Echoes

by Honor Raconteur

  Despite my better judgment, we kept tunneling. Chi started facing backwards to the group, guarding our rear, which made me feel marginally better. Vee added another mage light to the front, Maksohm threw one up toward the back, and it cut down on the amount of shadows. That also helped. I felt less inclined to crawl out of my own skin.

  I judged us to be almost nineteen hundred feet inside of the mountain by that point. I wasn’t sure if this distance was a good or a bad thing. It either indicated we weren’t going to find trouble, because surely any creature would have noticed us by now, or we were so far gone that there was going to be a swift and brutal attack. Flip a coin, it could go either way.

  Rena didn’t see anything though. I knew she didn’t because she kept speaking her spells, her words never faltering. I saw no hesitation in her and really, it was her eyes more than anything else that I trusted to spot trouble first.

  Another chunk went down. The dust swirled around our feet and waists, the wind spell clearing it out, and Rena…didn’t immediately launch into the next spell.

  Was she tired? She’d been casting for about three and a half hours. Maybe she wanted to stop, get lunch, pace herself? I stepped in closer, question poised on the tip of my tongue.

  “Sarding son of a Bauchi,” my wife swore viciously. “DOWN!”

  We all dropped instantly, Maksohm throwing up a shield around our heads even as he sank to his haunches. Just in time, too, as something large and winged smacked right into the shield before skittering off.

  And then proceeding to fly into a solid rock wall as if it were thin air.

  “What…that wasn’t a bat, right?” Chi asked, voice shaking. “Sards, that wasn’t a bat, way too big. Vee?”

  The half-giant’s eyes were wide enough to swallow her face. “Cenebre. Had to be. No other creature matches that description. Maksohm, we have to get out of here. Now.”

  We all more or less agreed on that point and scrambled back up to our feet, running flat out for the tunnel entrance. Never had eighteen hundred-something feet seemed so long, so impossible to quickly cross. I knew Vee restrained herself to match our pace, and how she was able to control her panic that well, I didn’t know, but I respected it.

  I kept an eye overhead for cenebre as I demanded, “Vee, how sure are you about them hating sunlight?”

  “If the legends are accurate, sunlight damages them,” she answered, also staring hard at the entrance. “We’re safe during daylight.”

  But not at night. She didn’t need to say that aloud. We all heard it.

  Vee kept swearing as she ran with us, feeding us answers before we could ask the questions. “The cenebre are highly territorial, they’ll attack anything that comes in, and they’re quick to retaliate if you don’t respect their boundaries. My people had the worst time fighting them off because of that.”

  I didn’t like the conclusions I drew. “How much trouble, exactly?”

  “As in they’ll attack the nearest human settlement, or they’ll just attack us if we stay in their territory?” Maksohm demanded of her.

  Vee winced. “Not sure? But likely the former.”

  Maksohm swore, the rest of us more or less joining him, as that didn’t sound like a barrel full of laughs to anyone. Then we swore again as another cenebre swooped in over our heads, screeching in warning before disappearing into the opposite wall. We all sprinted a little harder until we tumbled through into glorious sunlight.

  “Rena!” Dag ran up to us, catching her hand, his eyes as big as saucers, the words tumbling quickly out of his mouth. “What was that? It was like a really big bat, but it went through the stone like it was nothing.”

  Of course he’d seen it, it was only twenty-something feet away, his eyes could manage that just fine. As Rena ducked down to answer his questions, my eyes sought out Mack. A lot of little things that had bothered me before now made worlds of sense. I could see it in his face, his very pale face, read it in the way he stared at the mountain, his body trembling. “Mack.”

  Gulping, he shot me a look. “I didn’t…didn’t actually believe it. It was just a rumor. You have to believe me, I thought it just a rumor.”

  Maksohm strode for him, catching the man’s collar and giving him a hard shake. I’d only seen Maksohm this royally pissed once before, but he was ready to commit murder right then and there. “You knew something was in there. Don’t sell me that line, I’m not buying it. You knew, your company knew, and you sent us in there anyway.”

