She thought back to the Colosseum, where tens of thousands of spectators watched her love win where no others could. She thought back to the moment on Khelidon’s balcony where women stared at Rook and cheered. She thought back to the loyal vassals and toadies of Korakos and the courtiers in the keep, and she remembered how it felt to see her man—the man obsessed with her—at the center of so much attention. She remembered how gratifying it had been to know, when they slinked back into bed come night, that despite it all, he was still hers, and never anyone else’s.
She remembered it all. And once she was done remembering, she made no further efforts to conceal herself. She returned to her more usual, more revealing manner of dress. She ceased flinching when she heard the words ‘pregnant,’ or ‘child,’ or ‘baby.’ She condensed all her thoughts and lessons from throughout the weeks since Rook’s death and accepted that this was her fate. She was a woman. She was carrying Rook’s son. Better if everyone knew.
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They waited outside the village for Robur to return with their new provisions. It was yet another miniscule, rural locality far off the road, and by now they were miles east from the highway, but it was better to send in the one least likely to be recognized. Just in case. Just so they would leave no trail.
He returned with a blank expression on his face perhaps an hour later, carrying all three of their packs precisely how he had left with them.
He said nothing.
“Is something amiss?” Eris said.
“It appears we have no more money,” he observed quietly.
Eris sighed, but when her lungs were collapsed she felt something catch on them, like they couldn’t empty all the way. She gasped in surprise and discomfort, then growled. “Surely you had enough to purchase something.”
Robur hung his head. “No.”
“No?” Aletheia asked. “But—didn’t you notice in Dakos?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I did not want to be a burden.”
“So you went to town and compelled us to wait an hour while you did nothing?” Eris said.
“Well—yes,” he said. “It appears we will need to find work if we wish to continue on our journey.”
The day had been coming eventually, so Eris could hardly be outraged. But it was difficult not to be irritated at Robur’s insanity.
“We are three magicians,” Aletheia said. “We can probably make a fortune doing—something here.”
“We could burn down the houses and loot them of their valuables,” Eris suggested. When her companions looked at her with horror she added, “I am joking, you buffoons.” In fact she had been completely serious.
“I did see a vellum notice while I was in the market,” Robur said. “I believe it mentioned bugbears.”
“Bugbears?” Aletheia asked.
“Yes. I spoke to a woman in a stall—it seems they’ve been quite troublesome. Perhaps we could deal with them for a bounty, or give back stolen items for a small fee.”
“Or sell back liberated items for a just mark-up,” Eris said. “It has been quite some time since we embarked on a proper adventure.”
“Didn’t we fight bugbears in Rytus?” Aletheia asked.
“And?”
“…didn’t we lose?”
Eris thought back to that adventure three years ago. She nearly died. Her first bout of Spellsickness. Had it not been for Rook, and Guinevere…
But that was a long time ago. She was a different person now. The intervening years had taught her to take caution when it was prudent, and also which foes were within her powers to overcome and which were without. Bugbears ranked somewhere far below the Seekers.
“We were young and ill-prepared,” she said. “You could neither wield a sword nor use magic in battle then. And we did not have Robur.”
“But we had Astera. And Rook.” Aletheia whispered this last name.
And Zydnus, too, although as Eris recalled he had been less than useful, in the depths of despair following the revelation that he was responsible for the deaths of so many of his halfling kinsmen. What charming times.
“Rook’s absence will be felt,” she agreed. She sighed and rested a hand on her stomach. “Forever, if we are lucky. Yet this is our vocation. At least, ‘tis certainly mine.”
“Are you sure it’s safe for you to go?” Aletheia started. “What if—something happened?”
“You might as well ask ‘what if’ my arm were to be cut off. Would I feel terrible? Need you ask? Yet our wellness is what we stake as adventurers. And we may have little choice. We risk much by lingering in this town longer than we need. A short quest to refill our coffers is what we require.”
The girl sighed. “Ok. Just don’t get hurt.”
