Chapter 4: The Relic Hunters (Refined)
Whatever trail used to run through here is long gone. Swallowed whole. Moss strangles what’s left of the stonework, vines curl like fingers over broken memories. The forest doesn’t forget. It just... reshapes.
Still, he walks.
Short huffs push through his beard, fogging in the cold. Lips parted just enough to sip the air—wet stone, pine sap, and something older. Something sour. Like dust turned to breath. Like time trying to speak. He chews the inside of his cheek, jaw twitching. Thinking. Instinct clashing with memory. The wind moves wrong here—too deliberate, like it’s watching. The trees don’t creak. They listen.
They rise around him now. Giants. Silent, thick as siege towers, twisted up like they’re carrying pain. Bark folds like clenched fists. They press close, crowding out the sky. Blocking the way back. You don’t see a path in a place like this—you feel it. A tug behind the ribs. Half instinct. Half pure, bull-headed stubbornness. One step reveals the next. That’s it. That’s the test.
He’s walked worse.
Back in the Guild days, he marched into places darker than this without blinking. Captain once. Feared, even. Before the Council cleaned house. Before his name got scrubbed from ledgers and whispered through back doors. Now he’s just Gorik. Relic hunter. Stubborn bastard. Built himself up. Tore himself down.
And he’s not here for gold.
Not anymore.
It’s history he’s after. Real history. The kind kingdoms bury. The kind time tries to forget. He can feel it under the dirt—coiled in the bones of this land. Metallic on the tongue, like dried blood and rusted steel.
The ruins come in slow. First a busted archway, half-swallowed by bark. Then a leaning wall—drunk-looking and moss-drenched. Carvings melt into the stone, their shapes blurred and fading. Not rising out of the forest. Sinking into it. Like the land itself tried to hide its own shame.
He squints. The air thickens. Not with peace. With pressure. Like something holding its breath.
His fingers twitch toward his belt, brushing pouches and tools. He doesn’t grab anything. Doesn’t have to. The habit’s old, carved deep. Danger used to come loud, wearing armor and swinging axes. This kind? It just waits.
“We’re close,” he mutters. Then, after a pause: “...I think.”
His voice is gravel on stone, spoken to nobody in particular. Not the others—wherever they’ve wandered—but to the hush between trees. It doesn’t echo. Just... vanishes. Like the forest swallowed it. No bounce. No return. Too old, maybe. Or too damn alive.
“If the tales are true,” he says under his breath, “we’re about to find something big.”
No awe. No drama. Just the kind of truth that tastes like regret. Like saying a hunch out loud just to prove you’re not crazy.
Then it hits. A pulse.
Low. Deep. Buried in the world’s skin. It throbs up through his boots, climbs into his bones. Sets his molars buzzing. Not quite a warning. Not quite a welcome either.
His brow furrows under his hood.
“No…” It’s barely more than a whisper. “It’s the whole bloody territory.”
It started back at the obelisk. Half-fallen thing, choked in roots and fungus. Just a marker stone, forgotten by maps. Skipped by caravans. But it hummed. Not out loud. Not really. He felt it in his feet. In his teeth. Like the land had taken a shallow breath and hadn’t let go since.
Places remember.
Yeah. He believes that. Places like this—old, buried, ashamed—they don’t forget.
Not the people.
Not the pain.
Behind Gorik, Selene moves like breath—quiet, fluid, more presence than body. If the forest had a soul—and she's starting to believe it does—it might think she belongs. Her boots barely disturb the leaves underfoot. Each step is weightless, patient. No trace. Just the idea of motion.
She’s not sneaking. Not exactly. Listening just requires a stillness that most people forget exists.
Her gaze flicks between trees twisted like old rope, bark peeling in patterns too intentional to ignore. Scars, not bark. Wounds grown over. Above her, the canopy forms a ceiling of knotted limbs and leaves that refuse to rustle. A false sky. A trap, maybe.
Her ears twitch—sharp, reflexive. Her tail curls tighter beneath her robes, a silent tell. Pressure builds in her chest. Tension without origin. She doesn’t scratch. Doesn’t shift. Discomfort is irrelevant when everything around her feels... paused.
No birdsong. No buzz of insects. Not even the small rustles of life moving through root and burrow.
The silence isn’t absence. It’s intentional. Staged. Like a breath held too long.
She slows. Not because she chooses to. Her body just knows. Muscles tighten. Shoulders lower. That natural freeze that all prey shares when something nearby has teeth and isn’t hungry yet.
No scent of prey. No trace of predator.
And that’s worse.
That’s wrong.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
The forest is waiting. For what, she can’t name. But it’s expecting something.
“Gorik?” she says.
Her voice doesn’t echo. Doesn’t even linger. It vanishes the second it escapes her lips—swallowed whole by bark and shadow, like the woods are tired of being spoken to.
The dwarf jolts, half-turned, muttering something halfway between a curse and a sigh. His beard twitches. “Stones in my beard, girl—don’t do that.” Gruff, not angry. He never yells. Doesn’t need to.
Selene folds inward just slightly—shoulders pulling in, chin lowering. Her ears flatten. Not out of shame. Out of efficiency. Easier to be small than explain something even she doesn’t understand yet.
“Apologies, master dwarf,” she says. Quiet. Automatic.
