11

Some hundred or so metres into the forest, Lira found a small clearing of flat ground, protected by two trees large enough to shelter them if it rained and decided it was as good as anything else they'd find out here.

Lira dumped her pack by the base of the tree and rummaged through it, pulling out her regular water flask and taking a few, long mouthfuls. She let the last one sit in her mouth, swishing it around before she swallowed, trying to get rid of the dry, ashen taste on her tongue.

The others settled across from her. Thea helped the dark-haired girl off Shari's back and carefully sat her down on the ground. Thea's mouth set into a thin line as the girl showed her the spirit cradled in her palm, but after a quiet word that Lira didn't catch, Thea started inspecting the girl's leg instead.

Lira watched them for a moment, tempted to splash some of the remaining water over her face. Her skin was stinging, almost feverish, but she shoved the idea aside and screwed the cap back on the flask.

"You four stay here," muttered Lira, standing and reluctantly throwing the water flask at Thea. "There's healing water in the other flask if you need it. Don't take anything else."

Thea tucked a piece of her hair back behind her ear and leaned on her staff, starting to to her feet. "I can hel--"

Shari rumbled, quieting her. Lira pretended not to notice her partner placing a restraining paw on Thea's leg and headed off into the forest.

Lira unslung her bow and rested an arrow across it as she quietly stalked through the trees. She didn't exactly expect to find anything to hunt--not with a new Wild lands appearing and the blaze--but she felt steadier with the weapon in her hands, and she needed to do something. Something that would stop her from marching back into that town, something to stop her thinking about the ten different problems that had reared their ugly heads since she'd woken up this morning. Something to stop her thinking about what she'd said to the girls.

I know what it's like to get left behind.

The sun was setting, casting long, dark shadows through the forest that she used to her advantage, lurking from one to the next. The sky was redder than usual, the air still acrid with smoke, but the silence soothed her. The gentle wind, the rustle of the leaves. No Ruptures, no flames, no words. Just her own, soft footsteps on the grass and the occasional scrape of her arrow against the bow.

When she could breathe again--really breathe without her grip tightening on the bow, without her lungs squeezing inside her chest at the thought of returning to camp--Lira slung the weapon back over her shoulder and set about collecting wood. Fire was the second last thing she wanted to see right now, but they needed it.

The shadows had blended into nightfall by the time Lira returned to the camp.

Shari lay where she'd been earlier, right beside the dark-haired girl and Thea. Her tail swished slowly across the ground behind her, eyes pinned to Lira as she tracked her movements across the camp.

Maybe it was dumb, but looked at the three of them, Lira was jealous. Jealous of the fact that she had to share her dumb cat, jealous of the fact that they'd barged in on her life, that they all just fit together so easily.

Lira dumped the wood in the centre of the clearing without another glance at the two girls and walked over to her pack. Her cloak had been neatly folded and placed beside it, along with the two water flasks. She paused for a moment, then unstrung her bow and retrieved a small, flat stone from her pack before moving back to the wood pile where she set about making a fire.

"Haven't seen enough fire today, eh?"

Lira looked up, finding Thea giving her a small smile from across the pile of wood.

"Feel free to turn around if you don't want to look at it," muttered Lira, going back to organising the sticks and shaving tinder with her knife.

Thea sighed and shuffled a little closer, her staff resting across her lap. "I'm just--it was supposed to be a joke."

Lira ignored the comment. She picked up the stone and sat it on her palm. With a small incision, she had enough blood to draw the seal for fire onto the stone. What was one more seal to save time? Her arm was already a mess, covered in dried blood and burns that were beginning to blister. A small flame flared to life on the stone, and Lira carefully placed it beneath the tinder within the sticks.

The two of them sat in silence, staring at the wood as it caught fire.

Despite the blossoming flames, Lira couldn't feel the heat. Concerned, she reached out her right hand and was met with the sight of the still-glowing blood seal on the back of her hand.

