Talia stared at the trio of her fellow hunters. Impassive. Waiting for them to speak. Her opinion of them wasn’t necessarily poor, but neither did she hold them in high regard. That they’d likely fought for the defence of the caravan changed little. Self-preservation, after all, was not a virtue. It simply was. They did get points for volunteering for the hunt, but that was it.

If they’re going to say I should join the party, I might stab one of them.

Talia frowned. Where had that come from?

The thoughts of violence fluttered away quickly, but the vehemence with which they had appeared lingered like a bad smell. Schooling her features, she brought her attention back to the still silent delvers.

Silversweep’s vertical pupils flicked back and forth, never staying in one place. She didn’t appear nervous so much as fidgety by nature. Claw-tipped digits clacked against clasps on her leather gambeson, and her weight shifted side to side sinuously.

Shiny boy, on the other hand, did look nervous, though considering how he’d looked when Talia had first met him, that might have been his nature, as well. As she watched, the boy wiped his hands against his thighs, leaving streaks of moisture against the leather. His mouth opened and closed intermittently, as if he wanted to speak, but couldn’t bring himself to.

Talia’s last ambusher, Yasida, looked like she would rather be in a bottomless pit than here. Grey eyes panned the corridor, filled with boredom.

“Can I help you?” Talia asked, her tone flat, just barely on the right side of diplomatic and a single hair away from disinterested.

Surprisingly, it was the boy who came forward, with Yasida stepping forward to support him, a few paces behind. Silversweep only fidgeted in place.

“I—I mean we,” Colum stuttered, “We were wondering if you had any more of those, uh, blast wands. The one you used to kill the chellicoi.”

Ah. So that’s what this is.

At least it was something productive. Unfortunately, she’d have to disappoint them. Force runes were a part of the Enigma anyway, even if Talia had been able to inscribe anything more than vague scribbles.

“No,” she simply said, pulling her cloak to her side and making to sweep past them, the encounter already dismissed.

Talk to Darkclaw, then a few hours of writing practice, then some cycling exercises. I’ll see about meeting up with OsraaaARGGHH—

Her reflexes were just too slow to avoid Yasida’s hand as it slinked over onto her bicep, catching her by the arm. Her crippled arm.

Talia yelped, instinctively trying to jerk the limb back and only succeeding in turning the pain from shivering agony to oh-my-gods-my-arm-is-being-dipped-in-lava pain. Talia recoiled with a hiss, dragging the limb from the ganger’s suddenly limp grasp. The glare she threw at the other woman could have melted steel, her left hand curled around the hilt of her dagger.

Yasida let go of Talia’s arm like she’d been stung, raising her hands in the air.

“Aw, shit. I’m sorry! I wasn thinking, ‘pologies, really!”

Talia exhaled sharply through her nose, eyelids drawn to slits.

“Clearly. Now if you’ll excuse me…”

“Wait!” Yasida pled, “Look sister, I know we got off on the wrong foot, alright? I came at you, I’ll admit it. I shouldn’t have. I can see that now. Thought you were more bluster than steel. But don’t take that out on the kid, he’s just trying to be helpful, alright?”

“Helpful?” Talia repeated skeptically. She looked Colum up and down, mentally re-evaluating her assessment of the pair’s relationship. Clearly, there was more there than met the eye.

Yasida growled and rolled her eyes.

“The kid thinks you’re some kind of hero, you feel me? Probably has a bit of a crush too. Thinks you should be off doing better things than massacring bugs with the wave of a wand. Knowing boys his age, he probably has another wand in min—”

“Yasida!” Colum looked mortified, his ghostly skin flushed deep red.

“What? It’s true, isn’t it? I’m not here to protect your pride boy, just your fleshy, bleedy bits,” Yasida chortled, “Well, most of your fleshy bits. The big ones, at least.”

The sound that came out of the embarrassed boy’s mouth was a cross between a strangled whimper and a choked gargle. The result Yasida had been aiming for, Talia was sure. The cackle kind of gave the game away.

