The music had taken on an echoing quality—at some point. Talia couldn’t remember exactly when. In her mind, thoughts that were not hers mingled and flirted with her brain. She wasn’t quite sure when the room had begun to spin but—
Gods he’s so handsome—
I wish James were here, he’d love this. If only—
Why me? Why did she have to die and leave me here alone? What did I do to deserve this—
The unfamiliar voices—
I shouldna’ gone on this ‘ods be durned expedition. Ma were right. Gots me a death wi—
—built in Talia’s head like the pressure of a gentle drip of water droplets digging into her skull over the course of centuries. Her heart felt like some meddlesome god had plucked up emotions like paint and mixed them into a cacophony of feelings of varying intensity and fervor before pouring them into her like she was an empty mold to be filled with—
Ouch! Bastard!
Phantom pain from a woman whose foot had been battered by a heavy boot flared in Talia’s own appendage. She felt it as the dam around the woman’s sorrow broke from the innocuous occurrence. Ghostly tears flowed down both of their faces.
A sob caught in her throat, followed at once by a bubbling giggle that turned into a hysterical laugh. The music blared louder and louder. Talia realized she was singing along, without ever having heard the song before.
“In caves’o’ yore,
Oh! Where we’ve been before
I found meself in the arms of a poxy whore,
‘Is arse on bare rock,
Wha’ could ya want more?
Oh, in cave ‘o’ yore,
Where…”
A female beastkin gripped onto Talia’s arms, shooting the young woman a feral smile before sending her into a twirl, vermillion and black hair trailing behind her. Dancers around them were a blur of colour and sensation that forced the young mage to close her eyes.
Everything felt more.
The air electrified, charged.
Orange melted to red and grey and green. Around her, in the darkness of her eyelids, a collective of brightly glowing minds hovered, thoughts racing across them like sparks from a grindstone. As Talia watched, their images across the black of closed eyes became blinding, like bonfires catching alight, fueling each other.
I’m seeing their minds. Their very thoughts. Gods, what was in that ale?
Talia’s dance partner had changed without her noticing, padded fingers and soft brown fur replaced by rough callouses and the rippling compact frame of a dwarf. He led her through the motions of a traditional dance Orvall had taught her on a lark when she was a girl.
Eye closed and functioning off of old memory, Talia probed at the vital orbs of life around her.
Each mind had its own taste, colour and speed.
It was like nothing she’d ever experienced before.
To a one, every thought around her was in a frantic desperate race against the dark of the Deep.
Fear, buried with laughter. Lament, covered by ecstasy. Dread, coated with revel. The poisonous cocktail of suppressed emotion lurked below the surface of the gathering’s thoughts, like the spiderweb of cracks that heralded the advent of a rockfall.
A voice called out, jovial and slurring, to the gathered delvers.
A middle-aged dwarf, rust hair and beard tied in flowing clan braids Talia didn’t recognize, stood atop a crate precariously perched on one of the benches. The music slowed into something akin to a dirge, with jovial major notes sprinkled in.
The dwarf called for their attention; his words were lost in the din until enough drunk delvers had noticed his presence. Veterans quietened those unaware of what was happening.
“Mah friendsh! Weh’ve made it ter first haven! No guaranteed feat, I tellsh ye!”
The crowd cheered. A mug was pushed into Talia’s hands, which she raised to her lips, drunk on the intent of those around her.
“Bu’ noht all ‘o’ us made it ‘ere cleanly. An’ sho, ’ah raise a toasht! Ter our fallen! Ter James O’Rourke, a brave lad who fell ‘afore his time!”
The face of a smiling boy, face painted black, but whose eyes were warm and kind, flickered through Talia’s mind. She saw his body, battered and bruised, leaking from a dozen stabs of goblin spears.
Amid the wake for the dead man, grief from his lover filtered its way through her brain, bringing unbidden tears to her eyes and a shake to her fingers. She watched, felt, as the woman buried her grief gently, letting go of the person she’d grown up with. Had wanted to grow old with.
As the dwarf called out the names of the dead, the scene repeated itself.
All around her, the delvers honoured their friends and companions, with shaking hands and blurry eyes, amid cheer like a battle cry.
“Ter Evelyn Smithsen! Who conquered her fearsh ‘afore they conquered her.”
The raven-haired girl whose eyes Talia had closed for the final time speckled the minds of a few of the crew.
So that was her name. Conquered her fears indeed…. May the stone hold you gently, Evelyn.
