by Trey Myr
“Which, unfortunately, means that we can’t tie this to Hermes,” Ingrid’s mother added. “They’re compartmentalized enough that Adrian can just deny involvement and claim that whoever was behind it used the Hermes name as misdirection.”
“What about Kevin?” Ed asked her. “Put him in front of a truthsayer and he’ll reveal who he worked with.”
“Assuming your ex-friend is even still alive at this point, he’ll be under a geas to prevent him from pointing fingers.”
“Which means that it’s time for you to come back to the fold, Ingrid,” her grandfather said. “You can’t stay in reise with Hermes after you. We’ll have to make something up for you to ‘reveal’ to the House to finish it properly, but I won’t have you running around without backup. If you want, we can induce Ed and Lucy properly as armsmen so you could keep delving with them, and I’m sure you can find two more party members in the House lists.”
“I… really don’t like this,” Ingrid answered. “Keeping information from the family is bad enough, but outright lying about finishing my reise?”
“Then don’t lie,” Ed told her. “We don’t want to tell anyone about my Shards, but I don’t think the storm is as much of a problem.”
“He’s right, Ing. As much as I like having a unique Shard of my own, if we’re going to be fighting the Brotherhood of Hermes, having stronger allies is more important.”
“If you three have finished teasing us with knowledge you may or may not eventually reveal,” Ingrid’s mother said caustically, “The House healer is here to deal with your friend’s soul.”
The House Bjørnson healer was an old gnoll seiðkona, a high tier rank-up of the völva, or wise woman, class. The tall humanoid hyena would have been at least two and a half meters tall if she was walking upright, but stooped over her walking stick, her head was barely over Ed's. Her fur still had remnants of its original vibrant grey color among the white hairs, but her yellow eyes were sharp and wise, and her ears still upright and alert.
"Thank you for coming so soon, Aunt Margit," Cathrine Bjørnson said respectfully to the old shaman. "I'll let my daughter explain her problem to you."
The old gnoll turned towards Ingrid, who eagerly came over to her and kissed her fondly on both her cheeks. "It's so good to see you, Aunt Margit. I didn't even know you were out of the Labyrinth!"
"Even I need a break from work on occasion. Now what seems to be the problem, little valp?"
"My friend was killed by a reanimated giant pitcher plant," Ingrid, blushing from the endearment, told the old . "The necromancer who did it claimed that the soul of anyone killed by the plant would belong to him."
"That is truly nasty magic, if true. Let me examine the young man." The old gnoll limped over to James's corpse, and placed her staff over his heart. Now that she wasn't leaning on it, Ed could see that rather than a simple walking stick, she was holding a long wooden distaff, empty of wool. Chanting in a language Ed couldn't place and had no hope of understanding, Margit slowly rotated the staff, collecting glowing fibers from above James's heart. After a minute of gathering what Ed, from what little he knew of the völva class and its rankups, assumed was the remains of James's aura, she raised the staff so that the top was right before her eyes, which had turned a milky white.
"I see a thread linking his aura to something else. I cannot tell from here what he is connected to."
"Can you break it?" Ingrid asked her anxiously.
Instead of answering, Margit started a new chant, in the same unknown language, and slowly a thread seemed to appear, connecting the glowing fibers from her distaff to something far outside the room. It took perhaps ten minutes for the thread to become fully visible, and once it was, Margit simply plucked at it with her left hand, and it snapped.
"There. Your friend should be free to go to whatever the Norns have in store for him," the old gnoll said, swaying from the feat that clearly took a lot out of her. Ingrid rushed to her side, and helped her into one of the seats around the table.
"Thank you, Aunt Margit."
"There is no need to thank me, little valp. Necromancy is an abomination, and I am always happy to break it."
"That is all well and good," Ingrid's mother interrupted, "but I think Aunt Margit needs to rest now. I will have rooms prepared for your friends, Ingrid, and I'll get James ready for transport to his family. We shall continue our discussion tomorrow."
Ingrid kissed Margit and her grandfather on their cheeks, bowed to her mother, and motioned for Ed and Lucy to follow her.
