For the first time since Talia had set off into the Dark, the funeral wake was a sombre and quiet affair. There was no music, no fire, no dancing. There were no stories told in tearful remembrance or exaggerated grandstanding. A pall hung over the assembled delvers, as if they, not the dead, were the ones set to be buried.
Maybe it was because most of the dead had no bodies to put to stone. Maybe it was the sheer number of the lost, nearly half the expedition’s number, with no time to bury or remember them until now. Maybe it was the sober realization that they barely had the manpower to achieve their goal, let alone the bodies it would take to return home if they did achieve it. Hells, maybe it was because the casks of booze had been in wagon six when it was lost.
Talia stood before the stele erected at the back of the oval compound that was Karzurkul haven, a great big square-based rectangle of black rock that tapered to a four-sided pyramid, towering taller than the walls around them. Inscribed on the tip were words in old dwarvish.
Onast thorok
Honzar ukaad
Rest easy, honoured dead.
The stone held hundreds of thousands of names—some of them just bare initials—so many that it couldn’t possibly just be delvers. Likely, it had originally been built to honour the dead of the city’s Exodus, a calamity whose details had been lost to time, and were the last thing on Talia’s mind.
The jingle of delver tags was like a sharp spike of iron in Talia’s ears, drawing her attention back to the ceremony. The few trinkets that had been salvaged clinked gently in Calisto’s clenched fist. The chronicler’s eyes were sunken and lifeless, caught on a body wrapped in a black shroud, waiting for the stone to swallow it up with a little help from Osra.
Both of Talia’s friends looked like they’d had the will to live sucked from them—that essential spark stolen by the journey through the Deep Under.
“They’re resilient,” Torval muttered in her ear, “They’ll recover, and be stronger for it. Just like you will be. The Under is unforgiving, but we all knew the risks.”
Did we? Because if we did, then I think everyone here needs serious help—we’re likely insane.
Lazarus, from his place at the side of a stone-faced Dhustrun, reached over to give Calisto’s shoulder a gentle shake. The chronicler straightened her back and sucked in a ragged breath that hitched in her chest and caught like a rock in her throat. Once she’d composed herself, the older woman put on the stoic mask Talia had gotten used to and turned to address the gathered members of the expedition. Stepping forward past the other officers arrayed next to her, the chronicler raised her still-clenched fist, waiting for that gentle clinking to fade before speaking.
“Colleagues. Friends. Siblings in arms. When we embarked on this journey, none of us expected the obstacles we would face. The stakes are high. Higher than most of you knew, and the gods, or the Breath of the World, or whatever it is you hold faith in, saw fit to present us with a challenge to match those stakes,” Calisto spoke softly, her voice rising in staggered cadence until it echoed across the courtyard not by virtue of its volume, but by virtue of the empty, inhuman stillness of the ragged crowd in front of her.
“We have lost many in overcoming these challenges. Today, we stand here, in the very Dark that took them, to honour their memories. To inscribe their names into stone, that they may never be forgotten. To remember that in their last moments, they fought for us, and that it is only luck that we did not take their place. They, like us, knew the risks, but that does not make their loss any less painful.”
Talia shot a glance at the stele and recognized not a single name.
It’s a nice sentiment though.
“It’s a symbol, Arcanist,” Torval whispered, “It’s about closure. About honouring the lost so the living can go on. You of all people should recognize the power of abstraction in effecting change. What else is arcanistry but magic through symbolism?”
Talia ignored him, focusing on Calisto’s words. She’d missed the first name as it was called.
“Webkin of Clan Redscale,” she called.
As the name was announced, Osra stepped forward and laid her hand on the stele, brushing a palm over the stone and leaving it etched across the monument. Thinking back, Talia thought she remembered a scaled beastkin with piercing red eyes, whose laugh had sounded like a basket of snakes.
“Davin March.”
He’d held the breach valiantly, ultimately drowning in his own blood when the healers’ best efforts to plug the holes in his lungs had failed. In a very real way, Talia was the one who’d killed him.
“Percival Fyrial.”
Lost in wagon six. His screams of terror and the scent of his burning flesh would haunt Talia’s dreams more than her inability to even picture his face.
“Quickfoot the Exile.”
Another of the vanguard, crushed when the gates fell. Talia comforted herself in knowing that he likely never knew what killed him, not wanting to imagine the horned beastkin suffocating slowly under a pile of rubble.
