Chapter 13: E
They emerged from the ruins’ oppressive, dust-choked silence and into a world of vibrant, startling sound: the sigh of wind through tall grass, the distant cry of a hawk, the soft crunch of their own boots on dry earth. After the claustrophobic dark, the open sky felt like a physical release, a weight lifted from their shoulders.
“Air that doesn’t taste of dead wizard,” Ezra declared, pulling off his helmet and shaking out his sweaty red fur. He dropped his pack and threw himself onto a soft patch of meadow grass with a deep, grateful groan, staring up at the scudding clouds. “I could kiss it.”
Lira crouched by a trickling spring that cut through the plateau’s edge, scrubbing the last of the wizard-spider’s ichor from her hands with swift, urgent motions, as if cleaning away the memory itself. Ginny stood sentinel, one hand resting on her sword pommel, surveying the valley below, her posture finally relaxing a fraction as she confirmed no immediate threats lurked in the sun-dappled treeline.
Sigfried sat on a sun-warmed boulder, the heavy tome resting across his lap. He wasn’t reading it now; his fingers simply traced the embossed, geometric patterns on its cover, his gaze distant. The clean, biting scent of alpine herbs filled his lungs, but his mind was elsewhere, transported back to the austere lecture halls of the Teutonic Lyceum.
He pictured them clearly: Klaus with his perpetually arched eyebrow, Elara with her dismissive, tinkling laughter. All those faceless, grey-robed peers who’d whispered “theorist” like a curse, who mocked his pursuit of the abstract and unprovable while they grubbed for practical enchantments. A slow, sharp-edged smile touched his lips. He imagined the feel of the book’s substantial weight in his hand, the satisfying thwump it would make landing on the oak table before them, the silver ink seeming to writhe under the candlelight. Their smug expressions cracking into bewildered, greedy awe.
“You’re smiling,” Ginny observed, turning from her watch and catching his expression. “Planning to sell our souls with that thing?”
“Just considering the market value of vindication,” Sig replied, his tone light but his eyes holding a glint of cold fire. “It’s considerably higher than I’d anticipated.”
Lira looked from Sig’s private smile to Ginny’s wary squint, then over to Ezra, who was now making grass angels. The future felt suddenly, brilliantly uncertain. Beyond the plateau’s edge, the road back to town shimmered in the midday heat, beckoning.
Beyond the plateau’s edge, the road back to town shimmered in the midday heat, beckoning. Ezra’s stomach issued a prolonged, gurgling roar that echoed off the stone behind them. "Right," he said, clapping his hands together. "We survived ethereal horrors and academic vindication. I’m officially hollow.Anyone else hungry?"
"It’s barely morning," Ginny sighed, massishing her temple. She gestured toward the sprawling meadows below the rocky outcrop. "Go scout the treeline. Look for some rabbits or something."
Ginny’s command to “look for some rabbits” still hung in the crisp air as she turned, only to freeze mid-motion. Ezra, with an expression of serene focus, was already leaning over a sun-baked crevice in the rocks, his hands moving with deceptive gentleness.
He straightened up, turning to face them with something long and sinuous already clamped between his jaws. The snake’s lower half, thick as his wrist and patterned in furious brown diamonds, lashed the empty air in a frantic, muscular panic, its tail whipping against his chest plate with soft, frantic thuds. A muffled, pleased grunt emanated from Ezra as he began a slow, deliberate chew, the serpent’s struggles growing gradually weaker.
Lira made a small, choked sound, her hand flying to her mouth. Sigfried slowly lowered his tome, his analytical blue eyes widening a fraction before narrowing into a flat, unimpressed stare. “I said rabbits,” Ginny managed, her voice strangled between disbelief and utter revulsion.
“Fast-food,” Ezra explained around the mouthful, the words distorted by scales and muscle. One final, violent convulsion ran through the snake’s length before it fell still, dangling limply from his lips. He sucked the remainder in with a brisk, slurping sound that seemed to echo off the stones.
He then snapped his head back with a sharp, final crunch that made Lira visibly flinch. A look of pure contentment settled on his goat-like features as he swallowed. “Sun-warmed,” he sighed, licking his chops. “Fresh. You really shouldn’t let preconceived notions limit your palate.”
“My preconceived notion is that lunch shouldn’t look back at me,” Sigfried stated, closing his book with a definitive snap. “Must every meal be a theological debate on your demonic heritage?”
“It’s efficient,” Ezra protested, picking a tiny scale from his tooth with a claw. “No cooking, no fire, no waiting. I was being proactive.”
Ginny pinched the bridge of her nose, her green eyes screwed shut. “Just… just go find some normal food. Edible food. For people.” Ezra shrugged, the picture of misunderstood virtue, and ambled off toward the treeline, humming. Lira stared at the spot where the snake had vanished, her face pale. “I may just forage for berries,” she whispered.
They were all watching him as he went. That familiar, hollow space opened behind his ribs, wider than the valley below. The muffled revulsion in Lira’s whisper, the clinical disapproval in Sig’s stare, the exasperated piety in Ginny’s order—they were just a gentle breeze against the old, deep-cold stone of being alone in his own skin. He reached the treeline and didn’t look back, his cheerful humming cutting off as if severed. The forest shadows swallowed the sound, and him.
The forest floor was a carpet of decaying leaves and soft moss, muffling Ezra's steps as he pushed deeper into the gloom. Sunlight pierced the canopy in ragged shafts, illuminating motes of dust that danced like suspended ash. He could still taste the snake's earthy bitterness on his tongue, a sharp contrast to the sweet, damp air. "Normal food," he muttered to himself, the words dissolving into the dense silence.