The bed was warm and I wasn’t alone. Someone was cuddled up against me. I blinked, and gently rolled to find Eninald curled up with me.
I blinked. It had been an odd nightmare the night before, with him dying, but clearly that was all it had been. A dream. A passing fantasy. He was here, he was warm. Nothing bad had happened. I smiled and after a moment his eyes opened and he was smiling back at me.
“Good morning,” he said.
“Good morning,” I replied.
His smile grew wider, “Sleep well.”
I shook my head. “No. I had this nightmare.”
“Oh?” he said, his face growing tight with concern. “What happened?”
“Well… You, uh… died.”
He blinked and his smile turned soft and sad. “But Kara,” he said, his jaw lolling open and his cheeks hollowing out. “I did.”
Then he blinked again and his eyes fell forward, rotting away, and I screamed.
*************************************************************************************************
I awoke with a lurch in a bed I didn’t recognize, sweating. The room wasn’t rocking, we weren’t at sea, but it still felt like it was tossing and lurching all the same. Nausea welled and I nearly collapsed back over. I could still see Eninald’s face melting once again.
Once my body stopped shaking, I took a moment to wipe my face and rub my eyes, hoping to pull the image out of my memory, but had no luck. If anything, trying to get away form the memory, trying to not think about it, only made things worse.
“Don’t hear the Crimson Lark’s call.”
An old expression that Hisako Sensei was fond of. Crimson Larks were loud and persistent morning birds in the Wood, their calls often breaking concentration during meditation. If you wanted to successfully do your morning meditation, you needed to push the calls from your mind. However, telling yourself not to hear their call only resulted in the cries becoming all you could think of. So, instead, you focused on something other than the call and used that to push the sound aside.
So, I turned my attention elsewhere.
The sheets felt smooth to the touch in a way that I had never really felt before. There was a distraction inherent in feeling them on all of my body without the muffling of clothes to go with it, but it wasn’t entirely unpleasant. Just uncomfortable with how unfamiliar it was.
My heartbeat was irregular and rapid, but the more I moved my fingers along the sheets and felt the beat, the more even it became.
It was only once I was able to completely bring my mind to the sensations of my body that I could bring my attention to the present and the white ball of fluff that was in my left hand.
Even though I had gone to sleep clutching the ball, I was fairly certain it hadn’t been in hand when I woke up. Where it had been, I didn’t know. But it didn’t seem quite as relevant as the warmth I was feeling from the ball. It felt… familiar? Connected to the dream. To me. To Eninald?
I suppose that made sense. It had come from him after all.
“Eninald?” I asked plaintively, “Can you hear me? Do you understand me?”
The ball sat silently in my hand. I felt foolish for expecting it to respond. Still, the words poured out of me, unbidden.
“I didn’t mean for this to happen. I didn’t want to hurt you. It felt right, it felt natural. And for that you’re, you’re dead and I killed you.”
It was likely my imagination, but the ball felt almost warmer to the touch. And then my hand felt colder as a tear fell onto it.
Oh, I was crying.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know.” Tears were freely falling, and my words were interrupted by a rash of hiccuped sobs. The ball felt warm, comforting, but that only made it worse. Either I was imagining things, searching for solace to the point I was making it or the ball had an intent. A will. And that would have come from Eninald, meaning that Gherardi hadn’t lied and he was stuck in there, with me. Neither was appealing.
“Crimson Larks,” Rin suggested. But I didn’t want to think about something else. I didn’t want to forget, to look away from what had happened. What I had done. And so I pushed her and the thoughts aside and let myself feel the grief, the pain, the guilt within me. There were a few more attempts by Rin to distract or talk to me, but I didn’t and couldn’t pay them much mind. Eventually, she stopped and left me alone, crying in the magelight.
*************************************************************************************************
The next time I woke up, I was less confused and definitely less panicked. There was a brief moment of confusion where I was convinced that the mage lights scattered around the room were a candle I had left unattended while I fell asleep studying. I then saw the luxurious details of the room and remembered that I hadn’t been in the academy for more than a season.
Just as well. The scolding Mother would have given me had I fallen asleep with a lit candle would have been mortifying. I’m not sure if the waste of a valuable candle or the risk of an unattended flame would have been the greater concern for her, but neither were things she would have abided.
It was weird, but fearing a chastisement from Mother had me home hungry. It would have been… it was much simpler than my life was today. Especially given the night before.
Regardless, once I was awake there was no way I could even pretend that I was at home. The bed was too soft, the room too brightly lit, and I was tangled in far more sheets than my entire home had.
