BT - Book 1 - Chapter 68 (Patreon)

The cocoons of light dissolved within thirty seconds of each other, drawing a sigh of relief from Micah as Telivern’s majestic and snowy white form unfolded itself, almost glowing in the dim cavern.

He didn’t want to admit to himself how worried he had been that the evolution might have changed things.  After all, a slightly different skill set or experience profile before the deer began its transformation might have ended up with Telivern assuming a different personality, name and final form.

It cantered over to him and placed its snout in Micah’s outstretched hand.

“Long time no see Telivern,” Micah smiled as his free hand stroked the fur of its neck.  “You sure took your sweet time to evolve, but it’s good to have you back.”

Amusement.  Compassion.

It really was a weight off of his shoulders that everything went as planned regarding Telivern.  Micah hadn’t even realized until now how tense he had been about the possibility of losing his closest friend.

A fuzzy head slammed into his side before nipping him playfully.  Micah blinked.  He hadn’t even seen the panther approach.  It was dark enough in the cave that he might have missed it, but Micah suspected that its stealth had at least a partial magical basis. His senses weren’t magically enhanced, but he was fairly careful.  It was hard to evade his awareness completely.

“And what should I call you?” Micah asked, reaching down with the hand that had been on Telivern’s neck to scratch the panther behind the ears.

It was much bigger now.  Almost the size of a pony with well muscled raven feathered wings folded neatly at its side.  As Micah’s fingers played through its thick fur, the panther thrummed almost shaking him from the vibrations of its deep bass purring.

“Papa,” a childish feminine voice chirped inside Micah’s head.  His hand stopped moving.

“Keep pet Ravi Papa,” the voice chirped again.  Micah glanced at Trevor.  His brother was still smoking slightly from his exposure to Ari’s axe, but it didn’t look like he had heard anything.

Amusement.

Micah glanced at Telivern, unsure if it was laughing at his startled antics or if it was enjoying Ravi’s antics.

“No make fun of Papa,” her voice scolded with the broken syntax of a child.  “Mama Telivern and Papa Micah stay friends.”

Denial.  Alarm.

Micah laughed as Telivern stiffened next to him, its eyes wide as it glared at the cheerful winged panther.  Telivern snorted uncomfortably before stomping one of its hooves.

“Come on Telivern,” Micah shook his head, grin stretching across his face.  “You can’t run away from your responsibilities like that.  Ravi is going to need a role model and guidance.  It’s an important duty, but I know that you’re up for it.”

Telivern grunted, turning from Micah and cantering a handful of steps away before pointedly staring at one of the cave’s walls.

“Can someone tell me what’s going on?” Trevor wandered over, his clothing outside of the new breastplate charred and smoking from his experience with Ari’s axe.  “Are the animals fighting now?  Honestly I really don’t know how to keep up with them.  It always feels like they’re mocking me.”

“Uncle Trevor silly,” Ravi rubbed her head against Micah’s shoulder, spreading her scent onto his clothing.

“I don’t know why you would say that,” Micah responded, covering his mouth with his free hand as he continued to pet the gigantic panther.

“It’s literally making fun of me right now isn’t it,” Trevor crossed his arms in front of his chest, wincing slightly as the action aggravated some of the injuries from the battle.  “You have that look on your face.  You’re hiding something from me and based on your smirk, it isn’t something ‘fun’ like special loot.”

“She is making fun of you, yes” Micah responded, not bothering to deny Trevor’s charge.  “Ravi is a good girl and I would appreciate it if you didn’t pick on her.  She’s impressionable and I wouldn’t want her learning any foul language or bad habits from you.”

“Ravi good Papa,” she chirped happily, almost knocking Micah over as she slammed her entire body into him in an attempt to rub her back against him.

“Of course,” Trevor rolled his eyes at Micah.  “The animals take your side.  Maybe I was surprised the first five times this happened, but at this point it’s lost some of the sting.  Now are you going to play fetch with the cat or are we going to dive up this loot?  I call dibs on whatever turned that axe into a thunderstorm.”

“I’m not sure how good of an idea that is,” Micah responded with a sigh, throwing the signet ring to Trevor.  “The gear is all top notch, but we might be in trouble even if we leave it alone.”

Trevor cocked his head at Micah, confusion wrinkling his forehead before he looked down at the ring.  He turned it over a couple times in his hands before looking back to Micah without any understanding.

“I don’t get it,” Trevor shrugged.  “It’s a ring.  I mean, I can practically feel the magic pouring off of it, but I don’t see why that’s a problem.”

“It’s a ring bearing the heraldry of House Hurden,” Micah replied tightly.  “From the way the two of them were talking, the summoner was a retainer and the axe wielder was the Baron’s Son.  That explains why they have such powerful gear, but I’m not sure that I’m confident enough to openly wear anything from the two of them.”

“They’re the ones that attacked us,” Trevor huffed back.  “Seriously, they wander into a dungeon at night like they own the place and look at us like we’re nothing more than talking treasure chests.  You warned them off twice, and then they attacked us.  Since when are we not allowed to loot the gear of a couple of bandits that tried to kill us out of nowhere?”

“Since one of the bandits is the son of Baron Hurden, Vice Chancellor of the Noble Council advising the Mayor,” Micah could almost feel the headache setting in.  “None of the nobles are particularly friendly, but most of them don’t even bother to interfere with Basil’s Cove so long as their businesses and estates are taxed minimally.  That said, I strongly suspect that Baron Hurden will care if his son dies.  Especially if this ‘Ari’ was in the line of succession.”

