by Stone Thomas
“So, this is uncomfortable,” I said. “And it looks like it could take a while. I’m not going to attack you while you’re… birthing.”
“Door’s open,” Vix said.
I looked back, and there she stood with a lock pick in hand, swinging the front gate to Meadowdale open.
“This isn’t over!” Ess yelled. “Uwwwww!”
Vix, Carzl, the twolf pup, and I stepped inside the village and closed the gates behind us. Vix locked them shut.
“Lock picks?” I asked. “You devious vixen.”
“I’m glad you approve,” she said, flashing a smile while her tail beat to the side. “I build doors, among other things. If you ever lock yourself out of a building while you’re still building it, getting inside can be a hassle. Unless you know your way around a lock.”
“Carzl,” I said, turning to our new companion, “I didn’t want you involved in this. Meadowdale isn’t the sleepy village I left behind.”
“Looks fine to me,” he said. “Look at all these cute little bunnies!”
+10
I clasped a hand on Carzl’s shoulder. “Those are not bunnies,” I said. “They are anibombs.” A few light purple creatures shaped like rabbits moved in short hops in the street before us.
The road itself was wide enough to accommodate deliveries or important guests who might arrive with carriages and caravans, but it was still just a dirt road. Stone buildings with thatched roofs lined each side. I knew from experience that smaller roads would connect the back alleys and modest homes to this, the village’s only main street.
A dozen lilac bunnies, all as smooth as polished jade, moved about. They were oblivious to our presence. I hoped to keep it that way.
“They don’t have eyes,” I said, “but the last time we got near them, they still knew. One false move and they’ll explode.”
Vix’s eyes were darting around wildly. They had that look in them. The one that said, “I have ten ideas all rolled into one.”
“I have an idea,” she said.
“Let’s hear it,” I said.
“Carzl has enough rope hanging from this bag that we could make a lasso of sorts. With enough effort we could latch onto the chimney of this building, climb to the roof, and get a better view of the city. That way we’ll know what we’re up against. We may be able to walk across the rooftops to avoid the anibombs.”
“That’s actually kind of simple,” I said. “And feasible.” I put my hands on Vix’s head and kissed her forehead. “It’s a great idea.”
She blushed. “Thanks! I also kinda thought while we were up there we could scoop up all the reeds and straw that form the first roof and stuff them in our clothes for cushioning against any future explosions. We could use the rope to tie extra thatching around our waists and add another protective layer.”
“Let’s quit while we’re ahead,” I said, setting the fairyfly on the ground. “Carzl?”
The merchant was already untethering all of his items and freeing up his rope. “I’d like to point out what a good sport I’ve been so far about the fact that a dozen of my prized items are still in a heap outside the village wall.”
“If that’s your way of saying thank you for us saving you from the gi-ant Ess,” I said, “then you are very welcome.”
“Your assistance is not lost on me,” he said, “I am grateful indeed. Your lasso.”
I took the rope from Carzl and tested its strength. It seemed sturdy. I spun the rope in the air, then launched it at the one-story building we stood next to.
The rope landed on the roof, then slid down to the ground. I worried that the quick movement would draw the anibombs’ attention, but they were too far down the road. So far, we were still safe.
It took two more tries before the rope landed around the chimney, and then the difficult part began. I pushed my foot against the stone wall of the building and pulled the rope tight. When my other foot lifted from the ground, the weight of my entire body rested on my arm and leg muscles. It was slow work, and my muscles ached from the effort, but I was able to walk myself up that wall and then over the edge of the building’s roof.
No building in Meadowdale was higher than two stories, except the temple. From my vantage point, I could see the temple’s tower. I saw the road leading to it, which was littered with glistening anibombs. From the opposite edge of the roof, I could see a few side streets, similarly overrun by our faux bunny foes.
What I didn’t see were people. No magically enraged men with cursed gray skin. No women held hostage. Nola had warned us that Duul’s minions were on the move, but she didn’t mention a total absence of humankind.
