Blessed Time: The Complete Series: (A LitRPG Adventure Box Set), page 9
As Micah entered the tavern itself, a wall of noise hit him. There was only one other party there—B company, squad two, Trevor’s team. Most of them nodded or briefly hoisted a glass on Micah’s entrance, recalling him from his pre-blessing days. He waved back, only to be interrupted by Trevor once more.
“There’s one of the men of the hour!” Trevor slurred from the bar, where he stood next to Drekt and Jo. “Come on, Micah, let’s get you good and sauced.”
Micah waded through a crowd of back pats and formulaic congratulations from the other party to stand next to Trevor at the bar. Immediately, Micah’s brother draped an arm over his shoulder, eliciting a snicker from Jo, and leaned toward the bartender, a grizzled older woman with a deep scar puckering the right side of her face.
“Marlene!” he practically shouted at her, likely unsure of his own volume. “This is my kid brother, Micah! He just finished his first dungeon run, so we’re trying to celebrate in style. Get him a mug of brandy, please.”
“I heard you the first couple of times, Trevor.” Marlene didn’t move from her spot at the bar, leaning back against a keg with her arms crossed. “What’ll ya have, Micah?”
“It’s a celebration.” Trevor swayed into Micah as he spoke to Marlene. “He needs brandy! It’s not a celebration without the good stuff.”
“Can I have an ale, please?” Micah asked, his ears turning red as Jo practically doubled over laughing at him. “A red, if you have it.”
“Come on, Micah.” He had to reach out and stabilize Trevor as his brother lost his balance turning around while trying to speak to him. “This is a special occasion. If you don’t like the brandy, at least try the juushk.”
Micah blanched. Drekt had tricked him into drinking juushk once, the impossible-to-live-down “singing incident.” Juushk was little more than millet, reduced to a mash and fermented. Spellcasters or alchemists were used in the process to ensure that the product wouldn’t poison the drinker, but that was about all that could be said for it. Juushk tasted vile and left a hangover that lasted a full day.
“We’ll save the juushk for Will,” Jo intervened, snaking her arm through Micah’s and pulling him away from Trevor. “I’m pretty sure he’s taken a liking to the stuff.”
Micah snorted, trying to contain his laughter as he let Jo lead him away. As bad as the drinking juushk had been for him, Will had spent most of that evening in a bush throwing up while Drekt watched on, laughing uproariously. Even the morning after, when Micah had lain curled in the fetal position beneath a tree barely able to drink water and wishing that healing magic worked on hangovers, Will had it worse. The man spent an entire day moaning, vomiting, and whimpering for hours in a puddle of his own fluids. Laundry the next day had been particularly vile.
As they left, Jo snagged two mugs of ale, both filled with a frothy red brew. He’d never had it before—being underage did have its drawbacks. Instead, he relied upon the rest of the party’s recommendations. Well, the rest of the party other than Drekt. The crazy giant actively seemed to like juushk, to the point that Micah suspected that he had some sort of poison resistance as part of his blessing.
Jo practically pushed him into a seat in the corner before taking her own next to him. At the door, Will and Sarah walked through to another round of congratulations as Trevor talked animatedly but inaudibly with Drekt. Micah raised the chipped ceramic mug to his lips before taking a sip of the ale. It was sweet with a somewhat woody and bitter finish, but most importantly, after a long day of fighting monsters, it was cold.
He leaned back in his chair and sighed, enjoying the taste of the drink on his tongue and the wood on his back. Across from him, Jo chuckled.
“It’s all a bit much sometimes, isn’t it?” She finished her statement with a pull of ale, her gray eyes staring past him at the chaos near the bar. Micah squinted at her slightly. He’d never really noticed that she had gray eyes.
“I don’t have something on my face, do I?” Jo cocked her head, brushing a stray strand of hair aside.
“No,” Micah stammered, hastily taking a drink from his beer as he averted his gaze.
“Well then” —she set down her drink and placed her chin in her hands—“what were you looking at, Silver?”