“I—” Eris started. “Am the same as I ever was, Aletheia. Do not treat me as a child.” But as they entered town, she understood Aletheia’s trepidation. She felt a hint of it herself. As she considered the pain and misery and, even, death that might befall her, she realized that for the first time in her life, she cared what happened to her more than she lusted for power. She had a vision for the future she desired to see realized more than she desired cash in her pockets.
That was new. Eris had never been much for self-preservation. But it was no impediment. She would be cautious, and they would do this thing, as they had done many such expeditions together before. Her arguments were correct. They had no other way to raise funds so quickly. This was their vocation.
…yet in the past, the consequences for injury never seemed so potentially high. She did her best to banish such concerns and carried on, fuming at herself for feeling such sentimental thoughts for a child she did not even want.
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If it was attention Eris had feared the changes to her body would rob her of, she had been wrong. Men and women stared at her no less than they had when she was eighteen and childfree. In fact now they may have stared longer. What they thought she couldn’t begin to say, but Aletheia had been right. No one could possibly see Eris and think her ugly. Such conclusions were impossible. Thus they must have been awed.
It seemed a clan of bugbears was, in fact, gathering in the hills near the lake west of town. They had been terrorizing the townsfolk for months. Several farmers had been killed. They had been raided, once. Travelers were cowed. An ealdorman explained all this to them, and added, “We’ve tried all we can, but we’ve not got enough fightin’ young men to drive ‘em all away. If you can manage that, then there’s two hundred drachmae in’t for ye.”
“Two hundred drachmae? To drive off a horde of rampaging monsters?” Eris said.
“We’ven’t got anything else to offer, miss.”
“We’ll do it,” Aletheia said. “Don’t worry. They’re good as gone.”
The journey was five miles. Halfway there Eris found herself face-to-face with Aletheia once more. She twiddled her thumbs.
“You should stay here,” she said after a long pause.
“No,” Eris said.
“Please.” Aletheia winced. “You don’t have any armor. Even if you just fell…please, Eris.”
A year ago Eris would have turned the girl to ash for the audacity of this intervention, and she disliked that she had been so cowed that she no longer felt the impulse to do so—immediately. But, unfortunately, she had some empathy in this particular situation.
“You will need me,” Eris said.
“You don’t know that.”
“I am the most powerful magician of the three of us. I alone can wield the focus, and I am most practiced in the staff. I also know Disintegrate, which you two do not. Leaving me behind because I am with child is ridiculous. You are far more likely to be killed without me.”
“Better me than you,” she whispered.
“Though I would usually agree,” Eris said, “if you are to die, again, then I will be forced to raise this child myself, and we both know that is a fate no one deserves.”
Robur frowned. “Raising a child, or being raised by you?” he asked.
“Both,” she replied, but she added, “but the latter especially.”
Apparently this arrow of truth struck a point of resonance within Aletheia, for she nodded somberly. “Okay. You’re right. Let’s just—go now.”
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Bugbears were not subtle creatures. Aletheia spotted tracks half a mile farther into the hills. A few dozen feet toward an overlook of the lake, and there they found a field of sharpened stakes set in the ground.
Atop each sat a head. Most were animals: cows and horses especially. A few dogs. A few more men.
The sight meant little to Eris now. Nor did it much disturb her companions.
“Why?” Aletheia asked.
“Do not bugbears usually reside belowground?” Robur said.
“Indeed, and we are far from their normal range,” Eris said.
“I wonder how they got here,” Aletheia said.
“I would guess they walked,” Eris said. “Perhaps there is a cave nearby; this location is remote enough to evade knightly orders.”
Aletheia held her nose and scouted about the area. Tracks came and went. Eris battled a bout of light queasiness while she stood idle in the sun, then followed after the girl toward the lake. She kept her head to the ground. Eventually they found a line of wide, hobnailed prints down a narrow path along a rocky overhang above the water, where overgrown trees and wild branches crowded each step right before a cliff face. Eris batted them out of her way with spells cast from her staff.
