Daphne and Runar walked in silence for a while. At first, this was because they were both eating breakfast. Preserved letter-fruit was delicious, but chewing it was hard work and left no space for talking. Like the rich carving on the tunnel walls, this was a bit of lore Daphne had missed in her chronicling of Euloban years before. The glow from their bottle-pendants was enough to illuminate the path before their feet, but for the most part, they were surrounded by darkness.
The walking itself was also becoming more arduous. After the first hour, the tunnel began sloping gradually upwards. Daphne remembered Runar’s words, back at that fateful prose-shaft, and realized they must have reached the mountain paths. Some sections were steeper than others, but the easy level ground was a thing of the past. Daphne barely had enough breath to keep pace, let alone make conversation.
Still, she wasn’t complaining. She’d left her heart open to Mark’s, which meant her own internal swirl would occasionally get a flare-spike from whatever unpleasant feeling was at the top of his current emotional cocktail. It was a lot, but she couldn’t bear the thought of closing that door.
Maybe he was aware of her. Maybe he could feel things from her in return. Maybe, somehow, she was helping him — sharing the emotional load, like she and Runar were already doing.
Regardless, Daphne had plenty to occupy her mind and heart as she walked along beside the griffin. The effects of the Phrase-gift also made it easy for her to sense that Runar was as content as she was to journey in silence. This word-crazy world had thrown a lot at them in the course of a single day. If they wanted any chance of staying conscious and sane through whatever came next, they needed some processing time, preferably word-free.
Eventually, though, Daphne found her own processing cycle kept returning to one particular point. Sensing Runar was in a place of reasonable openness, she voiced the thought.
“Runar, where are we going?”
“To my kin,” he replied, sounding surprised by the question. “To the Hall of Parables, in the ancestral home of the griffins.”
“But what are we going to do when we get there? How are we going to save Mark?”
“I do not know.” He spoke quietly, but confidently. She felt assurance flowing from him across their emotional link. “There are few of us left, as I have said. But we still have wise ones among our number, with many years of experience following the ancient ways. Thou and I shall take counsel with them. With their skills and insight, we can form a plan to aid thy Mark.”
She tried to take comfort in this. They were on their way to get help. From GRIFFINS. She was about to ‘take counsel’ with a whole tribe of her absolute favorite mythological creature, real and in the flesh and probably high-leveled. They were going to make a kickass plan to rescue her boyfriend.
As exciting as all of this was, it was also pretty nerve-wracking. Daphne had always struggled with unknowns, especially when the happiness of people she loved was at stake. Now, every time she thought about what was ahead, her internal monologue rapidly dissolved into an anxiety spiral.
That couldn’t be good for Mark. If he really could sense her through the emotional door she had left open, she didn’t want him to be receiving a constant stream of nervous feelings-vomit. She had to keep her spirits up, for his sake.
That meant distracting herself with less dramatic topics of conversation, including a few she’d been curious about anyway.
“Runar, what level are you?”
He didn’t answer for so long, she wondered if he had heard her. Finally, just as she was about to repeat the question, he spoke in the smallest voice he had yet used in her presence.
“Level 7.”
“What?” Too late, Daphne realized her surprise might be construed as insulting, and tried to pull it back. Even more too late, she remembered their emotional link made it very difficult to hide anything from Runar.
“Indeed,” he said morosely. “A legend, I am not.”
“You’re plenty legendary to me,” she said. “I mean, you and Mark took down a Devouring Wind!”
“A Windling. A mere child.”
“It was nasty!” she protested. “It put up quite a fight. Threw off word-chains like a raging bull. And you took it down!”
The griffin sighed. “That is how I achieved Level 7. When I entered that fray, I was a mere Level 5.”
“Even more impressive,” Daphne said stoutly. “You made such a big deal of me and Mark jumping into fights at low levels, but you were barely above us.”
“Exactly.” Runar actually covered his eyes with his wings, as if trying to hide from the embarrassment. “I have lived here my whole life. I am a Lorist, descended from Lorists, born to the ancient way. Thou had been in this world mere hours before I met thee, and thou were already nearing my level.”
