Chapter Forty-Seven

Leaving the mountain proved easier than going in…save for the fact that magma was still flowing out front. ‘That’ we had to go around and off the path to avoid, and even so the heat was incredible. “It’s a good thing they didn’t inspect ‘how’ we destroyed their golems.” I said and laughed nervously while rubbing the back of my head before clambering over a rock.

“That’s true…but how did you know my spell would,” Tes’alay looked back at the flowing river of fiery doom she’d inadvertently created, “do something like that?”

“I didn’t.” I said, “I just noticed that your magic seems to be a worse version of whatever you’re trying to actually do, and it seems to kind of sort of do what you intend anyway, so I took a shot.” I explained and gave her a big, appreciative smile.

“Are ye insane?!” Dwarguy gasped. “What if the wee lass’d caused a quake that brought the mountain down?”

“I called it a ‘shot’ didn’t I?” I asked.

Loysa’s face was pale, “That was incredibly reckless…”

“I know. But it seemed like a good idea at the time, I was counting on the sheer perversity of this world, it seems to frustrate expectations…so what else could I do? Did you have a plan?” I asked. I was feeling a little bit defensive, and maybe that slipped out because Loysa was quiet.

“No.” She finally acknowledged. And then she added, “It did work though… and that’s no small thing. But there was something more reckless.” She said and as we broke back onto what passed for a road again.

“What was that?” I asked.

She sucked in a deep breath and after looking down at the ground, she pinched the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger. “Did you negotiate with the dwarves for how many masks per month? Did you negotiate an exact price for the golem? Did you negotiate for a share of the casino profits? Or any of the damages?”

“No… the document said arbitration would be decided by the court…” I said and a sinking feeling came over me.

All three of them groaned at once.

“Whose courts?!” Loysa exclaimed.

“Mother f-” I stopped myself and slumped.

“Right.” She said, “These are dwarves. Dwarguy, tell her.” Loysa said, clearly exasperated. “I swear, I could have gambled…okay, cheated… thank you divine playing card… my way to a better deal if you’d just told me what you were going to haggle out in the first place. How are you so bad at this?!”

Dwarguy cut off her rant and put his hand on my bicep, “Lass, we negotiate hard, real hard. Aye you c’n trust a dwarf to keep to the contract, but if’n ye don’t nail down numbers, then they’ll pick the numbers an ye will have to go to court to argue em down. Right easy when ye live there, but we don’t live in Undercity. An even if ye do, well that’n on your team’ll be on their shait list till the last of em rot away again.”

“So, you negotiated for me to make more of what I made for Yorgy, but for them so they rot faster… that’s fine. I can do that, how many?” She asked.

“Um, they didn’t say, I just kind of assumed for the whole population…all the undead?” I guessed.

Tes’alay paled. “If I have the materials, I can make one or two of those in a day. But there’s a hundred thousand or so undead in there…”

“Can we outsource it? Maybe have a factory make them?” I asked.

“Yes…” Tes’alay said tentatively, “It’s actually a set of very simple principles and even nonindustrial grade magitite will do. Any factory with the supply can make them, but the problem is paying for it to be done. I guess I should be glad I’m alive to do it…” She stopped in her tracks and asked, ‘Why’d you even do that?”

“Do what?” I asked.

“You put yourself at risk for me… dwarves aren’t angels, they’re not cruel in general, and they’re not demons, to make us twist in the winds of confusion… but they had every reason to take my life. They might have taken yours for being associated with me.” Tes’alay then turned an eye toward Loysa, “And you used your body as a shield to protect me… so did you, for that matter,” she added and pointed at Dwarguy, “are you all crazier than they say I am?”

“We’re a team. It’s what teams do. Or so I’ve always heard. I’ve never had a team before, so I’m just kind of… figuring all this out, but it seemed right. I brought you there, I’m responsible for making sure you leave alive.” After I answered, I caught sight of Loysa’s expression.

She was practically beaming with pride. Genre savviness served me well, I was right about this much, I done good. And it felt good to make her proud of me.

“What she said.” Dwarguy and Loysa said at once.

Dwarguy’s artificial legs both had very deep dents in them, were they real, I had no doubt they’d have been lost. He bent down and tapped the damaged metal, “Ah s’pose ah should be glad these’re fakies, but ye know, ah cannae really say I’m thrilled to lose a second pair of legs, they’ll be right clunky to walk on till ah can get em fixed or replaced.”

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He straightened up and rubbed his beard, “Although, it did nae hurt nearly as much this time.” He let out a loud, hearty laugh. ‘I wonder if dwarves can really experience trauma… if that happened to me, I’d be a nervous wreck for years, if not forever.’ Thinking of things like that, having left the city of the undead behind…and finding myself in trouble even while I found myself successful…again, I felt a wave of relief wash over me.

I barely caught Dwarguy out of the corner of my eye, he tilted his head sideways toward me while looking at Loysa, and my priestess was immediately at my side. “You did good in there. You should be proud. Even if you can’t negotiate for shit…” She cracked a smile, “We got in and out alive and with what we came for. Now it’s all right, everyone is fine, and it’s time to decompress. We'll camp at the base of the mountain, and you can go right to sleep.”