  Unable to refute that, the foreman shut down, staring at the ground without a single rebuttal on his lips.

  Chi came up to stand at my side, but he still had an arrow cocked and ready to fly. Our archer wasn’t going to just trust the legends were accurate about sunlight. “Guys, look, I’ve hit my limit with all of this. I’m supposed to be on vacation, where I can kiss my wife and bake things that are bad for me, not deal with monsters from legends. And we still don’t even know if Tohsie’s in there or not. I’m not taking both of them on at once. Maksohm, how about we all go down, away from this monster-infested mountain, and report this in? I’m strangely not excited about dealing with this mess with only one team.”

  “Me either,” Maksohm growled, prying his fingers away from Mack’s collar. I think what he actually wanted to do was choke and shake him for a while. “Vee, Emily, help me set up a quick perimeter barrier first. There’s a good chance we’ve riled them up so badly here that they won’t stay in their mountain come nightfall. If they leave, I want to know about it. And you, Foreman, you and I get to go back down and talk to my bosses and explain just how stupid you’ve all been. I can promise you, your company is going to be blacklisted and pay a very hefty fine for the events of today. You’d better pray that it doesn’t result in property damage and an attack on Mountain Point. If it does, you won’t ever be able to find work in this field again.”

  “How sure are you that they’ll attack?” Mack demanded of Vee as we piled into the wagon. Only Vee and Maksohm didn’t join us, which was good, as there was no room for another person. I sat in Bannen’s lap as it was, with Dag positioned on the middle of the cart’s floor, dodging people’s feet.

  “Ninety percent sure,” Vee responded tartly. She meant it as a rebuke to him but her worry underscored every word. I heard that more than anything.

  “Maybe them flying over your heads was just a warning?” Mack asked desperately, lifting the reins in hand. He turned us toward the trail with a sharp slap of the reins, desperate to move even as he demanded for reassurances. The rest of the crew watched her hopefully as well, although they didn’t seem to really believe her answer would be a good one.

  Vee stayed next to the slow cart effortlessly, glaring at him all the while. “Only if we’re very, very lucky. How lucky are you normally, Foreman?”

  Swallowing audibly, Mack didn’t answer.

  Even with us beating a hasty retreat down, it still meant three hours in a wagon on a steep and twisty trail. Bannen fidgeted, itching to move, but unwilling to leave my side. I kept his arms firmly around me, grounding us both. Maksohm had portaled ahead to Mountain Point, needing every second to get people moved to more defensive locations and under protective barriers. Everyone else stayed with us, Emily connecting me via TMC to Director Salvatore.

  One could say it wasn’t going well.

  “Clarify this for me, Agent,” Salvatore growled, sounding more pirate-like than usual. He actually sounded like he was on the verge of spitting on his hands, hoisting a black flag, and slitting a few throats. “Is Toh’sellor in there or not?”

  “I can’t say one hundred percent either way, but I’m ninety-nine percent leaning towards ‘not.’ I saw traces of a Toh’sellor minion near the front of the mountain, and yet nineteen hundred feet inside, an animal flies over our heads, completely free of Toh’sellor’s energy. That’s not possible if there’s a shard of Toh’sellor anywhere in the area. It takes up everything within a radius of itself. If there are animals flying abo
ut unmolested, then what I saw was old energy trapped inside of the rock.”

  “Is that possible?”

  “Honestly, sir, we’ve never experienced anything like this before. Toh’sellor was only ever in one mountain range, and it was there for so long that everything in that area is permeated with its energy. I’m reporting to you exactly what I’m seeing and trust me, I’ll pass along this information to Magus Trammel at the first opportunity, as any scrap of intel is helpful at this point. But gut instinct says there was a shard up there, yes. It’s gone at this point. The only way to know for absolutely certain is to take the mountain down.” I almost didn’t say it, chewed on my bottom lip, debating the wisdom of saying it, but really? I’m the Toh’sellor expert. I had to trust my instincts. “Sir. Can I be perfectly frank with you?”

  “Agent, I demand it at this moment. What are you not saying?”

