Never again.
The pounding headache felt like it was trying to break its way through her skull with a blunt object. A mace maybe, or a cudgel. Perhaps a particularly girthy rock.
Talia sat up with a groan more befitting a reanimated corpse than a living being. She cracked her eyelids open and found herself face-to-face with a pair of orange eyes staring down curiously at her.
“Gahh!”
The young woman jerked back, smacking her head on the headboard and startling the upside-down kitten. It meeped fearfully and streaked down onto her bed, shooting Talia a scandalized glare before vanishing.
“I don’t know what you’re upset about, you started it, you little prick,” she grunted, “If you’re not careful, that’ll be your name. How would you like that?”
Talia peeled herself out of her sheets and stood up, a decision she immediately regretted as the room around her spun.
Never again.
Sitting back down, she fumbled through the drawers under her bed. The waterskin she found was empty in less than thirty seconds, wetting both her parched tongue and a large circle on her undershirt.
A plaintive mreow whined out from above her.
Talia rolled her eyes and tossed a piece of jerky over her shoulder without looking back.
It never hit the bedding.
Sinking her face into her hands, the young woman strongly considered just going back to bed. She knew for a fact that several of the crew wouldn’t be waking until well past the second meal. Nothing was stopping her.
Nope. Projects to work on, runework to fix, library to plunder. No time for sleep.
Another groan and a boost from her bedframe sent her stumbling down the hallway toward the water closet.
----------------------------------------
A quick, hot shower had Talia feeling vaguely more human as she stepped out of wagon two. One of the stone shapers had erected a long table in the center of camp, reminiscent of the mess area of first haven. Seated along granite benches were a majority of the delvers from the night before. Most seemed no better off than she did. They sat with heads bent over their slop bowls, clothing dishevelled, treating their food as nothing more than fuel.
And then there were the hellspawn. Those blessed and cursed with a sunny disposition, no matter the circumstance.
They poked and prodded at their miserable comrades, chuckling at the murderous glares they inevitably received.
Hoping to avoid their notice, Talia put down her journal and went off to get herself some lovely gruel for breakfast.
Honestly, better gruel than something else. It’d just be wasted on my poor stomach at this point.
On cue, the organ in question roiled angrily.
The young woman grunted her way through the sparse line, collecting a bowl that one of the cooks was gracious enough to top with some dried fruits. A ray of light in the gloom, as it were.
Sitting down well away from the busily feasting majority, Talia flipped open her journal, deciding it best that she write out her tasks for the day. The expedition would be leaving the improvised sanctuary the day after the next, which meant she had limited time.
Alright, first order of business: weaponry.
The journey through the Under had only reinforced the need for combat tools. They hadn’t ended up fighting the Crescians, but if they had… Well, they weren’t prepared. The bows and crossbows that the crew’s ranged contingent wielded were enough for most threats.
Most threats, on a normal expedition.
From her command meetings and general mutterings among the crew, Talia had rapidly understood that they had strayed far beyond the norm. Which, if you asked her, demanded a change in tactics.
With their manpower depleting with every battle, being able to eliminate foes safely and at range, was more crucial than ever. And so, Talia divided the ideas she’d come up with into two categories: personal weaponry, and crew fired weapons.
If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
For herself, it mostly consisted of improvements to her Infiniwand Mk. II design as well as a few miscellanea. Like the exploding caltrops design she’d come up with. She’d iterated and created a few different designs that might perform better depending on the circumstances. As for crew weapons, they were a little trickier. Magic was a force multiplier, yes, but their restraints on mana were already considerable. Therefore, Talia fell back on the plan she and Torval had concocted before things went tits up in the Chasm.
Fire, fire, fire.
Pure flame was much less costly mana wise than say, earth spikes, or some other kind of material shaping. Mostly because once the flame was sparked, it would burn on its own. It just needed to be given a target and guided to it. Psionics were off the table, firstly because she had no idea what runes such effects would demand—if they existed. Secondly, psionics were just plain terrifying. At least if you misfired a wand of fireball, you saw your death coming. A psionic blast on the other hand…
Talia shuddered.
Wind was…interesting. Unfortunately, she had no idea how she’d be able to create blades or anything useful. Choking foes that needed to breathe was out of her reach, for the same reason she couldn’t mimic psionics: she didn’t know the necessary runes.
