I return Essie and Icey to Teuila, stating, “Te, you should go ahead and wear Icey. He’s really potent dealing with elemental stuff, um, especially the elements I’m good with. Fire, ice, lightning. Just ignore the crass jokes about you being inside of him, and stuff. He’s really excited to get you to wear him, despite how he phrases it.”

Te blinks, surprised at either the information, or at my suggestion, or perhaps Icey’s lewd jokes. I’m not able to read her as precisely as I normally would be, since we’re both heavily distracted by a torrent of emotions. A torrent Teuila is not ready to address, or tackle. No offense Te. We’re both suffering. Teuila pays my thoughts no mind, and strips so that she can equip Icey.

I add, “Essie would be potent against enemy spellcasters. They’d be stripped of their mnemonic. She can silence them. So—“

Teuila grins almost maliciously, “So they’d be like you, but worse. If they could even cast at all.”

I smirk and nod at Teuila. Elder speaks up from my side, “You’ll be leaving soon. We’d journey with you, if it pleases you.”

Te solemnly responds, “It does. It truly does. I can’t— glp. I can’t begin—. I.”

Elder merely nods at Teuila, understanding in some way that she cannot finish her apology, “You have driven them off, given us a chance to escape. We must seize it. Miza is resting, much deeper, with our young, and our food, our workers. I trust one of you can break down a wall?”

At any other time, one or the other, or both of us would have chuckled, maybe Te would relish the chance to show off her power, but she hesitates as she draws a ragged breath. I nod in response to Elder. Checking on my archsorc staff, there’s enough charges in it to cast one or two of a few of the spells. The one I’m thinking of is bypassed-wall.

I start with the sort of tunnel hallway that leads deeper into the complex warren of tunnels the kobolds have dug within the mountainside. I’ll save the exit for a bit later, when we’re sure everyone is prepared to leave. That includes Teuila. We have to be prepared in case the dragons circle back around in order to pick up their minions, the ones they might not know that we’ve slain.

With the wall now missing, after the spell from my staff, Elder signals one of the kobolds, somehow in this pitch darkness, it’s understood. I’m not sure if they have silent sonar like me, or something else. Regardless, the kobold slips quietly away, the scritching of their claws against the stone barely heard as they make their way deeper into the warrens, to find Miza and the younglings, and the others.

Elder seems almost jovial as he asks, “Is there some way we could thank you, reward you? Twice now, no, three times you have averted disaster for us.”

I hesitate to answer. I’m sure Teuila wouldn’t want anything in reward. She doesn’t do what she does for gratitude, or rewards, or anything. She’s a model hero in my books. She does what she does because it’s *right*. She helps the helpless, defends the downtrodden, protects those who can’t protect themselves. And she’s shying away from riding my thought trains since I’m complimenting her accidentally. Sorry Te.

Regardless, if anyone could have some of the gem supplies I need to be able to make certain enchantments permanent, it would be our friends here. But that’s their nourishment, their food. It might well be all that they have. If they even have them. I don’t know if I could in good conscience ask for them.

An almost chipper voice from the carriage states, “They won’t admit it, but they want, need, rose carnelians. It’ll make them more powerful. After a time. Maybe a few days, maybe a month. Reggie’s too kind to ask, but it’s not like they don’t have gems to trade. They’re just too distracted to remember how much mundane stuff they’ve got piled up. Always thinking about powerful, magical assets. Not the normal ones.”

My jaw hangs low as I realize what Tiktik said is true. We’ve got a nearly limitless amount of gems. *We* could feed the kobolds. We were planning on giving a ton of gems to the Aasimovians to help start rebuilding Jeegoobotstan already anyway. They could start a fully fledged economy. I know for a fact the kobolds can be excellent mushroom farmers, though I can’t remember the name of Miza’s child who happens to be a sporomancer, one that can magically create mushrooms. The humans and kobolds could barter services, produce food for each other, it’s, it’s got to work. It just has to. Plus, the kobolds are used to tunneling, so they could rebuild more secure, underground. The humans are used to not getting real sunlight, so maybe if they replant a few luma tulipa, they wouldn’t even complain about living in cave systems, maybe.

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All we have to do is survive, and get them safely past a swamp of no hope, the Jaggedfen Bog, a hydra, whatever spirits reside in the swamp that Elder warned me about, and, and—. Huff. I heave a sigh. It’s never easy. There’s so much that could go wrong. We’ll be mudcamping for days, weeks, maybe months, just to get there. Hopefully we can catch one of these dragons that we drove off. It might buy me more time. My clock is ticking down quickly. I’ve been working on the telekinesis spelliform runes, so that I can — wait. My staff.