She had purchased rope to use as a belt, from which to affix Rook’s sword from her waist. She presumed over the coming months it would need to be ever-expanded; this solution would be most adaptable. She didn’t intend to use the sword, but keeping it with her offered a sense of comfort and security. It would be their son’s someday.
The path led to a passage cutting into the rock. Deep into darkness. They found their cave. Eris glanced out toward the lake—a small lake, serene and blue in the daylight, surrounded by more trees and more hills.
She glanced up.
Another tree. This jutted from the rock over the cave’s entrance. Its trunk reached out off the cliff like a plank extending from a ship’s side, like some animal burrowing from the earth straight-ahead, reaching out directly…
Four pairs of human hands were nailed to the trunk through the palms. Their fingers dangled downward toward Eris as if they entreated, child-like, to lock hands with her.
“I believe bugbears are anthropophagic,” Robur said. “They capture humans for the purpose of consumption.”
“That is consummate with my recollection,” Eris said. Still considering each hand.
“Maybe hands don’t taste good,” Aletheia said. “You know. Calluses.”
“Evidently neither do heads.” Eris took a step toward the cave’s entrance. She turned herself sideways to slip within—and found herself too fat. She retreated out again, sighing into her staff. She was barely halfway through carrying this child. She could not imagine how inconvenient her size would be in another four months.
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Aletheia seized the opportunity to go first. She slipped inside easily. As did Robur. Thus Eris followed last, and this time she tried to go more directly. Fortunately the passage was broad enough for her to fit by slanting herself slightly. Evidently she was still not as fast as a bugbear. But the going was far more difficult than it might have been for her last year.
Within moments they were entombed in darkness. Aletheia sent out conjured lights ahead of them. Soon Eris emerged from behind Robur into a cave proper, where to the right she heard the sound of running water.
“Dim the light,” she commanded.
“Bugbears can see in darkness,” Robur whispered. “Perhaps we—”
Eris remembered back to their previous encounter. The bugbears had used lanterns—Robur was mistaken. “No,” she whispered back, “they cannot. Dim the light so that you can see only yourself and I shall return presently.”
She activated the arcane focus, took in a breath of mana, and cast the Embering Eyes of the Lynx over herself. When she blinked all color was gone from her vision, but she could see the weeping walls, the stalactites and pillars and columns of stone clearly.
The stench was hideous.
She followed the curvature of the cave’s walls around a bend and down a steep decline. There she came to the first chamber.
A disgusting, hairy, short, ape-like creature sat within a sea of baubles. Pots and pans and silverware all across the ground; copper coins and beads; blankets, clothes, and all manner of sheets—it was a midden used as a bed. Within the dark and narrow section of the cave, where stone grated the ground like the jagged teeth of a rabid wolf’s jaws, Eris saw a dimly glowing stone in a bronze lantern, just as she had in Rytus years ago.
This time it burned hot white in her vision. Her eyes stung to look at it while under this spell.
The bugbear snored loudly in its bed. She approached it. The lantern suggested it was supposed to be on watch, but had fallen asleep at some time during the day. These were creatures of the night, and no doubt the others would be asleep deeper in the cave system.
She stopped several inches off from the midden and glanced deeper into the cave. No light from that direction. They had the element of surprise.
Another glance at the bugbear. She searched for its eyes within the black mass of gray skin and tarry fuzz. The arcane focus spun over her palm. She raised the staff, preparing to silently coat the creature in her Essence and Disintegrate it before it awoke—
When she saw its eyes. Eyes black like an orc’s, so that she hadn’t noticed within its sea of hair, that they were open. And where her eyes met its, she knew at once it was not asleep.
It shot upright. A crude iron dagger appeared in its hand from beneath a blanket, but only for a moment; the blade shot out through the air toward Eris. She raised a forcefield instinctively: the hilt collided with a flash of green light, and when her mind had cleared and she could look again, she heard the horrible screeching of the creature raising the alarm, scrambling deeper into the caves.