She blinked, surprised she'd forgotten about it. She was usually quick to ask Shari to heal them, but with the mob, she hadn't had the chance. Now her partner was laying beside the dark-haired girl. The dark-haired girl that Shari had demanded they come back and save, that Shari hadn't wanted to leave, that she'd allowed to sit on her back--

Lira almost jumped out of her skin when Shari sat down beside her with a heavy thud.

"What do you want?" muttered Lira, looking back into the fire and folding her arms.

Shari stared down at her and pawed at her arm. When Lira refused to give it to her, Shari leaned down and grabbed it in her mouth. Beaten but still sulking, Lira held out her arm, allowing Shari to erase the blood seal on the back of her hand, then start on the deeper cut she'd made on her bicep.

"She loves you," said Thea, holding her hands out to the fire. "Even in other bonded spirits, I've never seen anything quite like it."

Lira glanced at her with a scowl. "How would you even know that?"

Thea tapped her eyepatch. "You're not the only one who has a way to connect with spirits."

"I don't--"

"I saw what you did with that wolf," said Thea with an exasperated sigh. "Is there actually a point talking to you, or are you just going to be angry all night? Because that's gonna get old real fast."

Shari nudged Lira's shoulder with her head, a low rumble in her chest. Play nice.

"Or what, you're going to mother-hen me some more?" Lira said to Shari, still scowling.

Shari gave her a blank stare, then licked over her face, all the way from jaw to forehead, hard enough to push Lira over. Shari laid on top of her, those massive paws pinning down her shoulders as Shari continued to lick her cheeks.

Lira tried to push Shari off, entirely unsuccessfully. "What are you even doing, you dumb cat?"

"You know your face is burned, right?" said Thea. "She's just trying to fix it."

Well, that explained the stinging. "Last I checked, she didn't--" Another lick. "--didn't have to pin me down to heal me!"

Thea smirked. "No, but you're being difficult."

Lira glared at Shari. "No wonder you like her. She takes your side."

Shari made another rumble that sounded more like a laugh than anything else as she finished on Lira's face and let her sit up. Lira tried to wipe the spirit-saliva off her cheeks, but a growl from Shari lowered her hand.

"Fine! I'll leave your slobber there, happy?"

Shari purred and, after making sure there was sufficient saliva covering Lira's smaller burns, curled up beside her, head on her lap, butt behind it.

Lira rolled her eyes but found her hand stroking Shari's fur anyway.

The clearing was silent for a few minutes, with nothing but Shari's gentle purrs and the crackle of the fire that kept the night at bay. If Lira closed her eyes, it was just like so many other nights, alone with no one but Shari around through thousands of trees.

Yet it wasn't just them. They had not just two humans, but another spirit with them. As much as Lira would have liked to sit here, not talking to anyone, she did have a duty to that spirit.

Sovereign, why do you do this to me? she thought as she gave in to the inevitable question and looked at Thea.

"If you can see spirits, can you look at the one over there?" asked Lira, jerking her head towards the dark-haired girl. "It didn't look good when I saw it earlier."

Thea glanced back over her shoulder at the dark-haired girl, still where she'd been sitting before Shari moved. Her leg looked better now, her burns covered in blueish-white stuff--probably from Thea finding a suitable plant to spirit-fy and turn into a healing paste.

"I looked earlier," said Thea. "I don't know, it just looks like his life force is… fading? Almost like it's bleeding out, but there's no wound. Shari tried to help him, but nothing changed. I haven't heard of anything like it."

Lira chewed the inside of her cheek for a moment. "What do you know of blood magic?"

Thea frowned. "Only enough to make sure I never accidentally use it, though what does that have to do with--you'd better not be suggesting we--"

"Blood seals don't work on spirits." Lira glanced at the dark-haired girl. "What about you?"

The girl slowly shuffled her way closer to the fire, still cradling Ryn in her hands. "I don't know much, just the legends that even a lowly serving girl knows."

"Still mad about that?"

