“Good morning,” Serenity greeted D’Nehr. “Are you ready to try? I’ve picked out a room near Amani, but not within her sight, as you requested.”
“As long as you’re there as an anchor,” D’Nehr replied. “I don’t know how long I’ll be able to stay on that side of things, since I don’t really have a body anymore. Not the way you do, and yes, I know you’re a shapeshifter. I only exist because Gaia …” D’Nehr stopped and shook his head. “No point raking up old troubles. It’s enough to say that it costs me to remain physical. I hope the ley lines are as much stronger as you say they are.”
Serenity knew what he was watching there, because he did the same thing; D’Nehr was nervous. Serenity grinned at the magma golem. “I’ll wait for you.”
When Serenity opened his eyes, he stood in a relatively large open area, roughly twenty by thirty with a twenty foot high ceiling. The entire room was made of A’Atla’s stone; Serenity hadn’t dared to choose anything smaller or more fragile. He didn’t know how large D’Nehr was and he wasn’t sure how hot he’d be, either; he was made of molten stone, after all, which was very hot.
There was nothing for Serenity to do other than wait. Fortunately, he didn’t have to wait long. A fiery spark appeared in the air about ten feet from Serenity, then quickly expanded to form the figure of a towering magma golem. Serenity could feel heat wafting off of him; it was a good thing Serenity’s resistances were good.
D’Nehr seemed to realize it too, probably by the fact that a blackened residue was starting to accumulate at his feet with no clear origin. At least, Serenity thought that was why; it was certainly what D’Nehr was looking at when he said, “Oops. I should fix that.”
It was the strangest thing to watch; D’Nehr’s shape seemed to melt and reform. Serenity didn’t think it was the same as his own shapeshifts at all; he was fairly confident that he turned into shadows as he went through his Sovereign of Potential form before resolidifying. D’Nehr looked more like melted plastic.
D’Nehr grew shorter and thinner. As he did, he also became more detailed and clothing seemed to form itself from nothing the way the golem’s body had formed before. When the shift finished, there was a man about Serenity’s height standing where the ten foot tall golem was moments before. His head was distinctly nonhuman; it looked almost like someone had taken a wolf’s head and put it on a human body. It definitely wasn’t a mask, however, because Serenity could almost read the wolfish expressions in the set of D’Nehr’s ears.
His clothing was odd; Serenity couldn’t quite figure out how it went together. He’d seen things like it before, but it definitely wasn’t delver attire. He had no idea how the loosely wrapped fabric stayed up; it had to either be pinned somewhere or very carefully held in place.
D’Nehr flexed his hands; his ears were folded back like he was unhappy. Serenity figured he was still nervous, so he decided this was a good time to ask the question he’d been thinking about ever since he got back from the Lost Vault. “Is there anything in the Vault other than the Eaters that would get Apollyon’s attention and draw him out? I don’t want to pull those things out and I didn’t really smell him on anything else.”
D’Nehr gave a bark. It was a little higher pitched than Serenity expected from a wolf the size of a man, almost a yip. “Nothing that should be taken out. Apollyon likes weapons that think but only think the thoughts he wants them to have.”
“Then is there something that would draw him out?” If there was an option other than the shaky plan to let him start a devastating ritual but disrupt it before it got too far, Serenity wanted to consider it.
D’Nehr shook his head. “He only knows the Eaters are there because I’m a trusting fool. Besides, we already covered this; he wouldn’t come himself. He’d send people he could control. Unless you want to let them into the Vault and let them have the Eaters, they’re not going to lead you back to him.”
Well, at least he’d successfully distracted the First Guardian from his nervousness.
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Amani worked her way through the broken bits and pieces in the box Samantha had brought that morning. Most of them were just that, broken detritus, but some was valuable, even useful.
I’m like this box. Broken but potentially useful. Out of place, out of time, alone but not unvalued.
It was all too much like her life in A’Atla before she was trapped in the Vault. She was valuable for what she could do, but the only person who actually cared about her for herself was A’Atla.
Several faces flashed in front of Amani’s memory and she flinched. She’d thought Hevri cared, she’d certainly helped Amani find enough work, but when she was recruited to work on the Vault, Amani found out that Hevri didn’t care about her at all. She’d gone to Hevri’s to celebrate, only to have Hevri become angry with her when she didn’t agree to complete a “simple job” that Amani knew would be more complex than Hevri made it sound. It was work that paid decently, or at least work that Amani had thought paid decently until she found out just how much she was being underpaid for the work she was doing.
“Where else am I going to find a semi-competent enchanter who has time to work on small stuff like this? Turn down that stupid job and come do some real work; you know they won’t keep you once they see your head in the clouds.”
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The last words Amani ever heard Hevri were an insult. Amani ran and was grateful for the work on the Vault. She even had a place where Hevri couldn’t reach her. As far as she knew, Hevri hadn’t even tried.
Amani continued to mechanically sort through the box as tears rolled down her face. The twisted ktseri looked like it would work, but Amani didn’t trust it; torsional damage to that particular control banding had a nasty tendency to deliver mana unevenly, which would lead to spell failure, fracture, or even explosion if it was uneven enough. That one had to go in the “broken” pile.
