“Those are the split peaks?” Jay asked as she stared at the mountains looming ahead of her.
“According to the map, yes,” Aila replied from behind her. “So our ally may be in this valley somewhere.”
“I do hope so,” Eir said from where she sat next to Aila. “The second possible location is several days to the west, and the third is deep in the mountain ranges. It would be much, much more convenient to find our hidden friend here.”
“When is life ever that convenient?” Kerr grumbled as she searched the forest before them for likely passage forward.
“It n—never is,” Thea sighed as she hefted a well-used axe to her shoulder.
Jadis felt Thea’s sigh in her soul. Their progress had slowed significantly since that morning and she honestly couldn’t wait for the day to be over, yet they were still barely inside the area that could be called the valley below their supposed landmark. She had expected it to be a challenge to pull the giant wagon overland once they left the road, but she had severely underestimated just how much of a challenge it would be.
The road leading out of Sweet Pine Valley did not branch eastward, at least not until it got all the way back to the abandoned Crossroads Fort. That eastern road didn’t go to the mountain they were trying to get to, either, as it instead bypassed it and many more valleys to reach another, larger mining village several days travel away. That meant the only way Fortune’s Favored was going to get to the valley was by going off road and blazing a trail through the forest.
Their massive wagon was more than capable of handling the bumps and dips of rocky terrain. Its robust suspension system and powerful enchantments meant a few rough spots wouldn’t cause it the least bit of damage. What the wagon couldn’t do, unfortunately, was easily fit between the trees. And even in the areas where the forest was dominated by giant redwood-like pines with dozens of feet between the trunks, the landscape there was so difficult to walk because of the huge roots that getting the wagon’s wheels over them was practically impossible, even for Jadis’ combined strength.
Kerr’s scouting duties had become less about keeping watch for dangers and more about finding clear paths for Jadis to pull the Behemoth along. Even then, the only real way to make progress was to break out axes and forcibly cut their way through. Jadis could split smaller trees in half with a single swing, but she still had to stop to do so, letting the wagon lose all momentum as she cut down the tree low enough for the wagon to pass over the stump as well as move the fallen log out of the way.
Kerr, Thea, Sabina, and Bridget had all been forced to take up axes of their own to help with the effort. They would stay ahead of the wagon, cutting down the smaller brush and trees and moving them out of the way so that Jadis could keep at least some forward momentum going. She still had to stop pulling occasionally to cut down the larger trees that got in the way, though.
Jadis really did hope this was the right split peak mountain. D had answered her question with the relatively vague direction that she’d find an allied member of an avatar race “at the base of a mountain with a split peak, where two streams meet right before spilling over into five waterfalls.” While that had to be a fairly unique location, now that Jadis was standing in the shadow of one of three possible mountains with a split peak, she was starting to understand just how daunting a task this search was going to be. D had said the waterfalls would be at the base of the mountain. But what constituted the base of the mountain? How far around it should they search? Additionally, they couldn’t even necessarily guarantee that it would be the base of this side of the mountain, in the southern facing valley. For all they knew, the spot could be on the northern side, meaning they’d have to go over the mountain to get to it.
She had to wonder if all oracles got just as vague and problematic answers to their questions as this one had proven to be.
Eventually, around nightfall, Jadis and her exhausted crew made it to a decent enough site to camp in along the bank of a large stream that was still running despite the cold. They were still a good ways away from the mountain, but they were within the valley below split peak, with two other mountains to their east and west. Overall, the valley wasn’t all that different from Sweet Pine Valley in the way it looked, just without the ruins of an abandoned village to populate it.
“I don’t think we should bother pulling the wagon any further in,” Dys said as she helped set the wagon-tent up. “It’ll take way too long to move the whole camp further into the valley.”
“We should leave the wagon here,” Syd continued from her side of putting up the wagon’s walls. “We can use it as a base of operations. We can just run on foot to search the mountain and come back here at night when we’re done for the day.”
“There are six of us, though,” Aila pointed out. “You can’t easily carry all of us plus your weapons while running. And we’d be leaving the wagon undefended, too.”
“Hmm,” Jay chewed on her lip as she set down a load of firewood, having just come back from chopping down a dead tree. “You could put your traps all around it, though. That would deter most things that might come across it.”
“Most things,” Aila agreed. “But not all.”
“Honestly,” Dys said as she turned to face Aila, putting one hand on her hip, “I think it should probably just be me scouting out there while the rest of you stay back at the camp.”
As soon as she said it, Aila and many of the others immediately voiced their objections to the idea. How were they supposed to work together as a team if she left them behind? What if she ran into an actual threat while they were separated? What if something happened to Jadis and they had no idea where she went and couldn’t find her?
“Look,” Jay said, holding up her hands to quiet her friends and lovers. “Out of all of us, I’m the most qualified to run ahead.”
“Yes, you’re better at tracking than me,” Syd quickly said, cutting Kerr off.
“But I’m faster than any of you. I can run as fast as a horse over rough terrain while wearing this really fucking heavy armor. No one else is better equipped to run around this valley making a quick search of it than I am. I’m more concerned about what could possibly happen to you all while I’m gone than what might happen to me.”
“We aren’t helpless,” Aila said crossing her arms. “The six of us can handle ourselves, especially working together.”
