Chapter Twenty Nine: A Brief Encounter With Briefs
(Artwork made by me in Paint3D, photograph manipulation)
Mr Shouty Dwerg Lord turned, stuttering, a shaking finger lifting to point at Valodrael as the Void dragon swaggered down off the building and crossed the street to coil round behind Estella, a move that put his bulk between her and where Nanny Tatters perched on the damaged roofs on that side of the street.
"What... Who... What?" he mumbled from inside his helmet, finger trembling in the air. Valodrael grinned, obviously enjoying the Lord's distress.
"I have to concur," Myslynn stepped forward, her expression forbidding and rested the head of her war hammer on the broken flagstones, "Who and what are you?"
"Um," Estella stepped forward and bowed to both lords in turn, "Lord Myslynn and good Lord Sir, may I introduce Valodrael, last of the Void Dragons. Valodrael, the good Lords of the Dwergs, the true people of Hestia." For a second, Valodrael lifted his head, looking down on the dwerg Lord's, something smug in his eyes and then he lowered his head, extending his wings as he lifted one forefoot to his chest. The effect was rather spoiled as one wing crumpled and sagged, trying to go liquid on him and his face tightened as he hauled it back into its proper shape by main will.
"My greetings, good Lords of the Dwergs, true children of the stone," he rumbled and bubbled in the same breath, "May I declare that I have found my stay in your realm to be most... tasteful."
"What?" Mr Shouty was still only able to form monosyllabic sentences.
"I see," Myslynn's expression didn't change, "And that begs the question as to how you entered our realm without our knowledge or permission."
"Actually you did give me permission when you invited Estella to meet you," Valodrael smiled, "Consider me to be her... guardian angel." Something like the remains of a werewolf's face rippled under his hide for a second, the features oozing and distorting.
"I am not familiar with such a thing," Myslynn didn't look away.
"Allow me to explain," Jeremiah said unctuously, stepping forward, "A guardian angel is a spirit being assigned at a person's birth to watch over them, to guide and guard them from evil and lead them to heaven. However, it is speculated that if a person turns away from their true destiny then the angel will depart and leave room for a demon to move in."
"More like the so called guardian angel I was assigned at birth was a lazy, no good, worthless air head!" Estella snapped, " 'Cause if they were doing their job I would have had no need to look for protection outside of my father's house. And if Valodrael is a demon then what do you call that 'god' you worship?"
"People we have a bigger problem here," Kaelin called. Unnoticed she had climbed down the front of the building she had scaled and was now crouched with her ear pressed up against the side of the werewolf siege beast that had been the first to die.
"I can hear something moving inside here," she told them.
"My dear Kaelin," Jeremiah shook his head, "Now why would anything be moving inside of there, unless you think that Thorian has once again not done a good enough job?"
"Hey!" Thorian rounded on the priest.
"Shut up!" Kaelin snapped, "I swear it, I can hear something moving inside of here! How long can a dwerg hold their breath for?"
"Oh of course," Ulrich snapped his fingers, "It swallowed... I say old chap what is your name? Not that it matters right now, it swallowed his guard. The one who saved his life."
"Allow me," Valodrael bubbled, stepping forward. The dwergs hesitated but stepped back, pushed aside by Valodrael's confidence. He shoved the body over on to its side, even as he had to pull his back leg back into the proper shape.
"Where?" he asked Kaelin.
"I'd say between here," she lay a palm against the siege beast's hide and then put her other hand further down its belly, "And here but its getting faint."
"Time to do what I do best," Valodrael noted, lifting his left forefoot and crooking the forefinger. The claw seemed to length and starlight started to pulse within its form. When it pierced into the siege beast's scales Kaelin drew back her hand in surprise. That claw was so hot it was cauterizing the wound even as it sliced through skin, fat and muscle tissue, the flesh pulling back from the injury with the smell of sizzling bacon.
"Now," Valodrael stepped back, "Get to work."
Kaelin shoved her arms into the gash, reaching for the thing she felt faintly stirring in the depths of the beast's guts.
"I can't..." she plunged in up to her shoulders, "Got him!" She tugged. She grunted as she pulled again. "Come on!" she muttered, "Get your aft out of there!"
"Here, I can help," Thorian stumped up beside her and plunged into the gap up to his waist, head and shoulders disappearing into the belly of the beast.
"Phew! It stinks in here!" his muffled voice came and then he backed out, pulling the limp form of a dwerg guard in very fancy armor out with him. "There you go, all out of there," he grinned as the guard flopped to the floor with a very squelchy splat, heedless of his own gore drenched state, "Don't know how that thing swallow yeh without you getting stuck in its throat." The guard didn't reply.
With a jangle of armor Myslynn thumped up what was left of the steps and snapped through the chin strap of the guard's helmet with a small dagger. She wrenched it off and span it away. Taking a deep breath she pinched the guard's nose shut and then blew into his mouth. Lifting her face, she drew another deep breath and blew again. After a third breath she suddenly pinch hold of a nose hair and yanked.
The guard sat up with a yelp, hand going to his face as his eyes watered.
"There you are boyo," Myslynn grinned, "Back in the land of the living and not a moment too soon by the look of you. That is going to take some polishing off." Someone chuckled and Myslynn started to as well. That did it, the chuckling becoming laughter as the guard looked round trying to understand how he was still alive and how come it was all such a joke.
Myslynn wiped her eyes as she turned away, Mr Shouty stepping up to her.
"I don't understand," he admitted.
"You will, Barrowbreaker," Myslynn gripped his shoulder, "You will." She turned to the King's Special and their allies, "Well you don't just seem to bring trouble and death with you but life as well. I'm still not totally sure about him." She gestured to Valodrael and he inclined his head back, even as his neck tried to liquidate, "But I for one reckon it worthwhile having you here. Thank you, all of you. We needed you today."
"Our pleasure to help," Ulrich touched a knuckle to his forehead in the absence of having a hat to doff.
"Speak for yourself," Jeremiah muttered.
"As if you haven't had fun tormenting that soul you brought back," Valodrael gurgled like a drain, "I have to say it is almost a shame we did not know you some years ago. There was one I would not have minded doing that too, though there wasn't that much left of him by the time I had finished with him." He grunted as an entire side of his ribs tried to collapse.
"There is no need to be like that," Estella smiled as she stepped up to him, "I was just glad that he was never going to hurt me ever again."
"I would still have made it last longer if I'd known more of the details," Valodrael growled even as his whole form began to sag. He didn't quite stop the noise of pain rising in his throat.
"What's happening?" Myslynn took a step back, concern in her eyes.
"The price," Estella lifted her hands to either side of Valodrael's muzzle, "What is paid for surviving the Domilii's attention and the Day of Detonation. And what I pay for having the freedom of my own choosing." She closed her eyes a moment, touching her forehead to Valodrael's and then she kissed him.
Valodrael liquefied.
Estella went stiff, back bowing backwards, fingers taut as they spread wide, the dark flood of Valodrael's form pouring down her throat. She flopped forward as the last of it disappeared but kept her feet. After a moment she straightened and blinked Valodrael's blackness from her eyes. Her face wrinkled.
"He was right, those things did taste of old liver, yuck," she noted.
After a moment Myslynn took a deep breath and let it out explosively.
"Now I don't understand," she admitted, "But I am willing to ask questions..."
"Perhaps later," Jeremiah called, "If people want to ask this hairy gentleman what his kind was doing here then they need to do it soon. Such things can only linger for so long."
"Just as long as..." Thorian yawned so hard it looked ready to crack his jaw, "As long as we do it quick. I want a nap and soon."
Kaelin screwed up her face as if trying to swallow something, then she gave in a yawned as well.
"Yep," she agreed, "What he said. Today has been entirely too long."
"What say you...?" Jeremiah looked up at the edge of the roof and stopped mid sentence, "Oh, he's gone."
"Who's gone old boy?" Ulrich asked.
"We had a visitor not a moment ago," Jeremiah frowned, "He was rather good at giving those big beasties pierced ears but he seems to have wandered off."
Ulrich frowned as he looked up at the edge of the roof and then something crossed his face for just a second.
"Now, now my dear Jeremiah," he smiled kindly, "It is unhealthy to indulge in these delusions of yours. You really ought to seek guidance on what is real and what is not."
"Are you questioning my judgement?" Jeremiah drew himself up, seeming to inflate.
"Now would I do a thing like that?" Ulrich replied with all due sincerity, "I am merely observing that it does not bode well for the state of your mind if you are beginning to experience distortions of reality. Do you feel unwell by any chance?"
Estella tipped her head as she watched the on going spat between the noble and the priest, listening to a voice that, currently, only she could hear as the speaker was residing inside her head. She bit her lip to stop herself from laughing out loud as it was suggested to her that leaving the priest to face the reversal of roles would be rather justified desserts.
"That and you just like watching him being tormented and harassed, don't you?" she muttered quietly.
She bit her lip again as she felt the laughter of another coiling through her belly.
"Honestly," Kaelin snorted as she paced up to where the two where arguing, "We're on a time limit here people, if you want to ask this hairy basket any questions I thought we needed to hurry up."
"My dear Kaelin," Jeremiah's smile was still pained as he turned to her but he seemed grateful enough for the distraction, "Are you offering to go first?"
"Me? Ha!" Kaelin spat, stumping up to the werewolf's ghost and glaring at it, "I only have one thing to say to this basket and it doesn't need words." It snarled at her in silence. Kaelin snarled back and then took great satisfaction in raising both her middle fingers at it and...
Her feet moved as if she was going to walk forward only instead she slid backwards, her toes never leaving the ground as she glided as if the battered pavement was as slick as ice. The ghost werewolf hanged there with its jaw flapping open. Estella raised an eyebrow. That was some muscle control Kaelin had when she wanted to have it.
"Well," Ulrich shook himself, pulling his eyes away from Kaelin with some effort. He didn't think that she would appreciate him staring and she could be extremely... direct in her displeasure. Best not to risk it. "Well then, oh tell us mister hairy and drooling, tell what are the burial customs among your clan of werewolves so that we can make sure to do absolutely none of them."
The ghost werewolf looked at him and wrinkled its muzzle, confused to all depths by his words.
"What?" it barked.
"You see, ladies and gentlemen," Ulrich gestured expansively, "It is an orc of the least intelligent bent, a disgrace to the race that helped found Thorian's people."
"What?" the ghost werewolf barked again.
"Are you... taking the mick out of me?" Thorian frowned.
"Thorian you are a good friend but I believe you do admit that you are not the smartest person in the room," Ulrich swung down off of Peter's back and stood before his friend, "However, that is no shame to you. You cannot help being born simple and I, for one, believe that there are very few simple people in Hell. However, there are that many ignorant people crammed in there that you cannot see the floor for them."
"Um," Thorian scratched an ear, causing a shower of drying flakes of blood to fall, "Is there a difference?"
"I would say so," Myslynn agreed, "Simple is something you are born with, a test for those around you as it reveals who would be willing to take advantage of someone who can't fight back. Ignorant is a mind that could be better, could reach higher but chooses to stay in its closed up little corner, unwilling to learn anything new."
Behind her Mr Shouty, Barrowbreaker as she had named him, shifted uneasily, looking off to one side.
"But back to the question in hand," Ulrich turned back to the ghost werewolf, "What are the burial customs of your people so that we may make sure we do not do them?"
It hanged above the remains of its body, which was now leaking red across the floor as it defrosted, a look of utter puzzlement on its face.
"They don't have burial practices," Kaelin sighed, "The pack often just leaves its dead behind for someone else to clean up. If not that then, well." She shrugged. "Meat is meat, no matter where it came from."
"Oh!" Ulrich said, face wrinkling up, "Oh, I see. I... yes well."
"If it makes you feel any better then before my grandfather did... what ever it is he has done, the bodies would revert to whoever they had been before they were infected after they died so it wasn't so obvious that they were chewing on once pack mates. Now, well, I doubt they care. There are reasons that wolves hate werewolves as much as humans do. Healthy predators drive rabid members out of the pack and you can't get much more rabid than werewolves."
She folded her arms across her chest, one hand playing with her hair.
"Hey," Thorian laid a big hand on her shoulder, "It's OK. My people ain't got many friends either but we do OK and that Elisha man, he offered me a place to stay when we're all done with this, I reckon he'd let you stay as well."
"Really?" Kaelin looked up at him.
"Yeah, said he like my big heart," Thorian grinned crookedly, "Well I might be guarding that hot bath house thingy Ulrich wants to make so I reckon Elisha wouldn't mind you filling in for me."
"Oh," Kaelin blinked, "Well that's nice of him and um, I'll think on it."
There was a squeal of pain.
They whipped round to see Jeremiah trying to force a lump of very dead werewolf into the ghost's maw. It tried whipping its head here and there but Jeremiah wouldn't leave it alone and in the end it snapped at him. He raised a hand and the beast squealed, gasping in remembered pain responses.
"How does it feel, now that all your clan is dead," he smirked at it.
"Stupid little man thing," it snarled back, "You think that this was all the pack? You are as blind with your eyes as you are with your nose, man thing. We came to gather the last of what the pack needed and we have succeeded. Listen."
Jeremiah's mouth thinned as it commanded him and he lifted his hand. It screamed as it relived once more its last moments, Valodrael's ice rupturing it from within as the breath curdled in its lungs and its organs froze.
Kaelin wasn't paying attention. She scaled the face of the building beside the werewolf's specter and stopped at the top of a column, head cocked to one side, ears going lupine and swiveling back and forth. In the distance the last yips and yelps of the retreating pack echoed and she tasted her gore rise.
"He's telling the truth," she reported as her feet touched the flagstones again, "What ever the pack was after they have got. They have taken brutal loses to do it but they have done it. I can hear it in their voices, the ones who are retreating, they have what they want."
Barrowbreaker immediately looked around.
"You!" he pointed at the guard that seemed the least exhausted, "Go to guard house K9, Bethel Street. Organize the pursuit. Harry them to the edge of our realm, kill as many as you can and recover what they have stolen. If you can not recover it, destroy it."
"Sir?" the guard seemed perturbed.
"Better destroyed than in the hands of these unclean beasts," Barrowbreaker snapped, "Destroy it if you cannot recover it. Better the knowledge of the ancients is lost than it is used against the people."
"Yes Sir!" the guard crashed his plated fist against his breastplate and then turned to double quick time it down the shattered street. Barrowbreaker turned back to them and met Myslynn's gaze. After a moment she inclined her head to him. Respect was given as respect was earned. The werewolf on the other hand was gloating even as the last shock waves of his punishment was trembling through him.
"How does it feel to know you failed, little man thing?" the ghost asked, "How does it feel to know that nothing you can do will stop the Pack from taking what is rightfully ours. You are weak! You are nothing! You..."
Jeremiah snapped his fingers and the ghost wailed as it disintegrated.
"That is quite enough of that," Jeremiah observed, dusting off his hands.
