“This is ridiculous. We should be plotting our route back home, not entertaining some hair-brained scheme from a high quarter, glory-hound brat!” Cropperpike frothed.
Talia felt a burst of righteous indignation at the quartermaster’s words. The dwarf had clearly never gotten over his first impressions—or rather, assumptions— of her. A whiny voice in the back of her mind—the socially anxious, socially inept one— implored her to just shut up and keep quiet, that she hadn’t the experience or the right to speak up at such a gathering.
Another voice petulantly encouraged her to let the aggravating officer continue to embarrass himself in front of his peers, without correcting his misinformed presumption. It clashed directly with her third impulse to rant at him about how wrong he was.
From the internal conflict somehow sprang words that belonged to neither course.
“Oh, shut up, you ignorant, self-obsessed, prick,” Talia growled.
The young woman’s regret was a nearly instant thing, and also far too late.
The dwarf’s reaction was immediate. His face turned a ruddy hue only found in expensive dyes and fabrics, ugly ones at that—burgundy verging on violet. The irate quartermaster was halfway off his stool in a split second. Talia suddenly found herself with a thick finger waving in her face and a shower of spittle splattering across the abdomen of her scale armour.
“Why ye’ arrogant little arsewipe! Ye’ve got some nerve comin’ in ‘ere like ye own the place, tellin’ us all wut we ought ter be doin’ r’ not, with yer big ‘n’ mighty name, like yer som’ow not scared shitless like the res’ ‘o’ us ye…”
The thick vitriol combined with the aggressive posturing was the toe on the scale that pushed the young woman’s indecision into action. Talia’s regret evaporated into fury faster than she could blink.
“Own the place?!? Like I own the place?! It not my fault your stupid prejudice has…” she yelled over him.
“…I were runnin’ threw’ the Deep since ‘afore ye were…”
“ENOUGH!” Torval boomed.
Both the arcanist and the quartermaster lurched as if they had been struck. Hanmul’s face drained of colour, whereas Talia’s reddened in a blush that was a mix of embarrassment and leftover indignation.
The delvemaster looked angrier than Talia had ever seen him. Almost instinctively, she loosened her senselocks—and was immediately whiplashed by the sheer force of the man’s incredulity.
Shame tugged its way into her head, quenching the remnants of indignation that still stirred in her gut. Talia closed off the senselocks before she caught a whiff of what her other fellow officers were feeling, deciding right then that knowing how others truly felt about her would only sow hurt.
If they found out she was reading their emotions…
Nope. Keep the focus broad. General impressions only. Nothing good can come from dipping into their heads at will.
The young woman brought her attention back to the vexed face of the delvemaster.
Torval stared hard at the two of them for what seemed like an eternity. When he finally spoke, his tone was sharper than a garbog’s bladed limbs. Gone was the friendly face of the man who had recruited her, replaced with the cold eyes of a man who had led others to their deaths, and would do so again. The eyes of a leader.
“Whatever issue is that the two of you have with each other, you will deal with it, bury it or whatever it is you need to do. Quartermaster Copperpike, you will keep your damn prejudices to yourself. Arcanist Talia, you will keep antagonizing statements in your head, where they belong. And the two of you will mind your godsforsaken tone when speaking to fellow officers. Clear?” he asked.
Copperpike nodded mutely, looking like his disgust was warring with his self-preservation. The latter of which had seemingly fled Talia’s at the mention of her supposed fault in the matter. Before she even knew what she was doing, Talia had begun protesting the unfair assignation.
“Antagonizing?! He’s the one that—”
From the corner of her eye, she saw Zaric shaking his head vigorously, eyebrows high on his head.
Regret came, once again, too late.
Torval interrupted her.
“I said. Is. That. Clear?”
Talia’s jaw clicked shut. Somehow, she had gone from being the victim of baseless slander to being the antagonist. Thinking back to moments before, she had to admit that her reaction had been…
Unwise. Immature even. You had the high ledge and then you lost it when you lashed out, just like Orvall always says. Way to stuff your boot in it, Tals.
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“Like crystal, delvemaster,” she answered contritely.
Torval relaxed slightly and sat back down on his stool.
“Good, now as I said, I don’t care how you solve the problem. Rational adults might suggest sitting down and actually talking as a solution. Regardless, I will hear nothing further about the two of you saying even a single unprofessional word to each other. Understood?”
Both officers nodded and took their seats, bobbing their heads with contrition. Copperpike shot Talia a side-eyed glance that she couldn’t quite decipher. The young mage resisted the impulse to both sneer as well as peek into the dwarf’s assuredly narrow mind.
“Good. Now if we’re done with that nonsense, we can carry on discussing Arcanist Talia’s suggestion. Thoughts?” the delvemaster asked, gaze roving about the room.
Apart from Calisto, who looked stern and pensive—as usual—most of the officers sported looks of consternation in various degrees. Ultimately, Lazarus was the first to speak up.
“Much as I disagree with his phrasing, should we not consider Hanmul’s argument first? If this truly is the start of a Migration, we would be ill-advised to continue. There is simply no good argument I can think of that would warrant the risk,” the healer stated.