Between the faint memories of my fitful sleep and a fear of damaging the delicate looking sheets, especially the ornate embroidery on the edges, I extracted myself from the bed and stretched. My muscles fought and clamped, reaffirming that I needed to stretch, but it was hampered by how unbalanced I felt. It wasn’t a new sensation given how much my body had changed and shifted over the past few months as I went through an effective second blooming, but today it felt particularly pronounced.
It wasn’t, fortunately or not, something as obvious as my arms were longer than each other or I couldn’t reach my toes when I bent over, but my entire body felt odd. It was only when I went for my discarded clothes and tried to pull the tunic on that I realized that my clothes didn’t fit once again. And I had just gotten to the point where I wasn’t regularly updating my seams during the trip over from Uvenallos to Mulvalod.
It was, thankfully, mostly in the shoulders and arms this time. My shoulders were just slightly too wide and my arms slightly too thick for the sleeves. It wasn’t impossible to fit, just uncomfortable. Still, it was something I would need to modify, which meant I would need my sewing kit.
Which, of course, would be in my bag on the ship.
Cursing under my breath, I started towards the door looking to ask for the guard to get me one. But halfway to the door, I stopped, a sense of discomfort lurching to mind. I had forgotten something, left it behind.
It was dressed. I had my few pieces of equipment I had brought with me to the inn. So what was I missing? What could I be missing? I tried to take another step to the door and suddenly that sense of missing was rapidly translated to nausea. Confused, I made my way back to the bed, hands and eyes searching for what my body insisted was there. It was only when my fingers touched a bit of fluff that I realized what it had been.
The ball that had been in Eninald. That had Eninald?
I shuddered and slowly picked it up. It still felt warm to the touch. I briefly considered leaving it on the nightstand but couldn’t bring myself to let it go. So, instead, I made my way back to the door, wearing clothes that were slightly too small and holding on to a ball of fluff. If I had been six the situation might’ve been cute, but today it just felt infantile. Perhaps I could do something about my appearance before opening the door. A minor…
My thoughts were interrupted by a knocking at the door, slightly more determined than anyone had a right to be. Stashing the ball in my tunic pocket, I carefully made my way to the door.
“Who is it?” I called through the frame.
“A handmaiden for the Lady Starborn,” she responded in Runna.
I blinked in confusion. I knew the hand as the body part with fingers at the end of my arm and maiden to be an unmarried woman, but I wasn’t sure what the combination meant. Perhaps she had exceptional hands in some form. Curiosity and caution argued for a second, before I removed the bracing bar and opened the door.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
The dusk elf standing at the floor was dressed in plain and practical garments with some dirt hemming the edges. Given how opulently the priests dressed, I guessed her as some kind of servant. Her hands were holding my bag and a bucket but otherwise seemed to be normal. She extended her leg behind her, and without dropping the bag or bucket, grabbed her skirts. She flared them wide and then did an odd half-bow. For a second, I thought she was going to kowtow, but she simply stayed on one knee. I politely bowed in return and then stood up, but she remained on her knee. We waited there for a moment, each confused by the other’s actions. When that confusion gave way to awkwardness, I cleared my throat.
“Um, you can stop.”
“Thank you m’lady,” she said, standing from the floor and making pointed eye contact. “Your effects,” she said, presenting the bag and then a small wrapped parcel.
I was glad this wasn’t the first person I had encountered out of Imardos, otherwise I would’ve been completely thrown by the contrast between her deferential tone and what would be highly offensive eye contact back home.
“Thank you,” I said honestly. I wasn’t sure if it would be crass to go through my effects in front of her, so I set that aside for a moment and instead gestured to the bucket in her other hand. “And what is that for?”
“It is my understanding that you are to be traveling through the Darkways but are recently from the surface. Smells of the surface are said to aggravate the creatures of the Dark. If the lady would allow it,” she offered politely, “I might draw you a bath to remove such smells from your person. Your personal effects have already been treated.”
I put aside the brief amusement at being effectively told I had a bad odor to check my bag. Everything inside was neatly folded, packed away, and had the faint scent of shovenmoss. I was almost offended at them going through my bag, but it seemed to be done in good faith. I set those thoughts aside and opened the small package to find the silphium I had requested.
“We should check for magical traps and effects later.”
Thank you, Rin.
“And thank you,” I said, trailing off once again, hoping to get her name.
“But of course, madam. Shall I?” she asked, lifting the bucket.
Sighing to myself, I nodded, “Yes, you should.”
She left the room on a mission and I returned to silphium. Quickly, I ate two leaves and packed the rest into my bag.