◆◆◆
Ingrid's suite of rooms was large enough to comfortably house a small family. Her sitting room's floor was covered by a shaggy carpet, with beanbags scattered around it to provide sitting. The walls were tastefully decorated with watercolors of northern European vistas, and enchanted lamps provided warm, inviting light.
Ingrid went towards an oak and glass cupboard, and motioned for Ed and Lucy to take a seat on the beanbags. "That went a lot better than I expected."
"You can say that again," Lucy agreed. "I didn't expect The Glacier to stop before getting everything out of us."
"The glacier?" Ed asked in a confused voice.
"Lucy's nickname for my mother. Cold, and impossible to stop once she gets going."
"I can certainly see that. But isn't your grandfather the head of the House?"
"Officially, yeah. But Granddad was never good at administration, and he's only grown less willing to do it as he got older. He's mostly researching or building whatever comes to his head these days, and Mother is the one actually running things. And as much as I love Granddad, she certainly does a much better job at it."
When she joined them on the beanbags, Ingrid was holding a bottle of deep golden liquid and three tulip shaped glasses. She poured three glasses, and Ed could clearly smell the sharpness of the alcoholic beverage. Placing the three glasses on a short table between the three, she sank into a beanbag and pulled Lucy into her lap, then took one of the glasses and waved for Ed and Lucy to take the others.
"To James, who was abrasive and annoying and would have been one of the finest healers the Labyrinth has ever seen!" Ingrid toasted as soon as all three had a glass.
"To James!" Ed and Lucy raised their glasses and drank, the aquavit bringing tears to their eyes.
The impromptu wake continued well into the evening, and Ed woke up the next morning to the feeling of a dozen dwarves mining his brain for gold. A strong arm snaked under his shoulder, lifting him up to meet a small glass full of a steaming brown beverage smelling of coffee, and of something else Ed's befuddled mind couldn't identify.
"Drink up," Ingrid's soft voice urged him. "It'll help."
Barely overcoming his nausea, Ed drank the strangely spiced coffee, and almost immediately the pain started to recede, not vanishing completely but fading to a dull background ache.
Feeling a lot better, Ed managed to sit up on his own. He had vague memories of staggering into Ingrid's bedroom after finishing the third bottle of aquavit, and of the three of them collapsing into bed. Ingrid looked fresh out of the shower, and none the worse for wear for the previous night's drinking, and he could see Lucy lying next to him, barely starting to stir.
"There's a shower beyond that door, and a House uniform that should fit you," Ingrid pointed. "I'll get another batch of Uncle Olav's special coffee for Luce while you get cleaned up, and then we'll see about getting some breakfast."
Ed thanked her, and went off to the shower. He was out of the shower and brushing his teeth when a bleary looking Lucy stumbled into the room, spun the cold water valve all the way open and stood under the ice cold water.
"Brrrr." A shivering, but awake, Lucy said from under the water, and quickly warmed up the shower to a less arctic temperature.
More than awake enough to enjoy the show, Ed waited until she finished her shower and had a towel ready for her. A towel she imperiously declined to take.
"You can dry me off," she sai
d with a wicked gleam in her eyes, and Ed was happy to take her up on her offer. Things might have progressed further, but Ingrid thumped on the door. "Hey you two! Uncle Olav's Special wears off after about half an hour, and if you don't get some water and solid food down your stomachs you're going to go right back to your hangovers!"
Ed and Lucy reluctantly separated and dressed, Ed in the copper and blue uniform of a House Bjørnson armsman's uniform and Lucy in clean wizard's robes in the same colors.
A large tray sat on a short table in the middle of Ingrid's sitting room, covered with a generous spread of cold meats, cheeses and vegetables, with a large pitcher of orange juice and another of coffee in the middle. "I took the liberty of ordering breakfast for all of us," Ingrid said as Ed and Lucy joined her around the table. "We've got some planning to do, and the two of you will probably need to meet with the arms master later."
"Planning I get, but what does the arms master have to do with anything?" Ed asked while Lucy eagerly poured herself a large cup of coffee.