Sinbar sighed and rubbed his brow a moment.
"As much as it is impolite for me to criticize a fellow practitioner," he tried to keep his voice level, "But did it occur to you that we could do with questioning it as to what the pack could want from the realm of the dwergs?"
"Oh, is it impolite to criticize a fellow necromancer?" Jeremiah asked with a smile, stroking his beard.
"Of course it is," Sinbar frowned, "The rules of etiquette are there to prevent ill feeling to a fellow from resulting in misuse of the gifts of Kronzyn..." He trailed away.
"You weren't trained by the House of Kronzyn?"
"Should I have been?" Jeremiah asked, "After all, who said that it is this Kronzyn who gives me the ability to control the dead? I think you need to go back to school yourself, little man. My god has nothing to do with you little Comforter."
Sinbar swallowed, fingers tightening on his flute.
"However, if you wish to try and prove that your wee Listener comes at least a little close to the might of the great Klu'ga-nuth, then you are welcome to try." Myslynn's mouth thinned at the patronizing tone in Jeremiah's voice but she closed her mouth as Sinbar flicked a finger and shook his head ever so slightly.
"Oh, so you don't think that you god measures up to the might of the Iridium Dragon?" Jeremiah looked down on Sinbar, misreading his head shake as he had missed the moment of Sinbar's finger. Ulrich looked round at where Quenril and the rest of Lady Zilvra's relatives were arching their fingers in gestures designed to ward off evil. They definitely recognized that name and feared it. He would have to make the time to ask them why that name carried such weigh with them.
Sinbar didn't reply verbally to Jeremiah's baiting, stepping forward instead and cocking an eyebrow at him. Jeremiah smiled and stepped back, gesturing expansively to the leaking corpse of the white werewolf. Sinbar stepped up to the edge of the puddle and flexed his fingers in turn. Lifting the flute to his lips he began to play a soft, coaxing tune. Kaelin stepped towards him without realizing it. The tune continued, cajoling, a gentle blandishment the drew the living closer even as a bluish glow infused the dead werewolves fur.
With a snarl its ghost reared up from its mortal remains. It laid its spectral ears back and snarled at them all.
"Pardon me, my good wolf," Sinbar smiled slightly as he let his flute fall from his lips, "But my esteemed college forgot a few questions that we have for you. My apologizes for interrupting your eternal rest for a second time but we really need to know what you were trying to steal from the dwergs so what were you after in this attack?"
"Not trying, little rabbit, succeeding!" the werewolf's soul snarled its mirth at Sinbar.
"But you didn't succeed, did you?" Jeremiah replied, "How does it feel to know that you were the pathetic member of the pack? The one thrown away so others could step on your corpse to obtain what you wanted."
The werewolf snarled at Jeremiah but Sinbar blew a harsh note that made it wince.
"Enough to the willy waving contest," Sinbar snapped, "Particularly as yours is non functioning. What were you after?"
"Perhaps you should check you den, little rabbit," the ghost werewolf grinned through a mouthful of fangs, "What we were taking of your fluids from the little dens of these half beings worked well enough but the first of the source will be even more effective. With what we have taken today we will be able to conquer the very skies above, no where will be out of our reach!"
"Oh Golgotha," Sinbar had gone pale, "Myslynn, would you?"
"On it boyo!" she nodded and pointed at one of her guards, "You! Guard house F3, round them up and get over to Sinbar's workshop. I want the place on lock down, the only person who is to go in is Sinbar until a full inventory is complete and we know what they have taken."
"Yes ma'am!" her guard nodded and double timed it away.
"Is this why your kind is not reverting back to what you should be when you are killed?" Sabal asked stepping forward. Ulrich looked at him. It was so often that Quenril did the talking for Ulrich's trio of body guards that that he sometimes forgot that the other two had minds of their own, "It is just that I was told that your kind are suppose to revert back to who you were before you were infected when you are killed. Is this why?"
The white werewolf's specter snarled, claws spreading wide.
"We have been blessed!" it rumbled, "No more are we shackled by the foul weaknesses of the chains of men. We are the wild! We are the strong! We will take back that which has been desecrated by the filthy hands of men and their witless beasts! The Wild will reclaim its place in the blood and bones of all living beings and the first rule will once again be the only rule!"
"Oh of course," Kaelin rolled her eyes and folded her arms, "The weak exist to feed the strong, any that have not the strength to fight deserve to be eaten blah, blah, blah!" She pinched the bridge of her nose.
"Silence! Pup!" the specter slashed out at her but could not reach, "Worthless scum! After all the favors your grandfather gave you, you still turned on your own family! The only reason you haven't been hunted down like the worthless, human licking dog you are is because Greely still wants you! And you dare strike him when you should be whimpering at his feet in thanks for his mercy! You are a dog! A human rutting dog! And when we have cleansed this world of the stone builders you will learn your place on your belly! You..."
"That is enough of that!" Ulrich stepped up and back handed a knuckle slap across the ghost's face, "Nobody should talk to a woman like that, particularly not you!"
The blow didn't connect in the way that a slap usually would have done but the ghost yelped in surprise as its form billowed in the air, shredded for a moment by the motion. It rippled back into place, spectral eyes wide and fearful.
"Not pleasant is it when you are the one who is weak," Ulrich smiled and waved his hand through it again, several times, ripping its phantom form with every pass and then waiting for it to be almost, almost reformed before waving his hand through it again. It was beginning to whine by the time he stopped.
"Now I think that the lesson has been learnt," Ulrich turned away from it, "Any one else have any questions for this hairy chap?"
Myslynn stomped forward, eyebrows beetling, mouth a thin line.
"Are you saying that all the destruction we have faced today, all the people who have been hurt were just some sort of collateral damage? That we weren't even the targets, you just wanted to steal some squit and be done with it?" she demanded.
"You are little things," the werewolf's ghost snarled, "You are prey! You are only worthy to be food for the pack."
"Well I say you goofed up there," Thorian smiled, "Seems to me that you were our prey, little doggy."
"I think we have everything we need to know out of this one," Myslynn turned to Sinbar.
"I agree," he nodded and lifted his flute.
"Allowed me," Jeremiah lifted a hand as he stepped forward, "Tell Klu'ga-nuth that I sent you." His fingers cut through the ghost's ethereal being, drawing a symbol the glowed with rotting power inside its chest. The werewolf's ghost screamed as it was sucked into that symbol and then the symbol blinked out of existence. Kaelin shuddered and rubbed the hair on her forearms flat. There was something about Jeremiah that just... She shuddered again and decided that she'd rather take on Valodrael when he was in a hungry mood than Jeremiah. The priest was getting worse as this trip went on, rather than better, almost as if there was something else pushing him on, encouraging his very worse impulses. She glanced at Ulrich. Maybe she should ask Ulrich what it was he had read in that book Jeremiah had lent him. It might give them some sort of clue as to what the fat priest was planning. Right now, however...
"It sounds like you have trouble in the world without a roof," Myslynn's look was sympathetic as she looked up at Kaelin.
"Nothing that I haven't known before," Kaelin shrugged, rubbing her arms again as she looked away.
"Doesn't make it any easier," Myslynn noted and turned back to Barrowbreaker to start organizing the clean up operation. Sinbar tucked his flute away and turned away to face the street.
"We need to talk about those dragon's teeth you took without permission," he noted to Estella as he passed her, "But right now I need to do an inspection of my workshop. I dread to think what they have taken."
"Understood Siwang Dashi," she bowed her head.
"Until later Congming de Nushi," Sinbar inclined his head and trilled up his skeletons, losing himself from sight in the center of the group as they marched away towards some where in the city that the King's Special hadn't seen yet.
Jeremiah clicked his fingers and the walls groaned as Nanny Tatters clambered down the front of the Lore Houses to join him on the shattered flagstones. He tugged his beard as he gave her the once over.
"I don't suppose that the workshop of our host would be big enough to house her like this," he observed.
"No," Kaelin drawled, "And neither would she fit through any of the tunnels leading us out of here."
"Oh shame, she is so much more impressive when she is like this," Jeremiah observed, "Oh well." He lifted his hands and carefully worded a pray to his god. It appeared that the Great Dragon was feeling generous as Jeremiah had sent yet another soul to be a plaything for his god's amusement.
With a creaking, crunching groan, Nanny Tatters shrunk, going from towering over the street to being the size of a medium pony at the shoulder. She blinked her sideways eyelids at Jeremiah but made no other move. He smiled as he turned to survey his three puppeted Ash Elves.
"Is it just me or..." Ulrich whispered to Kaelin as he whistled up Peter.
"I see it as well," she muttered back.
"Do you think he really hasn't noticed...?" Ulrich suggested as he sat down on Peter's back.
"None so blind as those who don't want to see," Kaelin agreed.
Jeremiah ignored their muttered conversion. The jealous and small minded were always going to be muttering their discontent as he walked passed. Such was the price of being great. He pursed his mouth as he looked as his collection of puppets. All three of the Ash Elf ones definitely stunk to high heaven now and there was the fact that one of them wasn't just gazing straight ahead like his fellows but actually had a glint of intelligence in his eyes. Jeremiah sank a hand into his pocket and stroked the cover of the Magnum opus in his pocket. Maybe that phantom bard, that Michael Azrael, had a point, it could be possible that a creator's creations could turn on their master, unnatural as that was. Still, vermin were very rarely grateful to their masters.
That little purple goblin was also not being much use but there again, if he got rid of all his creations, he'd have to start lugging his pack himself again. He narrowed his eyes at the bent back Vigor but the thing just stood there with its head hanging down, insensible to its master's scrutiny.
"You, here!" Jeremiah pointed an imperious finger. The Vigor shuffled over to his feet and stopped there. Jeremiah looked up at the three Ash Elf puppets. His lip twisted as he realized that one of them was most decidedly leaking. Despite what he had said to Sinbar and others, it was hardly the look that he wanted. People would be distracted by the ooze, worrying about cleaning their floor rather fearing the one controlling the puppets.
He lifted his hand and spoke a prayer of gratitude to his god.
The three Ash Elf puppets collapsed, the last threads of what was holding them together coming unraveled, tissues coming apart, skeletons dis-articulating as they crumpled to the floor with an extremely soggy sounding squelch. After a moment to absorb the released power, Jeremiah turned his back and walked away, commanding the Vigor and Nanny Tatters to follow him, but it was to disguise the fact that the burst of smell had turned his stomach and he was doing his utmost to not heave. That would have hardly helped his dignity.
Myslynn also stumped up to them.
"Barrowbreaker is going to organize the clean up party here," she informed them quietly, "I need to go back to the foundry to organize the workers to help out from there."
"You could use some of those furnaces to burn the bodies," Kaelin suggested.
"It may to come to that," Myslynn admitted, "Depending on what those dogs have stolen from Sinbar. I know what I think it is but I need to have the inventory to be utterly sure."
"Oh, what do you think it could be?" Jeremiah perked up.
"As I said, I need the full inventory before I start making reports," Myslynn rubbed her beard with both hands, "This is going to make more paper work than I'm willing to deal with but it looks like we're all lumped with it. Come on, let's get you back to the house and then I can get started."
"You don't want us here helping?" Ulrich asked, "It won't be the first time we've had to help with the clear up after a battle. We had to help the Snake Clan clear out their citadel before we could leave."
Myslynn looked at the three living Ash Elves and Quenril nodded silently. She then looked to where Thorian was yawning fit to break his jaw.
"Maybe tomorrow," she suggested, "You've already had quite a journey to get here today and it has been most of a work shift since you first arrived at Principle Mound. You've done enough for today, helping us still have a Principle Mound to defend and finding the answers of what these creatures were after in the first place. For that we owe you a lot of thanks and you have earned yourself a break. Come on, I'll take you back home and then I'll be able to get started on organizing the clean up of the city. I'm sorry that I can't let you just take yourselves but the whole thing with you being chaperoned hasn't been re-discussed in the council and until that happens I'm not supposed to let you run about outside of my sight. I can organize the clean up of my quarter from the mansion and make sure that we scour the city. My authority stretches fairly far when it comes to the guard houses."
"One has to wonder why you need guard houses at all if your society is so perfect," Jeremiah observed as he called Nanny Tatters and the vigor into line. Myslynn gave him one very long look.
"Never said our society is perfect," she turned to lead the way back to her house, "If you remember the mural I have in my retiring room, you'd know that. Just because we are the true people of the stone doesn't mean that we haven't had our frictions."
"After all, my good padre," Ulrich smiled as he nudged Peter into motion, "You of all people should know that the perfect society does not exist. It an affront to the gods for any mortal to claim perfection."
"And since when did you study theology my good Ulrich," Jeremiah's smile became forced.
"I did attend boarding school, at least until my grandfather died," Ulrich corrected, "The study of theology and good mental hygiene was part of the curriculum."
"Ah," Jeremiah's smile became more natural, "Then it would seem that the fault lay with the material rather than with the process."
"Hack to the kettle calling the pot black," Kaelin interrupted with a mutter and Ulrich only half suppressed a snigger. Jeremiah's face darkened but the others sobered before he could come up with a cutting remark. The journey back to the mansion took longer than planned.
Despite Jeremiah's carefully worded protests, which were ignored, the others weren't about to just walk passed the living wreckage when they knew they could help.
Ulrich surprised Kaelin with his willingness to help with the youngest victims of the attack, as well as how much it affected one of the Ash Elves. All she could get out of Ulrich when she asked her questions was the words 'the nursery wasn't good'. After a moment she decided that she wasn't going to push it, digging instead through her pack, trying to find the 'For Healing' potion.
"Wish Stink of the Midden was here," she muttered at Jeremiah's back as she set to work.
"Not as bad as the big castle place," Thorian grunted as he helped heap up battered werewolf carcasses as the side of the street, "That was the pits." He grunted as he tried to peel a werewolf out of the small crater were its head was smashed into the paving slab. "Not sure I like those big hammer things you guys use. It makes cleaning up that much more messy."
"And chopping them to pieces doesn't make a mess?" Myslynn asked. Thorian thought about it for a moment.
"The pieces are bigger," he noted at last, "Even if you have to do several trips to clear up. This is... this is goo."
"I'll be sure to lodge a complaint with the education core," Myslynn dead panned.
None of them felt much like food by the time they stumbled back to the mansion but the kitchen had adapted and left out a cold buffet for those who fancied a little something before turning in. Kaelin snagged a selection of cold meats that she could save in her room for when she woke up later, headed straight to the room she was offered and collapsed on to the bed. It had been a long and rather horrible day... again.
"Still cleaning up your mess, you twisted freak," she muttered as sleep closed over her head, the covers soft beneath her cheek. She was snoring face down in an instance.
*
Thorian sat helping himself to the food on offer in the dining room in generous amounts while Estella picked over her plate.
"What's up?" Thorian asked after a minute.
"Just the fact that there always seems to be a monster out there," Estella sighed.