As I made my way back toward Vix and Carzl, my boot sank through the roof. My leg crashed all the way through the thatching until I was balls deep in reeds and straw.
“Everything okay up there?” Vix asked.
“Yes.” My voice cracked a little as I replied. I pulled my leg free and began testing the roof ahead for wooden support beams that I could stand on. Many spots seemed more fragile than I would like them to be. The roof was barely in good enough shape to support me reliably, let alone three people. “I’m coming back down.”
When I landed again, the bunnies were as oblivious to us as before. I didn’t hear Ess moaning outside the front gates, so I assumed she had brought her newly laid eggs back to wherever it was that gi-ants waited to hatch.
“The roof is unsteady,” I said. “We’ll have to take the streets. The good news is that there aren’t any hostile people or cretins. The bad news is all of the anibombs. Carzl, if you wanted to stay here I wouldn’t blame you.”
“No, no,” he said, “this is the most interesting day I’ve had so far, and I won’t cut it short now. Onward!”
We skulked around the back of the building I had just stood on and entered an alleyway with fewer explosive bunnies than the main road. As we approached the first rabbit on our path, I paused. Its face turned toward me. Then it turned away.
“They seem larger than the ones we found near the temple,” Vix said. “When they explode, it could be a lot worse this time around.”
“What is it that makes them tick?” I asked. “They don’t mind noise. They can’t see us. We aren’t more than ten feet away…”
“They don’t smell you,” Vix said. I hadn’t considered scent as a trigger. “They have noses. It’s the only feature on their face, but they don’t twitch or scrunch the way mine would if I were testing the air for danger, fear, or anything else.”
“It must be movement,” I said. “Fast, sudden movements, like when we attacked them in the forest. That’s when they blew up. They respond to motion.”
Carzl took the crystal ball from his bulging backpack. “I could roll this down the road and see if they all go kablooey. It’s valuable though, so I’d need assurances.”
“That we’d compensate you?” I asked. “We’re in no position. Besides, setting off one anibomb might cause a chain reaction and topple these buildings. An alley we can navigate. A pile of rubble, not so much.”
I took a slow step forward. My foot hit the dirt gently. I crept forward another halting step. A lilac bunny hopped toward me, but it didn’t cock its head to the side the way the ones in the forest did when they were triggered. It sat and waited, ignorant to my presence here.
This was as close as I had been to an anibomb without being blasted in the face. I lifted my foot to proceed in the same slow creep. After two more steps that felt like an eternity, I was past it.
“Only what,” I asked, “fifty or so more to go?” The road ahead was strewn with occasional bunnies, but they added up over that distance.
“This is your old stomping ground,” Vix said, taking a cautious step forward. “Aren’t there any shortcuts?”
“I spent most of my time in the temple,” I said. “People here didn’t like having me around much. I wasn’t just an orphan that the temple took in for free, I was a stranger. My parents weren’t from here, they just l
eft me at the orphanage and ran.”
“I still don’t understand that,” Vix said. “Beastkin are prone to very large families. If I were lucky enough to have children of my own, I could never leave them behind. That’s unheard of where I’m from.”
“Humans could learn a lot from you,” I said. “There was only one place I really ventured out to when I left the temple. One place I still miss today. The bakery. It’s actually not far.”
I didn’t look back to see whether Vix and Carzl thought this was a good idea. Getting indoors would give us a respite from our snail’s pace through the town, and there might still be viable food in there.
When we finally reached the bakery door, I was relieved to find it unlocked. Here, we could move like normal people.
I moved just how any respectable adult in a bakery would. I ran to the glass case that had my favorite sweet rolls and pressed my filthy hands against the glass.
“These used to be my greatest joy in life,” I said. “Parmo was practically a wizard with dough. He made these sweet rolls that were just out of this world.”
“It’s all gone to mush now though,” Vix said.
