Nebula's Premise

The rising sun made it obvious just how sizable a hole Celistar had blasted into the ceiling. While she hadn't collapsed the entire thing, she had brought down enough that we were able to find a route to clamber up out of the cave.

After our time in the darkness, getting a face-full of the light outside the cave had my eyes wanting to nope straight out of my head. They burned as they do when you have a nasty headache as I blinked away some tears.

I felt what seemed to me initially as 'oddly' tired, but then I realized that I'd likely been up longer than I thought, since there was no concrete way for us to tell time in the cave.

Well, Elder Scholar probably had one, but I wasn't about to ask him about it now. It wouldn't make any difference regardless of what the answer would be, and I'd feel stupid either way.

Which, okay, maybe I was being too harsh on myself, but that was nothing new.

Anyone else hungry? I asked, and István immediately produced a sandwich out of nowhere like he'd been waiting for me to ask. Then he produced another, and before long he had a selection of sandwiches. Which beat one. They all seemed quite fresh, which was weird as I hadn't seen him prepare them.

By this point, his person seemed so unexpectedly magical in my mind that if someone told me the man's farts smelled of roses, I'd be inclined to at least take a whiff to verify.

I mean, not that I was going to tell him that.

The outside of the cave had us back on the outside slope of the mountain, which seemed fitting, but now we were facing in an entirely different direction.

One that had a clear-cut trail leading away from the mountain. There was some activity on it as well, a similar self-powered wagon to the one we had taken to Mistral slowly trundling along, heading our direction.

So people who likely had no idea that we had destroyed their camp.

"It would behoove us," István spoke up as if he'd been reading my mind, "to prevent them from spreading the word."

"Agreed," Celistar added.

Viktor just grunted, which I interpreted as agreement. He seemed a little bored again.

"You can take it out if you want." I said, nudging him with my elbow a little.

"Really?" He said, his face that of a child opening a present.

"Yup, have at 'em."

And so he did, running ahead of us down the mountain, practically skipping.

"That's adorable," Celistar commented, making me wonder if the calibration for my 'adorable meter' was broken, before looking back at me. "Did you by any chance have him do that so we wouldn't have to run ahead and do it ourselves?"

"I can neither confirm nor deny these allegations," I said with a grin.

Celistar laughed, which made me realize I'd missed the uplifting nature of the sound. She'd had far more reasons to be down than up lately.

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It occurred to me that it probably wasn't the most responsible thing to just 'leave it to Viktor' in some of these situations, but I honestly didn't foresee a situation where he got in so far over his head that he couldn't at least pull off a defensive retreat or hold the fort until we arrived.

And no, saying so wasn't me inviting disaster, just an honest observation. The dude definitely knew what he was doing. It did raise a question, though.

"Is there a reason Viktor likes punching stuff so much?" I asked, and both Celistar and I turned to István, the obvious target of such a question.

The man looked a bit conflicted for a moment before simply answering, "I believe that is a better question for the man himself. It would not be my place to answer."

"Fair enough," I said.

The surface of the slope had more debris on in, probably blown outward as the roof collapsed, and more than a few of the trees were knocked over. We picked our way down the hill as Viktor continued to widen his lead on us.

We watched him approach the base of the mountain, when he suddenly stopped. I thought that maybe he'd encountered something he didn't like, but instead I realized he was probably waiting for the wagon to get closer.

My theory was proven out a few minutes later with his silhouette was highlighted against the ground in front of him as he leapt off whatever vantage point he'd been standing on.

We'd caught up somewhat at this point, so we heard the noise from the ensuing destruction as we closed the distance the rest of the way.

It was clear that someone had put up a bit of a fight, but just by ear it still seemed one-sided, as you could clearly hear the deeper noises of Viktor's strikes.

Reaching the area, I realized that there was a fairly formal entrance into the mountain cut into the face, and Viktor had been waiting behind a small outcropping.

Below us on the trail lay the wagon, flattened into a shape I would not have been able to place as the remains of its former self, had I not seen it prior to its destruction.

There were several corpses lying about. Viktor was napping against the wall, a light sheen of fresh, uh… 'exertion' covering his forearms.

"It went well, I take it?" I asked, rousing him from his slumber. He seemed completely refreshed, which seemed completely unfair, since I was as tired as ever.

"It did!" He replied, holding out a handful of something. "I found more jerky too."

Uh oh.

"Is it normal jerky or the kind that silently screams at you?" I asked.

"No idea," he replied, pulling out one and holding it out to me.

I examined it, finding what thankfully was a fairly normal chunk of dried meat.

"No existential horror here," I confirmed.

"I take that as the aperitif, generally," István. Viktor nodded in agreement as though he knew what Elder Scholar was talking about. I certainly didn't. Celistar giggled a little as well, which made me feel really out of the loop.

I looked along the road. It seemed clear enough, which was good, but also long and boring. I was not looking forward to the walk.

"I guess we should get going, eh?"

"That's about it," I said, plopping down on the side of the road. It was the late afternoon, and we hadn't seen anything.

Apparently, the Umbral Covenant cultists (or whatever it was they called themselves) had cleaned out nearly all the forest critters here as well.

It made me wonder how they had done so, and how it was possible to be as thorough as they had been. It's creepy as hell to walk through a forest that makes no noise at all, and even more so once you stop walking and everything was just dead silent.

Steeve had taken it upon herself to transform into random animals, and even a pumpkin, just to liven things up. The most impressive one was when she turned into a thick mist and drifted across the road, just a bank of fog with eyes randomly tumbling through it.

I half expected Gran to pop out from behind a tree and do her cackling witch impression. It's top-notch, I tell ya. I'd have definitely stolen a hug.

Even if it got me turned into a frog.

We still had our camping supplies, thankfully, so we set up something off the road just far enough so we wouldn't be easily seen by someone making their way down the path. I assumed sooner or later we'd be found out, but no reason not to drag the charade along as far as possible.

I'd sat up against a tree when we started setting up camp, and had to be woken up again to move into the tent.

Celistar looked at me with a face of concern. "Everything all right?"

"Yeah," I said, "just exhausted. It's been… a lot."

A look of empathy crossed her face.

"It really has, hasn't it?"