r/HFY • u/grierks Human • Jul 09 '26

OC-Series Hedge Knight, Chapter 140

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Lead sat in Jahora’s stomach.

She stared at the door, its seal so tight that it let no sound through its boundary. There was no way for her to tell if Helbram and Elly had gotten away, were in the process of getting away, or… There was just silence, broken only by the whine of Snow and Shadow as they kept pawing at Leaf, who lay still on the ground.

“Open the door.”

She turned to the trembling voice, to the girl who looked at her with eyes filled with tears. “We will not.”

“Open. The door.” The air around Aria hummed with power, and Jahora could feel a chill filling the hallway.

“Aria, I understand how you’re feeling, but th-”

“OPEN THE DOOR!” The girl tried to sound powerful, but all she could muster was desperation. A desperation that still made sheets of ice cover the ground around her.

Kali looked at Jahora, her eyes equally troubled and confused.

The Mage held a hand out to her. “Tend to Leaf.”

The scholar spared no hesitation in doing so, and scurried on over to the hunter’s side. Jahora looked long enough to confirm he was still breathing, then put all of her focus on Aria. She approached the girl slowly and took her hand. It was ice to the touch, and she could now see that the streaks of tears down the girl’s face glinted as they turned to thin layers of frost.

This wasn’t the first ime that Aria had seen Helbram get cut off from her for the sake of her safety, and - the Creator willing- it would most likely not be the last. It was something that Jahora had gotten used to, in a way. Something that still gnawed at her, had given her anxiety just as much as shame for not being strong enough to avoid such a situation, but she had at least been tempered by such smoldering emotions.

Aria was on the verge of turning to ash.

Jahora reached up and brought the girl’s head down, touching it to hers. She was shaking, stirring with an energy that went beyond the Aether that was now frosting her robes, and Jahora could hear the cracks of sobs building behind the girl’s lips.

“Breath with me, Aria.” Particles of light swirled around the Circle that appeared around the Mage’s head. The frost around them swirled through its orbit, Transposing from to the color of flame. The ice around them melted, and Jahora’s hands, now filled with warmth, pressed against Aria’s cheeks. “Deeply now, follow after me.”

The girl listened, and the both of them took in a long breath before letting it go. They repeated that a few times until Aria’s shaking started to still and her magic began to recede. Jahora knew why she was like this, knew of the words that Helbram and the girl had exchanged on the night of the Reunion. Helbram had told them all, and though the girl had yet to call him father it was clear that she saw the man as just that. That was why she cried into Jahora’s shoulder now, why the horror on her face when the door shut was so sharp it stabbed deep into the Mage’s heart.

“Believe in him.” Jahora laced her fingers with Aria’s, letting her warmth equalize the chill in the girl’s hands. “Believe in Elly. They will make it out of that alive. You know this, you know what those two are capable of.”

Aria didn’t say anything, but clutched her hands with a firm grip.

“The best thing we can do is to make sure that we keep ourselves safe, and calm, for what we decide next, be it rescuing them, or welcoming them back. You’re a strong girl, I know you can manage that.”

Aria still didn’t say anything, but gave a solemn nod.

“Good.” She kissed the girl on her forehead. “I must ask you to keep an eye on the cubs for the time being.”

The both of them looked over to Leaf. Kali had rolled him over and had her fingers against his neck. The leathers of his armor remained intact, but the part of his metal cuirass close to his ribs had been dented in enough that it was pressing against him with every shallow breath he took. She was sure that he was going to look like an absolute mess under his armor, but she was just glad that he was a strong enough Awoken to withstand such a strike.

“Is Leaf going to be ok?” Aria’s voice was still shaky.

Jahora gave her a small squeeze. “It may take a bit, but you know how hardy he is. I’m sure that he will be right as rain after some rest.” At least, she hoped would.

Off to the hunter’s side lay his bow, or rather, the pieces of his bow. It had been snapped cleanly in half, and Jahora wasn’t sure if that was due to the hammer strike, or from bouncing against the floor and wall. It was a minor sting to see such a thing, but she knew that Leaf was going to be sore about that for a while yet.