Thorian frowned as he chewed the thought over as he finished another mouthful.
"I thought you liked monsters," he said at last, "Your dragon friend is some scary stuff."
Estella tipped her head over as if listening to a voice only she could hear and smiled.
"He thanks you for the compliment," she informed Thorian but then her smile faltered, "It's just..." She pocked her food again. "When I left my father's house, I thought I was leaving behind the monsters, the ones who look like men. Oh I don't dispute that Valodrael can be scary, dangerous and deadly to those he wants to be to but that is what he is. The Void Dragons are... were chaotic. They reveled in danger and risk, they power was to cause disaster, that was what they were made for. You can temper the base material but you can't change it. You can't make gold into steel or steel into gold. The fact that Val chooses to temper the instinct to just destroy everything in front of him well, that's something he does for me."
"Oh?" Thorian asked, taking another bite.
"It means we can hide more easily, travel without so much risk," Estella admitted, "It means we can hunt for what we need in civilized places more openly. It's one of the reasons I cut my hair. Its grown out a lot since we came to the Underworld but when it was short I could pass fairly well for a boy, though I appreciate being able to breath easier."
"What you mean?" Thorian frowned.
"Um these," Estella used her hands to highlight a couple of her assets. Thorian looked and then looked down at his plate, the blush turning his ear tips pink. Estella laughed.
"Yes I have to hide those to be treated as a young man who is interested in the esoteric arts," she took a mouthful, relaxing some, "As a girl? No chance, I don't think there is a sage, scholar or mage out there who would take a girl seriously. To them all a girl's head is stuffed with is her home, her husband and her family. I confess that I was surprised that Sinbar was so open to answering my questions about the dwerg's methods and materials, as well as his own arts, though I did hear that the necromancers of Kronzyn let their women into their ranks. I wonder what has driven Sinbar from his home, the necromancers were well established, though..." She frowned.
"What?" Thorian asked, frowning back.
"The necromancers of Kronzyn were accepted because they were useful," Estella explained, "Every body has a use to the Astral All Father but if you don't have a use..." She stuck her tongue out and made an indelicate nose, "Byyyyyyye!"
Thorian frowned.
"That doesn't sound friendly," he admitted.
"It isn't but it is how the land of the Astral All Father is run," Estella pocked her food again, "If you don't have value, if you're not useful, well...." She faltered and took a huge breath. "If I hadn't met Valodrael when I did, I won't be alive now."
"Why not?" Thorian frowned some more.
"We all must serve the Astral All Father, who guards us from above," Estella quoted, "A man by baring arms, a women by bearing sons. Only I'd been made... unfit for marriage. I no longer had a use and if my father had found out." She laughed but it was the sort of laugh that hid tears. "As I said - byyyyye!"
Thorian sat back, frowning trying to squeeze it through his mind, trying to get an understanding on it.
"How old were you when you met Valodrael?" he asked at last.
"I was twelve," Estella admitted, "But it had been going on for a year, no, slightly more than a year."
Thorian's expression darkened.
"Some booger did that to you?" he demanded, "Some booger hurt you? Some booger spoiled you?"
"I suppose you could put it that way," Estella was taken back by Thorian's anger, especially as it didn't seem to be aimed at her.
Thorian spat an orcish curse that fizz and popped in the air before combusting.
"When I find him I'll break both his legs!" he flared, "I'll pull his arms off! Then I'll take it off and ram it so far up his nose...!"
"It's okay! It's okay!" Estella reached across the table, "He's gone, he's dead. Valodrael dealt with him for me. He can't hurt me ever again."
"Dealt with him?" Thorian asked, simmering down a little, "Wot you mean - dealt with him?"
Estella flinched suddenly and blinked hard, blackness sloshing in one of her eyes until it was completely full.
"I ate him," Valodrael's voice issued from between her lips, "And he wriggled most pleasingly on the way down. After the starvation of months he was a most satisfactory meal but I will admit that if I had known more of the details I would have made his ending take that much longer."
"How so?" Thorian narrowed his eyes.
A grin that was all Valodrael twisted Estella's lips.
"Your suggestion to pull his arms off was a good start," he smirked, "But the problem with the arms is that there are only two of them. Better by far to start with the fingers, there are ten of them and you can take such a long time unscrewing them one at a time. Then of course there are the wrists... and the elbows, not to mention starting all over again with the toes." His chuckle was a liquid, dirty sound.
"And you wouldn't have eaten him?" Thorian frowned.
"Oh I would have eaten him," Valodrael admitted, "But I would have made him wish for death before I did so."
Thorian thought about it for a while, chewing his way slowly through a couple of mouthfuls while he did so.
"Good," he said at last.
"You agree with him?" Estella blinked Valodrael's darkness out of her eye.
"Of course," Thorian grunted, "Children are too good to spoil and any who do so deserve being fed to the snow devils."
"But I'm..." Estella started.
"Unfit for that marriage twaddle?" Thorian interrupted, "So what? I don't see that it matters that much any way. People love, people die. No damn reason for those left behind to not love again. So your woman has loved someone else before? She might love again after you're gone. As long as you're sure she's loving you right now what does it matter? Same could be said for you. You might have loved before and you may love someone else later, as long as she's the one you are loving right now does it matter?"
"But... But... How can you be sure the children she's giving you are yours?" Estella stuttered, "If she's already had someone else..."
"You make sure she's happy with you," Thorian stated bluntly, "And if she's had some kids already that just means she can have some. Least one of them will be yours. After all, she doesn't know if you have another woman some where else so don't go looking for trouble."
"But... But..." Estella stuttered.
"Nah butts about it," Thorian grunted, "Children are too good to spoil and the guy who spoiled you deserved everything he got and then some. Ah kinda like your dragon friend's idea of unscrewing his fingers but I still think I should have taken it off and stuffed it up his nose so far he..."
Estella burst into tears.
"Um what's that for?" Thorian asked in confusion.
Estella shoved back from the table but instead of running away she came hurrying around the table end and threw her arms round Thorian's neck, the talismans twittering round and round in the air, unable to work out why their mother was so upset.
"I thought... thought... Thought Val was the only one who... who thought like that!" she sobbed.
"I... um..." Thorian stared down at the top of Estella's head, wondering how on earth he'd gotten in this state, "Um there, there. There, there." He patted her on the top of her head but it was some minutes before she calmed down enough quieten.
"I'm sorry," she straightened up and snatched a napkin off the table to wipe her face, starting with the crystal lenses she wore over her eyes, "It's just as I said, I thought Val was the only one who thought like that." The red cardinal settled on her shoulder, cheeping with worry. She lifted a finger and rubbed its crest.
"Then you haven't met many guys who are worth being called men," Thorian noted, "Why do you humans make it all so complicated? You look after each other 'cause you know each other is precious, what is so very hard about that?"
"I really don't know," Estella sniffed as she sat back in her seat, still rubbing the lenses. She focused on that for a minute. "I think it is because humans are not certain of their strength. They can work for years at a goal or an ambition, they can train for years to become the strongest or the fastest or the most nimble but they are never certain of that strength, they never feel secure. It seems the only time they feel secure in their power is when they are pushing someone else down. I know that there are women like that as well, my grandmother was a shrew of the highest degree. The only time I ever saw my mother straighten her spine in front of that woman was when she flew off the handle because my mother had said please to my eldest brother's wife. I can still remember my mother's words 'Just because you take your pain out on every body else does not mean that I have to do the same'. That is the sort of strength I hope to have one day, to make sure the pain of generations stops with me."
"That's a big ask," Thorian noted.
"I know but someone has to start it," Estella slipped the crystal lens back over her eyes.
"What are they about?" Thorian asked, nodding at them.
"Oh these?" Estella tapped the crystal lens with a nail, "My eyes are not quite the right shape. I can see without them but only as fuzzy blobs of color, with them the world in just about in focus."
"Nifty trick," Thorian nodded, "Don't think I've seen the like in the places I've been."
"The people this far west don't seem to have them," Estella agreed, tucking into her dinner with more gusto than she'd had earlier, "In some ways the land of my birth is more advanced than the cultures further west, as the Astral All Father always assures us but in other ways, well, even if I had the chance to, I do not think that I will go back to the land of my Fathers. The learned folk still may not recognize that women can have brains of their own but more of the common people I have met have been much more open minded about women being able to look their men in the eye."
They finished dinner amiably and then Thorian headed up for bed, Estella deciding that she wanted a look in the library first.
Thorian sat down on the edge of the bed, pulled his boots off and stretched with a yawn fit to make his jaw creak. The bed springs groaned as he flopped over backwards and started to snore, a saw mill going from naught to a hundred within seconds.
*
Jeremiah was pleased to find that the mansion also included one of the wash rooms with the controllable rain showers. The water was not quite as hot as water back in what he now realized was one of the guard houses but it was decent and served to get rid of the grime. Ulrich did have at least a half way good idea when he said he was thinking of building a hot bath house as and when they were ever stood down from active service. It was gratifying that the traveler born upstart recognized that he was only good for being a servant, even if it was only subconsciously. Maybe if he (Jeremiah) worked on him long enough then he'd openly admit to the fact that he was never going to be good enough to inherit his father's estates. Such things as land belong only to true born people and not those that pretended to be people.
Still, Jeremiah reflected, there was also the problem of how he, himself, was going to leave the King's service. He had no intention of staying at King Tatsuya's beck and call like little lap dog. Such things might be suitable for the likes of Kaelin, after all she was mostly dog, she was just able to pretend to be human on occasion, but it was not suitable for a true human being and it was definitely not suitable for a servant of the true god Klu'ga-nuth. No, there had to be some way of getting out of this. He doubted that it would be safe to try and leave while they were still stuck underground, after all the realm of the Ash Elves was still between him and the surface and despite the fact that it was most sparsely populated than the realm of the dwergs it did appear to be more dangerous. No he would have to be patient and wait for the right moment to make a break for it. Underground was definitely out of it and while these werewolves were running a muck the surface wouldn't be much better.
As he helped himself to the buffet, Jeremiah mulled it over, ignoring the plates that told him that at least two people had not waited for him to have their suppers. No, trying to run while these hairy beasts were still on the loose would not be a good idea. Undoubtedly that Greely beast had passed on information about all of them, including most likely his smell and that would mean that he just have a huge target on his back if he tried to split now. However, if they managed a spectacular enough defeat of these beasts then perhaps the King would be willing to step them down to a less active status. Then if Hartseer, that judgemental statue, had a new team to shepherd then it would be all the easier to slip away without him being able to track him. Given a long enough time, with a little luck and his god's blessing, then Jeremiah could be well away before anyone noticed. There were other countries, other places outside the boarders of Portasia where Tatsuya's reach could not grasp and once he was settled there, well all sorts of opportunities presented themselves. Jeremiah opened his newest book, noting that the cover was already brighter than when he had found it in the library of the Ash Elves. He smiled, reading as he ate. There were all sorts of opportunities, people always looked for answers when they were in distress and he could work with that. After all, who would not want to be on the side of a god that even other gods feared. The One True God had such a lovely ring to it and he was sure that his god would bless him with spectacular health to see the task through. After all, the prophets of other gods were said to have much expanded lifetimes so surely his god would see to it that he'd have enough time to properly found a new religion. Jeremiah smiled. After all, religions could gain such power, all he needed was a king or two in his pocket and then he could come back to Portasia, come back at the head of an army, ready to bring this wretched little country to an utter smash. Of course, by then it would be Prince Relian who had the throne as King but Hartseer seemed to be devoted to the whole royal family rather than King Tatsuya directly. Making the metal man watch while he had Prince Relian's head sheered off like a rabbit's would be fine recompense for all the indignities he'd been forced through. Jeremiah stood up from the table when he'd finished and headed upstairs to bed. One had to be well rested to be able to plan a proper method of converting the masses.
*
Estella had been reading through the books she'd taken from Nanny Tatters' hoard, brows scrunched forward. There was something here, she could feel it but some how it was alluding her. It wasn't helped by the fact both table and chair were much lower than would be comfortable for a human, even a fairly short one like her. She was having to stretch her legs out in front of her, under the table and it was making one of her knees try to over extend. She put both of her elbows on the table and rubbed her forehead with all her fingers. She straightened and pulled out a hair from her head. Laying it on the table edge, she began to chant, fingers tracing lines in the air. She stopped chanting and... nothing happened.
"That wasn't a bad first attempt," a voice said from the doorway. Estella looked round to see Sinbar leaning on the door frame.
"What were you trying to do?" Sinbar asked after he'd trilled a scale on his flute, straightening as he did so and seeming to be more alert.
"I was trying to make it grow," Estella admitted, "I thought, you know start with something simple but I guess I got even that wrong."
"I wouldn't say so," Sinbar admitted, walking forward to stare at the thread of red laying on the table made of sedum, "Sounded to me like you got it absolutely right. You probably don't want to hear it but you might not have the flame for being a mage. If the reservoir is dry you can't draw water from it."
"Great," Estella dug her fingernails into her scalp, "Just stinking great."
"It was really important to you, wasn't it?" Sinbar noted.
"It's for Valodrael," Estella explained, "He needs another body. You saw how much effort it takes him to hold his shape when he's outside of me. It hurts him as well and if I die before we've managed to sort this out then he's going to wind up right back in the state he was in when I found him - a shivering blob of oil that could barely move and was in that much pain he could hardly whimper. And as I am no warrior we've been damn lucky that we've managed to get this far without a disaster." She rubbed her forehead again, shoulders drooping under the pressure.
"Well," Sinbar laid a hand on her shoulder, "We might be able to help but you need to answer some questions."
"Now?" Estella asked.
"I know, we are all tired," there were noticeable bags under Sinbar's eyes, "I swear these dwarfs have a stamina that puts a horse to shame but I'll try to get Myslynn to make it quick."
"Alright," Estella closed the books and put them back in her satchel.
Estella entered the retiring room to discover that Ulrich was already there, lounging in an arm chair before the fire, his head back and eyes closed, a brandy balloon empty on the little table at his elbow and a long stemmed pipe held loosely in his fingers, its bowl resting on the dwarf jacket that was currently serving him as a shirt. It was a little tight on him and she could see one of the lines of fresh pink scar tissue tracing its way over his collar bones through the open neck.
She tore her eyes away.
"I'm sorry, I don't know where that came from," she muttered, a blush rising to her cheeks.
"Sain Estella?" a voice asked. Estella looked up at the sound of the traditional honorific of her homeland to see a grubby and stained Myslynn sitting at a desk swamped by stacks of paperwork.
"Sorry ma'am, its a personal matter," she explained, "Sinbar has told me that you wish to see me?"
"Come and sit down," Myslynn beckoned them both to the other side of the table, keeping her voice low so that they didn't wake the sleeper. Estella sat, cocked one knee over the other and interlaced her fingers round the raised knee.
