Chapter 07: Koskema

Inquiry: What is our quor, and what does it offer?

On the tenth day of the Harvest Moon, we gather to hunt the koskema and extract three hundred grams of silicate powder. Such is essential for Sayamaks Jhunaluska and Felix in their Horticulture trial. From silicate powder, the gardeners will create fertilizer to feed a glass ewer plant.

Assembly: Who joins the hunt?

Five rangers walk together until the close: Sayamaks Taya (Ty), Jhunaluska (Jhun), Khutuluna (Luna), and Rowan, with the beast Zingiber. As Saya'Felix offered the sunshoot, in audience of earth and sky, Saya'Ty accepted.

Saya'Taya leads at point.

Saya'Rowan follows as hammer.

Saya'Khutuluna follows as sentry.

Zingiber follows as hound.

Saya'Jhunaluska follows as extractor.

Tals'Hayun sanctioned the hunt, swearing its design to be deliberate and worthy.

Ai'Yoza lights the path, keeping complete and fair distance, but for life and death.

Five mountv̇goats serve the squad: Jumpless, Singlehorn, Bigsneeze, Swimmer, and Persnickety.

The Game: The Huntress eyes her quor.

The game is simple: Saya'Ty will divine a koskema colony with the help of a yoric divining rod. Strengthened by the blood moon, a talented renasci should make light work of the hunt.

Koskema are no easy quor. They radiate lethargizing yoric energy, they attract vicious reaper ants, as large as cockroaches, and they often summon golems, which can grow up to a meter tall. In fact, situni may grow indefinitely, and with enough time, transform its environment entirely.

The Blackwoods are vast, alas, and the dense foliage has proven too much for our goats. Walking has slowed progress considerably. The goats do eat well.

On the second day, Saya'Luna and Zingiber caught wind of a wild opossum on a blood moon scavenge. A nightlong asynchronous chase ensued.

On the third day, the squad tracked the opossum to a hotbed of yoric energy.

Saya'Ty was able to pinpoint multiple candidates for koskema presence, each of which presented a one-in-five chance of hosting koskema.

The fourth site revealed koskema.

Identified as a possible former bear den, target site contains no obvious hazards, excepting the yoric radiation from the koskema itself. The surrounding area has been examined and secured.

On the third night, the squad entered the site. Saya'Ty used her renkinesis to redirect the chemical signals of the reapers ants to keep them out of harm's way. Saya'Luna, Saya'Rowan, and Zingiber physically repelled the clay golems from Saya'Jhun, granting him a berth of ten meters around, as he performed the extraction ritual on the koskema itself."

To his side, Rowan watched Jhun read, those needling eyes darting down the page. A hesitant inbreath here and a headtilt there told Rowan there was plenty work left to be done, but those pink lips never quite pursed.

The clearing stood eerily still. The muggy air had smothered them in a strangleheat impossible to ignore, and in the thick brush, as slivers of moonlight pierced the canopy, Rowan could swear he heard wolves howling.

Under the blood moon they prowl

Like shadows of men underneath

A goat bleated behind Rowan. He shivered.

"What do you think?" asked Rowan, unable to hold back any longer. "The Inquiry and Assembly were simple enough with the templates we found, but I spilled far too much ink on the Game for the result." He waved at the paper dismissively.

Jhun kept reading.

"Don't you think?" asked Rowan.

"Hm."

Jhun's mouth parted as if to speak before taking another maddening pause.

Rowan sighed. "It's okay if you need to rewrite the whole thing."

"Wh—no!" said Jhun. "This is workable! This is—this is good."

Rowan's smile outsized Jhun's words, but he couldn't help it. That was always a challenge with his friend.

"I love to hear that. The Finish should go easy, but I will need your help with the Celebration."

Rowan frowned.

"Do we really need the Finish, the Celebration, and then again the Close? It seems like overkill, doesn't it?"

Jhun's shoulders rose to dwarf his ears. He stared off, down and to the side.

"They're completions of different levels, is how we learn it. You Finish the Game, Celebrate the Assembly, and Close the Inquiry. The inquiry is, erm, an abstract, far-off kind of goal, which you assemble a specific squad for, and then you do—" Jhun shook two spread hands with gravitas "—the game. Then you disassemble the hunting squad, and finally you deliberate on whether you've reached the goal."

After a few seconds of silence, his eyes finally rose to meet Rowan's. They shone through the twilight, the blood moon reflecting off a deep obsidian. Jhun was never so powerful as when he took his time to consider and explain; Rowan might have melted like honey under his gaze.