No, fire was good, it had the potential to spread, cordoning off entire tunnels, and the risks of bad air could be mitigated by Zaric’s abilities or a few well-placed enchantments. Its only problem was a lack of stopping power, but there were other ways to manage that shortcoming.
Fire wands it is. Spray or ball? Hmmm… fireballs might pack more punch, but the spray would help with area denial, allowing the archery contingent to get more shots in. Although visibility might be a problem…
Tapping her trinket pen against the page, Talia added some kind of protective goggle to the list, followed by three question marks. She might be able to design some form of vision trinket that didn’t require glass, but its efficacy would be iffy at best.
Think it over, she scratched out the idea. It would waste too much time, and even if she could make trinkets out of them, they would still require mana. Mana that she and the other two mages had a limited supply of.
Letting her mind stew for ideas for a while, Talia finished her meal in a halo of disgruntled silence. The kind that screamed ‘don’t bother me, I bite’. Then she stared at the blank page for a good few minutes before she jotted down a quick list of things that might prove useful. Blinding orbs and other devices emitting bright light might be particularly effective against the denizens of the Deep Under. Then there was the utility side of things. Cauterization plates, for example, were fairly new inventions that she knew Orvall kept on hand for emergencies. She hadn’t seen any in Lazarus’ kit, but they could and did save lives.
More often than not, the ideas she came up with were already taken care of by the standard delver’s kit. In the end, most of what ended up on the list were ideas for new weapons. Well, not so much new, more like ‘usually unnecessary and expensive’. Why else wouldn’t the wagons have roof-mounted flamethrowers?
A thought occurred to her and she scanned her list, furrowing a brow.
Do I have a—uh—fire problem?
More than half the ideas involved the runes for flame, heat, or some other variation.
Hmmmm. My brain is too hungover to really say, I think. Moving on!
Tasks. To start, she put up an ongoing reminder to avoid being trapped in a room with Calisto. The last she’d seen of the chronicler had left her with the distinct impression that she might not escape the older woman’s clutches so easily next time.
Less than ideal.
She thought about practicing combat skills.
And then immediately dismissed it as her now full stomach violently protested at the mere thought. Talia hissed in discomfort and slated that for the following day. There wasn’t much time to practice, and every second was valuable. Torture wasn’t practice though.
Heh. Darkclaw could probably use that reminder.
Just to get it out of the way, Talia moved on and listed out all the enchantment work she had to go over again. Most of it had been done yesterday, but…
Never hurts to double-check.
Finally, she added cycling training in, probably at the end of the day, once she’d had time to peruse Magic for the Newly Awakened, and discuss Osra’s suggestions with Zaric.
Another question mark, and one that might save a lot of time if it was possible, was whether or not she could use the Weave-Fragment while cycling. It was…doubtful, but if there was a way, Talia would find it. The combination was simply too tempting.
Looking over the list of things she had to do, she nodded in satisfaction before grimacing and adding in Explorations on the Mechanics of Arcano-Suns. Much as Emile Iricos was a dry read, she wanted to be ready for when they arrived in Karzurkul. If his work contained something useful and she’d missed it…
Ugh.
She underlined the title twice.
Then, as more of a joke than anything, she added a line about the godsdamned cat. The Weave-Fragment had a surprisingly robust section on taming wild animals through the use of psionics.
Maybe at some point, a nest of Crescians turned to domestication?
Talia added it to the list anyway, along with a note to think of a name. The kitten was getting friendlier by the day, and she meant to keep him around. At least until he could take care of himself.
Osman? No… too pompous. Varden? Orvall would approve of a good dwarvish name, but maybe something simpler, like Skip, Sneak or Trip. Something cute? He is a little fluffball…
Talia let out a tiny chuckle at the idea of a fully grown mirage-lynx named Fluff.
That’s something I can wait on at least. He doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Onwards, toward tedium.
Stowing away her journal in her satchel, Talia rearranged her toolbelt and headed off to do her rounds of the wagons, touching up the expeditions runework. Besides, she may be feeling much better, but her mind was still in a fog from the prior night’s…overindulgence. Best to play it safe.
Simplest task first, and then fun.
She was sure that the way the Weave-Fragment seemed to call to her from its place on her shoulder was just what anyone else would feel when presented with vast stores of knowledge at their fingertips.
Right?
Dropping off her empty bowl and knocking back a few glasses of water to ward away the worst of her symptoms, Talia brushed off the errant thought.
Time to get started.