She didn’t exactly say ‘keep it together’ but I knew that was more or less what she meant, and I did my best.

The whole thing was just a blur, Tes’alay kept looking at us with frank disbelief in those beautiful, otherworldly eyes of hers. I know, I know, I said she was beautiful, maybe it was because I had a thing for elves in fantasy before coming to this world. But she really was on another level, and when her eyes were full of wonder, I couldn’t help but find her even more radiant than before.

That didn’t stop me from collapsing into my bedroll as soon as it was laid out though. Despite my collapse though, I didn’t sleep, not right away at least, or maybe I did, but I woke up. Tess tossed and turned, and I felt bad for her. Even back in my old world, the idea that somebody might risk themselves for someone else wasn’t foreign.

But for her it evidently seemed ‘alien’. But the whole team protected itself, it was probably the first time she experienced that, and it was leading to some uncomfortable thoughts.

I knew something about that. ‘I’ve been a big burden on Loysa since the start, even if she is proud of me now… I need to make sure to thank her properly as soon as possible.’

I might have done it that night, but as I lay on my back thinking about what to say… and that’s a lot harder than you might realize. I mean, she jumped on my back, ready to take shrapnel into her flesh to protect me. ‘Thanks’ just doesn’t seem adequate.

I didn’t get up though, because as I lay there pretending to sleep and trying to think of something, I overheard Loysa and Dwarguy talking. I really should stop eavesdropping…someday.

“You did real good with the foreign lass.” The gruff dwarf said and I heard the click of what was probably a leg disconnecting from the base.

“Thanks.” Loysa retorted, “She’ll be good at this eventually, if she doesn’t put herself in debt to the whole damn world.” She laughed, “Who knows, maybe that’s how she’ll get good, working herself out of debt?”

“Aye… aye…” Dwarguy answered and I heard the faint tapping of metal on metal, he was performing some maintenance on the damaged limb, making it somewhat more serviceable until we could find a place to repair it. Or…not? Maybe just doing something to do something while he talked.

“But ye know… I did nae expect yet to jump on their backs that way…” He finally said.

“I’m sorry.” Loysa threw the words out.

Dwarguy didn’t respond right away.

“For failing you the way I did, I mean. I let you down. I cost you your legs by trying to save Gilrain when he was beyond saving. I knew what I had to do. My own Goddess told me what to do. But I didn’t listen. I was wrong, and to make it worse, I never so much as apologized. So… there it is. I’m sorry for what I did do, and for what I didn’t. I screwed up, you paid the price, and if I could trade my legs for yours to make it right, I’d do that.” Loysa was honestly rambling in that, but she also meant every word.

I wondered if she even knew how to be insincere. Now that I thought about it, except for sarcasm, had she ever said anything she didn’t mean?

“He was my friend, ye know.” Dwarguy said after a while. “I got it, an if’n it’d been me wife’r lover or some such, I might’a made the same choice.” He acknowledged and I heard the ‘click’ of another leg being removed, “But ye know, come to it, I s’pose I might’a lost me legs today if I had nae lost em back then.” A big, gruff laugh echoed over the camp, “Listen, lass, ah won’t tell ye it’s alright, on account of it’s not.”

He let that statement hang between himself and Loysa for a moment, “But that also does nae mean I’m mad about it fer all time either. We all lost a lot that day, our friend, our team, my legs, an yer conscience been bleed’n fer all these years…an today, I did see ye jump on the backs ah them toothless greenhorns. It was kind of a relief, see’in the Loysa ah knew back then didn’t die with Gilrain Goran.”

“So, is that you telling me you’re accepting my apology?” Loysa asked.

Dwarguy snorted. “Humans, yer a melodramatic lot.” He smacked his legs with the hammer again and said, “Let’s just say ‘we’re alright’ and leave it at that.”

“I’m getting more than I hoped for, just with that.” Loysa said, and then snarkily addressed her Goddess, “Really? You can’t wait one day for an ‘I told you so?! Are all the other Gods as rude as you, if not, can I trade you in for a less smug model?!”

Dwarguy’s laughter and quiet repairs went on for a while, as did Loysa’s argument with her Goddess. But I was well asleep before either of those things stopped, so I didn’t know how it went.

Do you know that feeling when you’re close to the end of a journey? I drove across a continent once, from one end to the other, and there are certain points where it always seems to go either faster or slower. The start, it’s exciting, everything seems to go by fast. The middle, like those poor authors who struggle to get over the center of the novels they write (I don’t know how they do that) is always hard, you wonder, ‘how did I get this far, and how do I get to the end?’ and you have no answers but to keep going.

Then you get close to the finish, and it’s like the start of the journey again. A swift blur and exciting all over again.

We made it back to Steelven, dropped off the letter to Yorgim along with a sample fragment of the magitite ore, and caught the first airship to Hapralee, and I was now comfortable enough to sit closer to the outside of the long bench with fewer people between me and the edge.

I looked out over the side and watched the world pass by, I watched the mountain shrink into the distance, and I didn’t really even mind the press of people around me.

Before I knew it, Hapralee came into view. And it made my analogy of my coast to coast trip all the more accurate, because by Utu’s name… what a view of the ocean…