*************************************************************************
The ‘handmaiden’ didn’t immediately leave once my bath had been drawn. Instead she stayed behind and helped me wash. It was a very uncomfortable experience sharing such a private moment with a stranger, but eventually I just pretended it was Kyomi helping me with the bathing and it was easier.
Not completely free of oddness, but certainly more manageable.
At the end of it, my body was scrubbed, my hair was braided, and I was given a fresh set of clothes to wear. They had even incorporated the discrete holes that my other set had without me asking. I was trying to figure out how they knew how to make them, both for me and in general, when the handmaiden scooped my dirty and sweaty clothes from the floor and gave me a small bow.
“I’ll have these laundered and returned to you within the hour.”
I nodded absently before starting.
“Just a moment,” I said, making my way over to her. She dutifully waited while I went through the skirt’s pockets looking to grab the ball of fluff.
It wasn’t there.
Pursing my lips in confusion, I double checked. But no, I had been perfectly effective the first time. The ball was missing. But I didn’t feel nervous. Or nauseous. Instead, I just felt confused. Stepping back and pursing my lips in thought, I let my hands fall to my side and tapped my hip in contemplation.
Where had… What was that in my pocket?
Carefully, I slid my fingers into the skirt pocket and immediately found the warm ball of white fluff already there. How? What?
“Something the matter m’lady?”
I blinked myself back to the present. “Uh, no. No. Just though I left something in my pocket. I guess not.”
“Very good,” the handmaiden said before offering a small bow and leaving. It was only once she left that I pulled the ball from my pocket and stared at its pristine self. It was definitely the ball. But how had it moved? And why didn’t it move from the bed to my clothes earlier? It was both confusing and slightly disturbing.
“An unknown demonstrating new properties is a moment of learning. A known demonstrating new properties is a moment of revaluation. Revaluation, of course, being a polite way to say utmost terror and panic at the situation before you.”
That sounded familiar. My brain searched lectures and transcripts, before finding the quote.
“Margibund the Brash‘s memoirs, evaluating their decisive defeat by Salazar the Cautious,” I commented, surprised that I remembered a series of scrolls I had perused once several winters back. I had all but forgotten it until now, since bloodthirsty Tanuki warlords had never been a particular interest of mine. I wasn’t sure what it meant that Rin had been able to so easily quote it, but I was pretty sure I didn’t like it.
“Wisdom is wisdom, regardless of the source.”
Ikari the Mad.
Today was rapidly turning into one disturbing turn after another.
*************************************************************************
Ever since I had it first explained to me an ‘hour’ had always seemed like an odd amount of time. Dividing a day into chunks of twenty-four didn’t make sense. Groups of five or seven would have made more sense to me. Everyone else seemed to work with them well enough however, so I had largely attributed that largely to my lack of familiarity or use of them prior to leaving the Wood.
This is a very long way of saying that after what I guessed was an hour but at what seemed the right amount of time later, the handmaiden returned with the tunic that Thuvvik had bought me all those months ago crisp and clean, and a hearty plate of food. I dug into the food with a fervor and hunger I hadn’t been cognizant of. She was polite enough not to be visibly disgusted by my horrible manners and rate of eating, but given how impolite I felt about it after I finished eating, it was enough for both of us. Only after I was done and my bag was packed did the handmaiden lead me out of the room, through a series of tunnels, and into a large cavern. I had spent the trip trying to figure out both Rin’s disturbing quotes and the Ball, but when we came to the cavern I had a sudden and new set of issues.
Namely the forty heavily armored dusk elves milling about.
“Um,” I said to the handmaiden who was walking slightly behind me, “Are you sure we’re in the right spot?”
“Oh yes, madam,” she said with a sharp nod, “this is your honor guard for the Darkways.”
I turned back to the armored masses. One of them, the one with the most dented armor, was casually swinging a lance longer than I was tall through the air. I gulped. “Right, well thank you for all your help.”
“But of course madam.” And then, with another odd half bow, she was gone.
The ease and seeming lack of consideration with which the dusk elves were practicing made me nervous, to say the least. Discreetly, I looked around trying to find a place to wait until they were ready to address me. There were several benches across the cavern from me, but that involved distracting the armed contingent. Slowly, so I didn’t take an eye off the sharp objects, I turned, finding a bench with a thinner dusk elf and enough room for me to sit. Quick stepping, I made my way towards them. They didn’t seem to notice me approaching, intently working on some form of paperwork.
“May I?” I asked quietly in Runna.
They didn’t even look up from the stacks to gesture at the empty space next to them invitingly.
“Thank you,” I said politely as I sat down.
They grunted noncommittally.
We sat in silence for a bit before he spoke, a rasping tone that was notably gruffer than the lyrical tones I had heard previously.
