“Nice paint.”
“Thank you. It’s a model skill. It’s boosting my Organize Minions skill right now. I guess this is the Ruler makeup.”
“If I evah get moah jahbs, that sounds like a useful one ta pick up.”
“Model or Ruler?”
“Both. Eithah.”
“I would be happy to teach you.”
“Hate to interrupt lovefest,” Zuula spoke up, “But we ready to move on out of village now, Zuula t’ink.” She glanced back at the fire. “Might have to anyway. Wind comin’ from south. Maybe not be village left in a day or two.”
“Eh, that town was dead anyway,” Garon said. And then they were all howling with laughter, as the bears looked on.
Fluffbear looked at Threadbare, who nodded, and they laughed too. It seemed appropriate.
The mirth lasted until Fluffbear noticed how badly injured Garon was. “Oh! Oh I should mend you! Hold on, let me—”
Threadbare put a paw on her. “May I try? I just picked up a new skill.”
“You leveled from that?” Madeline looked up. “In what?”
“Golemist.”
Silence, as they walked. “That confirms it,” Garon said. “When your golems do something big, you get part of the experience. Speaking of which, you owe us some gold.”
“All right. Before that, though... Mend Golem.”
Garon’s head put itself together, mostly. “Sixty-five? Lordy.”
Threadbare smiled. “Okay, that was pretty decent. Now you can mend him the rest of the way please,” Threadbare rubbed his chin. “And that’s what it does at skill level one. Dear me.”
“How’s the cost?” Garon wondered, as Fluffbear godspelled him back up to full.
“Four times as much as a mend. Only works on golems. But...” Threadbare’s scepter glittered in the distant firelight as he swept it around to point at each of his friends. “Well.”
“Well.” Garon nodded. And yeah, it was. This wasn’t the existence he would have chosen, but it beat the alternative. Besides— he glanced over at Madeline as she rode on his back, looking back at the flames. The company wasn’t so bad. And the pay was... the pay! “Oh yeah! Gold? You owe us that.”
“So I do. Although I’ve been thinking...”
“Yeah?”
“You’re pretty big. What if we sewed you a pouch, and you used it to carry your own coins? So you could heal yourself whenever and wherever you needed?”
“I been thinkin’ about stuff like that too. Makin’ mods and gearing up ta help us sahvive and prospah.” Madeline said. “I got a crafting slot, and soulstones is crystals, riaht? So maybe I get Jewelah, and make us some weahable soulstone necklaces or something in case tha worst happens...”
“And Dreadbear is enchanter who need practice, so you put spells in necklaces,” said Zuula. “Or other stuff we can carry.”
“Maybe something to make Mopsy braver?” Fluffbear said. “Also can you adjust her saddle? She’s bigger now and it’s a little tight on her, I think.”
Plotting, planning, and basking in the glow of their stat gains, the little party of friends made their way back to town to salvage what they could and move on before the fire got there.
“So where do we go from here?” Threadbare finally asked. “We need to save Celia.”
“Noath prahbably,” Madeline said. “There’s a little fishing town up that way. Most of our prey came from there. Dungeon huntahs, lootahs, trappahs. The ones we turned all said it was a quiet little place where folks just fished and minded theah own business. We can staht asking about for Celia theah.”
“Yeah, but we’re a bunch of toy monsters,” Garon pointed out. “Even for an insular, quiet community, that’d be a bit much.”
“Actually, Zuula been tinkin’ about dat,” The shaman spoke, feeling a lot happier now that she was about twenty points of wisdom and eight points of intelligence smarter. “Here is de plan...”
*****
Meanwhile, many miles away, a man in green robes perked up. “Hey! There’s something to the south!”
“What?” His wife asked, shivering. It was cold and lonely up on this hill, and she was thoroughly fed up with waiting. The wind was coming off of Lake Marsh, and chilling her to the bone.
It was all the more agonizing, because the fire pit was right there, with unlit wood stacked high, ready to go. They’d been sitting next to it, as they had every night that their turn came up, with flint and steel and oil ready to go.
