Definitely could be going better, Reeve thought. “Hi, Mom, this isn’t a good time.” Reeve grasped her mother by the shoulders and began moving her to the side, unsure how, unarmed, she was going to fight the dwarf who was now rounding the bench but certain that having her mother between them would not improve the situation.
“I called Devon to get help,” Wanda said.
“Not now, there’s an angry—,” she spun on the fighter, “—wait, you called Devon?!” All other concerns left Reeve’s mind. “Devon and I haven’t been talking since she broke up with Millie!”
The fighter placed hands on hips. “This isn’t about Millie’s ASD, is it?”
“What?” Reeve stared at her mother, confused for a moment. “No! Of course not! Well, not directly. Millie did put all of Devon’s school notes in chronological order without asking not long ago.”
“That sounds helpful,” Wanda said.
“Yeah, but she put all of the notes in chronological order—biology, math, social studies—everything, all together in one big binder.”
“Oh,” Wanda said with a frown that did nothing for the fighter’s already unappealing looks.
“I’m still mad with Devon, because they were so cute together and nice to each other, most of the time, and…” The jagged tip of a broadsword floated into Reeve’s view. She reconsidered her situation and turned to the approaching dwarf. “Listen, Sir, I just need a second, and we’ll get this cleared up.”
The dwarf’s lip rose, revealing teeth gray like a dull blade.
“What happened to your teeth?” Wanda said, causing Reeve to wince mentally at the insult to the dwarf and kiss any chance of making peace with him goodbye. And then she winced physically as Wanda pulled down Reeve’s own lower lip to examine the gap. “Dr. Catanson won’t be—“
“Mom!” Reeve batted her mother’s hand away. “Dr. Catanson won’t be anything because he’s my orthodontist IRL, not in here. Now, quick, why didn’t you log us out, and what did Devon say? We’re about to be in a fight in the middle of a camp of elves who don’t like us,” Reeve swung her hand quickly behind her to wave toward the group of ambivalent elves, “mostly, and now would be a really good time to get out of here.”
“Oh, it wouldn’t let me call you—“
“—recall our party.”
“—and I didn’t speak with Devon, Mija. I left a message.”
“Devon always answers her phone,” Reeve said. “Even in class. She has a problem. It’s kind of a thing.”
The dwarf’s short, heavy strides almost had him to them.
“I called their house.”
“You called their…they have a landline? You left her a message on a landline? They never check those messages—it’s all spam.” Reeve turned toward the dwarf, who stopped a sword’s length from her. “Go ahead,” she said, “you might as well kill me now. It’ll save me the walk back to my cell.”
The dwarf took one hand from the grip of his blade and let the weapon fall back to rest flat on his shoulder. “You’re prisoners here?” He said.
“Yes?” Reeve said, figuring she had fifty-fifty odds on what’d work out better in this exchange, even though better might only be a quick, combat-free death instead of a more drawn-out combat-filled one.
“Why are you here?” The dwarf gestured around the armory. “You’ll never beat the army.”
“We just wanted to recover the weapons that were taken from us when we were brought here. Then we want to get out.”
The dwarf scratched the corner of one eye. “And this band of fools?”
“These are my par—oh.” Reeve saw that he was looking toward the elves. “They are, well, under my father’s sway.” She indicated the halfling still crouching by the workbench.
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“Walter,” her father said.
“Walter,” the dwarf said, as though the word was far too heavily salted. He looked at the fighter and fallen elf, then back to Reeve. “Helia pressed me into service more than a decade ago. For many years, I enjoyed the work. The tools and raw materials she brought me were beyond anything I’d’ve worked in a village smithy. But a decade has sated my thirst for building weapons I’ll never wield for orange-draped idiots bent on destruction. If’n you’re looking to leave this camp, we may have goals in common.”
“She won’t let you leave?”
He shook his head. “She’d rather see me dead than out of her hands, where I might fall in with those she may face on the field in days to come.”
Reeve nodded slowly, then extended her hand. “I’m Reeve.”
The dwarf grasped her forearm. Reeve reciprocated by grasping the dwarf’s forearm.
“I am Thomanji'yheri,” he said with a small bob of his head.
Reeve stared at him and then her shoulders sagged slightly. “Seriously?” She said.
Thomanji'yheri’s eyes narrowed and he stood taller, his fingers tightening slightly on his sword. “My father was—“
“No, no, don’t get me wrong,” Reeve said, “awesome name. Love it. But my parents are never, ever, going to get that right.”