“What’s he going to do,” Trevor frowned, fiddling with some of the burns on the tunic he wore under his armor.  “His son attacked us without warning and we killed him in self defense.  It seems pretty open and shut if he tries to take us to a magistrate.”

Micah closed his eyes.  Yes.  That was definitely a headache.  As soon as Trevor started to get serious about training, he revealed the deficiencies in the rest of his education.  Micah would have to rectify his worldview before his brother picked a fight with someone he couldn’t afford to kill.

“This would never go to court Trevor,” Micah tried to keep the testiness from his voice.  “The Baron would pay someone discrete to take care of us.  If he got caught, he would be convicted and fined.  They would give our parents five to ten attunement for each of us.  In a situation like this, many nobles would gladly pay that fine.  Hells, he would probably brag about it.  Our blood price might even be listed as a funerary gift for his son.”

“Couldn’t we take the matter to the Mayor ourselves then?” Trevor asked.  “He’s appointed by the King and rules over the Noble Council.  If he realizes that Baron Hurden is upsetting the peace, he could put a stop to the whole thing.”

“That’s true,” Micah nodded.  It was a better solution than he expected out of Trevor after his previous fumblings.  “Unfortunately we have nothing to offer the Mayor.  He has the power to tell the local nobles what to do, but they have the ability to make his job both miserable and difficult.  While it would be great if he would take our side simply because we are right, that’s an awfully big gamble.”

“Right now,” Micah put up two fingers.  “We only have two advantages.”

“First,” one of the fingers went down.  “The Baron has no idea who we are.  We used the teleportation array to sneak out here so, as far as the records at the gates know, we’re still at home and in bed.  He can hardly interrogate everyone in Basil’s Cove with a truth seer without some additional evidence.”

“Second,” Micah displayed an empty fist.  “So long as we stay near the Luoca we’re awfully resilient for any affordable assassin.  So long as we ward ourselves properly against poison, curses, or other unconventional methods of attacking us, Baron Hurden will struggle to find anyone capable of killing us.  I suspect he can afford to hire a master assassin from the capital who could keep us on our toes, but someone of that caliber would be ruinously expensive.”

“Shit,” Trevor spat the word out.  “What are we supposed to do?”

“Language,” Micah hissed back at his brother, covering Ravi’s large ears.  The panther playfully used a paw to push his hands away.

“You just gave me a lecture on how a corrupt noble is going to send fucking assassins to smother us in our sleep,” Trevor rolled his eyes at Micah.  “Spare me.”

“Well,” Micah answered, faint smile on his face, “we don’t let anyone know that we’ve been down here, that’s for damn sure.  That means we comb the entire dungeon and make sure that we didn’t leave any gear that could be recognized.  That also means that we find a way to hide the loot and we never touch it again.  Most importantly, we can’t talk about what happened down here.  Those two bodies are a secret that goes to our graves.”

Trevor nodded thoughtfully.  A brief wistful look flitted across his face when he looked at the high tier equipment of the dead noble, but as far as Micah could tell, his brother was taking the concerns seriously.

“Going forward,” Micah continued, “we can’t hit dungeons at night anymore.  I suspect that Baron Hurden is going to know both what his son was up to and the man’s temperament.  I would be surprised if he doesn’t start sending retainers out to look for people poaching dungeons.  I think the only dungeon we can safely raid is the Cavern of Rust.”

Trevor paled and Micah just nodded.  The changes would slow their progress down, and even with the Luoca the Cavern of Rust was probably a death sentence.

“I don’t know-” Trevor began only for Micah to cut him off with a wave of his hand.

“We aren’t going into the Cavern of Rust anytime soon,” Micah smiled wryly.  “I’d prefer to at least start growing facial hair before I die horrifically.”

“Okay,” Trevor calmed slightly.  “But then what do we do?  How are we going to level up enough to fight off the Durgh?”

“We need to start going through the Lancers,” Micah replied.  “I think I told you about my party members from my first timeline?  Drekt, the Redflower sisters and Will.  Keep your eyes open for them.  By now you should be strong enough to start your own team.  Pull them into it and bring them to meet me in the forest.  I’ll keep fighting anything I can find outside of the dungeons and working on improving our gear in the meantime.”

“The captains have been pushing me to take on a leadership role,” Trevor mused, a little enthusiasm returning to his face.  “Yeah, this actually has an off chance of working.”

“Great,” Micah smiled.  “As soon as you have a team put together, you need to start putting in bids for raids on high end dungeons.  As many and as quick as possible.  I’ll tag along and we can power level my old team.”

“Okay,” Trevor sighed.  “You had me scared for a second there, but I think I can manage this.”

“Well,” Micah’s mouth quirked sourly.  “You probably should be scared.  I’m not sure we had another option, but killing these two has the potential to be a serious problem down the line.”

“Why couldn’t they leave us alone?” Trevor asked him rhetorically, shaking his head.

“A question the poor have asked of the rich for generations,” Micah chuckled darkly.  “Come on Telivern, we’ll need your help to drag these bodies out of her.”

The deer turned from where it had been studiously inspecting the wally and meandered over to the two of them, pointedly ignoring Ravi.

“Wait,” Trevor interjected, frowning, pointing at Telivern.  “The deer has a name now too?  Also, you’ve never explained you seem to be able to talk to both of them.  Seriously, half the time I come out to the grove and you’re just having a conversation with the two of them while they stare meaningfully at you.  It’s creepy.”

Micah flashed a smile at his brother, not responding as he picked up Ari’s heavy form and piling it on Telivern’s back.