Suggested Listening

"We can't tell you." Elruin spoke out of turn, fearing that Cali might say something dangerous. "What if Claron has a way to hear through his magic?"

The king and queen were less concerned with the possibility of the magic being intercepted than with the potential of spies, but they kept their thoughts to themselves. The fact was that the child said nothing they had not already considered.

"My apologies, my queen, Elruin is young, and has no talent for indirect deception." Calenda, however, did speak. "Ell, we all recognized the risk, the plan was for me to provide a series of half truths and whole deceptions, in the hopes of sending Claron on some fruitless chase through the wilderness while we pursued our true goals. For example, I might have fed them a story of a hidden monastery with the other Eye of Enge. Claron has one, and no doubt would stop at nothing if he knew where to find the second."

The queen nodded, a dainty tilt of the head that hid all of her emotions. "Perhaps it is better this way. The pretender appears to have skill in the courtly process, and knows the lies you choose can reveal a great deal about your plans. Of note, the Eye of Enge still sits upon its Pedestal. Now I believe we would be best served ending our conversation here."

"You are most wise, my queen." Calenda, who still had her head down, bowed even further. She kept her head down until she felt the ripple of energies from the ancient artifact release their hold on the area, and the dryad energies washed it all away. Now they stood once again in the presence of the dwarven and silmid leaders.

Suggested Listening

"I'm sorry," Elruin said.

"Don't worry about it, Queen Laris was right, there's no way Claron would have been fooled anyway." Cali hoped her smile was reassuring. "This way, he won't be able to guess what we were saying by what wasn't said. All he could learn, now, is that you made it somewhere safe. I would almost advocate we remain here, where it's safe, but for the stuff that the queen didn't say."

"I don't know this court garbage, but I read a little between the lines," Lemia said. "It has to do with that 'Second Eye of Enge' myth, right? Wait, it's not the myth, is it? There really are two? I suppose it makes sense, eyes tend to come in pairs."

"They come in a trio, in this case," Cali said. "Which is where the icon representing Enge comes from. There is no official doctrine as to whether the so-called 'Eye of Enge' artifact is really one of Enge's lost eyes. It is, however, an artifact blessed by our emperor, and one believed to have a long lost twin."

"Does your queen know 'ere's a second arti'act?" A young looking silmid asked. If she was in this group, she was an elder and thus quite old in spite of her youthful appearance.

"I'm uncertain, but she must be under significant political stress at the moment," Cali said. "She never called him Claron, just 'the pretender'. If I had to guess, it is because Lord Claron is King Velan's son. I'm sure it pains both of them in their own way."

Lemia now recognize that the conversation was never for their benefit, but for the silmid elders. "Wait, does this mean the other Eye might not have a requirement that the wielder be 'Chosen'?" While the Eye of Enge was far from alone in being enchanted to serve only a select few, there were many artifacts with no such security measure.

"That, and so much more!" Cali looked at all the silmid; they had their own traditions and practices, but they still worshiped the ancestral god which protected their homes and was their homes. "It means Claron knows he's not Chosen! He knows he can't take the true artifact, or it would destroy him as it destroys all pretenders. He could at any time walk up to Engewal, request the right to touch the artifact, and if he was truly Chosen, it would acknowledge him, and all the kings of Engeval would be his to rightfully command by Enge's own law. What purpose would his barbaric war serve if the empire was already his by divine will?"

Some of the silmid and dwarves began to speak amongst themselves, in their own language.

Calenda tried to listen as the debate grew more divisive and chaotic. "We should leave." She stepped toward the exit tunnel, and the long walk up. "The longer we stand here, the more they remember how they feel about outsiders."

Lemia and Elruin deferred to their more experienced teammate. "I don't speak silmid, but even I could tell that it's getting unpleasant. What happened?"

"I can only speak a few words," Cali said. "The word 'liars' came up more than once. I think some of it was because we we hid our identities. More was their general distrust of outsiders, however. Something about how we ran off and came back with more dead men's treasures. The usual 'humans are unthinking war machines who only come to us when they need us' rhetoric. What it comes down to is that they don't trust us, and our actions didn't contradict their prejudices."

"Then, what, if we stayed here and helped them out, they'd be more inclined to help in the war against Claron?" Lemia asked. "And then they have the nerve to say we're the ones who don't care unless we need something from them?"

"But if we stayed here, then those bad men would have been able to do awful things to those poor people, and the puppies," Elruin said. "We did the right thing!"

"We did a good thing." Calenda put her hand on Elruin's shoulder, to comfort them both. "But not necessarily the smart thing. On the other hand, the silmid have little choice but to get involved to some extent, just not as enthusiastically as hoped. And we did profit from destroying the bandits, even made some allies that Claron would never expect."

