15

A Prize Fit for a Mouseling

Pip buzzed along a side passage, and Patches chased after him. He landed on a pillar where he walked in circles for a minute then stayed absolutely still for some time. When he took off again, Patches followed.

The fomorians paid them no attention whatsoever, which made exploring more appetizing, but the fomorian city, itself, lacked anything much worth exploring. So, the mouseling decided to turn back just as Pip came upon a fomorian shaman, no more than twenty feet tall. The spiritual leader appeared more than half-starved, likely from fasting. His gnarled, pointy bones stuck out from his skin in ridiculous places and he wheezed loudly as he walked. The shaman held a staff that Patches believed to be the spine of the previous shaman based on the vampire's brief description of their culture. Fomorian skulls dangled from his belt, along with a tuft of six-foot feathers, a string of topaz beads—thicker than the mouseling—and an enormous satchel, large enough that she imagined Oydd could nestle snugly inside. Or Cricket, rather. The mouseling changed the image in her head, and thought Cricket sleeping in the enormous satchel seemed more fitting.

Pip landed on the shaman's boney back and sat very still. Patches chased after them on the ground, but the shaman moved very quickly, taking one slow step for every twenty or so of her own.

"Pip!" the mouseling whispered sternly. Neither the familiar nor the giant responded, so she repeated herself more forcefully.

The shaman turned, as if he had heard something, and surveyed the vast hall a moment before wiping his forearm under his wet nose and smacking his chapped lips together as he peered off into the darkness. A long string of snot stretched from his nose to his forearm before it collapsed under its own weight.

If the fomorian had heard her, then Pip certainly had as well, which meant the familiar was deliberately disobeying.

Patches growled under her breath, and took advantage of the lull in the giant's gait to close the gap and scurry up the back of the shaman's leg. Quickly, she scrambled to his loin cloth and clung to the thick, matted fur, which smelled of moldy beetles.

The giant plugged one nostril with a knuckle, then blew out from his nose, shooting a slimy ball, much larger than the mouseling, off into the darkness.

He then turned and started again down the hall.

Patches pressed herself against the musty pelt, lifting only her head to peer over his buttocks. She saw the ladybug, still motionless, somewhat centered on the giant's back and crawled a bit higher to ensure she was in earshot.

However, just before she called out his name again, a second fomorian, brandishing a torch, appeared at the end of the hall, traveling toward the shaman. The panicked mouseling dove into the shaman's satchel, rather than risk being seen in the torchlight.

Slowly her eyes adjusted to the darkness, with the help of the torch's orange glow, which illuminated only a patch of the leather wall. It did appear to be a wall. The mouseling found the inside of the leather satchel to be nearly as spacious as her burrow back at the Warrens.

Patches frowned at the thought, and clawed at a tight knot in her stomach with her paw.

As the second giant passed, the shaman made no motion to acknowledge him, and the mouseling quickly studied the contents of the pouch in the event she found herself in complete darkness.

She sat atop a piece of dried jerky that smelled of cow, and must have been nearly as large as a cow. However, it was not treated properly, and a thick white fuzz grew along the edge of the moist, greying meat. Beside the jerky, she saw a mound of gems, most larger than the mouseling and certainly too heavy to carry, as well as a dead beetle several times her size, which explained the smell. The mouseling had a nose for dead bugs. She had attempted to collect some shiny, local specimens, in the Warrens, until, eventually, a mild rotten smell permeated her entire burrow and she was forced to bury the stash.

An assortment of other knick-knacks lay piled in the shadows.

Pip flew quietly through a gap in the ceiling and landed on the mouseling. She smiled and nuzzled her nose against the tiny bug.

The shaman stopped. The flap flew open and a massive hand began to dig through the contents of the pouch until it lay hold of a large, dry stick of clay. The shaman gripped the clay in his calloused fingers and pulled it from the bag.

The contents shifted, and Patches found herself sinking toward the bottom. A heavy bead crashed near her face. The mouseling, however, shook it off, more intent on a small bottle that sat on the far side of the pouch.

Normally, she might have called it a large bottle, as she suspected it would take two hands to carry, but the bottle looked laughably small compared to the size of the shaman.

The bottle had a tall neck, and was formed of amethyst-hued glass that sparkled and danced around the leather walls for the briefest of moments before the shaman withdrew his hand, leaving her again in darkness.

Patches crept to the far side of the pouch and wrapped both arms around the exotic bottle. However, this arrangement left her with no hands left to climb from the pouch, so she wrapped her tail around the neck instead, along with one of her arms, and slowly hefted it up the leather wall.

When she reached the lip of the satchel, she was already huffing and puffing.

