52nd of Season of Fire, 57th year of the 32nd cycle

  Newt was about to leave the geyser with his twelfth piece of misterium when the inevitable happened. He slipped. His foot slid across the smooth stone, but instead of falling down, pulled by the earth, he went up, lifted by the torrent. Newt’s body careened, he spun head over heels straight towards the heavens.

  The motion had barely started when the rope suddenly snapped tight, jerking him to a halt. The three loops bit into his spine and ribs, squeezing Granite Crust as they opposed the upward gush. Newt hovered an unknown number of feet in the air, his feet facing upwards, when the rope squeezing his torso pulled him sideways out of the flow.

  He almost activated his new and improved Fire Burst to stabilize himself, but stopped at the last moment. The technique could incinerate the ropes, and if he tumbled out of his friends’ sight, they might never meet again.

  Without Fire Burst, Newt flew with all the grace of a rock, smacking head first into the wet ground and shallow puddles. He stood up and dismissed his defensive techniques.

  “Twelfth piece!” He lifted the misterium nugget into the air.

  “Are you going to pretend nothing happened?” Jasmine folded her arms, a smirk dancing on her lips, an eyebrow arched in amusement.

  “No idea what you’re talking about.” Newt lowered his arm and opened his hand to better show the fist-sized rock he had snatched from the geyser. It was gray, with spongy texture, soft and full of holes out of which thin wisps of whitish-gray mist rose. It felt so malleable against Newt’s fingertips, he had a feeling he could squeeze the mist out of it if he clenched it a little harder.

  “He was as graceful as every rockhead ever.” Roselilly laughed, being the only person in the party who did not match the description. “Do we give up for now? We’ve danced a full circle around this geyser, and Newt obviously can’t go in any deeper without risking injury.”

  They had spent around an hour fishing for misterium, yielding twelve nuggets. Much better result than expected, but still a long way from their quota.

  Jasmine nodded in agreement. “Let’s try to find another geyser. If our luck holds out, we could gather enough in the first deposit.”

  “Why did you jinx us?” Obsidian suddenly shouted. “Now we’re not gonna find any geysers, or those we find won’t have any misterium or—”

  “I agree it’s time to move on.” Newt stepped in before Obsidian said something stupid, like the option of finding everything just fine and someone dying. He did not think the man would have done it, but better safe than sorry.

  The group packed their gains in a single sack and entrusted it to Roselilly, whose role in the expedition was keeping things safe. Five minutes later, they were stumbling through the thickest mist, blindly searching for the next geyser.

  The books Newt read about the Valley of the Lost had mentioned that the geyser fields had around one hundred geysers each, but there was no way to tell whether the one they found was the first or the last one of the field. They could have walked past ninety-nine of them, each time missing them by a dozen yards, and they would never know.

  Newt pushed away the pessimistic thoughts. We will find enough misterium, we will complete our mission flawlessly, and everything will be all right.

  His optimism lasted half an hour.

  We should have found a geyser by now. The field is half a day’s walk long. We’ve already crossed a third of it, haven’t we?

  “Found one!” Surprisingly, it was Jasmine who shouted, rather than Obsidian. She walked about two yards to the left in their arrow formation, and the geyser was outside Obsidian’s field of vision.

  The team treaded to the left, and a column of water identical to the one before appeared in their senses.

  “Should we spread out more?” Newt asked, ignoring the stench. “Heavens know how many geysers we’ve missed along the way.”

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  “No.” Roselilly did not even consider his suggestion. “You and Jasmine are already walking over ten feet apart, and that’s risky enough. Maybe the next geyser field will have better visibility. If not, then the one after that.”

  Nobody argued with her, and the team got to work. They bound Newt thrice, like last time, and he dove into the jet of water. He withdrew Granite Crust from the tips of his fingers and blindly touched the ground, seeking stones hiding inside cracks and folds in the volcanic rock.

