Cricket

23

Figments and Fragments

Scorpion crept close to the ground—still, save for his silently waving tail—then lurched off into the darkness, followed by the squeal of a wraith. The violet light from his arm cast an elongated shadow of the screeching ethereal being against the wall before it instantly faded.

The ratling looked a bit disappointed when he returned.

Cricket rested the palms of his lower arms on his sheathed scimitars, opting for the silver swords in his upper arms. "What's wrong?"

"No parasites in that one either."

"Really?" Oydd raised a brow in curiosity.

"Why does that matter?" Cricket asked.

"I suppose it doesn't," the rudra replied. "I just find it interesting."

"But why are you disappointed?" Cricket asked the ratling.

"It just... vanished. I don't know. I like to have a corpse."

"My god," Oydd breathed.

Cricket looked ahead and noticed a pillared archway, along with a fresco of symbols etched into the flat stone wall. He stepped forward and felt the engraving. "What does it say?"

"How would I know? These markings are ancient. It's like no language I've ever seen."

"Jesh?"

"What?" the druid said in surprise. "I don't know either."

"Well, you're older than Oydd, right?"

"I'm not... ancient..."

"Mm-hmm, mm-hmm," Cricket nodded, oblivious to the perplexed look on the druid's face.

Oydd stepped reverently through the archway. "These are the outer walls to a city. A vast, sprawling city."

Despite his promise, the rudra stared only at a blank dome of shadow formed by the reaching light of his stone.

Jeshu walked to his side. "You knew this would be here."

"I... forgot. I suppose that's not the word, since they are not my memories. But... I remember now, though it's a bit hazy. Building, after building, after building. All empty. But what..."

"What was living down here?" Jeshu finished.

"Maybe it was gnomes!" Bax offered. "Some gnomes like to live under mountains."

"We are far below the mountains," Oydd replied, still in awe. "I just... can't imagine a civilization down here, and... how old would you say these ruins are?"

Jeshu answered, "It's hard to say. I don't know what elements the stones are exposed to."

"Ten thousand years," Bax said. "Give or take..."

"How do you know that?" Scorpion asked with a biting tone.

Bax managed to look offended. "My wife was an archeologist of some renown. I can't tell you how many times I had to date ruins like these. It was the one thing she was bad at."

Scorpion scoffed.

"Ten thousand years," Bax repeated authoritatively. "I saw some hieroglyphics like this on a very old elven obelisk we unearthed."

Jeshu still looked skeptical. "Your wife was a famous archeologist?"

"Infamous," Bax corrected. "Er, because of some messy business with..." he stroked his beard three times. "With... with.. well, she accidentally mummified the Sunspeaker's cat. And elves are... very fond of their cats."

Cricket nodded in pretended understanding as the gnome fumbled again for his monocle.

He held it up to his eye and made as if he were reading the glyphs.

Oydd snarled impatiently. "That's not going to magically translate it."

"Hmph! I should put it away just to be petty, but... Here, see! False runes."

Bax held the monocle up for Oydd, and the rudra reluctantly took the lens and placed it over his own beady eye.

"Oh... there's an entirely separate inscription below."

"What does it say?" Scorpion asked.

"Well, I still have no idea."

Bax stuck his nose up quite snobbishly. "Nor do I, but now we know who lived here."

"And who is that?" Jeshu asked.

"Why, whoever buried the obelisk!" the gnome stated matter-of-factly.

"Do you hear that?" Oydd asked.

Jeshu looked up. "I don't hear anything."

"Precisely. No hum. No buzz." The rudra scratched his beak as he began to walk. "No wailing. I don't even sense the dethkiri."

Cricket fell in line next to the druid as they walked. The tired azaeri's spears began to tap against the ground with their weary steps.

"What are hieroglyphs?"

"Like runes," Jeshu said. "Each symbol has a meaning, but... it's a bit less evolved. More like pictures telling a story."

"Then why would we need to translate? We can just look at the pictures." Cricket eyed a symbol etched into a nearby wall that might very well have been a dethkirok.

"We can't, really, without some cultural knowledge. For example, the elves, like Bax alluded, use the symbol of a cat, or a cat's eye to represent the afterlife. But that's not really intuitive. Likewise, the symbol of the sun could mean death, or life, or even wisdom."

Cricket laughed. "I doubt they knew what the sun was."

"Well... perhaps a bad example."

The brigade marched down a crumbling stairway that passed other frescos and doorways and side streets, as they followed the rudra for nearly a mile at a gentle slope, before coming to a central, circular hub that might once have been a market.

