Undermind

Her breath quickened. Sweat glistened on her body. Gasping, she raked her claws across his chest—not too deep, but deep enough to draw a trickle of blood before the wound sealed shut. She saw it coming, but somehow he still managed to draw a startled cry from her lips at the sensation of his long, thick pole slamming into her…

…shins.

Swept off her feet, Saskia went tumbling face-first into the dirt.

Grinning, Rover Dog planted his staff into the ground, and reached down to help her to her feet. She leaned against the wall of the sparring circle, eyeing him warily. A crowd of dwarves—and a couple of elves—cheered and hollered and hurled suggestions, some of them lewd. As always when the two trolls faced off against one another, they’d gathered an audience.

“Princess fight like wild plainshriek,” said Rover Dog. “Good instinct, but unrefined. Strength and speed, but not technique.”

“I’ve never trained against a strong opponent before,” she admitted.

“You will learn.” He raised his staff.

Steeling herself for the bruises that would come, she stepped toward him.

An hour later, she stumbled out of the circle, nursing her aching muscles. “This is not the good kind of pain,” she grumbled.

Of course, there had been plenty of that as well over the past few days since Rover Dog had returned. Saskia couldn’t see this thing between them ever going beyond mere friendly fornication, but her troll body couldn’t seem to get enough of him. He’d seemed a little disappointed that her belly remained flat, and had been attempting to rectify that every chance he got. Sorry to disappoint you, bud, she thought. A while ago, after having missed her period for weeks, she’d begun to get worried about pregnancy. A self-inspection with her oracle X-ray vision, followed by a visit to Nuille, had put to rest those concerns—in a rather troubling way. She was infertile. Where once had been a uterus, now there was just an especially dense concentration of arlium.

It was probably for the best. She wouldn’t have wanted to bring a child into this world; not in its present state. And a baby troll? She really wasn’t ready for that.

After a quick dip in the lake, Saskia and Rover Dog headed to the excavation site. Thanks to the druids, the housing shortage had largely ended, and Ruhildi and Saskia had found the time to devote to a fantasinating, but less essential pursuit: delving into the ruins of Old Inglomar.

Up until a few weeks ago, they’d thought the elves and dwarves and mer had already plundered nearly everything of value from the ruins over the centuries since the city’s builders, the drengari, had gone extinct. Then Ruhildi, with the help of Saskia’s minimap, had found an archaeological motherlode: a network of ancient tunnels buried far below the surface ruins; so deep that only someone with access to an oracle’s magic could hope to find them.

Since then, Saskia and Ruhildi had been hollowing out a new tunnel that linked up with the old ones. Ruhildi’s magic did most of the actual hollowing, while Saskia carted the dirt out of the tunnel. Rover Dog and Baldreg had been helping out as well since they came back from their explorations. Thorric had also showed up a couple of times with an entourage of adorribles to ‘help’ with the digging, until Myrna dragged him away.

Today was the day they would break through. What they might find down there, no-one knew, but Saskia was willing to bet there’d be tombs and mouldy old bones. And possibly giant spiders. The dwarves and Rover Dog would be in heaven.

“Going well down there?” she called, peering down into the gloom.

A dusty dwarf emerged, and gave a little sneeze. “Aye, Sashki. Just a bell or two and we’ll be treading in halls that haven’t been walked in many a greatspan.” Her eyes gleamed with excitement.

A clean-shaven male dwarf poked his head out a moment later, looking sheepish. Yup, it was a Baldreg. Those two had been spending a suspiciously large amount of time together since he got back.

Between the four of them, they made short work of the remaining few metres of rock standing in their way. When the dust cleared, they found themselves looking upon a corridor of smooth stone, with blue crystal inset in the walls. Was that…?

“Blue arlium,” said Ruhildi. “The same kind we found in the Stone Bastion and the Dead Sanctum.”

These patterns were very different from what she’d seen before, though. The crystals were arranged in intricate spirals, and didn’t appear to be linked together. They were also inert, without even a hint of light emanating from them.

They followed the tunnel into a series of chambers in various degrees of disrepair. Anything made of iron or wood had long since rusted or rotted away over the untold years since this place had been abandoned, but other things had survived the ages more or less intact: clay urns and stone chairs, and crystalline objects of unidentifiable purpose.

Eventually, they made their way into wide open chamber with a ring of marble statues surrounding a crystal altar.