The list went on for another twelve names. Each was accompanied by a snippet of memory, or worse, a guilty absence of recognition.
“Quartermaster Hanmul Copperpike.”
Talia resisted the urge to turn toward Dhustrun, knowing that the dwarf’s feelings were likely still a complicated mess that she could do nothing to sort out.
“You’re taking on too much guilt, you know. It’s counterproductive,” Torval asserted conversationally, leaning against the stele with his arms crossed over his scratched leather breastplate, “There’s no way that more than half of our casualties can be your fault. Gods, you probably saved more than that just by avoiding us a fight with a Crescian Matriarch. Not to mention finishing off the wyrm, killing all those goblins, building the ash lance—”
“She gets it, you dolt,” Zaric interrupted, smacking the delvemaster on the shoulder “Don’t pretend you wouldn’t be doing exactly the same thing in her position.”
The ghost of her friend turned to her, a jovial smirk twisting his lips.
“But just ‘cause he’s a hypocrite doesn’t mean he isn’t right, you know. You didn’t kill those poor saps any more than you killed me.”
Talia ignored them both, hardening her heart against their words.
“That works too,” Torval whispered in her ear, “Ice can be just as useful as flame, in matters of the heart. Remember that you’re only a third of the way through. If you’re going to do this, you need a level head.”
Zaric shook his head in the corner of her vision, looking like he wanted to argue the point. His shape faded from view before he could.
Calisto’s voice did not tremble as she called out the final name, but her face tightened, the veneer of stoicism brittle and cracking.
“Delvemaster Arrick Torval.”
The omnipresent, distant drone of Karzurkul’s grand waterfall—usually reduced to nothing but white noise—came rushing back in as if to fill the space vacated by the new delvemaster’s voice. It brought with it a numbness that seemed directly at odds with the hot-coals-on-bare-skin ache of manaburn and the throb of the splint around Talia’s arm.
Even with her increased healing, Lazarus had expressed doubts that she’d ever be able to use the arm properly. A ‘wound of character’ he’d called it, one that grew old with you. Talia had put the troubling thought out of her mind then, and she did so now, sharpening her glazed look on Osra as the young mage laid leaden arms onto stone.
The holes in the wall that Karzurkul was built into closed up, sealing away the bodies of their dead friends. There were only three true graves. Three bodies recovered out of nearly twenty.
Beside her, Darkclaw muttered a chant that made Talia think of the prayers she’d heard the beastkin sing on occasion. The lyrical tone seemed directly at odds with the way he spoke it, like there was no heart in what he was saying.
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“Stone keep them,” Talia mumbled to herself as Osra sagged in either grief or exhaustion—probably a mix of the two.
On a spur-of-the-moment urge, Talia whistled out the clicker call for ‘unbowed’, the battle cry she’d adopted on a whim so long ago in those tense moments before the fight with the garbog. It only took one person responding before it spread, the out-of-sync whistling rising in an eerie, discordant chorus before it fell flat, its echoes stolen by the encroaching quiet.
Osra was the last to take up the call, her shoulders shaking and her head bowed against the rock of the wall.
A part of Talia told her to go over to her, to sling her arm around the girl’s shoulders and offer her the simple comfort of her presence. She’d lost just as much as Talia, after all. If not more. If Zaric had been more of a friend to her, like an older brother, then he’d been Osra’s surrogate father, a mentor and pillar of stability in a life filled with uncertainty and fear.
The arcanist stayed where she was, turning to stare off over the heads of the paltry crowd as Calisto raised her voice again.
“Stone keep them and gods preserve them,” the delvemaster pronounced, “I know that spirits are low. We’ve all lost someone. Friends, brothers, sisters.”
She choked.
“Lovers.”
The first of the sobs burst the bubble of silence like the finger of a petulant child.
“But we have a duty,” Calisto called out, her voice hoarse, “This is not some search for treasure to entertain a fancy noble back home. We are not scavengers looking to line our pockets this time. Our lives are not the only ones that rest on our shoulders. No. If we fail, our city dies. Our families, our friends, our home. Doomed to darkness. Swallowed by the Dark like the Dead City we stand in.”
The sobbing died out, blown out like a candle. Calisto let her words sit before continuing. Delvers stirred, grumbling amongst themselves and mumbling expletives.
“Our best bet is to do what we came to do and return home as quickly as possible, avoiding the Ways like we did when we—”
“Oy fuck that! We almost got swallowed up by them abominations jus’ getting here! Who’s to say they ain’t waiting for us when we go back out?”