He grunts like a man already losing a familiar argument. “Well? Spit it out.”
“This place…” She trails off, eyes lifting. A branch overhead bends the wrong way—intentional, unnatural. Leaves that don’t sway even when the air moves. “It feels… wrong.”
Gorik nods once. No drama. Just fact. “Aye.”
Selene exhales. Her fingers slide beneath her cloak until they find leather—cool, worn, comforting. Her grimoire. The spine creaks as it opens, like it's been holding something in. Pages curl at the corners, stiff with red ink and old dust.
She flips without looking. She already knows where. Doesn’t need words. Her hands remember the shape of knowledge.
The book hums softly, a familiar thrum that sinks into her skin. Warm. Alive. Responding to her presence like an old friend or a house pet. She leans in close—nose almost to parchment. She isn’t reading.
She’s listening.
Magic, for her, has never been about fire or force. It’s pressure. Texture. Memory.
And this place? It’s drenched in it.
She feels it like silk pulled through water—smooth, but wrong. Too smooth. Too slow.
Older than kingdoms. Older than speech.
The forest isn’t home to this magic. It’s trying to forget it. Bury it. Smother it.
A shiver dances across her shoulders. Goosebumps rise beneath her sleeves.
Something’s bound here. That part is clear.
Not speculation. Not theory. The book hums with certainty.
And if it stirs—
No.
She cuts that thought short.
Folds it. Tucks it away. Like a page she isn’t ready to turn.
Tibbins bolts ahead like a squirrel on espresso—jerky limbs, wild eyes, full of the kind of confidence that definitely hasn’t thought things through. The wreckage of root and ruin flies past him, a blur of moss, old stone, and poor decisions.
For a gnome, the dude moves fast. Not the pointy-hat, garden kind—no. He’s wiry, smeared in oil, built more for gadgets than greetings. About three feet of leather straps, half-scribbled blueprints, and raw enthusiasm stitched together by insomnia and an overactive imagination.
He skids to a stop beside some half-buried bronze panel, fingers twitching like he’s meeting an old friend—or ex. They hover. Pat. Stroke. Then suddenly wrench a hunk of metal free with a grunt.
“Don’t be difficult,” he mutters, half to the plate, half to himself. Reverent, but only up to the point where things stop cooperating.
His fingers speak fluent machine. His mouth? Absolute gibberish.
“AHA!”
He pops up from a bush, leaves clinging to his hair like some poorly-planned forest wedding. Eyes wide. Grinning. Head twitching left, then right, scanning for an audience.
Selene flinches, fingers lifting toward a spell-form. She doesn’t cast. Not yet. But she looks like she’s weighing the pros and cons of turning him into decorative vapor.
Gorik—mid-lift with his hammer—freezes, the weapon held somewhere between "threat" and "group therapy." His expression screams why are we still letting him touch things?
Tibbins blinks. “Danger?” he squeaks, spinning. “Where?”
Nothing. No beast. No sound. Just moss and one really judgmental tree.
Everyone exhales at once.
Selene lets her spell fade, silent and smoky. Gorik grumbles in Dwarvish—a sound that probably translates to this idiot’s going to kill us all—then straps his hammer back with a grunt and the weariness of a dwarf who’s seen too many “Aha!” moments go very wrong.
“Oh! Wait—!”
He blasts from the bush like a cork fired by destiny and bad impulse control.
“Is this—wait, no, no—just another rusted lever,” he says, but his voice climbs like maybe, just maybe, this one’s different. His eyes gleam. His hands twitch. He crouches beside the overgrown mechanism like he’s about to propose marriage to it.
“What if this one works?”
The words hit the air like magic.
Not because they make sense—but because he believes them.
His hands hover, shaking with too many thoughts and not enough caffeine. He brushes away vines like they’re cobwebs on treasure. The thing’s probably been here longer than most empires, but Tibbins treats it like it’s still listening.
“Imagine it…” he whispers. “Whole castle, still alive. Doors. Glyphs. Golem janitor trapped down here for, like, five thousand years, mop in hand, just waiting to squeegee destiny—”
He laughs. It’s high and sudden and weirdly pure.
Then his voice shifts. Drops. Just a bit.
“We’d be legends.”
A pause.
“No. Scratch that. We will be.”
Behind him, Gorik looks ready to punt a gnome across a canyon.
But then—
The floor groans.
Not creaks. Not cracks.
Groans. Like the whole ruin just woke up with a stiff spine and a grudge.
Selene dives into her grimoire like it’s fireproof. No eye-rolls. No lectures. Not this time. She’s already doing math in her head: arcane capacity, blast radius, acceptable losses.
Tibbins?
Still crouched. Still humming.
He adjusts the cracked goggles on his forehead—left lens so scuffed it might as well be decorative. The strap’s half-snapped again. It pinches. Always does. But he doesn’t mind. Fifth pair this month. Still his favorite.
He doesn’t carry a sword. Doesn’t shoot fire from his hands. No blessings. No chosen fate. Just rust under his nails and a gut feeling that the past still matters.
That if you talk to it—if you really listen—it might just talk back.
Worst case?
He triggers a doomsday machine, raises an undead titan, and gets everyone flattened into soup.
Best case?
Another lever. Another mystery. Another chance.
Just another adventure.