  “Seeing any trace of Toh’sellor scared the ever-living shenanigans out of me. If I’d been calm enough to think about it for a second, I would have realized Toh’sellor couldn’t be up here. Its shards all connected back to the main body, it wasn’t able to detach from the host. Since we have the host under lockdown, there’s no way for a shard to be up here.”

  There was a ruminative pause where I could only hear him breathing heavily. “Thank you, Rena. That was very frank and it puts a lot of my fears to rest. Alright, so you think the shard up there is long gone, probably when you took down the host the first time?”

  “That’s my guess, sir.”

  “I trust your guesses over everyone else’s. Alright, we have one problem solved, then, or at least Toh’sellor is now a non-issue. Now, what’s this other creature that you’re panicking about?”

  “Vee’s really the one to talk to,” I admitted frankly. Our giantess ran ahead of the wagon, keeping everything clear, ready to attack if necessary. I think she was too keyed up to sit still, really. “But this is what she told me. The creatures are called cenebre. They’re a legend up in these parts, huge creatures that are bat-like by nature. They prefer darkness, damp caves, and can apparently phase and fly through solid stone at will. They’re known to be highly territorial, which is why no one in this area would come up to work on the railroad.”

  “And you saw one of these?”

  “Yes sir. Two, to be precise. Not for more than five seconds, but they flew over our heads. It was huge, easily as large as an eight-year-old child. Vee was half-convinced the cenebre were just a bedtime story until we all saw it. Then she hustled us all out of there.”

  “That begs the question, how territorial are they?”

  “I have no answer, sir. According to Vee, very. The legends aren’t accurate about these things and they’re older than the hills. No one’s seen a cenebre in living memory.”

  “How far did you get inside? How much did you disturb the area?”

  “Absolutely no work had been done before I’d come up, as the men on site couldn’t get any laborers up there. I barely did anything the first day, as we stumbled across Toh’sellor’s energy fairly early on, so they might not have noticed me carving into the mountain. I did more work today than any other time, and we were eighteen hundred and ninety feet in when we saw the first one.”

  “That’s barely inside their area.”

  “I know,” I admitted gloomily. That didn’t bode well for us. “Dah’lil put up a barrier around the mouth of the tunnel before we left, but….”

  “Doesn’t do much good for creatures that can phase through stone. That ability, is that confirmed?”

  “Yes, sir. It entered and exited the tunnel by flying straight through solid stone. The rock was like air to the cenebre.” Which also alarmed me. If it could do that to the stone of a mountain, then what would prevent it from entering people’s homes?

  Salvatore apparently had the same thought, as he turned downright grouchy. “I can’t get help to you tonight. There’s no one close enough to your area. The best I can promise is in two days. Can you hold out that long?”

  “We’ll certainly do our best, sir.”

  Vee slowed so that she jogged alongside the wagon, then gestured for the TMC.

  “Ah, sir? Vee wants to speak to you.” I handed it over and listened in unabashedly.

  “Director,” Vee greeted, tone clipped and business-like. “I just had a thought. I’m not a historian and I’m certainly not up on the legends of Gargan, but an Elder would certainly know more about these creatures than I do. He might even know how we get them to calm down and stay inside the mountain. Yes, sir, I know exactly who to call. My mother’s brother’s sister-in-law’s older brother is an Elder.”

  I snorted softly at this rattling of relationships. For a giant, that was practically straightforward.

  Vee’s expression slipped into one of relief. “Yes, sir, I’ll call him immediately. I don’t know if he can get to us tonight, the trains will likely stop running soon. Yes, sir. Here’s Rena.”

  I accepted the TMC and slipped it back over my ear. “Here, Director.”

  “Answer one more question for me. The company that hired you for this, did they know?”

  “Their foreman had heard the rumors. The company itself I think suspected, as they were…very odd in their communications with me and overly generous.” Honesty forced me to add, “It could have been frustration on their end, as the work had been at a complete standstill for weeks, but…I think someone up there knew about this. Hiring the Void Mage for tunneling through a mountain is a little excessive, really. Other Mages could have done something too. I’m just more efficient than they are.”