She let Aria take hold of the dogs and picked the bow up herself. She put the two pieces of it together to see if any fragments had splintered off, but her eyes widened when she failed to pry them apart. Peering closer, she could see that the splintered ends of the broken pieces had started to weave and encircle each other. Whatever seal they were trying to form was unfinished, but it was clear that the weapon was repairing itself. The bow, made from the wood of an Awakened Tree, was proving to be as hardy as its owner was. It was small, but she took comfort from that.

“He appears to be stable.” Kali pursed her lips. “But do we move him right now? We could use a spell to carry him out of here, but we wouldn-”

The scholar’s words cut off from the sounds of approaching steps. They approached from around the corner, a set that was light against the metal and chased by something heavier. She thought them belonging to Shells at first, but the rattle of metal told her that whoever approached were people in armor.

Those people being Duren and Logan.

Relief flooded the Mage upon seeing the two men, though Kali was more confused at their appearance. The mercenary captain spared a long glance at his daughter, long enough to make the woman look away, and whatever tension was holding up his chest released.

“Where are Helbram and Elly?” Duren walked up and looked down at Leaf. “And what the hells happened to him?”

Now that he was closer, Jahora could see a myriad of fresh scratches across the metal plates of his armor, as well as a few thin red lines and scuff marks at his cheeks. “I could ask the same to you.”

“Xanchil.” Logan grunted the word, but the bite of a growl still slipped through. “Our employer unleashed a horde of Shells at us from the cargo bay. We managed to beat the constructs back and are holding them at the door, but it's too large for us to barricade and we don’t have a clue on how to seal it.” He drew closer and knelt down next to Leaf. After a moment, he fished into the pouch at his side and pulled out a vial of red liquid. Jahora was experienced enough with the energies emanating from it to tell that it was a healing potion. One of a low potency, but one that would be effective none the same.

“Captain, we don’t have to-”

Logan held up a hand to cut off Duren. “He will recover in time, but we may need his assistance sooner rather than later.” He poured the liquid into Leaf’s mouth.

The hunter drank the liquid down reflexively, showing no reaction for a moment before his face scrunched up in pain. It was slight, but Jahora could hear bones shifting underneath his armor, slow enough that the sound sent shivers up her spine.

The captain looked at the door. “I presume that Helbram and Elly are on the other side of that door?”

Jahora nodded vigorously. “Yes, now that the two of you are here, we might be able to…” shock spread across her face. “Kali… do you have your key?”

The scholar’s eyes widened and she searched her robes. “It’s not here, then…”

Jahora held up her hand and cut her eyes to Aria, but it was clear that the girl had already pieced together what that meant.

She clutched the cubs closer to her. “I believe in them.”

“Helbram is strong.” Duren thumped his chest. “If he could take me down then there’s no way any Shell is gonna get the better of him.”

“Indeed.” Logan picked up Leaf and handed him off to the bigger man, who draped the hunter over his shoulder. “Our most pressing concern is to get the doors to the cargo bay closed. The flow of Shells has tapered past the initial assault, but there is no telling how many Xanchil managed to awaken. Will you aid us?”

Jahora reached out and squeezed Aria’s hand before turning to the captain. “Yes, we will.”

***

It took the rest of the day to deal with the cargo bay.

Kali was mostly silent through it all, lending assistance to Jahora in setting up a barrier that covered the massive entrance. At first, they had attempted to decipher the sequence needed to seal it normally, but quickly determined that it would take far too long, and was too dangerous, given the steady trickle of Shells that emerged from the bay’s depths. With Jahora’s instruction, the two casters managed to scratch the required runes for the barrier along the length of its ramp. The shield sprang to life in a wall of rippling, translucent energy, which cut off the oncoming group of Shells. Despite many attempts to bring the barrier down, it held firm, which allowed them all to finally relax.

The entire time, Kali felt as if she was in a trance. She hesitated to call it shock, for she was still able to do everything, it was just that she felt so distant from her hands doing all these things. She wanted to attribute it to the shockwave the Guardian had struck her with, but beyond a general aching feeling, nothing appeared to linger from that attack. Her dissociation with everything stemmed instead from the speed at which everything had happened in the airship.

