Chapter 89 — What It Cost
He built a small fire beside the Broodmother’s cooling bulk, cut a portion of meat from the fallen creature, and called on Ember Touch to cook it — heat gathering easily at his palm despite the exhaustion dragging at every part of him, the meat searing through with a familiar hiss. Small mercy, at least, not needing to spend what little strength remained in his arms striking flint.
He ate slowly, deliberately, sitting with his back against a petrified tree trunk. He’d learned, across a year of careful practice, that the moment mattered — that whatever this power actually was, it seemed to demand a genuine act of consumption rather than simply proximity to the flesh.
The warmth arrived partway through his second mouthful, familiar now across seven previous encounters, though the sensation gathered with a force considerably sharper than anything he’d experienced before — spreading through his hands and forearms with a strange, tingling pressure that made his fingers twitch involuntarily.
A name surfaced in his mind, certain and whole.
Web-Silk Binding.
He sat with the sensation a long moment, understanding arriving alongside the name the same wordless way it always did — a felt sense of threads gathering at his fingertips, ready to be called forth and woven into something functional. He tested it cautiously, too exhausted for anything elaborate, and found a thin strand of silvery, resilient silk extending from his palm when he willed it, strong enough that it held firm even when he tugged against it with what remained of his strength.
Restraint. Control. A warning system, maybe, strung around a camp the way this creature apparently strung its own territory. He turned the possibilities over slowly, his exhausted mind working through the practical applications with the same careful thoroughness he brought to every new discovery, even now. This one, I think, could prove useful in ways that go well beyond combat.
He thought, distantly, of the strange, ongoing truth of his power — that not every creature granted something, that each one that did seemed to offer only a single trait from whatever larger pool of possibility it might have carried. He’d watched the Broodmother wield at least three distinct abilities during their fight — the venom, the webbing, the sheer, adapting speed of its strikes — and had walked away with only one of them, chosen by whatever silent, patient logic governed this power he still didn’t fully understand.
I wonder what the venom would have given me, if this had gone differently, he thought, exhaustion blurring the edges of the reflection. Or the speed. I’ll never know. Whatever this is, it hands me one thing and closes the door on the rest, the moment the choice is made.
He sat with that thought a long while, the fire crackling low, his body still aching with the accumulated cost of the fight. Eight abilities now. A year of careful hunting, careful testing, careful hiding — and he’d never once, in all that time, given the power itself a proper name.
He thought of the Broodmother’s massive, patient bulk, of the boar that had started all of this on a riverbank he could still picture clearly, of every creature since that had offered him something of itself in exchange for nothing but his own hunger and willingness to taste what the world put in front of him.
A predator’s gift, he thought slowly. Not stolen. Not conquered. Given, in whatever strange way this world allows it — one creature, one meal, one piece of what made them what they were, carried forward into whatever I’m becoming.
Predator’s Feast, he decided, the name settling into place with the same quiet certainty that had once delivered Enduring Vitality to him by a different fire, on a different night, an entire lifetime of growth ago. That’s what I’ll call it, if I ever need to call it anything at all.
He didn’t write it down. He didn’t have the strength left that night for his journal, and some part of him understood, sitting there in the valley’s watchful quiet, that this particular name deserved to simply be felt first, rather than immediately recorded.
He decided, once he’d eaten and rested enough to think clearly, against attempting the walk back that same evening. His injuries alone would have justified the caution, but there was something else worth respecting too.
He hadn’t heard a single predator call since the Broodmother fell — hadn’t sensed anything at all through Earthen Grip or Shadow Sense. The valley’s old wariness made a different kind of sense now. Nothing wanted to come near an apex predator’s territory, alive or dead. Whatever else prowled this strange, mineral-poisoned ground would give her lair a wide berth for as long as her scent lingered over it.
Safest place in this whole valley to spend the night, strange as that sounds, he thought, settling back against the tree trunk. Nothing’s coming near this clearing while she’s still lying here.