These two just get stranger and stranger.

Cutting through the bickering, Talia clarified the situation.

“I’m sorry to disappoint you both, but I’m just an arcanist, one with a shit job that unfortunately needs doing. I don’t make a habit of carrying extra multi-purpose artefacts with me, they’re expensive and a pain to make, and I think you’d find my current wand…difficult to use. Sorry to disappoint. Now if you’ll excuse me, I really have things to do.”

Talia stalked past them, giving Silversweep a puzzled look as she did. The beastkin hadn’t said a word, only standing there and fidgeting occasionally.

Didn’t take her for shy…No matter. Not my problem.

“Aww c’mon sister, didn’t take you for a prude, I was just teasing the kid. You know how it is.”

Talia shook her head.

Was I unclear? Maybe she’s deficient in the brain department—but no, she’s too clever for that. Slimy, like a wyrmling.

Spinning on her heel, Talia fixed the ganger with a flat stare.

“I don’t have anything that can help you, and I don’t need anything from you. What part of that is difficult to understand?”

Yasida’s expression remained one of quiet amusement, but something calculating lurked in her grey eyes. An assessing sort of gaze that Talia wasn’t sure she liked.

“Is it coin? If that’s it, I know for a fact the kid’s got like a dozen strings in the bottom of his bag—”

“Yasida!”

“Hush, kid, the grownups are doing business,” the ganger snipped at him with a flick to the arm. Talia registered the interaction as part of the increasingly odd puzzle that the duo presented, reminding herself that there was a third element to their interplay that was missing.

Then she registered what had been said.

Money? What the hell does money have to do with anything?

The last time Talia had even thought about money was when she’d discussed her shares with Torval and the other officers, what felt like years ago. Did the ganger think she was hiding spare wands somewhere, just waiting on the right price? Like the dozens of fireball artefacts Talia had created to fight the Aberrant were the subpar product, and she was keeping the good stuff to herself?

“It’s not about money,” Talia enunciated slowly, confused.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Yasida quirked a thin brow, something of a smirk on her thin lips. Talia’s bafflement reached new heights as the lithe woman began to approach her. Swaying her hips. Lips pursed into something…seductive?

How the hells am I miscommunicating this badly?

“Ah, I get you sister. I prefer cold hard clax myself, but I can’t fault a gal for dealing in favours,” Yasida purred, suddenly far too close.

Talia stood frozen as a pair of black lacquered fingernails fluttered down the scar on her cheek. The ganger’s breath was hot and minty against her ear.

“Always liked me a girl with scars. Does it go all the way down?” she asked silkily, “Ma always said you could kiss the pain away. Way I see it, there’s no harm in testing her theory, long as we both get what we want…”

Talia blinked rapidly. Gently, she reached up to grab the woman’s hand, and pushed it out of her space. Then she took a step back, just for good measure.

I am so confused. What in Ishmael’s dusty cunt is happening?

Shiny boy looked like he was caught between going green with envy and red with outrage, a sputtering sound falling from confused lips. The poor boy sounded like bafflement incarnate. Talia could sympathize.

“No. Just. No,” she muttered.

A streak of anger flickered across Yasida’s face. It didn’t reach her eyes. Before she could get a word out, Silversweep burst into a fit of laughter. At least, Talia thought it was laughter. The hiss-crackle could very well have been a fit of asthma.

“You—hesshh, hessshh—you are haveshte. A-a bat. Hesshh. Blind woman. Have eyes, but do not see,” Silversweep managed to get out.

Yasida rounded on the beastkin.

“What’s that supposed to mean, snake face?” she snarled, colour rising in her cheeks.

Silversweep only cackled harder, breath coming in wheezes. The scaled woman waved away the question with a paw, unable to get another word out. Clearly at the end of her patience, the ganger rounded on Talia, all traces of seductiveness gone.