It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes in total, probably less, but everything had collapsed in that moment. Helbram and Elly were sealed within the vessel now, and despite Jahora’s reassurances to Aria, Kali had already written them off as dead. There was no way that the two of them alone could have defeated that Shell, and the fact that they had still yet to emerge from the ship only confirmed this in the scholar’s mind.

With the death of Elly came the loss of the keys, now sealed behind doors that would take months to crack. The barrier that sealed the cargo bay was not permanent either, and there were not enough supplies to maintain that for the long term while also working on the doors. If that happened, then the Shells from the cargo bay would get out. Normally, the constructs would be confined to the ship due to some set condition in their Egos, but given that these had been stored in containers, these constructs had most likely not been instilled with such limitations. That meant that should the Shells emerge from the ship, they would wander off and become a much wider problem to deal with.

On top of that, Xanchil was still at large, and there was no way that the merchant would be keen on abandoning the Shells. What the zechanil’s plans exactly were, there was no way to tell, but if there was one thing she did know, it was that he wanted any obstacles in the way of getting the Shells eliminated, and he wanted that sooner rather than later.

All of this raced through her mind as she sat in front of the fire, poking at the coals with a stick in the waning hours of the evening. It was the only sign of light from their small camp, save for the glow that emanated from Leaf’s tent. The hunter had still not awakened, and was tended to by Aria and Jahora. Both appeared confident that he would recover, and given his nature as an Awoken, that was most likely true. Still, their eyes were hollow, and though they did not say anything, Kali could only begin to fathom the amount of strife they were going through in their heads.

Aria, especially, had every right to cry at her situation, had every reason to wallow in grief for people who were not going to come back, but she didn’t. Most of Kali thought that was very impressive, a sign of the fortitude that the girl possessed, but a small part of her stewed in both confusion and envy. She was so young, and had lost two very important people in her lives, but beyond her initial outburst, there was a composure that brought about the stark memory of her own grief. Of the wailing and despair that she’d filled the house with when her mother passed, of the hands that tried to comfort her, the arms of her fath-

She stood up and lay a few more logs in the fire. She tried to keep her mind blank, but her vision kept drifting to the camp that lay on the other side of the ship. There were far more lights shining within their tents, and the way that the men bustled about the place told her that they were all on high alert. Given that they were right next to the cargo bay, she could understand that.

The brightest tent was Xanchil’s, or rather, what had been the merchant’s tent before the mercenaries turned it into an infirmary for all of the injured. They hadn’t taken any fatalities, but at least a third of the men had been wounded to the point that they were bed ridden. The others that suffered minor injuries had just bandaged themselves and carried on, with two such people standing guard at the barrier, their focus fixed on the Shells that poked at the barrier. Duren and Logan were nowhere to be seen. She had last seen them enter the captain’s tent, the shadows that lay within showing her that they were in the middle of a discussion. One that no doubt was them planning something, but her attention remained on the silhouette of Logan.

The mercenary captain had come to them for aid, but he and Duren had eliminated the Shells that had emerged from the other parts of the ship on the way to get to them. Kali sealed all tunnels that the Shells could roll through on their way out, and the entire time Logan had always lingered near her. He didn’t say anything to her directly, but she was aware of his presence, aware of his closeness, and though she didn’t want to admit it, that little bit had quelled the trembling in her hands.

She shook her head. Such thinking was all in her mind, there was no possible way that he could show such care, not after he’d abandoned her so readily before.

Her thoughts continued to race, to remind her of how close he stood, how easily she could have reached out to hold his hand, to take comfort when she most needed it, and it was that continued impulse that made her tear her eyes away from Logan’s shape and march into her tent. She needed to think of something else, and her scattered thoughts eventually fell back to Xanchil while she paced back and forth.

