Chapter 11

  Hitasa stayed quiet for the rest of the evening. Dalex didn't try to get anything more out of her. Instead, he decided to try terraforming a small part of the hillside so it could support a campsite. At first, he used the {astral mortar} to summon a shovel and start digging out a flat space for a campfire. Seventh tsked in his ear when she realized what he was doing and dropped another canister with a {golem} to dig out a shallow cave for them.

  The {golem} scoured the forest for loose firewood and dropped a pile of dry logs at the cave entrance. Dalex had never started a fire in his life, but arranging the logs in a vaguely campfire-like shape and casting a {fireball} did the trick. He pointed a finger at the woodpile and the {astral mortar} in his armor projected a nozzle that spit a puff of fire and started the logs burning.

  Every time he used some magic, he caught a little twitch of motion from Hitasa out of the corner of his eye. The appearance of the shovel, the arrival of the {golem}, and the {fireball} all captured her attention, if only for a fraction of a second. Things outside her expectations still surprised her.

  Dalex went back to Hitasa and asked if she would like to sleep by the fire, offering to carry her brother there, too, so she could stay with him. She said nothing but also did not protest when he gently picked up Sitoa’s body and carried him to the cave. She followed quietly behind him until he set her brother down. She sat next to Sitoa again and stared away from the fire into the night. After half an hour, she laid down and went to sleep.

  Before calling it a night himself, Dalex took a moment to cast some {wards} around the hillside to alert him if any monsters, beastkin, or humans tried to sneak up on the camp. The fire was partially obscured inside the cave, but a determined pursuer from the town would be able to find them.

  ***

  Dalex woke to the shrill alarm of one of his {wards} buzzing in his ear. He sat up, noting that Hitasa still slept quietly next to her brother and had not been disturbed by the sound. He acknowledged the alarm, and it went away as he walked out to the cave opening.

  “Motion below,” Seventh said in his ear. “I have pinpointed the target. It is humanoid in shape. How would you like to repel the intruder?”

  Dalex whispered, “I think it will be quieter if I handle it.”

  He snuck away to the side of the clearing and crouched between the trees, looking downhill. When he couldn’t see anything with the naked eye, he cast {detect life}, {detect motion}, and {detect invisibility}. He decided to wrap them all up with a {god’s eye view}. His vision changed with each spell and his other senses enhanced alongside it.

  First, he followed vibrations in the air to locate the direction of his uninvited guest. Once he knew the general location of the intruder, he spotted a faded outline among the trees at the bottom of the clearing. It moved slowly clockwise around the clearing, opposite from where Dalex hid. Something like a lens fell over Dalex’s eyes, and his picture of the figure suddenly magnified and glowed orange.

  At first, it looked like an amorphous blob, but as it moved, he noticed its humanoid characteristics. It slunk low to the ground on two feet, using its hands to brace itself in an advancing motion that wasn’t quite a crawl. Despite being all the way across the clearing, Dalex could hear it move and breathe. Occasionally, the figure froze to perfect stillness, rotating its head and listening to the wind, perhaps waiting to see if it had been discovered.

  “That’s suspicious behavior if I’ve ever seen it,” Dalex muttered to himself. “{Invisibility}. {Fleet foot}. {Preternatural intuition}.”

  Dalex rushed quickly and quietly down the hill, rotating around the clearing to follow the intruder and catch up to it. The dark trees passed in a blur. Even sprinting through the forest, Dalex made no sound.

  Most of the spells were an experiment. In particular, {preternatural intuition} shot him with a chemical that boosted his thinking speed and reaction time. Seventh had assured him it wouldn’t come with any long-term side effects, though he wondered if that would be true the more he used it.

  He caught up to the intruder in fifteen seconds. Dalex got a brief but detailed look at the figure. It was a male beastkin, this one with the ears of a big cat like a panther. Black paint covered his body, along with an illusory effect that made his outline difficult to distinguish without upgraded vision. He held a short sword covered in a matte black material that made it nearly as invisible as its wielder. Around his waist was a belt sewn with pouches of varying sizes, each emitting a different haze that Dalex’s armor’s system could analyze. It informed him that some of the items in the pouches were poisonous in nature and others were explosive.

  This seemed like one well-armed assassin, but it wasn’t Castreier.

  Dalex hit the beastkin in the small of his back as hard as he could. The assassin let out a rush of breath and then fell face first into the dirt. Dalex waited for him to try to get up, but the assassin was motionless.

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  “{Detect maladies},” Dalex whispered.

  A diagram similar to the one he had seen when checking Hitasa’s condition appeared. It registered the patient as unconscious with a spinal fracture and kidney damage. A severe contusion swelled his back as blood rushed into the injured region.

  And Dalex hadn’t even used {Skull Anchor} on the guy. After Castreier survived a similar blow uninjured, Dalex had thought something magical and powerful protected him and his goons. Maybe the assassin had focused most of his efforts on stealth, only putting a few points in defense and never expecting to be noticed before he struck.

  “Are there any more of them?” Dalex asked.

  “I’m not detecting any more motion,” Seventh answered.

  Feeling a little bad that he had hit the intruder in the back, Dalex cast, “{Cure wounds},” though he specified the spell should only heal anything life-threatening. A small cloud of {astral mortar} became a swarm of tiny {golems} that rushed into the beastkin’s body through a lesion on his back and quickly mended his spinal column. They left the damaged kidney alone. Dalex figured the assassin could find someone in town to heal that or simply manage with the injury on his own.

