The mood in the camp was somber and tired. The silence that had creeped back in oh so slowly

after the successful defense was a voluntary one, built from exhaustion, fear, and in some cases, mourning.

Talia was no exception. She had helped Healer Lazarus and his two apprentices as they cared for wounds ranging from superficial cuts and bruises to internal bleeding and in a few cases, fatal gut injuries.

Three of the crew were dead. None that she had spoken to personally, but two of which she’d comforted in their last moments, holding clammy hands in her own and whispering soothing, meaningless words.

Their passing had only served to numb her further.

They knew the risks… we all did.

Nonetheless, the young woman’s mood was blacker than the tunnel outside wagon seven when Lazarus finally dismissed her, telling her to take Torval to wagon one and then get some rest of her own.

Talia had taken the concussed but conscious delvemaster with her, supporting his not inconsiderable frame with her own slight build as best she could.

Whether it was the concussion or the exhaustion, neither of them spoke.

They had simply stumbled over to wagon one, where she dropped him heavily into his private bunk. He was asleep before she stood up.

Most of the command wagon was taken up with shelves full of books and papers, surrounding a large metal table with a self-contained mapping and tracking artefact. The modern tool was a complex creation that drew a map of the tunnels in a clay like substance. The three-dimensional map could be panned and scrolled to view previous locations it had been brought to and was one of the most expensive items currently in the caravan.

Normally, Talia would have been unable to keep her hands off it. Now though, she could only think of one thing.

Sleep.

From the corner of her eye, Talia thought she saw the map move rapidly, flickering from a display of the tunnel they were in to a wider one with a steeper incline.

What was that?

When she took a harder look at it, the artefact looked for all the world as if it hadn’t moved at all.

Huh. Odd.

Talia shook her head and rubbed her eyes.

Must’ve been imagining things. It’s been a long day.

After making sure that the delvemaster wouldn’t choke on his own spit in his sleep, she slipped out of the wagon quietly, casting a forlorn glance at the treasure trove of magic and information scattered around the room.

Next time. Maybe I can say I noticed some cosmetic damage on the mapper. Yea, that might work… Or you could just…ask. You’re an officer, idiot. Not some apprentice.

All around the wagon train, crew members, those who hadn’t fought for one reason or another, cleaned up the remnants of the battlefield. Grey-green goblin corpses were loaded up onto makeshift sleds to be dragged far into the tunnel behind them, in order the reduce the already high risk of another attack, potentially from something more deadly than goblins.

Talia clambered up onto the back of wagon two, remembering at the last second to direct the ‘entering’ clicker call towards the door. When, after a count of twenty, no responding call came, she opened the door and trudged inside.

Whether any other officers were present was impossible to tell behind the heavy curtains, and in that moment, Talia didn’t care.

Pulling back the drapes of her bunk, she sloughed off her still damp armour and curled into the sheets, hoping for a dreamless sleep.

She was disappointed.

----------------------------------------

Talia stood above the lardlike form of Fatty as it bled its lifeblood out at her feet in sluggish spurts. All around her, delvers and goblins were locked in vicious struggle, their fighting forms frozen mid action.

In the growing crimson pool at her feet, runes both alien and somehow familiar to her traced themselves out in piercing violet shades, like how certain species of lichen seemed to grow into beautiful configurations entirely by accident.

As Talia watched, the puddle of blood twisted of its own volitions into a swirling vermillion vortex, pulling her inexorably downward.

Around her, the sounds of combat began to fade back into hearing in slow motion.

Then, unable to stop herself, she fell into the pool. And kept falling. Unfamiliar cities flew past her, their arcano-suns still and dark. The sounds of battle grew to a rumbling crescendo, goblin warcries turning to the more guttural snarls and roars of beasts. The clash of metal on metal deafened her.

The sight of what could only be the Dead Cities flashed by faster, each unique and each vacant and empty, dust left untouched for centuries laying atop decrepit buildings like a thick blanket.

The dream took her past empty streets streaked with brown stains and into the largest, straightest tunnel she had ever seen. It rose through the earth like the magma flows of the deep mines, a steady climbing incline, the slope just forgiving enough that it would pose little difficulty to sapients or wagons.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Talia hovered above the ground, floating quickly upwards for kilometres of monotonous tunnel until suddenly—she stopped. Two titanic metal doors carved with bas-relief images she couldn’t quite make out stood before her, untouched by time. On either side, stalactites had melted into stalagmites over centuries.

A hollow boom sounded out, followed by the most discordant cry she’d ever heard. It screeched past her ears to scratch at her mind with claws of rusted metal. Talia’s vision swam.

Light, blinding and cold, cracked from the slowly growing slit in the gates.

A pull from her chest tugged her forward with insistent need. Purple runes scrolled past the edges of her vision.

All at once, the gates were open, as if they had always been.

Beyond them lay Karzgorad, in all its glory, arcano-sun beating proudly like the city’s molten heart. It was beautiful, like the mural on the walls of the wagon. An artist’s rendition of what Talia’s home could be, not what it was.

A brief bout of homesickness struck her. It was immediately swallowed by inexplicable dread.

A shudder shook the dream. In the distant city, screams rang out. The arcano-sun dimmed and flickered. Then, it died.

The dream plunged into darkness. The screams fell silent.

Karzgorad was still as a tomb.

----------------------------------------

Talia turned her eyes away from the wagon wheel she was working on to take a bite from her bowl of sweetened gruel. The ration of beet sugar made the tasteless mush slightly more palatable, but only slightly.

