It began with a scent.
Sharp. Wet. Electric.
Raif stirred from half-sleep, nostrils twitching. He recognised the smell instantly, not memory, but instinct. A pressure in the air, a whisper through the leaves. Rain. Not a drizzle. A deluge.
He sat up and scanned the sky. The canopy was dark, more than night could explain. Thick cloud choked the treetops, and the usual symphony of insects was silent. A low, distant rumble rolled through the trees.
The orb pulsed.
Raif froze. The glow wasn't just light, it was pressure, attention, presence. A warning, maybe. Or a judgment. He stepped toward it, heart thudding. Was it watching him? Why now? Why not before the fall, before the near-deaths, the endless silence?
He knelt, eyes locked on the soft blue pulse.
"You knew," he whispered, voice raw. "You always know."
He touched the surface.
A single, deliberate beat, blue light beneath stone. Then words appeared, not spoken, but pressed into Raif's mind:
[WEATHER EVENT DETECTED]
[HAZARD LEVEL: MODERATE TO SEVERE]
[SHELTER INADEQUATE]
Raif blinked. "Now you decide to wake up," he muttered. He stood slowly, spine cracking from tension and poor sleep, and watched as the orb's pulse slowed again. Just enough to give warning, nothing more. No aid. No guidance.
He turned sharply, walking across the clearing to the center of camp.
"Wake up," he said louder, voice cutting through sleep and storm.
The camp stirred. Naera was already sitting upright, her eyes narrow. Goss groaned, swearing under his breath. Thomund stood and cracked his neck. Lira didn't move. Still curled under her sloped lean-to, the barkwolf wound pulsing red beneath its wrapping.
Raif's voice cut the mist. "The Core just warned me. Something's coming. Rain. Big. We need to prepare."
"Now?" Goss grumbled. "Sun's not even up."
"Now," Raif said. "We need a trench. Something to divert water away from the shelter and cellar. We've got maybe an hour, if that."
"I'll help," Eloin said, already rising.
Thomund nodded. "Tools?"
"Whatever digs," Raif said. "Flat sticks, bark scrapers, bones. Just move soil."
As Raif grabbed a sharpened branch and began gouging the wet earth near the shelter, Goss stood, arms crossed.
"This is madness," he muttered. "It hasn't rained properly in days."
"Look up," Raif said.
Goss did. Saw the black line of clouds pressing down through the green.
"I'll help," Thomund said. "You just direct."
Naera was already pulling a flat piece of bark from the drying rack. "This will push earth well enough," she said.
Goss exhaled through his nose. "Fine. But I'm not digging some bloody moat alone."
"You're not," Raif said. "But if we don't start, we lose everything again."
The group split. Thomund and Raif dug the perimeter trench in slow arcs, circling the camp's most vital structures, the shelters and the core cellar. Eloin and Naera focused on drainage routes, carving shallow feeder lines that split runoff into directions away from the drying racks and walk paths.
Naera glanced up once. "If it floods from the north slope, this line here-"
Raif nodded. "We widen it. Make sure it channels before the cellar overflows."
Wind stirred.
Leaves rattled overhead.
"You think this'll hold?" Goss asked, voice low.
"No," Raif said. "But it'll slow it. And maybe that's enough."
They worked in silence for long minutes. Then:
"You ever dig trenches before?" Thomund asked.
Raif shook his head. "Only on spreadsheets."
That earned a grunt. "Not bad technique, then."
Eloin added, "If we reinforce the sides with stone or bark panels, it'll stop collapse. But we need time."
"We don't have it," Raif muttered.
They dug until the first drops fell. By then, the trench was nearly complete, uneven but passable, a shallow curve of broken earth encircling the vulnerable points.
Then came the wind.
It howled through the clearing, tugging at vines and shelter alike. Bark panels flapped. Leaves swirled. Rain slammed sideways, driven by gusts strong enough to bend young saplings.
"Inside!" Raif shouted, helping Lira stand. She resisted but relented after a moment, wincing, limping.
Water pooled fast. The ground churned into mud. Naera knelt by the drying rack, trying to salvage the few preserved roots.
Wind arrived first, high and soft like a whisper across stone.
Naera paused, eyes narrowing. "The canopy's breathing wrong," she said aloud, voice tight. "Trees are moving before the wind reaches them."
Raif looked up. Sure enough, the trees shuddered before any breeze hit the camp, reacting to something deeper, more primal than air.
The first wave of rain came in slanting curtains, fast and warm. It drenched them in seconds.
Goss cursed and dashed across the clearing, his feet slipping in mud. "The drying rack! Bloody hell-"
He dropped to his knees, fumbling with the lashings, trying to save the bark-slab cover. Naera moved to his side silently, her hands already pulling at the lashings, tightening them around the central stake.
Raif bolted toward the nearest shelter. The roof was already buckling. He grabbed a length of wood and shoved it beneath the crossbeam, wedging it into place.
Eloin was halfway down the trench Raif had made a while ago, his boots lost in the runoff. He stabbed at the muck with a flat stick, trying to redirect the water. "We need a second trench! If this reaches the pit, it'll collapse the base!"
"Dig uphill!" Raif shouted back. "Carve it before it flows further!"
The wind grew teeth.