"Can you describe what exactly this Valodrael is?" Myslynn asked, a metal pen in hand and sheet of sedum paper before her.
"I can," Estella nodded, "And it starts with the Burning Continent. I do not know how far your realm stretches so I cannot say whether the dwergs have tunneled under the thinner land of the ocean floor to reach it?"
Myslynn shook her head.
"It was decided long ago that we would not push any further east," she admitted, "The fault lines are too unpredictable and too unstable. The ancestors decided and I agree with them, that to attempt an eastward push would be to be putting our people in danger for no certain gain. Personally, I feel that to try it would be to invite a disaster that could have a near hundred percent fatality rate. It is one of the few things that Barrowbreaker and I absolutely agree on."
"Then you probably don't know what happened there," Estella observed, "The Burning Continent was once a world of its own, without contact with the rest of Hestia. It had a history all its own and had developed its own cultures. The dominant culture was a theocracy led by an elected for life head called the Domilii. He, for women were not allowed within the ranks of the inner council, had the final say in writing laws into being and authorizing the missions of the Paladins and their Astral Dragon mounts."
"And where does Valodrael come into this?" Myslynn scratched her pen over the paper.
"The Void Dragons were the opposite force to the Astral Dragons," Estella informed them, "Nature always has a duality - light/ dark, up/down, hot/cold, order/chaos. The Astral Dragons were order to a fault to the point that they were forbidden families as attachment is... was considered to be the source of chaos. As far as the Astral Dragons were concerned if you could not fit the expectations society had for you then you should welcome your sequestering from society as it was the proof that you still loved your family."
Myslynn scratched her pen and frowned.
"I'm not sure I follow," she muttered.
"The measure of love is what you are willing to give up for it," Estella stated, "Therefore, if you have no use in your society you should welcome your imprisonment or even execution as it is proof that you still love your society. If you do not welcome your separation from the society that you cannot serve then you have no love for your society. Those that have no love deserve no mercy."
"Jesh," Sinbar winced, "Even the Astral All Father does not demand so steep a price. We all have to have use but he doesn't expect us to rejoice when we are rejected for not being useful enough."
"No," Estella drawled, "We are just supposed to meekly bow our heads and silently endure it like lambs to the slaughter."
Sinbar looked at her, confusion in his gaze.
"I have to admit that I think that the people of the Burning Continent must have had contact with the outer world at some point or maybe even a group of survivors managed to found a compound after the Day of Destruction," Estella stated, "But that would be for more scholarly minds than mine to confirm."
"And the Void Dragons are the opposite of this order?" Myslynn asked as the pen scratched. In his chair by the fire Ulrich grunted and shifted in his sleep but settled again after a moment.
"They were the opposite of the ordered society of the Burning Continent," Estella corrected, "Their wild sky dancing inspired people to question authority and their magic created natural disasters. In the wars that raged across the continent the Void dragons always backed the little nations that were up against the Domilii's people. If it meant they could have a battle with their Astral Dragon cousins, so much the better."
"And what is this day of destruction you have mentioned?" Myslynn looked up from the paper.
Estella closed her eyes a minute, her raised foot jiggling, listening to an internal voice.
"The last Domilii of the Burning Continent was not what he seemed," she said at last, "He was digging into knowledge and lore that should not be touched. Other wizards and magic users in times passed have reached for immortality, each using their own methods, some of a darker bent than others but all have had a flaw, a soul anchor that could be destroyed if others only knew about it. The soul anchors also take feeding. They must be maintained to be effective in keeping their owner tied to this world."
"And Valodrael knows this how?" Myslynn asked.
"Because he was there," Estella stated, "The Void Dragons were among the first to know that the last Domilii was an evil that even they did not know how to handle. He had made a pact with a being known as a Crone Dragon, the twisted offspring of a dragon egg and the worst fae magics of a coven of crones."
"And this Crone Dragon looked like what?" Myslynn's pen scratched away. Ulrich snorted in his sleep.
"You've met her," Estella's comment made Myslynn look up, "She's scurrying around at the priest's heels as his enchanted pet. Nanny Tatters is the same Crone Dragon who feasted on the eggs of the Void Dragons to grow to her true size."
"What?" Sinbar whispered, "Is he insane?"
"Possibly, possibly worse," Estella noted, "But for the Void Dragons the destruction of their eggs was the start of an out right war between them and the Paladins of the Domilii. Valodrael doesn't know much of that time, only what the Domilii let slip when he was gloating over something."
Myslynn frowned but Estella beat her to the question.
"Valodrael was captured the day that the eggs were destroyed," she stated, "He was young, what we would consider a child and he spent his childhood in the Domilii's private complex being his preferred lab rat."
"And what was the Domilii experimenting for?" Myslynn asked.
"As I said, other learned men have reached for immortality," Estella's foot jiggled, "Though wizards tend to be the most famous as their liches are the most common there are other methods. Valodrael knows the Domilii experimented with at least two different methods over the years, probably more as he was still experimenting right up to the Day of Destruction. You would have thought that was a little late in the day but my guess would be that the Domilii was just curious."
"And what was the Day of Destruction?" Myslynn frowned.
"The day that he received word that the last living member of his bloodline other than himself was dead," Estella closed her eyes again, "Once he knew his niece had perished he sent out the order."
"What order?" Myslynn frowned some more.
"The mass murder of the Paladin order," Estella informed her, "The deaths of so many god Blessed souls acted as the primer for the God Machine."
"The God Machine?" Sinbar whispered, the hairs on the back of his hands standing up on end.
"It scoured the souls out of every living thing on the Burning Continent," the black was sloshing in the bottom of Estella's eyes, "That was why the Paladin's had to die first, not only were their souls powerful enough to start the feed back loop and they were also the ones most likely to be resistant to the God Engine's power."
"But why?" Sinbar asked, "To what purpose? There is no way Kronzyn would ask for such a homicide. Life must continue for there to be death. One cannot exist without the other."
"Who said it was Kronzyn who asked for it?" Estella looked at him, "It wasn't for any of the gods who already existed."
"Then why?" Sinbar was so far out at sea the waves were breaking over his head.
Estella took a deep breath.
"If wasn't for a god," she stated, "It was for the Domilii. He wasn't aiming to become a lich or one of their derivatives, he was aiming for the heavens." Sinbar and Myslynn both frowned at her, not understanding.
"He was aiming to become a god."
Myslynn sat back in her chair, pen forgotten on the paper in front of her. The fire danced and popped in the grate but the room felt cold despite it.
"That is why the Burning Continent smoulders," Estella explained, rubbing her arms, trying to find a little warmth, "One man's ambition to be immortal without limits, to be more than even the other gods. Other gods need their followers to believe in them, when the belief of their followers falters then so do they. The Domilii, if he had been successful would have needed no followers to feed him, he would have been without limits."
"And are you sure that he did fail?" Myslynn asked.
"Valodrael is fairly certain something went wrong," Estella stated, "Its how he got out. That and by the looks of things at least some of the Domilii's experiments on him worked. He was right there at the epicenter when the machine was turned on. There is no pain on Hestia like it, a pain so strong he couldn't even scream, a pain that takes the breath, takes the sight... takes the very sense of your own body. All there is, is pain and you don't know where the pain ends and you begin... And you can't scream." The black had nearly filled her eyes to the brim and it wasn't just her voice any more, Valodrael over laying and blending with her voice. And he was terrified.
That was what Sinbar remembered long afterwards, the sound of a monster like Valodrael fighting to hide the whimper in his voice as he faced again the very worst of what was possible. Estella shuddered and rubbed her arms again as Valodrael suddenly retreated from her, curling up in a corner of her mind space and quivering.
"And Valodrael escaped?" Myslynn asked, "How?"
Estella held up a hand and closed her eyes a moment.
"He managed the jump," Estella said at last.
"The jump?" Myslynn frowned.
"The Astral Dragons had this ability called the jump to the Non-realm," Estella frowned, trying to understand Valodrael's slightly garbled explanation even as she relayed it, "They jumped to another place, the Non-realm and when they jumped back they could be miles from where they jumped from on Hestia."
"The Astral Dragons had this ability?" Myslynn frowned.
"Yes," Estella confirmed.
"Then how...?" Myslynn started.
"Valodrael's mother was an Astral Dragon," Estella said quietly, "An Astral Dragon who failed, who was dishonored. She chose exile rather than submit to her execution. Though his father bred true in Valodrael, he managed to access the bloodline ability of his mother's people that one and only time. It saved his life but not his body hence why he has been moving from vessel to vessel ever since. The times without a host are... painful to the extreme."
"I see," Myslynn nodded slowly, noting that down, "And if Valodrael is able to regain a body, what will he do then?"
"Do every thing I can to kick the spokes out of the Domilii's wheel!" Valodrael surged forward again, his darkness filling Estella's left eye, "Kick the teeth off his cogs! I want to see that gorram Twonk stew in his own juice! I want him to suffer for every single soul he shredded with that infernal machine! I want to watch him burn!"
"Are you sure that he is still alive?" Myslynn asked, pen pausing, "If something went wrong with the machine would he not have perished?"
"He still exists, though I don't doubt that it is much like myself," Valodrael sneered, "No matter what face he was projecting through the rune stones.""
"Through the rune stones?" Myslynn's eyes widened, "The one Sir Ulrich mentioned earlier today, the one who was bargaining with the Crone Dragon?"
"Yes," Valodrael hissed, "That was the Domilii. Five hundred years later and I find that the dangleweed is still spreading his poison across the land. I can't face him, not like this but give me my own flesh and blood again..." The smile that crossed Estella's face was all venom, all savage and all dragon. "Give me my chance and I will make him boil!"
Myslynn leaned back in her chair, gaze steady on the strange thing that was both human girl and eldritch dragon.
"Is he a danger to us?" she asked bluntly.
"Did he not steal the glyph magic from you so that Nanny Tatters could hide her lair from you?" Valodrael smiled with Estella's lips, "Has he not unleashed the werewolves upon you? Has he not unleashed monsters upon you who have murdered your children? And what of the items the werewolves have stolen from the good sir Sinbar? What of them?"
Estella/Valodrael turned their head to raise an eyebrow at Sinbar. Sinbar pinched the bridge of his nose, the bags under his eyes ever more pronounced.
"Kronzyn is a god of death and the journey there after, but he is also a god of the here and now and the journey of life," he explained, "Kronzyn wants his followers to led good, productive lives, to grow and discover what they are the best at, to have their families and live in peace so that he can gather their stories as they take the journey to the gateways of the stars. He wants their stories to be rich and bold and long so he will have another beautiful relic for his galleries. Therefore the priests of Kronzyn don't just control the dead, we aid the living as well." He stopped, face twisting and twitching.
Myslynn and Estella watched him, Valodrael receding from dual control but still listening in. After a moment Sinbar lifted his flute and piped a tune of comfort and rest. Ulrich twitched and mumbled in his sleep, sinking deeper into slumber. Sinbar was more composed as the flute fell back to his lap.
"The Astral All Father died and his son took control as the new Star of Heaven," Sinbar reported, "He has instigated a change in the worship of the land of our people and the followers of Kronzyn are no longer welcome. I was charged with taking the recipe of our regenerative serums out of the country. I was successful but the price was dear."
He paused, rolling his flute between his fingers and Estella leaned forward, studying the instrument.
"You see it?" she asked the question in her head.
"I see it," Valodrael agreed, "Clever, very clever. Guards would have been looking for paper and would have destroy that pipe the moment they caught him to rob him of his power. Clever little gnome."
"The regenerative serums you traded with us to earn your place among us," Myslynn nodded, "My brother's new hand is doing well, by the way, at least according to his last letter. He should..." She trailed off. "That's what the elger kissrums have been stealing, isn't it?"
Sinbar nodded.
"It took me a while to be sure, they've made one hell of a mess in my workshop," Sinbar rubbed his eyes, "But that is what they took. My guess is that they have been raiding the supplies in the outlying guard houses, staging an attack to draw the guards out of the room and then a smaller, more intelligent team sneak in to take what they are after. We'll need to have an audit of all the guard houses done to be sure of how much they have taken. It is also possible that the Crone Dragon was opening occult pathways for them. It would explain why this attack has come after the Crone Dragon was taken out by this band of adventurers."
"They are known as the King's Special," Estella reported, "Their King forged them out of members who have antisocial tendencies so that their restless spirits and unique talents can be put towards a more productive bent."
Myslynn thought about it for a moment, her lower lip pushing out even as she scratched at the bald spot the werewolf abomination had given her.
"A sensible idea," she noted, "I may even suggest it to the rest of the council in the future but as to the matter in hand I think I can tell what these werewolves have been using their pilferings for - its how they have been crossing themselves with other creatures to make new variants of themselves and why they are no longer changing back when they die. Gobannus protect us, your weren't lying when you said that this Domilii is a threat to us. Sinbar, I am going to have to insist on heavier security around your workshop from now on. We will also have to withdraw the supplies of the serums back to the more major guard houses. I know that puts people at risk of missing the opportune window for treatment but it will be more difficult for these things to bait the guards away from protecting the supplies."
"I understand," Sinbar nodded, "I will send messages to all of my apprentices informing them of the changes and to heighten security, we need to make any further thefts a lot more expensive for these beasts."
"Then it is the question of how long they will wage a war of attrition," Myslynn noted with a sour twist to her lips.
"Not long I believe," Estella said.
"And your reasoning?" Myslynn commanded.
"The ghost said that with what they stole today they intend to take to the skies," Estella explained, "Well there are no skies down here in the realm of the dwergs. It said they intended to destroy the lands of the stone builders and let the wild take back the lands of men. There are very few men who live underground. They intend to attack the cities of men, everything that has happened in the Underworld and the Realm of the Dwergs has, to them, merely been a gathering of weapons. At least, that is my conclusion."
Myslynn and Sinbar looked at her and then at each other.
"If it wasn't lying then her logic is sound," Sinbar noted.
"I agree," Myslynn jolted down a note at the bottom of her paper and then rose, "I think we could all do with a little shut eye now. I know we have a heap load of work to do but if we drive ourselves into the ground too soon it won't get done."
"With all due respect," Sinbar rose, "But I started a replacement batch of the regenerative serums before I left my workshop and they should have simmered for long enough now. I have a couch there that wasn't too badly damaged so once I have seen to the serums I will rest in my workshop as I also need to start on the preparations for the funeral rites."
"Three days boyo," Myslynn stated.
"What?" Sinbar frowned.
"You have three days of pushing yourself so hard and then I'll come down there myself and drag you back here to make sure you have a proper rest," Myslynn informed him, "Snacks and naps are not how a person lives, it is how one dies so three days to get your house in order and then you are having a break. Understood?"
"Yes Mother," Sinbar said contritely.
"Away with you, you cheeky young rip," Myslynn waved a hand, "Let me get my young guest and her passenger off to bed. You do let this girl sleep properly, don't you?" She narrowed her eyes at Estella, who was yawning fit to flip the top of her head.