“Barely,” she muttered, thinking of her own sorry status book.
Runar did not hear her. The griffin was on a self-castrating roll.
“It is almost too much to bear,” he groaned. “Two humans, visitors to Euloban, achieved more in a single day than I have in my whole feckless existence. How can I call myself a Lorist? What is Euloban trying to say?”
“Maybe you just haven’t had the opportunity,” Daphne suggested. “You have to do things to level up. Didn’t you say you’re not allowed to venture out much?”
“Thou hast hit it,” Runar grumbled. Daphne got a sense of deep frustration within the griffin, simmering across their emotional link. “The resistance is diminished, and my kin are afraid. The other young ones and I are held back, close to home.”
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Another curiosity point. “How old are you, Runar?”
“Old enough to do my part,” he replied curtly. “Over twenty years, by human measurement.”
“By human measurement?”
“Griffins age faster than humans, and live much longer,” he explained. “If I judge aright by thy appearance, we are of a similar age, though I hatched but five years ago.”
“You judge aright.”
Daphne felt herself smiling for the first time in… a while. It was pretty cool, being technically the same age as your griffin bond-friend. Eager to fulfill her bond-friend duties, she tried to think of ways to encourage him out of his leveling funk.
“Euloban’s been really stingy with me too,” she coaxed. “Mark was leveling twice as fast as me, and I have no clue why. I haven’t even gotten a skill yet. Maybe you and I are just super special.”
“Special?” Runar echoed.
“Sure. Maybe our potential is so huge, Euloban is really making us work for it. Then, when we hit a certain point, we’ll take off like a rocket ship.”
Daphne had a hard time believing any of this for herself, but she could absolutely believe it for Runar. Hopefully, her enthusiasm on his behalf would mask any lingering self-doubt trickling across their emotional link.
“Perhaps,” he said slowly. Then, as if playing a distraction game of his own, he switched tactics. “Hast thou checked thy book since the encounter with the Wordmage?”
“No need.” It was her turn to be curt. “I haven’t had a leveling blackout. And I didn’t do anything worth leveling, anyway.”
“Thou rushed into danger to save me,” the griffin pointed out. “And perhaps the leveling happened during thy sleep. It is the preferred way of Euloban, rather than a harsh moment of forced unconsciousness.”
Daphne really didn’t feel like opening her book. The last thing she needed right now was an official reminder of her own inadequacy. But Runar still seemed a bit fragile over his own leveling woes. The least she could do was humor him.
With a sigh, she released the Prism, leaving the magic pen icy and motionless in her right hand pocket. Then she pulled the status book out of her left pocket and flipped to the third page.
Scratch that. The fifth **page.
Page four contained a record of the Phrase-Gift, with a brief description. And page five…
“I leveled,” she said with all the emotion of a stunned zebra. “Twice.”
“Ha!” The griffin actually crowed a bit. “I told thee thy actions were worthy!”
“And I got a skill.” She held open the book so he could read:
Team Player
You abandoned the pursuit of personal fame to aid a fallen comrade. In this, you embody the true spirit of Euloban. This skill sharpens your awareness of your comrades’ needs and enhances your efforts to meet those needs, especially when sacrifice is involved.
“A skill worth attaining,” Runar said reverently. He gave her a small bow. “Well bestowed, well attained. Thank thee, comrade.”
“You’re welcome.” She was too confused to say anything else. She had done exactly nothing in that fight. No word-chains, no effective actions. She hadn’t helped Mark at all. And sacrifice? That had all been Mark. But Euloban had seen fit to make her a Level 5, with a skill to boot.
Her hand sought the cold Prism again. It might have been freezing, but at least it was solid.
Daphne couldn’t think about it. Any of it. She needed to keep talking. Rapidly shuffling through the many questions swirling in her muddled brain, she picked the one that seemed the most innocuous.
“You seemed really surprised to see a Phrase.”
“I had never heard of one visiting the Dalamelle of Clarity,” the griffin said. “In all the tales, it was the Dalamelle of Triunity where such a joining would occur.”
“It wasn’t that kind of surprise,” Daphne persisted. “You seemed shocked to see one at all.”
