Chapter 90 — The Long Way Back
They stayed camped in the valley for three full days before Priya finally judged Arlen fit enough for slow, careful travel, and even then, she insisted on a pace considerably gentler than the party’s original outward journey had required.
"You pushed your body past what any of my healing can properly account for," she told him, checking his shoulder once more before they broke camp on the fourth morning. "The venom burns are closed, but the muscle underneath needs time. Push too hard, too soon, and you risk permanent damage that no amount of rest fixes later."
"I hear you," Arlen said, and found himself, for once, entirely willing to honor the caution rather than push against it. The fight against the Broodmother had taught him something about his own limits that no amount of careful training under Garrett had quite managed to convey — the difference between disciplined effort and genuine, bone-deep exhaustion that demanded real respect.
Eldrin spent much of those recovery days documenting the Broodmother’s remains with the same meticulous, delighted attention he brought to every genuine discovery, carefully cataloguing the crystalline carapace samples Arlen had salvaged, sketching the creature’s proportions from Arlen’s own detailed account since little of the actual body remained intact enough for proper study.
"This will make for extraordinary scholarship," Eldrin said, reviewing his notes one evening by the fire. "A previously undocumented apex predator, confirmed kill, proper samples recovered. The capital archive will want this material immediately."
"Glad something useful came out of nearly dying," Arlen said, though the words carried more genuine humor than bitterness.
"Something considerably more than useful," Eldrin said, setting his notes aside to study Arlen directly. "You saved this entire expedition, Arlen. I don’t think I’ve properly said that yet, amid all the practical concerns of your recovery. Whatever I contribute to scholarship from this trip, none of it matters if you hadn’t made the choice you made."
"I made the only choice available," Arlen said. "Anyone in my position would have done the same."
"That’s not remotely true," Torin said, joining the conversation from where he sat nursing his own still-healing wound. "I’ve fought alongside plenty of adventurers who’d have run rather than stand alone against something that size. You didn’t hesitate. That’s not nothing."
Arlen didn’t have a ready response to that, the genuine warmth of the compliment settling into him with more weight than he quite knew how to properly acknowledge. He simply nodded, grateful, and let the conversation drift toward easier topics as the evening wore on.
The journey back toward Greyhaven took nearly two weeks at the careful, deliberate pace Priya insisted upon, considerably longer than the party’s outward trip, but Arlen found himself, despite the frustration of enforced slowness, genuinely grateful for the extended time to properly process everything the valley had cost and given him in equal measure.
He wrote in his journal each evening now that his strength had sufficiently returned, working through the accumulated weight of the past weeks with the same careful, methodical attention he brought to every significant reflection.
Eight abilities now. Web-Silk Binding, the newest, already proving useful — I strung a simple perimeter warning around our camp two nights ago, more out of curiosity than necessity, and found it worked exactly as I’d hoped. A quiet, practical addition to a toolkit that keeps growing in ways I couldn’t have properly predicted a year ago.
I gave the power a name, finally. Predator’s Feast. I don’t know if I’ll ever say it aloud to anyone, but it felt important to have it settled in my own mind, after a year of simply calling it "this" or "whatever this actually is."
The fight itself, I still can’t fully process. I came closer to dying than at any point since Millbrook, and this time I faced it entirely alone, by my own choice, because there was no one else who could have made that choice instead of me. I don’t regret it. But I understand, more clearly now than ever, exactly what this path actually demands of me, if I intend to keep walking it.
He found himself, during the long walk home, talking more openly with his companions than he had during the outward journey — the shared danger and its aftermath having stripped away much of the careful reserve that typically governed his interactions with people he didn’t yet fully trust.
"You handle danger differently than most adventurers I’ve worked with," Sera observed, walking alongside him on one of the journey’s quieter afternoons. "Most people either freeze or panic, facing something that far outside their normal capability. You just... adapted. Kept thinking, even mid-fight."
"Old habit," Arlen said. "Learned a long time ago that panicking costs more than it ever saves."
"Good habit to have," Sera said. "Wish more people I’ve traveled with shared it."
Priya, walking on his other side, added her own quiet observation. "For what it’s worth, I don’t think I properly thanked you. Not just for saving all of us, but for making the choice easy to understand, even in the moment. You didn’t waste time convincing us. You just told us what needed to happen and trusted we’d listen."
"I trusted you’d get Torin somewhere safe," Arlen said. "That’s all that mattered, in that moment."
They reached Greyhaven’s western gate on a gray, overcast afternoon nearly three weeks after their original departure, and Arlen found himself, seeing the familiar city walls rise up ahead of them, filled with a quiet, grateful relief distinct from anything he’d felt returning from previous expeditions — not simply the comfort of familiar ground, but the deeper, more settled gratitude of someone who understood, with fresh and hard-won clarity, exactly how precious the simple fact of survival actually was.
Word of the expedition’s outcome had already reached Greyhaven by the time they arrived — Eldrin, ever the careful scholar, had dispatched a courier from the first proper waypoint along their return route, a rider traveling light and fast enough to cover in days what their own injury-slowed party had taken weeks to manage. It was one of the guild’s more reliable services, Arlen had come to understand over the past year: urgent news moved ahead of the people carrying it, outpacing wounded parties and heavy supply trains alike, so that a branch never found itself entirely blind to what its adventurers had encountered out in the field. A small crowd had gathered near the guild hall as a result, Garrett among them, his weathered face carrying an expression of genuine, unguarded relief that Arlen had rarely seen from his usually composed instructor.
"Heard you nearly got yourself killed," Garrett said, by way of greeting, though the gruffness in his voice couldn’t quite mask the depth of his concern.
"Nearly," Arlen admitted. "Came out the other side of it, though."
"So I see." Garrett studied him a long moment, something proud and relieved settling into his weathered features. "We’ll talk properly once you’ve had time to recover. For now, just glad you’re standing."
Lyra approached shortly after, her composed authority carrying the same careful warmth she’d shown him since Millbrook first taught her to properly value his judgment. "Eldrin’s preliminary report already reached us by courier. A confirmed apex predator, previously undocumented, and a solo stand that saved the entire expedition." She studied him with evident, genuine respect. "I don’t think Garrick’s formal offer of transfer credentials was premature, given everything you’ve now proven."
"I still don’t know when I’ll use it," Arlen admitted.
"No rush," Lyra said. "But I suspect, after everything this trip has taught you, that day might be closer than you think."
Arlen carried that thought with him as he made his way toward the guild’s medical wing for proper, thorough treatment, his body still bearing the accumulated marks of the valley’s brutal cost, his mind turning over everything the past month had given him — a new ability, a name finally settled on the strange power that had shaped his entire second life, and a deepening, unmistakable certainty that the horizon he’d spent a year carefully preparing for was drawing steadily, genuinely closer with every passing month.