To the Sacred Tree (1)
"Y-Yona. Where's your husband off to today?"
"I told you to shut your mouth, Kayak."
Yona, seated in the Adventurer's Guild, bared her teeth and growled.
"Still prickly as ever, I see."
Kayak ran that enormous hand of his over Yona's head, ruffling her hair back and forth.
"Stop it, you bastard."
She was already irritated enough that Alec was running late, and Kayak's smirking on top of it made her blood boil all the more.
I've spent way too long trailing around with that guy.
She and Alec had registered with the Adventurer's Guild on the very same day, at the very same hour.
That had been the start of it — and besides, Yona was a Healer and Alec a vanguard, the two most in-demand roles in any party.
Thanks to that, whenever the two of them teamed up, finding a party was easy work, and somehow or other it had become the norm for them to travel together nearly every single time.
I think it's about time I put some distance between us.
Having decided as much, Yona finally sprang up from her seat.
And while she was at it — might as well see it through to the end.
Hmph.
Exhaling sharply, she marched up to Mary with her chin held high.
"So. Anything worth taking?"
"Oh my — you're not going with Alec?"
"Trying to keep my distance."
Mary smiled as she looked at Yona's sulky expression.
Granted, Alec's head being shaved down to bare scalp didn't do him any favors, but he wasn't a bad-looking man by any stretch. Among adventurers — whose speech was so crude it bordered on vulgar — he was actually one of the more well-mannered ones.
He took Yona's rough horseplay in stride, too, which spoke well of his character. In a way, the two of them were rather well matched, so—
"...Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Oh, nothing. It's just, you two suit each other so well, I was wondering why you'd split up."
"Mary."
The moment the words left her mouth, Yona's face twisted up something fierce.
But Mary just kept smiling serenely. No matter how angry Yona got, she was always peculiarly weak when it came to Mary.
And Mary knew it very well.
"Just teasing you. Anyway, let's see... somewhere you could go right now would be... hmm."
A Bronze-rank Healer.
Even now, healers of that rank weren't especially common at the guild.
Holy power was partly a matter of natural talent, but accumulation over time mattered far more. The more practiced a healer became at channeling holy power, and the more efficiently they learned to wield it, the more valuable they grew with every passing year.
And yet their numbers stayed thin — because the nature of the job demanded healers stay practically glued to the vanguard and the party's front-line fighters, which drove their mortality rate sky-high.
"That party over there looks good. It's Carlson's group."
"Carlson?"
Yona turned to follow Mary's pointing finger.
A man with a wooden shield slung over his back and a longsword at his hip was waving in her direction.
Carlson was a vanguard who leaned toward the attacker side of things.
Yona's mind worked quickly.
More movement required than with Alec — that was fine.
More nicks and scrapes than with Alec, too — also fine.
Being closer to an attacker meant the occasional big, ugly injury in a single hit... that part gave her slight pause, but it wouldn't really be a problem either.
The one real downside, as ever, was stability. Considerably lower than Alec's, no question about it.
Yona shook her head to shake off the second-guessing.
But then again—
"Well, well. Yona. So we're the lucky party today, huh?"
That bastard is the problem.
Miscot, his two-handed axe propped against the table, was grinning wide at Yona.
"What are you laughing at, huh?"
"Oh come on, you're mad at me just for smiling? Getting all thin-skinned on us, big man?"
"Ha... tch."
Yona swept her bangs back and scowled.
That guy had a real talent for getting under people's skin without ever quite saying anything worth punching him over.
"So what's the job?"
She could have just asked Mary, but instead Yona walked over to the table where Carlson and Miscot sat and dropped into an empty chair.
The chair scraped as she dragged it in, and a puff of dust rose up.
"Go wash yourselves and wipe down your gear, you animals. What is this dust?"
With the sunlight streaming in so brightly, the rising dust was impossible to miss.
Yona waved a hand in front of her face to shoo the cloud away.
"Oh, Irene's here too."
"Hey, Yona."
"Me too, you know."
"And hello to you, Viola."
Fire mage, Irene. Better than Freaky at least, but a mage with poor control over her spell radius. Human.
Fairy archer, Viola. Still leagues better than Emerson, at least.
"Just the four of you, then?"
"Yep. With you joining, that makes five. We're heading northwest — the forest above the Catacombs, you know it?"
The Northwestern Forest was somewhere she knew well enough.
She'd been there plenty of times.
"What are you going there for?"
"We've got to retie the guardian ropes around the Sacred Tree at the center. Three days and two nights, all told. What do you say?"
"Hmm."
At Carlson's words, Yona sank into thought for a moment.
She'd gotten a fresh Holy Shroud, so she needed time to get used to it again — and honestly, it didn't sound bad.
The trek to the center of the Northwestern Forest was long, sure, but nothing about it was especially grueling.
"What's the pay?"
"Twenty silver for the whole job. Five of us, so three each as a base, and the rest split by contribution."
Yona nodded at Carlson's proposal.
It was a reasonable split, and she had no particular reason to refuse.
"Alright. Deal, then."
Not bad at all.