“I was. I had never seen a Phrase anywhere, except represented in art. Granted, my life has been rather sheltered.”
Runar paused. Apparently, this question was far from innocuous. Daphne got another sense of that frustration simmering just beneath the surface of her friend’s emotional landscape, always on the point of boiling but always kept under control.
Even as she sensed it, he pulled it back. Their emotional link was steady once more before he continued: “It is only in the last year that I have been permitted to venture into the tunnels. But no other scout has reported a sighting. Of course, a lone scout would not merit the appearance of a Phrase.”
“Why not?” Daphne asked.
“The Phrases only appear when they can impart their gift,” Runar explained. “They would not visit a solitary Lorist, with no Wordsmith or Reader to join.”
“So, how long has it been, do you think? Since the last joining of a party?”
“Not long.” Runar closed his eyes, and a dull, aching pain flowed through the link from the griffin’s heart to Daphne’s. “Four years, according to the records.”
Four years.
“But that occasion was also the last sighting of a Phrase in Euloban,” Runar went on. “My people believed the Phrases had departed, along with their gifts, when the Wordmaster defeated the resistance.”
He paused again. This time, a wave of bitterness flowed across their emotional link. Runar made no attempt in holding it back.
“We thought of the Phrases as fearful and weak as ourselves,” he said, the words riding the crest of that angry wave. “I am thankful the Phrases are more… adaptable than mortals.”
Daphne wanted to comfort the griffin, but she couldn’t concentrate. Even the bitter wave faded to the background as another thought drummed repeatedly against her consciousness.
Four years…
With a familiar chill, Daphne recalled Runar’s words from the Dalamelle of Triunity. Hyddrun’s death, and all that came with it, had been three years ago. The last Phrase-gift had been given a year before that.
Which meant…
She swallowed hard, forcing the next question out. “It was Hyddrun and Amelia, wasn’t it? They were the last joining.”
The griffin did not speak, but he didn’t need to. The sorrow seeping across their new link was answer enough.
“But… how?” she asked desperately. “If they were joined, wouldn’t he have sensed what she was feeling? How could she deceive him?”
“It is possible to do so,” he said heavily. “If one makes great effort, and has the power to control one’s emotions.”
Daphne stopped walking, placing a hand on Runar’s wing to make him stop too. Turning, she looked him straight in the eye.
“I am so sorry, Runar. About your father, and… everything,” Daphne said. She meant it.
He held her gaze for a moment. Then he pressed his forehead against hers, letting the grief flow between them.
She accepted it gladly, grateful for the chance to share his burden. But the longer they stood there, the more she felt the nightmare coming back. The horrible dream had ended just like this. Hyddrun and Amelia, brow to brow, the griffin unaware of the treachery brewing in the woman’s heart.
She didn’t want to tell Runar about the dream. She didn’t want to tell anyone. She didn’t want it to be real.
But it was. And whatever it might mean, she needed to share it with Runar. He deserved to know.
Daphne took a deep breath. “Runar, I —”
Something blunt and heavy crashed into the back of her head, knocking her to the ground.
Black spots exploded across her vision. She struggled to sit up, blinking through the spots to see what had attacked her.
In the dim light of Runar’s glowing bottle-pendants, she could just make out the vague shape of another griffin, looming out of the darkness in the tunnel ahead. As it stepped forward into the circle of light, she saw it was brandishing what looked like a club in one talon.
Then the griffin spoke, its voice female and fierce and strangely familiar.
“A traitor human! On the Lorist Way, unimpeded, bearing the under-waters around her treacherous neck!” The voice grew higher as the griffin spoke, strained with nerves and shrill with mounting anger. “Runar, how could thee?”
Daphne felt compelled to come to her friend’s defense. She prepared herself to make an eloquent argument, readying all her verbal powers to justify her presence in the sacred, secret space.
“Um,” Daphne began.
The female griffin gave a small shriek, as one might at the sight of a squashed insect beginning to wriggle back to life. She gave Daphne’s head another wallop with her club, sending the Wordsmith swiftly into the arms of unconsciousness.