Talia ate her cold stew in silence, curled up against the wheel of wagon two. She and Calisto had discussed a few details about the journey to come, and what they could expect when the expedition arrived in Karzurkul. The conversation was a cursory thing, more fuelled by politeness than anything else. But it held a closeness that had been missing from the pair’s prior interactions.
A sort of…recognition of kindred spirits.
By the time the discussion had come to its natural conclusion, the party was in full swing, a dizzying blur of drunkenness and carefree dancing to the low strum of stringed instruments. Zaric and Osra were nowhere to be found, having probably retired for the evening.
Makes sense. If we find anything down the tunnels, we’ll need them in top form.
Besides, something told Talia that while Zaric might enjoy the occasional festive moment, Osra would most likely not. At least, not the kind that the delvers were prone to starting. It was telling that though she had opened up somewhat around Talia, the slip of a girl remained shy and reserved around most of their compatriots.
And so, Talia ate alone. It was a moment of peace she hadn’t realized she’d needed. The ‘rest’ days she’d had so far on their journey had been far from restful, as far as she was concerned. In first haven, she’d just woken up from a coma and had immediately rushed headlong into self-improvement with a fervour she could only attribute to her near-death experience.
That drive hadn’t faded, and after the…experience with the Matriarch, she’d found herself more rattled than ever. The only period of ‘rest’ she’d allowed herself had been more of a desperate, maddened need to escape. Egged on by Zaric and the crew, and whose consequences she’d ended up regretting. It had stolen too much of her precious little time.
The young woman felt like she was juggling too many things at once. A reasonable person in Talia’s situation might have told her to drop a few of them. To prioritise. And she’d done so. As best she could, anyway. Unfortunately, she wasn’t juggling little leather sacks filled with sand. Each object in the air was better represented by a sharp knife she had to be careful not to cut herself with, or a delicate crystal glass she had to prevent from shattering. All while walking across a tightrope over a pit of glowing magma that eagerly awaited the moment she would falter.
There could be no stopping. No faltering. There was too much on the line.
Her time had to be rationed out. Carefully measured.
Her arcanic projects had been worthy of that time, she decided. The wands were a powerful tool. A force multiplier as she’d heard Torval say. Not to mention, she pitied whatever wyrm or hulking beast mistook the caravan as easy prey, now that they had the power of the ash lance backing them up.
But now it was time to focus on other, equally important pursuits. Her magic had already saved lives, both hers and other’s, and even the entire expedition—if you counted the encounter with the Matriarch— but without dedication, it was a distinct possibility that it would fail her the next time she really needed it. The advantage of having an extra Core to fuel the expedition’s artefacts and enchantments was not to be underestimated either. After all, they would only be a force multiplier if they were charged.
Talia sighed heavily and pulled out her journal. She left a little of the stew in the bowl as a treat for menace and washed down the last bits of hard bread with a swig from her waterskin.
No rest for the weary.
Scribbling a few notes down, Talia decided that unless something else came up, she’d focus on cycling exercises. She also had to get Osra to make her a little bag of her prototype caltrops. If they worked as she thought they would, it would be just another tool in her arsenal. She also added in a blank for a hand-held timekeeper trinket. If she was struggling to manage her time, it wouldn’t hurt to be able to track time on her own.
Now that I have my own source of mana, it’s more convenient than not.
The primary reason she’d forgone getting one in the first place was the hassle and bureaucratic nonsense of getting civilian arcanics charged at the Bureau of Civilian Mana Use. Hourglasses and public timekeepers had suited her just fine. Now, she had no real reason to put off getting one.
Talia stood with a groan, rubbing her sore back and heading into the wagon. Before she went to bed, she may as well tackle the two persistent tasks on her list: cycling, and training Menace.
In reality, they comprised most of her tasks that didn’t pertain to her usual duties.
Martial training was off the list for now. It just wasn’t as important. Especially since Torval wanted her to man the ash lance in case of combat. Besides, training weapon forms while on the move was a recipe for disaster. She might be able to do it on the roof of one of the wagons, or perhaps commandeer wagon seven, but practicing in the workshop infirmary hybrid was just begging for her to break something and waving a sword around on the top of a moving wagon seemed similarly…unwise.
The rest of the time she wasn’t cycling, or training Menace would be dedicated to searching through the great, steaming turd pile Emile Iricos called a book for anything that might be of value. Talia was coming to terms with the fact that she’d have to figure out the nitty-gritty parts of extracting the matrix core from Karzurkul’s arcano-sun on her own. Hopefully, the Dead City’s Upper Reaches would be intact enough for her to work out the mystery.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
What will be, will be. Focus on what you can control, Tals, just like Lazarus said.
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The day they left the cavern was a silent, sombre one. Those that weren’t hungover and regretting their choices were distinctly aware that this was the final step toward their destination. If all went well, the officers had estimated they’d arrive in less than a week.
Given their experience in the Under so far, if was very much the operative word.
It felt like the whole expedition was waiting for the other shoe to drop. The tension was so distinct to their other departures that it was almost a tangible thing. Talia felt like if she reached out with her psionic senses, she’d be able to feel it. Like a thick haze of acrid, gelatinous smoke.
