Gorramit all. I thunk my head into the side of the carriage repeatedly. The others were removed from the carriage, except for Teuila’s icy coffin strapped to the top. I suppose it’s better that they’re being transported with the sick and the wounded, but it was at least a small comfort knowing that Tiktik, Kitten, was nearby. I’ve got so many emotions warring within to distract me from what needs to be done. I just, I yearn for that bit of comfort, someone to lean on, to feel their support, their affection just a moment’s glance away. Heaving a sigh, I summon my ghostly steeds, and latch them to the carriage.
I board the carriage, and begin working to carefully pilot it between rows of small tents, or yurts, or tipi, or whatever they are. I see the occasional kobold, from my vantage in the driver’s seat, but in a contingent this large, it’s understandable that they’re not all in my immediate vicinity. I’m being hasty, but I’ve lost days to despair. My arms vibrate weakly, and suddenly I’m rocked to my side by a spasm as a jolt runs through me. I’m paying the price for messing with electrokinesis beyond the scope of my powers, for being embedded with a magical staff, for imbuing a non spelliform rune. I momentarily convulse, and my vision washes over in grey. Oh no. Not again.
Sighing, I slump where I lay, feeling utterly defeated. The horses pause at my telepathic command, as I attempt to adjust to my current circumstances. I’m blind again. I’m surprised it took a week to catch up to me, but no doubt it’s because I took another lightning leap, one too many, especially without the rotational safety measures. I couldn’t focus on it in the moment, but it felt like my body was tearing itself apart in every direction, exploding from the inside out, every last fiber of me being stretched and pulled the wrong ways. The searing pain that ripped through me was intense beyond comprehension, I subconsciously cordoned off a part of my mind, and now that pain is free of the box I’d placed it in.
The sensation defies description on a fundamental level as I relive it in my conscious mind, unboxed from my subconscious memory. I’m stuck with haphazard similes and metaphors to compare the amalgamation of agony and electricity to. Its ferocity would have left me breathless, had I had lungs to breathe at the time. It was like a million million needles piercing every particle of my very being, all red-hot, fiery, capsaicin laced. I was pulled apart at the seams like funhouse taffy, my consciousness frozen yet stretched beyond its limits. I’m reliving the few seconds of the lightning leap, in vivid detail, and horrid intensity. I half worry that I might subconsciously activate the power, and begin streaking around the refugee camp as a bolt of lightning, crackling with electricity and striking down poor, innocent, hapless civilians.
Friggin’ hellspit and fel fires Reggie. You can’t see, you’re emaciated, and you’re reliving pain you’d put off experiencing in a dire moment, that you brought on yourself, with no plan. How the *hell* do you think you’re going to take on a hydra, or a lair of hydras, in this state? Huff. I don’t. I don’t. I figure I’ve got a few days to recover as I track it, I—. I’m going to have to leave the carriage, and beg Tiago to have it follow up no more than a mile behind me, probably a few hundred yards at best, so we can signal each other. In case the hydra finds *us*. I need to be in signal range of someone from the refugee caravan at all times, and that person needs to be in range of someone else, on and on.
I topple from my position in the carriage’s driver’s seat once more, falling heavily on my face. I end up groaning in pain, and staggering to my feet as I cast my silent sonar senses about. I’m making so many mistakes in my haste, I just, I just keep messing up. I keep failing, and everyone suffers because of it, and I’m going to die because of it. I make myself weaker and weaker, only gaining power in bursts. Wasn’t I just thinking the opposite? How I’d come so far since Octorochi? Is this some sort of cosmic karma for what might have sounded like pride?
Cranking up my aura vision sense, it’s almost as good as sight honestly, and my silent sonar guides my reflexes, even when I’m not focusing on being aware of it. I’ve got workarounds for my limitations. Can’t move? Pump some electricity through the muscles. Can’t see? Cast a spell for a different sense. Too weak to physically fight? Call out to Can’Z’aas and summon umbral duplicates of Valkyrie daggers from my inventory in a massive swath, and follow it up with a steady stream of fireballs. Next time, next time I’ll be facing dragons alone, just me, and I’ll go all out. I’ll buy time for the eight minutes it takes, and I’ll put my all into it.
Okay, okay, huff, we can do this. Wait. I cast my senses about, and try to recall what I’d seen from my vantage, redrawing the picture in my mind. Where are the plains Colossi? How did Keeley survive? Why hasn’t someone suggested a Colossi help with the hydra? I know the answer before I truly ask the question. They’re also dead or dying, or simply no longer Colossi. One or more somehow sacrificed themselves so Keeley could live, and that’s why she was pissed whenever she found out what Marshal was hinting at. Sighing, I stumble towards a major source of warmth, likely the cooking campfire that Keeley had ordered me to find.
I’m greeted with a, “Took you long enough, you liddle shid.”
I just sigh and shake my head, before dropping my butt onto a rock, my elbows onto my knees, and my head into my hands. I weakly ask, “Which one?”
I sense Keeley stiffen up at my question, the woman who seems to be made out of confidence and rage hesitates. She responds one word, “Meredith.”
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I simply nod ever so slightly. I can tell my gesture is received, and understood. We exchange no more words as she hands me a bowl of soup. Meredith sacrificed something, perhaps her life, so that Keeley could live. Maybe her ration of dragon’s blood. I knew the Colossi were going through withdrawals. I didn’t know how bad it could be. I eat in silence, lamenting their losses. They were people. People that I struggled not to kill, in my effort to save The Brook from their extortion. People that were at the end, led by someone reasonable, who cared about their wellbeing, that Teuila slew, and a monster without remorse, that I slew. I’d given the ideas to Helena and Reggie to take over in place of the previous rulers, with the only real stipulation of wanting them to be kind to their neighbors. I left them with the dragon’s corpse, but acid rain, lack of a heart, decomposition, any number of things meant they had to ration it. There might be barrels of dragon’s blood somewhere here in the refugee camps, untouched, because the Colossi who it had been rationed to have died.
