“And what do they win?” Molun asked.
“Eternal glory?” Brannal suggested.
Molun made a scoffing noise. “Not good enough. The winning team…”
“Does not get to watch the losing team put on a show,” Brannal said promptly.
Molun and Perian burst into laughter, with Molun trying to protest, “I wasn’t going to say that. I wasn’t.”
“Good thing,” Delana said. “You’re saving yourself a lot of pain.”
Still laughing, Perian said, “What if the winners don’t have to do the packing up?”
“Yes!” Molun gleefully seized on this. “The losers have to pack everything!”
Brannal, still looking amused, conceded, “Fine. The winners don’t have to do any packing.”
“And get eternal glory,” Molun added.
“And that,” Brannal agreed. “Is everyone ready?”
“Nope,” Perian said. “Hold on.”
He ducked into his tent, scrambled through his bag and made sure that it was packed with salve and tonics. He reemerged and showed everyone what he was bringing.
“We aren’t going to need those,” Molun protested. “We’re not going to get hurt.”
“Then it won’t matter if I bring them or not,” Perian said. “I’m the one without any ability to control the elements, but Icando this, all right? This is my way of helping.” He looked at the other team. “If you get hurt, you just yell for me, and I’ll come help you, too, all right? But if you ambush me, I’m going to shove the bottle down your throat.”
They all laughed, thankfully.
“No cheating,” Brannal agreed, before smiling at Perian. “And you’re useful whether you bring medicine with you or not.”
He sounded very sincere when he said it, and Perian smiled fondly at him and slung his bag over his shoulder. He felt more useful this way, even if he knew it was unlikely anything would happen. Brannal had already told them they couldn’t hurt one another. They were competitive, but hurting your friends in the middle of the forest was just a dumb idea.
Still, itwasthe middle of the forest, and it was possible, even if unlikely, that someone was going to turn an ankle or something. Things happened in training all the time, and if Perianwereon an outing like this for real (was he practicing for the winter inspection, trying to show that he did have added value?), then this was exactly the sort of thing he would do.
“On your mark,” Brannal said. “Get set. Go.”
They all jogged off into the forest, Molun calling taunts at the others because of course he did, and Delana calling back, because she wasn’t the type to let that sort ofthing slide.
Perian and Brannal were in the lead, and they soon led their teams in opposite directions, because each group needed to strategize.
They crouched down and huddled to make extra sure they wouldn’t be overheard.
Perian explained as best he could where he’d put their ribbon and the parameters around it, sure that Brannal was doing the same with the other team.
“So we can both guess the direction that the other person went, but we can’t be sure if the other one doubled back or tried to do a fake out by placing the ribbon closer and hoping we would pass it. We could go straight to it with a goal of protecting it, but it’s possible that would just lead the other team to it. How is everyone at tracking?”
Molun pointed at Nisal, “They’re very quiet.”
Nisal smiled. “I won’t be able to find the ribbon based on where Brannal walked yesterday, if that’s what you mean. I could probably follow the team today, but they might well suspect that, and with earth, water, and air, they could probably catch me.”
“Better to keep our distance, then?” Perian wanted to know. “Try to defend our ribbon from all comers?”
“Well,” Molun said, “with Brannal restricting himself, I can create the strongest shield. They could still get through it, but less quickly. And we’ve still got Nisal, who could be blowing them away, too. Arvus is restricted in that he can’t do any real harm, so he’s probably not just going to make a gaping hole in the earth below us.”
Perian’s eyes went wide. “He can do that?”
