by Trey Myr
While I was talking with Richard and Doreen, Marjory had managed to find clothing somewhere, and had been handing them out to the people coming out of the tanks. Most of them seemed in shock at finding themselves warped, but fortunately for us they were mostly sitting around apathetically rather than flying into rages, as I would have expected from the increased aggression of most warps.
“We Forresters have always been content,” Doreen started, an edge of bitterness to her voice. “We’ve had our Patterns for centuries, but we’ve always been middling Shapers at best, and never bothered carving out our own territory. We were rich, we had political power and that was enough.
“Until Gerald Forrester. Granddad was driven. Obsessed, even. According to our records, he Shaped his first pair of Guards as soon as he turned twenty and left for the border. Over the next decade, he only ever came back when he needed to use the Patterns, which meant that as his Shapes ranked up higher his visits became more and more rare.
“By the time he was thirty, he had enough gold to hire a company of mercenaries to accompany him into the wild and claim his own territory. He wrote in his diary that until he had his own town, he was never satisfied with what he had. It’s why he called it ‘Gerald’s Rest’. Because he could finally rest after he’d founded it.
“So he settled down in his own town, got married and had children, but he was still ambitious. He got my father engaged to a daughter from a powerful Shaper family, Irene Quinn. The Quinns saw Grandad as an up and coming power, and welcomed an alliance with him. But my Father was a typical Forrester, and had a lot more interest in trade and luxury than in Shaping and battle. He Shaped a couple of Hawks when he turned twenty, used the butchers to rank them up to Crystal Phoenixes for the blast crystals, and left it at that. Aunt Evelyn didn’t even bother with that. She Shaped enough to make certain she wouldn’t warp, and called it quits. I don’t think her Shapes had ever left the mansion.
“Not that I was any better, of course.” And now the bitterness was a lot more than just an edge in her voice. “I was forced to dress and act like a man, and resented my parents for it. So as soon as I could I turned the Boar and Barrel into my own office and did my best to come back to the mansion as rarely as possible. I had no interest in my family and its fortunes, and even less interest in its Patterns.”
“Hold on a minute,” I stopped her. “You’ve been followed around by a pair of rank III Shapes since the day I met you. How can you not be a Shaper?”
“I was,” she answered with a smile, and for the first time since she got out of the tank she really looked like the Darren I remembered. “And nobody ever found it strange that a fifteen year old boy had two rank III Shapes.”
“Well, you were from a Shaper family…” I started, but stopped when I realized how flimsy that explanation was. I knew how hard it was to harvest vim, and I was a lot faster than I should have been because of the Swift. There was just no way to raise that much vim by the age of fifteen. Not without a whole battalion of people to butcher animals and warped for you, and there was no way to hide that kind of enterprise.
“Yup.” She must have seen the understanding in my eyes. “My guards are… were Granddad’s. He set them to guard me on the day I was born, and they’ve been with me until the raiders destroyed them when they attacked.”
It wasn’t a secret that Shapes didn’t dissipate immediately if their Shaper died. They kept on performing their last orders, leaking out vim from their severed connection to their maker until they had too little to stay solid, and then they dissipated. Which, for a high ranked Shape, could be decades or even centuries. But if enough damage was caused to such an Echo that it dispersed, it was destroyed forever. And it certainly explained how Doreen had enough vim that she could be warped.
“Most of Granddad’s Shapes were destroyed in the battle that killed him,” Doreen continued, “so between me, my Father and Aunt Evelyn we had a grand total of three Horses, two Crystal Phoenixes and two Sentinels with which to protect the town.”
“And now, because of your incompetence,” Richard snarled, and I could hear the sentiment echoed by the other warped townspeople around me, “Most of the town is dead, the rest of us are warped, and the raiders have all of your Patterns.”
“It’s even worse than that, I’m afraid. I don’t think they were really raiders.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “We fought them on the way in, and they were definitely raiders.”
“There were two groups that attacked the town,” Doreen explained. “One of them were ordinary raiders. But the others… They were better armed and armored, and much better disciplined. And they were the ones who teleported away with the Ogres. I suspect that whoever is behind this, they’re from inside the kingdom. Probably a Shaper family. And they just got a very large boost to their power in our Patterns.”
“Not to mention the people who got warped before us,” Richard was practically grinding his teeth, letting out a sound like rocks scratching against each other. “Wherever they are and whatever their purpose is.”
My brother wasn’t alone in his anger. The angry mutters coming from behind Doreen were a clear indication that the rest of the townspeople had gotten over the shock of being warped, and the increased aggression that always seemed to accompany the condition started to assert itself and increase their admittedly justified anger at their supposed protectors.
Doreen and Richard started to snarl at each other, with me standing between them, and I had a feeling that if I moved to try and calm the rest of the people down, they would be at each other’s throats before I took two steps.
I was starting to think that I had no way to avoid a total riot when a loud crack cut through the rising voices.
