Welcome back gentle reader
Things are ramping up now, not many chapters left for this story. Hope you enjoy the ride.
Like the last, this is a chapter chock full of action and decisions so once again, I'm sorry to disappoint on the sex.
Once again the standard disclaimer, multiply ages by roughly two to get equivalent Earth ages. Everyone is a consenting adult.
-- Somewhen, Somewhere --
Darido sat on a crystal throne, watching with mounting frustration, as the caravan moved across the plains, carrying his captive chosen player along a path not wanted. Had he chosen wrong? It was a gamble working with the lizardfolk, their thinking was alien even to those like him. He could speak her language, even read her thoughts with ease. Comprehending them was another issue altogether. Bualdir had wanted something different of course, one of the dark races, vehemently opposing any human or elf candidates, pushing hard for a particular Orc champion she had in mind. Darido detested Orcs, only managing to get Bualdir to compromise on his choice of Kelek when Lashan, the only Orc among the Ascended, chose a human for himself. Orcs are useful tools but unreliable.
What to do about Kelek's situation? Her soul's ability to interrupt Comlain's conference with a hiss of displeasure was impressive, but he still could not decide on the best way to augment his player. His best course of action was to allow for a measure of the cooperation Comlain was proposing.
His contemplation was broken with the sound of shattering crystal. Darido looked up to see Bualdir herself walking towards him, her proximity to the nearby crystals was enough to create catastrophic failure from the smallest flaws. The crystalline structures leading up to his throne slowly broke in her wake. Darido sighed in annoyance, it did not look forward to the effort it would take to reset everything after this meeting.
"What is it now, I grow tired of your incessant bitching. Your goblin gambit nearly killed our own player."
Bualdir's mouth worked in exaggerated movements that did not match the words that originated in the air around them. "If you had fucking picked my champion, we would not be in this fucking mess, Vincent."
His answering roar shattered even more of his crystal throne room, "DO NOT DARE USE THAT NAME."
In a much calmer, conversational voice he continued, "You are the focus of Despair, you should be used to it by now." Darido laughed at his own jibe. Fuck her for getting under his skin like that.
"Fuck you, fuck Comlain, fuck that cunt Bora, fuck you all! I am done with this game and now I play by my own rules!" She turned to leave but stopped when the nothingness around Darido's throne room shook. Several cracks appeared in that gray nothingness. It was more a deformity in nothingness than an actual crack, but the crack analogy was the only one that came to Darido's mind. He stood to meet whatever attack was being unleashed when an impossibly large eyeball loomed before both of the Ascended. It swiveled around a few times, orienting itself before finding a resting point, focusing on the two figures before it.
"By the Power!" Darido cried an oath and pulsed raw Order at the distortion, causing the grayness to return with a baleful scream of agony that enveloped the two. Bualdir was curled in a fetal position, unable to do anything herself while so close to Darido's base of power.
A different voice, one seldom heard but instantly recognized by all the Ascended, filled the void left by the scream. "The rules are set, Mistress of Disorder, even you must obey. The Others await our failure."
Darido cringed himself as the strength and immensity of the Power pulsed over them and promptly vanished.
Bualdir slowly regained her standing position as Darido looked about his heavily damaged domain with a loud sigh. Every previously pristine crystal structure was nothing more than a webwork of cracks or piles of powder. He looked back to the goblin cowering before him, "You were saying?"
She flipped him off with both hands as she screamed in rage.
-- Chapter 12: Ruins of Valor City --
-- Second Tenday of Yantaen 813 AGR --
The difference between bad and worse is a lot bigger than the difference between good and better.
