Free Web NovelChapter 46: Come Get It
Twelve of them.
Arthur counted fast. They came from three directions, closing the circle slow and deliberate, the way things moved when they knew their prey had nowhere to go.
No eyes. Spines exposed. Four legs bent wrong.
He counted again. Twelve.
Theodore pulled his notes and pen out of his bag and shoved them into the sling. Both hands came up, palms open.
Kreasial was already set.
Shit.
Arthur looked at his own hands.
I can’t use Hellshade. Not openly. Not here.
’You’ll die if you don’t!’ Vexis hissed.
Then Kreasial laughed. Short and mean.
"I’ll hit you if you don’t move." Ice shards flew from her palm, clean and fast. Three crawlers hit the ground before they finished their step.
Theodore fired without a word. His magic was barely visible. A thin displacement of air, a clean line through space. The crawler it passed through made a sound and dropped sideways and didn’t get up.
Arthur raised both hands.
Slow. Careful.
He pushed his shadow anchor out. Not far. Just into the shade at the base of the nearest trees, where the canopy blocked the light and the dark sat natural and still. Nothing anyone watching would clock as magic. Just shadows being shadows.
Four crawlers were already crouching. Ready to launch.
The anchor reached them.
Arthur closed both fists.
Bind. freёweɓnovel.com
His aetheric blood moved down through his arms and into his fingers, heavy and dense, flowing out into the shadow and making it something other than dark. The crawlers locked mid-crouch. Two of them tried to push through it. Neither of them got anywhere.
He lifted his right hand.
Index finger extended. Thumb up.
Water gathered at his fingertip, small and dense, spinning once before it settled.
He aimed at the nearest crawler.
Fired.
The shot punched through the creature and it flew backwards and hit the dirt hard and didn’t move.
Kreasial looked at the crawler. Then at Arthur.
"Why did they stop moving." She threw another ice shard without breaking rhythm. "These idiots scared of us?"
Arthur shifted his aim. Moved to the next one.
Fired.
The crawler hit a tree trunk and bounced off it.
He moved to the third. Aimed.
Something launched from his left.
He felt it through the network half a second before it happened but half a second wasn’t enough. The crawler was already in the air, jaw open, saliva tracking across the space between them.
He didn’t move in time. freewebnσvel.cѳm
It never reached him.
Flames wrapped it clean and fast. The sound was brief. What dropped to the ground wasn’t much.
Roz lowered his arm from Arthur’s shoulder. His expression didn’t change.
"Continue what you’re doing, brat."
"Thanks, Master."
Arthur shifted aim and fired again.
"We need to move!" Kreasial was already stepping back. Ice shards in both directions. "We can’t just stand here with these little shits!"
Arthur glanced at her. Looked forward. Fired once more.
He took a step back.
Closed his left eye.
His shadow anchors spread along the ground ahead, threading through the dark between the roots and the tree bases, moving forward while the rest of him stayed still. He let them run. Felt the ground through them. Weight. Texture. Density.
There.
Something heavy sat near the water. Dense in the specific way that things underground felt different from loose dirt. Close.
He opened both eyes.
"Move forward, then go left."
Kreasial was already moving. She glanced at him once and kept going.
Theodore fired at the last crawler standing. The air displacement was almost silent. The crawler wasn’t. It dropped.
He followed.
Theodore’s bellus broke away at a fork in the path, cutting right without hesitation, nose already working. Theodore watched her go and kept pace.
The riverbank opened up between the trees.
The water was rust-colored and slow at the edges, catching what light made it through the canopy. Small rocks broke the current near the shore. The sound of it was low and steady.
Kreasial stopped at the bank.
Arthur moved past her.
He closed his left eye again. Let the anchor feel along the ground near the boulder a few meters upstream. Cold dirt. Small rocks stacked against the base of it. Something underneath that wasn’t part of the earth.
He crouched.
Reached under the edge of the boulder.
His fingers found it.
He pulled it out.
A small pendant. Dark metal. Slightly damp.
"Look."
Both of them turned.
The cloud appeared overhead.
[Class F Triad: Misfits have found a treasure]
[+100 credits]
"That’s two hundred," Theodore said. He was smiling.
Arthur smiled back.
Then a rustle from the right.
Theodore’s bellus came through the undergrowth at a run. Something small and metal in her mouth. She dropped it at Theodore’s feet and sat back and looked at him.
A bracelet. Dark iron. Simple.
[+100 credits]
"Three hundred," Arthur said.
He raised his hand toward Theodore, palm out, fingers spread. Trying to dap Theodore.
Theodore looked at it.
Then at Arthur’s face.
Then back at the hand.
Arthur lowered it.
Right.....
"If we keep working like this, three thousand is manageable."
Theodore pulled his notes out and uncapped his pen. "This section seems dense with treasures. Do we keep scouting here or cross the river and check the other side?"
Kreasial crouched at the bank and pushed both hands into the current. She shook them out. Water scattered across the rocks.
She stood up.
"We take the advantage while it’s ours." She rolled her shoulder. "You saw those crawlers. They’re nothing. This whole section is sitting empty and it’s ours for the taking."
Theodore wrote something. Didn’t look up. "If we attract a larger pack moving through the same area, that changes fast."
"Then we deal with it." Kreasial turned toward him. "If you don’t have the guts for hard decisions, forget winning. Forget everything Vivienne said. Go back to being a reject."
Theodore’s pen stopped.
He opened his mouth. Closed it.
His bellus looked at Arthur.
Theodore was right. They couldn’t just burn through this section without knowing what was still out here.
Kreasial was also right. Sitting still wasn’t a strategy either.
Arthur closed his eyes.
He pushed the anchor network outward. Slow. Spreading through every shadow between the trees, under the roots, along the dark strips of ground the canopy blocked from the light. The island fed back in pieces. Weight. Movement. Stillness.
"Goldie, what are you even doing?"
He didn’t answer.
His field moved further. Past the nearest tree line. Across the water.
Three points of weight on the other bank. Individual. Close to each other.
Not crawlers.
People.
Arthur opened his eyes.
He looked across the river.
His eyebrows came down.
"Show yourselves."
Kreasial’s head turned. Theodore looked up from his notes.
Across the water, three figures stepped out from between the trees.
The first one had dark green hair. Tall and lean, moving easy, blood on both hands from something that wasn’t his. A purple bellus sat on his shoulder with the flat look of something that had been forced there recently.
The second one was a woman. Black hair. Glasses. She lifted one hand and Kreasial’s whole body locked up. The woman reached up and fixed her glasses.
The third was the tallest of them. Brown hair, spiky and short. Broad across the shoulders in a way his academy uniform wasn’t designed for.
The green-haired man looked at Arthur’s hand. Then at Kreasial’s. He took in the pendant between Arthur’s fingers.
"Isn’t it a bit rude," he said, "taking someone else’s spot?"
His mouth was already pulling up.
’This absolute lunatic—’ Vexis started.
Arthur looked at the pendant.
He raised it. Held it between two fingers, level with his face.
"I don’t see your name on it."
His free hand came up.
Middle finger.
"Shame."
Kreasial made a sound beside him. Not quite a laugh. The genuine kind that slips out before you can stop it.
Theodore turned his face into his shoulder.
The green-haired man went red from the neck up. His jaw locked.
"I’ll just take it then."
Arthur lowered the pendant.
He looked at the man across the water. Took him in once. The blood on his hands. The uncomfortable expression of bu purple bellus. The easy posture of someone who had been winning all morning and expected to keep winning.
Arthur’s tongue touched his teeth.
"Be a good dog."
He tilted his head.
"Come get it."