Saskia stared at the statues, open-mouthed. The forms depicted here were of a people she’d long since given up any hope of seeing on this world.

“This is what the drengari looked like?” said Baldreg, his forehead crinkled in puzzlement. “The stories said the drengari were kin to the alvari. But these…these people look closer to dwarrows.”

“No, not dwarrows,” said Saskia. “Humans.”

There were three of them; two men and one woman. All nude, and…very well-endowed. The statues’ ears were rounded, not pointy. One of the men had a beard on his chin. And yet all of them were taller and leaner than any dwarf. There was no mistaking their species.

“There’s something written on the base of the statue,” said Ruhildi, peering at the bearded man’s feet. “Can you read it, Sashki?”

Saskia frowned at the strange symbols. They didn’t mean anything to her. She’d need to see more of them before her oracle translator could start making sense of them.

“I can read,” said Rover Dog, surprising everyone. “It say: Murgle, who Lurks Beneath.”

“How the hell do you know how to read that?” asked Saskia.

“I not remember where I learned this tongue,” said Rover Dog.

“Murgle were one of the old gods,” said Ruhildi. “My people call him Stonefather. He were said to have moulded the first dwarrows out of argnum.”

“Sarthea of the Night,” said Rover Dog, translating the inscription beneath the voluptuous woman.

“Sarthea were goddess of shadows and patron of fertility,” said Ruhildi. “Some say it were her loins that birthed the drengari and alvari and mer.”

“This is not how Sarthea is normally depicted,” said Baldreg. “Here, she only has two tits.”

Ruhildi snorted. “Aye. The Harlots hold her in high regard.”

“Okael, the Fire Across the Sky,” translated Rover Dog, looking at the third and final statue.

“God of the sun,” said Ruhildi. “Okael were a right bastard, if the stories were true.”

“What does this mean?” asked Saskia. “How could the old gods be human?”

“I don’t ken,” said Ruhildi. “There’s no telling if these statues hold any more truth than the tales passed down from our forefathers.”

They continued on in silence, finding the occasional inscription in stone; enough to prod Saskia’s oracle translator into action, but nothing that answered any of her burning questions. Finally, they came upon a smaller chamber, hidden behind a stone shelf. It was only thanks to her minimap and Ruhildi’s stone sense that they were able to find it.

Inside the room was a smaller statue whose head had been removed.

“Anduis the Dreamer, who Dreamt the Night Away,” said Saskia.

“Never heard of him,” said Baldreg.

“Methinks I’ve heard that name afore,” said Ruhildi. “’Twere an old tale, also from the Age of the Gods. Anduis were most favoured of Sarthea, until she caught him lying with one of her maidens, and in a fit of pique, cast him into the dark void, never to be seen again.”

“Who Dreamt the Night Away,” quoted Saskia. “Could the ‘Night’ be Sarthea?”

“Mayhap,” said Ruhildi. “Like as not, a tale that old holds only fragments of the truth.”

“So what happened to Sarthea?” asked Saskia.

“Abellion slew her, along with all the old gods.”

“I wonder…” Saskia trailed off, not yet ready to give voice to the thought.

They spent several hours just wandering the ancient tunnels, looking for clues. This was nothing like the monster-infested dungeon she’d expected to find down here. There were no enchanted swords or chests of gold to be found; no monsters to slay or traps to avoid. Which was probably just as well, because Saskia’s head was spinning from the implications of what she’d seen.

Had the old gods really been human? Or had the builders of those statues—drengari, presumably—been human, and sculpted them in their own image? Maybe both? Could humans have been the progenitors of some of the other sapient species on this world?

It was a lot to think about, and her mind was a million miles away when she stepped out of the tunnel, and came face to face with Garrain.

“What’s up?” she asked, seeing the worried look on his face. “It was the assassin, wasn’t it? Please don’t tell me it was the assassin.”

It had been several weeks since the last murder. Saskia had begun to hope they’d seen (or rather, failed to see) the last of him. If his goal had been to sow discord between the two races, then he’d largely failed. The murders had actually kindled some sympathy among the dwarves, and a few of them had even delivered gifts and pledges of assistance to the grieving elves. Heartened by the show of support, the druids had been helping the dwarves with their housing shortage, conjuring up new homes by the hundreds. Anyone with half a brain would have to concede that their presence was a net gain for the colony. There were still dwarves who would rather see everyone suffer if that’s what it took to be rid of their hated enemies, but they remained a minority.

