He could hear the beeping. It was always the same pattern, boop, boop, boop. It was a piercing sound, on the edge of too much to bear.
CJ woke up to the muffled sound of people talking on the opposite side of a wall. The beeping was gone. He sat up, and found himself in a too-soft bed covered in a thin tartan blanket. He was indoors, for the first time since he left the Temple of Last Embers. The room was wide, with a leather couch across from the bed. There were several trunks throughout the room made of rough black stone and silvery metal hinges and latches.
“Did I… die?” CJ asked the empty room. He pushed to the edge of the bed, and stopped halfway. His arms were sore, the muscles in his legs burned, and it felt like he had a lump in his chest. Everything hurt, everything felt spent. But there was something more than that.
He looked down at his chest, and saw there were two light blue tethers flowing out of him. One arced up and headed toward the thick wooden door to the room. The other was taut and headed out of the window. It only took a moment of wondering to know which was which. The one toward the door led to Larl, the other one led to the Duchess. They were both healthy, which was a relief. They made it, which meant that this was likely Scaleback, the city they were heading to.
Larl was approaching. Unlike before, CJ’s impressions of what Larl was feeling or doing was faint now.
CJ turned toward the door. There were heavy boots outside, so he had to assume Larl had company with him. Maybe he was being celebrated as a brave hero, after getting the duchess out of a pinch. The idea of it made him grin.
Then the door burst open, and it was Sir Byr. He was in his uniform again, and his eyes narrowed in on CJ as soon as he saw that CJ was awake.
CJ looked to his map. It was just a general map of the city at the moment, it wasn’t even focused in on him, or showing the icons of other bonds. Maybe because they were safely in city limits? He didn’t know the rules. Either way, he didn’t expect to see Byr burst through the door first.
“Byr,” CJ said. He forced himself to his feet, “Good to see you.”
Sir Byr stepped over to CJ, and backhanded him across the face.
The pain flashed across CJ’s whole body, and he fell back onto the bed where the whole frame groaned with the sudden weight. CJ grabbed his face and looked at Sir Byr.
“What the hell was that for?!” CJ snapped.
Byr stepped closer. “I hear you withheld critical battle knowledge, Eastman.”
The map, his battle map. CJ sat up, but slowed down when Byr stepped forward again.
“I didn’t know if it… I wasn’t sure about it, I didn’t want to have to explain it.”
Sir Byr flared his nostrils, “You didn’t want to explain it? You wasted more than enough of my time explaining every little thing, and you couldn’t tell us you had a map in your head?”
“My head doesn’t belong to you!” CJ shouted back. “I said I was going to help, but I can have information of my own, can’t I?”
Byr growled. “If you wanted to be some neutral party, you could have done that. We helped more than a few people here to Scaleback, you could have gone about your way like all the little nobles and merchants that hung off our cloaks as we went over that mountain. You chose to ally with us, that means you fight for Akahi, you are with Akahi!”
CJ bit the inside of his lip. He could feel the heat in his cheeks. Byr’s expectations were his own, of course he would want absolute loyalty.
“Sir Byr!” Larl said from the door. He had a tray with food, and set it down on the couch before rushing over. “What is going on here?”
Larl forced himself between CJ and Byr, and then looked into the old knight’s eyes.
“This doesn’t concern you,” Byr said. “We were just-”
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“Doesn’t concern me, what does that mean?” Larl asked. CJ could feel his rage, and a sense of betrayal. “You can be mad at CJ, but this isn’t how the commander of the magmaguard behaves, is it? He isn’t trained as a soldier, or one of your guards, what do you expect from him?”
Sir Byr backed up a step, and Larl let out a sigh.
“Never again,” Byr said. He stood up straight, but looked away. “We almost lost the Duchess. You think I wouldn’t have made different choices if I knew you could do that, Eastman? We didn’t have to… we could have done it all differently. That’s all I meant to say.”
CJ stood up again. “I didn’t know who to trust yet, okay? That was my fault, and I’m sorry for it. But Larl is right, I’m not from here. I don’t know the rules, I don’t know what is and isn’t true. This eye is freaking me out more than anything.”