  “I suspect you’re correct. I’ll handle them after we have this situation sorted. Make sure to keep record of all damage and how many hours everyone has to work to avert this disaster. I’ll take it out of their financial hides.”

  I really liked this man some days. Glancing up, I saw Vee move ahead, a small mirror in her hand as she called home for help. “Yes, sir.”

  “Salvatore, out.”

  Taking off the earpiece, I handed it to Emily, then gripped her hand hard. She needed the reassurance, as she looked a little white around the eyes, a little paler than normal. “How you doing, Em?”

  “I don’t like bats,” she responded in a high, thin voice.

  “Yeah, I know, it’s why I’m asking. You like bats about as much as Chi likes monkeys.”

  Emily’s marmoset familiar sat up in her lap, chittering at me in rebuke.

  “He doesn’t mind you, you know that,” I responded in exasperation. “You’re nice to him. It’s the mean monkeys in Njorage he doesn’t like.”

  “You’re fine, Dax,” Chi assured the marmoset from his perch on the side of the wagon. He had bow in his lap, arrows notched but not drawn, ready to take down anything suspicious. “You’re intelligent, nice, and cute. It’s those mean dastards in Njorage that bite people for no reason that I hate.”

  Soothed, Dax chittered to him for a moment before relaxing back in Emily’s hold. Emily translated for him, “I like you too, but I’d like you more if you shared your peaches more often.”

  Chi snorted, eyes rolling. “Right. I’ll do that.”

  “Don’t,” Emily dissuaded, wrinkling her nose at Dax and getting a glare in return. “He’s already a pig. He’ll be a hundred pounds at this rate. Alright, back to the problem: we have to hole up in the town tonight. What are the odds we can protect everyone?”

  “It’s not that big of a town,” Bannen murmured, and I could just hear the wheels turning as he thought of numbers and logistics, “but still, there’s not many of us, either. Only three mages who can create barriers and that’s a lot for three mages to cover. If we can manage to cram everyone into one large building—what do you think, Rena?”

  I did the math, calculating square footage compared to the rough population size of the town, and frowned at the answer. “We’ll be straining past our limits to manage it. I don’t know how feasible that is. Hopefully Dah’lil can get even
several hundred on board a train and heading out, otherwise we’ll be in trouble come nightfall.”

  “You know,” Chi said rhetorically, looking at no one in particular, “when someone predicts that something horrible is going to happen, I want them to be wrong. Just once, let them be wrong.”

  Lifting a hand in the air, Bannen drawled, “Seconded.”

  Emily lifted her hand as well. “Thirded. Motion carried.”

  I was pretty sure that wasn’t how that worked, but was too sympathetic and amused to tell them so.

  It might seem strange, but part of me—a large part of me—felt relieved that all I had to deal with was monsters. Toh’sellor and monsters did not a winning combination make. I would take one without the other any day of the week. It didn’t make the situation any safer for the town, of course, not in the immediate sense. But I found myself echoing Chi’s wish: for once, could our prediction of something going terribly awry be wrong? For once, could the monsters stay in the dark instead of coming out and attacking?

  Vee turned in her tracks, stopping and beaming at us. My attention sharpened on her and I sat a little straighter, hopeful. That look on her face was very promising.

  “What, wifey?” Chi called to her, also catching her expression.

  “Vaughn, Wade, and Hugo are all coming,” Vee answered, her smile stunning in its relief and happiness.

  I recognized all three of those names, and could put faces to them. Vaughn was the Elder Vee idolized, Wade and Hugo two of her cousins—and usually the ones enticing Bannen and Chi into various antics. I knew all three men to be very strong in giant’s magic, ferociously loyal in their support of family, and stalwart in their defense of the young. There was not much that could tackle a giant and win. Three giants? It put the odds back in our favor. “When can they get here?”

  “The train’s not running our direction, but honestly, moving by earth magic is faster at this point. They’re running as fast as they can and swear they’ll make it before sunset.” Vee crossed herself in a silent prayer of thanks. “I owe them.”