- Turtledove
Kelek was having a rough day, tenday, month, life. She hated her circumstances. She hated her imprisonment, she hated all the humans and others around her, she hated the wagon, but she didn't quite hate the ceaseless walking statue that followed behind her wagon. It's not name was Sift. Much like Kelek's own shortened name her captors used, the statue possessed a longer one Kelek's language had no words for. The tall male that acted as if he was in charge had followed through on what he said, which was a new thing for Kelek. It was bad enough these people put a male in charge, but maybe that is why he honored his words unlike every lying, conniving female chieftess she had ever met. After using the statue's words to inquire of her needs, he had returned with her feed bag. She could go for long periods without eating the food these people brought every day but she was not going to let them know that. Most of what they brought was burnt and disgusting, she threw that over the side of the wagon to pollute some other creature's poor palette. The things not burnt she stored away to allow it to mature to a tastier state; time alone was the best way to cook.
She talked more with the statue as the journey continued, learning much. Sift had lain dormant for countless phases of the moon and was missing all history of the world. It shocked Kelek when Sift possessed no knowledge of magic and Kelek spent many hours discussing magical theory and how her tribe functioned with it. It was satisfying to have someone listen to her without interruption, who asked intelligent questions, while not trying to prove her wrong. If everyone else she encountered acted more like Sift, maybe she wouldn't hate everything like she did.
Jebidiah was having a rough day. He had spent most of the morning, the midday meal, and a better part of the afternoon darting around the caravan, tracking down people he needed to talk to. That was surprisingly difficult even though there were 'only' around ninety mobile people left in the pack train. Most of those conversations had become debates, learning moments, or bouts of frustration. It was approaching time to stop and make camp for the evening, which left Jebidiah with his last self imposed task of the day, visiting with the wounded. He felt in his gut it had to be done. If he had found himself wounded fighting someone else's battles he would expect a visit and word of thanks. But there were a lot of wounded and while he rarely felt guilt or regret it bothered him so many suffered because of his decisions.
He had elected to erect his larger tent as an infirmary when camp was set, the larger tent made it easier for the healers to slowly bring everyone up to full strength. He only had one corpswoman and a couple of others with some healing ability which created a bottleneck on magical healing. He headed to his infirmary first after getting his own accommodations out of the way.
The wounded were lined up on both sides of the interior, it looked like the more serious on one side with the more ambulatory on the other. Some of those better off were sitting up and talking, bandages stuck various places or splints where needed. The worse off just lay and sometimes moaned or cried out in pain. There were more than a few with stumps where limbs had once been. He found Second Lieutenant Francis Featherton sitting at a small field desk in the center of the tent.
"Well met, Lieutenant. I'm sorry we gave you so much work."
The healer was so engrossed in her notes that his voice startled her into knocking over her inkwell. "Damns what else can go wrong." She muttered angrily as she tried to blot up what she could of the ink spilled across her page. "I should have you brought up on charges for interrupting..." the words died on her tongue as she turned to see the target of her ire.
"My Lord, forgive me." Flustered even more now, she wiped her inked hands on her apron, probably permanently ruining it, and managed to knock the inkwell completely off her desk, spilling the rest of the ink on the ground.
"There's no need to apologize to me, Lieutenant, that is what I came here to do. And now I need to doubly so. May I try to rectify this situation to the extent I can?"
"Just Francis will do, my Lord. The rank reminds me I am a soldier. And I'm not sure what you mean to rectify but you are more than free to do as you wish."
"This is just something I figured out because I have a really bad habit of dripping ink as I write." Jebidiah lifted up the book she was writing on, holding it so the blotted side was aimed down, drew upon the threads he needed and cast a simple cantrip that made the ink from the blotted sections of the paper drip onto the grass underneath, leaving the legible portions untouched.
Francis blinked in surprise, alternating looking at the now clean paper and Jebidiah several times. "My Lord! I have never seen the like!"
"I don't believe this cantrip is available to divine magic but any of the mages should be able to do it. Most ink is water based allowing it to be manipulated with Shape Water, so long as the ink is still wet. Not much to do for dry ink. I'm afraid your apron will have absorbed too much of the water by now."
"That is ingenious. Remarkable. I was told you were an Artificer, I did not realize you had a mage Talent. The apron will be fine, there is a cleaning ritual that restores them. There are worse things than ink that gets wiped on an apron," she said with a rueful smile. "I thank you for the repair work on my pages, but how may I help you, my Lord?" Francis asked, still quite nervous.