But still, the stars refused to cooperate, and until they did, the fire had to remain unlit.
“Give me a second, let me get up here...” The man shimmied up one of the old dolmens, using one of the many tentacles carved into the sides to climb it.
She winced as he put a foot into one of YGlnargle’blah’s graven eyes. “Sorry lord,” she mouthed, just to be sure.
“What was that?”
“Nothing, nothing.” She coughed. “Just cold.”
“Well someone’s not. They’ve lit a whomping great fire out that way.”
“Out what way?” She moved over to the edge of the hill and peered. No way was she climbing a dolmen, the last time she’d done something like that had been a lot of donuts and about five blessed children of the depths ago. Which reminded her, she needed to pick up fish in the morning before she got back home. They’d been good lately, and it was fun watching their lidless eyes light up so as they got their special treats.
“South. It looks like a wildfire or something, it’s really going,” her husband said.
She froze. “Harb?”
“Yes Marva?”
“Harb, it’s a fire? A big fire that we can see from here?”
“Uh-huh.”
“A fire like the sort we were supposed to light when the stars were right, and YGlnargle’blah’s words echoed like terrible thunder from the dolmens to enlighten his children?”
There was a long pause. Then as one, Harb and Marva turned to look at the town of Outsmouth, a few miles to the north.
Outsmouth, in which their cult was eagerly awaiting the signal. The signal of a fiery beacon, from the south.
Harb and Marva looked to the stars, which were really, really, really not right. Then they looked to the dolmens, which were as silent as they’d been the last two years that the cult had been keeping sentries out here. Then they looked to the unlit fire.
And then they looked back at the blaze.
“You know,” Harb said, in that voice one gets when there’s something entirely horrible right in your sight, but you don’t want to acknowledge it, “That fire is pretty big. You can probably see it from town.”
“If you’re looking this way,” Marva said, in that voice one gets when one is trying to deny the horror, find some faint scrap of hope to lift one’s soul, even in the face of the death of all one’s hopes and dreams, “Maybe nobody’s looking this way. I mean, Ebbett’s on duty tonight, and he is a bit of a slacker.”
“Totally fell through on the last bake sale,” Harb said, desperately. “Probably asleep right now. Nothing to worry about—”
BONG.
The two cultists turned to stare at the town.
BONG BONG BONG.
Someone had started ringing the bells.
“Dead gods dammit Ebbett!” Harb and Marva wailed simultaneously, and looked at each other. Harb shimmied down off the stone, took her hand, and the married couple ran desperately toward town, hands waving, screaming at their distant brethren that no, wait, stop, it was all a big misunderstanding...
CECELIA’S QUEST 2: BAD COMFORT
Cecelia was far, far from Reason, and she hated it.
She had her plate mail, at least, enchanted with the same heating runes that kept her warm in Central Sylvania’s chilly spring, and a covered wagon to ride in to spare her legs and back, but she really, really wanted to be inside a ton of steel and more esoteric components forged by her own hand.
“You’ve got that look again,” Morris sai
d, grabbing the wagon’s tailboard and hopping up into it, moving easily in his own armor. “That look like you just sat on a hedgehog. Why the resting bitchface?”
The bastard had hit level twenty-five recently, and loved showing off one of his top skills that let him move around like his armor was weightless. Cecelia ignored that, and answered his question. “I miss my Steam Knight suit.”
“Fff. No way you’d get that to the front in one piece. Even if you had the coal to make the trip, the rangers would be on it like Zara on a cute noble boy.”
“Like they could do anything to me while I was wearing it.” She muttered.
“They can, Dame Ragandor.”
Cecelia sat bolt upright, twisted around and snapped her fist to her chest with a CLANG as gauntlet met breastplate. “Sergeant Sir!”
“At ease.” Out of his helm, Sergeant Tane’s face was solid and square, with a crooked nose broken long ago and never set right. Framed with blonde hair, rapidly receding from a high forehead, the man resembled nothing so much as an old lion. His eyes flickered as he glanced around the four trainees, now full knights, that rode in the back of the wagon. Behind him, the cloth separating the teamsters from their human cargo was loose. Cecelia could see the horses, and between them, the road ahead, misty and muddy from the rain that had been falling for the last two days.