"Yes," said the girl, glaring daggers at Lira as Thea lifted her gaze to the canopy and leaned back on her arms with a sigh. "I'm still mad about you telling me that I'm worth absolutely nothing without even giving me a chance to explain--"

"I gave you plenty of time to explain, you decided to tell me about how willing you were to cut off your hair instead of, oh I don't know, telling me that you're spirit bonded!"

"Right," said the girl. "Let me just go throwing out my biggest secret on a whim and endanger not only myself, but Ryn! Look how well that turned out!"

"Guys, can you--" began Thea.

But Lira was latching onto the last part. "You told that woman you were bonded?"

"Well--yeah?" said the girl, aggressively lifting a shoulder and dropping it a few seconds later. "She comes back to the inn, starts screaming at me about not giving you the letter properly or something, so I might've asked why she wanted your help, and I don't know, it just kind of slipped out about Ryn once I knew she was looking for spirit bonded pairs."

"Then what did she do?"

"Her attitude just completely changed," said the girl. "She apologised, said she had something important she needed to show me upstairs, so… I followed her." The girl paused, closing her eyes for a long second. "Someone else in one of the rooms heard the yelling and came out to see what was going on, but the woman, she just--she just pulled out her dagger and…"

The girl drew a line across her throat.

"I know I should have run at that point," continued the girl, blank eyes on the campfire. "But--I don't know. It just didn't seem real. She pulled me into the room you found me in, and then the ropes were moving by themselves and I was tied to the chair. She made a gash on my arm and used the blood to draw something on the back of the door before she left. I tried screaming, but the gag just blocked everything. I heard someone scream downstairs, and I knew she'd killed someone else, that she was coming back…"

"Which was when Ryn found you," murmured Lira.

The girl gave a stuttered nod. "He--he squeezed under the door and tried to get the ropes off, but he was so small. He couldn't--and then the woman was back, and she put him in the cage. It--it wasn't until I saw the blood on the wall that I realised what she was doing to him. I just threw myself at her, chair and all. I don't think she was expecting it. She fell over and hit her head on the end of the bed. I could smell the fire, but I couldn't get out, couldn't--couldn't--"

Thea shuffled a little closer to the girl's side, putting an arm around her shoulder.

"Did she say anything else?" asked Lira.

"She just said that we were leaving," murmured the girl. "I mentioned smelling smoke, but she just laughed and said we wouldn't be here long enough anyway and started drawing on the wall with his blood."

"You mean her blood, right?" asked Thea.

The girl shook her head. "Ryn's."

The colour drained out of Thea's face as she glanced at Lira. Lira confirmed her fear with a slow nod. The spirit mage covered her mouth with a hand and looked down to where Ryn lay, flicking up the edge of her eyepatch for a brief second before snapping it back into place with a curse.

"How'd you know what seal to draw on the ground?" Lira asked the dark haired girl. "You said you didn't know anything about blood magic."

"I don't," replied the girl. "I was desperate. I figured she'd started the fire, it'd only make sense if she protected herself from it too. I just copied the freshest seal on the woman's vest and prayed to the Sovereign that it'd help. I tried using her blood first, but it didn't work."

"No, it wouldn't," said Lira, tapping her fingers along Shari's fur. "You can't use other people's blood to draw seals."

The fire crackled, a few of the sticks splintering and falling inwards to smoulder.

"That fire today wasn't natural, was it?" said Thea, hugging one of her legs up close to her chest. "It wasn't burning the way it was supposed to. It felt clever, almost like it was… taking its time."

Lira poked at the fire with a longer stick. "That woman killed the innkeeper and used his blood to draw a seal that kept the fire spreading and burning, far longer than it should have."

Thea frowned. "You just said you couldn't use other people's blood to draw seals."

"Technically, what I said was that you couldn't."

"And as helpful as that is," said Thea. "Are you going to elaborate on that or leave us to figure it out ourselves?"

"I'll… explain," said Lira quietly, lifting Shari's head off her lap and walking over to her pack. She shoved the two flasks back in the bag and shook out the cloak, throwing it over the head of the dark-haired girl. "You two can share that tonight." After a little more rummaging, she pulled out two strips of dried meat and tossed the girls one each. "Those, too."