Lightning split the sky, a violet fork that didn't crackle but flashed silently. The clearing lit for an instant, revealing the full sweep of the storm. Wind, trees, shadows-
Then Lira screamed.
Raif spun around. "Lira?!"
Her form vanished in a blur of motion and mud. "She's gone!" Goss shouted.
The camp raced to the edge of the ditch, a runoff gully carved by the storm surge. Lira had fallen into it, water up to her chest, mud dragging at her limbs. Her injured leg twisted beneath her, stuck at an ugly angle. She thrashed once, then began to slip under.
"Get a vine. Anything!" Raif barked.
Naera was already running.
She grabbed bark weave straps that had been stored beneath a drying stone, thin, pliable fibres she'd soaked to soften them for lashing. She looped them into a line, braced one end around a shallow root, and slid partway down the embankment.
"Hold still," she said, voice low but clear.
Lira coughed, choking, her voice breaking. "I-I can't-"
"Don't talk. Just stay up."
Naera tied the strap around Lira's torso just as Raif and Thomund arrived. Eloin moved to brace the root. The storm howled.
"Pull now!" Raif shouted.
The strap groaned. Mud sucked at Lira's limbs, resisting every tug.
"She's stuck!" Thomund growled. "She's wedged!"
"Not for long," Raif snarled. He dropped to his knees, bracing his boots against a rock, and pulled with everything he had.
With a wet rip and a scream of pain from Lira, she came free.
They dragged her up and over the edge, the strap burning red across her soaked shirt. She collapsed in the grass, gasping, sobbing, shivering.
Her mask cracked, not just pain, but terror. Her usual fire gone, replaced with something small and raw.
Naera didn't speak. She peeled off the outer layer of bark wrapping from her chest and shoulders, used to guard against rain and friction, and draped it over Lira's back.
"You're okay," Raif whispered. "You're okay."
Lira clung to the bark wrap weakly. Her teeth chattered, her hands balled into fists. Her voice, when it came, was a ragged whisper. "Don't... say anything."
Goss stood a few paces away, arms limp, mouth slightly open. His expression wasn't blank now, it was afraid.
The shelter rattled again. Wind screamed louder.
They huddled in silence, soaked and shivering, rain battering the clearing. Goss stared at the mud-slick ground, his eyes unfocused, lips pressed together until they whitened. Thomund's hands shook slightly as he tightened a fraying tie on the collapsing lean-to. Eloin, breathing heavily, leaned against a support post, face drawn and hollow. Lira, wrapped in Naera's bark cloth, sat against the wall of the shelter, her hands still trembling, though her face was turned to hide it. She wasn't crying, but it felt like she might, if anyone said a word.
Naera sat nearby, reshaping the ruined straps with mechanical precision. Her clothes were soaked, hair flattened to her skull, but her gaze flicked often to Lira. There was no judgment, just watchfulness.
No one spoke.
Even the fire was silent, drowned.
Raif sat apart, near the orb, rain trailing from his hair. He looked at his hands, blistered from pulling and soaked to the bone. The silence wasn't rest. It was aftermath.
The orb pulsed once more.
[STRUCTURAL FAILURE LIKELY]
[FLOOD RISK ACTIVE]
Raif stared at it. "You knew. Hours ago, you knew." His voice cracked, not with accusation, but with something close to disbelief. "Why now? Why this, and not the other times? Why let us almost drown? Why not warn me when it mattered?"
He ran a hand through his soaked hair, frustration boiling behind his eyes. The orb pulsed again, calm, cold, impersonal. Raif knelt in front of it, lowering his voice to a whisper.
"What are you really watching for?" he asked. "Because it isn't survival. It isn't help. You let us suffer, then count the cost after."
He wanted to smash it. To throw it into the rising mud and leave it buried. But he couldn't. Not yet.
He stood up slowly, chest tight. The orb pulsed once more, and Raif turned away before he could see what it meant.
It didn't answer. Just pulsed.
The night dragged. The shelter's walls bulged inward under the wind. Eloin and Raif braced them with their backs. Thomund dug a narrow trench by hand to divert the rising water. Naera re-tied lashings with soaked vines, her fingers numb.
The rain slowed.
No one moved at first. The world held still, only the steady drip of water from trees and the groaning of sodden wood broke the silence.
Then Eloin exhaled shakily and slid down beside the half-collapsed shelter, arms resting limp over his knees. "We almost lost her," he said, not to anyone in particular. "We almost lost her and the cellar in the same hour."
Goss stood nearby, mud streaked up his legs, water dripping from his elbows. His lips parted like he might speak, but no sound came. Instead, he looked at Lira, then down at the earth. Whatever he wanted to say, it stayed trapped in his throat.
Lira shifted beneath the bark wrap, eyes still open but unreadable. When Goss stepped closer, she flinched, not dramatically, but enough. She turned her face to the wall, muttering just loud enough to be heard:
"Go away."
Goss did.
Thomund dragged himself upright, staring at the lines of the trench he'd dug by hand. He nodded once, without smiling.
No one else said anything.
The storm had passed, but its weight lingered.
Raif stared at the orb, shoulders drawn tight.
[Weather Event Survived: +3 KE]
[Total KE: 66 ]
[Challenge Updated: "Defend Through Natural Hazard" – COMPLETE]