The two mages walked in an odd silence, one caught somewhere between companionable and tense. Once they’d made it a ways out of the fortress and onto the bridge, Talia offered to try reproducing Osra’s spell with her own working. Initially, they’d considered it good practice for her, until the arcanist actually tried, and almost ended up flipping the now dangerously explosive waste disposal artefact end over end. After that, they decided that having Osra carry it was for the best.
Talia looked ahead, occasionally peering over the edge of the grand arch to make sure they weren’t going too far. Down below them, in the ravine, the final dregs of the rapids spilled into an endless dark so black that even her talent couldn’t pierce it.
“Ehm—Talia?” Osra said, glancing over.
“Hmm?”
“A-are you ok? I know you said you were fine, but I can’t help it, something feels wrong.”
Talia slowed momentarily then moved ahead before the other girl could stop too.
“I’m…not quite sure what you mean by that,” she finally answered after a moment’s thought.
She could feel Osra’s worried gaze on the back of her head like the heat of a molten lake.
“I—uh—you just seem a little…on edge, but not, if that makes sense,” the apprentice haltingly explained.
Talia clenched her fist, suppressing the upswell of bile in the back of her throat, forcing her shaking hand to still. The box in her chest buckled and shook.
“I’m fine.”
“Uhm—are you sure? You know you can—”
“I said I’m FINE!” Talia snapped, eyes ablaze.
Even with her mindsense restrained she’d still have felt the poor girl recoil. The makeshift bomb fell to the floor with a muted thump. Talia sighed, feeling a current of shame, and turned, leaning on the entirely too-short, metal guardrail. Osra had frozen in the middle of the bridge, shocked.
Great job, Tals. Way to be a good friend.
“Here’s good enough,” the arcanist said, moving over to the approximate center of the road and sketching out a square with some charcoal. Her words tugged Osra from her stupor, and the girl made her way over, the levitating explosive following her like a stray. Talia spoke without looking at her friend, her tone flat but not unkind.
“What would cost you more? Melding it through the stone, or carving out a block? We need this thing at least a few metres deep, so it really wrecks the superstructure. Bear in mind I’ll need you to rune the stone as well.”
“The second one,” Osra said quietly.
“Perfect, why don’t you get started on that? I need to look up the Old Dwarvish runework anyway,” Talia replied, flashing a tight smile.
Osra nodded, kneeling and laying her hand on the rock of the bridge. Luckily enough for them, like the rest of the fortifications, the bridge seemed to have been stretched from a single block of stone, so there weren’t bricks or mortar to contend with.
Talia flipped through her journal, mostly as an excuse to gather her thoughts. When she thought she’d ordered them enough to not make a fool out of herself, she cleared her throat.
“I—uh—I’m sorry for snapping at you,” she muttered, “I’m a little…off kilter. I’ve been having these nightmares, and then there’s all the responsibility, the secrets, the Aberrant, the death of Hanmul and the others, oh and let’s not forget the weight of a whole city resting squarely on my shoulders, on top of the already existential threat of mage-madness. It’s all fucking terrifying and yet I—we— have no choice and—” Talia’s ramble cut short as she ran out of both breath and things to say.
Osra froze, halfway through slowly shaping a deep gouge along the tracing the arcanist had drawn on the ground. Seeing no reaction, Talia continued.
“I guess, I’m just so overwhelmed. This whole trip has been one thing after another, getting jerked around between near-death to fitful rest and back again. Every time I think I have time to regroup something else comes up and I’m so sick of it. I didn’t ask for this, any of this.”
Talia sighed.
“But those are all just excuses, and I had no right to talk to you that way,” she uttered, “You must think I’m just a whiny brat, incapable of—”
Suddenly, it was Talia’s turn to freeze in her tracks as the mousy girl turned around, crossed the space between them, and wrapped her in her arms. The hug was tense. Osra’s arms were bent rigidly, and there was a slight tremor in her wrists. Her breath tickled Talia’s ear, and her chin dug painfully into the arcanist’s shoulder.
