Deacon was already halfway through calculating his descent, branch angles, optimal landing points, and how to approach without a single twig snapping underfoot, when the voice called out, casual and flat.
"I hear you moving behind me, Deke."
He froze.
Eyes widening slightly, his posture stiffened against the tree he was leaning atop of. She hadn't even turned to look. Not once. His hand gripped the twin hilts of Echoform Reliquary tighter as his brain raced through the possibilities.
Then she sighed.
The thief lowered her bloody dagger, wiped her hand absently on her trousers, and finally turned around.
Deacon's fingers twitched off the grips.
Valorie.
The dirty-blond hair, tied back messily with an arrow shaft, the crooked smile she always wore when she thought she was being clever, the same half-closed, amused eyes, and the same tiny pale scar just over her chin, from the dummy accident in their shared archery class.
She raised an eyebrow at his silence, gesturing with the tip of her dagger toward the slope he was "hidden" atop.
"Well? You just gonna keep stalking me up there or come say hi like a normal person?"
Deacon blinked owlishly, his brain trying to process that the thief who stole from him was Valorie, his archery rival at the academy, and not some random Joe Shmoe who got lucky.
Then he let out a long and slow sigh, which caused the tension to bleed off his shoulders as he stepped off the ridge and dropped down.
As he approached, she went back to carving the doe.
"You're a real piece of work, Val," he said, stopping just a few feet from her and eyeing his bow and quiver strapped across her back. "You stole from me."
"You left it in a tree," she replied without missing a beat. "Plus, you didn't even notice me following you when you went past my platform."
"Besides," She smirked. "I left quite a bit of obvious clues for you to track me down."
Deacon pinched the bridge of his nose, muttering under his breath.
"You're such a pain in the ass."
"You mean your hero who protected your stuff?" She winked over her shoulder. "And you're welcome, by the way. There was someone else who was tailing your ass, so I got rid of them when they were about to take a shot at your head."
"Really?" Deacon asked, but he didn't remember seeing anyone tailing him.
"You remember that elf in our archery class? The one with long green hair?" Valorie asked and continued to describe a bit more once Deacon's brows furrowed. "The one who looks like she had a stick up her ass?"
"Val," Deacon said, eyes turning half-lidded and deadpan. "You literally described every elf in the academy."
Val snorted. "The one who got third place in the archery tournament, while I got first and you second. You remember her?"
Deacon looked thoughtful for a moment before making a noise of realization, "Oh, yeah… Le'ae, right? Why would she try to kill me, though? I haven't done jack shit to her? Hell, I remember giving her some advice back when I first joined the academy."
"Beats me?" Valorie shrugged, going back to carving up the doe. "I mean she had some sort of inferiority complex, that I knew, but I didn't think that bitch had it in her to actually try and kill you."
Valorie continued carving methodically, blood coating her forearms past the elbow as the hide peeled back. Deacon, shaking his head but deciding not to press her too hard just yet, stepped away from her and began gathering materials.
There was a small patch of bellroot growing under a thick moss bed nearby, good for bruises and quick clotting. He picked it clean, then grabbed a couple of long branches, and searched around the edge of the stream for flat, dinner plate-sized stones.
One by one, he washed everything in the water.
"So," he said, tossing a cleaned stone up and down in his palm, "where's your bow?"
There was a pause.
Then Val let out a breath through her nose, more annoyance than anything else. "Gone… Here, look."
Deacon looked up.
She tilted herself backwards for a moment and lifted the back of her chest piece, just enough for him to see the tightly wrapped white bandages just above her hip. A smear of green paste oozed slightly where pressure shifted – medicinal paste.
"What the hell happened?" he asked, submerging yet another flat stone into the river.
"When I stopped her from shooting at your head, with a warning arrow of my own, she got really pissed at me," Valorie said, eyes rolling as she lowered her chest piece and went back to carving the doe. "We got into a bit of an archery battle, which ended up with us getting into a melee because other beasts got involved."
"Mid-fight," Val continued, flicking a hunk of meat off the blade with a lazy twist, "another elf dropped in and of course he helped Le'ae, because elves could never be the aggressors," she snarked sarcastically.
"And they wonder why everyone still blames them for the Second Tower War," Deacon said sarcastically as he dunked the branches under water.
Val gave a dry snort. "Not for long. Elf #2 threw a firebolt at me. Missed my face, but it hit my bow on my back instead. Caught the string and upper limb. It was ash in seconds."
Deacon winced. "Oof. I don't suppose it was just one of the bows that we used for practice, was it?"
"Nope. It was all custom-made; One hundred and eighty pounds pull with a Whisperwood frame and oiled for a week and a half with horned snake oil. It took me a year and a half to gather the money for the materials and two months to create it." Her knuckles tightened just around the grip of her dagger. "It's pissing me off even thinking about how its gone now."
"And after that?"