"With Hermes after us, and me out of reise, we're going to have to be an official House Bjørnson party, so we need both of you to be an official part of the House. You'll both be armsmen, which places you under the arms master's authority, at least nominally. You'll both be assigned to me, so it's mostly a formality, but you'll still need to do it."
Ed nodded his understanding, and took a slice of bread from the tray to prepare a sandwich.
Lucy finished her coffee and immediately started to pour another. "OK then. Meeting the arms master after breakfast. What planning do we need to do?"
"First of all, we need to decide if we're going to continue as three people or try to return to a full party," Ed answered while placing slices of smoked dire salmon on his bread. "And related to that, we might want to check if Ing counts against the party limit or not."
"I think we're keeping it to us three for now," Ingrid answered. "I'll see if I can recruit others from the House later on, but I want to be careful with who we let in, since they'll have to know everything."
"I'm with Ing here," Lucy said. "One Kevin is enough for me."
"Agreed then. But that means we need to use my phantasms to beef the party up, which is going to take a lot more credits then I've got."
"Don't worry about that," Ingrid waved away his concerns. "I've got access to my accounts back now, and as a Family member I get a generous allowance. It'll cost a bunch to get the free essence to close down my Shards so I'm not in breach, but we should still have enough to properly outfit the phantasms."
"I can't take your money for this," Ed protested. "It might take a while, but I'll raise the credits for the phantasms myself."
"Don't be an ass, Ed. I've just taken a third of your Shards and thousands of essence, so you can let me pay you back. Besides, we're in this together now."
"She's got you there," Lucy agreed. She was finally done chugging down coffee, and turned her attention to transferring a huge mound of scrambled eggs to an inadequate looking piece of toast. "This has stopped being a temporary group a while ago now."
Ed looked at the two, feeling that he was being railroaded into something that, while appealing, was happening a lot faster than he expected.
"Ed," Ingrid said softly. "If I'm effectively your summon now, what happens to me if you die?"
The unexpected question caught Ed like a hammer blow, and whatever he was going to say faded away.
“Do I just vanish?” Ingrid kept on relentlessly, “Do I lose the Shards from the hobgoblin? Do I become a Shard and drop for anyone who finds me to use?”
“I… I don’t know,” Ed stammered.
“Neither do I, and I have no desire to find out, which means that I’m planning to stick close to you.”
“Same here,” Lucy added. “That kobold is still mine.”
Ed closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “OK, so we’re sticking together and sharing resources. What do we need?”
“Before we get to that, there’s one more thing we need to discuss,” Ingrid said. “Ed, you can’t keep being a melee fighter.”
“I know. If the party is built from mostly summoned creatures, if I get knocked out they’ll vanish and you two are left to fight alone. I’ll have to move to a ranged weapon position, since I probably can’t afford a mana intensive role if I want to be able to resummon in combat. On the other hand, with a party made from my summons, I can buff most of the party with aura channel.”
“Do you actually have any skill with ranged weapons?” Lucy asked curiously. “It’s not like you can Slice an Archer Classshard.”
“I’m a decent crossbowman, actually, though I’m better with a staff. Trained in it while I was doing HEMA. And I’m a fairly good shot with a rifle, if we can afford one that works in the Labyrinth.”
“I don’t think we’ll be able to afford it at this point, but a crossbow can be done. Which means that we’ve got one heavy front liner, two ranged magic and one crossbowman/support. But we’ll be losing one ranged magic when Ed levels up his class. What next?” Ingrid took out a small notebook and pen.”
“The fox-kin is a liability right now. It can’t use its single offensive skill, so it can’t gain essence. I think we should give it a tier zero magical attack, preferably earth, since we’ve got the other basic elements covered. It’ll suffer from aura breach, but if we fight in floor three or four, a tier zero skill should still Seal quickly, and then it’ll be able to gain essence for its Classshard.”
“Agreed,” Ingrid marked down in her notebook. “I’ll get an Acid Dart Shard from the quartermaster. That gives us an extra ranged magic. We’ll want at least one more melee and at least one dedicated healer.”