*
For a three-day, two-night expedition, there wasn't much to prepare, whatever anyone might claim.
Having agreed to pack up and meet at the west gate, Yona made her way back to the Moonlit Inn.
"Bedroll, needles, habit... and..."
She skipped the toiletries altogether.
On expeditions like these, it was better not to count on getting the chance to wash her face anyway.
Even if the opportunity came up, a quick swipe across the face and done — the toiletries would just be dead weight.
"I'll buy food on the way out."
Nine copper coins.
She tucked them into the pocket of the habit she was wearing, shouldered her pack, and that was more or less everything.
— Ding-a-ling.
"Hey, I'm here."
Stepping into the general store, Yona waved at the owner, Henson. When he asked what she'd come for, she slapped her nine coppers down on the counter with a clack.
"Three days and two nights."
"Right. I'll set you up with the mid-grade stuff."
"Mm."
Henson turned without a word and rummaged through his shelves. He pulled out six small pouches, and finally one large pouch into which he packed all six of the little ones.
Then three canteens.
That made her water and rations for three days and two nights.
"Where are you headed this time?"
"The Northwestern Forest. Going to the Sacred Tree."
"With Alec?"
The irritation flared up instantly.
Why did everyone and their grandmother, the moment they saw Yona, ask whether she wasn't traveling with Alec? She understood why, well enough — but that didn't make it any less annoying.
"No. I'm going with Carlson."
"Really? I just assumed you'd be going with Alec."
"I said no. Why do I have to be tied to that guy in a set, always?"
"Word around town is the adventurer married couple has finally arrived, though."
"We are NOT married!"
Yona shrieked, then shoved the pouches into her pack.
Just before stepping out of the store, she turned back to Henson and narrowed her eyes.
"Don't you ever say that again. I will genuinely lose my temper."
Henson didn't answer.
He only gave a quiet little shrug of his shoulders.
"You're here early."
"Like packing takes any time at all. How many times have I done this by now?"
At the agreed-upon west gate, only Carlson had arrived.
Miscot, Irene, and Viola apparently hadn't shown up yet.
"The rest of them are just slow, is all."
"You're the fast one."
Carlson sat on a bench, tending to his sword.
He'd polish the blade to a gleam with a rag soaked through in monster oil, then run a whetstone over it in long strokes, then wipe it down with the oil rag again — over and over. Then he'd raise the sword up to the sunlight, peer along the edge for a long while at something or other, and start the whole process anew.
"...Does that actually do anything?"
"What do you mean?"
"The whetstone-and-oil routine."
"Isn't it obvious?"
Carlson flashed a grin. Between his teeth showed a smile stained a sickly yellow.
"You keep the blade maintained like this, and it'll slide right through whatever you're cutting. Otherwise, say you're mid-swing and it catches on bone—"
Shhk.
Carlson raised a hand and drew it across his own throat.
"Couldn't you just get it maintained at the weapon shop?"
"Expensive, kid. You only ever burn through Holy Shrouds, so you've got no idea how much gear repair costs."
"You're hilarious, really."
Yona shut her mouth.
There was no point arguing about things she didn't know. All it got her was a sore mouth.
While they talked, Miscot, Irene, and Viola all trickled in.
"Right, we move out. We're traveling on foot."
On foot was the default, after all.
As they filed through the gate and Carlson wrote their names into the ledger, Yona glanced back over Evian's square.
Giggle, giggle— laughter rang out, and children with black hair and blonde hair and blue hair and pink hair ran this way and that, each of them laughing — a sight that felt terribly, fondly like home.
She wouldn't be back for another three days and two nights, but Yona carved the image into her heart once more before turning away.
"Ever been to the Sacred Tree?"
"Plenty of times. I mean, look at my job."
"Yeah, fair enough."
The walking order had Carlson at the very front, then Yona, then Miscot — those three positions were fixed.
Irene and Viola floated front and back as needed, but for the sake of watching the rear, Viola usually brought up the tail.
Reaching the forest proper took a good long while on foot.
The road was too questionable for wagons to manage — and besides, wagons were expensive.
In fact, they were expensive enough that even if one had been running this route, everyone would probably have walked anyway.
"So the Sacred Tree's guardian ropes came loose again?"
"Looks like it. You hear anything about it?"
At Carlson's question, Yona just shrugged.
Like she'd have heard anything.
She wasn't close enough with those cathedral types to be trading gossip like that in the first place.
And talk of the cathedral brought that wretch back to mind again — Vigrind, that red-haired little brat who should just drop dead.
Yona ground her teeth.
"Would those people ever even tell you the reason when they hired you? They paid for the job, so it's just 'go deal with it and come back,' probably."
"Oooh, is that any way for a woman of the cloth to taaalk?"
"Miscot, you bastard, I swear. Are you determined to grind on my nerves?"
She glared at Miscot, who had butted into the conversation out of nowhere, and raised a fist. Miscot threw up his hands — oh no, whatever shall I do — putting on a theatrical show of terror.
"Miscot, quit picking on Yona. She only just got separated from Alec — think how lonely she must be."
"IRENE—!"
Yona's roar rang out, bright and merciless as struck bronze.