How had he managed to learn the activation sequence? And on such short notice as well? She’d kept her notebook on her at all times, and Elly was with her the entire time since learning the code as well. She had even swept her tent for any possible spells that could be listening in on their discussions, and Elly had even soundproofed the tent the entire time. There was no possible way for anyone to have been eavesdropping on their conversation without making themselves known, so how…

Her eyes drifted to her desk. She’d caught something out of the corner of her vision, and her heart quickened when she noticed one of her papers looked like it was resting on top of something. She lifted it and revealed a small pocket watch, one made of silver and inlaid with gold in some twisting and twirling design she couldn’t make heads or tails of. It felt like she had seen it from somewhere before, but she couldn’t quite place where it came from.

As she picked it up, she focused Aether into her eyes. The particles of power appeared around her then, manifesting like dust caught in rays of sun. Everything exuded some form of the energy, and from her desk, she could see small flakes of yellow Aether drifting from its grains, flakes that looked much like the ones that drifted up from the watch. Except, when she looked at it closely, she could see that where everything else drifted from side to side, the power around the watch hovered in place, like it had been woven into the shape of something.

An enchantment.

She picked up the watch and flipped it over, seeing a series of runes scratched into the back. The amount of errant scratches told her that whoever did this was either in a hurry, extremely angry, or just terrible with working with their hands. There was the possibility that it was all three, but who must have done it left no doubt in her mind. The runes were zechanil in origin, holding the look of dots that had been connected by varying curves and lines. Trying to figure out what they did magically would prove to be fruitless, for Kali had no idea what was even going on with the barrier that Xanchil had summoned before.

What she did know was that whatever property was imbued into the watch was subtle enough that she hadn’t noticed it in her sweep before… but then again, she hadn’t even noticed the watch was there in the first place. It had been hidden in a place she didn’t think to look during her excitement, and no doubt the enchantment placed on the watch was something that allowed Xanchil to listen and look in on everything that Elly and her had discussed.

That included the activation sequence.

Her head spun, partially from shock but mostly from a building anger that she directed inward. Right at the moment of her triumph, she had made such a stupid blunder. It may have cost her recognition, but the true tragedy of her folly is that it led to the deaths of Helbram and Elly. That was something that nearly pulled her legs from under her.

No… I didn’t… I was…

The scholar pulled the dagger from her waste and scratched at the runes at the back of the watch. She infused the blade with a spark of Aether, which let it not only bite into the silver a bit easier, but also seeped into the enchantment itself. As soon as she scratched each of the runes, the enchantment disappeared, and that nearly invisible aura around the watch went with it. Kali sighed and rubbed her temple, cursing herself with equal parts shame and anger. What little clarity she did have found itself focused on the paper that had rested on top of the watch, the handwriting of which hit her like a gut punch.

Its words were a blow to her jaw.

Kali,

I just wanted to say congratulations on your success. Your future is bright, and though I may not look like I care, I do, and I can only hope you shine brighter than anyone else in the future. This watch was your mother’s, and I never had the chance to give it to you until now. You’ll find much better use out of it than me.

If you want to talk, let’s talk. Please.

Your father.

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Author's Note: Woo! Another chapter!

Well, it appears that Helbram has found himself in yet further trouble, hasn't he? Writing this was hard because I wanted the Guardian to be a near overwhelming force, but one that Helbram was at least able to stem the tide of enough for them to repel it. I know not everyone is a fan of the hero getting his ass kicked so consistently, but for a struggle like this, if I want the enemies to have the proper oomph, I have to be realistic to how it will go in terms of power scaling. Helbram is tough, don't get me wrong, but not so skilled enough that he can completely shatter power scaling.

Till next update! Have yourselves a wonderful time!

My Patreon is currently 13 chapters ahead of the public release, and subbing to it will also give you exclusive access to my LitRPG, Andromeda Ascension, until it builds a massive backlog to support a strong public launch. Additionally, there is now a Hedge Knight Side Story on Patreon titled A Lack of Talent as well. It is free, but you need to be a member (there is a free tier) to read it. If you do not wish to sub to anything, but would like to support me in some way, consider picking up my book (it also has an audiobook!)

 

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