"Right, then," said Rowan. "You'll just have to walk me through it, I suppose."

But Jhun hardly seemed to register—his eyes were back on the hunting report. He still had another dozen concerns to satisfy before they entered the cave.

Rowan had to wonder what had been left unsaid about the report. Every moment that passed seemed to reveal another inadequacy in his words, another smudge in his ink. When he'd offered to write the first draft of the report, he'd never imagined it would be so excruciating to review.

"Jhun, perhaps we could revise this later. Don't you think we've kept the others waiting long enough?"

They looked across the clearing toward the den's entrance. Rowan couldn't find Luna at first—darkness had set, outside Rowan's notice—but then he realized her hooked speartip glowed a soft white in the moonlight. The tiny lone figure waved.

Their captain had vanished, at a glance.

"And you're sure about Ty as pointlead?" asked Jhun, suddenly.

"Oh."

Rowan must have waited a moment too long to continue.

"I knew it," said Jhun. "We should put you at captain like we'd said."

Rowan reached out instinctively, grabbing Jhun's arm as if to hold him in place.

"No, wait! It's—it's fine!" said Rowan. He flipped through a hundred ways to articulate the same thoughts—that he desperately wanted to lead, to prove himself a capable ranger, to be more than just dead weight on his first hunt. He'd felt it the moment he'd entered the forests of Hayuwasi, and weeks later, the shackles of imposture continued to drag him down.

And now, in the final hour of the hunt, Rowan wondered if he'd offered anything at all to this squad. Inside the den, would Luna and Zingiber even need him?

It was more than a matter of pride. As leader, Rowan could prove his skill and inspire confidence in Jhun. And he could place the squad in the best position to succeed.

But three days of divination struggles had disheartened Ty, and Rowan knew she needed her own victory, too, so he'd relinquished the honor. Ty had keen instincts, she communicated loudly, and she was a powerful renasci, according to Alex's most begrudging admissions.

"I was being silly earlier. Ty's the better choice for pointlead."

Jhun studied him again, the uncertainty in his eyes matching Rowan's own.

"She certainly wanted it the loudest," said Jhun.

Rowan grimaced as he turned towards Singlehorn. The brown goat blathered again and nudged his rider with his horns.

"Come now, friend. I've already fed you," said Rowan, but his protests only drew the attention of Singlehorn's cohort, and then there were four insistent bleaters crowding into Rowan.

Heavy footsteps behind drew his attention to the approaching Luna. She had finally abandoned her hat, Rowan noted, letting a shag of black hair hang freely.

"Heyla, huntress," said Rowan. "You look more ferocious than ever."

She pitched her head towards Rowan in acknowledgement before she addressed Jhun.

"Is everything okay here? Aren't you ready?"

"La," Jhun said—after much thought, Rowan had concluded that this utterance, while affirmative, was baldly dismissive.

Rowan couldn't help but tease him. "Saya'Jhunaluska, what could go wrong? This is Hayun's own hunt, with the smallest changes."

Jhun shook his head, his curls dancing lazily about. "Three hundred grams far exceeds the original bounty. We've already struggled plenty. We rushed into this."

Luna tilted her head and bit her lip, but she didn't speak.

"What is it?" asked Rowan.

"Three hundred, yes, but isn't most of that for Tals'Hayun anyway?" asked Luna. "Your plant can't use more than a hundred grams."

Jhun furrowed his brows as he faced her. "Ty wouldn't be happy," said Jhun. "She only wanted to join the hunt because I promised the C-class trophy. Now we've spent days out here. . ."

"She might be pointlead, but she's one of five huntresses here," said Rowan. He caught Luna's eye, curious and searching. "If we need to cut and run, you'll have our support."

The Guluwe grunted in affirmation. "A hunt is a hunt, and we've already done the hard part. What's the problem?"

Jhun gave a dozen small nods, bobbing with nervous hope. A flighty bird he was, every movement of his startling himself.

Rowan clapped a hand on Jhun's shoulder. "And if there's a chance for more, we'll take it."

Jhun stood a little straighter. There was that flash of certainty in his grin, like Rowan had seen on Komo Island.

And after a pregnant pause, "I'm g—"

"Heyla," said Luna. "Our pointlead and hound have already entered the den. Are you two ready or not?"

Jhun's dark eyes met Rowan's for just a moment. The boy nodded.

"Quickly, then," said Luna.

"They should have waited," said Jhun. He shoved his report into his bag as they checked the goats' leads one last time.