  After the first dozen successes, Newt could distinguish misterium from regular rocks based on touch alone. The high-pressure stream of water and the need to protect himself with Granite Crust made the feat difficult, but not impossible.

  His fingers slid into a vertical slit and touched a rough, squishy surface.

  What if misterium isn’t really a special rock, but a rock that’s been sprayed with the geyser water long enough to change its attributes?

  Newt considered the idea as he pinched the rock between his thumb and forefinger and dislodged it from the tight crevice. It was an interesting idea, but he doubted it was true.

  “That’s one!” he shouted as he jumped out of the geyser.

  An hour and a half passed, and Newt collected sixteen more nuggets of misterium, bringing the party’s total to twenty-nine without taking foolish chances. By the time the mist turned garnet, signifying the approaching night, the group had left the first valley. They had visited five geysers, collected a total of eighty pieces of misterium, and elevated their morale to new heights.

  They had harvested four fifths of their quota without encountering a single problem. Jasmine was probably about to point out the fact when Obsidian raised his finger at her as soon as she opened her mouth.

  “Don’t you say a word. We’re enjoying a good thing, don’t spoil it for everyone.”

  Jasmine stuck out her tongue at him, and Roselilly chortled. “Can you two stop it with your silly antics?”

  “Nothing silly about it! She’s a jinx. She always says something and things go wrong.”

  Newt tuned out their banter. The siblings were putting on a show for Rose’s sake, and it was getting tiresome.

  I wonder whether her mirth is genuine. She doesn’t seem to be pretending, but there’s no way the same old act over and over can make her laugh. Right?

  Newt focused on other problems. They needed twenty more mist crystals to complete their mission, with each additional crystal increasing their reward slightly. Should they rush their mission and complete the most basic requirements, or should they focus on gathering more?

  The former made no sense to Newt, even if they harvested hundreds of bonus mist crystals, Newt’s medical debt was thousands of times the reward. His friends, on the other hand, could really benefit from that bonus, and helping them advance was in his best interest.

  I guess, reducing my debt by a fraction is still worthwhile, more-so because it helps them.

  Newt glanced at his teammates. They were kind of all right, but he did not think he belonged to the team. They were positive, and trying to move on with their lives, but there was something off.

  They aren’t Dandelion and Everlast. Newt considered the thought and found that was exactly the problem. In the other group, he was the weakest, constantly forced to improve himself to keep up. But his new team was on par with him, and that was him being generous, they were probably weaker.

  Sure, Obsidian offered tips on processing corpses, and grilled enjoyable meals, but in combat the Deeproots were lacking. They were decent, they could handle third realm spirit beasts under Newt’s watchful eye, but they were missing something.

  What are they missing? I have a feeling that figuring that out might help me improve in some way.

  Newt spent the evening considering the question, but even as the world grew brighter, he failed to find his answers.

  The next day was full of even more frustration. The debilitating mist oppressed his senses, the wrongness followed his every step, and three fights in which Obsidian and Jasmine revealed endless openings grated on his nerves.

  Then, as they made their evening camp, Newt realized even the meal was frustrating. They did not need to eat, nor rest, nor did they need fire. Why bother with it then? Newt suddenly found a problem with his question. The meat was palatable, there was no reason to get angry about free, tasty meals.

  “Is anyone else feeling angry or frustrated for no reason?” He asked, realizing it might have been a feature of the Valley of the Lost.

  Unfortunately, his three teammates shook their heads.

  “No, but you’ve been gloomy all day.”

  “Yeah, hardly said a word. And you killed that hadrosaurus today before we had a chance to react, like you were venting.”

  Obsidian was right. Newt should not have done that, but watching the siblings fumble around had grown too annoying to bear.

  That’s not how I usually am. It’s strange and unnatural. Is it because I have a third eye?

  “I think it’s the mist doing something to my mind. I’ll watch out not to do something stupid. But keep an eye out for me, please.”

  That was what Newt said, but he had a feeling the remaining handful of days would prove stressful. Very stressful. He could only hope his eventual outburst would not fracture the team further.