The delvers drank, toasts and praise rising to a fever pitch, punctuated by a choking sob in Talia’s mind. The young woman knew not who the emotion came from, but it rode its way roughshod through her, irregardless of any belonging.
Eight names, the rust-haired dwarf called out from his vigil atop the bench, and eight times the assembled delvers released their sorrow into drink and cheer.
“And now ter our heroes, fallen or nae! Ter thos’ who went above ‘n’ beyond. Legends in their own right. Raishe yer mugsh fer Deepwalker the Raging, who spat in th’ eye of death, an’ broke the wyrm ‘afore it broke ‘im.”
Talia and those around her remembered the last moments of the large, plate-mailed beastkin who had died on the garbog’s claws, mace held high and courage unflinching.
The cheer was deafening, full of guilty relief and revived fear. The delvers’ voices flinched off of the walls of first haven, their emotions bouncing chaotically in the bounds of Talia’s skull.
An unfamiliar beastkin dialect, full of lilting vowels and harsh k’s hummed out in what sounded like a prayer.
Whether it was spoken out loud, or only in her head, Talia didn’t know, but the chant was wonderfully musical, heavy with overtones of love and farewell. Of honour and rest. Completely at odds with the raucous, fanatic voices of the partygoers.
The young woman swayed to the lulling tones of the prayer, whose melodic quality overlapped neatly with the slow dirge of the impromptu wake, drowning out the desperate elation that surrounded her. Time lost its meaning even as all around her, heroes, both living and dead were born, crowned by the salutes of their peers.
Only to be shocked out of her daze as a nearby woman clapped her on the back, throwing her a wink.
“An’ last bu’ no’ least, I give ye the Wyrmslayer, Talia the Unbowed, who leapt atop the beast, battered ‘n’ near death as she were, with a sword sharper than a diamond’s edge. An’ who survived ter TELL THE TALE!”
The delvers roared.
Countless memories of the pitched battle inundated Talia’s mind, from every perspective imaginable.
A view from the side as she stabbed down into the garbog’s carapace, a rictus grin smeared across her face like the beast’s own brackish blood.
A feeling of awe as a skirmisher watched her jump in front of his downed companions, acid splashing to either side of her nearly invisible shield.
Countless viewpoints of her as she stood atop the wyrm’s corpse, hacking away still, a guttural growl snarled behind her teeth.
In their eyes she saw the avatar of Ishmael, God of Death.
And recognized nothing but the body it wore.
That’s not—that’s not me… is it? Is it?
Talia felt herself picked up from the ground, too overwhelmed to struggle or realize what was happening. A low chant began in the depths of the crowd as they carried her on their shoulders, raising in a crescendo to deafening heights.
“Un-bowed, un-bowed, un-bowed…!”
----------------------------------------
The night blurred into a caustic haze of shared emotion and pilfered memories after that. Bits and pieces of others’ experiences leaked into Talia’s reality like maggots on festering corpses. First battles shared and scars displayed, friends lost and family waiting patiently in Karzgorad. Lust and sorrow and joy and everything in between.
The young woman stumbled through the wake, collecting backslaps and praise everywhere she went. Her mug was refilled, often without her realizing, usually by excited crew who pushed toasts on her, their faces shifting erratically in her spinning vision.
A low whine built up in Talia’s ears. It was an unsettling, sharp tone that stabbed at her eardrums, getting stronger as she sapped the emotion from those around her.
Her mind was too muddled to realize that something was wrong. That what she was experiencing went far beyond what acute perception and what her—generally non-existent—social acumen could inform her of.
So deep within the collective consciousness was she that she didn’t even notice the burning sensation until it had engulfed her fingers and travelled up into her chest. It felt like something between a friction burn and her blood boiling in her veins.
What the hells is happening to me?
Panic swelled across her thoughts, radiating out of her in a wave of unease that nibbled at the edges of the celebration.
Talia pushed her way out of the crowd. Delvers looked at her with confusion and the subtle hint of unnatural fear in their eyes.
The burn intensified brutally, rising through her heart to singe at her head with the beginnings of a migraine. Nausea swept through her, and she covered her mouth to keep from throwing up on the spot.
Help. Someone help. Make it stop.
The words came out as a jumble mush of unrelated syllables. Crew around her laughed and jeered as Talia rushed towards the nearest bench, retching violently.
“Our Wyrmslayer can kill a garbog along with the best of ‘em but can’t hold her ale for shit!” a man’s voice cried, to the infinite amusement of those who’d heard him.
Sudden anger sent a force in Talia’s chest ricocheting off of her ribs. Shock rippled through her.
