Chapter Thirty-Eight

Camp took several hours to reach, and you know, for the life of me, no amount of magic could keep exhaustion at bay. The camp itself was asleep, except for one thing.

Dwarguy’s mech was walking in a slow circle around the camp. “That’s… some security.” I acknowledged.

Loysa snorted, “Yeah. Dwarguy through and through. It can’t fight on its own, but nothing less than an ancient vampire, dragon, or a very powerful werebeast will attack a mech. So he, of course, can sleep, and so can we.” She pointed to the lump of dwarf lying on a bedroll and sounding very much like he was sawing logs. Tess was close by, and in between them sat a small pit with burning embers casting up a glow that was just barely visible above the hole. “He even digs pits like he used to. One pace across in every direction, almost perfect symmetry.”

She sounded almost wistful. “And it looks like he even laid out your bedroll. Good of him.” She pointed to a bedroll on the far side of the embers from where we stood.

“Where’s yours?” I asked.

Loysa pointed to an unrolled set nearby. “There’s no way he’d prepare mine, old grudges… and just ones at that.” She muttered and went to her bedroll. “At least he got me one.” She murmured as she undid the knot on the brown wrapped up fabric.

“So… he said it was your fault, what happened to him, I mean. Can I ask, if I can’t, that’s okay…” I wasn’t sure what to say, I was anxious of course, how do you ask somebody how they crippled somebody else?

Loysa didn’t look my way, her fingers just kept working the knot to loosen it.

For a moment I didn’t think she’d tell me, but finally she said, “Fine, you’re right, she should know.”

She exhaled heavily and said, “About ten years ago or so, Dwarguy and I were in the same party, Sami was our leader back then. You don’t see a lot of gnomes leading parties, they’re so short that very few of them even make good adventurers unless they have some other rare skill. But she was the best. A Full Gear ranked adventurer and our glorious leader, even though we had someone who actually could hold the line beside Dwarguy Davaran. Our fourth member and another Fullgear. Gilrain Goran. A human and a full fledged knight.”

She whistled, probably without intending to. “He was broader than a dwarf and seemed like he was as tall as a mountain, strong as one too. He used a bladed magigun.”

It was a strange way to say it, but I knew immediately what she meant. ‘A swordgun…’ I thought of the few representations of them from various games, and their historical counterparts, but she just went on while she pulled the first strand of brown twine free of the knot.

“Hair as red as those coals,” Loysa tilted her head toward the embers, “eyes as dark as coal, and if a festival could smile, his smile was what that would look like. We all came up together. More or less. Dwarguy was the last to join, but he had mech fighting and military experience first. So… we were a team. Sami called the shots and sniped from the rear, I hung back in support, Dwarguy and Gilrain at the fore. We were unstoppable. We took down werebadgers, werewolves, werelions, vampires, even a kraken.”

If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

She looked over at me, her wistful smile was already wavering as the happy part of the story was drawing to a close. “We were a team, a family. Gilrain and I were more than that though… we were lovers. I loved him more than anything, and the others, they used to tease us both about it. I was fine with it, and you know what? I thought it would go on forever. Then… to put it simple, we got tasked with putting down a group of ogres. The intel was bad, and we got pinned down, ambushed from on top of a mountain cliff while on a narrow road. There were a lot more than we thought. We might have been fine anyway, but they brought down the cliff onto us.”

Loysa was fidgeting anxiously with the second knot, her fingers were not nearly their dextrous selves, she was struggling with it before finally slapping the strand down.

I wasn’t sure what else to do, so I approached and crouched beside the bedroll with the tiny knots binding it tight against the traveling pack. I took a wild guess. [Unlock]. And held my hand over the little knot.

The twine began to loosen, wiggling as the tight bindings released their hold on one another.

“Dwarguy’s mech was crushed, and him in it. Gilrain was pinned inside his armor, the metal caved in against his chest, his lungs couldn’t expand, so he couldn’t breath. He was suffocating in the open air.” Loysa blinked back tears, “He couldn’t even scream. But Dwarguy sure could.”

She clenched her jaw and when the knots ceased to wiggle, she nodded at me and tugged the strips free so that the bedroll could be removed. “If they’d gotten Sami, we’d have all been dead, but they missed her. That little gnome is quick. She sniped the last of the ones up on the cliff… they’d lost some of their own when the cliff side broke away, so there weren’t many. Climbed up the rockface, and from out of reach, sniped the rest of the ogres.”

“So you won.” I said, and Loysa stood up with the bedroll in hand, laying it by the fire, she shook her head.

“Not really.” She answered, “I had to choose who to help first. I went for Gilrain. It wasn’t even a choice. I didn’t hesitate to abandon Dwarguy for him, even though as soon as I got to Gilrain I knew it was useless. Even with Kuduru shouting in my head that it was too late. Even though I could see at first glance that if suffocation didn’t kill him, his other injuries would.”

“Magic couldn’t fix it?” I asked, ‘That’s different.’ I thought with a shiver.

“You can’t heal an organ with the object still piercing it, and his own armor was bent inward in multiple places, it crippled his bones in multiple places. His helmet was even bent in against his head, to heal him I had to remove it, and I couldn’t. But I paid attention to him anyway, while Dwarguy screamed for my help.” Loysa rubbed her face with one hand…

“By the time I came to my senses when Sami slapped me across the face after she got down, she’d already gone and used a potion on his body to keep him from bleeding out. Magic can’t interfere with magic, for the same reason you’ll never be a mech pilot. So she saved his life, I couldn’t even save his limbs. I tourniqueted the stumps and we made it back to town, collected our reward and… I’m sure I don’t need to explain the rest. Sami retired, Dwarguy got new legs and went back to doing tournaments, and I just went from guild to guild where the Goddess told me to, cheat the cheaters and do… whatever else, and you know the rest.”

“And Gilrain?” I asked.

“The guild recovered his body and buried him.” Loysa replied and slid down into her bed roll.

“I’m… sorry.” I said, and Loysa rolled away from me and toward the dying embers, the mech’s heavy steps were like a steady beating drum, and the ground shook slightly whenever it passed nearby.

“It’s in the past.” Loysa answered me.

“Wait, what about doing magic?” I asked, she raised up a hand from on her side and gave a dismissive wave.

“You already did some. Get some sleep, you’re exhausted. It’ll take days to get there on foot anyway.” She emphasized that by giving a much exaggerated yawn, and I automatically yawned in return.

I went to my bedroll, laid down, and fell asleep facing her across the flame, unsure of what to think, or feel, or really… what to even do with what she said.

Perhaps there wasn’t anything for me to ‘do’ at all.

But at least I knew a little bit more about her, and that wasn’t nothing.