“They don’t hit you where you’re strong,” he said, keeping his voice low so they had to strain to hear over the raindrops. “They come in the night, or in weather like this. When you’re sleeping, or exhausted from slogging through mud, or out taking a shit just past the perimeter. That’s when the arrows come, or the blades flash, and if you’re a soft target you’re dead, and then they’re gone as quickly as they came. You can’t touch them in the woods, you can’t find them when they want to hide, and they would love to bring home the head and helm of one of His Majesty’s Knights.”
Next to Cecelia, Lana tensed up. “Don’t we have scouts? I thought they were good in the woods.”
“Yeah. Which is why you have to be a top scout to be a ranger, along with some other stuff nobody knows except for them.” Kayin spoke up. “That’s the rumor I heard, anyway.”
“And none of our scouts are at the top of their field anymore,” Tane confirmed. “When the traitor Jericho deserted almost five years back, he took our best and brightest assets in that job with him. The ones we’ve trained up since get targeted by his resistance. So never assume that you’re safe, not here in the wilds, not in camp, not until you’re at the front. Keep your eyes open, keep a buddy in sight at all times, and whenever you’re out of armor I want Always In Uniform up.”
“I’ve got some scout training, sir.” Cecelia offered. “I could take an extra shift, borrow a horse and ride perimeter—”
“Absolutely not,” Tane said.
Cecelia blinked. “It wouldn’t be any—”
“Did I stutter, Dame?” His eyes bored into her. Cecelia met them...
WILL +1
...and managed to keep from looking away.
“You know why, Dame Ragandor,” Tane said, his voice barely audible enough to hear.
She did. It was because she was her father’s heir. “Yes sir. Doesn’t mean I like it.”
He smiled then, grudging respect in his eyes. “I do. Have patience, your time will come at the front. As you were, knights.” He returned to the front of the wagon, buttoning up the cloth separator as he went.
As it turned out, her time came way sooner than that.
*****
Cecelia’s eyes snapped open, and she didn’t know why. Then training kicked in. “Always in Uniform.” She sat up, feeling the air solidify around her, and peered around the tent. Firelight shown through the walls of it, flickering in the glow, and for the second, all seemed still.
But the flap was open. It hadn’t been, when she went to sleep. She sat up, sliding a dagger into her hand as she went—
—and her face brushed against something crinkly.
Paper.
She froze, as it rustled against her face, then felt with her free hand, groping until she had it. A tug pulled it away from the thread it was tied to. Cecelia could just make it out in the firelight, a crumpled wad of parchment.
“Appraise,” she hissed. No traps showed up. It was a simple parchment note. She tucked into her sleeping bag, taking the note with her, and said “Glow gleam.” It took a bit to dial down the light to where it shouldn’t be visible from her tent. (And also to keep it from blinding her too badly.)
The note was very simple. It said
GO SOUTH TO PADS VILLAGE IF YOU WANT TO SEE THE TRUTH OF YOUR KINGDOM, DAME RAGANDOR
Cecelia’s breath whistled between her teeth. She read it again, just to make sure she was understanding it correctly, then killed the light.
Wide awake now, she pushed out of the tent, dagger in hand, peering around—
—and then the screaming started.
“Fire! Fire!”
Three of the wagons burst into flames, and for a second there were glowing red stars falling out of the night...
Flame Arrows.
Mordecai had told her about those, once. They were from an archer skill. Fire arrows coming out of the woods meant—
“Rangers!” She shouted. “We’re under attack! Able bodies get those fires out! Noncombatants take shelter! Go go go!” She didn’t know where the officer in charge was, and it didn’t matter. They’d order the same thing, she was sure.
Then the horses screamed, as the falling arrows swept toward them, and she gasped as she saw the caravan’s steeds fleeing for all they were worth. But how? They’d been tied earlier, she’d even helped...