"What?" she asked, blinking owlishly and then the darkness filled her left eye again.
"I assure you, Lord Myslynn, that Estella's health has been, is and always shall be my highest priority," Valodrael's voice issued from her lips, "Besides the fact that abusing your host is just foolishness when a good host is so hard to find there is also the fact that she counts me as a friend. I have never been someone's friend before and I am interested in exploring this... position more."
"Just as long as you know that I have an issue with people, any people, who abuse children and I have a longer reach than you may think, boyo," Myslynn lent her knuckles on the edge of her desk.
Valodrael grinned with Estella's mouth.
"On that score we are in total agreement and if you doubt me you could ask Thorian Vandervast the details of the discussion the three of us had over dinner. It was most illuminating."
"Very well," Myslynn relaxed slightly, "Now Sain Estella, you need to get up to bed."
"Er, what?" Estella yawned again, the darkness receding from her eye, "Oh, right, thank you." She stood, her talismans flitting about her head as she made her way to the door. Myslynn was pretty sure the poor girl was asleep before her head was on the pillow.
"She's a gangling thing, my love," Myslynn muttered to a memory, "But I think our little Freya would have liked her. I think they would have got on well together, even with that dragon being stirred up in the mixture. Gobannus, but I miss the pair of you every work shift but it's still not done. There's always something." She turned and stumped her way back to her retiring room. Ulrich wasn't much of a distraction and she needed to write up her report on her assessment of how much danger Valodrael posed to the dwerg. She shook her head ruefully. Dragons had been consigned to the realms of myth and then not one but two of the beasts turned up in their midst and neither of them were like the legends said they should be. There was always something.
*
Jeremiah came to the realization that he was dreaming slowly, the deep thrum of the cello echoing through the corridors of the old theater building as the streamers of color whipped and fluttered through the monochrome surfaces. Hat fluttered in a wind that was not there, buzzing in his efforts to stay steady on Jeremiah's miter.
"Hat!" Jeremiah snapped and then thought about it, "Hat is an undignified name for you, mayhaps that is why you are always undignified. I will name you... Gerald. I believe that there is a Gerald in the Brekka bloodline. What can be more fitting that I have one of them as my servant?" Gerald the moth fluttered, trying his best to hold still in a wind that did not exist in the physical. Jeremiah's face darkened but then the cello thrummed a deep and insistent note, an unmistakable summons that vibrated through the air and the streams of color flicked in time with it.
Jeremiah scowled. He hadn't been summoned like that since he had been a boy and he objected now. The music changed key and became more ethereal, more mysterious. Jeremiah sighed and rolled his eyes. Some people were just too obvious. However, a quick look around made him realize that he was in part of the theater house that he totally didn't recognize. That complicated matters, especially as there didn't appear to be a obvious way he had arrived here and therefore, no obvious way back.
Jeremiah sighed and started walking towards the sound of the cello. The music halted for a moment and then started a new tune. This one was faster than the pieces of classical music that Jeremiah would have associated with a theater and the repeating segments of music put him in mind of some of the peasant songs that he had heard the illiterate masses favored. Granted, played on the cello it was more pleasing the ear of a refined gentleman such as himself. Maybe this visit would be slightly more bearable than he had initially considered.
The music lead him down several corridors lined with grand paintings that lack a certain something, rendered as they were in shades of grey. Jeremiah snorted. Really, what was the point of all these riches when none of it looked right? It was just ashes, dull and unappealing, the lights too stark and too highly contrasted and yet dim at the same time. It was tiresome in the extreme.
Eventually he stepped into a corridor where one of the walls was a series of arches so thin they seemed to be made of stone filigree, their leaded glass doors hanging like veils of lace.
Michael sat on the balcony beyond the open doors, his back to Jeremiah, the fingers of his left hand moving up and down the strings as the bow sawed back and forth in his right. The music had changed again, becoming slow and mournful. There was something lonely about that melody, a plead for ears to hear, for arms to reach, but it merely echoed in the sound of silence.
Jeremiah snorted.
Really, the specter had no one to blame but himself. He had made this bargain, he was the one who had opened the door to the shadow lands, if he had got himself trapped here then he had no one to blame but himself.
The bow lifted from the strings and the last notes shivered into silence.
"There was a time when I thought I would give everything I had to be able to wander the halls of the theater so openly," Michael said, looking out at what ever lay beyond the opera house. Jeremiah stepped forward, curious as to whatever could be out there.
It looked like a storm in the middle of a partial eclipse, streamers of cloud racing across a dully shadowed sky, no certain source of light out there, the wind that was not a wind billowing passed with a muted sound at odds with its pace. Jeremiah stepped further forward, curiosity getting the better of him. Beyond the railing of the balcony there was nothing, a great emptiness, a nothingness that seemed to stretch on for ever and ever.
"It's only the theater," Michael confirmed, plucking a string and adjusting the tuning peg, the bow laying on an occasional table at his elbow, "That was the place where my music lived, where it infused the stones, where the minds of so many came to hear, to listen, to live the music that I made. They could not see my face but in the music... they loved me."
"And why could they not see your face?" Jeremiah turned to face him, a predatory gleam in his eye. Really, this phantom was rather needy for a specter. Michael turned the right side of his face away.
"No one loves a monster," he whispered, "Not an ugly one. Handsome monsters get admired, ugly monsters? We get hunted." He tucked his face to his shoulder for a moment and then picked up the bow but he did not turn his face back to Jeremiah. Jeremiah did not see what the fuss was about. Michael seemed regular enough in a plain, uninspiring way, then he frowned. Michael's right hand was wrapped in bandages, his grip reduced to the pincer like grip of a crab. Jeremiah frowned some more. There seemed to be something pocking through the end of the bandage, four little black tips like the ends of tooth picks, pocking through the cloth. There was also something wrong about his right shoulder, it was too high compared with his left. Maybe he was a hunchback, those people usually had some sort of facial deformity as well as their unnatural spines.
"Why did you bring me here?" Jeremiah demanded.
"You appear to be forgetting our bargain," Michael looked at him out of his left eye, "I had feared that I would not be able to make contact with you but enough people are beginning to hum my music in the little town you left it in that I can, just, reach you."
"And isn't that enough to satisfy you?" Jeremiah asked, "That bard who made the copy of your magnum opus seemed the foot loose type. I'm sure she'll move on, once she's bored."
Michael's cello played a sour chord and he slammed a hand down on the strings.
"That is the point," he hissed bitterly, "She isn't wandering and it is not by her choice."
"Oh" Jeremiah raised an eyebrow.
"She knows the music well enough now that I have access to some of her thoughts," Michael admitted, "And she is scared. I don't know what of but she is scared and is playing my music to keep the dark at bay. Something is very wrong with the place you have left my magnum opus and the only reason I do not count our contract as null and void is because it is a copy you left with her and not the real thing."
"Of course the original is safely in my pocket," Jeremiah smiled, "I wouldn't give such a valuable thing to just anyone. But as it is safe then why are you worried?"
"And just how long have you been acquainted with the gnome who channels his magic through his flute?" Michael asked, suspicion lacing his every word like poison in wine, "How many opportunities have you had to give it to him to copy? Do not think that the dwergs have no music simply because they are dwellers of the underground spaces. What is a theater but a cave made by men? My music would sing in this place, it thunder on pipes driven by steam. It would be magnificent."
"Well I for one don't trust that gnome," Jeremiah stated, "He is too full of himself and has embedded himself in this society too well. People should not trust necromancers and call them friends."
Michael actually smiled at that, even if his face was still turned away.
"So says the grand and mighty Jeremiah Maat," he proclaimed, "He who plays with the bodies of his fallen foes, calling some of them to serve as unwilling members of his retinue while others he leaves by the way side for others to clean up and dispose of. He who lifted the knife in his own hand to the throat of an ally and had no qualms with spilling his blood." The music spilling from the cello turned dark and fierce. "He who dedicates himself to a merciless and pitiless god, who inflicts him with pain whenever he so much as speaks his god's name. Tell me, oh wise and mighty Jeremiah, could it be that you are jealous?"
"Jealous, jealous of what," Jeremiah demanded.
"Jealous that though Sinbar worships a god of death he seems more content in his life than you are with yours," Michael observed, the music alternating between a slow, quiet melody and a rapid frenzy of notes.
"Jealousy has nothing to do with it," Jeremiah snapped, "And if he is content with his life then more fool him. Necromancers aren't supposed to sit on their hands and bow their heads to some civil authority as if they were just servants. Necromancers are supposed to be striving to climb higher, reach further. What is the point of breaking the boundary between life and death is you are then going to do nothing about it?"
"So you admit, oh great and powerful Jeremiah, that you are a necromancer?" Michael looked at him from the side of his left eye again as the notes scurried like frantic mice and died, only to scurry again, "That you are a necromancer who would like to see the whole world beg at your feet for a moment to live before you strip that life away?"
Jeremiah opened his mouth and then closed it. There was a smile in Michael's eye, as if he was trying to trick Jeremiah into a confession. Jeremiah narrowed his eyes.
"No," he said coldly, "I am a true servant of..."
The end of Michael's bow was suddenly at his lips, stoppering his voice.
"Do not say that name!" Michael whispered, fierce and low, "I will not have his gaze drawn to me." Jeremiah was almost too busy to heard him, trying as he was to get a proper look at the right side of his face. It was still difficult to. The darkness of the shadow lands seemed to trail and smoke over that side of Michael's face, obscuring the features, or maybe it was that the darkness was coming from that side of his face. Michael realized where Jeremiah was looking and stepped back with a pained sound.
"Do you delight in misfortune?" he demanded, "Does it bring you joy to see the pain of others?"
"What does it say that I am the only one that the gods have sent your way to retrieve you magnum opus?" Jeremiah smiled, "Could it be that the help you promised to give me will bring just more pain and suffering into the world?"
Michael went still as the storm in the shadow lands continued to blow by both within and without the theater of ghosts and dreams.
"This from the one who does not trust Sinbar, faithful servant of Kronzyn," Micheal said at last, "Or could it be that you do not trust him to not see you as you truly are, rather than what you want him to see?"
"And do you want people to see what you truly are?" Jeremiah asked, "Or are you going to keep hiding your face from the world?"
Michael gazed at Jeremiah a long time then finally sat back down and resettled his cello.
"Very well," he said at last, "I will accept that you have no wish to give my magnum opus to Sinbar, though I feel it is because you are afraid that I might find Sinbar a more worthy barer to my great work." He laid the bow against the stings. "Now however, it is time that you... Wake Up!" The cello squealed a sour note and Jeremiah opened his eyes to the dark of the room.
Something, a sound, a smell was off.
"Gerald!" he snapped, rolling over and sitting up in one motion, "Light!"
With a buzzing thrum that sounded more mechanical than organic, Gerald light up like a beacon, flooding the room with dazzling blue light. Jeremiah already had his eyes shut, hand lifted to shield them. In the flood of illumination, something cried out. Jeremiah squinted through his fingers.
Blinking and reeling in the sudden glare, their large eyes weeping tears of pain, no less than six vigors stood in the room, war picks clenched in their fists.
Jeremiah inflated with ire. Of all the ridiculous things! Did these things have no decency? Once was enough but twice was more than enough! He roared a string of words to his god and threw something, he didn't check what, off the bedside table at the next bunch of them. The cloud of cinders and scorching sparks engulfed them and they screamed, a horrible high pitched noise, as the smell of roasting meat filled the air. As the cloud cleared, the charred sticks that were all of what was left of their skeletons crumpled to the floor, splintering under the impact. The remaining four squeaked and squealed, surging forward.
"Karma, protect me!" Jeremiah barked. His puppet vigor lurched forward, its back permanently bowed from the weigh of his pack and its swings missed hitting its more nimble living kin. However, it wasn't without effect as it lurched and stumbled, stepping in the way of the attacking vigor almost by accident, being pushed and shoved about as the living attackers tried to bundle passed it, its cold flesh obstructing them over and over again as they flinched back from it. Frustrated and disgusted, the living vigor opened their mouths and...
The noise was a battering ram that smacked Jeremiah across the top of the head. He held and lifted his hands to his ears but he could not hear a thing, a complete absence of sound like someone had clapped a helmet of cork over his ears.
Thorian rolled over in his sleep and grunted. That was the problem of soft sheets, it was always so hard to wake up from them.
Kaelin barely snorted. She was stood on a hillside over looking some where she had never seen. It was a valley, broad and wide, wide river curling slowly through the middle of it, full fields either side of it, doted with woods and lined with hedgerows. White buildings nestled among the trees. A gentle breeze, baring the scents of lavender and mint and wood smoke danced passed her. In the sky above, shining in front of the purple clouds of dawn, dragons the color of star light, reds, yellows and blues, glided in the sky, tiny in the distance but regal in their power.
"Have you come to stay?" a squeaky voice asked her, "Has the Goddess of the Thunder Voice come to stay?"
Stink of the Midden stood on the hillside before her, large ears waggling back and forth.
"No she hasn't, not yet," a quiet voice replied even as Kaelin opened her mouth, "It's not her time, not yet." The man in strange armor made of overlapping scales was stood there, his blue eyes kindly as he looked at her. He still had that air of calmness, stillness about him. Kaelin found herself fighting the urge to cry and she had no idea why but at the same time she felt that he would not condemn her for her weakness.
She looked away, looked back at the valley and saw the dragon, who's hide was patterned with bursting nebula watching over where the young of many races were running through an orchard in the dawn light.
"This is heaven?" she asked, "Am I dead?"
"No, not yet," the knight who was more than a knight smiled gently, "But you needed to see someone and so you do."
"Hello Stink of the Midden," Kaelin managed, "Are... are you happy here?"
"Yes, yes," Stink of the Midden grinned, "No more big jobs digging up the burrows, no more boots. Plenty snails, plenty caterpillars, no one turn us out of the gardens. Yes, yes, good place. You come back here, Goddess of the Thunder Voice?"
"I..." she faltered, "I think I would like that."
"In time," the knight's smile was gentle on his bearded face, "In time. Come, Stink of the Midden, time to go back." He held his hand out to the goblin and did not flinch as the goblin put his bony fingers in his. They turned and walked away down the hillside, stopping once to look back and wave.
Kaelin rolled over in her sleep, a tear soaking into her pillow.
Ulrich sat up in the retiring room, head groggy with the heat from the fire and his neck stiff.
"Ah," he winced, pulling his head upright with a whole series of crunches and clicks. "What's going on?"
Myslynn was already heading out the door so she didn't answer.
"You smellfungus, ninnyhammering pillocks!" Jeremiah roared at the top of his lungs, kneeling on the bed, his voice tinny and squeaky in his own ears through the whining that was blurring his hearing, throwing everything that came to hand at his diminutive foes, "You louts of the first degree! You brain hobbled non-beings!"