"It's surprisingly well-preserved," Bax noted. "I don't think they have wind... or rain... or... or... definitely not plants." The gnome looked accusingly at the dryad. "Not good for preservation, plants. Tear up everything!"

"That's a fair point," Oydd joined. "Without normal weathering, I suppose it's possible these ruins are as ancient as you say. And not even the wraiths come here." Oydd's eyes narrowed. "Actually, we should hurry. I find the absence of life here to be ominous."

Scorpion sniffed. "Since when are you superstitious?"

Oydd shook his head. "I find the evidence to be alarming, though I don't have an explanation."

The azaeri huddled in tight as they marched, eyeing the shadows suspiciously. When one jumped, or sneezed, it sent a chain reaction through the ranks of flits and disapproving caws.

Ja'hek approached the rudra and gestured she had something to communicate.

Cricket felt Oydd open a link, and debated listening in, but was worried that the rudra's new brain might detect the intrusion.

After the two conversed, Oydd appeared troubled, and turned to Jeshu.

"Do we dare take a break here?"

"It seems quiet to me."

"That's what worries me, really. It's unnatural. What have wraiths to fear?"

"Well, evidently dethkiri, for one..." Cricket replied.

Jeshu stroked the rough bark of his chin, pondering. "It is troubling. But not more troubling than what we have pressed through."

"A fair point," the rudra conceded. He turned again to Ja'hek. "Do you agree it is less risky than elsewhere?"

The commander lifted her beak, silently thinking, facing one eye directly at the rudra, then nodded in that position.

"Good. Then we'll rest for a few minutes."

Ja'hek clicked her tongue disapprovingly.

"What do you want? More or less?"

The azaeri clicked her tongue, and Oydd was forced to rephrase the question. "Do you need longer?"

She clicked her tongue again—this time with a nod.

Cricket waited patiently as the rudra and the azaeri discussed a few more minor issues, and then the commander left to relay the matters to the three remaining squads.

When she was out of earshot, Cricket asked excitedly, "What does her voice sound like? I mean, when you talk to her in your head. Because she can understand the common tongue, so she must communicate in common, but... that seems weird too."

"No," Oydd said with an oddly warm smile. "You would think so, but not everyone thinks in words."

Cricket watched as she, evidently, appointed a new captain to replace Ruka, and the smile left his face.

"You have to," Cricket said blankly.

"I can assure you that you do not. Ja'hek chooses to communicate in concepts and impressions, and, frankly, does so better than the rest of us."

"Oh," Cricket groaned, disappointed. "Maybe that's why Ty'lek didn't like speaking through telepathy."

"He did like to, he just didn't like to converse in common."

"Well, that's what I mean. I just pictured what her voice would be like." Cricket took one last look at the commander. "And I wanted to see if I was right."

"When I speak through the link," Jeshu asked, "do you hear my voice in your mind?"

"Oh..." Cricket thought for a moment. One antennae drooped while the other straightened up, which meant the insect's mind was wandering.

Jeshu waited long enough, then replied to his own question. "I have learned to recognize Oydd's thoughts well enough to distinguish them from yours. There is a feel to it. But it is not his voice."

"Hmm?" Cricket snapped out of his daydreaming. "What? The voice?" Though he had heard the dryad, he had not listened, and it took him a moment to replay the words in his mind for context. "Yeah, I guess."

The soldiers began to break into groups, removing their armor and dividing rations. One winded recruit even plopped flat on his back panting, but his newly appointed captain seemed to have no issue with it.

Cricket wandered as far from the main group as he could. The magical haze in the city was much thinner than elsewhere, which meant he could actually see a short distance without any aid. The clerical lights penetrated much further as well. In all, the entire town square, or circle as it was, was sufficiently well-lit. The insect happened upon Bax sitting alone in the shell of a small building—no more than two and a half walls without a roof.

The gnome sighed and played absently with the buttons on his vest.

Cricket sat about a foot away, and Bax gave him no more than a sideways glance.

"You okay?"

Bax nodded. "I am. I'm just sweaty."

"Sweaty? It's colder here than Euna Brae."

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"But more humid," the gnome retorted. "The moisture is nesting on me!"

Cricket cocked his head. "It doesn't feel humid to me. And you don't look like you're sweating."

"Well, I feel like I'm sweating. Can you even gauge humidity with a shell on?"

"Um, not by feel, but sometimes I get... little beads of water."