“Look. I know you can make new ones, alright? I’m not daft. We all saw you fire that beam straight out of a Legion arsenal. So name your price and quit dangling it over me like I’m some low quarter rat. I know how these things work. You don’t need someone to warm your bed? Then fine, tell me what you do need, and I’ll get it for you, sister.”

Silversweep coughed, sounding suspiciously like the beastkin word for blind. Talia just shook her head. Clearly, the beastkin was savvier than she appeared.

“Not about what—” Talia cut off halfway through her sentence as a thought crossed her mind. She’d been about to tell the other woman that she couldn’t enchant. But if the mage had things her way, she’d be back to designing within the week. Maybe later, but not by much.

Yasida gnashed her teeth, but it was faux anger now—her grey eyes glowed with triumph.

Talia fought the urge to smirk.

“You want wands? Fine. On one condition.”

“Name it.”

“You gather as many friends as you can, and you head over and tell the delvemaster you’re volunteering for next week’s mission.”

Yasida squinted at her.

“I do that, and we get to keep em. Fair and clean, yea?”

“Fair and clean.”

“One for me, one for the boy, and one for Kaina.”

“Yep.”

“Any of us die, they go to the survivors. Or our next of kin.”

“Sure.”

The ganger stared at Talia a moment longer, as if she might spot the catch on her face somewhere. In the end, Talia didn’t know if it was greed or something else that did it, but the woman stuck her palm out for a dwarven clasp, remembering at the last second to use her left.

“Deal,” Yasida growled.

Talia smiled as she wrapped her palm around the ganger’s elbow, with the woman matching her movement. For all that Yasida looked pleased, her satisfaction didn’t reach her gaze. The set of her shoulders screamed comradery, but her eyes… Her eyes held steel and the promise of violent retribution.

Good thing I’m not double-crossing her.

The ganger gave Talia’s arm one last shake and a nod of her head before turning to Colum with a scowl.

“C’mon, kid, let’s you and I go see if we can round up some of the slackers. Kaina’s probably a lost cause already, with the party goin’.”

Talia watched the pair leave, expression inscrutable as she considered the interaction. For the life of her, she couldn’t tell if she’d been miscommunicating, or if Yasida was simply strange. In the end, it didn’t matter. With a paltry promise, she’d gotten Calisto another body for the roster.

Just have to make sure I actually deliver.

“Ssss. Tut. You lie to haveshte. You lie to Darkclaw,” Silversweep hissed, head cocked. “You lie to everybody? This one thinks you bad at it. Should stop. Will get you problems. Adda always say too many lies like tangled net. You trip. You fall. You lucky, you break nose. Unlucky? Someone break neck.”

“Your father is wise,” Talia said, “But I’m not lying.”

Slitted green eyes met her own false grey, alien and depthless.

“Was,” the beastkin finally said, pulling a frown to Talia’s face.

“Was?”

“Adda dead. Long time.”

“I—I’m sorry.”

Silversweep shrugged.

“He unlucky. Someone break neck.”

Talia stared at the odd woman, unsure what to say to that. Something on her face must have been comedic, as Silversweep began letting out her hissing laugh.

“You words lie, face says much. But heartbeat lies too,” she paused, considering something, “I talk to maz’roka. Vol-un-teer. Join you to seek above. You defend from Izkarid. I make sure fang woman know you don’t like sex. Heshhh hesshh. Fight. Keep watch. Bring back stories for clan. Already, they laugh. Promise.”

Talia stared at the scaled woman as she walked away, hands fidgeting at the handles of her axes.

One day, I’ll be the normal one. One day.

----------------------------------------

The rest of the night passed quickly. She wrote, practicing her telekinesis at the same time. Progress was steady, at least. The tedium gave her time to think, and the crystal mind spell gave her perfect focus. When her hands got tired, she sat in the corner of her workshop with Menace in her lap, dragging her hands through his fur and working through problems in her head. Admiring how her thoughts slipped from one to the next like water across a sheet of spidersilk. Beading apart before coalescing into one coherent stream.

