She returned a few minutes later with a small backpack that she set at the base of the stairs before joining me on the couch. “We’re finally doing it,” she said as she wormed her way in between the back cushions and my chest. “An adventure that isn’t just us running from Virram’s guards.”
My thoughts turned again to Val’s arrival two days prior, but I forced the feelings down before they could ruin the moment. “It’s been a long time coming, but we made it. This is just the first of many.” I kissed her lightly on the forehead. “Sorry it took so long to get here.”
“Oh, I can’t really complain,” she said with a smile. “The past month has been alright, I guess.” Her smile widened as she let out a repressed laugh. “Maybe the best month of my life. Who’s to say, really?” I felt an intoxicating warmth surround me as Lia’s aura expanded into mine. My remaining anxieties melted away, and I took a deep breath as I closed my eyes to bask in the feeling of calm.
There was a light tapping on my forehead a few moments later. “Hey. No sleeping. I promised my parents we would help them get the house ready this afternoon.”
“Mhmm.”
The tapping grew more incessant as my eyes remained closed. “Get up, Lux.”
“Mmm,” I groaned, pinning her in place as I nestled further into the couch.
She giggled as she fought against my imposing form, pulling her arms in tight to her sides and rocking back and forth. I felt my body slipping towards the edge of the cushions as she continued to push me away, and I fell onto the floor after a brief, awkward struggle. I opened my eyes to find Lia staring down at me from the couch.
“That wasn’t very nice,” I groaned, scratching the back of my head.
“You were going to fall asleep, like you always do,” Lia teased, sticking her tongue out.
“What’s so bad about that?”
“We promised to help my parents get everything ready before our dinner tonight!” she repeated as she reached her hand down to pull me to my feet.
“You promised to help. I don’t remember saying anything of the sort.”
Her hand disappeared halfway through the motion of pulling me up, and I nearly fell to the floor for a second time. “If you don’t help, you don’t get any dinner.”
I considered the ultimatum for a moment. “In that case, we should probably get going,” I said, starting towards the door. Lia let out a playful sigh as she grabbed her bag from the base of the stairs, then jogged up behind me and took my hand as we began our walk through the forest.
Over the course of our journey, I noticed for the first time that the path we followed had worn down to a thin dirt trail in the grass, clearly demarcating where Marin, Lia and I had traveled back and forth over the past month. The sight made me smile; while the timeless nature of our secluded homestead made it easy to forget, it was nice to see a reminder of the long-term stability we had created.
Marin greeted us at the door when we arrived and immediately doled out a long list of tasks to be finished by sundown. As she informed us multiple times over the course of the day, Elise’s visit for dinner would be the first time she had seen the house, and everything had to be completed before her arrival. Lia was enlisted to help her mother take care of the stubborn packing boxes still scattered around the house, while I was sent back into the forest to find fresh meat for our dinner. “Something more exciting than rabbits, please,” Marin implored me as I was shooed out the door.
I found a large range of potential targets in my initial sweep with Detection, but I discounted most of them based on Marin’s criteria for an “exciting” main dish. There was the usual range of pheasants, turkeys, and other wild game birds, as well as squirrels and rabbits, but my eyes were set on a larger prize. I was surprised to see a vulroc out during the day; the red and gray striped fox stood as tall as a wolf, holding statue-still on a fallen tree as it surveyed the surrounding forest. While they were sometimes hunted for their beautiful pelts by less-than-reputable sportsmen, Lia had told me it was generally frowned upon to kill them—and that the meat was next to inedible—so I left it to its business.
My sights finally settled on a solitary bihorn grazing in an open clearing. Despite its name, the ox-like beast had only a single horn growing from the top of its head. Lia had explained the odd name came from a children's story in which two of the Primevals argued over how many horns the animal should have; the parable ended with a moral lesson about compromise, but I had failed to see how the tale justified the incorrect nomenclature. The oddly named bihorn was mostly a domesticated beast for both food and labor purposes, but the smaller wild variant still existed in much of northern Lybesa’s forests and fields.
Once I had stalked within visual distance of it, I suffused the beast’s neck with mana and activated my Pain Reduction enhancement, then swiftly followed up by shattering three of its cervical discs. It fell to the ground without a sound and remained still, instantly dead from the severed nerves. I moved in to retrieve my prize and, after taking a moment to prepare myself with enhancements, hoisted it onto my back. While it wasn’t as large as a domesticated bihorn, it felt as though it weighed nearly half a ton as I draped its legs over my
