Talia felt the air woosh past her face as she dodged the flying dwarf at the last second. The fellow redhead went tumbling head over heel through the door to wagon two before thumping flat on his stomach with a groan. From the cheers and sympathetic winces outside, she had an inkling of what was happening but popped her head out to check anyway.
In an incongruous moment of levity and like-mindedness, a dozen or so crew members in casual dress had formed an impromptu circle around the pair of fighters. Coins changed hands, encouragement roared, and the delvers called out with cries ‘to finish him’ in one of the only events that seemed to get their blood boiling nowadays. For Talia, seeing it was a mild irritant bordering on incoherent frustration. She fought the urge to sneer at the layabout cowards. Of all the things they could’ve been doing, fighting was what they got up to.
For fucks sake. This is the third time this week. Where’s Darkclaw? He's usually on top of—
The arcanist’s musing was interrupted as the bundle of dwarven rage and redheaded spite came leaping back out of the wagon, ducking under her head and launching himself at his gloating opponent. The human turned at the last second, only noticing his adversary’s return because of the way the crowd went silent.
Too late.
The dwarf, Darvin, or Drakin, something like that—Talia didn’t rightly care at that moment—clipped the larger man in the stomach with a braced elbow right as the human turned. When the human bent over at the waist, his breath leaving him in a sharp exhale, the dwarf raised a knee and promptly slammed the previously gloating man’s face into it.
The crowd oohed and aahed sympathetically as the man’s nose snapped like a piece of slate, gushing blood. But the fight wasn’t over there, no. Without missing a beat, the human tackled Darvin—or Drakin—to the ground, using his size to his advantage. Unfortunately for both contestants, that was where the fight ended.
Finally.
Talia stepped out onto the eaves of the wagon as she spotted Darkclaw’s diminutive form cutting its way through the crowd. The beastkin cut an interesting figure, to say the least. The expedition’s battle commander had brown fur that was greying all over, his snout sported a wicked scar from some deep dweller’s claws, and his left eye was gone, replaced by a prosthetic. The crude artefact spun wildly within a melted orbit surrounded by waxy, blackened flesh. For all his diminutive size and disfigurement, however, the battlemaster had clearly attained the rank for a reason, being one of the expedition’s best fighters. If not the best.
The psion wasn’t the only one to notice his arrival, delvers peeled off out of the crowd as soon as they noticed the scarred beastkin approach the fighters. The battlemaster let them go without a word, stalking up behind the human straddling Drakin. He’d been going to town, pummeling the dwarf’s face repeatedly, so caught in a fugue that when his fist met resistance in the form of Darkclaw’s grip around his wrist, he seemed confused.
“Enough,” Darkclaw said, his voice disconcertingly high-pitched, but dripping with enough menace that any comedic effect was lost.
Rolling her eyes in disgust, Talia let the battlemaster handle his subordinates, knowing that at the very least, they’d have a few more hands on fertilizer duty. She had better things to do than watch the beastkin rebuke a pair of idiots.
It’s like they all forgot what we came here for.
Talia cut across the open courtyard of Karzurkul haven, surveying the area as she did. The liveliness of the fight had dissolved like a spoon of sugar in hot water. With a stir and imperceptible sickly sweetness. Those crew members that weren’t holed up in the stone barracks lazed about half-heartedly playing dice or smoking in silence. A few of the more motivated ones tended to mushroom beds and other edibles, a sharp contrast to those who sat listlessly before the stele for the dead, staring into a grey abyss of grief.
Without the galvanizing threat of imminent death, the crew had allowed themselves to fall apart. Or rather, had been allowed to fall apart. For some reason, she couldn’t imagine Torval letting things get this bad. Yes, the losses were awful. Yes, the grief hurt, and the odds looked bad. Worse than bad. Abysmal, really. Talia herself struggled under the sheer weight of it. But as the dead delvemaster was— had been so fond of repeating, they knew the risks.
And if the reward was simply a few trinkets stolen from the husks of dead sapients’ homes, then Talia would’ve been the first to admit that the risk wasn’t worth it. Hunkering down, waiting for the Under to rearrange itself after Migration and heading home after the dust settled would’ve made sense. But this was bigger than that. They had some leeway, now that they’d made it to the city, but in the end, they needed to return to Karzgorad, arcano-sun matrix core in hand, or their home would end up just as dead as Karzurkul.