She tried to use her Disintegration spell now, but he was too far away, and it took a moment to cast—so instead she attempted to grab him by the leg, to pull him back to her telekinetically, but she took a step forward and lost her balance on the uneven ground. She felt her Essence grab hold of the bugbear’s greasy hair, but she had to let him go to keep herself from falling over.
She was not used to her new center of gravity. She swore, ready to give chase, when a moment later light swelled through the cave.
She ended the Embering Eyes.
“What happened?” Aletheia said. She rushed to Eris’ side.
Eris was furious with herself. It took her a moment to respond, “Their guard must have seen us on approach. He pretended to be asleep, snoring, yet when he saw me preparing to cast a spell he attacked.”
“Are you okay?”
She didn’t bother responding. “He escaped. They know we are here now.”
“It may be best if we leave,” Robur suggested. “We could find some other way of making our money—”
“We are not leaving,” Eris said. She glanced around the chamber. The sound of running water came from a stream that trickled through an opening in the stone overhead, draining down one of the rock walls, onto the ground, then into a pool that must have then led to the lake belowground.
There were some objects of minimal value within the midden, but she would not reduce herself to sorting through trash. Especially not while pregnant with the son of a duke.
Lights lit farther down the cave. The same glowing stone used in all bugbear lanterns. Voices followed soon after, growling and calling in a language like nothing except stone being crushed by mallets. Then they began a chant: one word, again and again and again.
Aletheia started casting the Wisdom of the Sages to translate it, but Eris stopped her by grabbing her wrist. “I recognize this word from Dwarvish.”
“I do as well,” Robur said.
A moment. “Well?” Aletheia whispered. “What is it?”
“‘Tis something we were called often in Kem-Karwene. Human.”
Eris was tired of caution. They were three magicians, and no longer children. They would be able to dispatch a hundred bugbears with ease. So she led the way forward, which compelled Aletheia to rush in front of her, and Robur to follow after; another bend and a farther descent toward the lake, until they saw the orange glow of the lanterns and turned a corner. Here the passage forked into several disparate paths, but dead ahead they saw a vast clump of dark creatures, and a call in Bugbear tongue came bellowed toward them.
The sound of a dozen crossbows being shot followed. Robur was the first to raise a forcefield this time; each of the bolts whistled, then bounced off the red light as if it were plate armor.
Silence reigned for a moment. Then one bugbear, the largest of the group, raised an axe; he wore mail armor and yelled something in surprise, and he charged.
Eris prepared Disintegrate yet again, but this time resistance came from the side passages. Two bugbears barreled from each, having been waiting in ambush behind them, and now they were surrounded. In every direction flashed spells of surprise and self-defense. Robur was tackled to the ground, dropping his first shield, but he managed a burst of mana that knocked four of the creatures off their feet, and he held them down to the ground with telekinesis.
Aletheia engaged their leader. Countless bugbears armed with shields and spears came for her, placed between her and her target, but each time she let out fire from her fingertips, a golden spray of color that set their fur ablaze and turned them into torches that brightened the dark cave; or she blasted them back with quick jolts of energy; or she knocked their spears away with her sword and incapacitated them with cuts to the arms and legs.
She took several hits to the torso, but Rook had taught her well: she still wore the remnants of Astera’s elven armor, and she was protected from steel weapons.
Meanwhile Eris concentrated. There were more bugbears here than she anticipated—dozens crammed within a small room that reeked of death and decay, with arms and armor laying about everywhere. One bugbear came at her with a spear; she gestured with her spear and batted it away, sending it flying, screaming, back toward the far wall. She turned another with a shield to ash as it tried to run toward her. A third took a shot at her with a crossbow, but with the arcane focus her ability to reach out telekinetically was greatly enhanced—her control with her mind and imagination was as fine as it was with her hands.
She grabbed the bugbear’s finger as it pulled the trigger. Keeping it off. It screamed in frustration, and as it protested she yanked the weapon from its grasp through a gesture with her staff, pulled it into the air, turned it around, and pulled the trigger herself—shooting the bolt clean through the creature’s heart.