“Not the assassin, no,” said Garrain. “The news I bring is far more dire.”

Ice trickled into her veins.

They followed the druid to the newly-constructed meeting hall at the edge of Redgrove, where a small group had gathered—elves and dwarves both. She recognised Kveld and Dallim and Nuille and several other faces. When they were all seated, Garrain, spoke. “You may recall the farseer, Ciadhe, went with the dwarrow arborologists to investigate the failed rift. The one beneath Wengarlen.”

“Yeah,” said Saskia. “You wanted to confirm that it no longer posed a threat, and see if you could learn anything that might help us close the Elcianor rift.”

“Indeed,” said Garrain. “As you can see, they have returned.”

“Oh dogs,” said Saskia. “It’s gonna blow, isn’t it?”

Garrain regarded her silently for several moments, before inclining his head. “Yes, Saskia, I fear it is. Thiachrin stopped the shapers from breaking through to the surface. But they were close. Exceedingly close. Now there’s just a thin crust of argnum holding back the inferno. And not for long.”

“We thought, in time, the arbor would heal itself,” said the head arborologist, whose name was Furglewacker (yeah, really). “By the forefathers, we were wrong. The other rift has greatly weakened Ciendil, and now it no longer has the strength to staunch the flow.”

“How much time do we have?” asked Saskia. “Is there anything we can do to stop it?”

“Less than a year,” said Furglewacker. “And no, I ken of no way to reverse what has been done. ’Tis the same problem as the other rift. The arlium burns too hot for anyone to get near, and we have no way to strengthen the argnum around it. One rift may dry up afore we all freeze or suffocate, but two…”

Saskia let out a long breath. “Okay, so what are our options? We already pretty much ruled out getting everyone off Ciendil, and that was when we thought we might have decades to do it. But maybe we need to start thinking outside the box. Or the branch. Airships, maybe? Oh no, that’s right. It’s a vacuum out there.” She turned to Dallim. “You’re a Neil Armstrong buff, aren’t you? Do you know how to build a rocket?”

Dallim offered her a sad smile. “That’s one small step for man. But an insurmountable leap for alvar and dwarrow.”

He was right, of course. The technology base needed to build chemical rockets capable of flying between branches was at least two hundred years beyond their grasp. Even if they had all the knowledge they needed—which they didn’t; they only had fragments—they’d have to make the tools to make the tools to make the tools…on and on for however many steps, each one requiring years of testing and tweaking. And that was assuming physics even worked the same way here as it did on Earth. Which it clearly didn’t, because tree the size of a planet.

Aside from rockets, there was a fairly obvious way she might be able to get herself off the branch. She could do what she’d already done a couple of times: enter the between, and come out at a different location. Teleportation, with a side of tentacles.

Perhaps she’d need a visual on her destination before she could teleport there. Probably not, though. She’d emerged into this world for the first time without having eyeballed it. Her undermind must have some way of sensing the world and choosing an appropriate site for her emergence. It had deposited her right next to a worldseed, after all. That couldn’t be coincidence. She had no reason to suspect there would be any more limitations when teleporting between locations within the same world.

In the months since her last trip into the between, she’d tried to repeat the process a couple of times, experimentally, with no success. She suspected her undermind wouldn’t let her do it unless there was dire need. Surely a slow death by suffocation or freezing would count as dire need?

But that wouldn’t save her friends, or anyone else on Ciendil. She’d seen nothing to suggest she could teleport anything outside of her own body—not even the clothes on her back. This whole line of thinking was probably a dead end.

“If not rockets, how did the dwarrows move between Ciendil and Old Ulugmir?” asked Saskia.

“The old tales speak of many ways, Sashki,” said Ruhildi. “Of these, the only one I ken to be true were the giant lift our forefathers rode up and down the trunk. It were destroyed in the siege of Climber’s Gate. More fanciful tales speak of ships that sailed the skies, and dracken riders, and droplines, and impossible climbs, and a few leaps into the void with naught but the clothes on one’s back.”

“Climb not impossible,” said Rover Dog. “I climb here.”

“From…another branch?” asked Saskia.

Rover Dog bobbed his head up and down. “Grongarg.”

“Grongarg,” she repeated. “You’ve mentioned that before. You thought I was a Grongargian princess.”

“You are princess,” said Rover Dog.

“So just to be clear, you’re saying Grongarg isn’t on Ciendil. It’s a completely separate branch.”

He nodded again.