He turned beet red, floundering for words as he wilted under Jo’s gaze. She let him suffer for a couple of seconds before her laughter cut through the fog surrounding him.
“Gods, you’re so cute when you get flustered like this.” Her voice washed over him like cool water in a desert. “I’ve literally had your hands inside my torso as you healed a punctured lung while Drekt and Will fought off willow creepers an arm’s length from your head and you didn’t even blink, yet every time I try to flirt with you, you turn into a puddle.”
“Wait.” Micah’s face twisted in his confusion. “You were flirting with me?”
“It’s a good thing I don’t mind them a little oblivious.” Jo’s laughter wrapped around Micah, filling him with a strange warmth. “All of the jokes in the field? Every time I found an excuse to touch your arm while talking over a scouting report? None of that ever registered with you?”
Micah shook his head helplessly.
“Well, that explains why the godawful drinking game didn’t work,” she said, almost to herself.
Micah cocked his head in an unspoken question, prompting her to continue speaking.
“That time Drekt gave us the juushk” —a brief, sour expression flitted across her face—"I figured that you were just shy and I hoped that a little liquid courage would push you to make a move. Unfortunately, we just ended up singing barroom ditties and earning skull-rending hangovers.”
“Gods.” Micah took a drink before setting his mug down and running a hand through his hair. “If I’d known, I would have said something. I just always thought you saw me as a friend, with all of the dirty jokes and teasing me.”
“Well.” She leaned toward Micah, her lips filling his vision. Almost absently, he noticed his Adam's apple bobbing as her face approached his. “I’m not leaving things up to chance and interpretation this time.”
TWELVE
HALCYON DAYS
“Why in the name of the Sixteen am I doing this again?” Micah hissed at Jo, his hands tightly gripping the rope tied around her waist.
She grinned up at him, wind whipping through her hair as she prepared to descend down the side of the mountain. Behind her, the early dawn light barely illuminated the crevice that Micah was in, bracing himself against a rock.
“Mostly because you enjoyed spending five hours climbing a rock face while staring up at my ass,” Jo giggled back at him. “Also because you agree that hatching a cliff eagle egg and raising the chick as a pet would be super fun.”
“I’m not sure about fun; raising a monster sounds like a lot of work to me,” Micah grumbled, setting himself so Jo could use the rope he held to belay herself down the mountainside.
It wasn’t a sheer surface; more in the range of a sixty-degree angle. Technically, Jo could handle the incline on her own, but it would be much safer for everyone if someone was on hand to provide a safety net just in case she were to fall.
That was the real reason he was here. Every minute with Jo was more vibrant. He just felt alive and present in a way that he didn’t normally. That said, she would take risks. By the Sixteen, did she take risks. The bags under his eyes spoke to the unnecessary chances she took, dragging Micah along with her.
“You didn’t deny that you agreed to come along in order to peek at my butt.” Jo winked at him.
“You do have a fantastic butt,” Micah agreed dutifully. “It was a bit hard to see given that you woke me up around midnight and made me climb a mountain in the dark, but I’m sure that it would have been breathtaking if I actually could have caught a glimpse of it.”
“Maybe afterward.” Jo grinned as she glanced down the incline toward the nest beneath them. “The mother eagle has left, and we don’t have much time.”
Micah grunted as the rope pulled against his hands. Almost immediately, he realized his mistake as the rope fibers bit into his tender skin. Gloves. There was a reason actual climbers used heavy leather gloves when doing rope work.
Luckily, Jo was fairly light, her slim form almost entirely muscle. Micah appreciated her dedication to diet and exercise for a multitude of reasons. A smile flashed across his face. He’d never thought that “supporting her weight while she made an idiotic attempt to steal a monster’s egg” would be added to that list, but here he was.
Really, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to him. When Jo wanted something, she tended to speak her mind. Sometimes, what she wanted to do made sense. Others? It was little more than the excuse of an adrenaline junkie to get her next fix.
