The last constructs fell in the ten minutes after, picked apart systematically. Elizabeth’s barrier had held the bridge long enough for Alexander and Mireya to clear the far end completely.
Iris had pushed the left flank back into the trees with the kind of contained efficiency that Rex filed for later. Apollo had handled the constructs that got through with physical precision, and Talyra’s arrows finished off the stragglers.
When it was over, Elizabeth stood at the center of the bridge with both grimoires open but inactive, scanning the tree lines on both sides.
"They knew where we were," she said to Alexander.
He nodded. "That’s twice today, and it’s starting to get ridiculous!"
"Why don’t they just fight us right now?!"
"The corridor, and now this," Alexander said. "Mordecai’s network is better than we assud."
Elizabeth looked at Rex. "That was coordinated, and nothing on that gorge rim was random deploynt."
Rex agreed in the tone of soone confirming rather than contributing. "They know we’re after the Key."
"They’re not sending everything at once, though. This was testing our formation."
"That’s a reasonable read," she said.
She folded the first grimoire. "We have to keep crossing, keep on the move before anything happens again."
"Drevash village isn’t far away from here, so let’s move now before it gets full dark."
Apollo ca off the bridge and looked at Rex and Nerith standing near the edge, Nerith’s scraped hands visible, her expression composed but not entirely convincing. His face moved through its sequence and landed on concern.
"What happened?" he asked.
"She went over the gorge edge," Rex said. "But she’s fine for now... I pulled her back."
"Oh no..." Apollo looked at Nerith directly. "Are you hurt?"
"It’s only my hands," Nerith said. "Nothing serious."
"Let see." He reached for them, and she let him look, and he made the expression he made when he was assessing sothing and trying not to show that he was worried. "Aisella needs to look at these."
"I’ll find her," Nerith said.
Apollo looked at Rex over her head. The gratitude in his expression was unguarded and real. "Good thing you were close," he said.
"Yeah," Rex said.
Apollo held his gaze for one more second, then nodded once and went to help Elizabeth with the crossing.
Nerith turns to Rex before she goes to check on Aisella, and of course, she still has a conflicted mind about him. But for now, she’s going to let it all slide because he just saved his life.
’Everyone... deserves a second chance... and what he did to ... it was all just a fake dream that needs to be replaced with sothing real.’
’Yes... that’s it...’
...
After walking for almost a long ti, they finally could see firelight about two hundred ters further on through the thinning trees.
The village was called Drevash, and it was smaller than its firelight had shown. Maybe sixty households arranged around a central square, with a well, a covered market stall, and a two-story building at the far end that served as both the headman’s residence and the closest thing to an inn the village had.
The surrounding land was cultivated in narrow terraced plots that climbed the ridge on three sides.
The villagers were cautious about the group’s arrival, which was reasonable. Elizabeth handled it with practiced ease, introduced herself as Grand Academy faculty, nad the Academy seal on her ring, and explained the expedition’s purpose in terms that were accurate without being alarming.
Within fifteen minutes, the headman, a heavyset man in his late fifties nad Durvan, had arranged lodging and was sitting with Elizabeth and Alexander at a table in the building’s common room.
Rex stood near the doorway and listened.
Durvan knew the canyon system well. Three generations of his family had fard the terraced plots above Drevash, and his grandfather had helped map the first-level passages when the canyon was opened for mineral survey work.
He described the three levels with a matter-of-fact familiarity: the first level was accessible and stable, the second level required rope work and technical preparation, and the third level featured changed acoustics, a differently flowing nature channel, and light sources that began to behave strangely.
Elizabeth asked about the corridor.
Durvan’s expression shifted.
"We’ve had trouble," he said. "Not from below, but... from the canyon’s east approach."
"The east approach," Elizabeth said. "Hmm... that’s not a standard route."
"Not anymore," Durvan agreed. "Used to be a secondary trade path, stone rchants mostly."
