Chapter 49: Vantage Point

  We move without speaking. Away from the bodies, the smell and the “feast”.

  Thrak'zul sets the pace, his crutch finding purchase on the uneven stone with mechanical precision. Kor'ik walks at his shoulder, eyes down, club dragging slightly. Gorvash flanks my right with his splinted arms held carefully against his chest, scanning every shadow out of habit even though his body has nothing left to fight with.

  I'm last. I rub my thumb against the Ring, feeling its weight once more. I feel this will become a habit. Next, I check on the twin daggers sheathed at my belt and finally at the small bundle of wrapped meat hanging from a loop of salvaged cord.

  The thought rises but I immediately bury them. Not now, later. Survive first, philosophize after.

  The Sunken City stretches around us in the pale moonlight. I glance up between the leaning towers as the blue moon is in a thick crescent low on the horizon, beginning its slow wax. The amber moon still sits nearly full above, which is why we could get in at all. The water level has been dropping for days now, revealing multiple paths and platforms that would otherwise be submerged.

  Which means the window for getting out won't stay open forever.

  We find shelter in the third hour of search.

  I'd been watching the structures as we moved, cataloguing them with whatever analytical energy I have left. Most of the Sunken City's architecture crowds toward the ground, or what used to be the ground, before centuries of accumulated marsh swallowed the lower levels.

  The towers, with their multiple staircases, still stand, rising from shallow water at their impossible angles, their beige stone slick but structurally intact. Builder construction. Whatever they used to bond these surfaces, it has survived things that would have reduced ordinary stonework to rubble long ago, especially underwater.

  What I want is height. Orcs are large, heavy, and loud, and won't waste energy climbing unless they have reason to. This is if they haven't seen us yet and assume we died in the trial.

  The building I choose is a tower set apart from the main cluster, accessible only by a narrow stone bridge that arcs over a deep pool of brackish water. One way in. Easily defensible even by four people in our condition. The lower floors are dark and wet, carved with those fluid, illegible symbols, but the stairs spiral upward through two more levels, and the third floor opens onto a partially roofed platform that faces toward the sky.

  "Here," I say.

  Thrak'zul examines the bridge, the tower entrance, the sight lines. Then he nods once, which I've learned to interpret as high praise from him.

  So we go up.

  The first night is the harshest.

  Not because of danger or the pain, though everyone has plenty of that. It's hardest because we finally stop moving, and stopping means the mind finally has some time to catch up.

  We arrange ourselves on the platform, with Thrak'zul braced against the southern wall where he can watch the entrance, Gorvash nearest the interior stairway where his mass can block passage even without functioning arms, Kor'ik curled against the northern parapet with his head down. I take the western edge, where I can see the sky and most of the city below.

  From up here I can see how much of the city has been reclaimed by the marsh. Entire blocks drowned to their rooftops. Platforms and bridgeways emerging from the water like the backs of sleeping creatures.

  Somewhere down there, the Orcs are probably still alive.

  I don't know how many survived the battle. At least three went down in the fight, but the Leader walked away unscratched. He must now have not only his Halberd but also the Gauntlet and even the Core Stone from the Trial of Shadows.

  Kor'ik makes a sound in the dark startling me.

  A soft, rhythmic clicking from deep in his throat, the kind of sound I've heard Frogmen make when they're in distress. His throat sac pulses faintly, visible even in the moonlight. He has his knees drawn to his chest, both hands wrapped around them, and his bright green skin looks pale.

  I consider saying something, but don't.

  Sometimes silence is the only honest response.

  Day two.

  Gorvash wakes me before dawn with a rub of his tail against my shin. One strange accommodation he developed since his arms became useless.

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  "Movement," he says quietly. "South."

  I'm at the parapet in seconds, low, peering over the edge. The sky is shifting from black to deep violet while the water below has silver on it.

  And there, perhaps four hundred meters south, moving through the flooded lower street in a loose formation are the Orcs.

  Two warriors, spread wide and moving in careful synchronized steps to minimize noise. The third is larger, moving at the center, and even from here I can see the way the moonlight catches the unnatural hardness of his fur.

  The Chief.

  The halberd rests across one shoulder and, as expected, the gauntlet rests in his left arm with its chains slithering all over it with each step.

  My heart rate goes up. My hand finds one of the daggers without conscious decision.

  Thrak'zul materializes silently at my shoulder, having somehow crossed the platform without me hearing him despite the crutch. He watches for a moment, then withdraws. When I look at him, he shakes his head fractionally.

  Wait.

  I know. I know.

  We watch until they disappear around the curve of the drowned street, the Chief's halberd the last thing to vanish into shadow. Then we breathe.

  "They're still looking," Gorvash says.

  "Of course they are." I settle back against the parapet, working through the logic. "They came into this city during the same window we did. They need the same conditions to leave. We're all on the same clock."

  Kor'ik has joined us, crouching at the parapet's edge. His throat sac pulses in that irregular way it does when he's thinking hard. "What do they want?"

  "More." I glance at the southern horizon where the patrol vanished. "That is the problem of greed. Never seems to run out."