Micah was a little troubled that he didn’t really seem able to say no to her. Sometimes, like this morning, he didn’t want to follow along with her antics. He’d been tired and it was their only day off from patrolling.
She’d been willing to head out on her own too. It was just that when Jo explained to Micah what she wanted to do, he couldn’t let her go alone. Jo might be fine with scaling a mountainside in the dark and sneaking up on a monster nest on her own, but the very idea gave Micah chills.
The idea of letting Jo go off on her “adventures,” not knowing whether or not she’d return, terrified Micah. He knew for a fact that he’d just spend the entire night awake, worrying about her and wondering what more he could do to help.
Instead, here he stood. Worried for her safety but present, putting himself at risk to participate in the same idiocy that Jo insisted upon.
“Shit!” Jo’s yell rocked Micah’s attention back to the present. “Micah, pull. I got the egg, but its parents came back early.”
He opened his mouth to respond, but promptly shut it as an incensed screech sounded from below. Leave it to Jo to land them both in hot water on their day off.
He did his best to ignore the way the rope jerked in his grasp, shaving off hit points as he pulled it hand over hand. The uneven surface of the hemp burned the flesh of his hands.
Micah bit his lip against the pain. He’d need to cast Mending sooner rather than later. There was no way that his abused fingers would be able to grasp on to the rocks of the mountainside with enough strength to make a descent.
“Get away, you overgrown chicken!” Jo shouted from outside the crevice. Squawking and wingbeats answered her.
Micah grasped the rope with both hands and pulled with all of his strength. It bit into his palms, pulling the softened flesh off his burns. Each jerk rattled his shoulders as Micah twisted his body, trying to give Jo as much support as possible while his hands left bloody prints on the rope itself.
She clambered agilely over the lip of the crevice, a grapefruit-sized tan egg tucked under one arm and a smile on her face. Behind her, a bird the size of a small pony screeched angrily as it swooped toward the entrance.
Swiftly, Jo stowed the egg behind a rock. One of her blades glinted in the dawn light as she swung it at the eagle, forcing it to arrest its dive and swerve away. Without asking questions, Micah cast Wind Shield over the cavern’s entrance. It might not be enough to stop the bird if it was truly determined, but the wall of air pressure would slow or deflect any attempts to breach the cave.
“Wow!” Jo exclaimed before bursting into laughter. “That was wild. Did you see how close it got to me? I could feel the wind from its wings on my back as I made it over the edge there. Gods, that was close!”
She moved closer to Micah, one hand on his shirt and the other seeking his hand. Jo leaned in, her eyes bright and dancing as her lips parted slightly in anticipation of meeting Micah’s own.
He winced as her hand touched his. She pulled back, looking down at the red stain covering her palm. Somehow, he heard the drip of his blood splashing on the cavern floor over the distant eagle attacking the spell protecting the crevice entrance.
“Micah” —she looked from her hand to his own—“you’re hurt! Why didn’t you say anything about being hurt? What happened?”
“You can be a little overwhelming at times, Jo,” Micah winced as he picked a strand of hemp from his burned and raw hands. “You didn’t give me a second to let you know I was hurt before you bounded over here.”
“But how did you get hurt?” Concern filled her eyes as she looked at his mauled hands. “You should’ve just been safe in the cave the entire time.”
“Rope burn,” Micah hissed, pulling more of the rope threads from his hand. Healing would cause his skin to grow over the wound, but he’d be in for even more pain if he didn’t clear the injury of foreign matter first. “You were in danger and needed me to pull faster. I don’t know how I’d be able to live with myself if you got attacked on the mountainside and weren’t able to defend yourself from the eagle. If it took a little pain to get you back to safety, that was a price I was willing to pay.”
“That looks like more than a little pain, Micah.” Jo frowned, guilt flashing behind her eyes. “Are you saying that you suffered through all of that because you thought I needed help with the cliff eagle?”