"About two years ago, travelers started having trouble with it."
"Equipnt going missing. Guides coming back with injuries." He folded his hands on the table. "It was not a monster attack, but the injuries felt wrong for that."
"It has cuts that are too clean and traps that are too specific." He looked at Elizabeth directly. "Soone’s been working the east approach for two years, and we don’t know who."
Elizabeth exchanged a glance with Alexander. Rex noted it and filed it.
This was new information for her, and it was consistent with the second-stratum contact theory. He didn’t volunteer the connection, but he stood near the doorway and watched.
After hearing all the important information, Elizabeth said to the group, "Now’s the perfect ti to enjoy and have a relaxing hot spring before tomorrow, which will be the last day of the expedition to save Aurelia and the others."
...
The hot spring was behind the main building, enclosed by a low stone wall and a bamboo screen dividing it into two sections. The water ca up sulfurous and steaming, deeply satisfying after a day of forest terrain and combat.
Rex had let the others go first.
From the n’s side, Apollo’s voice was relaxed, saying sothing to Alexander about the corridor collapse that made Alexander give a short, genuine laugh. Iris’s quieter voice ca from sowhere in the won’s section, followed by Aisella’s soft response, and then Nerith spoke from nearer the bamboo divider than the others.
She was sitting in the water with her back to the bamboo, her robe folded on the stones beside the pool, her hair loose. The amber leaves were settling into the water’s heat in a way that looked involuntary, like they were releasing sothing they had been holding all day.
And slowly... her eyes were closed.
The dream was still there when she closed her eyes.
But it’s not in full detail anymore, more like the residue of it, the emotional texture that good dreams and bad ones left behind even after the images faded. The version of Rex in the dream had been all cruel and evil, where he literally raped her.
She was thankful that she had woken up from it with her hands shaking and had spent the rest of the day being very careful about the conclusions she drew from feelings.
That had been the sensible approach.
She turned her hands over in the water and looked at the scrapes along her palms from the listone crack, still faintly pink even after Aisella’s attention.
The dream Rex and the Rex who saved her from the gorge were not the sa person. She had been telling herself that in different ways since the waterfall, trying to find a framing that let her hold both versions without one canceling the other out.
The dream felt true. It had the weight and texture of truth.
However, the gorge incident had actually occurred, and it was not a dream, but the crack in the listone was real, the four seconds were real, and the hand that ca down over the edge before she even called for it was also real.
She exhaled slowly and let the steam do what steam did.
’Mother Nature is forgiving towards humans who destroy nature... Should I be forgiving as well and see the real Rex right now...?’
She begins to think about Apollo. The thing about him was that, from the mont they t, she had always been able to understand him. He was relatable in the sa way that good people are relatable.
’His warmth showed where it was, his uncertainty showed when it was there, his care for the people around him was visible in every small choice he made throughout the day...’
’At the waterfall he had said sothing honest and quietly devastating, and I had known exactly what it was and exactly why he was saying it, and I had felt sothing real in response.’
She pressed her palms flat against the stone edge of the hot spring.
’But still... the thing about Rex... I could not do that.’
’I could not read him the way I read Apollo. I could watch him and collect information and build models and revise them, and every ti I thought I had an accurate picture, sothing happened that the picture did not account for.’
’The dream had felt like finally understanding sothing... then the gorge had dismantled that understanding without asking permission...’
’He was already moving,’ she thought again. ’Before I knew I was falling.’
That was the part she kept returning to. Not because it was the most dramatic mont of today, but because of what it implied about the ti before it.
Rex had anticipated the mont four seconds in advance, yet he remained silent, did not draw attention to himself, and was simply in the right place when the mont arrived.
She had not needed to call for him. She had not needed to ask.
He had been there in the specific way that people were there when they had already decided, before the ergency, that they were not going to let sothing happen.
’He saved two tis... and I feel so bad having all these bad thoughts about him...’
User Comments
0 comments from readers