“You feeling the anger yet?” Marjory shouted at the sudden silence she’d brought about by firing her steam cannon at the ceiling. “Burning hotter than you’ve ever been before? You want to rip things apart, starting with the person whose fault this is?
“Well, welcome to the blast-shattered club,” the dwarf raised her voice to drown out the murmured assent from the still enraged crowd. “I’ve been warped since before I was born, and I blasted well learned to control it before they let me out of my crib.
“Now I won’t tell you that you’re wrong to be angry. Whoever’s behind this has my brothers, and you can bet your tails, horns and wings that when I find them they’ll get a new insight into how a poached egg feels. But that girl over there isn’t the one who did this. So you can mob up on her, knowing that you’re being less disciplined than a dwarven daycare group, or you can bank those fires down so we can figure out how to find the blasted bastards.”
That was about as far as she could possibly get from how I would have tried to calm down a group of newly warped people, but she certainly had a lot more experience than me at dealing with warped, and I wasn’t really surprised to see that her words did have a calming influence on the not-quite-yet-a-mob, and the angry mutters quieted down enough that we could continue our conversation.
Finished with her speech, Marjory stomped over to us.
“So how do we find out which of your blasted nobles has my brothers?”
“This attack has been very well planned, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that they attacked Gerald’s Rest,” I mused. “They must have known that the Forresters weren’t up to defending it.”
“That basically narrows it down to the Whites,” Doreen said. “They’re the closest to us, and on the only road leading further in, so they’re mostly the only ones we deal with. But I know these people. I can’t believe they’re the ones behind this. Not to mention that I’ve never heard of any of them having Ogres.”
“Well, if they’re the only ones who would know, than they’re the ones responsible,” Richard grunted. “And it’s not like we can trust your judgement about anything.”
The only reason I managed to keep a snarling Doreen from attacking my brother was that I was still between them, and
she was still not quite used to how her wings and tail affected her balance. As it was, she stumbled into me when she tried to pounce on him and I found myself lying on the ground with a still naked draconic warp on top of me.
She scrambled back to her feet before I could make sense of the mixed feelings of having a scaled, and yet very attractive, woman naked on top of me while knowing she was someone I’d considered male and a friend for years. I took her proffered hand, and while she helped me up I noticed that her scaled cheeks had regained the purple hue I associated earlier with blushing, and I felt my own cheeks warming up in response.
“I would have left off the second part of that,” I said hastily to distract myself and everyone else, “but my brother has a point. If the Whites are the only ones who knew about your weakness, they’re the logical suspects.”
“There might be someone else,” Doreen walked rapidly to a pile of leftover clothes, picked up the first things she found and ran behind one of the tanks to get dressed.
“Who is it?” I asked when she offered nothing further.
“…” I heard her mutter something, but couldn’t make any sense out of it.
“Who?”
“My mother,” a very unhappy Doreen said as she walked back to us, dressed in a pair of pants that was at least ten centimeters too short for her, and a shirt that must have belonged to someone significantly shorter and wider than her.
I wasn’t sure how to respond to that statement, but she continued talking without any further prompting.
“Grandfather was one of the best Shapers of his generation, and he was very young when he cleared out the territory around Gerald’s Rest. His ability and ambition caught the eye of the other Shaper families, and as I said before, he managed to leverage it into what was supposed to be a very good match for my father. But once she realized that Father was a typical Forrester and didn’t share Grandfather’s drive, she wanted the marriage dissolved.
“Of course, the marriage contract specified that she had to give Father an child, so she had to stick around long enough for me to be born and now she certainly knows everything she needs to about the family.”
“And you really think your mother would be behind an attack on her former husband and her daughter?” I asked.
“How would I know? She left as soon as I was born, and none of us have seen her since. But she clearly felt no attachment to us.”
“Well,” Marjory summed things up. “That gives us two directions to check, which is two more than we had before we got you out of the tank. Whitecliff isn’t that far from here. We can go and snoop around your friend Simon.”
“Wait,” Richard grabbed me before I could answer. “What about us?”
“What about you?” the dwarf answered.
“Where are we supposed to go now?”
I stopped to consider my brother’s question. Gerald’s Rest would need a lot of work before it was inhabitable again, and even then I was sure most of the former townspeople wouldn’t want to return to the place their friends and families were slaughtered in. Going to another town might have worked for one or two of them, but a lot of people disliked and were frightened by the warped, and a large group would never be allowed in.
The sad truth was that most warped, unless they had an influential family willing to protect them, ended up being forced into the wilds where the ones who survived would most likely end up joining a band of raiders. Which only served to reinforce people’s dislike and fear.
My brother, despite now looking like some sort of troll, was a baker. I had no illusions about his chances of surviving in the wilds, and I had no doubts that most, if not all, of the other people in the room were in the same boat.
“I have no idea, Richard,” I answered eventually. “This would have been a good place to settle in, but whoever did this to you knows about it, and knows that it was attacked. We have to expect someone to come to investigate soon.”
“We should probably get away from here as soon as possible,” Doreen added. “They might be able to teleport back here with more soldiers.”