“That’s insane!” she blurted. “The branches must be hundreds of kilometres apart! How can you possibly climb between them? Is there even air…?”

Rover Dog nodded. “Trunk carries blood. Blood brings air.”

By blood, he presumably meant arlium. Oh, of course! Arlium must flow through the trunk as well as the branches, so the trunk would also have its own atmosphere!

“Many days climb,” added Rover Dog. “Not easy, even for trow. But possible.”

“Interesting though it may be, this information is of no benefit to us,” said Garrain. “A trow may be able to endure such a climb, but the rest of us cannot. And certainly not the entire population of Ciendil. Just getting to the trunk would be an impossible trek for the fledglings and elders. It would take the bulk of a year, and we’d have to cross the scorched lands to the north.”

Ruhildi grimaced. “Aye, I hate to agree with the lea—with Garri—but I just don’t see how we can get more than a fistful of us away, no matter how we do it.”

Saskia’s mind was still whirling as she thought of the possibilities. The fact that there was air around the trunk was another bit of weird physics that she hadn’t considered. On Earth, even if there were something holding the air in place, the pressure wouldn’t be equal all the way up. At the base of the tree, with the weight of hundreds or thousands of Earth atmospheres pushing down on it, the air would be crushingly dense. At the top, it would be too thin to breathe. But she had to assume it didn’t work like that on this world.

That being the case, maybe balloons or airships could make the journey up and down the trunk. Though it would be all too easy for them to drift out of the atmosphere, whereupon there’d be nothing stopping them from…falling off the world, essentially. Maybe they could use tethers?

“There is something we could try,” she said. “I’ll talk to you about it afterward, Dallim. It’s not something that could transport everyone off the branch, but if we have to choose between saving a few of us, or none at all…”

“Agreed,” said Garrain. “As long as we don’t put all our effort into that last resort, and in so doing, miss an opportunity to save everyone.”

“Yeah I get that,” said Saskia. “I’m not giving up on everyone just yet. I think it’s time—yet again—for me to try to get hold of my father. He may be a donkhole, but he seems to know more about this stuff than any of us.”

“You said Calburn has been silent ever since the seed of stone were destroyed,” said Ruhildi.

“Yeah,” said Saskia. “But part of that, I think, is because he only ever visits me inside his old strongholds. The closest one is the Dead Sanctum—assuming you guys didn’t completely destroy it.” She looked at Garrain.

“If you mean your old lair, I fear it may no longer be of use to you,” said Garrain. “One of the survivors told me Thiachrin put his blade through its black heart.”

Saskia frowned in puzzlement. “Its heart? Oh, you mean the keystone! That may not be a problem. We have another one. I think they’re interchangeable.”

“I wish I could join you, Sashki…” said Ruhildi.

“But you’ve got a colony to look after,” said Saskia. “I know. I could go alone, but…” She turned to Kveld. “…I’d like you to come with me. If you still want to be my vassal.”

“I…’twould be a great honour, Saskia,” said Kveld. “You think it didn’t work last time because we were too far from a nexus?”

Ruhildi snorted. “Methinks there were a few other reasons why it didn’t work.”

Saskia’s earlier attempt to make Kveld her vassal had been…awkward. Because he lacked a focus for her to absorb, the only way she knew to do it was the Ruhildi method, as she’d begun to think of it: bringing her would-be vassal into the between, or at least the version of it she entered in her dreams. So for one incredibly awkward night they’d slept next to each other in an attempt to enter the same dreamspace. But instead of entering the between, she’d found herself dreaming of, well, other stuff. Apparently she’d gotten quite noisy and gropey in her sleep, and the poor dwarf had run off in a panic.

Ruhildi, of course, had been mercilessly bringing it up every chance she got.

“I’m not sure,” said Saskia, shooting her friend a withering scowl. “With Ruhildi, we were sleeping in the Stone Bastion control chamber. That might have made all the difference. I think it’s worth a shot.”

They set off later that day. At troll running speeds, it was just a four day journey to the Dead Sanctum, following the route Garrain had taken to and from the surface. On the way, they passed through a large cavern with a staircase running up one wall. Waves of intense heat emanated from a concealed tunnel near the base of the stairs. That must lead to the den Garrain had told her about, where the stoneshapers had been doing their funnelling. She didn’t dare go near it now. It’d be chock full of molten arlium.