  Satisfied with his patient’s progress, Dalex cast, “{Sleep},” summoning an injector that would keep the beastkin out of action until Dalex and Hitasa were gone. He jabbed the assassin in the leg and then cast {ray of light} to cut a message into the bark of a nearby tree. If the assassin woke up, he would see it right away in a language he should understand.

  “You’re welcome for not killing you. If I see you again, I won’t be so gracious.”

  Dalex marched back up the hill to the cave. Hitasa didn’t wake up on his arrival. He curled up in a corner and was out like a light.

  ***

  When Dalex woke for good the next morning, the sun was already up. No one else had appeared in the night. Seventh assured him that his drugged guest remained in the same place down the hill, still alive and still unconscious.

  Hitasa was awake as well. She had not moved from her brother’s side. Her eyes remained fixed on the nothing in the distance.

  “She woke several times in the night and watched you,” Seventh said in Dalex’s ear.

  Dalex didn’t know what to make of that. He sat up off the dirt floor and looked at the elf. “Good morning. Did you sleep well?”

  She didn’t look at him.

  Dalex continued, “I’ll make us some breakfast in a moment, but I need to ask again how you want to see to your brother?”

  She touched her brother’s hand but remained silent.

  “We can’t stay here another day, and we can’t carry his body like this.” A thought occurred to him, and he asked, “Unless you know some kind of resurrection magic?”

  Hitasa gave him a look like he was a child that had just asked if he could bring a cow into the house. Dalex wasn’t sure if the resurrection was truly impossible or if the idea simply offended her, but it seemed that option was out, at least by means of her own magic.

  “No resurrection, then,” he said. “Excuse me for a moment.”

  He stood up and walked to the edge of the cave entrance. He lowered his voice and asked, “What about us, Seventh? Is there really nothing we can do?”

  “His brain has been destroyed,” Seventh said. “His body is beginning to decompose. The curing of death is possible, but not under these circumstances.”

  Dalex turned around and walked back into the cave. “I am sorry, Hitasa. We have to put Sitoa to rest. Only you know what he would want.”

  “He would not want to be touched by a human,” she growled.

  Dalex couldn’t help a small chuckle. “I bet he wouldn’t.” He paused and took a deep breath. “Sorry, that was inappropriate. I do not have to touch your brother. I can help dig a grave or whatever you might need. The {golem} could do it, too.” He gestured to the artificial being sleeping outside the cave. “Or I could do nothing at all and leave it up to you. Tell me what you want to do.”

  He finally saw some light in her eyes, and not a kind variety.

  Looking for that one last push to get her moving, he added, “It’s only a matter of time before Castreier comes looking. He may already have sent someone.”

  “Let him come,” Hitasa said, glaring at Dalex.

  “We could try that. I’m guessing he would want to burn your brother’s body. He seemed deeply intent on hurting you, and I’m sure he knows that would do the trick.”

  This seemed to finally wake her up. Her rage gave way to fear, and she shuffled closer to her brother’s body. “I– I–”

  She didn’t finish her thought. After a moment, she turned around and hefted her brother into her arms. Dalex took a step forward, ready to catch the body if she dropped it, but she rose to her feet easily. Sitoa’s dead weight hardly bore her down at all.

  Hitasa gave Dalex another withering look. “I do not need your help.”

  With that, she walked out of the cave and started up the hill towards the trees. Dalex followed, prepared for a warning to buzz off, but it did not come. It seemed, as long as he didn’t interfere, she didn’t mind him watching.

  She found a spot deep in the forest and gently set her brother down against a tree. Dalex stopped a few yards away to observe quietly. Hitasa went to work digging in the dirt with her hands. She was strong and could move a lot of dirt at once, but Dalex still knew her method would take forever. After a few minutes of watching, he couldn’t help himself.

  “Are you sure you don’t want a shovel?” he asked, using the {astral mortar} to summon the tool in question. “I assure you there’s nothing human about it.”

  She looked up from her digging and glared at him but only went back to work. Dalex rested the shovel against tree a little closer to her and then backed away. A few more minutes went by. Finally, the elf made a disgusted grumbling sound and stood up to grab the tool. The grave digging went much faster from there.

  Once she had a suitably deep and wide hole, she set the shovel aside and retrieved her brother. Settling him into the grave took a fair amount of careful maneuvering, but she managed it on her own. She stood over the open hole for several minutes. At first, she just stared down at her brother. Only when the wind above the forest canopy died down for a moment did Dalex hear her quietly whispering to herself. He wanted to inch closer and hear what she said, but knew it was a bad idea.

  Finally, Hitasa cupped her hands together over the grave and said, “Aquarigare means the waters of life.”

  Water pooled in her hands, sloshing over the edge of her fingers to pour into the center of the grave. She let the stream flow for a few seconds before turning her hands over to empty the rest of the reservoir. Her fingers moved back and forth, sprinkling small bits of something over her brother.

  Seeds, Dalex realized.

  “Sitoa shall grow forever,” she said, and then grabbed the shovel again and set to filling the grave.

  When she finished, a green sprout already jutted from the freshly laid soil. Hitasa threw the shovel aside and walked away from her brother. She passed Dalex and continued down the hill, uttering a single question.

  “What now?”

  Dalex didn’t know if that was for him or for herself, or both.