Osra’s obvious discomfort only made the embrace all the more meaningful.
“It’s ok,” the apprentice murmured, “I’m pretty sure we’re all scared. And overwhelmed. And tired. I know I am.”
Talia just nodded mutely, fighting to keep her emotions in check.
Now is not the time to start up the waterworks Tals, there’s work to be done. Fight first, cry later. Or never.
She swallowed the lump in her throat, patting Osra on the back gently to let her know that they could part if she wanted, but relishing the comfort the other girl offered freely, if reluctantly.
Stolen story; please report.
One day we’ll talk about why touch is a problem for her.
“Ah, thanks Osra,” she said thickly, “I’m sorry. Again. When this is done, I’d love to sit down and have a long chat, preferably around a cask of ale, maybe two.”
Osra chuckled, letting slip a little sigh of relief as she parted from Talia.
“It’s ok. I understand. I think I’d like that, but you’re right, we should focus on what’s in front of us,” she said, “Won’t be much to talk about if we’re dead.”
Talia did a double take.
“Was that…gallows humour? From the ever-puritanical Osra?” she asked, shaking her head “Truly, the situation must be dire if it’s come to this.”
The apprentice’s cheeks coloured pink at the teasing, though the sparkle in the girl’s eye didn’t escape Talia.
“Right then. Why don’t I add the rune inscription so we can get both done at the same time? I think you’ll find that Old Dwarvish is a much more accommodating script than Runic. Only hitch it that you’ll have to run a channel through the block of stone itself,” Talia said.
Osra frowned as Talia got to work on the tracing.
“Why are we burying the thing anyway? Seems like it’s just making things harder for us,” Osra asked.
Talia grunted.
“Contains the pressure. Makes it more likely that the bridge actually shatters like we want it to. Also—”
Osra peered suspiciously at her.
“Also what?”
“Well…” Talia hedged with a sheepish look, “If, say, I accidentally made this thing a little too broken then there’s a chance that we get an implosion instead of an explosion. Breaking things right isn’t exactly a precise science you know? If we do get an implosion, we’ll probably have better results if it’s already inside the bridge itself.”
It didn’t escape Talia that while the other girl was nodding her understanding, she’d taken a few steps away from the jury-rigged waste incinerator and was staring at her skeptically.
“Bah, don’t worry, either way, we’ll want to be far off when this thing pops. Preferably on the other side of the chasm. Uh… actually, maybe farther, come to think of it. Honestly, let’s just hope we don’t have to use it.”
Osra stared at her, aghast, but got back to work as Talia got up, leaving a set of concentric squares, rectangles and triangles drawn on the stone block.
“How are we supposed to do that, when it needs to be activated?” Osra asked.
“I’m not stupid, you know,” Talia scoffed, “timers are pretty basic things to make, especially when you don’t need them to display to anything. Once we activate it, we’ll have a good ten minutes to get clear. All we have to do is inject a little mana into the Dwarvish activation rune and run.”
Osra blushed and scratched the back of her neck sheepishly.
“Right, I uh, forgot about how convenient arcanistry was.”
“You’re damn right. Now watch out for the angles on that rune, Old Dwarvish shouldn’t fail catastrophically at this scale, but if it fizzles, we’ll have done a whole lot of work for nothing.”
----------------------------------------
The pair finished their work and stepped back to inspect it. They’d lowered the modified waste incinerator down into the two-metre-deep hole, placing the stone block on top and melding the seems back into the stone, tossing the leftover rock over the side of the bridge where it landed with a distant plonk.
Talia was impressed, and a little scared. If weren’t for the large, square-ish rune boldly etched into the stone of the bridge, her bomb would be unnoticeable.
“Now we just have to hope we don’t need it…” she muttered.
“What was that?”
The arcanist shook her head.