He built up the fire properly, tended his injuries as best his modest supplies allowed, and spent the night drifting between exhausted, shallow sleep and careful, deliberate rest, his body’s accumulated damage demanding patience he understood, even depleted as he was, that he needed to properly honor.
---
Nearly two miles back along their retreat path, Eldrin’s party had made camp of their own — tense, exhausted, and increasingly desperate as the hours since Arlen’s stand stretched from one into several.
"We should go back," Priya said, for perhaps the fourth time since they’d finally stopped running, Torin stable now under her careful treatment but still too weak to travel far. "It’s been hours, Sera. Hours."
"And if we go back and that thing is still alive, we lose everyone instead of just risking one more," Sera said, though her voice carried none of the conviction the words demanded, her own guilt plainly visible in the tight set of her jaw. "I know. Believe me, I know. But my barrier’s nearly spent, Torin can barely stand, and Eldrin’s no fighter. Going back now helps no one if we simply die alongside him."
Eldrin sat apart from the argument, his usual scholarly composure entirely absent, his hands trembling faintly as he stared back toward the direction they’d fled. "I should never have insisted on this expedition. I knew there was risk, but I let my own curiosity outweigh proper caution, and now—"
"Now nothing," Torin said, his voice weak but firm, propping himself up despite Priya’s protesting hand on his shoulder. "Arlen made his own choice. Made it clearly, made it fast, and made it because it was the only choice that gave the rest of us a chance. Don’t you dare turn his courage into your guilt, Professor."
"He’s right," Sera said quietly. "We’ll give it until morning. If he hasn’t returned by then, we go back for him — properly, together, whatever state we’re in. I won’t leave a member of this expedition behind without at least trying."
Eldrin nodded slowly, though the guilt didn’t fully leave his expression, and the party settled into a tense, watchful night, none of them finding much genuine rest despite their accumulated exhaustion.
---
Morning came gray and quiet for both parties, and Sera, true to her word, roused the others at first light.
"We go now," she said simply. "Torin, can you manage a slow pace?"
"I can manage," Torin said, already forcing himself upright with Priya’s reluctant assistance.
They moved out cautiously, retracing their path back toward the crystallized terrain, and had covered perhaps half the distance when Sera’s detection spell flickered against a new, familiar presence ahead.
"Someone’s coming," she said, tension easing from her voice for the first time in nearly a full day. "It’s him. It’s Arlen."
They found each other in a wide, open stretch of the valley roughly halfway between the two camps, and the relief that broke across every face the moment they spotted Arlen’s battered but upright figure carried a warmth that settled something in his chest he hadn’t fully realized had gone cold with worry over the past night’s isolation.
"Arlen!" Priya was moving toward him before anyone else, rushing to help steady him as his legs, finally, gratefully, threatened to give out now that the danger had properly passed. "You’re alive. You’re actually—"
"Barely," he admitted, allowing her to guide him toward a fallen log where he could finally sit. "It’s dead. The Broodmother. Took everything I had, but it’s dead."
Eldrin’s face, when Arlen finally focused on him, carried an expression of such raw, unguarded relief that it startled him more than anything else about the reunion. "We were coming back for you. I should never have let you—"
"You didn’t let me do anything, Professor," Arlen said, managing a tired, genuine smile despite his exhaustion. "I made the choice myself. And it worked. That’s what matters, right now."
Priya was already examining his injuries with practiced, careful hands, her expression tightening at what she found. "These need proper treatment. Real treatment, not just whatever field healing you’ve managed on your own."
"I know," Arlen admitted, the accumulated exhaustion of the past day finally, fully catching up with him now that safety had settled properly around him again. "I don’t think I’m fit to travel far yet. Not safely."
"Then we don’t travel," Sera said firmly, already moving to help arrange a proper resting space. "We make camp here, as long as you need. You bought us all our lives yesterday, Arlen. The least we can do is give you the time to heal properly before we ask anything more of you."