The journey ended with a claustrophobic crawl through a very narrow tunnel to a certain bridge and the waterfall behind it. Months had passed since the day she’d last set foot in here, but the memories were still seared into her mind. She remembered arguing with Ruhildi at the mouth of this tunnel, trying to get her to go on without her. If she’d tried to squeeze through the tunnel back then, their pursuers would have easily caught up, and she’d have been stuck there, unable to manoeuvre. So she’d opted to face the elves in a place of her choosing—on a ledge behind the waterfall.

When Garrain had delivered himself into her grasp, she’d tried to bargain for his life, not knowing how little regard the Chosen had for his peoples’ lives. Not the best decision she’d ever made.

Ruhildi had been furious. Saskia still recalled her friend’s words, whispered into her ear after the druid had tried to snatch back his staff: “Kill the slippery shite afore he kills you!”

In the moments that followed, Saskia may have done just that, if she’d had the chance.

She remembered the feel of Thiachrin’s blade searing through her. The shock and the terror. Tumbling down; just like in all her earlier dreams. And then…

“Why have you stopped, Saskia?” asked Kveld.

“Just remembering, is all,” she said. “A lot happened in this spot. I’ll tell you about it someday.”

Turning away from the bridge, they quickly made their way to the control chamber. As Garrain had mentioned, the keystone lay shattered on the floor. But the socket remained intact, just waiting for a new keystone to be inserted. She was only too happy to oblige it.

As the keystone expanded to fill the slot, the patterns of blue arlium around the walls bloomed to life, bathing her in their soft glow.

A message awaited her when she touched the keystone: Site has been compromised. Recommend immediate evacuation.

Saskia let out a snort of laughter. A little late for that, don’t you think?

She entered the message: I wish to make this dwarrow, Kveld, into my vassal. Can you help with that?

Keystone: Analysing…

A column of light appeared around the dwarf, who let out a startled yelp.

“Sorry,” she said. “Just stand still. It won’t hurt you. I think.”

“Your words…they don’t fill me with confidence,” said Kveld.

The light winked out, and a new message appeared.

Keystone: Compatibility exceeds minimum viable threshold for vassal conversion. Do you wish to proceed?

She gave the assent. Nothing happened for several long seconds. Then she began to feel woozy. Kveld’s head lolled downward, and she caught him just before he fell. She lay down beside him on the cold floor, her eyes already fluttering closed.

Sometime later, she awoke to the sight of Kveld standing over her, an awestruck expression plastered across his face.

“Is that…is that what you really look like?” he asked.

The experience had been similar to the one where she’d taken Ruhildi as her vassal. Just without the trip through her friend’s memories, and with neither Abellion nor her father showing up to hinder or help her efforts. From her perspective, it had looked as if one of the vines trailing the winged leviathan—the undermind—had attached to the back of Kveld’s neck. But she knew he had probably seen something quite different, because everything they saw in the six-dimensional null-space of the between was, as Calburn had so often pointed out, mostly metaphorical.

“I don’t know,” she said. “What did you see?”

“A metal…thing,” he said.

“Oh yeah, that was me alright,” she said, grinning at him. “I’m a thing.”

He flushed. “I can’t describe it better than that. You looked big and metal, with wings and spinning blades.”

“Huh. I think you might have been spending too much time around Dallim. That’s not what I saw, or what Ruhildi saw. Actually, I don’t know if she even remembers what she saw. Everything is subjective in the between.”

This led to a discussion on just what the between was. She answered as best she could with what little information her father had given her. Speaking of which…

“No sign of Calburn in that dream,” she said. “I’ll give him a few days to show himself. If he doesn’t appear by then, I’ll assume he’s not going to, and we can head back. In the meantime, let’s see…”

Saskia looked down at her interface. Sure enough, there was a new double-sided mirror with Kveld’s face on it, right next to Ruhildi and Garrain. She activated it experimentally, and immediately started seeing double. So far, so good. She brought up her minimap and some other interface objects for him to see, and explained their purpose to him. Kveld took it all in his stride, and did the dwarven equivalent of geeking out.

“Now…let’s find out if you can do magic,” she said.

Yes. Yes he could.

Lacking a focus of his own, Kveld had been severely limited in his ability to cast spells. He’d done exceptionally well with what he had, becoming a master manipulator of ward magic—a facet of stoneshaping that required very little essence—but he’d barely been able to make a stone wobble on the ground. Now, that had all changed. He had a focus: her—or rather, the network of arlium within her. Now he was a full-fledged stoneshaper; one of only two remaining in the entire world. Kveld only knew a few spells outside of ward inscriptions, and his control of them was lacking, but seeing him levitate a huge slab of stone left her with no doubt as to his power.