The vigors pushed their zombified cousin to the ground and drew breath for another scream.
Jeremiah got in first, screaming the words of his pray even as he threw a small but heavy item that appeared to have on its front a fist size replica of the numbered and arrowed thing Handrun had gazed at to know if they arrived at the place of the locomotive on time.
It exploded, cogs and springs whistling through the air as three of the vigor were enveloped in the expanding cloud. They screamed, shrill cries like hot gas escaping from a vent and then they weren't there any more, ash and glowing fragments of what could have been hot coals scattered across the floor.
The last vigor realized that it was outmatched and out done and turned to flee.
"Karma!" Jeremiah snapped, his ears just about clearing, "Get him!"
Jeremiah's pet rose to its hands and knees and tripped the fleeing vigor flat on its face. With a yelp, it rolled under the bed.
With a bang the bedroom door burst open.
"What on Hestia is going on in here?" Myslynn demanded, hammer in hand.
Jeremiah was infinitely glad that he always wore a dressing gown to bed.
"There is something under the bed," he reported. Myslynn frowned and Jeremiah could tell she didn't quite believe him. He schooled his face still and turned slightly, making it seem that he was peering over the edge of the bed away from the door, muttering the prayer as he did so. Under the bed the dust stirred, seethed across the floor, curdled into form.
The vigor yelped as a bony finger pocked it in its side, banging its head on the underside of the bed as it jumped.
Jeremiah grabbed either side of the mattress as the bed started bucking about, thumping and bouncing as live vigor and skeleton fought underneath it with the sound of a dozen strangulated cats fighting in an ivory factory. Myslynn stared, mouth slightly ajar as she watched Jeremiah riding a jumping bed. She blinked several times and then stumped over and seized the side of the bed and lifted.
With a yell Jeremiah rolled off the bed on to the floor. He hastily scrambled on to his knees and made sure his dressing gown was straight. Exposure was the last thing he needed right now.
Myslynn stared at the swirling mass of fighting, biting limbs and teeth and squeals that was rolling and screeching under the bed, then she hefted her hammer and put an end to the argument with one well aimed smack with her hammer. The living vigor rolled over, its temple totally crushed in by the blow, its eyes crossed and blood trickling from its nose, now most definitely not living.
With a quick snap of his fingers Jeremiah undid the magic that was holding the skeleton together.
"Thank you for that my good host," Jeremiah bowed to her as he stood, "I have to admit that I am not used to the house pests being quite so large. Where I am from vermin don't tend to be much bigger than the span of one's hand."
"Indeed," Myslynn pocked at the decreased vigor with the haft of her war hammer, "I dare say that were you are from vermin don't often take payment for being such pests either."
"You know these things then?" Jeremiah inquired.
"Heard of them," Myslynn admitted, "You must have really irked someone for them to have hired these things to go after you."
"Indeed," Jeremiah turned to the window and pulled it shut, making sure the latch clicked into place. Myslynn looked round the disheveled room, the furniture shifted around and scorch marks on the floor, small objects smashed and scattered in pieces.
"Well, I'd better offer you a new room," she observed.
"An excellent idea, my good host," Jeremiah noted, "And preferably one that lacks windows. These things seem to have a habit of coming in through the casements."
"Right," Myslynn nodded and lead the way down the hall towards a different room.
Downstairs Ulrich had finally managed to straighten his spine out with a final crack of cartilage realigning. He tilted his head and listened. Whatever had been causing the ruckus it had died down now. After a moment he shrugged and went looking for his bed. As much as the night cap had been most welcome, going to sleep in the chair had left him with such a crick in his neck and as the house was now so quiet he figured that it was still the rest shift of this sun less world. A more comfortable resting spot was calling him than the fireside chair and he was interested in finding it.
*
Breakfast had been laid out in the dining room for quite a while by the time any of them found their way back downstairs. Thorian had already heaped his plate high when Kaelin came in, still in the same clothes as she'd been wearing the previous day. Thorian frowned. He didn't remember Kaelin drinking anything in the way of fire water before they went off to bed but she looked about as miserable as he felt after Ulrich had given him those two bottles. She went down the sideboard, sniffing at the food stuffs and rejecting most of it.
"Are the provisions not to your liking good lady?" Bunrik asked quietly.
"Right now all I want is hot, brown morning juice," Kaelin stated. Bunrik frowned for a moment.
"I am not familiar with the beverages of the world without a roof but I can prepare a vessel of Hell Grey Tea, ma'am," she suggested.
"Bring it," Kaelin sat down at the table with an undignified plop. Thorian decided that it was best to just sit quietly and chew his food. Kaelin was obviously not a morning person, a fact that was apparently lost on Jeremiah as the over weight priest came in with a loud and hearty greeting and continued to try and engage her in conversation as he tucked into a heap of food. Kaelin didn't say anything but her expression gradually became more and more flat and unimpressed, her eyes half hooded. Thorian gulped a mouthful and edged away from Jeremiah, wondering when she was going to throw something at him as he jabbered on and on about diet and nutrition, whatever they were.
Ulrich and the Ash Elves arrived at about the same time as the Hell Grey Tea so Kaelin ignored their existence in favor of concentrating on the bucket sized mug that Bunrik had taken the liberty of prepared for her. A twittering announced Estella's arrival as her talismans swooped in and darted through the air. Jeremiah broke off needling Kaelin to glare at them and with a chorus of squeaks they turned tail and dashed back to their mother, settling on her, some clinging to the back of her jacket, some hiding in her hair, all of them staring at Jeremiah in silence, eyes round with fear. She looked at Jeremiah and her mouth went flat with dislike.
"And how did you rest, my dear?" Jeremiah smiled, "Have none of your little pets wandered off on their own? It would be such a shame if they wound up on an anvil by mistake." Estella narrowed her eyes at him, her expression rather close to Kaelin's at that moment.
"You can rest assured that all of the talismans are present and accounted for," she patted her satchel and the talismans darted into it, "I am always very careful to nurture and protect my friends and allies."
"Oh are you, my dear," Jeremiah's smile was snide, "And here I was believing that you are little more than the carry case for that eldritch abomination of a dragon you call a friend." He lifted his cup to her. "I am a little surprised that after traveling with us for so long that he hasn't realized that he sold himself short when he partnered with you."
Estella opened her mouth and then clicked it shut again. She stared at Jeremiah, fingers clenching so hard, Kaelin looked round about to warn her that she was going to split her palms with her fingernails if she wasn't careful. Estella's eyes were shining, lip pulled slightly inwards but it was still plain that she was biting it.
"You see, my dear," Jeremiah put his cup down again and picked up his eating irons, "Even you have to admit that you are nothing but the weak link in the chain. Did your father even care when you left his house or was he glad to be rid of you too?"
Thorian's plate jumped as his fists banged down on the table. He was half way out of his chair before Estella's hand fell on his arm. She shook her head at him.
"He...!" Thorian started.
"No Goodman Thorian," Estella said firmly.
"But he...!" Thorian looked ready to bite nails in half.
"No Goodman Thorian," Estella repeated and turned to face Jeremiah herself. He smiled up at her, eating his breakfast quite unconcerned about what she might say next. She waited until he looked down to cut himself the next piece of food.
"Well, Padre Jeremiah," she drawled, "I didn't know you were offering to be Valodrael's new body."
He choked on that.
"Of course," she continued, "If you are so set about the idea that he deserves a stronger host then by all means you can have him. Of course, I'm not sure about how comfortable you'll find the transfer of him getting inside you."
Kaelin snorted at that, not daring to lift her face over the rim of her mug.
"And then there's the issue about whether or not your god would be willing to share," Estella mused, "But I suppose there's plenty of room."
Thorian didn't snort, he bellowed with laughter, pounding on the table with his fist. Jeremiah went to glare at him but jerked back at the movement he caught out of the corner of his eye.
Estella was crouching on the table, face barely inches from his and her eyes were totally black.
"How's about it?" the mixture of her voice and Valodrael's voice purred from between her lips, "Just a little kiss should do." Her lips parted but the tongue that snaked out was long and black and forked as it licked up the side of Jeremiah's face. He jerked back with an exclamation of disgusted, hand going to his face. Estella/Valodrael laughed, a quiet, husky sound, shoulders swaying from side to side, shadows billowing from their shoulders and rump, the smoky form of wings and tail, trailing in the air.
Ulrich whistled quietly and half looked away but half didn't, then did a double take when he saw the looks on Sabel and the two brother's faces. Estella most definitely had their attention.
She straightened, standing on the table.
"I take that as a no," Estella/Valodrael purred, "So I guess I'm not such the weak link you say I am." She turned away, the tip of their shadow tail flicking Jeremiah across the nose, before withdrawing as she stepped back across the table.
"Are you alright, my lady?" Quenril stood, offering her his hand, helping her to step down on to a chair and then the floor, Valodrael's darkness fully withdrawing from her eyes.
"I certain feel better now," she stated, a mischievous smile on her face. The talismans tweeted from her satchel. Jeremiah glared at her and scraped the prongs of his fork over his plate. Just about everybody flinched as the sound scrapped across their nerves, with Kaelin actually yelping with pain. Estella turned her head to look at him with the expression of an unimpressed queen.
"Do you feel any better for that or are you still being petty?"
He stabbed a piece of food and bit down on it with unnecessary force. She laughed quietly as she went to help herself to breakfast from what was on offer.
Kaelin was beginning to look half way human when Myslynn walked in. It appeared that the dwerg lord had been up for some hours already as her armor was a more practical, every day set than the one she's worn to the Meeting of the Twelve the day before but it was already spotted with grime.
"Good prime to you all," she greeted, "How did you all sleep?"
"Better once the vermin were cleared out," Jeremiah wasn't quite snide, his acidic comment making Ulrich raise his eyebrows.
"I would say that I slept very well," he stood and bowed to Myslynn, the three Ash Elves copying him and adding their own murmurs of agreement.
Kaelin slurped her 'hot, brown morning juice and didn't reply, her expression saying plainly that she was going to do something unpleasant to the next person who asked her, possibly with the oversized, extra large mug she currently held.
"It was lovely," Thorian grinned, "Wish I could have a bed like that all the time."
"And would not your people say that you were getting soft?" Jeremiah needled.
"Paft," Thorian waved a hand, "They ain't hear to try it out. 'Sides they also say that I am too smart for them, when I'm still too dumb for almost every where else so what they know? I know I had a good sleep last night and I wouldn't mind having another one like it."
"May we know how the city is doing?" Ulrich interrupted their banter before it could detract from Myslynn's presence.
"Well it could have been worse," she reported, "It isn't good, as well you know, pwarter poor timing on that academy trip..." She faltered and Ulrich winced. It hadn't been as bad as the nursery at Snake Clan Hold, especially as dwerg children were apparently granted hammers the moment they could make a proper grip but it had still been bad enough. The one who had lost an eye was going to give him nightmares for a long time and he'd been grateful that last night's night cap had given him at least one night without the dreams.
"Still, thanks to you they didn't get into Principal Mound and their two big beasties aren't going to be giving anyone any more trouble," Myslynn rallied her reserves.
"Any idea how they managed to bring those ones into the cavern?" Jeremiah asked as if it was of no interest at all to him, "I would have thought the usually tunnels would have been some what low for them to fit through."
Myslynn looked at him and her expression, behind her beard was hard to read. Estella tilted her head ever so slightly.
"Well I wonder if you could answer me that boyo," Myslynn pulled a sheet of paper out from the side of her breast plate, "Does this seem familiar to you?"
Jeremiah looked at the diagram that had been copied on to the sheet of sedum paper.
"I can't say that it..."
Quenril snatched across the table, glaring at Jeremiah as he did so. He and his companions bent their heads over the diagram.
"It is a variant of the runic circle that one's pet used to breach the citadel," Quenril reported, "Crude, badly worked, more likely to have killed the portal users than properly open them a gateway to where they wanted to go but usable, just."
"Well, let's just say I don't think these things have safety on their minds," Myslynn grunted, "Judging by the mess that was discovered round the place we found this runic circle something else used the portal to come through with them."
"Oh?" Jeremiah lent forward, "Tell me more?"
"Not sure," Myslynn reported, "But whatever it was put up one hell of a fight before they brought it down. Looked like there was meant to be a third one of those big beasties but whatever piggy backed its way through put pay to it for us."
"Oh, such a shame," Jeremiah noted, "It must be embarrassing to know that the great race of the dwergs needed help from something unnamed and unknown."
Myslynn glowered but Jeremiah seemed to be impervious to shame.
"Still, thanks to that mess and the losses these 'werewolves' took yesterday we now doubt that they are going to try again," Myslynn reported, "However, the Council would like a few more days in which to discuss the matter before a decision is made. Yes, I know," she held up a hand, "Nothing ever moves quickly with the Council, but right now we do not need to be challenging the foundations of our society. The population is already shaken up quite enough by these events, I do not need even more piled onto my plate and neither does the rest of the Council."
"I take it that the Council want us to stay put until they have thoroughly hashed out their decision?" Ulrich asked.
"That just about covers it," Myslynn nodded, "I know that you are all eager to get back to the world without a roof and believe me, I understand why, but I'm afraid that you are going to have to wait for a little while longer before you can. However, you don't have to be completely idle while you wait for us to hash this out."
"We don't?" Ulrich asked.
"Oh shame," Jeremiah muttered, "Here was I, looking forward to having a lovely long, relaxing break." Kaelin gave him a long flat look before going back to her mug of tea.
"You'll still have time to sit long enough," Myslynn noted, "As you won't been the one actually doing the work, so long as I am correct about what is filling out that bag of scolding of yours." She nodded to Thorian.
"Er what?" he asked, putting one hand on the magic bag he'd taken from Nanny Tatter's lair.
"I can tell you how to find what you're looking for," said bag offered, "First step - pull your head out your aft!"
"After you skinned that Crone Dragon what did you do with the hide?" Myslynn asked Quenril and the other Ash Elves.
"That one claimed it as a trophy," Quenril inclined his head to Thorian, "It has been three days since we faced the destroyer of our people in her lair so it would be unlikely to have spoiled too far."
"Good," Myslynn nodded, "Because it has been decided that the leather workers are going to make you all a set of dragon scale armor from that hide as a token of our gratitude."
"Whoopee!" Thorian leapt up from the table and began to...
"My dear Thorian just what are you doing?" Ulrich asked nonplussed.
"Well they are going to need to know our size," Thorian stood there in all his glory, "Can't do that with all those clothes on."
Jeremiah rolled his eyes and looked resolutely at the ceiling while the three Ash Elves looked at their plates with stoic resolution. Kaelin took a good long look and then shrugged.
"Huh..." she muttered, "I've seen bigger."
At her elbow Estella choked on a laugh and bent forward until her face was nearly on the table cloth, shoulders shaking, spluttering and stuttering as she did her best to stop laughing or at least keep her laughter a little more lady like. She pulled her crystal lens off and plonked them on the table beside her face, a move that made her turn her head and catch another glimpse of...