I think I get why Torval insisted on taking a break. I just can’t tell if it made things better, or made them worse.
Only time would tell.
Either way, Talia was sequestered in her bunk, journal splayed out before her and bag of jerky in hand. She’d decided that for the next few days, she’d focus entirely on cycling and combing through Exploration on the Mechanics of Arcano-Suns. And of course, the ever-annoying Menace.
She knew it would take time before the whelp was a reliable companion and not a mercurial, whimsical kitten, but she couldn’t help but feel like she’d already made quite a bit of progress. He was still playful, sure, and the new, more specific commands she’d tried to teach him were a definite stumbling block, but he seemed to understand their arrangement much faster than what she’d seen of the desert sandwyrms in the Weave-Fragment.
Talia looked up from her book, chewing on the end of her trinket pen. The fluff ball raised his bright orange eyes to meet hers from his little nest of covers on the bed. Was she imagining it, or was there a question in there? The young woman shook her head.
Probably just imagining things…
The cat meeped as she turned back to her book.
Talia rolled her eyes and extended a little tendril of power into Menace’s mind, showing him an image of him rolling over on his back along with the accompanying sensations. A pointless task meant to acclimate him to listening to her. It took a little doing, but eventually, she got the message across and rewarded him with a piece of jerky when he complied.
Yessss that’s it. Eat the jerky. You like the jerky don’t you?
“Good boy, Menace,” she crooned.
She smiled and resolved to bring the little bugger some more stew from the evening meal. Her jerky stores were running low, and he’d seemed to like it the night before.
Talia sighed and turned her attention back to her notetaking. The words swam in front of her eyes like they were trying to escape the page. And why wouldn’t they? The text somehow managed to be both dry, viscerally irritating, and overly dramatic. For gods’ sake, it was supposed to be a scholarly essay!
The young arcanist snapped the book shut and poked her head into the hall to peak at the timepiece.
Only two hours had gone by. It was a little early for her scheduled cycling, but if she read another sentence that began with “I posit…” or “I speculate…” she thought she just might end it all. At least when she was cycling, she felt productive. Reading Iricos felt like wading uphill waist-deep through a slurry of waste rock, picking through the sludge in search of gems the size of her fingernail.
To be fair, she’d managed to find gems in the rough here and there, little tidbits of evidence—unsurprisingly sourced from other works— that seemed to lead to actual conclusions. But she attributed much of that to her own desperate determination, as opposed to any actual talent on Iricos’ part.
Talia sighed.
It’s all we’ve got, and if Evincrest didn’t give us anything better, it must mean it’s all she’s got too. I can’t imagine we’ve been sent out here without the best she had. Unless Ikkel knew something I don’t.
She crossed her legs and set the books aside, preparing to sink her mind into the meditative mindset required for cycling. Zaric had been busy and surrounded by others when she’d seen him in the morning, which meant that she’d have to content herself with her broad-focused exercises or look through Magic for the Newly Awakened for precision exercises, at least until she could get some time alone with him.
It wasn’t a big deal, from what Osra had said, honing her precision was always going to be a work in progress, and one day’s practice wouldn’t do much in the grand scheme of things. Capacity was Capacity, and it would serve the expedition better now anyway.
She had Osra to fast-track any artefacts she needed done quickly.
Talia had left the girl with a few pages detailing her prototype caltrops and the runes for a portable timepiece, asking her to make them on her own whenever she got a spare moment. The Arcanists’ Guild bureaucrats would probably have fit if they found out that she’d been giving out the schema for enchantments of any kind to someone without a license.
If they find out, well, we’ll have saved the city by then, or died trying. Either way, a problem for another day.
Sure, Osra was getting pretty good at copying already developed schema, but she had next to no idea how it all worked, and was useless without Talia to check her work. If she managed to memorize the designs the young arcanist had left her unsupervised with and recreate them, well then in Talia’s book she had earned them.
Hopefully, she doesn’t though. Way too easy to blow yourself up when you don’t have the slightest clue what you’re doing.
Talia pushed the pointless thoughts out of her mind and growled at herself to focus.
Now’s not the time for daydreaming, Tals, now’s the time for cycling.
Her breathing evened out and her shoulders relaxed.
Critch scratch critch
The young mage opened a baleful grey eye before Menace could make it more than a few centimetres across the top of her bunk, causing him to freeze, his gaze twitching between her and the bag of jerky at her side.
A little psionic nudge conveyed her displeasure just in case her body language wasn’t screaming it.
The godsdamned cat keep staring at the bag, acting as if he hadn’t even noticed. He crouched down, tail wagging back and forth as he prepared to pounce.
Talia raised an eyebrow and was about to snatch the bag when she got an idea.
When she’d connected to the minds of the adult mirage lynxes, their thoughts had followed simple, set patterns, which they seemed to communicate with their packs through some unknown means.
Wonder if I can do the same?
Extending a tendril to connect with Menace’s little blip of a brain, Talia focused on replicating the patterns she’d sensed weeks ago during the ambush.
hide-patience-ambush wait-ambush-danger
The result was shockingly effective. Immediately, Menace stopped wagging his tail back and forth, curling up into a little ball and disappearing from view.
Talia smiled.
Progress.