"Pip, help..." the mouseling whispered, but the bug only stared back at her with a most uncooperative look.

Patches bit her lip, grunted, and pulled the bottle over the top. The weight of it lurched her downward, and she almost lost her grip. She tightened her tail around the neck of the bottle and peered down at the ground. The giant sent tremors through her body with each step it took, and she could not possibly climb down and protect the bottle under such conditions. Neither could she leave her prize behind.

So the mouseling held the bottle against her belly, to protect it from the fall, then dropped about ten feet onto her back, curling her head away from the ground.

The impact knocked the wind from her lungs, and there she lay, staring up at the oblivious shaman as he drew runes upon the crystal walls with his stick of clay.

Pip buzzed from the giant's pouch and hovered in the air over her.

She rolled onto her feet and the glass made a very faint tink as it touched the ground. Horrified, the mouseling darted behind a pillar, without looking back to see if she'd been seen. She could hear the shaman, however, still scratching away with his dry clay.

The mouseling wrapped one arm over the purple jar, and the other under the neck of the bottle, finding the weight to be much more manageable on the ground. Then she limped off to rejoin the others.

*****

Oydd took another glance behind him as the giantess led Licephus further and further from the audience chamber, with no hint of the mouseling in sight.

Licephus followed graciously and left the rudra to worry about their missing companion.

After leaving the audience chamber, the group had remained in the entry hall for some time as bustling attendants entered and left, whispering with the king and with their guide.

After a lamentable wait, the giantess sighed and motioned for the vampire to follow her. The group traversed a long, smooth hallway of opaque blue stone—evidently one continuous, flowing piece, and eventually found themselves at the edge of a ravine, where a fallen shaft of crystal, over a hundred yards long, lay across a seemingly bottomless pit.

The giantess paused at the natural bridge as the rudra crept toward the ledge, cautious of the slick floor.

"This is the fastest way for puny whelps." She motioned across the crystal bridge. On the far side, a somewhat stout and dull fomorian waited.

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Without hesitation, Licephus stepped onto the crystal and proceeded across. Jeshu went second, then skunk, then the undead demon, and finally Oydd.

With that, the female giant turned to leave.

The druid walked carefully—painfully slow. Once he slid an inch or two toward the side of the crystal shaft. He gasped, taking a long steadying breath, before continuing.

"I can lift you," Oydd said.

The druid looked at him warily.

"Perhaps not for long. But if you start to fall, I can..." The rudra turned his palm up and gestured a levitating motion.

A brief flash of relief passed over the dryad's face, but he still proceeded at a tiringly slow pace.

Once the group had crossed the ravine, the fomorian guide on the far side began to walk off without so much as an introduction.

He passed under a series of crude archways, then pointed at a still form tucked against the far wall. Licephus approached the corpse—a changeling to be sure.

"Is this the one you seek?" the fomorian asked.

Licephus nodded. "It is, thank you."

"It is dead," the fomorian stated, nudging the body with its wrist.

"Yes," the vampire agreed. "Please thank your king."

The giant stared, dully, at the vampire for a moment, then began to leave by a different route.

Licephus remained behind and when the fomorian was far enough away to mask his voice with its own heavy footsteps, he looked at the others.

"This is not Juhidra. But we are meant to think so. This is a female. I suppose the fomorians are too disinterested in our kind to notice."

"And it's been killed recently," Oydd added.

Licephus considered this then looked down the hall after the retreating fomorian.

"They have given us more help than they realize."

"How so?" Oydd asked.

"Look at the reddish skin. The blackened nails. This changeling has been in close proximity to deep goblins." Indeed, the changeling appeared very similar to a deep goblin, though more lithe, with a slight grey tint to its smooth skin.

"All the way from Agoth," Jeshu responded.

"Yes. And I believe her mind will be easy to probe." Licephus looked to the rudra.

"Yes," Oydd agreed. "She is fresh enough." He knelt at the changeling's side and lifted her hand from the cold stone floor. "You said we're looking for a cold forge?"

"There is no heat involved in the process of producing adamantite."

Oydd lifted the changeling's hand toward the vampire. Thick soot covered the fingertips, and a large popped blister ran down her wrist. "Then what is this?" Oydd also pointed at a recessed scab, "And this pit here is from the spray of molten metal."

The rudra placed his staff on the floor and called out with his mind.

Changeling...

He felt her presence, hovering, lingering.

He called out again. Changeling...

She did not respond.

Oydd grinned. He called out again, this time more forcefully. His mind reached out like a skeletal hand, wrapping around the changeling's throat and he felt her recoil, but held fast onto the spirit.

She closed her mind to him, and he grew frustrated. He sent a pulse of pain into the spirit's mind and wrestled until her will began to break. Then he dug into her thoughts with clawing fingers and tore open her memories.