As I think about it, my archsorc staff is in my hand. Except, I’d put it away. I hadn’t drawn it to cast the bypassed wall spell, but it was in my hand. Now it’s in my hand again. Is my mind so far gone that I can’t remember when I stow and draw my staff? Is this part of the memory blocking thing? Or am I just full of self doubt because of the memory blocking thing? Ow, my freakin’ head. No, that isn’t it. I walk to the carriage, set the archsorc staff on it, and turn back towards Elder, striding towards him to help confirm Tiktik’s response.

My staff is in my hand as I emphasize to Elder, “Tiktik’s actually right. I completely forgot about how many gems we have, and how badly I need rose carnelians I think it was. I’ve got about forty two or so runes of the telekinesis enchantment spell mastered. I need to master all of its runes, or at least, to comprehend and be able to perfectly apply their two dimensional runostructure as part of the permanency ability that I have. When I’ve got them mastered at least that much, I need rose carnelian paste to place the enchantment on myself permanently. It’s a massively versatile power.”

I’m gnawing on my lip as I stare at the staff in my hand. I swear. I absolutely swear I set it down on the carriage. I also swear that it was probably lost in rubble when I was blown to smithereen by dynamite that Dippy used against the earth elementals so very long ago. Yet I remember awakening, finding it in my hand. Is it sentient like Bud, Essie, or Icey? Can it move? I know that I can skip some steps, bend some corners, but there’s nothing in my toolkit that—. Nothing. I put my staff in the double-ended drop-sheathe holster. Focusing, I try to summon it to my hand. Nothing. No success. It is soulbound to me. If I had access to my Can’Z’aasian magic, I could pull it to my inventory from at least a short range, then out of my inventory to my hand. I don’t have that here though. I’ve got… nothing.

Gnawing on my lips, this thought train seems circuitous, or circular, yet it feels as if I’m scratching at something. It’s like I’m clawing away at the side of a mountain. On the other side of the mountain lay answers, and this frantic scrabbling is the fastest clawing I’ve ever done. The closest I’ve ever made it to the answers about my powers. And yet—. Clawing away at the mountainside still isn’t the answer. It’s still not even really progress. Grr. I don’t understand. Why didn’t the Sisters—. Oh, right, I know why. They didn’t give me more clear guidance about my powers, because that would have somehow given me power over them, or the one they serve. Some sort of, I don’t know, sentient void? Ow! My friggin’ brain!

What was I—? For some reason, my head hurts a bit. Oh, right, I think I was thinking about my staff for some reason. I can’t remember why though. The telekinesis spell is in it. It might allow me to shortcut a bit towards getting the enchantment on myself permanently. It’s too bad that the spell is a self-only enchantment. I can’t grant it to Teuila or Tiktik. I can’t even let them use the staff to grant it to themselves, then apply permanency to that enchantment. Oh, right, if I made the staff enchantment permanent, it might ruin being able to cast from the staff, like when I extended the telekinesis spell and kept trying to cast from it in the cult of the Bright Lord. I’d better not shortcut. Dangit. I’ve got the spell about halfway mastered from the last week of travel. I think I’ve still averaged six runes of mastery a day.

But wait. Didn’t I have some off days where I’d only been able to master one? Or weren’t there some runes giving me trouble? Why are my memories so fuzzy, so hazy all of a sudden? Why can’t I recall something as simple as how many of a quantity has happened in a week? Memories? Wait. There was something. Something about memories. Ow! That’s right. A force, one that I can’t challenge yet. Possibly more than one. It’s keeping my memories from me, screwing with them, making it harder to think and keep track of things.

What is even its game? I know it can outright kill me. So why hasn’t it? Or—. Or what if there’s more things at play. What if the memories themselves could kill me? Ow! Hm. This is weird. What was I thinking about? Right, right, trying to master the telekinesis enchantment. I’ve got to keep on keeping on. I’ll get it soon I hope. Just not soon enough to help with any dragons still in The Gap. I wonder if I can leave the heavy lifting to Teuila on that end—. Or, or would asking that of her be the most horrible thing I could possibly do. Suddenly I feel like an awful person.

I feel, I feel so horrible, I—, a voice in my mind orders me, “Stop. Just stop. You’ve been, you’ve—. Huff. Just stop, okay? Shut your brain off for a bit. We’ve got some friends to deal with, and then we need to get moving. We’re not okay, and we’re not going to be, for a while, but you’re not an awful person. You’re my Airhead. Just, please stop thinking about me for a while, at the very least.”

My heart races at being ordered to stop thinking, worse, at being ordered to stop thinking about Teuila, m—. I was given a request that I intend to honor. I breathe, ragged, shallow breathes, hiccuping, tears streaming down my face. We have to continue. We’ve got friends here, we can do this. Reggie Shellcracker, breathe air, breathe.

Tiktik’s mental avatar appears in my mindscape, chipper as ever. She asks an odd question, “You okay Tiger?”

At any other point, I could probably give Tiktik an answer one way or another. For some reason, right here, right now, the most honest thing I can truly say is, “I’m not sure.”