He walked around the bed, giving Byr as much space as he could, and headed for a big window. He pulled the drapes open, and was greeted with a view over the winding cobblestone streets of a city of brick buildings. In the distance he could see a stone wall, and on it were two statues facing out, standing tall enough that they dwarfed the defensive towers along the wall’s central gate. There were people on the street, many of them taking leisurely walks, but a few were leading massive bison-like animals with big black horns that curled back. The people on the street had horns too, at least quite a few of them. Some popped out of hats, others were open to the sky.
“This is Scaleback, right?” CJ asked.
“Yes,” Sir Byr said. “It is the border town of Barune. Also serves as our main point of contact with the kingdom. They are our closest allied city.”
“But they have a big wall facing you?” CJ asked. He looked back over his shoulder.
Larl smiled, and CJ could feel his joy at getting to explain something. “The wall isn’t for us. Mount Akahi is rather volatile, the wall is to protect from a lava flow.”
Byr shook his head, “Not that they’ve needed it. That’s also why the buildings all have their rooftops pointed toward the mountain. Akahi likes to bless us with ash several times a year.”
“Several times?” CJ almost choked as he imagined it. Mount St Helens went up once before he was born, and it had its own chapter in the history books. He couldn’t imagine trying to deal with that multiple times a year. “I’ve never heard of a mountain erupting that often.”
“Just this one,” Byr said. “That’s the font of power for Hibe, it is sacred ground. All soulflame was born from there, and eventually returns there.”
CJ nodded. “So secondary question, do Hillmen just have horns? Is that what this is?”
Larl and Byr looked at each other, and then Larl laughed. “Of course they do. I mean, you’ve been around Alyss for days, you haven’t noticed?”
He thought about Alyss, and her helmet. He thought the helmet had horns, that made sense. He pictured it in his head, the way the helmet cupped the horns, the cut around them, the way he never saw Alyss with her helmet off.
“My god, she does have horns. I’m an idiot.”
“Yes well,” Byr said, “that does seem to be the theme of the last couple days. We are here in Scaleback for the foreseeable future while the Duchess petitions the King for aid. You should lay low in the meantime.”
CJ turned to the two of them. “Lay low?”
“Well,” Larl shrugged, “you do have an inhuman eye that glows with power. It may draw attention to you.”
That was true. Unfortunately, everyone in the refugee caravan knew what he looked like, so it probably didn’t matter much. If his eye was going to be trouble, there was a good chance word was already spreading.
“I do want to take him to the lapidary though,” Larl said, holding a hand on his chin and looking at Byr, “don’t you think we should know what is going on with him?”
Byr rumbled his annoyance, “You think there is more?”
“A lapidary?” CJ asked. “Should I look that up?”
“They are stone-cutters, and experts in all things soulstone.” Larl grinned. “You’ll love it, they can reveal so much about how you work, I’m sure nothing like them exist on your world.”
Sir Byr fished into his jacket, and pulled out something balled in his fist. “Plus we can get you a proper attunement. If you plan to help, you should know how the attunements and their masters work. We can go to the Guild of Arms, there should be a small one in town.”
He could look it up, but CJ was just going to run with it for now. For a moment, he wanted to just breathe and relax. They got away from the mercenaries, they were in a safe town. He could look at the world at a slower pace now. Knowing there was just a whole other section of the population with horns was already a shocker he couldn’t stop and process during the battle before.
“Cover your eye with your hand,” Byr said.
CJ realized Byr was approaching him. But he didn’t seem aggressive. CJ pulled a hand up and covered the weird eye, assuming Byr meant that one.
“Can you still see your map?” Byr asked.
He could. That surprised him. He took his hand down, then closed his eye. Closing it got rid of it. “Huh, yeah.”
Sir Byr reached his hand out and revealed a dark blue strip of cloth.
CJ grabbed it and untangled it. It was an eye patch. Not the thin band you might see on a pirate, but more of a ribbon that got thick near the part that went over your eye.
“Put that on, and we can go into the city.” Byr said.