By the ti the sun dropped, the outpost had been converted into sothing that almost resembled a functional camp. The kind of almost that ant we wouldn’t freeze or get eaten.
Finn had patched the walls, Kira’s vine was already climbing high enough to work as a beacon, and Coco had marked the periter so thoroughly that even a Corruptor with excellent navigation would have trouble finding us.
Sowhere in the middle of all that, the small pale animal had settled close to my left boot and was watching with the calm patience of soone who had already decided we were friends and was waiting to see if I’d realized it yet. I sat down, and the animal sat down.
"We should na it." Coco said imdiately, leaning forward with barely contained excitent like soone who had been waiting hours to finally say that. Which he had.
"It’s not ours to na." Kira replied, though she was looking at the animal like she already had a na for it. Her eyes had a soft, warm quality that ant she would already kill for the sake of this fluffy thing.
"It followed Allaran for the whole day." Coco pointed out stubbornly.
"It followed the rocks." I said flatly.
"The rocks are there, but he’s here with you." Coco answered with a small shrug that implied the logic was airtight.
I opened one of the canned rations and didn’t argue further, because technically he wasn’t wrong. The food tasted as good as it had in the lab, maybe better now that we were eating it outside with cold air drifting down the mountain.
The animal accepted a piece of whatever the at was with far less hesitation than earlier and ate neatly, which I noted as a point in its favor. Clean eater, respectful of shared spaces. Better manners than so people I’d known in the orphanage.
"Wip." it said when it finished, making the small sound like it was announcing sothing important. A review, a rating. Four stars, would eat again.
"That." Coco said instantly. "That’s its na. We don’t need to debate about it anymore, the creature has spoken."
No one objected. It was difficult to argue with sothing that was also the animal’s entire vocabulary. Also, Wip was cute.
"Wip." Finn repeated experintally, watching the animal with mild curiosity. The animal glanced at him for half a second and then returned its attention to . "I think it likes you more than it likes the na."
"I think it likes the rocks more than both." I said while watching Wip. "It’s definitely a passive mob, but I’ve never seen anything like it in the farms of Argent."
We all looked at Wip, who was cleaning its face with one small paw and seed completely unconcerned about being the focus of our group investigation.
"Also." Kira added after a mont, crouching slightly closer and studying the animal with narrowed eyes. "Pretty sure that’s a she."
Coco blinked. "You can tell that just by looking."
Kira replied calmly. "Trust ."
Wip paused her grooming long enough to look at all of us, as if confirming the discussion was about her, then went back to cleaning her face.
"Alright." Coco said after a mont. "Then she’s Wip."
The wasteland was full of Corruptors. And yet this small, completely undefended animal had been living alone inside an abandoned outpost and had survived.
"Maybe she lived close to a dark water lake." Coco suggested while staring at the canteens around the periter.
"The only location where that would make sense is the top of the mountain." Kira said with quiet certainty. "Her family might live there. She might already be missing them."
Wip yawned, a very small and entirely unconcerned yawn that settled the question of whether she was missing anything.
The next morning Finn unfolded the map and pointed at the mountain, not at the base but up toward the peak.
"The last outpost is on the other side." he said while tracing the route with one finger. "The fastest way is over the top. The canyons around the base go the long way and we’d lose two days."
"Over the top." I repeated slowly while looking at the mountain, which was not a small mountain.
"Maybe three hours of climbing." Finn calculated, probably not realizing he was going to climb it too.
We all studied the mountain. Kira was already pressing one hand against the stone and testing the surface for grip points.
"I can run vines on this surface." she said while examining the rock carefully. "Sothing to hold onto."
"Amazing." I replied, then looked down at Wip sitting by my boots in her usual spot.
The animal looked back up at .
"You can’t climb that." I told her.
"Wip." she replied simply.
I crouched and opened the top of my pack. Wip looked at the opening, then at the mountain, then back at the opening. She walked forward, and pulled herself inside with calm confidence. She turned around until she was facing outward, ears up and tail resting inside the pack.
"Good Wip." I said while standing and pulling the pack onto my shoulders. The extra weight was barely noticeable. "Don’t complain about the view."
Kira’s vines made the first section manageable. She ran them diagonally across the mountain wall, thick enough to grip and spaced for climbing, anchoring them into natural cracks in the rock.
The height increased quickly. The canyons below spread outward in every direction, vast and rust colored under the green sky. In the distance we could still see Kira’s vine from the seventh and sixth outpost. Even from here it was impressive.
"Wip wip wip." Wip said for most of the first hour, making a comntary from inside the pack.
She did not sound afraid, just observant, like a small narrator describing the climb.
"Good vibes." Phinyx said at one point with quiet confidence, and a mont later the air around us shifted slightly. The next handhold felt easier to trust. The grip was the sa, but the body stopped insisting that failure was inevitable.
His ability was really useful in monts like these.
I focused on climbing, analyzing which holds could take weight, where the vines were thickest, and how to distribute the weight of the pack. At one point I considered switching sections of the rock face to give myself a better grip, but the last thing anyone needed was for to extract a chunk of mountain while hanging high above the canyon floor.
I left the rocks alone this ti.
The wind picked up around the two hour mark, it was really cold. Finn yelled that we were almost at the top.
Wip shifted inside the pack.
"We’re almost there." I said quietly.
The pack shifted again.
Then the clip on the side snapped open with a small flat sound. The pack slipped loose on one shoulder. I grabbed for the strap with my free hand a half second too late.
The pack dropped.
And Wip was inside it.
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