Rowan reluctantly said goodbye to Singlehorn, scratching the back of his neck the way he loved.

"See you soon, friend."

Rowan followed the bobbing silver speartip through the brush, down a shockingly large hole in the slope of the earth. An orange glow illuminated the distance ahead of them, waxing and waning rhythmically.

Rowan's hand went instinctively to the cast ward in his pocket, an oddly weighty pendant that promised protection against the yoric energies of the koskema. But this was a secondary defense, as even the finest ward had its limits. More crucial would be avoidance.

That would be Saya'Ty's foremost job here: A persistent draft pulled at them into a cavern, into a crystal lantern that she twirled about on her staff.

Like a wind dancer she handled her tool with lazy familiarity, swinging the long bamboo quickly enough to draw a blazing circle around her. Her hair sparkled in the passing firelight, row after row of seashell beads glinting blue, white, and purple.

"Okay, let's be sure not to harm anything." Jhun pointed at large rows of ants filing across the stony floor, seemingly unbothered by their guests. He crouched for a better view, but a yell from Ty almost knocked him onto his backside.

"Don't get too close to them!" said Ty, out of breath from her efforts, "or they'll smell your pheromones no matter what I do."

From a new angle, Rowan could see Ty was centered within a vortex, both the smoke and the ants circling about her in smooth spirals. Her amber eyes met his, and she frowned petulantly before she cracked into a toothy smile, as if to say, "I'm not enjoying this, but obviously I can handle it."

A few meters away, Jhun had evidently found their quor; his bag lay open on the ground next to him and he hunched over something Rowan could not see.

Rowan joined the extractor's side, taking catpaw steps on the granite floor and leaving space between them to avoid a nervous distraction.

It might not have mattered anyway—Jhun had eyes only for his reference sheets and a bare patch of grey before him. He squatted as still as a porcelain statue, his iron chisel and a waxed gourd container forgotten at his feet.

"Are we ready?" asked Rowan. He knelt to grab the hefty tool and befronted his friend. He considered how he might replace a parchment with the chisel in one of Jhun's hands; he had still not been noticed.

But there was new cause for his distraction, now—up and past Rowan. Jhun's agape mouth and awestruck eyes led Rowan to turn for a treat worth pausing for: Luna astride the back of Zingiber, her smug smile bobbing by from the back of a real Jhouri tiger. Two wide eyes peered through brown slashes of paint that masked the Guluwe's small face, her teeth exposed through a part in her blackened lips. Zingiber acted as noble steed, easily three hundred kigs with five black daggers on each paw.

For the first time in the weeks that Rowan had known Luna, he saw her for the huntress she was, spear hook in her hand to gather prey. She towered over Rowan, her hair swaying coolly with each step of her ride, and in the whirling lantern light, her eyes shone as stars.

Zingiber rounded on Rowan, huffing and baring his many teeth.

Rowan instinctively grabbed Jhun's hand; Jhun gripped back like a steel vice. Ignoring the pain, Rowan watched the tiger carefully, unsure just how much Zingiber's temperament might have changed to chase his form. Two yellow eyes studied him back, a hefty stripeless snout hovering just cemmies away from Rowan's face.

The eyes closed slowly.

Rowan sighed in relief. The hands in his trembled.

"Team!"

Ty followed her cry with another scream, this time something indiscernible.

"I think that means 'go'," offered Rowan.

Zingiber leapt away without a sound, his tail brushing lightly against Rowan in some sort of goodbye. Rowan felt himself fall sideways into his squadmate.

Jhun yanked his hands back, taking the chisel with him, and knelt forward. He took a deep breath to begin.

He didn't move.

Rowan should have joined Luna to create the ten-meter perimeter around Jhun. Yoza's words still burned the back of his neck, and Ty's whooping laugh echoed in his head..

"Remember your jobs, ḱosas. You boys can't spend the whole hunt glued together at the waist. That's how rangers lose limb and life."

But he could see where he was needed now: Jhun's side.

He mustered his gentlest voice.

"Walk me through it."

Jhun stared at the mound, apparently willing his response out.

"We. . . have to carve a sanctifying rune here. The koskema will be isolated. I have an extractor, then, that can grind the stone pillar down."

The explanation began to spill out from Jhun, his words tumbling over each other as he retraced familiar threads of thought.

"Eventually, the silicate powder rises to the top, and I'll collect it all, clean the area, and unseal the rune. Once it's begun, I have to complete the full extraction without interruption, or the loose powder will trigger the defenses."