That isn’t supposed to happen anymore.
That was the whole damn point of untethering her magic from her emotions.
Through the magma flow of the now blazing agony unfurling along her limbs and up her spine, Talia realized that the feeling was different from her prior experience. Her magic wasn’t trying to rampage against her will. In fact, the fledgling mage’s Core felt empty, deeply, and completely void of mana at all.
Alcohol, pain and stolen emotion consumed her lucidity. Talia stumbled back towards the crowd aimlessly, thoughts and urges flittering, a jagged mess of impulse stirring in her head.
A strong grip appeared around her bicep.
Or was it always there?
“Why don’t I bring you back to your bunk? I think you’ve had enough,” Zaric’s voice filtered through her ears on a current of disapproval. The mage-commandrum appeared next to her as a hazy blob of dark skin and robes.
“Something’s wrong with me,” Talia tried to say.
Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.
What actually came out was closer to “Somshingswrunwifm”.
She felt muted irritation replace disapproval in Zaric’s mind.
“What?” he asked.
“Hurts.”
“What do you mean, what hurts? I swear if you throw up on me…”
“Armsh. Head. Chesh hurts. Core burnsh.”
Alarm blared through the collared mage, worry close on its tail. Talia absorbed it all; it sent her mind reeling even further.
“Listen to me Talia, I need you to tell me if you’ve used any magic. It’s important,” Zaric hissed in her ear.
Behind them, delvers burst into laughter as a young beastkin jumped across the cook pit, raising his hands in triumph only to realize his tail had caught alight, and promptly dropped to the floor in a panicked roll.
Talia giggled without even noticing why she was doing it, falling into nearly maniacal laughter in Zaric’s grasp.
“Focus, arcanist. Magic. Yes, or no?”
The still giggling young woman leaned into the man’s ear.
“Shhh. Mac—hic ish a shecret. Noh machik here, no, no.” she whispered.
Zaric growled, but he felt more concerned than frustrated. Then, Talia felt something odd happen. The mage’s mind twisted, contorting unnaturally. To Talia’s new, overloaded senses it felt like he was… juggling, but without moving his arms or anything to juggle with.
The mage’s hand on her arm grew cold for a brief moment— and then her heart skipped a beat as the most searing pain she’d ever felt ran through her nerves and into her Core.
“Outch stop stop stop, hurts!” Talia yelped, mumbling incoherently and attempting unsuccessfully to pull her limb from his grip. Her body felt leaden and oversensitive, like the top layer of her skin had been scraped off with a steel brush.
Zaric stopped what he was doing as soon as she yelped.
“Shit,” he muttered.
Without wasting a second, Zaric scooped her up like she weighed nothing and set off at a jog towards wagon seven. Each step felt like spikes being shoved through Talia’s eyes, but her mind cleared somewhat as they left the group of delvers behind.
All that did was allow her own panic and Zaric’s alarm to flare stronger in her mind, along with an intense increase in pain.
What the hell is happening?!?
The mage-commandrum kicked at the door to the specialist wagon. He had to repeat the action multiple times before Lazarus opened the door.
“What could possibly be so— oh,” the elf exclaimed.
“Are you alone?” Zaric asked.
“No, I was having a discussion with Gregory,” he said, looking Talia over worriedly, “but I can send him away if need be.”
The mage shouldered his way into the doorway sideways, careful not to knock the woman in his arms against anything.
“Do it,” he said.
The healer’s brow furrowed, but he held his tongue and followed the concerned mage inside, where a clearly chastised Gregory sat waiting on a stool.
The room was filled with a heady mix of worry, panic, and puzzlement, with a subtle undercurrent of shame from the dwarf. All of which renewed the migraine that seemed to be attempting to tunnel its way out of Talia’s skull with a blunt knife.
“What’s wrong with her?” Gregory asked, irritation filling his thoughts if not his voice.
“Too much to drink,” Zaric answered curtly without looking at the apprentice.
“I don’t think—”
Lazarus interrupted with a slash of his hand and a scathing tone, but his thoughts belied tenderness and exasperation.
“No, no you do not. If you thought more then perhaps you would not be in this situation. Now out. I want two double-sided sheets of parchment on proper bedside manner and the dangers of leaving patients unattended from you by tomorrow. And old gods help me, if I hear from Mirielle that you so much as looked at a cask of ale before it is done, we’ll be having more than a conversation.”
“But—”
“Out!”