The corpse twitched and writhed—its face contorting in horror.

*****

Patches managed to locate the audience chamber, but by then Licephus had left. Fomorians of all sizes traveled through the enormous hallways, in all directions, and Patches found it difficult to avoid them all.

She opened her pack, looking for the velvet bag, but failed to locate it among the clutter. She did find a white, opalescent potion she had borrowed from Cricket. However, she had no idea what it did. She sniffed the milky liquid, but imagined all the undesirable effects of potions she had read about in one of Oydd's books—from hair loss, to hair growth, to size changing potions, or even poisons and embalming fluids. Her whisker brushed against the glass and she sneezed.

Thoughtfully, the mouseling replaced the flask in her pack and continued to avoid the giants by hiding behind pillars and keeping to the shadows.

However, the effort of carrying the bottle so far had tired her more than she expected. Her feet hurt, her back hurt, and her tail hurt. She found a secluded corner where she unstopped the bottle and dumped out the liquid inside—a lavender fluid with dried flecks that smelled strongly of flowers.

The blue crystals at her feet absorbed the liquid thirstily, then fizzled and began to grow and crack.

But Patches kept her eyes on the bottle. The purple glass caught the light even better once the container had been emptied, and only weighed half as much.

Patches set off with renewed determination, but soon felt a dark presence from the opposite direction. She paused. She sensed the rudra communicating nonsense to some being, as if talking in his sleep.

But she recognized the cadence of Oydd's thoughts as clearly as the sound of his voice. She turned and scurried back the way she had come, heading toward the rudra.

When Patches reached the ravine with the crystal bridge, she crept to the edge and peered over, looking to her left and right for any other route.

Seeing no alternative in sight, she climbed onto the fallen crystal shard and began to run across. However, her little paws had trouble holding onto the slick rock with the extra weight of the bottle, and almost immediately she lost her grip and began spinning around in a circle. She spread her arms out wide, holding the bottle with her tail, and came to a stop so close to the edge that some of her whiskers hung over.

She paused, gasping in alarm, then began again more slowly, crawling on her belly for extra purchase.

By the time she reached the far side of the bridge, however, the mouseling could not carry the bottle another inch. Her feet ached. Her tail and her arms lacked the strength to lift the glass any further. She tried, but she couldn't so much as lift her arms.

Pip landed softly on the mouselings cheek, in what she assumed was a half-hearted apology.

The mouseling curled up around the bottle, in the middle of the path, and cried.

*****

"Oydd!" the vampire shouted.

The rudra took a sudden breath. A cold sweat dripped from his brow.

"I've been calling to you for some time."

The rudra panted as if waking from a nightmare.

The corpse lay still before him, its face in peaceful repose. He looked down at his hands, half expecting them to be covered in gore.

"What happened?" Licephus asked.

"I... I lost control."

"Communing with a spirit?" He asked in disbelief.

The rudra shook his head. "No... there was something else here. Some other presence nearby... hanging around us."

Jeshu surveyed their surroundings. "I don't sense anything. Nothing malicious."

"It's not close. But it's strong. And curious. It seized my emotions as soon as I opened a link." The rudra still looked at his hands.

Licephus considered this information. "Did you get what we needed?"

Oydd nodded. "But it's far. Deep in the gorge." He looked back the way they had come. "I could lead us there. But, do we need to disguise our destination?"

"From the fomorians? No. They suppose themselves to be exceedingly clever. They will not anticipate any deceit from us."

"It is far," the rudra repeated. "But she knew the way well."

"Then lead us there."

Oydd took a deep breath as he stood and headed back toward the crystal bridge, his metal staff ringing faintly against the smooth stone floor as he walked.

When the group came across the mouseling, laying quite still, out in the open, Oydd breathed a sigh of relief.

The dryad ran to her side.

"Are you okay, little one?"

"No," Patches cried. "It's too heavy..." Her tears pooled atop the crystalline floor.

Jeshu looked at the little bottle.

"Would you like me to carry it for you?"

The mouseling shook her head.

Regardless, the druid made room for the bottle in his pack, and removed Orth from his shoulder, placing Patches there instead. Her wet fur smelled faintly of flowers.

The rock worm wrapped around Jeshu's wrist, under his shield, and clicked to protest the mild inconvenience.

"Where have you been?" Oydd asked, more in concern than frustration.

"I don't know," the mouseling replied sadly, curling up on Jeshu's shoulder. Without so much as a touch from his hand, she felt a magical warmth soothing her strained muscles.

"Which way, rudra?" Licephus interrupted.

Oydd pointed along the cliffside, and the group began its descent deep beneath the fomorian city.