“Yeah, which is too bad,” I replied. “I was hoping there was enough food in here to use as leverage with Ess. When we get out of here, she’ll be waiting for us.”
“Some of the raw ingredients haven’t spoiled yet,” Carzl said. “I could squeeze this flour into my pack now that many of my other items have fallen out. I did repair the fabric while you were on the roof.”
“Won’t that much flour be heavy?” Vix asked.
“This bag is no thing of wonder,” he said, “but it does have a gravlite enchantment on it. What goes in weighs far less than it should.”
Vix’s tail thumped against the floor. “Why hadn’t I thought of that before,” she said. “A mill. It’s one of the easiest towers to make. We could grind up grain right in Halcyon. Ooh, then I could work out a gear system to funnel the grain into a vat with water and yeast and we could churn out fresh dough. We’d have a dough mill! With a fire energem working the hearth, we might build an automatic baking assembly…”
“All of which,” I said, “assumes our farmers ever get any grain growing. Take what you can, Carzl, but keep a ledger. When we find Parmo, we’ll pay him what it’s worth.”
Vix crouched beside a door in the bakery’s side wall. With a slight clicking sound, the lock sprang open and she turned the knob.
“Time to visit the neighbors,” she said.
“That’s Rinka’s shop,” I explained, entering the next building through the connecting door. “She’s Parmo’s wife. I always thought it was nice they worked side by side. Rinka was the town brewer, but most of her potions were just good for minor healing.”
“Yes, please,” Carzl said, taking a few potions off the shelves.
“Ledger,” I repeated.
“Of course,” he replied. “Anything else would be stealing.”
“Since we’re shopping on credit,” I said, “I’ve always wondered about this one.” I walked to the front window and lifted a tiny vial of thick blue liquid from a display pillow. It was the only potion in the window, sitting on a tall stone pedestal that made the small vial look even smaller by comparison.
“Never buy from the window display,” Carzl said. He took the potion from my hand and held it up.
“Why is that?” I asked.
“Quality items will sell themselves,” he explained. “When a vendor really wants to move a product, they push it to the front to catch everyone’s eye. Placement is a gimmick. Everything’s a gimmick, really, but that one is particularly blatant. The shop owner wanted to get rid of this quickly for some reason.”
He swished the bottle once and squinted at it. “Ah, it’s near expiry. It has another few weeks before it’s just another vial of worthless sludge. Perishables, I cannot fix. Only evaluate.”
“What does it even do?” I asked.
“This is a spiritualist potion,” he said. “It activates Spirit Animal. I doubt your brewer made this herself, or she’d have taken her skills to a larger city. This is a very complicated potion, likely brought here by adventurers.”
“I’ll take that,” I said, slipping the miniature vial into my pocket. “Put it on our tab.”
“It quintuples our tab,” he said. “But yes, you’re in charge here, friend.”
I asked Carzl to take the fairyfly and give our twolf companion a perch inside his large bag. We left through the front door of the brewer’s shop and continued our painstakingly slow journey toward the temple.
We were halfway toward our destination when the sound of a large wooden door slamming shut stopped us all in the middle of our slow strides.
“There’s only one building with doors heavy enough to echo this far,” I said. “The temple. Guys, we have company.”
+11
We walked slowly as quickly as we could.
“Maybe it’s just Kāya,” Vix said.
“Just the goddess of awkward moments,” I said, “would be bad enough, but I had a thought. If she’s laying claim to Laranj’s old temple, maybe she’s here with a head priest.”
“You’re right,” she said. “Even if she inherited other gods’ powers by now, she’d need a head priest to skillmeister her and unlock them.”
“And we know she’s got some other power lined up, because these explosive rabbits are a nuisance, but they’re not awkward.”
“Is there a goddess of bombs?” Vix asked.
“If there is,” I said, “she must have made you, because baby, you da bomb.” I felt my face turn red. “I don’t know where that came from. That was embarrassingly awful.”