Even the pain of cycling faded into the background more than usual, the meditative trance clearer and easier to reach than it had ever been. In fact, she thought her mind might just be clearer than it had been before she’d left home.

It was exhilarating. A bigger rush than feeling the magic fill her deeper and deeper.

Then she tried to access her mindscape.

Nothing.

She tried for an hour. Menace purred in her lap. She decided enough was enough when he ran off to do gods knew what. The problem was clear. One might even say clear as crystal. Only one thing had changed, after all.

It seems magic is all about the tradeoff.

Talia stared at the pitted ceiling, wondering what had created the cracks and spots that lay there, embedded forever in the stone. There was a time when she’d have drifted off on that particular minecart of thought. Now, she pivoted straight back to the issue at hand.

That her own mind was closed off to her did not bode well. There was damage to mitigate in there, and she didn’t have a millenia old spider doing ninety-nine percent of the work this time. More than just helping herself, too, she’d been counting on the experience to help her work with Osra.

Will I even be able to enter her mindscape?

She assumed so, but then again, assumptions had gotten her in trouble in the past.

I knew there were risks. Now it’s just a matter of deciding if this one is acceptable, or if I should take down the spell.

That, at least, she’d done her due diligence on. Altering her mind without knowing how to remove the working would’ve been the height of stupidity, and crescians were not short on methods of how to clear themselves of undue influence. The question remained of whether or not doing so would benefit her.

Right now, I’m stable. No ghosts. No irrational spurts of feelings. Clear-headed, focused. Only downside so far is this.

For all intents and purposes, the instability she’d suffered from the trauma of the journey was gone. But she had no illusions. She’d treated the symptoms, not the cause. Whether those were the symptoms of her trauma, or of the breakdown of her Place of Power didn’t matter.

It stays. For now. If I start…cracking, I’ll take it down. But right now, I need it. I need it. Tight bandage.

The beauty of the spell was that once the decision was made, the worry faded from her mind like a bad smell in the face of a hot updraft.

When she slept, she didn’t dream.

Waking felt like skipping through time.

----------------------------------------

Days passed, and Talia’s routine solidified. Cycling in the morning, a little jaunt around the camp with Menace—invisible of course—followed by a small breakfast and then sequestering herself in her workshop. Osra dropped by on occasion, though they always met in the evenings in the beryl cave. Even if only for a quarter of an hour.

Osra had been taken off guard by Talia’s demeanour at first, the swift reversal sending her for a whirl. Talia sometimes caught the other girl staring when she thought Talia wasn’t paying attention, a look of worry on her face. No matter that Talia had assured her time and again that she was fine.

Eventually, Osra dropped it, but Talia could tell she hadn’t heard the last of the worry. She’d debated telling the other mage about the crystal mind spell but decided to keep it to herself in the end. No need to bring more attention to her change in behaviour. Besides, her friend would likely go to Lazarus with the information, and then the elf would become impossible to avoid again.

No, better to pretend she’d come to a state of peace on her own. It wasn’t like it hadn’t taken effort, it just wasn’t the kind of effort either of them had meant for.

They’d probably insist I remove it.

The thought made her sick to her stomach.

Everything was easier with the spell. She wasted no time stuck in her head. Chores didn’t suddenly become fun, but getting herself to do them was a piece of cake. Not to mention her learning speed. It was what she imagined gnomish zikbud draught was like. She’d picked up using her left hand faster than she’d ever done anything in her whole life. Not even runecraft had come to her so fast.

Part of that was simply her brain adapting to being a cripple, surely, but the rest she fully attributed to the spell. Her telekinesis had lagged, but she’d always expected it to. Relearning how to write was somehow simpler than delicately moving things with her mind, and that was fine.

Because now, she would never have to write with her left ever again if she didn’t want to.