Chapter 23 – Scout’s Risk
1192 Words
Bryn volunteered before anyone could stop him.
“We need eyes on the outside of that place,” he said, tapping a rough sketch Corren had drawn on the kitchen table—a ridge, the sealed tunnels beneath, a vague circle where the knot might surface on Serin’s side. “You’ve got Tavis’ view from the inside. I’ll find the shell.”
Maera frowned. “Serin did not build his half of this on our land alone. That complex stretches onto his formal territory. You sneak too far in, you don’t come back.”
“Good thing I’m charming,” Bryn said. “And hard to kill.”
I snorted. “You’re allergic to boredom. That’s not a qualification.”
He winked. “Motivation, moonshine. Very important.”
Corren’s mouth tightened. He leaned over the map—a real one now, spread under the sketch. Ridges, streams, old logging roads. Borders inked in red.
“Tavis felt water,” I said, finger tracing. “Cold, fast. And the air tasted like metal. There’s an old river cut here.” I tapped a narrow blue line near the eastern edge of Serin’s marked lands. “And an abandoned ironworks there.”
“Too obvious,” Maera murmured. “Serin likes pretty symbols, not rusty chimneys.”
“Maybe,” Bryn said. “But if you had to hide a ritual complex from humans, you’d put it under something nobody wants to touch.”
He wasn't wrong.
“Fine,” Corren said. “You’ll go as far as the river bend. No further without sending a signal. You don’t engage. You don’t hero. You look, you smell, you come back.”
“Those are very boring instructions,” Bryn said. “I approve of the ‘come back’ part, though.”
I folded my arms. “You’re taking a partner.”
He raised a brow. “You volunteering?”
“No,” I said. “I’m already tied into one suicidal mission. I meant someone who can drag you by the scruff if your self-preservation fails.”
A small figure on the edge of the group cleared her throat.
“I can help,” Sela said.
Three adult wolves said no at the same time.
She blinked, taken aback but not cowed. “I didn’t mean go there,” she said. “I meant… I can listen. Like with the fence. If Bryn gets close to the other side of the knot, I’ll feel it. Maybe better than he will.”
Maera’s jaw worked. “You will not be anywhere near—”
“I don’t have to be,” Sela insisted. “You said the knot goes under lots of places. I can sit here. Or on the fence. Or in the den. The lines will still hum if he touches them.”
My resonance brushed against hers, testing. She was right; her sensitivity to the web had only grown since the big ritual. Threads that were a faint itch to me came through to her like distinct notes.
“It’s a relay,” I said slowly. “Bryn goes. Sela listens. I translate. We get a three-dimensional sense of the outer knot without poking our heads fully into the lion’s mouth.”
Corren didn’t like it. Every muscle in him said keep the children out.
But he wasn’t the only one learning to let go of old patterns.
“We do it once,” he said finally. “Short run. If Sela feels anything too strong, we stop. This is not another way to make you an anchor,” he told her directly.
She nodded solemnly. “I don’t want to be an anchor. I want to be… a smoke alarm.”
Bryn snorted. “Best job description I’ve heard all week.”
They left at dawn: Bryn on foot, light pack slung over his shoulder; Sela curled up on the den’s front steps with a blanket and a sketchbook, feet bare, toes wiggling in the cold. I sat beside her, back to the wall, eyes half-lidded.
“Draw what you feel,” I told her. “Even if it’s just lines. Don’t try to make it ‘make sense’.”
“I never do,” she said cheerfully.
Bryn lifted two fingers in a lazy salute as he disappeared into the trees.
“He jokes too much,” Sela observed.
“That’s how he keeps from screaming,” I said.
“Oh.” She thought about that, then went back to her drawing.
Time stretched. Pack life moved around us: wolves coming and going, the clatter of breakfast dishes inside, someone laughing too loud at a joke that probably wasn’t that funny.
Under it, the web hummed.
At first it was just the usual background: the steady pulse of our knot, the faint echo of others far away. Then a new thread plucked, faint and mobile.
Bryn.
I closed my eyes, following.
He wasn’t trying to hide from me, exactly, but he wasn’t broadcasting either. His senses were tuned outward—to terrain, to wind shifts, to scents. I tasted river cold on his tongue, the iron tang of old pipes, a whiff of human garbage from some forgotten dump.
Sela’s hand moved faster over the paper.
“It’s changing,” she whispered. “Like… like the string is getting tighter the closer he goes.”
My own resonance agreed. The ambient buzz sharpened, narrowing into a line that ran roughly east by northeast.
Then, abruptly, it kinked.
“Turned,” I murmured. “He’s following a bend.”
Sela switched to a darker crayon, drawing the line curving, then angling down.
“He’s going under something now,” she said. “Feels… heavy. Like a roof on my head. But not scary yet.”
Yet being the operative word.
I sent a thought along the tether.
Bryn?
His answer came back faint but flippant. Still pretty. Lots of rocks. Smells like corrosion and bad decisions.
“Good,” I said aloud.
Sela frowned, shading a patch. “There’s… a bump,” she said. “Like a knot on top of the knot. Wrong color.”
My pulse kicked.
“Can you show me?” I asked.
She turned the sketchpad toward me.
It was crude, but the shapes were clear: a long line for the ridge, a curve for the river, a scribbled mass under it for the tunnel knot. On top of that, pressed right against the surface, a smaller, darker circle.
A satellite site. An aboveground access.
“They’re closer than we thought,” I murmured. “He’s almost at the skin.”
As if on cue, the thread that was Bryn’s presence jerked.
Sela gasped, grabbing my arm.
“Something touched him,” she whispered. “Not… not like us. Like… a hand without a body.”
My heart slammed against my ribs.
“Bryn,” I said sharply, pushing more of myself along the tether. “Report.”
Static. Then, after a breath that felt too long:
Found your front door, moonshine.
His mental “voice” was thinner now, strained.
And something else found me.
- Writer