Except, unlike when the Dead City had fallen, so many centuries ago, this time, there wasn’t anywhere to fall back to. There would be no third Exodus. Karzgorad was the last of the Undercities, and when its light died, civilization would die with it.
Hence, the sooner they accomplished their goal, the better. Even though Magister Evincrest’s estimates set the timeline at a little under half a decade, the expedition had been expected to return well before then.
Frustration welled up in Talia as she ruminated over the existential threat. She veered off, changing course from the dining hall and instead heading toward the squat stone building Calisto had claimed as her own. It’d been three weeks, and the new delvemaster had allowed things to fester for too long.
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None of the buildings in the haven had doors. Or if they had doors at some point, they’d long rotted away. That, more than anything, was evidence that the enclave carved into the base of the ruined city was a new construction. Relatively speaking of course. From what Talia had seen so far, most of the entryways in Karzurkul were sealed by sliding, dark metal panels that recessed into the walls when opened. The architects of the city were obsessed with the unidentified alloy, to the point that it covered nearly every construction with that ephemeral, flowing design.
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In contrast, the design of the haven was much more recent, favouring brutalist stone edifices spruced up by the occasional mural or carving. They sprouted from the walls of the semicircular compound, three stories tall with cramped corridors and rows of identical rooms. Better than the wagons for most of the crew, but Talia still preferred her bunk. Moving all her stuff out was a hassle anyway, and besides, none of the barracks had hot water. The fact that most of the officers had moved out of wagon two simply meant she had more space to herself and Menace.
As she walked up to Calisto’s new office, she paused before pulling back the curtain, hearing voices within.
“…gonna ‘ave to send out ‘unting teams soon. I got th’ crew workin’ on the grow beds, but we’re still lookin’ at a few weeks gap where we’ll be lackin’ on food,” came Dhustrun’s rumbling voice.
“And if we ration things out?” Calisto asked.
Talia felt the silence fall upon the pair, knowing already what the dwarf was going to say. Surprisingly, it was Lazarus that answered instead. She hadn’t realized he was there.
“Rationing, on top of the…poor morale, will likely only make things worse,” the elf said, “It would be better to have Darkclaw gather those that are willing and take them out on a foray. Chellicoi are ill-tasting, but they are better than letting the crew go hungry at this juncture.”
Talia heard Calisto sigh.
“Do you think I don’t know that, gentlemen? Last time that I suggested we leave the damn haven, we nearly had a mutiny on our hands,” she said, “They’re frayed to the final thread, Lazarus, and damnit so am I. You of all people should know the importance of time to recover.”
Another sigh. Talia fought the urge to scoff.
If they haven’t ‘recovered’ after three weeks without a kick in the ass, then they aren’t going to.
“But you’re both right. Let Darkclaw know that he can gather a group of volunteers. I don’t want to hear a word of any pressganging. We have it bad enough trying to enforce discipline as it is without him going overboard. I don’t want another Yves incident.”
Talia burst into the room before she knew what was happening, muscling against a swell of fury.
“Just like that?! I’ve been asking for a group for a week and a half, to do what we actually set out to do, and you kept saying it wasn’t time that—”
“Ohoho she’s blowing up on ‘em Arrick, finally,” Zaric giggled from off to her left, crouched in a corner.
“Are you sure this is the right way to go about this, Arcanist?” the ghost in question asked her, sounding more curious than anything.
The mage choked on her words before they could escape her lips, not knowing what had come over her. She’d just been so angry. Days of exploring the city on her own, canvasing the place for a way into the upper reaches, all alone, and now Calisto decided to send a party beyond the walls?
But for all that they were aggravating, the apparitions had a point. Blowing up was the wrong way to go about this. If she were under less stress, Talia would’ve felt proud of her self-restraint.
Instead, she just fumed in silence.
“Ahem. I’m sorry. I let my emotions get the better of me,” she mumbled, banishing the ghosts from her sight with a thought. Striding over to the stone table, the young mage pulled up a seat and sat gingerly next to the blonde healer.
