As the guys filtered around me, I could hear their collective intake of breath at the sight in front of them.
“So, that’s the badlands?” Zayden asked, as he gulped. “Seems really… Dry.”
“Yes. Also, no buildings, cities, or rock formations to hide around. Just open land.” Rykon observed.
“Not good for when you’re trying to sneak around.” Ajax quipped.
What they all said was valid. It forces us to use different skills than we planned, but that was why I knew we would be fine. This group was all about adapting.
“The strategy will be different. We will need to be more friendly with the locals, ask questions first before killing anyone to ensure we don’t incur more threats than we will already get from being new.” I kept my eyes on the land, searching for any movement.
“But aren’t they used to new people? I mean, this is the place where people are sent who have been banished, right?” Zayden’s question was sound.
Rykon answered before I could. “It’s true that banished people come here, but it’s not like banishments are commonplace. At least not since the fae closed their borders and King Valkon forced out anyone with too much fae blood.”
Ajax crossed his arms, “So they’re going to look to either rob us for our clothes and supplies or they are going to immediately distrust us and not want to talk to us.”
I nodded, knowing what he was saying was true, but there was always a way to deal with those kinds of issues. My father taught me that. “All that means is that we need to find a leader, preferably one that has morals, that can point us in the right direction of the librarian in the lighthouse.”
Ajax scoffed, “And if we find a not moral one?”
I turned to him, smiling a slow, wicked smile, “Then we get to teach them why fucking with us is a death wish.” He searched my eyes, seeing the truth in them. I was more than willing to kill a whole lot of people, especially immoral ones, to get what I needed.
“Well, that just sounds like lots of fun.” His mouth tipped up, matching mine as he palmed his long dagger. His eyes flicked to my wounded arm, lifting an eyebrow to question if I even could do that in this state. In a blink of an eye, I took my good arm, threw one of my thigh knives into my bad arm’s hand and lifted it to his throat before he even knew what I was doing.
He lifted both eyebrows, not in fear, but impressed with how fast I managed it with a wounded arm. “I can do anything I put my mind to. Don’t forget that.”
I turned back around, searching for my bag. As soon as I found it, I sat down and dug into it, searching for a tin of that magical cream my father got me all those years ago. Since he got me more than I needed during training, I always kept some in reserve, bringing it with me whenever I took a trip. I haven’t had to use it since returning to Onisea, so I had some left.
Zayden was the first one to look away from the landscape, seeing me huff and puff as I tried to find the damn tin with one arm. Zayden seized the bag. “What are you looking for?”
I looked up at him, expecting to find anger or sadness, but all I saw was concern and a need to help me. I exhaled out my nose, “I need the small round tin out of my bag. It has some of the magical healing cream my father had gotten for me during training.”
After hearing that, both Ajax and Rykon turned, “Why the hell didn’t you tell us you had that?! We would have already put it on.” Rykon said as he stomped over, taking the bag from Zayden. Looks like he was still a little angry.
My eyes went to find Zayden, to apologize for Rykon’s moodiness, when I saw Zayden’s big smile. I looked down at his hand and there was my tin of cream. He popped it open as Rykon was still searching my bag and was about to scoop some out when I stopped him. “Just use it sparingly. It will seal up the wounds, but I want to save most of it for the trip. I don’t really care if it scars.”
“Are you sure?” His face pinched as he looked at my arm, guilt peppered his eyes as he looked back up at me. “It’s going to be a pretty nasty scar.”
I shrugged, lifting my finger to trail his unblemished cheek. “It’s not like scars hurt my profession.” I chucked as his eyes widened at my joke. I called out to the one who would have my back on this. “Plus, scars make an assassin look much more seasoned. Right, Ajax?”
The big guy was looming over us, his arms crossed and his face pained, but he said in a surprisingly light voice, “Yep. Scars make the assassin look very legit. The more scars, the better.”
“See,” I told Zayden, trying to ease the guilt a little bit, “It’s actually going to help me out.”
Zayden puffed out a breath of disbelief, but he followed what I asked and only put on a very thin layer of cream. I looked up at Ajax in appreciation. He winked at me, a small tug of a smile on his lips before he turned and looked back out to the badlands terrain.
As soon as Zayden was done, Rykon was right there with a wrap, grumbling about how the least he could do was wrap the damn wound he cleaned. Zayden gave up, moving to sit on the other side of me for company.
It was a strange sort of comfort to have Rykon wrap my wound, Zayden sitting next to me humming some tune under his breath and Ajax looking out, monitoring any trouble that might come our way.
Despite my best efforts to convince them otherwise, the boys decided they wanted to camp here for the night. I wanted to keep going, to head down and start the actual part of the quest that I expected to be hard, but they thought with all the excitement of earlier, they wanted to give my arm time to heal. They also said that with us being so high up, we didn’t need to worry about the shadow fae or what we are to face going down the mountain, of which I had to agree with them on. This was the safest spot we could rest.
I brought out my bars again, Zayden still grimaced but ate his, and we talked about heading down the mountain and trying to find someone that we can talk to. While the side that faced the human and fae lands was steep and jagged, the other side was almost the opposite. We scouted around the area. We found a faint trail that had corroded but natural steps into it that lead down to the floor of the mountain.
It made some sense that to get in; it was difficult, but for those already inside it would be kind of torture to see what you lost, having to risk sudden death to get back. There was a strange type of sad beauty in it.
I started to pack up, about to ask them if they wanted to sleep and I could take the first shift, when all three glared at me.