  The Chief walked out of that battle holding probably more value than most beings will see in a lifetime. But satisfaction is always temporary isn’t it? He won't rest until he knows he has scraped every possible thing still left in this city.

  And here we are, four mostly beaten slavers with a magical item of their own.

  He absolutely can't find us.

  The following days fall into a scheduled rhythm.

  In the mornings, one of us keeps eyes on the western sightline at all times, tracking the Orcs.

  They move twice daily, once at dawn and once at dusk, with what appears to be methodical search patterns. They haven't found a new Trial or our tower yet. The bridge protects us as it looks too narrow, too conspicuous, and they seem to be prioritizing ground-level structures.

  Midday is for healing. This is when we rest, sleep in rotation, and try to let our bodies catch up to the damage we've absorbed. Thrak'zul's broken leg has already started to heal. I can see when he thinks no one is watching, the way he tests his weight on it, jaw set. Another day, maybe two, before it can bear full load.

  My own injuries have long closed completely. Fast Regeneration has earned its cost in hunger. But I kept the bloody wraps around it to not raise suspicions.

  Gorvash's arms are the longest timeline. Broken bones take longer than soft tissue, and he won't be fully functional for another three or four days at minimum.

  Still, I can say with certainty that overall healing of beings here is much faster than back on Earth.

  Finally the afternoons and nights are for maintenance.

  This is Thrak'zul's time. He has a routine. I've watched him do it since the first day and I still find it slightly surreal. He puts his body through a careful and methodical sequence of movements, modified to compensate for the crutch and the splinted leg. Upper body rotations. Core work.

  Balance exercises on the narrow platform edge that make my palms sweat just observing. Each movement is deliberate, controlled and economical.

  He catches me deliberately watching on the third day and doesn't look away.

  "You train?" he asks. His Lizardman is still broken but improving, which tells me he's been listening and practicing.

  "I study," I say.

  The corner of his mouth moves. It might be the closest thing to a smile I've seen from him. "Watch. Learn."

  I watch but can't manage to learn much. He's working with muscle memory that took years to build, and I'm a creature who existed for probably some months in this world and body.

  But I catalog the principles. Weight distribution. The mechanics of how a body this size generates force efficiently. Where Thrak'zul's power comes from and why.

  Those legs I thought designed only for explosive burst movement, can also move with the graciousness of a dancer.

  I try to imitate it, but it is nothing short of a disaster.

  The movements are strange and constantly throw me off balance. Besides, my tail keeps getting in the way.

  "This for Frogmen. Need different one for Lizards." Thrak'zul points out the obvious difference in biology that I should have known from the start.

  He watches me stumble through another attempt anyway. Then he stops me with a hand on my shoulder.

  He doesn't speak for a moment. He sets his crutch against the parapet wall, balances on his good leg with a stillness that shouldn't be possible, and begins again from the start. Slower this time. Deliberate in a way that feels pedagogical.

  I pay attention properly now.

  Every movement flows into the next without a hard stop. Weight shifts that carry momentum forward rather than killing it, rotations that load the next position while unloading the current one. His arms extend and retract, tracing arcs that keep his center of gravity in a constant, controlled migration. Even the breath is part of it. Exhale on contraction, the torso tightening like a coiled spring.

  Then the crutch is gone and he doesn't seem to need it. One leg. Perfect balance.

  It looks like the inevitable movement of water moving downhill.

  He slows to a stop and looks at me. Waiting.

  So I try again.

  This time he doesn't let me get three steps in before his hand catches my elbow and guides it into a different angle. No words. A pressure and direction correcting me entirely through touch.

  He releases. I continue.

  He stops me again. Points to my feet.

  "Wide," he says.

  I widen my stance. Something in my lower back immediately unlocks in a way I didn't know it was locked.

  "Now."

  I move through the first rotation. It's still ugly, still graceless, but the balance holds this time. My tail swings out wide on the pivot and nearly clips his shin.

  He steps back without breaking expression.

  "Tail." He makes a short sweeping motion with his hand, a half-circle low to the ground. "Use. Not fight."

  I replay the movement. He's right, I've been trying to keep the tail tucked and neutral like dead weight, overcorrecting against it. But it doesn't have to be dead weight. It's the longest lever on my body. Used deliberately, it could be a counterbalance.

  I try the rotation again and let the tail sweep into it instead of against it.

  The result is sharper. Faster. My center of gravity doesn't drift the way it did before.

  Thrak'zul makes a sound of a low resonant click from somewhere in his chest. I have no idea what it means but it doesn't feel like criticism.

  We work like that for what must be an hour. Him demonstrating a piece. Me attempting it. Him correcting with touch and single words, sometimes two.

  By the time he retrieves his crutch and signals the end of the session, I have a rough sketch of a routine, done in broad, clumsy strokes.

  He gives me a long look before turning away.

  "Tomorrow," he says. "Again." Before wandering off to his corner.

  I wonder if Magba has a version of this for our species. If the old crone is still alive, that is.

  Either way, I have a place to start.