The bark bit into her palms, rough enough to leave hash marks in her skin. She shifted her weight on the branch. A lateral limb thick as her torso, solid enough to hold an ox. Her hip immediately reminded her that she'd been sitting in the same spot for too long.
Forty feet below, Kellen stumbled through another aimless circuit of the clearing.
Pathetic. And she'd thought the Banton Academy entrance exams were supposed to filter out the hopeless cases.
Her stomach growled. Loud enough that she glanced down at it, annoyed. She'd been rationing carefully, one meal at dawn, one at dusk, water sips every two hours. The kind of discipline that would get her through a week-long trek without needing to forage. Something she could only assume Kellen had not done, given the way he'd chugged his entire water supply mid-afternoon like a man who'd just discovered hydration.
She reached for her pack, pulling out a strip of dried venison. Hard as leather, tasted like salt and regret, but it would keep her going. She'd need to hunt before they left the forest... deer, maybe, or wild boar if she got lucky. Something to replenish her supplies before the open road.
Her hand brushed something unfamiliar in the side pocket.
Nora froze.
She pulled it out slowly. A book. Leather-bound, compact, edges worn smooth from use.
The Echo Tome.
Her Echo Tome. The one she'd turned in to the vault that morning. The one Oryn had checked her bag for.
She stared at it, mind racing. She'd handed it over. Watched the vault keeper log it. Then Oryn had inspected her pack himself, methodically checking every compartment. Then that bird hit the window.
The bird.
Oryn had slipped the tome into her bag while she was distracted. He must have summoned it.
But why?
An additional weapon? That made sense. The wilderness was dangerous, and a mage with an Echo Tome was worth three soldiers. But Oryn wasn't the type to bend rules for convenience. He was too rigid, too bound by protocol.
Unless it was a test.
Or... training.
Nora's fingers tightened on the book's spine. If the Codex rejected Kellen, or if he died, it might choose her next. Oryn had said as much. And if that happened, she'd need to be ready. Not just physically, but prepared. A Bearer who couldn't summon was useless.
He wanted her to keep training. Secretly. So when the time came, she wouldn't stumble.
She looked down at Kellen, still limping through the clearing like a wounded animal.
If the time comes.
The Echo Tome lay open across her thighs, pages blank except for the faint shimmer of her [Tracker's Eye] overlay. The skill painted phantom data across her vision, heat signatures, mana signatures, movement patterns. Kellen's silhouette glowed a sickly amber-yellow at the edges.
Kellen's health was down to seventy-two percent. Not terrible, but combined with his mana reserves sitting at a pathetic four points and his stamina bottomed out at twelve? She estimated forty minutes before he collapsed. Maybe sixty if he was stubborn.
Nora had seen Academy recruits last longer on their first overnight march. With broken ankles.
No discipline. No foresight.
He stopped walking. Swayed. His hand shot out to brace against a tree trunk. He missed, and caught himself on his knees instead. His chest heaved. Even from this distance, she could see the tremor in his shoulders.
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Below, he pushed to his feet. Wobbled. She heard the scuff of his boots on loose stone. Three steps north, then a pivot east. No reason. No pattern. He was circling like a wounded animal, shoulders hunched against the cooling air.
Searching.
For what? Food? Shelter?
A miracle?
The forest didn't care about desperation. She'd learned that lesson at twelve, lost in the Blackwood during her first solo trial. The forest cared about competence.
And Kellen had none.
Kellen lurched to a stop again. This time, he didn't catch himself. He dropped to a crouch, head between his knees, and just... sat there. His back rose and fell in ragged rhythm.
Get up, you idiot. Nora's jaw tightened. She didn't say it aloud. Didn't need to. The thought was reflex, drilled into her by a decade of conditioning and one particularly sadistic combat instructor. When you fell, you rose. When you failed, you adapted. You didn't sit there like a kicked dog waiting for someone to put you out of your misery.
Kellen was doing none of that.
The [Tracker's Eye] pulsed. MANA: 4/120
She exhaled through her nose. Forced her shoulders to relax. Which was harder than it should've been, considering she'd been tensed up for the better part of three hours. This wasn't her trial. Her mission was observation. Documentation. Retrieval.