"I did what I know," Val said simply. "Used the environment to set up some wire traps and yadda yadda yadda, Elf #2 ended up being hung by his neck by my wire noose trap, and Le'ae ran right through my piano wire trap and got decapitated by it. But just as I was scavenging their bodies, a big fuck off tiger came out of nowhere and ate Le'ae and her bow… so yeah… "
Deacon set down the cleaned stones beside the fire, then handed her a damp cloth. "Hold that to your side before the paste dries out. I'll crush some bellroot and make a proper wrap."
She took the cloth with a grunt of thanks, pressing it against her wound while keeping her other hand steadily working on the carcass.
"She was gonna kill you, y'know," she added after a moment. "You wouldn't have heard the shot. It was a clean angle. I only noticed because I was already watching her follow you."
Deacon nodded, not doubting her for a second. "I believe you."
"You owe me a bow," Val replied without missing a beat. "And a quiver as well."
He smirked. "Fair enough, I can find another bow from another corpse."
***
Three hours later, the area beside the river was nearly spotless.
Ash had been scattered and used to bury the blood trails, and boot prints were covered with dirt and leaves. The only visible signs of people having been in the area were the strips of jerky hanging above a campfire by a tripod made of tree branches and the smell of smoke, meat, and herbs mingling together.
Deacon crouched near the fire pit with one hand held above the flames. The embers beneath his hand flickered, becoming unnaturally still for a moment before surging with a low hum as the area around his palm became visibly drier.
"You are only limited by your own imagination," Deacon repeated to himself, remembering a quote in a book he read back in the academy library.
He was using his Innate Skill, Undying Flame, as a pocket dehydrator to turn the thick pieces of venison Valorie cut into jerky in a quarter of the usual time.
Valorie sat beside the river, sharpening her dagger with short, practiced strokes, already cleaned of blood and filth. Her gear was all sorted out, bow and quiver on her back, daggers were cleaned and sheathed, and her hood was up. Her wound was re-wrapped, bellroot paste mixed with amaranth, and packed tightly beneath medicinal paste.
When Deacon finally stood, he moved over to the pair of cloth bundles Valorie had laid out, along with two satchels – she'd found them in the pouches of the elves. He began to pack up the jerky, counting by weight. Once he was satisfied, he cinched one of the satchels shut and tossed it toward Val.
"Seven and a half kilos," he said. "Should last you a couple days if you don't gorge yourself."
Val caught it with one hand, weighing it in her palm before nodding approvingly. "Not bad, you saved me a long ass time turning these into jerky."
He gave her a slight smirk and secured his own half in his pack. "You saved me from getting a huge piercing."
Val rolled her eyes but smirked right back. "And I got me a bow and quiver as my payment."
There was a beat of silence before Deacon straightened up and slung his satchel onto his shoulders. "Hey. You ever thought of running with a full team again?"
Val's brow rose. "You trying to recruit me?"
"Yup." He stepped around the fire for a moment before kicking dirt atop it to snuff the flames. "Jass, Esmerelda, and I are in a Party at the moment, and we could use your skills while we're on Floor Three. Loot is split evenly, and if you want, you could stick with us for as long as you want."
Val was quiet for a moment, gaze drifting to the last of the embers as Deacon kicked dirt over them, snuffing their glow.
Then she shook her head, tossing him a sideways wink. "You know me, Deke – I don't do well in groups. Besides, I've gotta find my brother, Leon. He landed on Floor Three not too long ago, and if I leave him alone any longer, I'm pretty sure the 'hidden base' I told him to build will turn into a damn underground castle."
Deacon nodded without offense; he'd expected as much. "Sounds like something Leon would do."
He turned slightly, checking the position of the sun filtering through the canopy. "I'm heading northeast. Planning on setting up a temporary base on one of the more reclusive islands."
Val snorted. "Is it going to be a treehouse?"
"Something like that." He smirked.
She stood, slinging her own pack over her shoulders before looking back at him. "Well, if I ever need a place to crash in and get help, I now know where to find ya."
Deacon held her gaze, nodded once. "And if you run into any more elves with superiority complexes, try not to lose another bow."
"No promises."
With that, Val turned and disappeared into the thick jungle.
Deacon lingered for a minute longer just to make sure he had everything on him before he spun on his heels and began to head northeast. His boots moved quietly through the thicket, avoiding dry sticks, leaping over thorny fronds. The flora thickened the deeper he went – ferns brushing his thighs, trees rising like twisted columns overhead.
The weight of his satchel sat comfortably on his left hip as he reached into it and began to chew on a piece of deer jerky. Marching up a sloped section of the jungle, he was able to see a distant canopy off on the east side of the central island he was teleported to.
But as soon as he got distracted by the sight of a couple of cadets flinging flashy-looking spells atop the canopy, a flock of brightly colored birds flew out of a tree a couple of meters away from him, it startled him shitless as his eyes went wide and he cursed under his breath.
Shaking his head in exasperation, he climbed over a low ridge and felt the rustle of wind brush across his face.
Standing atop the ridge, he could see tucked between two wide cliffs, lay an elephant-shaped inlet. A river split the terrain like a scar, emptying into a small lake. Large stones jutted from the water, and one narrow, wooden rope bridge crossed the stream farther down.
And beyond all that was the ocean, and a few kilometers outland was another island, a small one.