Leaving him to play with his new toys, Saskia settled in for what would hopefully be a long snooze. Despite having just slept for several hours in front of the keystone, she remained quite tired. It was just as well, because she planned to be doing a lot of sleeping over the next few days, or however long it took for her dad to give her the time of day.

She awoke feeling refreshed—and frustrated. That had been a nice dream, but Calburn hadn’t featured in it at all. After a quick check-in with Ruhildi and Garrain (just to make sure New Inglomar hadn’t imploded while she was away), she returned to Kveld, hoping he hadn’t managed to blow himself up yet.

Nope. Still there.

Except…

The metal man gave her a sheepish grin.

“How!?” she said, feeling her eyes bulging out of her skull. “That’s an advanced spell, isn’t it? I’ve never seen Ruhildi cast it before.”

“The keystone,” he said. “There were a…library inside it, just waiting to be…”

“A library of spells? And you only just found this now?”

“Aye, ’twere hidden from me until…” He pointed at her.

“Until you became my vassal,” she said. “Does Ruhildi know about this?”

“Methinks not. Far as I ken, she hasn’t spent much time with the keystone after…”

“Oh wow!” she said. “Just a pity we didn’t discover it sooner. If the two of you can access Calburn’s whole repertoire of spells… Is there anything in there that might help us deal with the rifts?”

“Aye—no—mayhap,” he said. “Not stoneshaper magic. But there may be something. The library doesn’t just have… There are other spells too. Necrourgy, aye, but also other strands of magic. Other worldseeds.”

“Other worldseeds? Which ones?”

“I don’t ken. I don’t recognise these spells. It doesn’t say where they came from. I just ken they aren’t stoneshaper magic. And I found one strand…” He was silent for a long moment, gazing into the keystone.

“You found one strand…? Don’t keep me in suspense here!”

His brow furrowed. “It speaks of…binding the…blood of the world.”

“Blood of the world…as in arlium?”

“Mayhap,” he said, giving a dwarven shrug. “There are spells that heat the blood of the world; cool it; make it solid; make it flow. And spells that change other spells.”

“You mean like metamagic?”

He looked at her blankly.

A huge smile spread across her face. “This is incredible! If we could find someone who could cast these spells, they could solve all our problems! Well okay, only the biggest ones, but still…”

“Mayhap,” he repeated. “But how would we find him? This magic could come from any worldseed…on any branch…anywhere on Arbor Mundi.”

“Yeah,” she said. “But it’s something! A possibility of a way out of this. Let’s see if we can find anything more on the subject.”

Pressing her hand against the keystone, she sent the message: Where may I find the worldseed dealing with arlium manipulation or metamagic?

Keystone: I do not have that information, mouthlet of the master.

Saskia: Do you know where I might find it?

Keystone: The Great Library might contain the answers you seek.

Saskia: And where is the Great Library?

Keystone: The Great Library is located in the Scholar’s Circle of Pentus, on Ulugmir.

Saskia drew in a sharp breath, then relayed this information to Kveld.

“Ulugmir,” he said. “But that’s…”

“The Deadlands,” she said. “Yup. Not the kind of place we could survive in, even if we had a way of getting there. There has to be another way. Keep digging in the keystone. I’ll go check the physical library upstairs.”

All that was left of the library were burnt books, shredded scrolls, torn mosaics and ripped and broken paintings. The elves had ransacked the place on their way out. Wincing, she asked her interface to highlight anything of interest that had survived the destruction. All it revealed were scraps of Poggendoobler’s journal, which she’d already read.

She wandered through the various chambers, checking for anything she might have missed on her first, rather rushed, exploration of the place. A bitter, hollow feeling settled over her as she went from room to room, finding only dust and ruins. Everything of value had been trashed or taken.

Returning to Kveld, she found him staring into the keystone, just as she’d left him.

“Anything?” she said.

He smiled up at her. “No, but I did larn how to turn gold into lead.”

“Not the reverse?”

“No. The spell were called mad gold.”

“I think someone was trying to be funny.”

Three days passed with no sign of her father, and no leads on where they might find a metamagician, as she’d begun to call them. Kveld was having the time of his life trying out new spells and delving into the keystone’s secrets, but she was getting restless—not an ideal feeling for one trying to sleep.

