Chapter 61: Camping Games

“That, Lily, is a cliff,” Arthur said.

“I know. I mean on top of it.”

The middle of the mountain was gone. Through some freak occurrence, it was like a gigantic knife had come down and cut a square out of the mountain. From the distance, they were looking at a flat cliff that ended with a table-flat section of the mountain, which then led to another cliff in front.

“It’s…” Ers hesitated. “I honestly don’t know the name for it.”

“Me either, even with the librarian class. But it has to be too small to camp on, right?” Spiky said.

“Oh, not at all.” The bear-demon had already started walking. “It’s a bit farther away than you think, so it looks small from the distance. Good catch, Lily. It’s going to be great.”

With Lily glowing from the big-person-she-didn’t-know praise, they hoofed it to the clifftop. Luckily, it wasn’t all that hard to access. The path up to it was thin and narrow in parts, but there was fairly traversable terrain all the way up. In a few places, Arthur was less than a few feet from a drop, but the fact that he was on solid, relatively even rock reassured both him and the others enough to keep going.

And it was pretty great, just as predicted. Soil had accumulated on the flat part of the mountain, as well a few trees here and there. Some of the trees had fallen over time, which meant the firewood supplies were strong. There were shortfalls, like the complete lack of water which was a good thing for Arthur, and they had carted in enough water with them that it wasn’t much of a problem.

And then there was the view.

“Wow. It has everything. Is that a little forest?” Arthur asked. “By the river.”

“That’s a grove. Bigger than a copse, smaller than a forest.”

“It’s a good river,” Mizu said. “It’s nice to see water at work like that.”

“So green,” Corbin said.

“Shit! Dammit, don’t do that, Corbin,” Milo exclaimed.

“I’m sorry, Milo. There’s no good way to shift out of stealth,” Corbin said.

“Why are you going into stealth, man? You brought your girlfriend, Dilah,” Milo said.

“Oh, he can’t hide from me. That’s part of why we work,” Dilah said.

They all looked for a few moments until, almost as one, everyone turned to look at Arthur.

“What now? That looks like a ‘what now’ look.” Arthur waved his arm at the cliff-backed space. “Set up your tents, everyone. Big circle. Close enough that you aren’t too far that you can’t hear Milo snore.”

Arthur had a few stakes in the ground when Lily bought up the looming problem.

“So people are wondering about activities.” She shifted her weight foot to foot, uncomfortably. “And I’m pretty sure you didn’t plan any of those. Except food.”

“Oh, yeah, of course. So that’s the trick to camping. How are you doing with your tent?”

“Bad. I can’t figure out how to make the tent, tent. At all. That’s part of why I came over.”

“I have this theory about that.” Arthur pounded in another stake. “Only about one in three people actually knows how to set up a tent. At best. So what does that mean?”

Lily looked around the campsite for a few seconds. “Mizu sets up everyone’s tents?”

“No. Mizu sets up some of them, but Milo sets up some, too. Spiky probably needs two whole people to help him, considering what he’s done so far. And now everyone’s talking. Having fun. By the time we get Chuck to break a tree into sections so we can sit on it, nobody wants activities anyway. Activities, Lily, are the bad kind of fun. The kind well-meaning adults force on you when you just want to see who can throw rocks the farthest.”

“My money is on Ers.”

“No way, I bet it’s Milo. But anyways, we’ll have plenty to do.”

By the time the tents were up, everyone was having a pretty good time. Better yet, it was already a bit cold, which meant a fire was well justified. Spiky guided the battle-jocks to the correct fallen tree trunks with his encyclopedic knowledge of everything minus how to set up a tent, and they took turns battering the trees until they had a stack of firewood about as tall as Lily to work with.

Arthur worked on unloading his pack. If people were going to be running around in the cold, they’d need something to help keep them warm. Inside his bag, he had another smaller canvas container filled with steel rods that Milo had made for him. Some were forked, while others had prongs sticking out of them to catch on the forks. All together, they combined to make a basic stand around the fire that Arthur used to hang a large kettle. When the water boiled, he made a couple basic drinks.

“Tea’s on!” he yelled. “Just take what you want. Or I can make something specific that you want.”

People filtered in and out, taking tea and spices at his direction and warming their hands on the piping hot glasses. Soon enough, they had explored nearly every nook and cranny the flat platform had to offer, with one significant exception.

“We have to go into that cave.” Arthur was surprised to find nobody else wanted to. So far, it was him and Lily against the rest of the teenagers. “It’s a cave, guys. A full actual cave we found. Right here.”

“You don’t go in caves, Arthur. Ever. There are children’s books about it.”

“Children books about not having fun?” Lily shouted. “Why? The world’s an evil place.”

“Well… that’s a different conversation. But we agree on the spirit of this. Mizu, you really don’t want to go in this cave?”

“No, Arthur. And you can’t either.” Mizu put her hand on his shoulder. “It’s odd that you want to so much.”

“Do you know how rare caves were on Earth? That you could just go into and walk around in? I basically didn’t know of any. I think. All I had were deserts and mountains.”