Bax smiled. "Maybe I've just been pushing myself too hard. I have to take two steps for every one of yours."

"Oh, I hadn't thought about that." Cricket looked over the gnome for some evidence of sweat, but gave up. He did, however, notice the red, translucent lens sitting in his vest pocket. "Hey, what is that thing?"

"This?"

"Yes. Your glasses. Are they magic?"

"No, no, no... a bit. A bit maybe. But mostly the opposite. It's magicite. Er, the stuff Oydd calls... bloodstone. Just really thin."

"Really thin..." Cricket repeated, impressed.

"And it's not glasses, because there's only one."

"What's it—"

"A monocle!" Bax said proudly. "Very distinguished."

"And it dispels magic?"

"Well, not like... not much. It dispels the magic that passes through it."

"So you don't see magic?"

"Yes." Bax squirmed. "But it's cooler than it sounds."

"It sounds awesome!" Cricket replied.

"Oh... okay. Then maybe it's... a little less cool than it sounds."

"What do I look like?"

"You?" Bax scratched his nose. "Just... like you."

"Oh..." The insect's antennae drooped. "I hoped I was at least a little magic. Oydd said I was starting to... um... be."

At this, Bax took the cracked lens from his pocket and surveyed the insect meticulously. "Well, good news and bad news. You're not magic enough to look different..."

"But?" Cricket asked hopefully.

"But your khopesh does look different. Maybe... duller?"

"I guess that's cool. Hey, should we get Jeshu to turn my pendant on, and then look at it through the lens? Does Oydd look different? He's pretty magic."

"Not really," Bax said, answering the second question. "I think he just uses magic."

"Does his arm look different? The... purple one."

"No," Bax said with a note of surprise. He thought a bit, then added, as if slowly coming to a conclusion, "I can't... dispel... purple?"

"Well, it makes sense. A red lens can't dispel red, right? And purple is half red."

"And red means it's reflecting red," Bax tried to clarify, but it only seemed to confuse the insect. "So we know not all the red light is passing through it." Suddenly Bax frowned, and looked down at his boots, second guessing his own conclusion.

"Make a purple goblin, then see if you can see it through the lens."

"Brilliant!" Bax hopped to his feet, but slowly sat back down. "I can do this sitting." A purple goblin appeared in front of the two, with wiry green hair, and a substantial bald spot between its pointy ears.

Bax lifted the monocle to his eye, and it instantly vanished.

"Okay, I... it's hard to keep up an illusion I can't see, you understand, and I couldn't see it. Which means I can dispel purple."

"You're getting better! That's good. I was a little worried. We have to fight a lot of purple."

"We do?"

"Umm... " Only one of Cricket's antennae began to droop, a tell-tale sign he was near the end of his attention span. "Dethkiri are kind of purple-tinted, arguably. And I think the lich cast at least one purple spell."

"He did, didn't he? And I make a lot of purple things..."

Unconsciously, Cricket looked up at the gnome's purple hat.

"...But that would be good, I think. If I couldn't dispel purple things, I mean, because then I could just make more purple illusions, and my lens would only dispel enemy illusions."

"We haven't fought any enemy illusionists."

"Well, no, he didn't end up being our enemy, but I'm not supposed to talk about that."

"Can I try?" Cricket asked, pointing at the monocle.

"Well, for a moment only, if you promise not to drop it."

"I don't like making promises. How about, if I break it, I have to give you something better?"

The gnome pondered this arrangement, then extended his stubby hand for the insect to shake. A custom which Cricket had apparently not learned, as he just stared at Bax's fingers.

Bax leaned forward until his nose almost touched Cricket's face and forced a brief handshake, then passed the lens into one of the insect's lower hands.

"Knock yourself out!"

Cricket squealed with delight and placed the lens over his rounded eye, awkwardly. He spent a moment trying it in different places on the same eye, then looked at Bax squarely.

"Oh..."

"What?" Bax asked, a bit self conscious.

"Well... you know..."

Bax only stared back.

"You do know, right?"

"Just tell me. Do I have a zit?"

"Well, it's more about things you don't have."

Bax nearly panicked, his eyes growing wide. "What don't I have? Is it bad? Oh, just tell me!"

"Well, you just look a lot different through the lens. But... that's the real you, right?"

"How do I look different?"

"Okay..." Cricket sighed to himself, clearly not expecting further explanation was necessary. "For starters, you're missing an entire ear."

"I already knew that."

"But I didn't. And an eye... and half your nose..."

