Chapter 372. The Dream That Slowly Changed Her Mind and Vision About Me

The leaves went very still.

"You’re not supposed to say that," she said, and her voice had gone quiet.

"Why not?’

"Because it makes it harder," she said. "To be... angry at you."

"Are you angry at me?" Rex said.

She was quiet for a moment. "I don’t know what I am."

’The dream manipulation did the trick, huh...?’

’She’s conflicted with her mind.’

"That’s fair." Rex looked at her with an expression that had no pressure in it, just presence. "You don’t have to know right now."

Nerith pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, the posture of someone who had run out of protection and was working with what they had left.

The white was entirely gone from the leaves. The amber had settled into something less like distress and more like the complicated warmth of someone sitting next to a fire they weren’t sure they should be sitting next to.

"I’m sorry," she said. "For almost saying it to Apollo..."

"You didn’t say it," Rex said.

"Well... I wanted to at first, but I think... it’s just me being all confused and stuff..." She said while her body shivered. "I don’t know what’s reality and dream anymore after experiencing that..."

"I know." He looked at her without flinching from it. "And you didn’t, so that probably means something."

She looked at him for a long time without saying anything. He looked back with the same patience he had been sitting with for twenty minutes, and the forest made its afternoon sounds around them.

"Why do you do that?" she said finally.

Rex tilted his head slightly. "Do what."

"Make it so I can’t put you in one place." She looked at the leaves on the ground in front of her. "In the dream you were one thing. And then I wake up and you’re sitting here and you’re..."

She shook her head. "You’re something else entirely."

"Dreams are built from what we’re afraid of," Rex said. "Not from what’s actually there."

"And what is actually there?" she said.

He looked at her. "Someone who caught you before you hit the ground and stayed."

Nerith was quiet for a moment.

"That’s a very small thing to point to," she said.

"Small things are usually the real ones," Rex said.

She looked at him sideways, not quite a full look, more like someone checking whether a door was open without wanting to be seen checking. Then she looked back at the trees.

"I still don’t know what I am," she said. "About any of this."

"I heard you the first time," Rex said, and the corner of his mouth moved slightly. "It’s still fair."

The amber in her leaves shifted toward the warmer gold it turned when she was feeling something she hadn’t been prepared for. She pressed her lips together and said nothing, which was its own kind of answer.

[Nerith Sylvarune — Desire Level: 72/100]

Rex didn’t react to the desire level finally increasing again, and he didn’t need to. He stayed where he was, close enough to matter but still enough to let her decide what she wanted to do with the distance.

After a while she picked up her staff from the ground without a word, and Rex stood, and they walked back toward the corridor together without any particular hurry.

"Rex," she said, about halfway through.

"Hm?"

"Thank you..." She didn’t say anything for a few steps. "...for staying."

Rex looked at the path ahead. "Don’t mention it."

"I mean it."

"I know," he said. "That’s why I said not to mention it."

She looked at him with an expression he couldn’t quite decipher, then turned back to the path. The light filtering through the canopy was warm, and they fell into a comfortable silence after that, and that was enough.

[Nerith Sylvarune — Desire Level: 72/100 → 75/100]

’It fucking worked, heh... this time I need to manipulate more situations to make her trust me even more until she starts being obedient just because she remembers that dream.’

Rex used his avatar creation right away when Nerith was still feeling conflicted about her feelings, mind, and dream. That way she won’t notice that he just made an avatar that looked like a demon.

’Good... now I just have to wait for the right time to make the ambush.’

...

By the time they got back to the group, the sun was low, casting long amber shadows across the debris field at the blocked corridor. Elizabeth and Alexander had identified an alternate route around the ridge.

The group had used the time resting, and the atmosphere had the settled quality that came after people had been running assessments for an hour and arrived at the same conclusion from different angles.

Apollo saw them before anyone else. He was standing near Talyra when they came out of the trees, and his face moved through its sequence quickly, which was relief first, then surprise that it was Rex beside her, then the warm, unguarded gratitude that he didn’t bother to conceal.

He walked toward them. "Thank god..."

"You found her." He said it to Rex and then looked at Nerith directly. "Are you all right? You were gone for a while."

"I’m fine," Nerith said.

She cleared her throat once. "The terrain ahead was affecting my nature channel, and I needed to sit with it for a moment."

Apollo looked at her with the attentiveness of someone who was checking whether the answer matched the face. "The channel’s been pulling at you all day, hasn’t it?"

"It does that before a significant descent," she said. "It’s normal."

"You should have said something."

"Well..." Nerith giggled. "I’m saying it now, right?"

Apollo looked at her for one more second, then nodded. The check was complete, and she had passed it, and Rex noted that Nerith had delivered the explanation with a steadiness that was either composure or the specific quality that came from having already decided something and no longer being uncertain about it.

"Good thing Rex was with her," Talyra said from behind Apollo, and the way she said it was simple and clean and left no room for a second reading.

Apollo looked at Rex. "Yeah."

He clapped Rex once on the shoulder. "Good thing indeed, my friend."

"She just needed some fresh air," Rex said easily.

Aisella came up beside Nerith and looked at her face with the diagnostic attention she brought to everything. "You’re looking kinda pale, Nerith..."

"Huh? I’m always looking pale though," Nerith said.

"Paler than usual," Aisella said. "Sit down for a few minutes before we move."

Nerith looked like she was going to argue, then didn’t. Nerith sat on a section of fallen stone at the edge of the corridor, while Aisella crouched beside her and spoke in a low voice that Rex chose not to overhear.

Nerith responded, and the specific tension that had been in her shoulders since waking up in the forest eased slightly.

Rex watched the scene and turned away.

Alexander was a few meters off, looking at the alternate route on Elizabeth’s map with the expression of someone who had already run the terrain assessment and was now confirming rather than discovering. He glanced at Rex as he came up beside him.

"She all right?" he said, nodding toward Nerith.

"She’ll be fine," Rex said. "Nature practitioners or maybe druids take the terrain more personally than the rest of us."

Alexander considered this and said it. "Fair."

He looked back at the map. "The alternate adds forty minutes at a minimum. And hate to say it, but... it could get more if the ground’s as loose as it looks on the survey."

"It will be," Rex said.

"You’ve read the survey?"

"Elizabeth mentioned the soil type when she briefed the route," Rex said. "Loose aggregate over limestone at this elevation, and it packs well enough until you put a group on it."

Alexander looked at him with the evaluating expression he had used since the sparring sessions, the one that had moved from skepticism to something more like professional acknowledgment. He said nothing, just folded one edge of the map back down and looked at the ridge.

"We should move before the sun drops any further," he said.

"Agreed," Rex said.

Elizabeth’s voice came from the far side of the debris field. "Everyone up!"

"We’re taking the southern bypass, and make sure to stay tight on the slope and watch the footing."

The group assembled with the efficiency of people who had been resting long enough and were ready for the next thing. Nerith stood without help, which Aisella noted and didn’t comment on.

Iris moved to the front of the column with the automatic positioning of someone who put themselves at the point without being asked. Apollo fell in behind her, checking the draw on his weapon with the habitual motion that served the same function as a breath.

Rex moved in near the back.

After a few minutes on the bypass, the path narrowed between two sections of the ridge, and the group compressed into a loose single file, the stone on either side close enough that the ambient temperature dropped a few degrees.

The sounds of the forest behind them faded, and the sounds of the path ahead—winding through narrow stone passages and the occasional distant bird, took their place.

Nerith was four people ahead of Rex.

He watched the leaves. They were amber and steady, not trembling.

’Every time I take a step... I don’t know why but... that feeling...’

’It keeps coming back to me...’