The young dwarf bolted. Meanwhile, Zaric placed Talia on the still made bed she had just woken up from hours prior. The sheets against her skin felt like jagged sandpaper on exposed nerve. Talia’s whimpers echoed back at her like from down a long tunnel.
“Little harsh don’t you think?” the mage asked absently.
Through the burning haze, Talia saw the healer roll his eyes.
“That boy would walk right off a cliff without a firm hand to keep him away from it. No impulse control, that one. Now are we going to spend all night talking about how I educate my apprentices, or are you going to tell me what’s wrong with her?”
“Well first off, she’s incredibly drunk— but most importantly, she’s managed to give herself manaburn.”
A burst of confusion came from Lazarus, followed quickly by cold, analytic processes.
“She said she had a kinetic affinity,” the healer said, “if she had been blasting away with it, it is fair to say that someone would have noticed.”
“Right. But she’s barely been awakened for a month, most of which she’s spent asleep, or violently suppressing her Core,” Zaric replied, looking down at the woman writhing in pain on the bed.
The mage’s sympathy and empathic pain rattled her.
“Talia, can you hear me? I need you to focus on my voice.”
The feeling of Lazarus connecting the dots was a tangible thing.
“You think she’s developed a new manifestation.”
“She must have. No other explanation. That or…a maladaptive talent of some kind, drawing too much from her Core,” Zaric mused, “Talia, can you tell me what you’re feeling? I know it burns, but I can’t talk you through it if you don’t talk to me.”
“Feelingsh hurt. Toomany thoughtsh,” she slurred.
Both men froze, exchanging a look, unease colouring their thoughts briefly. Suddenly, they faded from her new sense, Lazarus faster than Zaric. Both became essentially emotional voids. Talia sighed in relief, her migraine receding and the burning of her Core abating slightly. Her skin began to feel less sensitive.
“Ahhh…thash mush better. What dish you dew?” she mumbled.
An uncomfortable silence greeted the fledgling mage’s statement. If it could be called that.
Lazarus broke it first.
“I’ll go get an emetic and a blood cleanser,” he said.
“Is that safe?” Zaric asked.
“Used every day? No. When you are in the early stages of blood poisoning because delvers, as a general rule, have no boundaries around anything that will pickle their minds like a root vegetable? She’ll survive.”
Even without the aid her new sense, Talia felt Zaric’s eyeroll.
“She will be fine,” the elf insisted.
He returned with a bucket and two bottles filled with unappetizing grey…goop.
Talia wasn’t told to drink them so much as they were forced down her throat. The first caused her to violently retch up the contents of her stomach. The second somehow tasted worse than said vomit, but began to clear her mind within minutes.
It did nothing for the pain of manaburn.
If anything, it made it worse. The young woman curled up in agony on the corner of the bed, arms wrapped tightly around her legs.
“Feeling a little better now?” Zaric asked.
Talia groaned as tongues of flame ripped at her nerves like flesh eating parasites.
In fact, the fledgling mage was half convinced that parasites would be less painful, such was the anguish of the sensation.
“No. But at least I can think,” she croaked.
A quick look at the dark-skinned mage showed that he looked…worn. He had bags under his eyes and his robes were disheveled. Talia found herself wishing she knew what he was thinking. The pain in her head intensified at once. Immediately, Zaric frowned, looking discomfited.
“Stop. Whatever you just thought of, stop doing it. Psionic shielding isn’t my forte to begin with. It doesn’t help when you batter at the walls like that.”
Talia recoiled, realizing that her Core had taken her intent to know what the man was thinking quite literally and begun pulling at her empty mana reserves to do just that. Violently, she slammed a box down around it, shutting off the flow of mana to her mind. There was no strain that accompanied the action, no resistant bucking or flinging itself against the metaphysical box like a rabid beast—as she’d half expected it to do.
It just…stopped. But even in her state, Talia felt that the fix was temporary.
“Is that better?” she asked.
Zaric breathed a sigh of relief, slumping in the chair she hadn’t noticed him fetch.
“Yes, thank you. Whatever you did, keep it up for a moment.”
“What’s happening to me?”
“You’ve manifested a second power. Something caught between an ability and a talent.”
“But…why did it go out of control like that?”
Zaric scratched at the fuzz that had begun to grow on his usually smooth head.
“I’ll try to explain. Bear in mind,” he started, “I’m not a psion, so my understanding is limited to a talent that, while similar, is leagues apart in terms of the true underpinnings of telepathy or empathy. To learn more, you’d have to discuss the issue with a master, which, when it comes to psionics, I am most certainly not.”