Reeve looked at the fighter standing behind her and then at the crouching halfling, Thomanji'yheri’s cold gaze following hers. “The cowardly halfling and the unsightly human are your parents?”
“Really, come on, I’ll show you, let’s get it over with. Mom, Dad?”
Wanda stepped closer, and Walter pulled himself up by the bench and walked over to stand between Reeve and Wanda, glancing between Thomanji'yheri’s raised blade and Starling’s withdrawn group.
“Mom, Dad, I’d like to introduce you to…” Reeve squeezed Thomanji'yheri’s forearm slightly.
“Thomanji'yheri,” the dwarf said, bowing slightly, “son of Bhenanji’yheri.”
“Ohmagod,” Reeve said.
“Delighted!” Walter said, reaching up to pat Thomanji'yheri’s arm where it still lay against Reeve’s. “Now, should we call you Tom? Or Jerry?”
Thomanji'yheri looked, confused, between Walter and Reeve.
“And you’ve already met me,” Walter said, “gesturing to himself with a tiny thumb, “Walter. And this is my better,” he chuckled, “bigger half…”
“Wanda,” the fighter said in a deep voice. “I love your parents’ ice cream. De ensueño.”
More confused, Thomanji'yheri looked back to Reeve.
“The sooner we all get out of here,” she said, “the sooner you can stop interacting with them.” No such luck for me, she thought. “You said you’d been working for Helia for more than a decade?” The two released their grips on each other’s forearms.
“Aye,” Thomanji'yheri said.
Reeve looked around the armory, and the thousands of weapons—years of the dwarf’s life—which spoke to the duration of Helia’s campaign, first against the ice-orcs and, more recently, in service of toppling an empire so that another could rise.
“Viv must have rewritten much of the backstory of this world at the moment the new AIs were created,” she said to herself.
“I thought Devon’s mother’s name is Veronica,” the fighter said, concern in her voice. “I called her Veronica in my message.”
“Mom,” Reeve said, turning and grasping her mother’s calloused hand in her own, “there is no chance anyone is ever going to hear that message. So don’t sweat it. Why don’t you stick around in here for a while?” Reeve patted her mother’s chest, which was obviously well-muscled beneath the cheap armor. “You can probably do more for us in here right now than out there.” Reeve looked over the painfully unattractive avatar. “You just use a quick generic fighter build?”
“I’m getting much better at making these things rápidamente,” Wanda said, pivoting on one toe as she looked down the side of her fighter, appraising its physique.
I will celebrate my parent’s victories, however small, Reeve recited in her head. She turned away from the preening fighter and pulled back her cowl to make it easier to focus on her conversation with Thomanji'yheri. “We have two more, half-elves back in our cell.”
“And a honey badger,” an insistent halfling voice added from behind her.
“And a honey badger. Hopefully, an alive honey badger.” Reeve took a moment to collect herself. “We need to get our weapons, which were taken from us, go back and find the rest of our party, and then get out of here without the camp realizing and turning on us.”
“The apiary,” Walter said from behind her.
“And,” Reeve said to Thomanji'yheri with a pained expression, “my father would like to make a stop at the apiary.”
Thomanji'yheri frowned and looked to be about to ask a question. Feeling bone-tired, Reeve shook her head, and he held his tongue.
“Do you need to gather your things?” Reeve said.
“Everything of value to me is here,” Thomanji'yheri said, “I’ll have it gathered in a trice.”
“What should we do with them?” Reeve said, tilting her head toward the group of elves, who were slowly drifting back toward Walter now that Thomanji'yheri was in a less threatening stance.
“You say they are under the halfling’s thrall?”
Reeve glanced at her father, considering the nature of his ‘thrall,’ and said, “Uh-huh.”
“Then we keep them close, lest they regain their senses or unintentionally alert others.” The dwarf gestured down the nearest aisle of weapons. “At the back of the armory, there is a storage room, which also has an entry from the apiary. I will need to move some crates, but we can enter the apiary thereby, without need of traveling the more heavily trafficked passage that brought you here."
“OK,” Reeve said. “You’ll get your stuff?”
“Aye.” Thomanji'yheri walked toward his bench.
“And where are our weapons?” Reeve said.
“Down the aisle so,” the dwarf pointed, “in the locker just beyond the case of intelligent items.”
“Intelligent items?” Reeve said quietly to herself, starting for the aisle. “Dad, this way.”