The Thornwood started where the road stopped.
One moment there was packed dirt and wagon ruts. The next there were trees so dense the sky mostly disappeared. It wasn't dramatic about it — no fog, no ominous sounds. Just a hard line between town and not-town, and on the other side of it everything was a bit too quiet and a bit too watching.
I hate forests, I thought. I'm a city person. I grew up between concrete and convenience stores. This is not my environment.
I had my scroll pouches on my belt, elixirs in a side pouch, the enhanced dagger at my hip, and a pack with rations and camp supplies. Rena had her swords — I'd done a final enhancement pass that morning, both of them now feeling like they were at the top of what I could push them to at my current level.
She walked like someone who'd done this a thousand times, which she had. I walked like someone who was looking at every bush.
"Stop watching the bushes," she said.
"The bushes could have things in them."
"The things in the bushes can smell that you're watching the bushes. You look like prey."
What am I supposed to look like?
"A predator," she said, as if she'd heard me.
"Right. Sure. I'll get right on that."
We found the first goblin camp an hour in.
Six standard goblins, a fire pit, a rough shelter made of branches. D-rank contract meant clearing camps in a two-kilometer radius. This was the first one on the map the guild had given us.
I crouched behind a fallen log next to Rena and looked at the camp. The goblins were doing goblin things — arguing over food, sharpening sticks, one of them asleep against a tree.
"Plan?" I said, quietly.
"I go in left. You stay here, use a scroll if one of them flanks or runs."
"What if there are more than six?"
"There aren't."
"How do you—"
"Smell. Six individual scent trails to the camp. I've been tracking since we came in range." She glanced at me. "Pay attention to information sources that aren't your eyes."
Okay that's actually useful, I thought. I'll file that away under 'things I did not know about experienced adventurers.'
"Go when I move," she said.
She moved.
It was fast — I'll say that. She was into the camp before the first goblin registered something was wrong, and then it registered things were very wrong because one of its friends was already down and there was a woman with two swords in the middle of their fire. The enhanced blades caught the firelight and they looked almost gold.
Three goblins on her at once. She didn't panic, just moved between them, clean and efficient.
Then the two on the edge of camp spotted me.
Yep, I thought, already reaching for a scroll. There they are. Coming toward me specifically. Great.
I pulled a Flash Bomb scroll — four charges after enhancement, up from two — pressed my palm to it, and activated the first charge.
White light. Both goblins stopped, hands over their eyes, stumbling. I was up and moving before they recovered, closed the distance on the nearer one, and hit it in the head with the pommel of my dagger in a way that was not cool or elegant but did work.
The second one swung blind. I stepped back, activated the scroll's second charge right in its face, and when it stumbled I put it down.
Then I stood there, breathing hard, two unconscious goblins at my feet, and looked up to find Rena already done with her four and watching me with an expression I couldn't read.
"You hit it with the handle," she said.
"It worked."
"You panicked."
"I improvised."
"You panicked and then improvised." She sheathed one sword. "The scroll use was correct. The approach after was reckless."
She's not wrong, I thought. She's annoying, but she's not wrong.
"I'm not a fighter," I said. "I said that upfront."
"You're not a fighter yet," she corrected, which was a different thing to say, and I wasn't sure how I felt about it.
We cleared three more camps by afternoon.
By the third one I'd worked out a rhythm — I stayed back, managed scrolls, called out flankers, and only got into direct contact if something broke through to me. Rena worked better when the plan didn't change, I'd noticed. If I called something early enough she adjusted smoothly. If I called it mid-action she'd hesitate.
Timing is everything with her, I noted. Tell her before, not during.
Camp three had a hobgoblin — bigger, slower, hit like a door. Rena took a glancing blow off her shoulder that would have caved her in without the enhanced armor she'd borrowed from a guild contact that morning after I'd spent twenty minutes on it.
"You felt the difference?" I said after, when we were clearing the camp.
She rolled the shoulder experimentally. "Yes."
"Imagine that without the enhancement."
"I don't want to."
"Good," I said. "Remember that feeling next time you think about renegotiating my rate."
She gave me a look.
"Kidding," I said.
I wasn't fully kidding.
We camped at the edge of the outer ring as the light went. Rena cooked — she was better at it than me, which I resented — and I ran enhancement passes on our scroll stock for the next day, refilling my MP with a mana tonic between passes.
"How many passes per scroll?" she asked.
"Depends on the grade. Grey scrolls cap out around four to five passes before they start degrading. Blue scrolls I can push further."
"Degrading how?"
"The inscription gets unstable if I over-enhance. Too much efficiency and the structure cracks." I set down a fully enhanced Fire Arrow scroll. "Like oversharpening a blade. There's a limit. I'm still learning where it is."
She was quiet for a moment, watching me work. "You're learning this as you go."
"I was exiled two weeks ago. Yes, I'm learning as I go."
"The king's court made a mistake."
Yes, I thought. They did. And I'm going to make sure that is incredibly obvious to absolutely everyone by the time I'm done.
"Obviously," I said. "Pass me the blue scroll."