Two ambushers came for her next. She leveled the staff their way and green fire engulfed them. They attempted to run past her, but she knocked them backward, and they fell to the ground, immolating.
Still more. Many, many more. Robur used his Essence to wrestle the axe out of one’s hands as it tried to cleave him. Now Aletheia was at their leader and she dueled it while keeping the others at bay with her magic—she wasn’t as strong as the bugbear, but far smarter, and far faster, and with better reach.
More charged at Eris. Now, looking over the short creatures’ heads, she saw the far side of the room, and she had an idea.
She used Blink. It took a moment, and she was careful to transport both herself and the soul of her child just in case, and even after it was cast she had to wait several seconds before every living being in the room had closed its eyes once. But once they had she closed her own and opened them and found herself staring face-to-face with the rock of the cavern’s wall.
She turned—and nearly fell over, her sense of balance gone. But once righted she looked now at the battle from behind.
Aletheia landed a thrust through the armor of the bugbear leader’s neck. She toppled over onto him, but soon more and more bugbears were upon her. Robur was forced against a wall; he covered himself in a forcefield to keep weapons away.
The bugbears that had been coming for Eris turned about themselves, only confused.
She would have to end this fight now. It had been enjoyable to feel the rush of battle again, to exercise power over living creatures, to kill—but the time to win had come.
She raised her staff and brought down as much mana into herself as she could. They were deep belowground now and her access to the Aether was hampered, but the staff still aided her greatly in channeling her powers and in pulling any ambient magic still left in the air. Then she extended her mind and grabbed hold of each and every bugbear still standing. She took her time, watching only through one eye as Aletheia punched, kicked, stabbed, incinerated, and otherwise fended off three bugbears at a time, and just as Pyraz had taught her she painted the monsters in her imagination.
She concentrated through the arcane focus. She thought back to Disintegration, and she tore down the corpuscles binding each bugbear’s body together one by one.
Every bugbear turned to ash simultaneously. It began at the arms but spread like paper put to flame, coursing across the torso, to the other arm, up to the head and down to the legs, across the fur, over the beard and hair, engulfing any armor and clothes and finally the weapons in their hands. It was a slow enough process that every bugbear knew what was happening well before it died. They stopped fighting, falling to the ground as their legs turned to ash under them, screaming in pain and fear, until suddenly all at once, their cries stopped.
A cloud of soot burst into the air, then settled back down again like feathers gently wafting back down to the ground.
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Aletheia spit ash from her mouth. She was covered in gray dust. Her hair, her skin, and all her clothes. She coughed and used water from her canteen to wash off her face. Robur fared somewhat better, although he had been wounded in the shoulder. Eris was fine.
The ground was also fine. Like sand. Very, very fine. Navigating this cavern was something like walking on a beach.
“They weren’t as tough as I remembered,” Aletheia coughed.
“They were largely the same. And far greater in number,” Eris said. “We have changed.”
“I have—not seen this spell before,” Robur said. “What is it?”
“Disintegration,” Eris said. “It is rather useful, I think. Pyraz taught it me.”
“And your teleportation…”
“Blink. Also Pyraz.”
“I see.”
“In fact you do not see Blink; ‘tis its entire purpose.”
They rested a moment. Aletheia wrung dust from her hair. It would need to be washed thoroughly. She took a long while to calm herself, but once she finally had she said, “Eris?”
“Yes?” Eris had begun looking through the premises for valuables.
“That was awesome.”
She frowned and turned to the girl. “What?”
“When you took that bugbear’s crossbow—that was amazing. And the way you got away from the ones coming after you! And it was really gross but—Disintegration is badass, like, how they didn’t even know before it was too late—”
She was giddy with excitement. She ran to Eris’ side.
“You have to teach it to me. And Blink. Please. Please?”
“Why is it you think saying ‘please’ makes me more likely to agree to anything?” Eris said.
“I saw you disappear and I didn’t know where you went, but then I remembered what spells you know, and then I was afraid for a second, and then I saw you behind us and you were concentrating really hard—” Eris glanced to Robur for help, but he stood awkwardly in the corner doing nothing, and he wouldn’t have been fast enough anyway to intervene before pounced for a hug. “You really are amazing.”