A frown scrunched up her face as she examined the runework etched into the thin mithril band on the inner part of the spokes. The arcanist had been puzzling over the problem for close to an hour. Every time she thought she’d fixed it another issue reared its head. Talia stuffed angry spoonful after angry spoonful into her mouth, glaring at the sloppy patchwork her predecessor had left on the enchantment. She just knew there was another problem area hiding in there somewhere, she just had to find it.

How in the world did Ikkel pass his qualification test…? The examiner must have been drunk or paid off to not notice second-rate work like this.

She’d have to check over the rest of the caravan’s complement of enchantments before they set off again. Who knew if another issue was waiting in the aisles, just waiting to appear at the most inopportune moment.

Finally, she spotted the root of the problem. A bit of silverite wire from an earlier repair had been knocked out of its groove, probably during the fighting, and now connected the mana channel to a secondary runic array. The whole setup meant that as the mana flowed through the channel towards the primary arrays, it would instead shoot at full speed towards the smaller secondary, which was only designed to handle the runoff from its primary array. Talia was glad the mana capacitors on the enchantment were drained and that she hadn’t tried to have them refilled.

Even with a relatively banal enchantment like this, the consequences from an overloaded runic array could be…dire.

Talia set down her bowl and plucked a pair of tweezers from the neatly arrayed tools to her right, bending the wire back into its channel in the mithril, where she heated it into place with her a short burst from the arcano-torch. A catchy rhyme from her apprenticeship floated into her head.

Silverite conducts and mithril obstructs, iron shatters, steel blathers and melted coppers. Ugh. Never going to forget that tune, are you, Tals?

It was meant to teach apprentices about the arcanic properties of different metals. What it truly accomplished was irritating the whole workshop when the song got stuck in everyone’s head.

All anyone had to say was that mithril blocked mana flow while silverite—and to a lesser extent, silver—accelerated it. Why steel, iron and copper were included was a mystery to her. Any arcanist foolish enough to use them in anything more than the most basic of trinkets would be lucky if they didn’t have to be scrapped off the floor.

A soft, whispery voice pulled Talia from her errant thoughts.

“…aster said you might need some help?”

Zaric’s apprentice, Osra, had snuck up on her without her noticing.

Well technically, you were preoccupied with what amounts to a nursery rhyme and didn’t even hear her speak.

Talia pulled the clicker from her mouth.

“Oh sorry, say again? I didn’t realize we were still alright to speak out loud.”

The apprentice mage had her hood down, revealing an oval face with unblemished caramel skin and a sharp chin. The girl’s—woman’s—eyes were orbs of cool green, firmly planted on the ground. Somehow, she managed to exude an aura of shy tragedy.

“Oh—uh right, well Delvemaster Torval asked my master and I to put up a wall behind us. Master Zaric is pretty mana-burned, so it’ll be slow going to excavate the cave-in ahead. On the bright side, the wall we put up is pretty thick, so we get to avoid the clickers for a while longer,” the mage explained softly.

Talia nodded, keeping her attention from wandering back to the wheel in front of her. Then a thought struck her.

“Um, doesn’t that mean we’ll all suffocate eventually?” she asked.

Osra giggled. It was an endearing thing, like that of a child.

I thought Zaric said his apprentice was my age.

“No, no, we left tiny holes near the top and bottom, just big enough to let air through,” Osra explained.

“Ahh, smart, makes sense. Well, in that case, what can I do you for? Is something else broken? I’ve got a pretty full plate, but I can add it to the list if that’s the case.”

“Er, no. At least, I don’t think so? Maybe? I don’t know,” the girl rambled, “—Master Zaric said I should help you fill anything you need. With mana, I mean.”

“Oh, well perfect timing then, I just got all the wheels fixed up, along with a few of the crew’s personal artefacts that were damaged in the battle. Why don’t you take care of the wheels first, and then we can go get them from wagon seven.”

The girl nodded, approaching the wagon and laying a delicate hand on the axle. She closed her eyes, frowning in concentration.

Talia waited. And waited. And kept waiting. Eventually, she began cleaning and organising her tools and slotting them back into their toolbelt.

Finally, fifteen minutes later, Osra was done. The girl was panting slightly, and sweat had beaded on her brow.

Ok, I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure it shouldn’t have taken that long. Zaric wasn’t kidding when he said she needs practice.

Talia said none of that of course, only shooting the girl an encouraging smile.

“All done?” she asked.

“…yes, just let me…catch my breath,” the mage replied.

Osra leaned an arm on the wagon and lowered her head.

“How many more are there to charge?” she asked.

Talia thought for a moment, counting the items out on her fingers.

“Two more wheels on wagon four that were scratched, a pair of bows, a shield, and Darkclaw’s armour. Oh, and I noticed some of the lightstones in wagon two need topping up. You sure you’re up to it?”

Osra looked like she wanted to groan.

“Yea, lead the way,” the mage answered instead, with a weak smile.

“That’s the spirit! One artefact at a time, and you’ll be done before you know it,” Talia cheered.

The apprentice nodded and stood up straight, dusting invisible specks of dust off her robe.

Talia threw her a wink, gathering up her tool belt and coils of spare wire, and stuck her clicker back in her mouth. Just in time to catch the end of a call. ‘Officers to command wagon. Five minutes’.

Wracking her brain for the correct sequence, the young woman flicked off the message for ‘acknowledged’ in the vague direction of wagon one, hoping that she hadn’t just blasted everyone in the tunnel with the noise.

Talia awkwardly pulled the clicker out of her mouth, giving Osra an apologetic look.

“So— change of plans, looks like I have to head for wagon one for a meeting. You alright to do the wheels and the lighstones while I go? And I’ll show you the artefacts later?”

The apprentice mage nodded uncertainly.

“Perfect! Come on, I have to drop my tools off in my bunk anyway, you can start there.”