"One nostril is not half my nose!" the gnome roared so loudly that a nearby group of soldiers looked over in concern. Bax, embarrassed, lowered his voice. "What a preposterous notion! That a nostril is half a nose. So much more goes into a nose."

"Sorry," Cricket back-pedalled. "You're missing half your nostrils. And your mustache, and—"

"That's unrelated."

"The mustache?"

"Yes." Bax nodded. "It's absurd to think I lost that in a fight with a ferret."

"I didn't. Did you lose all the other stuff to a ferret?"

"Well, yes. But to be fair, I had my arms pinned against my sides, and he was able to get at my face."

"Oh, how awful! So you lost it ferret hunting."

"No, why would I hunt a ferret?"

"You said if you wanted to hunt a ferret, you had to go into their holes headfirst."

"Ah, you're thinking of weasels. I wouldn't try to catch a ferret. The ferret was our family pet. I get why you'd jump to that conclusion though. The ferret belonged to my son, Amos. Until he met an unfathomable fate..."

"How did he die again?"

"He was accidentally pickled." Bax frowned.

"Now I know you're lying!"

"Pardon?"

"You said you had two sons, and one was killed by a weasel and one was killed by a raccoon and one was killed by a badger. But you also said they were killed when they got rabies, and now you're claiming one was pickled! You can't die that many ways!"

Bax looked down and sniffed. A single, huge tear rolled down his cheek and landed on his leggings, leaving a dark spot on the bright blue fabric.

Cricket froze, his mouth still half open. Bax wiped his eyes, and turned partly away from the insect.

"I'm... sorry?" Cricket offered half-heartedly.

Bax nodded in response, and Cricket began to scratch under one of his many armpits and sniffed the fingers. Then he felt like he was holding his arms weird and switched positions, but it still felt weird.

Several minutes passed in silence, before Bax spoke, his face still turned toward the wall, away from Cricket.

"The ferret was accidentally pickled, not my son. I misunderstood your question." He forced a laugh. "You think I have a pickling jar big enough for a three-year-old gnome?" However, he paused at this, looking up so suddenly that Cricket was led to believe he might. "My two sons were killed by rabid animals. Or bitten, anyway. The cleric said they simply couldn't survive the infection at that age. I can't remember the animal. It was a weasel, or a raccoon, or..."

A silence followed, and Cricket spoke up. "I am so sorry I said that. It really... it really seemed like you were making things up."

Bax shook his head, smearing running snot onto the wall. When he noticed, he wiped his nose on his sleeve until he thought himself presentable and turned to face Cricket.

"I remember them much better now. I find that when I remove less important memories from my mind, I am able to see the remaining ones more vividly. Honestly, I had forgotten why I started to do that. Because it makes my illusions stronger too. I must have thought the reason wasn't worth remembering, but... I plan on holding onto it this time."

Cricket bit his thumb, clearly hesitant to say more. But that didn't stop him. "Did you forget geese?"

"Geese?"

"Yeah. I just... heard Jeshu and Oydd talking."

"What did they say?" the gnome asked in alarm.

"They... suggested that you might have forgotten what geese were."

"But what did they say exactly?"

"Oh, um... Jesh said, respectfully, I might add, that he thought you were mistaken, and that you were thinking of geese."

"When?" Bax sat up straight.

"I don't remember. But Oydd seemed annoyed. Then Jesh said that maybe you were just misinformed. And Oydd said it was... 'entirely possible you were thinking about geese and also that you were misinformed about geese."

"Geese, huh... Well, Oydd was wrong for certain, because I'm not at all informed about geese." Bax summoned a thick tome with a theatrical wave of his finger that Cricket knew to be entirely unnecessary. "First volume," he said importantly, then licked his thumb and began to skim the pages quickly then stopped to see where he was.

"Hamsters." He looked at the pictures. "Really hard to know whether to head back or forward, seeing as I don't know how big geese are."

"Probably bigger than a hamster. Most things are," Cricket commented, based on the sketches but without any first-hand knowledge.

"You'd be wrong at that..." Bax said, flipping back a bit. He pulled his face away to look at the side of the book and measure the height of each half. "Most things are bugs. Hundreds of types of bugs for every... mammal, for example."

"Really?" Cricket grinned. "Hey, what does it say about Crickets."

"You want me to flip back to the small ones, or forward to the big ones."

"The big ones are in there? Do those!"