“Didn’t you?” Micah replied, pouring a splash of juushk from his kit over his newly cleaned wounds to sterilize them before spellcasting. “I mean, it hurt like the hells themselves were twisting in my grip, but it’s easier to heal my hands than the entirety of your back. The talons on that bird aren’t a joke.”
“No!” she blurted out before biting her lip and chewing it in frustration. “Well, yes. I really couldn’t have fought it properly on the mountainside. It just doesn’t seem fair that you’re the one getting hurt for my idea.”
Micah cocked his head slightly, smiling sadly as he spoke the words to Mending. His hands dripped blood as they went through the pantomime the spell required.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have come?” Jo mused out loud, pacing back and forth and ignoring the irate bird of prey outside the cave. “This was all my idea and you only got hurt because you followed my lead. I know that sometimes I insist on adventures that could get dangerous, but I never meant for anyone to get hurt. I should probably leave you back in Basil’s Cove the next time I try something like this.”
“But that reckless streak of yours is why I need to come with.” Micah sighed in relief as he flexed his newly healed hands. “You live in the moment. It makes everything about you exciting and new. Unfortunately, you just don’t take danger all that seriously, Jo. If I wasn’t here, not only would you have been attacked while making your way back to the cave, there wouldn’t have been anyone here to heal you.”
“The eagle was supposed to be hunting for prey.” She sulked slightly. “I’ve watched it off and on for two weeks now and it always takes at least an hour to return. I prepared for everything. It wasn’t supposed to come back for at least another half-hour.”
“It did, though.” Micah smiled slightly. “It’s hard for you to say that you’ve prepared for everything when I’m literally looking at evidence to the contrary in the form of an eagle circling the entrance to our cave.”
“I know, but” —her eyes flashed back to his newly healed hands, distress clouding her face—“I didn’t think that you would get hurt. You have to understand, that’s never what I wanted.”
“Jo,” Micah laughed, “I don’t think you’re a monster. It’s just that sometimes you don’t think. I still love the vibrancy and excitement of your adventures; they can just be a bit much sometimes. Seriously, I don’t even know when you sleep. I can barely keep up with you.”
“I’m sorry, Micah.” She glanced down at the floor of the cave. “I guess I’ve just been doing what I wanted and not really considering you. I… I’ll have to think about how to change that.”
“Don’t worry about it, Jo.” Micah put a finger under her chin, angling her head up so she could look at him through damp eyes. “Look, let’s just give this egg back to the eagle and get out of here. The idea of trying to scale our way back down the mountain and then making an almost-full-day trek back to Basil’s Cove while being attacked by an angry bird doesn’t really have a lot of appeal. Plus, I don’t want to kill a monster just because it’s trying to protect its young. That doesn’t sit right with me.”
“Fine.” Jo smiled weakly. “I suppose it’s the least we could do.”
THIRTEEN
AMBUSH
“Come on, Micah, think of it as an adventure,” Trevor quipped, spear over his shoulder as he walked next to Micah. “Unless there’s a raid, the guild never sends out multiple teams after the same objective. This will probably be our only chance to work together unless there’s a dungeon break.”
“Can you at least show some concern, Trevor?” Sarah took a brief break from scanning the nearby forest to scowl at him. “Westmarch reported Durghish scouts sniffing around and then went silent. For all we know, the entire contingent deployed there is already dead or twisted into warbeasts.”
“Lighten up.” Trevor laughed, winking at Sarah. “Westmarch is a citadel. There might only be five hundred soldiers there, but they’re all over level 7 and well-trained. Plus, I’ve seen those walls. They were raised by a team of high-level Earth wizards almost a hundred years ago. Granite, five times a man’s height tall and about one-fifth as thick. Even if the Durgh have a veritable army, they aren’t getting in there anytime soon.”
Sarah scowled at the both of them, drawing an aggrieved flicker of expression from Micah. Trevor was always like this, brimming with chatter and opinions regardless of how appropriate they were. Most people learned fairly quickly that he was immune to shame. Any attempt to scold him would be answered with a laughing wink.