I’m sure it’s dragon’s blood, Meredith’s share, that got Keeley going again. She probably has to keep taking it, to make up for being speared through internal organs. Keeley is on borrowed time now too. To verify, I ask, “How long?”
There’s a frown that crosses her face, an expression as well. What is it? Shame? I think so. Keeley’s answer, “Couple months, years maybe, if I’m careful. Maybe survive after, if I’m lucky.”
I nod, barely perceptibly. Keeley has to keep taking dragon’s blood, and hope that it patches her up, without changing her physiology, without making her addicted and dependent on it. I don’t hate the woman. I really don’t. I never have. I even get it, in some ways, why she was so spiteful, so angry. Losing a son, because he was a reckless adventurer? I’d be upset too, at every reminder. Especially when the wound was raw, and recent. She might have been more nurturing, more loving, in the past, instead of overbearing. Who knows? I suppose Marshal would know, but I don’t need to go digging into the scars of their pasts.
I startle only slightly when a kind hand sets upon my shoulder. I’d barely registered Tiago walking into my sensory range. I look up towards him, forgetting my lack of eyesight for a moment, and he gasps when he sees my likely cloudy eyes. Keeley’s gaze follows Tiago’s after his noise of surprise, and her frown increases.
I mutter, “It’s okay. Been blind before. It’s fine.”
The two shake their heads. I think the three of us sigh, for relatively similar reasons, at relatively the same time, in our own fashions. I busy myself practicing more runes of the telekinesis enchantment, as I finish my soup. I’m a bit lost.
Turning to Tiago, I ask, “How many? How many are still Colossi? How many are even alive?”
His expression turns grim, “The leaders, Helena and Reggie, they remain powerful, at the rear of the refugee procession, always erecting more barriers, covering our trail, cutting us off from the hordes. The rest,” he sighs deeply before finishing his response, “I’d say maybe a quarter have survived as they cut back on the dragon’s blood.”
A seventy five percent mortality rate dependency from withdrawal. I shake my head sadly, dropping my chin back to my chest. Is it even worth sparing anyone? Saving anyone? If they’re all going to just die anyway? Should I just be more selfish, self-serving? Would Teuila still be at my side if I had been? If I weren’t destroyed from my defense of The Brook, I probably could have taken down one of the dragons. If we hadn’t saved the kobolds to begin with, there wouldn’t have been innocents in the path, and Teuila wouldn’t have had her world shattered. If I’d just slaughtered all the beavers, Lil never would have been hurt, and—. This is a slippery slope line of thought Reggie. Drop it. Yeah. Yeah it is. That’s not me. No matter what. Give up everything, save others, spare others, try my best. Try to be good. On a good day? I can consider myself good overall, outweighing the atrocities I’ve committed, or the failures that took place at my hands. On a really good day? I can just barely feel like others might consider me a hero, and I wouldn’t shy away from the title.
Where do I even go from here? I know I’m vaguely in a region where I should be sweeping southwest, west, northwest, then north, to get to the heart of Jaggedfen Bog, but that’s not what I mean. What’s my drive? Who even is Reggie Shellcracker, with no other Shellcrackers? Sure, I still want to save the Aasimovians, and the kobolds, or, okay, maybe that’s being full of myself. Maybe not save them, but at least provide them a safe path to settle a new home. What then? Rush to the Spine of the World? Hope I can be ruthless enough to kill the first dragon I see? Hope it’s evil? Absorb its dragonforce, and then roam the world looking for more, for a way to thaw Teuila? Oh Teuila.
Thinking about it, I can’t risk bringing her with me on my journeys. One good fall, one strong attack by a bludgeoning implement, anything like that, and she might be sundered-through. I don’t even want her going with the refugees, for much the same reason. They’d be picking through the ashes of a ruined kingdom, doing construction, digging. Who’s to say that a sinkhole doesn’t open up in the wrong spot at the wrong time, resulting in her falling, even just twenty feet or so? Could I somehow get her back to the Sisters? No, I’d die before I circumnavigated the mountain range, especially with having to avoid the south end of it. Could I leave her in Victo, with Jarvis Tavner’s nephew? He seemed like a kind individual, and we stopped the—. No. No I can’t leave her anywhere near the Celestial Imperium. The Celestial dickwad knows we exist, he’d find some way to extract her soul. Or maybe he’d just shatter her out of spite, sending troops through Victo.
Wait. Granny Altross. I’d intended to pay her a visit, ever since I saw her journals, and made the connection between her and Taylynn, her great granddaughter Tabitha Lynnia Altross. It’s still just an assumption, but I’m pretty confident about it. She was going to while away her twilight years in a manor in the Jaggedfen Bog. She cared about Taylynn, and Taylynn’s desire for freedom, for adventure, to be her own person, not be brought up as some stuffy noblewoman. She sounds like perhaps she was a kind soul. Would she possibly be willing to let me simply store Teuila’s icy remains somewhere on her property? In a cellar perhaps, where she might be safe?
My breath is hitched, having forgotten to breathe for a while, as I stared down the rabbit hole of my own thoughts. Suddenly I have a direction, a purpose, a chance.