“Yes, you can,” Jay nodded. “That’s another reason why I think you should all stay right here. With all six of you staying here to defend the wagon, I’d feel much better about leaving you all behind. I know you could handle any bandits or demons that might find you.”
“Still feels like a shit idea to separate,” Kerr growled. “You might not even know what to look for out there even if you do find these stupid waterfalls. If the person we’re looking for left, you won’t be able to follow their tracks.”
“If I find a place that looks like the right waterfalls,” Syd said, “I am immediately running back here to get all of you. I want all of your help with this. I’m only suggesting this split so we can cover more ground faster.”
The team talked over the idea more, discussing it as they finished setting up camp and made dinner. It was decided that Jadis should only search specific areas in a sequence, as outlined by Aila, so that if for some reason she didn’t return for the night they had an idea of where to look for her. They also all adamantly insisted that if Jadis ran into anything that might be even a remote threat to her, she was to run away and return to camp as hastily as possible. Even if it meant leading a demon matriarch back to the camp, they wanted to be able to support her in that fight rather than her trying to take it on herself.
Jadis had a few conditions of her own, of course. She didn’t want any of them to go wandering off while she was gone. No need to split the party further than they already were. She didn’t want to return from a day’s search to find that one or more of them had disappeared into the forest with no sign of returning. She also wanted to work out a way for them to signal her. If a dangerous enemy that they couldn’t handle attacked the camp, she wanted them to call for her aid so she could return to defend them as quickly as possible.
Sabina was the one to come up with an idea to solve that problem.
“I need you to fuck me again,” the smith said between bites of stew. “So I can change my boosted attribute to Arcane. I think I can maybe craft a one-time use enchantment that’ll make a really, really loud noise, like an explosion or a thunderclap, that way we can signal you or you can signal us with one of your own! But I need Arcane magic to do something elemental instead of Eldritch since this will be kind of complicated, so we need to have sex.”
“While I completely get where you’re coming from, that is just such a weird thing to hear said out loud,” Bridget mumbled as she shook her head.
“Alright then,” Aila said as she got up, putting her mostly empty bowl aside. “I better start laying down more trap circles.”
“Hmm? Why?” Thea looked up at the redhead in confusion.
“Because if Jadis is going to be having sex with Sabina, that means there’s going to be a lot of cum to spare shortly. I might as well use up my magic reserves so I can get a refill.”
“O—oh.”
Jadis had to agree with Thea and Bridget. The matter-of-fact nature of their combined sex life was certainly odd.
The next morning, Jadis spent the first couple of hours using her strength to reinforce their camp. Going back along the trail they had made, she brought many of the logs to the camp and used them to make fortified walls. She set up as many as she could while waiting for Sabina to finish her Arcane powered enchantments. The need for protections and a way of signaling each other had been made clear by the multiple instances of demons coming across their camp in the night. A baker's dozen worth of bramble fiends had stumbled into their traps during the night, and a trio of bone thieves had assaulted them in the early hours of the morning. Most of them were taken out by Aila’s traps, so the threat was minimal, but the demons still impressed the dangers of the area on their minds.
Sabina’s hastily crafted creations turned out to be inspired by something the imperial military sometimes used for long-distance communications. The flat, round piece of wood had been etched with an arcane enchantment circle, though it was slightly more complex than just a carved piece of wood. The ashes of several different types of herbs had been mixed into a paste, then painstakingly painted into the rune marks without spilling over. Several pieces of flint had also been inserted into specific notches carved into the wood, and a rather foul-smelling goo had been made from certain parts of the frost drakes that Sabina had harvested had been used to seal the flint stones in place.
“This is just a very basic version of what the military has,” Sabina explained as she handed the plate-sized wooden disc to Jay. “It’ll only work once, but it’ll be loud when you use it, so as long as you’re in the valley we should be able to hear you and you should be able to hear us if we use ours. Just put a little of your magic into it and it should work!”
“Put a little magic into it?” Jay wondered out loud.
She knew that was how Aila kept her enchanted canteen working, and how longer-lasting enchantments generally worked as well. They generally needed magic from a person to refresh them, like charging a battery. She’d never actually tried it before, though.
“Do I just… think about it? Or do I—”
As she held the disc, Jadis focused on the enchantments, seeing if she could feel any kind of magical connection between herself and the device. Surprisingly, she found that there actually was something there that she could vaguely feel, almost like a string or wire coming out of her body that touched the enchantment, giving her a tingling sensation that reminded her of when her leg fell asleep after sitting on it for a while. As she touched that odd-feeling part of her to the enchantment, the black soot inside the arcane enchantment ring started to sizzle.
“No wait!”
Half a second later there was a deafening bang as the wooden disc burst apart in Jay’s hands. While the wood breaking apart was no more explosive than a balloon popping, the sound it made was like a thunder clap that made Jadis’ ears ring. All three of her, even Dys who had been standing several yards away, were forced to pull her helmets off and rub at her ears. Looking around, Jadis could see that her bodies hadn’t been the only casualties. Everyone was rubbing their ears, faces twisted up in pain. Eir and Kerr in particular looked miserable, their sensitive hearing no doubt impacted the most by the explosive noise. She even saw Eir’s hands glow as she started using healing magic.
“Yup! That’s how you do it!” Sabina shouted as she wiggled a finger in her pointed ear. “Just make sure you throw it up in the air after you activate it, or it’ll deafen you!”
“…Right.”
“What!?”
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