The outburst was like a pocket of gas bursting in a mine.
Next to an open flame.
The crowd began yelling out their own concerns, crude grief turning to oily resentment and igniting into anger.
“That’s my Syndra,” Torval muttered with a shake of his head, “Great at writing a good speech, but never could read a room.”
Talia shook her head, determined to ignore the dead man until he faded away like Zaric.
“Are you so sure we’re just figments of your imagination?” the dead delvemaster asked, sounding genuinely curious.
Yes, I am. But that doesn’t make it any better than seeing ghosts.
The chaos of the crowd rose to a fever pitch with no signs of abating despite Calisto’s insistent attempts at calling for calm. For a moment, Talia considered helping, but then she remembered the looks she’d been getting ever since she’d woken up. A lot of people had seen her spectacle on the bridge, the artefact excuse was getting flimsier and flimsier. Most people—Talia included—had never seen an artefact that could drop a man dead with a thought.
It may be selfish, but it was probably for the best that she didn’t draw too much negative attention to herself. With one last look at the stele, Talia stepped from the plinth it was set on and made her exit. Every part of her body hurt, and her bed beckoned.
Best to leave it to the others to figure it out.
Calisto would understand.
Right on cue, Talia heard Dhustrun’s biting voice lash out over the din like a whipcrack.
“Shut yer traps ye mangy arses. ‘Ave ye no shame? Startin’ a fight at a wake? What are ye, beasts? Listen ‘ere…
----------------------------------------
Talia grunted, pulling herself up onto the abandoned walkway with one arm. A coil of runerope lay slung across her torso, her rucksack strapped to its clip on her armour. Her right arm hung limp and useless at her side as she huffed from the exertion.
Biting back a curse, she caught hold of a crumbling railing as a stray rock threatened to send her tumbling.
“Are you sure you should be out here alone?” Zaric asked worriedly.
“Will you shut up,” Talia snapped, “It’s bad enough that they’ve all just given up, I don’t need commentary and nagging over my shoulder about everything I do to top it all off.”
The ghost’s face drooped into something infuriatingly close to pity, but the dead mage faded away, there one second and gone the next.
Good riddance.
Sitting down against the wall for a rest, Talia pulled out her waterskin and looked over the city. Karzurkul sprawled across tiered terraces carved straight into the rock of the wall. All the flat ground of the cavern below had at one time been used for agriculture, vast fields now overgrown with all manner of plant life, fed by the humidity-laden air. A small part of her mind remarked that the view would’ve been breathtaking if the city wasn’t so dark, but Talia was in no mood to appreciate the beauty of the vista. She had eyes only for the great dark cage that hung from the ceiling—her goal.
It wasn’t what she’d imagined a dead arcano-sun would look like. Oh sure, the black alloy frame was in all respects identical to the one she knew, but without the raging ball of fire at its center, it revealed her misconceptions for what they were.
Arcano-suns, apparently, were hollow.
Well, not quite hollow, but she didn’t have another way to describe it. The centre of the massive artefact was an orb of massive proportions with a set of four walkways that led out into its frame.
Maintenance access maybe? For a book on the mechanics of the things, Iricos was disappointingly sparse with schematics.
Shaking her head, Talia stood before she sank into another rant about the idiocy of the pompous prick whose writing she’d been afflicted with. Violet pox would be a better fate.
Instead, she took out a piece of chalk and marked an arrow on the wall, ensuring that it pointed to the one she’d left down the street. It wouldn’t do to get lost. For a city that was supposed to be dead, the maze of terraces that was Karzurkul were shockingly…lived in.
Mostly by giant, solitary, centipede-like beasts.
Because it’s never cute, fuzzy little animals. Well, except for Menace, but so far he’s the exception.
With a half-chuckle that melted from her face like wax from a candle, Talia, one step at a time, inched her way toward her destination: the elevation platform that would take her up into Karzurkul’s Upper Reaches, the warren of ancient tunnels that purportedly led to the central control for the arcano-sun.
Those cowards may have given up, but once I get hold of the matrix core, they’ll have no choice.
Behind her, a clatter of stone made her jerk, spreading out her mindsense in search of what had caused the sound.
Talia sighed when she realized who was making their way up the path to the walkway she was on. Walking back to the ledge she’d climbed up from, Talia sat and waited until Osra saw her.