“Nothing, let’s head back, I want to go over a few checks of the ash lance before the Aberrant get here,” Talia replied.
The pair walked back, at a brisk clip, lost in their respective thoughts. In the distance, if Talia focused hard enough, she thought she could hear the metallic, ear-shattering screech of the abominations through the constant drone of water.
----------------------------------------
As they stepped off the bridge and back into the fortress proper, Talia frowned. Lazarus and Torval awaited them, hoods down and heads bent in quiet discussion. They stopped when Lazarus noticed her and Osra walking up, and made their way over, their expression grim.
“Arcanist,” Torval greeted.
“Delvemaster.”
“All went well with our plan b, I hope?”
Talia winced, bobbing her head left and right.
“Honestly, you’re better off hoping that plan b never gets used. Arcanic reflux detonations aren’t exactly known for their predictability,” she cautioned, “But yes, with Osra’s help, if we need to retreat across the bridge, I’m fairly confident we’ll be able to destroy it.”
Torval nodded calmly, his fingers twitching against one of the scabbards of his serrated shortswords.
“That’s all we can ask for, it’s plan b for a reason, after all. Now if you don’t have anything pressing, Lazarus and I wanted to discuss something rather…delicate,” he said with a light grimace that Talia matched with a raised eyebrow.
“I was going to check on—”
A muffled, high-pitch scream rang out, causing those who heard it to pull weapons from their scabbards and turn toward the source, which…
Oh by Ishmael’s wrinkly arse! Those fucking numbskulls!
Talia watched riveted, as a gnome fell from the gatehouse window—set above the Final Outpost’s massive doors—a good five or six-metre drop. With flailing hands, Fred, or Ed or whoever, ripped what looked like a sock from his mouth, screeching to the delvers clustered below.
“CAATCHH MEEE!”
Thankfully, whoever had tossed the idiotic gnome from the window had noticed the delvers clustered below. Well, presumably. Given the pair of cackling gnome faces poking out from the gatehouse window, Talia wasn’t so sure.
She sighed of relief when a stout dwarf managed to catch the scrawny engineer before he cracked his head open on the pavement. Apparently, the gnome’s brothers didn’t feel the same, spewing a slew of insults and jeers from their perch high above him, before a pair of bony hands snaked out to smack them both upside the head and drag them back inside by their collars.
Talia turned to Torval, her eyebrows disappearing into her red and black hair.
“What was it you said earlier? Eccentric but efficient?”
Torval had the good grace to look consternated, but his expression quickly turned to a smile when a heavy grating sound rumbled from the gates. The moving gates, Talia realized. Whatever Calisto and the triplets had done, they’d gotten the doors of Karzurkul functioning again.
All over the courtyard, delvers stopped what they were doing and turned to watch as the ancient relics moved once more.
Torval smirked at her.
“I stand by what I said,” he replied, tactfully ignoring the grounded gnome’s frantic yells to ‘stop!’
Talia rolled her eyes.
“Ahem, while I will admit that it is quite the sight to see, we require your assistance with something, if you have them time,” Lazarus interjected.
Talia turned to Torval.
“Can it wait until I double-check the ash lance’s installation?” she asked.
The delvemaster pursed his lips and exchanged a worried glance with the healer. Their concern sent a lonely chill down her spine.
“It’s about Zaric,” Lazarus confessed, drawing a gasp out of Osra.
Something cold and wobbly settled in Talia’s stomach. There was only one reason she could think of that the healer would want her help with the mage-commandrum.
They think something’s wrong with his head.
“Has he woken up yet?” she asked anxiously.
Lazarus shook his head and waved his hand uncertainly.
“Better if I explain in a more…discrete setting,” he answered.
That’s…not reassuring.
Talia followed wordlessly behind the delvemaster and the elf, shooting a glance at her friend. Osra looked like she’d been shot in the heart, her caramel skin bloodless and pale and her eyes widened to the whites.
They both knew what the visit with the older mage might mean.
Mage-madness.