"Oh," Valodrael rumbled huskily in her mind, "Should I be taking notes of my lady's... preferences?"
Estella choked and coughed again, something other than laughter rolling in her belly, the same swift flash of heat she had felt when she had seen Ulrich's collar was not properly closed the night before.
"Um what?" she gasped though her bouts of giggles.
"Still, I don't think I could pull off green," Valodrael mused, "Red however, hum." Again that husky rumble in a throat that didn't truly exist and Estella shivered, a new sensation running down her spine. "Yes, I think I would look good in red."
Estella swallowed round a suddenly dry mouth, the image of skin the color of well fired terracotta gliding over broad shoulders and well defined muscles filling her imagination.
Kaelin looked over at Estella's quivering form.
"You alright?" she asked, noting there was a sudden change in Estella's scent. It almost smelt like she was...
"Shut up!" Estella whispered fiercely.
"Excuse me for..." Kaelin started and then realized that Estella was still muttering.
"Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!" the entire of the back of Estella's neck and her ears were glowing the same color as her hair and Kaelin could almost hear the sizzle.
"You need to get that blush under control," Kaelin noted. Estella squeaked and clapped a hand to the back of her neck without raising her head. She made a noise as a voice that only she could hear commented that he rather liked her blush, it so tempting.
"Will you just stop it?" she begged between her teeth and then she relaxed as something stopped pushing its luck.
"I'd keep your head down," Kaelin warned. Estella froze in place.
"I uh hum," Myslynn cleared her throat several times. In fact she had to restart, stop, clear her throat again several times before she had enough control to speak. "As much as I am aware that the um," she coughed, "Concept of modesty may have a looser meaning among you people, good... man Thorian." Well there was definitely no mistaking that. "Among us it is not traditional to undress at the table." Estella had another laughing fit. "That and the measurements will be taken at the workshops of the leather workers so please can you put your clothes back on?"
"Oh, right," Thorian said and reached for his shirt.
"Just out of... curiosity," Ulrich hazarded the wording there, "But do you not own a pair of underpants?"
"What?" Thorian frowned, looking round at Ulrich.
"Underpants," Ulrich repeated, "The small item that goes under your trousers... your draws." Ulrich corrected himself, remembering that Thorian was not familiar with the term trousers.
"Yeah, I did," Thorian noted, "They fell apart a while back. Suppose there might be some more in ere though." He hefted the bag of scolding and dug around inside.
"You bring nothing to the table except drama," the bag grunted.
Thorian lifted it up... and dropped it on the floor.
"Ouch," the bag grunted, "You are living proof that being loud doesn't make you right."
"He's not alright," Kaelin smirked, "He's half left."
"Indeed," Estella managed to sit up with a smile on her face, "If he was all right he'd fall over."
Kaelin didn't quite smile but she held up a hand and let Estella high five her.
"So rewarding to see that you are beginning to feel slightly human," Jeremiah noted, returning to his breakfast now that the highly distracting view had been covered up again.
"Oof!" the bag complained as Thorian picked it up again, "I've no interest in explaining myself to someone who doesn't listen."
"Hush you," Thorian patted it, "Or I might let Kaelin use you as a chew toy."
"You won't dare!" the bag snapped.
"I might," Thorian noted.
"Now that little... matter is taken care of," Myslynn used all her years of politicking to keep a straight face, "Once breakfast is complete I will lead you to the leather workshops. I'm afraid that we will not be able to linger long but my library is open for your use while I am busy with the Council and I also have a private practice range so your are free to use any of it. Just ask Bunrik to show you where they are."
"Thank you very much, your lordship," Ulrich inclined his head, "And may I say that we are truly grateful for your generosity and... forbearance."
"Yeah," Thorian nodded, "Tell you what? If there is enough left over, would you like a set of dragon hide gloves?"
Myslynn was still a moment and then inclined her head back.
"I must say that offer is more than generous of you and I thank you for it. It is a shame, I think, that once you leave our realm I will be unlike to be able to keep in contact with you. I would like to know how your quest finishes." She smiled.
"I don't know," Jeremiah observed, "I think we may find our way back here at some point." For some reason coming from Jeremiah it was not reassuring.
Not long after, everyone agreed that they had partaken of Myslynn's generous breakfast board enough for one morning and they were ready to have a constitutional perambulation through the city. The atmosphere was changed from the day before, the hustle and bustle of law courts and businesses muted below the clink and click of hammers and chisels, the metallic scrape of iron support beams being moved into place and the rumble of falling stone where unstable floors were simply knocked out so they could be rebuilt from secure foundations. Principle Mound looked like it had sprouted a fuzzy outer layer as scaffolding was constructed around it, dwergs in workman's gear telling guards in no uncertain terms to get their bottoms out of the way so that they could do their job. However, Myslynn did not lead them up the hill to Principle Mound but rather across the city to a more utilitarian area.
The smell of the leather works was strong, acrid and organic.
"I suppose that this is also where the urine of the city comes," Jeremiah observed, handkerchief held delicately to his nose.
"Why on earth would they need urine?" Myslynn asked.
"To remove the hair off the hides," Jeremiah replied. Myslynn looked at him as if he was more than a wee piece dumb.
"Urodel have no hair," she stated, "I don't know what your leather workers are tanning but if they have to use urine then I can only imagine the stink. Might be an idea thought for some of those beasties though."
"What?" Kaelin asked. Myslynn shifted uncomfortably as she realized that she'd let something slip.
"I apologize if we should have asked but it was decided that as a final insult to the monsters that harmed our children yesterday, they would be skinned and their hides given to the leather workers."
"Don't leather workers bate the hides they work with the brains of the creature that provided the skin?" Jeremiah asked with a small smile.
"Yeah they do," Kaelin replied for Myslynn, "And like that's going to bother me. If someone can find a use for their brains after they died then by all means let them do so, its not like the idiots used them when they were alive."
They wandered in through the stained door of the tannery. Inside was better than they had expected, the smell a little abated and instead of the massive vats they had been expecting, they found rows and rows of hides hanging from the ceiling on racks, some of them a rich black, others a creamy white and then there was everything in between. There were also finished items set out on manikins, thick heavy aprons and other protective gear for the blacksmith, still thick but more supple boiled leather garments for going under the armor of guards, then the lightest stuff for more comfortable wear. There were also boots, boots by the dozen, boots by the score. Boot that looked like they could walk themselves over a river of lava and shrug it off to boots with turned down tops and very fine embroidery on the cuffs.
"Ah, front of shop," Ulrich noted, "And a very fine establishment you have here as well."
"Well I must say that I never expected the subject of a human tale to walk into my shop," the proprietor smiled, "But if they are all like you then I must say that I could stand to meet more of your kind." He shook Ulrich's hand. Ulrich managed not to wince. The dwerg had a grip that could put a blacksmith to shame. He soon found out why.
"So where is this dragon skin that I'm supposed to be working with?"
"Here," Thorian smiled and flipped the bag of scolding upside down. Nanny Tatters' skin cascaded out on to the floor in a heap that almost came up to Thorian's head.
"Oh," the chief of the leather workers winced, passing a hand before his eyes, "Young man, you do not treat hides that way, it spoils them so badly to get creases in them. Now then." He grabbed the edge of the dragon skin and pulled.
The King's Special and Myslynn found themselves being pushed to the walls, along with the furniture as the massive skin was pulled out as flat as could be managed.
"What is your name?" Ulrich asked as the dwerg worked.
"Drongar," was the short reply as the dwerg in question worked, "Drongar Awlhand. Eighth of the name and still going strong. Hum." He glared at what he'd managed to pull out flat and then stumped to the door that lead deeper into the complex. Opening it he roared in a voice that could probably be heard half way round the city for his boys to get their afts up to the shop floor and bring the large salt barrels with them.
Said large salt barrels when they arrived only just fitted through the door. Drongar's sons were suitably impressed by the dragon skin laid out upon the floor and dismayed by the fact that it had been kept crumpled up for three days. They promptly helped their father pull all the slack over to one side of the shop floor and while one helped their father begin to salt down the inner layer of the hide, the other went running off for more salt.
Jeremiah picked up a pinch of the stuff, noting that it was pink.
"Just out of interest, is it supposed to be this color?" he insinuated.
"Finest deep rock salt," Drongar barely gave him a glance as he poured another bucket full on to the hide. "It will cure it as fine as anything." He and his son started rolling up the hide straightening it out as they did so. "What happened to its tail?"
"Er, I got that here," Thorian admitted, "Not had the chance to use it." He held up the coiled length of Nanny Tatters' tail. "I forgot about it." Drongar took it and had a look as his boys continued with the work of salting and rolling.
"Not in too bad of a state," he admitted, "But the rot is beginning. Not noticeable to the untrained eye but I can feel it in the bend. Would you like me to do this as well? Think with care, we can keep some of the bone tip and the rest we can braid back together again. Should have a fair snap once we've done."
"Cool!" Thorian grinned, "I mean yeah. I mean please!"
"Right," Drongar nodded, "Boys, add this to the pile." He put it down by the door and turned to help his sons finish the job of salting and rolling.
"Right, if you give us moment to get this to the curing shed, I'll be back and we can start talking commissions," Drongar helped his sons lift the humongous roll of hide on to their collective shoulders and then they lifted the roll off their shoulders and turned themselves so the roll went down on their opposite shoulders and they were facing the door that lead to the deeper recesses of the leather works. They marched out without having to call time. Ulrich watched them go and then whistled.
"Just how heavy do you think that roll of hide was?" he asked the King's Special.
"Heavy," Thorian nodded.
"Your people are a strong people," Ulrich noted to Myslynn.
"Did you expect any less boyo?" Myslynn asked, "We are the true people of the stone, like the stone we are strong."
"I don't question how deep your roots are in the earth," Ulrich worded his comment carefully, "But it surprises me that leather workers appear just as strong as a blacksmith. As they work with a softer material I would have thought that it would have needed slightly less strength."
"Oh really?" Myslynn drawled but she was smiling at the time, "Alright boyo, lift that there hide down from the rack." She pointed. Ulrich looked at the spotted sheet of Urodel leather. With a shrug he reached up and lifted it of the rack.
"Flip," he cussed the strongest cuss word he was willing to use in present company, "That is heavier than it looks!"
"What do you expect?" Myslynn asked, "Those things live in the hot springs that bubble up from the world's core. Its not quite as hot as lava but you need a thick skin to with stand that stuff, especially as some of those springs are laced with chemicals that make lime look positively beneficial. Compared with an Urodel even we are soft skinned."
"If he's spending a lot of time on the shop floor helping shift those things around," Ulrich managed to heave the leather back onto the rack, "Then I can understand with his grip can pop a rivet." He shook his hand.
"Right," Drongar dusted his hands off as he walked back into the shop room, his sons coming in to straighten the furniture and carry the salt barrels off, "Now Lord Myslynn sent word that you're having to work on something of a time limit so I've put that roll in the lo drying room. I'll leave there for about a day and a half, while a frame is constructed in situ and then we'll move is into the vent room and string it on a frame over the vent. Between the salt and the heat we should be able to speed up the curing without degrading the quality. After that it is going to take a couple of days to bate it and have it ready for the tanning vats. The thing is we don't have a tanning vat big enough to take the whole hide so we are going to have to cut the pieces with a fair amount of leeway and the adjust once the tanning is done to fit. All in all, I reckon just shy of two weeks. I can't cut it any shorter than that and I may have to say longer if one of the stages decides to just be that way. You can't over work leather I'm afraid. It works at its owe pace and only a hack tries to rush it."
"One minute," Myslynn held up a finger before turning to Quenril and the other two Ash Elves, "As this is outside of Kaelin's control, will you allow her an extension on the time limit she has before the forfeit is claimed?"
Quenril looked at the other two Ash Elves. Their conversation was conducted completely in silence, the slight wave of a hand or the twitch of the expression changing what they were saying. After a minute, Quenril turned back to Myslynn.
"We will allow for the delay," he conceded, "On the condition that she uses this time to prepare to meet her Grandfather in battle and end the threat that he posses to our people."
"Understood," Kaelin nodded bluntly.
"Then you may proceed," Myslynn nodded to Drongar.
"Is this were we get measured up?" Thorian asked.
"Wait one moment!" Ulrich yelled as Thorian went for his belt, "Do we need to be totally starkers for this or are we alowed to keep our small clothes on?"
"Small clothes would be preferable," Drongar frowned, obviously wondering why this point had to be made and then he saw that Thorian was already ready to be measured up.
"Eager are?" he hazarded a guessed, "Very well, if you come this way to the measuring room, then we will begin."
"Oh yeah!" Thorian punched the air and was first through when Drongar opened a different door that lead through to a room that had tape measures and note books and pencils laid out in shiny rows. Off to one side was a sofa that Jeremiah promptly claimed, while on the other was a curtained area that Drongar beckoned Thorian into.
"Now then sir," Drongar said, as he closed the curtains, "If you'd hold out your arms to the sides, straight out sir, yes that is right, we will be able to measure up your chest... Excuse me a minute." He popped out of the curtained area, looked around, walked across the room and picked up a stool meant to help reach the sample and patterns stored in a top cupboard.
"Now Sir, if we start at the neck line and work our way down."
Kaelin glanced round from where she was perusing the swatches of leather. She shook her head and went back to flicking through the samples.
"I have to admit that we are not used to providing for such big customers." Drongar prattled as he measured Thorian from wrist to shoulder.
Kaelin paused again, crossed her eyes a moment and moved on to looking at the diagrams of the stitch patterns.
"Well I'm a big boy from a big family," Thorian replied, "We're always been well endowed."
Kaelin coughed.
"Is something wrong my dear?" Jeremiah asked with his usual spite.
"Bit of dust," Kaelin replied. For the first time in her life she was wishing she knew the trick of sewing as it would give her something to distract her from the conversation that was going on behind the curtain. A quite sound made her glance round.
Estella was sat on the floor in a corner, a piece of talisman wood in her hands as she started carving another one of her little pets, her living talismans quietly bobbing about on the floor, cheeping in muted worry. Kaelin frowned. What was bothering her?
"Sir is certainly narrow in the waist however," Drongar's tape measure was busy, "I hope that sir is not under eating. We will not be able to make adjustments for expansion I'm afraid."
Estella's talismans chirped again and Kaelin frowned more. Then she realized that Estella's singular focus was her attempts to not blush.
"Oy!" Thorian suddenly cried out, "What you think yah doing with that bit of tape? No bloke is putting his hands there!"
"I'm afraid sir that I need an accurate measure for your inside leg," Drongar explained.
"The inside of my leg is always where it should be," Thorian protested, "Ain't no bloke putting his hands near captain winkie!"
"I assure you sir that my hands are always strictly professional," Drongar stated, "And dare I ask which side sir dresses?"