“Take it you’re our glass leaf,” they said, shuffling the papers.
“Glass leaf?” I asked slightly taken aback.
“Valuable, fragile, and functionally useless in combat,” they said as he made a few scribbles on their papers. “Like a glass leaf.”
“Sounds like someone needs some instruction in manners. Evoke some water and show him why we are not to be trifled with.”
I, however, found myself laughing. While they were horribly impolite by any standard I’d measure them against, it was a welcome break from the aggressive efforts to bed me or practically kowtowing at my every word. “I’ve never been in a fight before, so I suppose that’s an apt description. Any suggestions on how to make your life easier?”
“Learn to teleport,” they said frankly. Then, after a moment he paused and set the papers aside, looking me straight in the eye, “You were being serious, weren’t you?”
“I mean, yes. You all are doing a lot for me and I don’t want to be a burden,” I said with a smile, before I pursed my lips in thought.“I will admit I hadn’t considered teleportation. I don’t even know how to start going about that.”
That wasn’t strictly true. The theory of translocation was one of exchange, typically exchanging yourself for an equivalent amount of materials at the target location. It was easiest when exchanging objects of roughly the same size and shape, but the energy requirement and spellforms to help focus my mind to that point had never been covered. I could start with the theory, but the research time required would render such a process impractical. Perhaps…
The elf snorted in laughter before nodding, “Well, if you figure it out, let me know. It’ll certainly make my job easier.”
“And that is?” I asked earnestly.
“Assistant Quartermaster.” They motioned at the papers, “Which really means that I get to handle anything too dangerous for the Quartermaster on top of my normal duties. Which need to be done before I leave. Won’t do to have the reports late.” There was a pause with a dismissive wave, “Typical military bureaucracy.”
I nodded, but didn’t really follow. ‘Assistant’ seemed to indicate a lesser of some kind, the fact that they were trusted to do the full duties indicated something else was going on. I hoped for clarification but when they didn’t provide it, I tried to politely continue the conversation, “So, you’re coming with us then?”
They sighed and nodded, “Yeah. Command decided that if we’re going to Freeport anyways, we might as well get some supplies there. Which means they need someone to haggle.” They pointed at one of the armored elves, “And while Erveus Mah-Tok is one of our most accomplished patrol leaders, he’s not exactly the best negotiator.”
“Why not a merchant?” I asked, thinking of Thuvvik and his disarming mannerisms. “Clearly, someone specialized would get you the best deal.”
The quartermaster—having mentally removed the ‘assistant’ for simplicity—snorted again, “Yeah, that’s what I said and normally that’s what we’d do. But, we’re going through the Darkways. We’re already taking a risk with one glass leaf. Adding another would just be suicide.”
Well, I suddenly felt a lot less confident about this plan than I had previously. A part of me felt small and insignificant, but I tried not to let that be the whole. “It’s that dangerous?” I asked, trying to keep my concerns out of my voice.
He raised an eyebrow incredulously, “Mah-tok is the best patrol leader we have and even he loses several Tunnelers a year. And that’s close to home in what we consider to be safe territory. The reason we stopped going to Freeport through the Darkways was because it just wasn’t worth it in resources and people lost.”
Reflexively, I gulped. Sighing, the quartermaster shook his head.
“Look, if you really want to help the best thing you can do is stay in the middle of the formation and when someone tells you to get behind cover, do it. As long as we get you through, the Priests and Priestesses will tell us it was worthwhile.”
There was a clamor ahead of us that caused both of us to look up. Ahead, the armored elves were falling into sharp lines.
“Well,” the quartermaster said, “That looks like muster. Time for us to move out.”
I nodded, quickly standing up to move towards the group.
“Hey,” the quartermaster called out, “hold up.”
Quizzically, I turned back to see them standing. The tight fit of the light armor suggested that he was male, but thinner than I expected. In a gloved hand, he held a pair of goggles with solid metal frames and dark lenses.
“You’ll want these. To help in the dark.”
Reflexively, I went to refuse. “Oh, I couldn’t possibly accept such a gift.”
He looked utterly confused and pressed them into my hands, “It’s not a gift, it’s a requirement. We’re not taking torches into the dark and you can’t see. Put them on.”
I fumbled with the goggles, not expecting them to thrust into my hands and by the time I could look up, the quartermaster had hurried ahead, taking his place in one of the columns of soldiers.
Rude. Or at least, I think it was rude. Rin didn’t comment one way or the other which was surprisingly disorienting. Confused, I turned the goggles over in my hand for a second, worried about magical traps and what it meant when a gift was forced upon you by someone else. But then there was a yell from the column, I had to hurry ahead, leaving my concerns behind.
