This, he supposed, was how he would spend much of his time now. He and his family.
After the harvest season, when little work was needed to maintain their small lots of arable land, the travelers and fighters in their family went on what they called a healing raid - part mission to spread their healing abilities farther from their home in the Barrens, and part mission to exterminate or uproot nearby predators. Their whole lives, they had contended with dire rats preying on their weak and wreaking havoc on their food supplies. They were not friendly to animals who would see them dead.
This year, they would come to Mistfruit Forest, Ragnar had already decided. And he was here on another scouting trip, making sure that they had reliable navigation to get here as well as shelter and the ability to either find or cultivate food while they were here.
Conditions didn't necessarily seem favorable, but that was why they had come early. Logistics were a relatively significant part of these trips, and somebody needed to know all the details to help the group arrive - being the one who had all of those details locked in his head... that meant power, whether the others realized it or not.
Ragnar came to the edge of the lake, looking out over its expanse with a dark fury in his eyes. Once again, he had to think of what it meant, for all this water to have been kept up here while the rest of the land starved. It meant that, perhaps, none of this had to have happened, that all of this was inflicted upon a land that did not deserve so much abuse and disregard.
"Ragnar..." Suma cautioned, fluttering up beside him. "It will soon be nightfall. If you're going to do something, you should do it now so we have time to find shelter before the beasts come out."
"You're right, Suma," Ragnar said, steely-eyed. His gaze didn't leave the lake for a long moment, until finally his horn began to glow and a puff of water evaporated from the overfull lake as Spillway took effect. "This lake. It causes me a great deal of anger."
"For good reason, Ragnar. But use it as fuel, not a blind source of ineffective hatred."
Reluctantly, Ragnar turned away. Suma was right. They left the lake behind, looking for high ground that was not inside the forest. They didn't want to be trapped inside a tangle of dead trees if they were pursued.
"What do you think, Suma? The journey here was not hard. We could make it in a matter of days, if there are no distractions," he said, thinking aloud as they went.
"The journey here and back are easy. The question is food and shelter. There isn't much out here, though perhaps some dried store would be useful."
"Granted, there is hardly anything anywhere," Ragnar said quietly. "Save Homewood."
Water would hardly be a problem here, and with this odd hilly landscape, finding places to set up temporary camps would be feasible.
"We'll just have to bring enough food, and not spend too long here," he said, thinking things through. "Homewood is close, our suppliers can easily make trips there to restock if we need more, in which case we can spend much of our healing raid here."
"Are you suggesting more healing than raiding?" Suma asked with genuine surprise. The suggestion was unlike Ragnar on all counts, and wouldn't easily earn him favors from a crowd that inherently loved to fight. Raiding rat nests tended to be a lucrative endeavor. The creatures liked to hoard away stolen trinkets and equipment that often proved useful, and the scrappy, hard-fighting noulicorns in Ragnar's clan appreciated things like that to help their hard life in the Barrens.
"It may seem that way, but I've spotted tracks. There are nests of rats right around here. We've not bothered with this area in years because it's so close to Homewood, but there's plenty of raiding to be done alongside healing." Ragnar smiled, crafty, thoughtful. "Mistfrut is the new land of opportunity. Forget the Bog, and certainly forget the Ruins. We've stumbled across a mutually beneficial spot for our raids."
Suma nodded, watching the cogs turn into his bond's head. It was subtle, little more than a slight narrowing of his eyes in concentration. But it was there. The faery fluttered up and landed on Ragnar's back. "So it's sorted, then. We have everything it takes."
Ragnar nodded. "Yes. Everything is set." They would be returning to Mistfruit with reinforcements.
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