"Maybe it's better if we don't work too closely with the silmid, anyway," Lemia said. "We're different than them, perhaps even incompatible. I have yet to see any silmid playing with dollies, you know."

"You're right," Elruin said. She was still a little sad that they couldn't have the silmid helping them, but not if it meant she'd have to destroy Mister Clackybones again. She would never let another of her wonderful horsies die again.

"Now, let's go plan our trip. If we leave the carts behind, take only what we need, and avoid distractions, we can make a hundred miles a day with a hard march. How far are we from the well?"

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"I can't speak for weather, but it's easy terrain. Even if we have to be careful not to get seen. No more than three days," Lemia said. Once again, Cali was lying, and so was Lemia. Their target took them almost straight up a mountain, and with the benefits of sarite and undead labor, they could travel far more than a hundred miles in a day.

"Good, I'm meeting up with Katek, she's buying anti-poison and acid shards for you and Elruin and stocking up on food. I want you to pick whomever of our refugees seems most trustworthy to look after our equipment. Hire a few of them, we should only keep the useful hardware, let them have the clothes and other less useful stuff. Let's see if we can't get rid of the excess animals and carts, give them away to the merchant caravans if we have to, it's better than paying to feed animals we can't use. I want out of here by tonight."

"Great." Lemia hated traveling at night, but she reminded herself that the beasts of the wilderness were just as happy to hunt during the day. A thought which did nothing to improve her opinion.

By the time Lemia arrived at the entrance where the refugees remained, she found a handful of other human merchants were eying their camp and the people still there. She took a breath, reminded herself that they were not in human lands, then walked toward the men. She would pretend it was like talking with silmid.

As it turned out, she needn't have worried, when Mato stepped away from the group to greet her, smiling for the first time since they'd met. "Lia!" Mato then gestured at the men. "These are my cousins!"

This was better news than the alternative that they'd somehow broken a law or offended someone. "Good. I'm glad for you." To her surprise, Lemia found she was speaking sincerely. Mato had been a great deal of help, in spite of the misery she'd been through. "Say, does that mean they can help us?"

Mato glanced back at her family. "Uh, first, can I ask a question? I know you said you were mercenaries before, why did you risk your lives for us?"

"Truth told, we didn't," Lemia said. "Our clients lost family to the bandits, we were paid to take blood for blood, nothing more or less. We didn't realize there were living prisoners until the battle was over."

"Oh," Mato looked back. "Uncle Nel said that was probably it, but I guess I was expecting something a little more romantic. Like, our families came together to hire heroes to save us."

"Sorry, as far as I know that only happens in fairytales," Lemia said. In half of those fairytales, the captives were found dead. "But on the off chance you find a bunch of families who want to chip in to get a rescue done, be sure and let us know." Lemia wasn't certain how the rest of the team would feel about the mercenary deception, but it was the best lie she could come up with, and it was true from a certain point of view.

"Don't take it too hard, Matty, such is the way of the world." The eldest, and thus presumable leader, of the men came forward. He was in good health, though his hair had grayed enough that he was probably the father of the other men. "But their actions were more heroic than most, if they chose to bring you to safety without being hired to do so. I'm sure they weren't expecting to have to guard you from the wilderness for the whole trip. Managing caravans is difficult enough when it's full of trained workers rather than traumatized children. And then to give you the goods the bandits stole, instead of keeping it for themselves. "

Lemia bit her tongue. "We got what we came for, and more." They did get sarite and magical equipment, after all. "Why compound suffering with suffering? Well, aside the bandits, may they be forgotten."

He then addressed Lemia directly. "You have my undying gratitude, not just for finding my cousin and removing the bandits from the road, but for restoring an old man's faith in humanity. The world is made better by your efforts."

"If you truly mean that, then we could use your help," Lemia said. "Our team likes to travel light, and we have little need for most of these supplies. If you could take them off our hands, that would be wonderful. Don't worry, we're not looking to profiteer, but you will have to take the people we rescued home. We don't have the time or resources to get these people back to human lands, and you do."

The older gentleman gave his cousin a meaningful look, and did some calculations in his head. The cost of the extra animals would be a little steep, but decent quality clothing was hard to find and easy to sell, so he would still do better than breaking even. In addition, it wouldn't hurt to have extra wagons around, just in case. Not useful enough to pay for, but not a burden either. In fact, he could ease the burden on himself by calling in a favor or two with the other traders coming through. Each had their own routes to the more civilized corners of the world, which could be closer to these kids' homes.

"I'd be happy to do my part," he said.

"My team will be glad to hear it."

Later on, Cali smirked at her. "Now we're your team, huh?"

"Hey, I got the job done, didn't I?" Lemia crossed her arms. "And whose team do you think this is? And don't say yours, just because you're the one who knows how the military side of things are run."