Talia nodded, and immediately regretted doing so, as a wave of nausea and pain hit her. Lazarus came back holding a small keg of water and three mugs, filling each and handing them out.
“Drink. You need liquids, both the alcohol and the emetic will have dehydrated you. And in the future, have a care when you share a cask with delvers. They are a…hardy folk.”
Zaric scoffed.
“Pretty sure you’re more delver than healer at this point, Lazarus. So, you can get right off that high ledge you walked in on,” the mage-commandrum joked.
The elf sniffed, not deigning to answer, but all the same, didn’t deny it.
“Yes, well do not let me interrupt,” the elf instead replied, “I will just have a seat over here. Simply pretend I am not here.”
Zaric waved his acceptance and dismissal.
“As I was saying, before we were so—kindly interrupted. Abilities, senses and talents. Abilities are magic that you use consciously. They have high mana draw and are usually noticeable to those around you. Like my earth shaping ability or your kinetics. With me so far?”
Talia nodded curtly, careful not to move too much.
“Good. Talents are the opposite. They’re unconscious effects that usually draw so little mana as to be unnoticeable. Like your darkvision or healing for example. Enter senses. Most mages only gain a single sense over their entire lives. Though there are rumours of a mage possessing up to four different senses, but he was an anomaly.”
“Ok. I follow, but what’s the difference between a sense and a talent or an ability? And what does all that have to with what’s happening to me?” Talia asked through gritted teeth.
“I’m getting there, patience,” Zaric soothed.
“Get there faster, or I might die from the pain.”
Zaric rolled his eyes at her dramatics, but pressed on faster, nonetheless.
“If abilities are inactive by default, and talents are always active, then senses are the in-between. The most basic form of a sense is always active. In my case, my sense manifests as an intrinsic knowledge of the earth around me in a small range. We’d call it an earthsense.”
Understanding peeked its head in Talia’s grey eyes.
“How much mana does a sense draw?” she asked, suspiciously her voice thin.
The bald man nodded in approval at her deduction.
“It usually depends on the complexity of the sense, which is specific to the mage. Some are considered prohibitively expensive. We call them detrimental, or maladaptive. In that they are close to unusable. These include my particular brand of earthsense, for example. The mana cost of extending the range past a few metres around me is…extreme. I would succumb to manaburn very quickly, if say, I were to extend it out past the confines of the wagon.”
“And you think I have a maladaptive sense, is that it?”
“No, not necessarily. Psionic powers are somewhat different. Every psion has a very similar sense, one that allows then to detect sentient minds. The difference lies in the active part of the sense. Whereas the active part of earthsensing is limited to increasing the range, as well as the occasional manipulation of vibrations, psion senses are more comprehensive and versatile. Truly a combination of talent and ability in every way.”
Talia pushed through the manaburn to recall the sensations she’d felt during the party.
“I think— I think I see what you mean. I was pulling on emotions, on thoughts. I think I might have even been pushing out my own to others around me at one point. But when I closed my eyes, I could see their minds, the patterns…” Talia said, wincing at a violent pulse.
Zaric nodded at her explanation.
“Exactly. Without intending to, and because your sense can’t be turned off, you were pushing mana into the costliest parts of the power. When your Core emptied…you probably gave yourself a nasty case of overdraw manaburn.”
Lowering her head into her hands, Talia groaned.
“Lots of questions come to mind, but just tell me how to make it stop. Please.”
“Yes, maybe its best if we discuss those tomorrow, once you’ve recovered enough to at least practice some theory. Sorry to say, the manaburn is there to stay. It’ll dissipate on its own, but I’ll give you a few exercises to practice when you wake up. Those should ease the strain.”
“Great,” Talia complained, “it’s just one thing after another with this stupid ‘Gift’ isn’t it.”
Zaric smiled sympathetically.
“The first year is the worst. It’s all easier after that. At least until…”
He trailed off morosely, looking away.
“Until I lose my mind and attack everyone around me,” Talia finished for him, “got that part, truly. I know you think I’m a danger, that came through loud and clear earlier, but can you just help please? Trust me, I’d like nothing more than to sit and pick your brain for hours but right now I can’t think straight, let alone chain together a logical argument.”
Zaric recoiled at her tone, taken aback.
“I don’t—no, you’re right, we can talk about it later. For now, I’ll guide you through a meditation that should help you rein in your telepathy and empathy. It won’t help the manaburn, only rest will do that, but it’ll keep it from getting worse until you can get a better grasp on how your sense works.”