The kiiyt with the tab broken off, however, was fine. That was the only damage and it was magically sound; it simply wouldn’t adhere to a wall anymore for storage. It wasn’t terribly useful, but Amani thought it would still be appreciated; properly managing the appearance of clothing was complicated magic, especially when the kiiyt was the only reason it didn’t slide apart as the person wearing the clothing moved. This one must have belonged to someone trying to seem wealthier than they were, since it was ornate and Amani didn’t recognize the symbol on it.
The next piece made Amani smile; she knew what that was from. It was part of a minor diviner, a tool used to map the mana levels in a small area before precision work was done. She’d heard they were used for other things as well, but that didn’t matter; it was nice to see something she’d once used every day.
A knock at the door pulled Amani away from her memories. She wiped her eyes so the tears wouldn’t show, set the diviner down, and told the door to open. Serenity stood on the other side.
“I wasn’t expecting you back!” Amani grinned at his presence. Serenity wasn’t quite a friend, not yet, but he was fun to talk to. He approached magic from a truly weird direction, but that just meant they could both laugh when they realized they were talking past each other. She also got to tease him about the fact that he kept saying he wasn’t an enchanter even as he designed objects for A’Atla to build; by all the gods, what did he think an enchanter did? “How long are you here for?”
“Not long, I’m afraid.” Serenity looked entirely too pleased for Amani to believe his sorrowful words. “I brought someone to see you.”
The grin slid off Amani’s face. Another new person? Amani wanted to see what she could do with all the fun new toys, not talk to people. She knew Samantha and her people were trying to gently ease Amani into their group, but even that didn’t always work well. She definitely didn’t want to spend more time with people who didn’t realize that they were weird.
Serenity waved at someone outside the room. Amani’s mouth dropped open as she saw the person he gestured to come in; while he was generally human in appearance, he had the head of a wolf. It wasn’t the creature she’d seen in some of the nature documentaries Samantha liked to show her; instead, it was the wolf she remembered from her past on A’Atla.
Not only that, it was a familiar wolf. For all that his fur was a range from a pale gray to a blue-black, his eyes were completely different: they were filled with the fire of the deepest parts of the world. Calu was wise and wild; it could be said that he domesticated mankind rather than the other way around. Amani couldn’t believe it; after she saw his men broken and turned to stone, Amani had guessed Calu was dead. Everything else was, what was one more loss.
Only he now stood in front of her.
“Amani?” Calu sounded hesitant, almost like he wasn’t certain it was her.
Amani sank to her knees, then carefully shaped her body into the appropriate obeisance for a greater power that didn’t directly command her, but who was still above her in the hierarchy. She bowed her head, arched her back so that her face faced towards herself, and shifted her arms into the correct positions. It was an elaborate position, but anything less was inappropriate for the circumstances. Calu had allowed her far more liberty with her greetings than most, but the sheer amount of time apart meant that she should grant the highest formality. It was unfortunate that she wasn’t wearing the correct clothing and a kiiyt; her simple working garb wouldn’t shift colors the way clothing should for this greeting.
Amani held the greeting for the requisite time before she looked up to see the response. She found Calu standing straight with his arms crossed in the position of greeting to an equal rather than greeting to a non-lineal supporter. That wasn’t an honor he’d granted her before, but it was one that was impossible to grant; he was the Guard at the Deep Gate while she was just a workman. For all that she was a skilled, valued craftsman, that was a line that couldn’t be fully crossed.
He’d crossed it now.
Amani took a moment to think and decided that perhaps he was right; he was no longer who he’d been and she was no longer the person she’d been, either. She worked directly for Serenity, even if he was allowing her to work with others for now; he was the Wizard of A’Atla, a position not much below the Lord. He was also the Lord’s son. Even if Serenity didn’t use a title for his mother, Amani knew a Lord when she saw one. Bethany Rothmer was Lord here, no matter what anyone else claimed.
At the same time, Calu was no longer the Guard at the Deep Gate; the Gate had fallen. When she thought about it, Amani realized that she should have known he survived; who else could have seared the Gate closed?
Amani rose cleanly to her feet and shifted her obeisance into a simple bow of greeting; the fact that Calu had acknowledged Amani as an equal meant that she could greet him the way she’d always wanted to, with the form of a close friend. A hand held out with the elbow lowered and the other arm tucked slightly behind but carefully below the waist completed that greeting, while a shift of her head and the motion of a foot added the emphasis that said she’d missed him.
Amani couldn’t hide her grin when Calu shifted his form to match hers, agreeing with her on their status and feelings. She broke the formal greeting, now that it was acknowledged, and threw herself into her friend’s arms. He caught her and held her, just like he’d done on that horrible day when her joy turned to ashes with Hevri’s betrayal.
This was a far better day than that one. Amani didn’t try to stop the tears that ran down her face. “I thought I’d never see you again.”
“I thought you were dead,” Calu agreed. “Lost in that attack so long ago. I - I nearly was myself, so I told myself there was no reason to look; only pain lay there. If only I’d looked sooner!”