“From what you’ve told me of Earth, there weren’t any caves that turned out to be surprise dungeons. And that happens here, Arthur.”

“It does?”

“Often.” Mizu nodded. “Scouts can usually sense new dungeons in fields, or out in the open. But caves and things like them hide the dungeons. And dungeons spawn in these kinds of areas more. It really is something they teach children.”

“Plus, that’s if there aren’t beasts of other kinds in them. They say poison loves the dark,” Milo said as Mizu shivered. “And caves collapse, sometimes. It’s just not a good idea.”

“Well, darn. I guess that’s out, then.”

“It’s no problem, really. Because I, Milo, have thought ahead.” Milo dropped his pack, which clanked ominously as it hit the ground. “We, all of us, are playing junk weapon darts. And I won’t take no for an answer.”

Milo had brought food, water, and very little else of practical use. Instead, most of his bag was filled with a dozen or so absolutely random weapons he had made as tests over the past year. They were too rough to sell, and iron was too cheap to justify using them again as scrap. Instead, he had invented a sort of game in which the campers divided into teams and picked random weapons to throw by pulling scraps of paper out of a hat.

“Dammit, I got the axe again,” Arthur said. Milo’s one axe was a lopsided, over-heavy thing too difficult to use with one hand, let alone throw accurately. Arthur had managed to draw it three times, which meant he hadn’t hit the target yet.

“You can do it, Arthur. Just throw it better,” Mizu said. Arthur turned and looked at her face, suspicious that she was now quipping at him, but unable to pierce through her general mask to be sure. She had loosened up a lot around him and the others over the past few months and they were on separate teams, so it felt possible that she was trash-talking him in a very restrained, dignified sort of way.

But whether she was mocking him or not, he still felt compelled to do his best.

This time, he got a running start, stepping absurdly hard into his throwing motion and letting the weight of the axe crank his shoulder around like a trebuchet arm. The absurdity of what he was trying to do sunk in as the weight of the axe pulled him past his balance point before he could let it go. He fell flat on his face, the axe flying in an unknown trajectory above him. He had almost gathered himself enough to feel embarrassment when the sound of semi-sharp metal thunking into wood brought him out of it.

“Gods, I can’t believe that worked.” Milo was awestruck. “Pretty near the center of the target, too. That puts Arthur’s team in the lead. Watch out, Mizu. He might just win.”

Mizu responded with a good-not-great dagger throw that kept things even, and then it was time for the combat classes to play. They had been severely handicapped for the purposes of keeping things fair, and were a good twenty feet further back from the target than the others. Ern was a dexterity heavy build, and had yet to miss a shot except with the few truly heavy weapons Milo had brought with him.

Chuck, on the other hand, was a strength kind of guy. He didn’t have the accuracy Ern could put out, but he didn’t need that. He could throw anything smaller than a bowling ball in a deadly, flat trajectory that seemed to ignore conventional physics.

As much as the two of them outclassed everyone else, they also more or less canceled each other out. That left the game in the hands of the more or less normal people, with each side getting a bonus throw from Lily as a source of potential extra points on an alternating schedule. And since throwing these particular objects wasn’t anything that anyone could have really practiced, it finally came down to one last set of tie-breaker throws.

“There’s no way he makes it, right?” Arthur asked as he watched Spiky step forward. “It’s a super heavy axe. And he has to have almost no points in strength.”

“You never know, Arthur.” Milo said. “Librarians are a whole thing. Knowledge classes in general. There’s a lot they can do that seem like magic, provided they know the right things to make it happen.”

Spiky stood with the axe in his hand, observing the target carefully. He’d stared for a full minute before he suddenly reared back, snapped forward, and threw the axe at an angle that was more towards the sky than the target itself.

Too high. Has to be. And too far to the left.

And yet, it wasn’t. The wind blowing across the cliff-side platform caught the axe and curved it around toward the target. The blade never hit wood but that didn’t matter when the metal handle of the axe was driven into the target and got stuck there.

“That’s a hit. Dammit, it stuck. That’s a hit,” Milo said.

“Perfect parabola. That’s a librarian class. He got the actual angle he needed to throw it worked out,” Onna said.

“Well, damn,” Arthur said. “Spiky, that was amazing. And a little terrifying.”

“It was.” Mizu looped her arm through Arthur’s. “I won, Arthur.”

“Well, yes. And good. I’m glad for you. Perfect ending, Spiky. Really.”

Spiky bowed. “Thank you, thank you. And if anyone would like to read the book that made it all possible, it's available every day at the library, where learning is fun.”

The congratulations stopped as Arthur watched an entire group of people simultaneously decide that they didn’t really need improved axe throwing skills. The vibe of the moment wasn’t lost on Spiky.

“Or we could forget it, I guess. Arthur, what’s next?” Spiky said.

“Hot chocolate. And sausages. And whatever food you guys brought. It was a long walk earlier, and I’m guessing we are all hungry. Let’s eat!”