"You don't want any?" said Thea, as the dark-haired girl started tearing into her own strip.

"Bonus of being a spirit hunter," said Lira, patting Shari on the behind as she sat back down in front of her. "Bonding with this dumb cat means I don't have to eat as much, among other things."

"I… have my own--" began Thea, hesitantly tugging on the strap of her own, far smaller pack.

Lira sighed. "Just eat it. I'm guessing most of your supplies were with your map guy, and for what I'm gonna say next, you're going to need every little bit of strength you can get."

Thea's guilt evaporated into a withering stare. "What, because you're so tough, Miss 'sulking because my cat didn't want to let some other girl burn to death' spirit hunter?"

Lira smirked. "Still a better title than Miss 'mobbed to death by a bunch of people because she completely forgot she had magic' spirit mage."

"I didn't forget," mumbled Thea, tugging on the end of the strip with her teeth. "I'm just… not used to having people get that angry. Usually they give me the chance to talk, or--"

"You've never left the city before, have you?"

Thea puffed out her cheeks. "The other mages wouldn't let me."

"The other hunters didn't let me either, but here we are." Lira took off her belts and settled back down against Shari. One by one, she pulled out her knives to clean them. They didn't really need it, but it was an excuse. An excuse to focus on anything else, to have their weight in their hands before she shared the suspicions that'd been coiling in her gut since the Rupture. "Do they teach you spirit mages what a blood witch is in that pretty little city of yours?"

"They taught us about the war," said Thea. "The spirit mages had to eliminate the blood witches after they started using blood seals to break the rules of nature, like reanimating bodies to make them fight, or drain entire towns of their blood to power their rituals."

"I didn't think that was all real," said the dark haired girl around a mouthful of food. She swallowed. "Like, the legends say all that stuff about the army of the undead, but it always sounded too dumb to be true."

"They were real once," said Thea. "But the spirit mages hunted them all down. They're extinct. The last witch died centuries ago in a hidden cell deep within the city." She wrinkled her nose. "I've… I've seen the body."

Lira turned over a knife, checking the edge, keeping her eyes on the spiritsteel. "Blood witches could use other people's blood to draw seals. Their seals were stronger in every way, even able to draw nearby blood into them." She tapped her knife against her knee. "What if the witches just got really good at hiding? What if they're adapting to how they lost the first time?"

Thea gripped her staff. "I hate that I know what you're suggesting."

"What, that the witches aren't all dead?"

"No," snapped Thea. "That if they aren't all dead, that they're not just using human blood anymore. They're trying to use spirit blood."

"I don't like it either," said Lira. "But there's too many coincidences. There were burned out human-blood seals around the Rupture. The spirit itself had lines on its head that almost looked like a broken seal, and when I connected with the spirit, something was fighting it for control. Then in the nearby town, we have a woman, who not only tried to enlist me for Sovereign knows what, but later set an entire town on fire using someone else's blood, all to kidnap a girl and use her bonded spirit's blood as fingerpaint. If anyone has another explanation, I'm more than happy to hear it."

She almost hoped one of them would start arguing, telling her that she was being ridiculous, but they both just sat there, one staring into the fire, tapping her fingers along her staff, and the other one hungrily eyeing off a neglected strip of dried meat.

"So what do we do?" said Thea, taking another small nibble at her strip as the other girl pouted. "We can't just ignore this."

"For now, we stay here and sleep," said Lira, putting away the last of her knives and laying the belts down close. "After dealing with a primal and an idiot mob, I'm exhausted." She rubbed her fingers behind Shari's ear. "Healing water and cat slobber only does so much."

"And tomorrow?"

Lira shrugged and laid down beside Shari, who placed a paw over her chest. Solid. Safe. Warm. "Hopefully once the sun is up, it won't take Arden and his other idiots too long to find us."

"What if they don't find us?" asked Thea, finally passing her strip to the dark haired girl, who immediately inhaled it. "What if--"

"We find them," said Lira. "And then make fun of them for taking so long to get here."

*+*+*+*