That thought did not sit well with anyone, and I had to raise my voice to be heard over the rising panic.
“The way I see it, we’ve got two problems here,” I started. “We need to decide where to take everyone, and we need to think about how to get them there. I might have a solution to the second problem, but it won’t help if we don’t have a destination in mind.”
“We can always take them to the ghoul tower,” Marjory offered.
“To the what?” Richard squeaked. At least, as much as a troll whose voice can’t rise higher than the bass registry is capable of squeaking.
“Jack and I cleared a ruined old world tower on a flying island between Gerald’s Rest and Whitecliff. It should be safe now, and has enough room for all of you.”
“It might work,” I mused. “There’s even some room to plant a garden and raise vegetables there. It won’t work as a permanent place since supplies are going to be an issue, but it’d work for now and we can buy food in Whitecliff and fly it over.”
“You expect us to go live in an old world ruin? One that you two refer to as the ‘ghoul tower’”? Richard rumbled.
“I don’t expect you to do anything, Richard. But I can’t think of a better idea, unless you just want to head out into the wilds?”
“It definitely sounds better than the other options,” Doreen said.
“Oh no. You are not coming with us, Forrester,” Richard ground his teeth together, and I could clearly hear the muttered assent of the rest of the townspeople. “We don’t want you anywhere near us.”
“You can stay on the Swift with us,” I told the stricken dragon woman, and she brightened up a little.
“Not sure where we’d put you though,” Marjory added. “There’s barely room for the three of us as it is.”
“That might not be an issue,” I went over to the big vim crystal and looked at its connection to the floor and the metallic lines leading to the tanks. “It actually ties in with how I’m planning on getting everyone to the island.”
The big crystal was set into a metallic silver pedestal that appeared to be anchored deep into the floor. I called my Deckhands over and started to pry it apart, only half listening to Marjory explain about the Swift to my brother and the rest of the townspeople.
The metal holding the crystal in place wasn’t very hard, but it rose up to about half a meter, and therefore it still took a fair amount of effort to pry apart enough of it to release the vim source. By the time we could move the crystal, my dissipated Shapes had fortunately all reformed, since it took the combined strength of all eight humanoid Shapes to lift the heavy artefact.
As soon as the crystal was no longer touching the pedestal, a nearly inaudible whine I didn’t even realize I’d been hearing since we entered the building fell silent, and every one of the old-worlders’ light sources died, leaving the basement in pitch darkness.
I could hear cries of panic from around me, and started to rummage blindly in my pack for one of the torches I always had with me when entering old world ruins, but Marjory beat me to it and had her own torch lit up before I even found mine. We lit a few more torches and passed them around, and soon we had enough light to see by and started on our way out.
It took some effort to get the crystal up the stairs and maneuver it through the corridors, but eventually we found ourselves outside the building, and I called the Swift down to meet us. Marjory had told the townspeople what to expect, but the sight of the flying Boat was still enough to inspire gasps of awe and cries of wonder.
“Stay back,” I said once she was on the ground and the gangplank had lowered. I sent the Shapes holding the big crystal up when Richard’s heavy hand landed on my shoulder.
“That thing won’t hold all of us,” he grumbled. “And we’re not letting you fly away and strand us here alone.”
“I wasn’t planning on it,” I shot him an angry look, but the warp le
ft him far stronger than me, and there was no way I could dislodge his hand. “Though I must say that you’re really tempting me here.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Marjory, who had been carrying the still unconscious Mable, lay her down on the grass and approach me in case I needed help. Doreen was approaching from the other side, and I didn’t think I had a lot of time before the situation became even worse.
I waved at the women to calm down and stay back, and had the Shapes place the crystal on the Swift’s deck. I was really hoping that the Boat would be able to drain the vim from the crystal, but had no idea how it do it, or if it could even be done. With a normal elemental stone, you just had to touch it to the Shape and it would drain the vim, but my Shapes had been touching the crystal for a while now, and nothing seemed to be happening.
The Swift, however, had already proven that she could react to my intentions, and after a few nerve racking seconds the crystal started to sink into the deck. It took a couple of minutes before the Boat finished absorbing the large crystal, but as soon as it vanished I felt the huge influx of vim.
This was the second large unknown of my plan. I had no way of knowing how much vim was stored in the crystal, and just had to hope that it would be enough. Fortunately, as soon as the vim started to flow I could tell it was enough to fill up the Swift’s reservoir and push it high enough to the minimum needed to rank up.
I got all of the Shapes to disembark from the Boat, and gave it the order to rank up. Blue light creeped all over the hull, but unlike the regular Shapes, the Swift was big enough that I could see what was happening underneath. The Boat’s deck split open down the middle, rising up and merging with the gunwale to become part of the hull, and then somehow unfolded until the deck reached a height of five meters. The stern opened up to extend the hull backwards, and kept opening up until the hull had doubled in length, and then the hull somehow flattened until it reached a beam width of about five meters, and the height dropped to four.