Let him fall.
Twenty minutes passed. The forest darkened as the sun bled through the canopy, painting everything in amber and shadow.
Then the wolf-spider emerged.
It moved like oil over stone, deeply wrong in a way that made Nora's skin crawl. Eight legs. Torso the size of a mule. Fangs that dripped venom in slow, glistening threads, like the world's worst candlemaker had gotten creative.
Kellen kept walking. Oblivious.
"Damn." Nora cursed under her breath.
The spider crept closer. Fifteen yards now. Each step left a wet impression in the moss, venom dripping from its fangs in slow threads that hissed when they hit the ground.
Ten yards.
Nora raised the bow. Drew to her cheek. No arrow. Instead, white light coalesced between her fingers, humming with that high-pitched resonance that always made her teeth ache. A mana construct. Pure energy condensed into a kinetic arrow.
She released the [Radiant Bolt].
The bolt struck the spider's front leg joint.
The creature shrieked, a sound like tearing metal, and stumbled. Its leg buckled, chitin cracking. It scuttled sideways, trying to hide behind a fallen log.
But it was still in plain sight. Amateur mistake.
Nora drew again. Another [Radiant Bolt] coalesced between her fingers.
She released.
The second bolt punched through the spider's abdomen. Ichor sprayed. The creature convulsed, legs thrashing, and then its cluster of eyes swiveled upward.
Directly at her.
Shit.
The spider abandoned Kellen entirely. It pivoted, all eight legs churning, and charged toward her tree. Fast. Faster than something that size had any right to move.
Nora drew a third time. Her fingers hummed with mana, the construct forming faster now. Muscle memory.
The spider reached the base of her tree. Started climbing.
She released.
The [Radiant Bolt] streaked down. Hit the spider dead center in the cephalothorax.
The creature convulsed, legs curling inward like a dying hand, and collapsed in a heap of twitching chitin. Venom sacs ruptured. Caustic fluid hissed against moss, eating through greenery in seconds.
Nora lowered the bow. Exhaled.
[COMBAT COMPLETE]
Wolf-Spider (Lvl 3) Neutralized: +45 XP
Radiant Bolt Efficiency: 94% (Mana: -24)
Current XP: 1,245/2,000
She flicked the notification away without looking. Not enough to level. Trivial.
Below, Kellen froze. His head snapped up. Spun left, then right. His hand dropped to the Codex at his belt. Instinct, even now. But he didn't draw it. He just... stood there. Scanning the trees. Searching for a threat he couldn't name.
You're welcome, by the way. She didn't expect gratitude. Hell, he didn't even know she'd saved his ass. But a little situational awareness would've been nice. The spider had been fifteen feet away and closing. Most people noticed when something of that size was about to inject them with liquefying venom.
After a long moment, he turned away. Resumed walking. Still aimless. Still lost.
Nora's eyes tracked the spider's corpse.
Already, the venom was doing its work. The chitin shell bubbled and cracked like overcooked eggs, dissolving into a foul-smelling slurry that looked disturbingly like the porridge they served at the Academy refectory. Nora's stomach turned. She'd seen plenty of corpses. Came with the job. But there was something uniquely revolting about watching a predator melt into its own digestive juices.
She shouldn't have intervened.
The thought arrived with the weight of doctrine. Her mission was observation. Documentation. Retrieval. Not protection. She'd broken protocol the moment she drew that bow.
Keeping the Codex safe, she told herself. That was the justification. The spider would've killed Kellen, and the Codex would've been... what? Stuck in a spider's belly? Covered in venom?
She dismissed the thought immediately. The Codex was indestructible. She'd read about the countless times it had been put through hell... dropped from the tower, set on fire, submerged in acid. The artifact always remained intact. A spider's digestive system wouldn't do jack shit to it.
But retrieving it from a melted corpse inside a spider's nest? That would've been a pain in the ass.
Borderline, she decided. The intervention was borderline justifiable. Barely.
But next time?
Next time, she'd let him fall.