"The military. The political. The religious." Lemia took her thumb and started placing fingers on it as she listed. "The economic."

"And I handle all our alchemy, or did you forget your new gloves?" Gloves which were left outside the gates, buried with a small army that dug their own mass grave. "Besides, I'm the one who located our next mission objective."

"Yeah, but we voted to go to the one you didn't want," Cali said. "By that argument, Scratch is the leader."

"Can I be the leader?" Elrun asked. "I promise to give you lots of hugs and let you play with my dollies whenever you like."

"She does represent most of the team's firepower," Cali said.

"Sure, why not?" Lemia said. "The twelve year old is now in charge. Makes about as much sense as everything else we do, and you are more than half of our firepower."

"Thank you, I shall endeavor to lead you to the best of my ability." Elruin said with the seriousness that only a child could muster.

"Live up to that promise, and you're already better than half my commanding officers." Cali ruffled Elruin's hair. "Now go to bed. We'll be heading out early, and part of being a good commander is getting enough sleep."

Elruin beamed up at her. "Okay!" She gave Cali a hug, then crawled into the nest to take a nap.

"You've been a big sister for a few months, and already you're better at manipulating small children into doing as they're told than most parents are by the time their kids are her age."

Suggested Listening (Warning, this one's rather unpleasant)

The sun was still below the horizon, though perhaps that was because the horizon was well over their heads. "And we've arrived at the bleeding anus of the world!" Scratch announced, as if he was a tour guide.

"Should we make the corpses start wiping?" Lemia asked. Aside a distinct lack of vegetation, she saw nothing special in about this place. More to the point, she felt nothing special, which was rather the opposite of her expectations when promised a well of exotic magic unlike any she had ever experienced before.

Clackybones slowed to a stop, responding to Elruin's trembling. "Get out." A quiet, pleading whisper. "Get out!" She put her hands over her ears in a vain attempt to block the discordant, hateful, unacceptable song tearing through her mind. "Get out!" She screamed at the offending distortion, cried out with the power of Requiem, and drove the twisted music back with a violent force of will that staggered Calenda and left the mindless undead crumpled to the ground.

"Knew you'd feel it first," Scratch said.

"Merat!" Lemia ran to Elruin, but was driven back by the tornado of necromancy trying to drive back an unseen foe.

Ketak, too, was forced to admit she could not safely approach the chaotic negation magic. Perhaps long enough to kill the child necromancer and shut off the mage's power, but not enough to rescue the girl.

Elruin's heart hammered in her chest, every fear she'd ever known amplified by a thousand lifetimes crushed down on her from all sides. Her magic, her mind, her soul, nothing but a fragile egg crushed not by a careless girl's slippery fingers, but by the power of a world that sought nothing more than its destruction. Keep singing. Nothing else matters. Keep singing. Elruin mumbled her song, a frantic defense against the wrongness of this terrible, horrific place.

Then the others began to recognize the horror, as they gazed over the precipice of reality, and knew that what lay on the other side was a cloying emptiness that threatened to peel away their souls.

"This is Void magic?" Lemia closed her eyes, desperate to find pattern in the emptiness. She found nothing, but Elruin struggling to drive it back, to construct a reality around herself. Lemia reached out, grabbed the notes and bent them, reinforced the necromancer's instinctive magic with pattern and law. Ketak contribute as well, warmth and heat, interactions between interactions, a fundamental 'atmosphere' for them in the astral emptiness.

Calenda was last to recover. Lacking a true connection to the flesh, her experience was different and alien to the others. In some ways pleasant, and that enjoyability allowed her to be drawn deeper than the others before Elruin's cries drew her back. She granted motion to the pattern, allowed it to dance within its own song. A floor to stand on.

Soon, far sooner than they had expected, they built their shell of stability against the maw.

"Not bad," Scratch said. "Most of the time, I have to drag everyone out one at a time, so they can recover and do it on the second try. Also change their pants."

"You knew this would happen." Lemia glared at the floating creature, the only one of them which hadn't contributed to the shield, and hadn't needed to.

"There will be plenty of time for recriminations later," Scratch said. "For now, you've awoken one of the inhabitants."

The air shook, crack, broke as if it was a pane of glass. Stained glass, the whole of reality nothing but a fragile colored portrait, hiding an unknowable vastness behind it. A long, amorphous pallid limb slid through broken window. Its eyes, all eight of them, looked in every direction as if unable to comprehend their world any more than they could recognize where it came from.

"Ooh, and a thaumivore on the first try. Magic's worse than useless against them. They'll suck it right up and be that much stronger for it."

Another tendril slid out, then a third, until it plopped out on the ground, a writhing ball of giant white worms and eyes. Now, the countless eyes began to focus on the one other anomaly in this broken place: them.