CHAPTER 71: THE ECHO OF MISCHIEF (2)

Instead, he focused on maintaining the fire, on the simple physics of combustion that required no divine insight to understand.

"So!" Nik’s voice shattered the silence with forced cheer. "I think we acquitted ourselves rather well against the fairy horde, don’t you?" He had recovered some of his usual exuberance, though Apollo noted he still occasionally stared at his hands with fascinated wonder. Whatever effect the mushroom cap had induced hadn’t fully dissipated.

When no one immediately responded, Nik pressed on, undeterred. "I mean, there we were, surrounded by dozens, no, hundreds!, of the little blighters." He leapt to his feet, pantomiming the scene with extravagant gestures. "They dive-bombed us from above—" he made a high-pitched whistling sound, swooping his hand down toward Thorin’s head, "—and erupted from below!" He accompanied this with an explosive popping noise that made Renna jump despite herself.

"There weren’t hundreds," Thorin corrected, though his tone lacked its usual gruffness. "Thirty at most. And they didn’t ’dive-bomb’ anything. They flew. Annoyingly."

"Oh, details, details." Nik waved a dismissive hand. "You’re missing the narrative impact! The dramatic tension! The sheer terror of being set upon by magical beings with unknown powers and dubious intentions!" He clutched his chest and staggered backward in an exaggerated swoon. "I thought my heart would burst from my chest!"

"If you don’t stop embellishing, I’m going to gag you with what’s left of your precious scarf," Renna threatened, though Apollo caught the slight upward quirk of her lips that betrayed her amusement.

"You wound me, fair Renna!" Nik pressed both hands over his heart, dropping to his knees beside her. "I merely seek to preserve our adventures for posterity! Future generations will sing of our courage in the face of the fairy onslaught!"

"Future generations will wonder how you survived long enough to reproduce," Lyra muttered, but her green eyes glinted with rare humor in the firelight.

Despite Nik’s determined efforts to lighten the mood, a subtle tension remained, hanging in the air like the faint scent of ozone before a storm. Their laughter came too quickly and faded too soon.

Their eyes darted to the shadows between mushroom stalks too often. Even Thorin, usually stoic to the point of appearing carved from stone himself, startled at the sound of a branch snapping in the fire.

As the night deepened and conversation gradually gave way to exhaustion, Apollo watched his companions settle into their bedrolls.

Nik curled around his ruined scarf like a child with a security blanket. Thorin lay with his glowing axe within easy reach, one hand resting on the handle even in sleep. Renna positioned herself with her back to a mushroom stalk, her posture still vigilant even in repose.

Lyra was the last to surrender to slumber, her green eyes meeting Apollo’s across the dying fire in silent acknowledgment of his unspoken intent to take the first watch.

Soon their breathing deepened and slowed, leaving Apollo alone with the night and his thoughts.

The fire burned down to embers that cast a gentle glow across their sleeping faces, softening the lines of worry that marked them by day. The mushroom caps continued their subtle luminescence, bathing the clearing in ghostly purple light that made the familiar strange.

Apollo rose quietly and moved to the nearest giant mushroom, placing his palm against its stalk. The surface felt warm and slightly yielding, like flesh rather than plant matter. Beneath his hand, he sensed the aether pulsing through the fungus like blood through veins, cycling between earth and air in patterns that felt almost... intentional.

He closed his eyes, allowing the gold in his veins to respond more fully to the energy signature.

The resonance built within him, a harmony that vibrated along pathways that had once channeled divine power without effort. For a moment, brief but achingly perfect, he felt connected to something larger than himself again, part of a system of energy and life that transcended mortal limitations.

The sensation was so familiar, so reminiscent of Olympus, that Apollo withdrew his hand as if burned. The loss of connection left him hollow, a sharp reminder of all he had forfeited in his fall.

He returned to the fire, adding the last of their gathered wood to coax a few more flames from the embers. Better to focus on immediate concerns, heat, light, safety, than to dwell on what could not be reclaimed.

As Apollo finally leaned back against his pack, preparing to wake Thorin for the next watch, a sound drifted through the mushroom forest. Not the tinkling laughter of the fairies this time, but something more resonant, a whispering chorus that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.

Apollo strained to catch words in the susurration, but the sound remained elusive, fading into the natural creaks and whispers of the night forest. He sat motionless, listening intently until the strange chorus diminished to silence.

The mushroom forest settled around him, the massive caps casting violet shadows across his sleeping companions. His fingers traced the edge of his pack where the wooden flute nestled, a momentary temptation to play something that might answer the whispering. But the thought of waking the others, of explaining what he’d heard, stopped him.

Morning arrived with reluctant gray light filtering through the canopy of mushroom caps. Apollo hadn’t slept, though he’d closed his eyes during Thorin’s watch, feigning rest while his mind circled endlessly around the fairy’s warning.

Renna was first to rise, methodically checking her belongings in the pale dawn. She held the pouch of glowing mushrooms away from her body, as if they might bite.

"I still can’t believe those little menaces took my apricots," she muttered, glaring at the luminescent fungi. "I was saving those."

Thorin grunted as he examined his axe in the growing light. The blade’s edge still shimmered with that strange blue radiance, catching the morning light like trapped water.

"Can’t get it off," he said, rubbing his thumb along the metal with increasing frustration.