Bax sighed as if burdened with the world as he skipped ahead, until he'd reached capybaras. Then he eyed Cricket critically and muttered to himself. "I wonder if it's ordered by weight or height. Capybaras can get pretty fat. Oh, what a bother. I'll need to get my wand." The gnome reached into one of the lower side-pockets of his vest, then pulled out a slender wand that was far too long to have been in his pocket. The wand was formed of several switches of willow woven together and a bit burned at the tip.

Bax pointed it at the book and the pages began to whip forward as if blown by a strong wind. A few began to tear. The pages suddenly stopped, and then began to whip back in the opposite direction briefly before coming to rest on a page filled with sketches that might as well have been Cricket himself in various combat poses.

"Crickets," Bax said, still with a sad tone that he hadn't quite shaken off from earlier. "Humanoid insects. Favorite foods, favorite color, habitat..." He spoke as if summarizing. Cricket looked over his shoulder, but couldn't make sense of the strange, blocky letters. "Simple," Bax said indignantly. "That seems a bit rude."

"It says that?"

"Shh! I'm still reading... It is mostly reliable, but it gets a lot of things wrong about gnomes. Says here Crickets 'may be covered in a shiny, black, exoskeleton that is chitinous in nature or formed of shadow.' That seems vague, right?"

"I think it's clear," Cricket replied, leaning forward on his knees.

"But it could mean that the exoskeleton is chitinous in nature or formed of shadow. When it clearly means the whole body is either shadow or covered in chitin." Bax scratched his chin. "I think a comma will do it."

The gnome held his wand very close to the page, like a quill, and made a slight mark with the ashen tip, then looked to the insect for approval. Cricket however was lost in the sketches, studying the poses and weaponry.

"Oh, no!"

Bax raised a bushy brow.

"Look at that!" Cricket pointed directly at the feet of one drawing. "My back foot is at the wrong angle. That's lazy."

Cricket stood up, taking a similar stance to the sketch, even drawing his weapons, then looked down at his back foot.

"Dammit!" Cricket suddenly snapped his mouth shut in embarrassment. "Sorry."

"It's okay. It's important."

Cricket switched his stance. Placing his other foot in the back, quickly and so expertly that his head didn't move, and his feet never lost contact with the ground. He took a step forward, then another, slashing at an imaginary foe, then stopped mid-swing and looked back at the placement of his rear foot again.

"Son of a..."

Cricket corrected the position of his rear foot, then played around with his blades a bit more, paused and made another minute correction that the gnome suspected might be for show.

Bax suddenly patted his chest with both hands. "Where did you put that monocle?"

Cricket stopped, and sheathed his lower swords. "Oh..." He pointed back at the ground near the gnome with one of his remaining two blades.

Bax groaned, and picked the lens up from the soil. He sighed as he rubbed it clean on his vest then made several more circles for polish before placing the lens back carefully into his pocket.

Bax suddenly frowned. "I'm sorry. I've been short with you. It's just my knees ache from all the walking. I tend to be a bit snippy when I'm tired... and in pain... and sad... and grumpy." He tried to force a smile.

"Do you want one of those stamina potions? I still have one in my bag." Before waiting for an answer, Cricket began to fish through his pouch with his lower arms.

"No, it's okay. I'll just be sad. I don't mind being sad."

Cricket looked up for only a second before he resumed digging. "But you don't have to be." He extended a small bottle to the gnome. But Bax looked past it, at the other contents of the pouch.

"Say, is that an invisibility potion?"

"Oh, yeah, I still have two of the ones you gave me, because..." Cricket knit his antennae, trying to recall the reason.

"Can I have that instead?"

"Well, I mean... of course. They're yours. But it won't really—"

"It will fix me right up! They're good for all sorts of aches and pains. Mostly because of the milkweed, but..."

Cricket stared back dumbfounded, and skeptical at once.

"...out of sight, out of mind—right?"

Without answering, Cricket returned the stamina potion to his bag and swapped it for one of the milky potions of invisibility. "But they only work for a minute."

"It sounds refreshing! Can I have both?"

"No."

The gnome stared back, unsure if Cricket were serious.

"It's my last one," he clarified, and Bax nodded in understanding.

One of the azaeri soldiers across the encampment shouted—somewhere on the spectrum between a yelp of pain and a warning.

Cricket's hands reached reflexively for the hilt of his sheathed swords, and he peered into the blackness but saw only other soldiers trying to identify the source of the sound.

When he looked back toward Bax, there was no trace of the gnome, save for an empty glass bottle on the ground, and his bestiary—volume one—which slowly began to fade back into oblivion.