“Let’s blame Kāya for that bit of awkwardness and keep moving,” Vix said, grinning.
I felt like a trespasser, winding through the deserted streets of a town I wasn’t born in and never truly belonged in. I shook those thoughts aside. Kāya was the real trespasser here. I had spent my life keeping vermin out of Laranj’s temple. It was time for one last clean-up.
We marched in slow motion toward the double wooden doors of Meadowdale’s holiest building. A handful of lilac rabbits sat in the street near the temple, idle. I pulled the door open and stepped inside.
The walls were still pink, but the temple’s entrance had lost its luster. Gone were the soft rosy light of the goddess of harmonic sound and the chorus of yawning angels that gave the building a heavenly feel.
“This place is amazing,” Vix said. She ran down the front aisle and paused at the carnation pink altar. “Listen to those acoustics. The flow of this room channels sound perfectly. And there are so many pews. We need more pews for Nola. And wall carvings!”
“The back of Nola’s temple has carvings,” I said, “though she’s not even sure where they came from. She took over an empty temple when she set out on her own.”
Vix looked back at me. I was suddenly aware of what I had said. “She’s nothing like Kāya. Kāya is trying to take over a whole village, a whole congregation of people that came here for Laranj, not for her. Nola just gave an old abandoned building a new life.”
“I know,” Vix said. “It’s okay Arden. I never said it was the same.”
It didn’t feel okay. Being back in this temple was unnerving.
“There’s still no sign of Kāya,” I said. “Stay close though. We know we’re not alone.”
I walked past Vix and opened the door behind the altar. Here was Cahn’s vestry, the room where he kept all of his robes, prepared his important papers, and did whatever else he kept private from the worshippers that came to pay homage to Laranj. Lewd acts with coinage, no doubt.
I was never allowed to linger here. Now there was no one to stop me.
“Arden, this is just like the room I built for you behind Nola’s altar!” Vix said.
“You have good instincts, Vix,” I said. “Nola’s temple will be the envy of the human lands soon, just you watch.”
“This
is a nicer temple than we have, but not for long,” Vix said. “I’m taking mental notes of everything here.”
I shuffled through some of the papers on Cahn’s desk. Most of it was written with a quill and black ink in handwriting so bad I couldn’t read it. One paper, however, was written in a different style. Its letters were clear, and the parchment had a wax seal on the edge. The name Martinstead was imprinted in the wax. It read:
To: Cahn Drimmiger. It is not time to return. Your war preparations are incomplete.
That was all. His desk drawer had a few quills and other items, but one stuck out. It was a small iron signet with a round depression engraved inside. I wondered whether it was how wax seals were made. I slipped the item into my pocket. If Cahn was sending war-related communications, Nola might make something of this.
Vix seemed to be taking measurements of the space between the stone columns that supported the ceiling, while Carzl disappeared into a temple supply closet. That was where I returned the chalice and other valuable instruments after I dusted and polished them. I’d have to be careful that his merchant’s eye didn’t get greedy in there. Laranj’s possessions were off-limits.
The door to the back of the vestry was still open. That’s the door I had burst through on my way out of the temple the last time I was here.
Whatever happened to Cahn, he left all of his ill-gotten luxuries behind. I brushed aside a few silk robes that hung on a wall rack. It was more robes than any one head priest would ever need. In a small set of drawers sat a pile of silk socks, silk underwear. I glanced at the floor. “Even his slippers are silk.”
“The finest,” a man said.
I spun around. Standing there in the open doorway, wearing his characteristic black silk robe, was a man that had barely tolerated my existence for my entire life. “Cahn,” I said.
“That’s Father Cahn to you,” he said, stepping forward until he stood in the room’s center. He held an anibomb bunny in his hands, cradled against his sunken chest. This was no small, lilac rabbit. It was a deeper shade of purple, and much larger.
