“We’ll mourn them, and remember them, but we need to go,” My voice was gentle.
Chanter: This is important. We will go soon. Please, just a little longer.
Abernathy reached up and scratched the falcon behind the head, sniffling. “Remember. Yes, we’ll remember them. We need to get back to Verdantbrook and let everyone know. The mentors… the guild… they won’t be forgotten.”
He stood, looking around — really looking — for the first time since the events of the night before.
“Everything’s on fire! Katarina, your leg? What happened to your leg? Oh my God!”
Katarina laughed. It was an impossible laugh. In spite of everything that had happened, she laughed.
She leaned against me, her arm over my shoulder, and we began walking. The kitsiho ran just ahead of us. Abernathy kept pace, sniffling but no longer in a stupor.
We jogged down the path, back the way we had come. The fire continued to spread, faster through the grassy plains but stronger in the forest. The two sides seemed to feed off one another.
Pillars of smoke rose ahead. The fire was spreading faster than we could jog, but the forest ended a little further up on our left.
The trail opened onto a wide expanse of grassland. The grass was waist high and still posed a danger. I was getting nervous about the thickening smoke when the wind shifted and began blowing back toward the forest.
We emerged from the smoke, coughing and breathing in beautiful, clean air.
“We need to keep going,” the kitsiho turned and looked over its shoulder as it trotted along the trail, “the wind is fickle and may turn on us.”
“Fickle, I’ll show you fickle,” Katarina mumbled under her breath.
The wind didn’t change directions and my tension eased as the distance between us and the — now massive — fire grew. The horizon behind us was dark with a wide swath of smoke that stretched far in both directions.
Katarina was a comfortable weight against my side. She whispered something as we jogged, making herself lighter.
“Did you do something to make the wind blow the other way earlier?” I asked.
She smiled, I noticed how close together our faces were.
“Not directly, no, but the wind is not our enemy.”
I pulled up the map. We had traveled quite far from the way-station. Madame and her remaining crewman must have departed soon after the attack for so much distance to have been covered with that slow cart. I pulled up the clock.
3:32 PM
We had been jogging for nearly forty-five minutes already?
It was no surprise that we had ended up so far from the waystation, the day was mostly gone.
I looked at how far we had to go — much of the map between was blank because I had been unconscious or locked away — and had some doubts about making it back to the waystation before night fell.
“I don’t think we are going to make it before night.”
“Wait, wait please.” Abernathy squealed. I stopped turning to look at him. I noticed he was still in his underwear.
“Oh, Abe, here, take your stuff.” I initiated the trade and returned his belongings. His equipment flashed as he equipped it.
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“Thanks, I didn’t even think to ask until now… but I should be able to help with moving faster. One second.”
He sat down, manipulating something we couldn’t see from within his inventory. He pulled a wand, a flattened band of iron, several sets of springs, and an iron rod a little over a foot long. He also pulled out a pair of goggles that reminded me of Gindledorf.
“You might want to look away.” Bright sparks flew from the metals as he began welding with the wand.
“What is he doing?” Katarina asked.
“I… don’t know,” I replied.
Lesh flitted from Abernathy’s shoulder when he started welding the metal, flying over to stand next to the kitsiho.
“Will you join me on a hunt? I hunger, and you should eat,” the kitsiho said.
Lesh chirped a few times. The sounds were sad, melodic.
Lesh took flight and the kitsiho followed, his two sets of wings spreading wide and pumping as he gracefully leapt into the air. The pair soared off over the plains.
Abernathy finished his welds and returned everything to his inventory. He continued manipulating some menu we couldn’t see within his inventory for another minute, then grinned broadly.
It warmed my heart to see him smile again, after everything that had happened.
“Holy shit,” Katarina breathed as Abernathy pulled what he had been tinkering from his inventory.
A series of leather straps affixed to the top of the artificial leg. It was not leg shaped. He bent the long, flat band of iron into a half circle and had welded the iron cylinder and a series of springs together.
The iron cylinder attached to a padded leather cup, then the flat iron band was affixed about a third of the way down the cylinder. Another, smaller, flat band of iron was welded at the base of the half circle. Springs were affixed to the interior of the device.
“I can make this much better at a work bench, but it should be good enough to get us back to town. I need to get the exact fit right, do you mind?” He approached, holding out the leg.
“Do I mind? Abe this is amazing! Give me that!” She took the artificial leg. She looked around at the two of us. “Uh, Chanter, do you mind… maybe playing that invisible song or something?”
I blinked. “Um, sure.” I stepped back, pulled my lute around, and started playing, wrapping us in a dome of silent sound.
“Ah, it needs some minor adjustments,” Abernathy muttered.
I looked around for any signs of danger, trying to discern why Katarina had wanted me to play. Nothing stood out to me amidst the rolling hills of tall grass. I missed a few notes and redoubled my concentration on the performance, closing my eyes.
“I’m going to add a bit more padding here as well.” Abernathy said.
“How do you make these changes to items in your inventory?” Katarina asked.
“It’s a class skill. I can do simple tailoring and other basic crafting from within my inventory. Here, does this fit better?”
“Wow, yes! It is so snug! Oh, maybe a little too tight.”
“Okay, here let me see it again. Alright how about now?”
“It feels good, not too tight or too loose.”
“Want to try standing on it?”
I heard a slight creaking of springs and looked over. Katarina stood, shifting her balance to reorient herself with the new appendage.
She looked at me for a second before her eyes darted down and away, then back to Abernathy.
“This is incredible!” she laughed, bouncing on the limb experimentally. She bounced progressively higher, until she was leaping five feet up.
She landed, rolled, stumbled a bit, then got to her feet and sprinted away. A swift rhythm of thump, squeak, thump, squeak sounded as she ran.
Katarina ran into the horizon, turned and ran back. She was breathing, but not nearly as heavily as I would have been had I just sprinted like that.
“I can do something about that squeaking,” Abernathy bent over and applied oil to the leg. “It’s not perfect but do you think it will do?”
“Are you kidding me?” Katarina asked, hopping from one foot to the other, “this is amazing!”
We continued down the trail, moving at a considerably faster pace than before. With her new leg, we were the ones holding Katarina back.
We ran until Abernathy called out for a rest. I performed Radiant Winds, restoring our vitality. We ran more, repeating the cycle for the remainder of the day.
An hour after we started running, the kitsiho returned, alone. He glided alongside us.
“Welcome back!” I called. “Where’s Lesh?”
“The death of his bonded companion is taking a harder toll on him as time progresses. He has flown ahead. Whether to the waystation, or the town, I know not.”
Corpses littered the waystation. The two had not bothered cleaning or burying. It looked like they had looted everything they could from our friends, stolen the cart, and fled.
Carrion feasted on the bodies of the scaled wolves. A variety, both winged and earthbound. They all fled into the sky and tall grass at our arrival.
We had made excellent time, at least an hour of daylight remained. The next hour was difficult.
Abernathy froze at the sight of the corpses. Katarina and I helped him into the water pumping building and set him to preparing dinner. He relaxed once behind the closed door and we got to work.
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