Talia bobbed her head wearily, eyelids pressed to her balled fists.
The mage instructed her to lie down with her eyes closed, his voice smooth and steady. Slowly, ever slowly, he guided Talia’s thoughts away from the burning sensations and into an intricate set of mental gymnastics. Eventually, a stretching sensation she hadn’t even noticed was there receded, curling up into a little ball in her head. She felt more compact, as if her mind had settled itself into a fetal position.
Talia let out a breath as the awareness of the living beings around her folded itself away, still present, but in a distant way, like seeing things from behind thick, warped glass. The echoed, amplified emotions that had buried themselves in her subconscious leaked from tiny, one-sided holes in the translucent barrier, leaving her head with only her own thoughts and feelings in it.
A complex soup of stuff that she shoved away into a box for later.
Talia was becoming more aware of the fact that ‘later’ would eventually have to become ‘sooner’, but as the meditation ended and Zaric’s voice trailed off, all she felt was exhaustion. Relaxing as best she could, she fell into a fitful sleep.
----------------------------------------
Syndra Calisto was frustrated.
The carefully selected library of historical texts and analyses that she’d brought were proving inadequate for her purposes. Beneath her austere veneer, she resisted the impulse to slam the tome in front of her shut, instead gently closing its yellowed pages and slotting it back on its shelf, picking another promising candidate to pour over.
So focused was she, that she only noticed her lover’s entrance when Arrick Torval slid his arms around her waist and pressed a prickly kiss into her neck.
“You need to shave,” she commented idly.
“Mmm. And you, my dear, need to come to bed,” he answered.
“In a bit. If I don’t find the missing puzzle piece, I’ll never be able to sleep. What about you, did everything go well with the girl?”
Walking over to the front of the wagon, Arrick set water to boiling on the arcanic burner in his private cabin.
“As well as could be expected. Turns out she’s a mage,” he replied innocuously.
“Oh? Well, that’s an unusual development. Explains how she survived,” Syndra commented without looking up from her book.
A pregnant pause coloured by the burble of water rising to a boil was all that emanated from the cabin. The chronicler didn’t even notice, absorbed in her task.
“That’s it? No shock, no concern, no nothing?”
“Is she a danger?”
Arrick tutted.
“No, we don’t think so,” he replied.
“Then what is there to be shocked about, my love?” Syndra asked.
“Well, when you put it that way…”
“Mhmm.”
The pair fell into silence again, punctuated only by the low whistle of the kettle. The delvemaster sighed, setting a pair of cups down on the table and serving them both tea, mindful to keep the kettle far from the very expensive tomes.
“You’re not going to let this go, are you dear?” he asked.
The chronicler finally looked up from her book. Staring at him with a look of pure irritation.
“What’s shocking is how quickly you did let it go. Goblins? A week out from the city? Unprecedented. Then there’s the deeps-forgotten adult garbog, creatures that reside down in the furthest recesses of the Deep. Were it not for the mithril mines, they would be nothing more than legends, mind you. And we were attacked by one. On the Ways. Like it was a common musklop. They shouldn’t have been there, Arrick. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Coincidences happen, Syndra. Who knows why the goblins were up so high, let alone the habits of a deep dweller? We should just be glad we survived with only nine dead in all. Take the win, won’t you? We have more than enough on our plate as it is.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Coincidences are just patterns we don’t have enough information to quantify. There’s no such thing. A whole goblin warband and warren. For gods’ sake hobgoblins equipped with tools and weapons.”
The severe looking chronicler glared at her partner.
“Don’t shake your head, Arrick. That wyrm must have been at least four decades old, to grow so large. Threats like that don’t leave their stomping grounds for the hells of it. This is unusual, and mark my words if it’s happened before, a chronicler has recorded it.”
The delvemaster held Syndra’s stare, eyes far away, fingers clacking away on the quiescent map table. The woman waited; she knew that he liked to take his time to think things through.
With a groan, he ran a hand through his hair, pulling the long curly brown locks from their leather band.
“Fine,” he decided, “where do I start?”
Syndra graced him with a rare smile and gathered up a stack which she slid across the table in his direction.
“You look over these and I’ll see if Nirenter recorded anything about deep dweller movements during the Exodus. We’re looking for a pattern of some kind. Any indication of what would bring both goblins and wyrms so close to Karzgorad. Look for the information behind the pattern.”
The delvemaster sighed again, tucking himself in. It was going to be a long night.
But if his lover and second in command’s hunch was right, there was trouble ahead. They could only hope that the expedition was ready if she was.