“Make it two melee, one of them a rogue type to deal with traps, and we’ll add another ranged weapon when Luce gets the kobold. We can afford to fight with just one healer since I can heal and resummon too.”
“Makes sense to me,” Ingrid noted it down. “Any preferences on the melee types?”
“Get a beast-kin,” Lucy said eagerly, “and a dwarf! Ing’s a hybrid defense/offense now, so we’ll want a speed type attacker and a pure defense type to complement.”
“She’s got a point,” Ed agreed. “A dwarf with a Hammerman Classshard to rank up into a Stonehammer, and a cat-kin or goat-kin for agility type, with a Daggerman Classshard to rank up into Rogue later.”
“That works,” Ingrid added while writing it down. “I think we should go with an elf for the ranged weapon, Bowman class to start with, and a fey type, preferably nymph, for the healer, so we can evo it to a naiad and get the Water of Life effects.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Ed agreed. “So where does that leave us?”
“For Raceshards we have dwarf, agility beast-kin, elf and nymph. Elf will wait for later since you can’t Slice it yet. For Classshards, we’ve got Hammerman and Daggerman for now, and for Skillshards we’ve got Acid Bolt and Cure Lesser Wounds. Do we need anything else?”
“We should get a gathering skill,” Lucy pointed out. “We’re losing on monster body parts right now, but once we pass the fifth we’ll start to see herbs as well.”
“It’ll have to wait until one of the new phantasms maxes out its Classshards,” Ingrid shook her head. “None of the three of us can afford a slot for it right now, and it certainly can’t go to the kobold or fox-kin.”
“I know, but I wanted you to put it on the list so we don’t ignore it.”
“Noted. Do we have anything else we need?”
“I’ll want a crossbow,” Ed said. “Preferably light, since I don’t have any strength bonuses, and I’ll need bolts to go with it.”
“Nothing more for me,” Lucy shook her head, “but you’ll probably want to pick up a bunch of mana potions, otherwise it’ll take Ed all week to summon and Slice the phantasms.”
“You’ve got a point there. OK, after we finish breakfast, I’ll take this to the quartermaster while you two have your orientation with the arms master.
”
The three ate in silence for the next half an hour, famished enough to finish every scrap of the generous breakfast Ingrid ordered up for them. When they were finally all sated, and neither a crumb of bread nor a drop of coffee was left on the tray, Lucy and Ed kissed Ingrid goodbye, and left the room.
Ed looked around the corridor outside of Ingrid’s room. The residence wing for the Bjørnson family was lavishly decorated, with a lush carpet covering the floor and large oil paintings of prominent members of the family hanging on the walls. The doors to individual suites were separated by large picture windows, each one leading into a different scene, and no two of them could have existed side by side. Snowy mountains covered by a raging storm waited beyond the window to the left of Ingrid’s suite, while a barren, sun-scorched desert appeared to the right, and a large, winged, lion-like creature that could never have existed outside of the Labyrinth flew over a bright green savannah right in front of him.
“Come on, Ed,” Lucy pulled his arm towards, he assumed, the elevators. “I think I remember the way to the armsman barracks.”
◆◆◆
The House Bjørnson arms master was an old, grizzled mantis-kin. Her green carapace was covered in scars and burns from hundreds of delves and battles, and one of her four arms had been cut off out of reach of the House healers, and had since then been replaced with a clockwork contraption made of bronze and crystal. Four wickedly curved daggers hang from her belt, and a huge dragonhorn longbow Ed was sure he'd never be able to pull leaned against the wall behind her.
She was sitting behind a large oak desk in a utilitarian office at the entrance to the armsmen quarters, her large compound eyes looking at Lucy and Ed, an unreadable expression on her insectile face.
"Lucy Bradshaw and Ed Fergusson," She used her top two hands to lift a sheet of paper with Lucy's picture attached to it, and another with a picture of Ed. "My name is Gillian Solomon, and I am your arms master. It is extremely irregular that the Family drops armsmen on me without consulting me, and even more irregular for it to be done at such short notice, and as I have not had a chance to test you, I will require that you answer some questions regarding your abilities.