Eris cringed. But as they settled into the embrace she let her hand fall on the girl’s back, and she sighed. Aletheia was irritatingly intelligent and empathetic beyond her years, but she was still a child, although not for much longer. This was a small taste of what dealing with such a child was like.
What came next hurt her to say, but it was true. “You were also—adequate. You performed well with the sword and wielded magic effectively. ‘Tis a great improvement over when we last fought together. Rook would be proud.”
The girl’s golden eyes looked up. “Really?”
“Yes. Now must we keep touching? You are covered in ash.”
“Oh. Right. Sorry. I just—got excited.”
They took the ears off the bugbear leader as proof—he had been killed before Eris’ spell and thus spared disintegration—as well as his axe. Whatever else fit in their packs was also taken and returned to town, and when all was said and done they received close to five hundred drachmae for their day’s troubles. More than enough to live off on the road through winter.
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That night, as Eris settled into her bedroll under the chilly sky and watched the Aether snaking overhead, she felt her first true jab against the walls of her gut. It was small but unmistakable. She was tense as she awaited another, but thereafter followed only more fluttering, by then very familiar. Her feelings on this child became more and more complex by the passing day. She did not so much mind the reminder that he was alive within her anymore, but she would have preferred if he did such acrobatics in the day, rather than when she was trying to sleep.
Yet that was not her fate. Instead he kept her up. And in keeping her up, he was a reminder of how far they had come since Rytus. Aletheia was nearly a woman; she could fight well and use magic now. Eris now truly possessed the power she deluded herself into thinking she had at sixteen; there were few obstacles she could not overcome with magic. Robur—was mostly the same, it seemed, but at least he was taller.
Had they stumbled into the bugbears’ ambush when Eris was sixteen, Aletheia was twelve, Rook was eighteen, and they had in tow a useless halfling, elf, and barbarian savage behind them, they would almost certainly have been killed. Now it was a minor skirmish. Thirty bugbears—Eris exterminated them easily. She was not even drained.
Such realities were hard not to notice. It was no surprise, of course, that one’s skill grew with age and time and practice. But she wondered where she would end up in another four years. In another ten. Twenty. A hundred, for she might well live that long. This chapter of her life drew near a close; she had escaped with many lessons, many new abilities and spells, and two friends. Would it prove the most important part of her life? Or was this a mere footnote? The beginning of a far longer story?
Eris would turn twenty at the year’s end. Her child would be born near the same time. Twenty years was a small sliver of life for any human. She could only imagine what the next twenty would bring, but being Eris, she found it hard to imagine anything other than utter greatness.
Which brought her back to the fluttering in her gut, which even after hours was yet to end. She groaned. “Go to sleep,” she whispered.
And then it stopped.
She was left stunned. It was surely a coincidence. Her heart sank. A kind of guilt flooded in through her arms. She realized, suddenly, that she did not mind the sensation overmuch, for it was a reminder that she was not alone. And thus loneliness did set in.
She touched her stomach and focused in on her Essence. She used Supernal Vision and looked within herself—Robur had taught it to her in their travels. She wasn’t certain why, she just needed…
But there he was. The heartbeat and the soul that reminded her so much of Rook. Still there. She did not need to worry.
Now here was a fate she never could have imagined for herself. Not only with child, but concerned for its survival. She did not understand what Rook had done to her. But regardless of what her and their child’s future would have in store, she assured herself that it was he and Rook that transformed this part of her life from what it likely deserved to be—a mere beginning, a dirty and dangerous childhood like her life in Katharos, hardly ever recollected—into something she would not, could not, ever forget.
Rook would haunt her forever. And their son…would be raised by Aletheia. But she did not intend to ever bear any child ever again, so at the very least she would carry with her this memory for the rest of her life, as her singular brush with motherhood, and she would perhaps even…
But then her body was still, and she was exhausted, and she fell asleep beneath the Aether.