Copperpike allowed a victorious smile to curve his red beard, and even the generally taciturn Darkclaw nodded in agreement.
Torval sighed almost imperceptibly.
Moment of truth. Does he tell them or doesn’t he?
Talia watched the delvemaster make the decision in real-time. She disagreed, but in the end, it wasn’t her choice to make. The young woman felt a surge of pity for the position the man had found himself in.
“Suffice it to say, that turning back is not an option. Much as I understand your reluctance, the decision is mine. We push forward,” he said, shoulders straight and eyes hard.
Copperpike frowned. Talia tensed as he began to speak.
“All due respect, delvemaster, but I think we can all agree that this kind of decision isn’t what the guild charter means when it gives delvermasters full control over their expeditions. The situation is different.”
“You all knew the risks,” Torval replied curtly.
“We knew the risks of a bog standard delve. One among dozens, hundreds even! Not facing an unending horde released from the belly of the Stone Itself! You can’t just decide for us all like that. If we’re to going to do it, it should be a vote, among officers, at least,” Copperpike said.
The room tensed. Even Talia—who had only skimmed the charter when she’d signed up— knew that Hanmul’s words came dangerously close to mutiny. The quartermaster had placed his fate in Torval’s hands, while also wedging the delvemaster between a rock and a hard place.
As socially inept as she was, the young woman knew that no good outcomes would come from what would happen next.
Torval was silent for a long time, staring down at the dwarf, who seemed to finally realize the predicament he was in. Whether it was confidence or concern that tightened Copperpike’s jaw was anyone’s guess.
“Fine then. Majority vote, and I will break a tie. Is that acceptable to you, quartermaster?” Torval said.
Though he at first seemed like he might protest the terms, the dwarf nodded resolutely, probably aware that his ‘proposal’ could have gone in an entirely different direction.
“Aye, that’ll do,” Copperpike answered instead.
The delvemaster nodded, throwing a glance at the rest of the officers before sealing their collective fate.
“All in favour of pressing on, raise your hands,” Torval called.
Zaric’s hand went up first, followed by Calisto’s and finally, her leg jittering like a hive of urvai, Talia followed suit.
Confusion crept its way onto Copperpike’s face, followed by the realization that he’d been played at his own game. The delvemaster, to his credit, did not gloat. His voice sounded more defeated than anything as he raised his hand to break the tie.
“The ayes have it. We continue onward.”
Those against sported expressions ranging from apoplectic shock to mild consternation.
“Now, let’s discuss how we might avoid the dangers of the Ways and still survive the journey.”
----------------------------------------
As the large, stone gate concealed in the wall of first haven slid open in silence, Talia considered that maybe her idea hadn’t been as brilliant as it had first appeared. The officers had torn the rapidly thrown-together plan apart, rightfully pointing out that just because they took to natural caves and pathways, didn’t mean they would necessarily avoid conflict. Then there had been the issue of the wagons, scouting, natural hazards and a whole host of other things Talia hadn’t considered
Eventually, it had been decided that they would follow along the Ways as usual until they reached a split in the tunnel network about a week’s journey from them, that would them out onto the ominously named Chasm of the Lost, which cut its way through the Deep in a nearly straight line to Karzurkul.
Talia hadn’t gotten a chance to ask where the name came from, but the ravine posed its own dangers, particularly its narrow, treacherous paths and a colony of luminescent fungi with toxic spores.
Joy! Good job Tals, instead of getting eaten by monsters, death will come in the form of getting high and stumbling off the side of a cliff.
Talia shifted her clicker with her tongue, grateful that it impeded her ability to groan.
I should just cross my fingers and pray to the gods there’s another pile of shit waiting at the bottom for when I inevitably fall.
Calisto patted her back, face obscured by her cowl.
‘Idea was good; dangerous but good,’ the chronicler clicked to the arcanist.
Fumbling at her with her neglected clicker vocabulary, Talia replied.
‘Hope no death.’
The older woman just nodded. Talia could almost imagine the chronicler’s face, impassive lips bent in the ever so slight slant of fatalistic disapproval. For the ‘nth time, Talia wished her talent allowed her to see through obscuring enchantments.
Before Talia could gather together another thought, wagon two wheeled forward, its attendant drake winding itself up into a loping gait. The little noise that the caravan had been making fell once more under a veil of quiet, like a spell of silence had been cast on the crew. The expedition’s crew had been forlorn, to begin with, after Torval’s announcement, but now they slipped into the intense absence of sound that characterized the Deep Ways. A tangible muffling of sensation that pressed on Talia’s chest like thick mud.
Sitting back against the front seat of wagon two, the young woman closed her eyes and settled into a simple cycling technique to expand her core. If there was to be combat in her near future—and there probably would be—it would pay to be as prepared as possible. Her magic was an asset she couldn’t use properly—yet.
But little by little, she was getting there.
Besides, after a while, the repetitive nature of the exercise became calming, a meditative fugue state that pushed the worries from her mind like soap bubbles drawn into a drain.