"The little golems you told me about before?" asked Rowan. He was half-excited to see them, though he knew he shouldn't be.

"The more the koskema senses that things are wrong, the more of them that will appear," said Jhun. "We must take care not to let them touch us."

"You're ready, then?" asked Rowan.

Answering only with a deep sigh, Jhun wiped his hands on his cloak and began to chisel into the stone a circular rune a half meter across.

The rune featured an intricate geometry that Rowan could not have replicated, beginning with a straight horizontal line across, followed by a semi-circle, four triangles in symmetry, and a hexagonal design which Rowan recognized as a summoning spiral; he nodded approvingly, which might have caused a twitch in the corner of Jhun's lips.

The ground reacted to the rune's completion with a harsh, grumbling groan, the stone rising impossibly like a sandhill.

"Could you hand me the extractor?" asked Jhun.

Rowan grabbed the bag, which held far too many cumbersome supplies, as well as a stout, ironwood bow drill that Jhun had shown him days before.

Rowan grabbed the tool with care— Yoza had warned them he'd created it for purpose, not for perpetuity. Rowan didn't know what that meant, but Ty's reaction had told him that he needed to be delicate.

Jhun accepted the drill with ginger hands, paused to think for a vanishing minute, and finally set the drill against the stilled stone spire, standing proud at a half meter tall. He yanked at the bow once, spinning the drill into the stone for a half-second.

He furtively turned towards Rowan but, meeting eyes, snapped back to his task. He slowly moved the bow back and forth, building speed as the drill worked its way into the stone.

Rowan steadied his restless legs as he waited for some sign of action; an eternity passed as he dutifully kept quiet.

Jhun broke the silence with a sudden cry.

"Aiy, I'm sorry," said Jhun.

A plume of dust burst from the contact point, assaulting a yet unsuspecting Rowan. With a hacking cough, he fell backwards onto the ground, his hands frantically wiping at his face.

The shrieking rumble resumed.

"Jhun?" asked Rowan, in between coughs.

"Jhun?!" yelled Ty, irritation battling confusion in her voice.

"I botched the first try, sorry," yelled Jhun. He bit his lips but drew no explanation forth. "You need to keep your distance—ten meters, remember?"

"Ah, at least it's only yoric. And that's what the cast ward is for." Rowan tried to spit out the dust that caked his mouth.

Jhun pointed out past Rowan.

"The golems—"

"Heyla, leave it to me," said Rowan. "You extract, I hammer."

He clapped Jhun's back and whooped loudly enough for all to hear, suppressing a cough that tickled at his throat.

"Luna, Zingiber," said Rowan, in his mightiest warcry, "let no golem intervene!"

He gave Jhun no chance to respond before he flipped backward into a handspring, twirling a half rotation in the air before landing on his left foot. Likewise, he didn't check to see if Jhun was still watching— they both had work to do.

With his attention fully on his surroundings, Rowan could see small clay and stone golems rumbling together from the ground. They rose into self-assembly, culminating in shambling piles of rocks, moving far more slowly than any beast. There was an imprecision to them, like they slung their weight around blindly. As four golems rose around Rowan, ignoring him in favor of the koskema, he thought through Jhun's instructions.

"They'll look to attack me and anyone who gets in the way. One alone should do little harm, but a group of them can swarm you and bury you with the sheer mass of clay. Move them into position with force, but handle them with care until you're ready to finish them off."

Rowan wasn't sure exactly what it meant to move them into position, but he sidestepped the two closest golems and stepped squarely on the head of a third, using it as a step to jump out into the open.

"Sorry, friend."

He only needed to buy time as he landed and gathered his thoughts.

With light steps and loose attention paid to his chasers, Rowan watched Luna and ZIngiber make a perfect demonstration of the technique—Zingiber pranced through a crowd of golems, and Luna hooked one with her spear to pull it in, contorting sideways from her tigerback seat to abduct the golem from the ground in one smooth motion.

A sea of yoric puppets abruptly turned to give chase, either on instinct or by invisible command. Zingiber darted about the den, narrowly escaping the embrace of the horde, until he circled around to Rowan.

On some unheard signal, Luna hurled her victim back into her pursuers, knocking over at least nine of them—Rowan had nary a chance to count due to a fiery explosion that forced him to avert his eyes.

A draft roared past Rowan's ears, rocking him onto his heels. He swiveled on one foot to regain his balance, and he caught the last of a torrent of debris swirling into Ty's lantern.

He gasped.