"Er, the side closest to the door," Thorian hazarded.
Estella dropped her work and looked up. Unfortunately for both of them, she caught Kaelin's eye.
"Er what's going on?" Thorian stuck his head out through the curtain. Kaelin and Estella both looked up at him and then creased up laughing again. Estella was laughing so hard she was leaning helplessly against the wall, tears rolling down her cheeks and gasping for breath, the talismans darting round her head.
Kaelin was curled up on the floor, laughing until her ribs hurt and she was trying to wipe away the tears and pretend she wasn't. She opened her mouth to laugh again and hiccuped instead. Estella leaned forward.
"Did you...?"
Kaelin hiccuped again. Estella dissolved in giggles again.
"It's (hic)," Kaelin protested, "It's (hic) it's (hic) not (hic) not (hic) funny! (Hic)" She gave up and laughed as well through the hiccups.
"There is of course the question of sirs usual fighting style," Drongar managed to somehow keep a level voice.
"Er that make a difference?" Thorian asked.
"Oh yes," Drongar replied, "A more nimble fighting style requires a more flexible armor, whereas a stand still and pound them into the ground fighting style requires a heavier, sturdier armor to take more punishment. How does sir fight?"
"I came at them from the front," Thorian said, "I smack 'em from the side. I'm not fancy, I just hits them."
"Don't forget the rapid thrusts from behind," Ulrich commented.
"Oh yeah, that too," Thorian agreed.
Kaelin looked at Estella and sniggered. Estella bubbled for a moment and then gave into the pressure. By the time she was finished laughing she was on her side, gasping for breath. Ulrich had already been measured up by the time they'd got themselves under control.
"Oh dear Lord," Estella sat up, hands pinching the tips of her ears which were glowing a beautiful red. Her eyes widened slightly.
"Now don't you start!" she snapped at someone who wasn't there.
"Does he often intrude?" Kaelin asked, scooting over to sit beside her.
"Not usually like this," Estella admitted, "Since this morning though he's become a little..." She stumbled for the words.
"Frisky?" Kaelin arched an eyebrow.
"Frisky," Estella agreed, "That is a very good word for it! Frisky!"
"May I suggest you gentlemen find some where else to wait," Drongar suggested, "While I see to the lady's, if Lord Myslynn would stay to make sure all propriety is observed?"
"That I will do," Myslynn nodded and jerked her thumb at the door, "You three have a look through the stuff out there. Find yourselves a set of boots that you like or something."
"As our lady suggests," Ulrich bowed and lead the way out. Ulrich was soon caught up in trying to decide which boots were the perfect blend of practical and decorative for riding around on Peter or on the back of his lizard, while Jeremiah speculated what on Hestia the leather worker could do in the way of proper clerical robes for a priest of his status out of dragon skin.
Thorian in the meanwhile was sniffing the air. There was definitely a smell that was not quite the organic smells of the leather works in the air. It was something... rather... alchemic. He'd smelt something like it once before when he'd gone through a town where the blacksmith had used this funny yellow liquid to etch pretty patterns on metal.
Following his nose Thorian wandered out of the leather works and wandered slightly further up the street. Pushing open a door, the smell hit him full in the nose.
"Phuroo!" he exclaimed, blinking the tears out of his eyes, "What's this place then?"
"Well hello friend Thorian," a voice he recognized called to him, "I didn't expect to see you here."
Thorian blinked again and squinted his eyes.
Sinbar was hauling on a chain that was looped through a system of pulleys and cogs suspended from a boxy contraption that rested on a massive pair of girders that ran the width of the workshop. The motion of Sinbar's arms seemed to be pulling something up out of a huge vat of a yellowish, fizzing fluid was releasing the awful smell.
"It pongs in here," Thorian observed, "It really pongs."
"Yes," agreed Sinbar, his voice a little muffled, "I'm afraid that I don't have a nose mask big enough for you. And I'd also stay back while you don't have goggles."
"Er what?" Thorian peered closer. Sinbar had a massive pair of thick lensed googles over his eyes and a conical mask, rather like a raven's beak over his nose and mouth.
"This stuff can be nasty if you get it on your skin," Sinbar warned as what he was hauling out of the tank rose into the air. It appeared to be a large, fine meshed sheet of metal, on top of which the pieces of a...
"Is that a dwarf's skeleton?" Thorian asked, pinching his nose mostly shut and stepping a little closer.
"A dwerg," Sinbar corrected, "And yes, it's one of the guards who didn't make it yesterday. I'm preparing the skeleton for the funeral rites." He pulled another chain to lock the mechanism in place and the grabbed a third and started hauling on it, the boxy thing up on the girders slowly rolling forward, the sheet supporting the skeleton moving its dripping load from over the vat of yellow stuff, towards a vat full of white water.
"Here let me help," Thorian stepped forward and ceased the chain.
"Careful! Careful!" Sinbar squeaked but Thorian took it slow and once the dripping load was over the second vat he let go.
"Thank goodman Thorian," Sinbar nodded as he unlocked the mechanism and started lowering the skeleton into the second vat, "but you did take quite a risk. As I said, this stuff is nasty on the skin." Once the skeleton was totally submersed and the top of the vat bubbling to a froth, he turned to Thorian and reveal that besides the nose guard and goggles, he was also wearing a back to front heavy leather smock over his shirt sleeves.
"And what can I do for you?" he beckoned Thorian away from the vats, stepping into another room where he closed the door on the stink with a sigh of relief and stripped the nose guard off. He did not however remove his goggles or his smock, going over to what appeared to be a larger version of the Ash Elves' pot bellied stove and checking something in a cruible on the top.
"Well I don't know," Thorian admitted, "I was just wondering what the awful smell was."
"Oh that's the acid of my trade," Sinbar smiled, "You're right, it stinks to high heaven. Personally, I would prefer to have my vats in an open sided building but as there is no wind underground to blow the smells away, the dwergs insisted that I have it inside a fully inclosed building. They are still trying to breed a sedum strain that will soak up the fumes but so far no luck." He walked over and checked something he'd got supported in an indent in a tray of sand, testing whether he was absolutely sure that all the peices fitting together the way he expected them to.
"Is that a skull?" Thorian asked in suspicion.
"Yes," Sinbar stated bluntly, "Again, one of the guards who didn't make it through yesterday. The dwergs believe that the skull is the seat of the soul, so that is the part of the body that they preserve after death. Once I have cleaned and prepared it, the family will hold a great cerimony in which they recount all of the deceased deeds, good and bad, while the skull carver immortalizes them in pictogram form on the skull. It will then go into the family vault, which is open so that the family can come and tell their ancestors the progress of the family. It is why I need to restore this one, a broken skull means the soul cannot take up residence after death."
He walked back to his pot bellied stove and picked up a pair of long tongs.
"Er so what did they do before you were here?" Thorian asked, scratching at an ear.
"They used to trade with the Ash Elves for a supply of kerveads," Sinbar carefully carried the crucible across the room and tipped a stream of silver out into the pieces of skull he already had in the support. "Much messier business, took longer and was more distressing to watch. My way isn't so crawlly." He put the crucible back on the pot bellied stove and scurried back to the table where he started to carefully swirl the semi-molten silver round the inside of the supported skull pieces. It flowed sluggishly, like setting wax.
"So that why you like it here?" Thorian asked, "They give you a job?"
Sinbar tipped the support tray slightly, watching the silver slow and set.
"You could put it like that," he noted, laying it flat again.
"Er, what did I say?" Thorian worried.
"It wasn't you," Sinbar said quietly, putting off his goggles. Laying them beside the tray, he walked to the other end of the workshop, passed various glass things that bubbled and steamed, as well as cauldrons that smoked and hissed. Thorian did not follow, not wanting to knock one of those fancy things over but he could see the picture on the wall.
It was a tall, thin figure, not man or woman, its face blank save for the eyes that were large and calm. Round its waist hung a belt of masks, man, woman, child, human, elf, orc, even dragon. Thorian frowned. The picture reminded him of someone as it lifted its four arms. Two were held out in a gesture of welcome, an offered hug, while the higher two were held above its head, one holding a sickle of reaping, the other the small pin hammer of the silver smith, a hammer of making.
Sinbar knelt before the painting.
"When I first saw this land and knew myself to be safe," he said, "And my wife and child were not beside me I said to my god "my god this day I do not believe in you"."
"What did he say?" Thorian frowned.
Sinbar stood and turned to smile at Thorian.
"He said "that is quite alright, Sinbar, I understand why and when you are ready to believe again, I will be waiting for you to come home" and so I live among my adopted people, people who accept me and accept my work and I have found that I still believe even if that belief is without the joy it held at one time."
He walked back to where Thorian stood, the dark rings under his eyes standing out in his tired face.
"You did a great thing when you helped these people," he said, "And for that I thank you."
"Ah," Thorian shrugged it off, "Just doing what's right."
"So what brought you down this way, any way?" Sinbar pulled his goggles back on an started adding little chips of silver to the crucible.
"Oh we're getting our armor made next door," Thorian jerked a thumb back the way he'd come, "The big jobs decided they'll turn that dragon skin I got into some fancy armor for us."
"Ah so they did decided to go through with it," Sinbar gave the crucible a stir, "Well once you've had it done bring it over here and I'll work some runes into it. Wards are another skill in my arsenal and Estella has been giving me the low down on some of what you might be facing in the future. You are going to need all the help you can get."
"Er, we are?" Thorian asked.
Sinbar looked round.
"Valodrael recognised the person Nanny Tatters, the dragon you skin, was talking to through the rune stones," he told Thorian, "He is not good news. He's old, he's powerful and he's full of spite. If he's picked up on the fact you were involved in taking Nanny Tatters out then he is going to have marked you down as a foe. As I said, you are going to need all the help you can get to deal with him and so I'm offering it. Now get on with you, Myslynn's probably wondering where you wandered off to, just hold your breath on the way out."
As the King's Special made their way back to Myslynn's house later, there were plenty of looks and a fair amount of nods in their direction.
"I see we have made an impact here," Jeremiah waved graciously.
"Seeing as you haven't fallen over yet it can't be that great of an impact," Kaelin noted. Jeremiah glared at her, which was probably why he huffed off after they arrived back. Kaelin made the excuse that she was tired and went to her room. There was something she'd forgotten about for far too long.
"Hi Charlotte, sorry I... huh," the locket was empty.
"Em Charlotte, hello?" Kaelin tilted the locket this way and that, "Uh, hello? Anyone there?" She tapped the locket, first on the picture face, leaving a grubby finger print and then on the back.
"Well this is a fine kettle of fish," she muttered, giving the locket a shake, "We never did work out how to let each other know we wanted a chat." She was just about to give up and close the locket when Charlotte appeared in the painting.
"Just where on Hestia are you?" Charlotte demanded, "The connection was extremely uncomfortable."
"In," Kaelin replied drolly. Charlotte blinked, waiting for more but Kaelin could out wait a stone.
"What did you mean by that truly unenlightning reply, cousin?" Charlotte kept her tone polite.
"In Hestia," Kaelin replied, "We're in Hestia and I'm not sure how many miles down."
Charlotte opened her mouth, closed it again, took a deep breath and sat down on the painted grass.
"Please explain?" she asked humbly, "And please don't leave out any details."
"Right, where to begin," Kaelin wriggled herself back into the pillows on the bed so she could longe comfortably, "Well we made it to Nether Wallop, turned out the governer there was on the straight and narrow, even if he is an Ash Elf..."
"A what?" Charlotte asked.
"An Ash Elf," Kaelin repeated, "Tall, pointy eared snot noser with a superiority complex but the governor seems OK as I was saying. The whole thing with the lake was just the top of the tree, Nether Wallop has been underseige for months Ash Elves from different clans and the governor had pulled everyone back inside the walls for protection. Follow so far?"
"Yes I do," Charlotte nodded, "So I can report the trouble extends to Nether Wallop as well."
"As well?" Kaelin raised her eyebrows.
"It has," Charlotte hesitated, "It has not been good. Half the harvest was got in but the rest has been destroyed. The attacks are happening just about every night and they are getting heavier. Elisha has had rooms in the tower itself prepared and has drawn all the dependents and what they could bring into the tower just incase the walls are breeched in the night." She looked up at Kaelin. "We really need you home."
"We are working on it," Kaelin said soberly, "Any way, we headed down into the Underworld, where the pointy gits were coming from and we did expect trouble. Found more than we expected. Ulrich managed to charm his way into the graces of one of the pointy gits leaders so we thought we'd get the problem fixed in short order only... only we ran up against my grandfather."
"What!?!" Charlotte exclaimed and then clapped a hand to her mouth.
"Yeah," Kaelin was tired, she admitted it to herself, if no one else, "It was the werewolves who have been stirring up the Ash Elves. Looks like I didn't do a good enough job when I let the hunters into the compound." She sighed. "Looks like if you want a job done you have to do it yourself." She rubbed her eyes. "Problem is, it's not just my grandfather - he's been making alliances with absolute freaks, including this big, ugly lump of a dragon."
"That can't be good," Charlotte agreed.
"Oh she weren't so tough," Kaelin smiled, "The grumpy, little gits are turning her skin into some clothes for us right now."
"Grumpy, little..." Charlotte hesitated.
"Dwergs," Kaelin explained, "Turns out the legends of deep dwarfs, ain't legends, they're down here and they weren't entirely happy to see us but turns out that grandpa was sticking his claws in down here as well so they have decided that they owe us one for helping them kick the old flea biters butt." She lay back. "That's about it, kind of stuck here, until they decide to let us leave. Oh there was one more thing, we're met a thing called a Void Dragon."
"A... Void Dragon," Charlotte repeated slowly.
"Yeah," Kaelin nodded, "Dangerous monster but he's limited at the moment. Something happened to him so he's having to ride crossbow in this girl called Estella Blackstar. Now she's strange, doesn't seemed bothered at all about having a draconnic hickhiker. I think they might be headed up to the surface with us so I think we might be bringing a potential new member of a King's Special. I'll leave that up to the King to decide on that."
"Probably sensible," Charlotte agreed, "So any idea when you will be able to come and help us?"
"Not a clue," Kaelin shifted uncomfortably. All this talk about her grandfather... yuck!
"It's just we could do with you either back here, or taking some more detailed notes about what you are up to," Charlotte observed.
"How about I keep the locket open over the next few days so you can look in?" Kaelin suggested, shifting again.
"Now that sounds like a brillant idea," Charlotte beamed, "I..."
"You know what else is a good idea?" Kaelin asked, sitting up, "A wash! I want a wash, a bath, a shower, something that makes me clean."
"That is true," Charlotte hazarded, "But..."
"Speak to you later," Kaelin slipped the locket off and left it on the bedside table. She headed for the bathroom, wondering if she could get her clothes cleaned as well. It was petty, flipping birds at the memory of the old wolf but it made her feel better so she was going to do it as much as possible.