The trio of officers looked at her with different expressions on their faces. Dhustrun, bald pate glistening, and brunette beard tied in clan braids, had a light frown, but there was a fire in his hazel eyes that seemed to match her own.
Lazarus, on the other hand, followed her every movement with his emerald gaze. Talia knew if she looked over, she’d see something akin to pity on his hawkish features, likely closer to worry, but to her, it made no difference. The sentiment wasn’t what she needed.
Calisto, on the other hand, looked thunderous. But to Talia, it seemed a brittle kind of anger, the kind that masked grief.
“Apology accepted,” Calisto clipped, “Was there something else you wished to discuss, Arcanist? I believe we aren’t short of scriptwork for you to attend to.”
Before she could retort, Talia took a moment to look at the delvemaster. Not glance but look.
Calisto’s onyx hair fell in drab, greasy locks, streaked through with grey that hadn’t been there when the expedition had left. She seemed to have aged by a decade, and her blue eyes were ringed with deep purple circles. Wrinkles had multiplied across her face. She looked half-dead.
Talia hadn’t truly grasped on to the fact that Calisto and Torval had been lovers until much later, but apparently, it’d been an open secret in the caravan.
The chronicler had taken the man’s death hard. Harder than the psion had realized.
That, and Talia’s general lack of social acumen had led to more than one explosive fight between the two. Behind closed doors, of course, but it wasn’t like the camp gave much of a shit anyway. Over the past few weeks, the pair had made their stances clear.
Calisto believed that pushing the crew any farther than they already had would end poorly. Talia argued that they didn’t have much of a choice, or much time to make it. To which the older woman replied that they did have time and that it would be best to let the delvers have their rest and recuperation.
In the end, Calisto had the final say, so the argument was moot.
“A pack of depths stalkers has moved into the city, so if you’re sending out hunting parties, I want in,” Talia threw out, almost vindictively.
Calisto didn’t really hold officer’s meetings like Torval had. She simply called on those she needed and then went back to doing whatever it was she did in her room all day. If Talia didn't want to be dismissed out of hand, then she had to justify her presence. Who said curses couldn't also be blessings, with the right circumstances?
Dhustrun raised an eyebrow, while the delvemaster grimaced.
“Yer sure?” the dwarf asked.
“Positive. I killed one just last night. I figured there wasn’t a big rush in telling anyone, since no one but me leaves this hidey-hole any—”
Lazarus cleared his throat loudly at her jab, making her eat her words. Calisto didn’t rise to the bait, swearing and smacking her palm against the table, looking like she wanted to break something.
“Godsdamnit. Dhustrun, go warn Darkclaw. It won’t do much, but he’ll need to be on his guard, anyway,” she ordered.
“He was in the courtyard dealing with yet another fight, last I saw,” Talia called to the dwarf’s back.
When the quartermaster had left, Calisto rounded on Talia.
“You can sense them?” she asked, without preamble.
Talia nodded.
“Good. If we lose someone else this soon, we might just have a riot.”
“They knew the risks,” Talia replied.
She could hear the delvemaster grind her teeth from across the table.
“Don’t tell me about the risks, Arcanist,” Calisto hissed, “We’ve already payed far too much. Far, far too much.”
Talia didn’t respond, simply looking across the table, ignoring Lazarus’ eyes as they bored their way into the side of her head.
“You’re on the hunting team,” the delvemaster finally decided, “See to it that they all come back alive, and I’ll start putting out feelers for an exploratory team. Give me one week. One week and I’ll see what I can get going.”
The mage wasn’t sure, but the older woman almost felt like she was pleading with her. The feeling was unsettling, after three weeks of arguing and exploding at each other.
Talia nodded, meeting the chronicler’s eyes with her own as she stood. Lazarus got up with her, going over to whisper in Calisto’s ear before following her out.
Sensing that the elf wanted to talk, Talia waited and was vindicated when he followed her.
“Have you the time for a chat?” he asked as he pulled the curtain closed.
“I’m a little—”
“Humour me.”
The look in his eyes brooked no argument.
Talia nodded, something heavy catching in her throat.
“Fine.”
“Lovely. I recently found some tea that I had forgotten that I had been saving. I think you’ll enjoy it,” Lazarus said, his crooked smile betraying the pleasantry for what it was.