"How did you—" said Rowan, before thinking better of it. "How many times can you do that?"

"As many times as you need," came Ty's answer. "Just make sure I'm watching before you knock them down, or I won't get all the dust."

"Okay," said Rowan, "so this is how we finish them off! This we can do."

"Are you okay, Rowan?" asked Luna, unprompted. Underneath the sweat and dust, her eyes glimmered with concern.

Rowan swallowed. "Yes. If you handle the perimeter, I can focus on guarding Jhun."

Luna nodded eagerly.

Zingiber bounded away, circling around the amassing hordes of golems that rose minute by minute.

Even as the golems began to number in the hundreds, Zingiber led the swarm by a tiger's tail with no sign of panic, until eventually there were simply too many to keep together—Zingiber could lead them to Ty, but she could only destroy so many at a time. Rowan would have to regroup the overflow.

Gathering the first bunch of golems was easy. A few vaults and sidesteps allowed Rowan to stay a comfortable meter from his chasers. On the occasion that their interest wandered towards Ty or Jhun, Rowan provoked them by running past and tapping them lightly with his staff.

"How much longer?" asked Ty, echoing the mantra Rowan had sprouted in his head.

"I have one hundred grams, maybe more," said Jhun. "Should we stop?"

"Aiya, I don't know," said Ty. She made no effort to mask her exhaustion or irritation. "Come now, planner, what did we come here for?"

Jhun locked eyes with Rowan, and they shared an unspoken message in a nod: This was not the time to turn tail, but a golden opportunity to show the guild what rookies could do.

"Three hundred," interjected Rowan.

"Aiy, three hundred," said Jhun. "I'll work faster."

"A brilliant idea," said Ty.

But with each passing moment, the dread in Rowan's gut grew and sank deeper. He felt more than just the coughing, though that got worse with every pass through the crowd of pursuers. His muscles were worn and heavy, like hours had passed in minutes.

By the time he'd gathered another hundred of his own followers, Rowan could no longer hide it. He stumbled towards Ty, finding just enough strength to grin.

"All yours, captain."

"I'm not ready yet, Rowan. I just got one for Luna," said Ty.

Rowan turned to face his horde. He'd been too busy with his own task to keep track of his squadmates.

"How much longer?" asked Rowan.

"A few minutes," said Ty. "I'll yell for you."

As Rowan mustered his response, he felt the sickening crunch of an ant under his leather sole.

"Watch your damn step!"

"Sorry, sorry," said Rowan. He regained his footing, shaking his leg to rid it of phantom crawlers.

He didn't have the chance to reconsider his next steps before a well-placed fireball blew the oncoming golems into dust; a vicious torrent of wind whipped at Rowan as Ty cleared the air.

"All right, progress check!" said Ty, her shoulders heaving as she panted. "How much more does your plant need?"

Jhun didn't answer. He was hunched over a new site, grinding a fresh koskema into dust.

"Jhun??"

"The pla—what do you mean?"

"How much longer? Until you're done?"

"For the plant?" Jhun's words squeezed through gritted teeth, in rhythm with the back and forth of the drill. "I've been long done with our batch."

The light of Ty's lantern doubled in intensity, illuminating every edge of the cavern at once.

"Then what are we doing here?"

"Seventy more grams for Tals'Hayun! They asked me to collect extra for a—"

"Well, how much secures the C-class?" said Ty.

"Two hundred."

"You said three hundred before. "

"Yes, for the—"

"No," said Ty, to nothing in particular. "No, no. Show me your cast wards."

Rowan reached into his pocket to find what he'd forgotten completely; his heart sank as his fingers traced several jagged cracks that streaked across the crystal.

"Rowan," said Ty. She befronted him before he'd even retrieved it.

It weighed nothing in his trembling hand, so much so that he would have doubted it were actually there, if not for the light reflecting from the opalescent surface in a dozen directions.

Ty stared for a moment, her lantern having abandoned its spiral flight to swing idly back and forth. Rowan tried to ignore the sudden shifting masses of ants breaking formation.

With a snap of her wrist and a full body twirl, Ty resumed her circular dance. "Sheeya, I'm calling it. Let's go."

"We're going?" said Jhun. "But I'm not done."

"Yes, ḱosa. Now."

They lingered only a minute longer, enough to allow Jhun to securely store the gourded extract in his backpack. Ty leaned harder into her dance, giving one final push and releasing the rest of her current in a whirlwind as they climbed out of the den.