The mage didn’t say a word, just waiting with a worried look on her face.
When the girl kept waiting, Talia realized she must’ve been clicking to her, and fumbled awkwardly with her left arm to grab her own from its pouch.
‘Come up’ she called, gesturing in welcome at the space beside her before making a big production of putting it back on her belt.
Shaking her head, Osra looked skeptically at the pile of rubble that had once been stairs. The stone moulded itself delicately to her footsteps as she made her way to join her friend.
“How did you find me?” Talia asked.
Osra looked at her like she was stupid.
“Ehm—you left a clear path of arrows leading straight to you. Better question, why aren’t you using your clicker? You know this place is infested with chellicoi, right?”
Talia shrugged.
“Well, they’re skittish as all hells, to start, not to mention deaf and solitary to boot. You could probably take one on alone if you had to. And besides, there isn’t one within half a kilometre,” she explained, tapping the side of her head knowingly, “Seems like an unnecessary hassle when I’m alone.”
Osra nodded at her reasoning, falling silent, looking over the view that Talia had just dismissed.
“I—”
“Why—”
The pair spoke at the same time, pulling a chuckle from Talia and the ghost of a smile to Osra’s lips.
“You go first,” Talia said.
“I—uh—I was looking for you back at haven,” Osra started, suddenly unsure.
Talia waited, letting her friend get her thoughts together.
“Uhm—do you remember that talk? The one we had on the bridge?”
The arcanist raised an eyebrow.
“Hard to forget something that happened just two weeks ago. What about it?”
“Yeah, I-I know—it just…feels like a long time ago, you know?”
“Tell me about it,” Talia sighed, chasing away the dark thoughts that always seemed to hover just within reach.
“Ehm—yea…anyway, I was just wondering. I mean, I thought,” Osra stammered, “Are you okay?”
When Talia’s eyebrows rose into her hair, the stuttering girl looked away, but pressed forward nonetheless.
“It’s just… You don’t talk to anyone anymore, you don’t eat, Lazarus said you haven’t been to see him once and I—then I remembered what you said on the bridge and your arm and…and…” Osra took a deep breath, “And Master Zaric is dead, so I figured if you might need someone to talk to—”
Talia leaned away from Osra, looking at her suspiciously, her only functioning arm pressed against her chest.
“Osra…have you been stalking me?”
More stammering ensued, and the girl’s caramel complexion flushed, causing her to duck her head and look away. Talia laughed from deep in her belly, the sound echoing hollowly against the surrounding metal buildings.
“Shhhhh—”
Osra panicked, slapping a hand against Talia’s mouth, her eyes wide with fear, only letting go when the arcanist settled down and nodded her head with an eye-roll.
“I’m telling you, there’s nothing—”
“Do you have a death wish?” Osra hissed, “What’s wrong with you??”
“You’re being silly.”
Osra’s eyes narrowed to slits.
“You changed the subject.”
Talia pressed her hand to her chest in a ‘who me?’ gesture, affecting a sardonic smile. When the other mage didn’t relent, she dropped the charade and looked away.
“I’m fine. I’m eating, and I went in to see Lazarus just the other day for my arm, thank you very much. I just want to get a headstart for when the rest of the crew finally get their heads on straight—”
“Jerky doesn’t count as a full meal, Talia, and you know that’s not what I meant by seeing Lazarus.”
Talia frowned.
“When did you get so assertive?”
Osra almost sank into another blushing fit before she realized what Talia had done.
“Don’t change the subject!”
“I—”
I’m fine.
Her voice cracked, and the events of the past month came crashing back into her mind, replaying themselves with vindictive cruelty. A bundle of something acidic and cloying rose up her throat like bile. Wetness streaked down her cheeks.
“I’m fine,” she hiccoughed, “I have better things—”
Osra cut her off by reaching over and gently pulling Talia’s head into her lap.
“You don’t have to tell me,” the girl whispered, “Lazarus says sometimes it’s ok to just cry. If you ever want to talk, I’m here.”
And so Talia did, burying her face into Osra’s pants to muffle her sobs.
“Shhhh… It’s alright. You’ve been working so hard. It’s ok…”
When did I get so bad that she has to comfort me?
They sat there for a moment, Osra running her hands through Talia’s hair, teasing out knots and pulling it out of her face, humming something akin to a lullaby.
And that was okay.
Saving the world would wait.
For now, it was okay to just be in pain.