“Let’s head back. I think we’ve gotten all we can out of this place. The keystone doesn’t need to be plugged in here for you to access the spell library, right?”

“It shouldn’t,” he said. “We can test it afore we leave.”

A quick test revealed that all the information was still there for them after they unplugged the keystone, so without further ado, they set off back the way they’d come.

Four days later, as they approached New Inglomar from the west, an uneasy feeling crept up her spine. A glance at her minimap confirmed her suspicions. The town was abuzz with activity, while a small cluster of grey dots approached from the southeast.

Saskia bounded up the hillside to where her friends stood surveying the nude blue-white figures stalking across the shallow water.

Mer.

“Sashki, you’re just in time,” said Ruhildi, her face grim.

“Just a few of them,” said Saskia. “And my minimap doesn’t see them as a threat.”

“There may be tempests walking among them,” said Baldreg. “Best not to assume they’re harmless.”

“Aye,” said Ruhildi. “Be prepared for anything.”

The mer came to a halt in the shallow water several hundred metres shy of the town. Four women and three men, each armed with spears and bows. The tattooed woman at the head of the group caught Saskia’s attention, and not just because of the eerie smile on her inhumanly flawless face. The way she held her spear—hand clasped close to the tip—gave the game away. There was arlium beneath her fingers, she just knew it.

“They wish to parley,” said Ruhildi. “Let’s go out there and larn what they have to say.”

Ruhildi picked out Saskia, Baldreg, Garrain and Nuille to accompany her. Three different species walking side-by-side. Hopefully that would send the right signal to the newcomers.

Saskia kept her attention on the tempest, prepared to leap to her companions’ defence at the first hint of magic. The tempest’s smile widened as they approached. She opened her mouth as if to speak—

Her eyes went wide. The smile turned to a rictus of agony. Dropping her spear—her plain, ordinary spear without a hint of arlium—she reached for her throat. Blood ran between her fingers. Then she slumped forward, staining the water crimson.

Heart leaping into her throat, Saskia exchanged a shocked glance with her companions, and it was clear they had no more idea what had just happened than she did.

Cries of alarm erupted from the mer. They sprang into action, levelling bows and spears at Saskia’s group.

One of them fired directly at Ruhildi from a range of just twenty metres. Saskia lunged forward, snatching the arrow out of the air, even as a spear flew past the spot where she’d just been standing.

A second mer slumped into the water with an arrow in his eye.

Desperately, Saskia’s eyes sought the shooter. Some of the dwarves along the shore had crossbows drawn, but she couldn’t see anyone reloading. Besides, they’d have to be world-class snipers—and incredibly lucky—to hit two mer from that range.

There! When she looked to the left, her eyes were turning away against her own volition.

“It’s the invisible assassin!” cried Garrain, apparently realising at the same instant she did. He began to summon a scorching sap spell. She didn’t know how he could hope to hit his target without looking.

Turning back to the mer, she flinched as another one dropped beneath the churning waves.

In the back of the dwindling group, an unassuming young woman had raised a spear with the unmistakeable glow of arlium in its shaft. The tempest—the real tempest, this time—was preparing to bring up a repelling vortex spell; the air shield that had cause Saskia so much trouble during earlier encounters with their kind. That might protect her from the rogue sniper, but Saskia very much doubted the slow-cast spell would come up in time. And now the tempest had revealed herself, she’d be the prime target.

Saskia sprang forward, landing with a tremendous splash in front of the tempest. She snatched her up, curling her body protectively around the startled young woman. In the same moment, an arrow thudded into her back, and she felt an awful pain spreading outward from the point of impact.

Poison.

Not a tranquilliser; something much, much worse. The fiery agony was steadily working its way to her chest.

Flailing in her arms, the mer jabbed her spear up at Saskia’s throat, using it not as a focus, but as a simple melee weapon.

Can’t have that, thought Saskia. She tore the spear out of the tempest’s hands. And as she did so, a surge of warmth flowed into her.

Oh…crap.

The tempest’s wide eyes were locked on the spear; the spear now absent any trace of arlium.

A new mirror appeared in her interface next to those of her other vassals. The tempest’s face in the mirror held a hint of outrage. As the last of her strength left her, Saskia stabbed an ethereal finger at the button that would cut off the tempest’s magic.

Still clutching her new vassal, she fell retching into the water, and for a time, she knew only pain and darkness.