The night was darker now, the moon hidden behind a curtain of storm clouds. They spread out in formation, with Luna leading the way to the goat pack. Ty took the rear, driving them forward with a blazing lantern and scorching words.

"Just as pigheaded as Alex—you never know when to stop. What's the point if one of us gets hurt? This is why I'm pointlead. You need me to make these decisions when you're too much a fool to make them yourself."

"Harsh words for your team, captain!"

The four rangers stopped in their tracks as they processed Ai'Yoza's voice calling out from their goats.

"I remember my first hunt, young—"

"Shouldn't the lightrunner meet us at the basecamp?" asked Ty coldly. As the rookies neared, Yoza rode out on Swimmer, the largest of the five mountvgoats. The ranger's lanky body reminded Rowan of a green standard held from rideback, his ranger's cloak billowing like a flag.

"Rahrah, who are you impressing with the etiquette? I've been talking to a goat for three days. The game is finished, is it not?"

"Technic—" began Ty, but Yoza waved her off.

"Does anybody need a med check before we go? Jhun?"

Luna's eyes softened as she glanced at Rowan. He opened his mouth to ask what she meant to say, but a tickle in his throat fomented a coughing fit. He rushed to Singlehorn's side to grab his waterskin and drink. The water was cool and smooth, but there wasn't enough, and the relief faded as quickly as it came.

Yoza frowned, the wrinkles on his forehead showing his age for the first time since Rowan had met him. Yoza's angular features usually gave him a jester's affect, but now they pierced Rowan's veil, letting loose the dread that pooled in his gut.

"Cast wards out."

Jhun flourished a silver medallion beset with two hexagonal crystals identical in size and clarity. Rowan's own crystal was considerably smaller, set into a platinum frame, and fractured beyond repair.

"Rowan, what did you do?"

"I—I don't know."

Yoza's brown eyes searched for answers in Rowan's.

"You spent too long down there. And too close to the koskema. I told you to keep your distance, didn't I?"

"It's only yoric energy down there. It's a far cry from—"

"No, you fool of a prince," spat Yoza, a fire raging in those pupils. "Yoric poisoning is exactly as potent as arghalic. Or are you the type of Mithran to think lye less dangerous than vitriolic acid?

"No, of course not!" yelled Rowan, though he didn't know why. "I established the ten meters once we got started—"

"Then how did you so overwhelm and destroy your cast ward?"

For once, Rowan couldn't find the words.

Yoza turned his interrogation to Ty. "And you, pointlead. You didn't notice?"

Ty scoffed, her eyes wide with indignance.

"I was busy doing my job."

"A pointlead's most basic duty is to command her squad. Especially as a damned spellranger, Ty. You should've been monitoring each of your squadmates the entire time." Yoza seemed to forget Rowan entirely. "You need to figure yourself out, now. Tals'Dana already tanned my hide about Convocation, which you two still haven't made up to me for. Now Xifo'Wu is going to hold this against me as your—"

"We should have asked someone else for cast wards," said Ty, unimpressed with Yoza's outburst. "Jhun's is obviously heavy enough, but Rowan and Luna might as well have gone in soulbare."

Yoza squinted.

"Also your job, ḱosa."

He paused to track a loud rustling from the forest. Each of them froze, letting the silence wash over for a minute.

"All right," said Yoza, his voice low and calm. "It's a blood moon and these are zone five woods—there's no point in finishing this conversation here."

"Are you scared of demons, Yoza?" asked Ty, a bit too surprised to properly mock their lightrunner. "And I thought we won the war."

She grinned at Rowan, cheeks ruddy and puffed, but he couldn't bring himself to smile.

Only the dead hear their howl

And only the dead see their teeth

"Rowan, are you okay to travel? Or do we need a medcheck right now?" asked Yoza.

Rowan might have collapsed at any second, but he had just enough strength to pull through. He collected his breath as carefully as he could and straightened his back.

"I'll make it."

Yoza's gaze unfocused over Rowan as he nodded; the aisupo's mind was already elsewhere.

"We'll finish this once we get to the outpost."

With great effort, Rowan climbed onto his goat, kissed his left horn stub, scratched the back of his neck, and purred, "Thank you, young one."

"Baaa," said Singlehorn.

Rowan looked at Jhun, who gave a crooked smile and a ranger's cross—a nuanced gesture that said something like "I trust you, I've got your back, and we'll do this together."

Rowan returned the gesture and slumped forward in his seat, closing his eyes before any tears could escape.

In his mind, he wrote the last line of the hunting report.

The Finish: Quor secured with NO complications.