chapter 24: Traps

Night fell hard on the forest, cloaking the woodland in an airless darkness.

The only sounds were the rustle of wind through the trees, the scrape of metal against wood, and the occasional low murmur of coordination between the three outcasts preparing for war.

Fang crouched near a pile of freshly cut branches, carving their ends into brutal, jagged points with a curved hunting knife. The blade hissed with each pass, showering curled slivers of wood onto the moss. "These'll punch through leather," he muttered.

"Not if they're soft," Isgram replied from beside the firepit, where a dozen sharpened stakes lay propped in a neat line. He pointed a finger, and a narrow stream of flame ignited from his fingertip. He swept it across the stake tips slowly, charring and hardening the wood to a deep black. "Now they'll punch through and stay inside."

Fang handed him another stake without looking up. "Good. I want them to scream."

Up above, perched in the trees like some nocturnal wraith, Gaia whispered to the forest floor. Her voice rumbled like distant thunder, low and resonant. The soil beneath select patches of moss began to soften, shifting unnaturally as roots unwound themselves. With an elegant flick of her hand, she collapsed one patch entirely—creating a sinkhole just wide enough for a man's foot and just deep enough to insert a sharpened spear in it. Another movement, and a second pit opened like a mouth nearby, teeth-like stones placed to ensure a shattered leg if anyone fell in.

'It will be harder to prepare for several types of injuries. Doing this will make it much harder to heal their fighters,' Thought Gaia.

She was already battle-hardened, but Isgram suggested it first, and she took a liking to his experienced view of warfare.

Smoke and the two new rabbits darted between shadows, marking trap spots with bits of glowing fungus by planting them near right beside the trap. Seeing as it was a toxic mushroom that no animals dared eat, it was efficient. Grim. Quiet.

Isgram glanced up toward Gaia's silhouette. "How many of those pits can you make?"

"Enough," she called back. "I think at least 50 pitholes will do the trick, but how insightful of you to see such matters in such brutal ways. I have missed the smell of blood lately."

"Creepy," he muttered. "Useful, though."

Fang gave a rare chuckle. "Welcome to the haven."

Another pile of stakes was ready. Fang drove the first one into the earth near a natural chokepoint—two trees growing close together, their roots twisted like interlocking fingers. He set it at an angle, perfectly positioned to gut someone trying to squeeze through. Isgram joined him and began hardening them on-site, short flames licking the wood without igniting the underbrush.

They worked in silence for a while, until Isgram broke it. "You really think this place can be defended?"

Fang didn't stop moving. "No. Not yet at least. But we must go on, we need a home first."

"And after that?"

"One day we will take the fight to them."

Smoke popped up beside him, ears twitching. One of the rabbits behind it let out a soft, ghostly squeal, then darted off into the dark again.

Fang looked up toward the treetops. "Gaia, if you can shape the land like this… could you eventually build structures? Walls, towers?"

She dropped from a branch with the grace of a predator. "Yes. But I'll need time. And corpses."

Isgram blinked. "Wait, what?"

Gaia smirked. "Bone makes excellent reinforcement. Your Death magic will bind it well I will teach you a way to do it when the time comes. For now, we'll need bones. Lots of them."

Fang stood, brushing dirt off his hands. "Then we build the deathtrap first. And after the first wave breaks—"

"We harvest," Gaia finished, her eyes unmoving as she talked about it like picking a carrot from the ground.

Isgram sighed. "It's official. We're the bad guys now."

Fang didn't respond to Isgram's comment. He simply stepped past a tree, planting another jagged spike into the soil with deliberate force.

"Bad guys don't build homes," he muttered. "They burn them."

"That's exactly what we're doing," Isgram said dryly, flame trickling from his fingertips again as he hardened a newly planted spear. "Setting very deadly traps and dreaming of one day slaughtering them in their own homes? Sounds to me like a villain role."

Gaia crossed her arms, the moonlight catching the edge of her horns. "You whine like a human. I thought dwarves embraced efficiency in war. Where is your pragmatism?"

"We don't build with bones," he snapped. "And we don't smile when we talk about harvesting the dead."

Gaia tilted her head, curious now. "Why? Out of fear? Guilt?"

"Out of decency," he shot back.

Gaia chuckled, low and cold. "Decency didn't keep your people alive. Didn't stop them from butchering chosen ones like us. Don't preach morality when you're just one bad day from becoming what you fear."

Isgram stood up, brushing some ash off his tunic with an irritated sweep. "I know what I am. I just don't want to enjoy it."

Gaia stepped closer, boots silent on the forest floor. "Then don't get in my way. We all bleed for this place, one way or another."

Fang stepped between them, not with aggression but weight. His presence alone quieted the space, and the rabbits even froze. Smoke tilted its head.

"Enough," Fang said. "You want to claw at each other? do it after we've survived the next attack."

Isgram grunted but stepped back. Gaia gave Fang a slow, approving nod—more respect than retreat.

"Fine," she murmured. "But I stand by what I said. The world we came from doesn't mean anything here. Some rules are different here."

"Listen," Fang said, eyes narrowing as he turned back to the traps. "We're not fighting for anyone else but us. And world? We're building a new one. And in this one, we earn what's ours."

Isgram picked up a fallen stake and jammed it into the dirt. "Let's just hope we survive long enough to enjoy it."

Gaia knelt beside one of her pits and whispered another command to the earth. "If not, at least we'll leave behind a garden of corpses."

The wind picked up again, cold and dry. In the trees, the leaves whispered like conspirators. Fang looked over the grove—lined with hidden death, jagged branches, and glowing fungal markers—and finally nodded.

"We're almost ready."