She thought back to the paper in her tent. That was how. She shut up and helped with the bucket brigade, until Sergeant Tane relieved her, and told her to go suit up. “We’re keeping watch until dawn. You can sleep in the wagon.”
Unquestioning, she headed out to the perimeter, whispering “Keen Eye” as she went. Which is why she spotted the body first.
In the morning, the tally was final, and devastating. A third of the horses had been lost in the night. The two wagons worth of food had been mostly burned, doused with oil before the flaming arrows fell. Less than a quarter of their ration boxes could be salvaged.
And of the seven scouts and three mercenary guards who had been tasked to keep the perimeter, two were corpses and the rest were gone like they’d never existed.
*****
“Haven’t you slept yet?” Graves asked, concerned. He was the second-oldest of her squad, a thickly-built man in his mid-twenties. He kept a white-streaked goatee, a neatly-trimmed mustache, and a friendly smile on his face at all times. “You really should turn in, it’s bad for your pools.”
It was easy to forget he’d transferred in from the necromancer corps, after some hushed-up-but-probably-horrible scandal. But he was a knight now, and he’d sweated harder than Cecelia to get into shape and survived the proportionately-harder tests that Tane threw at him, so none of that mattered to the squad.
“I’ve got a scout skill that helps me not sleep,” Cecelia replied, scanning the road to both sides as she tucked the little metal device back into her pouch. The rain was still falling, but it had slowed. So had they, though. Most of the remaining wagons were down to one horse apiece.
“Must be nice. I could do all sorts of training if I never had to worry about sleep.” He smiled. “Figured I’d end up like that eventually, I suppose. I thought I’d be a lich someday. If they exist, I mean. I was going to be the one to discover it.”
“My skill is not perfect,” she confessed, leaning against the backboard, feeling her armor settle against her spine. “Every extra hour I spend awake now I pay for later. I’m going to crash hard.”
“Does the Sergeant know you’re doing this?”
“I cleared it through him first,” she sighed. This wasn’t the first time one of the Squad had asked her this question, and she found their lack o
f faith disturbing. She ran her fingers along her white plate helm, before sliding it back onto her head. The rain pattered against it, instead of her sodden hair. It’d take a fair amount of polishing, when she was finally out of her armor.
“Mm,” Graves grunted. He coughed, spat into the mud. “Listen. I’ve... asked the others. Now I’ll ask you.”
“Ask me what?”
He nodded toward the back of the wagon, and she followed, unbuttoning the blanket and leaving the weary teamster to do his job.
“I’ve got a skill. From my old job,” Graves said, stretching out his hand, palm up. “Soulstone.” A solid black crystal materialized.
Cecelia nodded. “Me too. Appraise.”
“Enchanter, right? I was going to learn that one at some point.”
“Among other things.” She looked it over. “It’s empty. Level one crystal? Huh, Gemcutters could get some use out of it, but...”
“Yeah. It shatters if it’s used in crafting, unless it’s full.”
“So what—” The answer came to her. “It holds souls. Of course it does. Why are you offering it to me?”
“Well...” Graves chewed on his lip. “I was going to pitch this to the squad at the front, before we went into battle. But we’ve got rangers after us now, so... look. We might die here. If they’re serious about killing us and we slip up, we’re dead.”
She thought of her tent, slit open in the night, and a piece of parchment that had been left behind.
They don’t want me dead, she knew. But she didn’t know why.
Then the second part of the answer came to her. “Wait. You want to catch our souls in those if we die?”
Graves nodded. “I do.”
“Why?”
“I’ve got another spell that lets me and anyone around me speak to spirits. It’d give you a chance to say goodbye to people, and wrap up any last-minute business you’ve got unfinished.” He shrugged. “Not everyone gets that opportunity. I’ve spoken with a lot of undead that got themselves ghosted because of dying regrets. I don’t want to see that happen to any of you. Let’s be honest, we may not entirely be friends, but you’re the closest thing I’ve got these days.” He smiled.
Threadbare Volume 2 Page 19
