by Daniel Heck
You arch an eyebrow at his curiosity. During many prior transactions with Matthias, he has hardly said a word.
“We need to find Fedwick,” you explain, stopping short of full disclosure.
He wrings his hands and avoids your gaze, squeaking, “I’ve been looking to change things up a bit, you see. Gets awful repetitive just handling these creatures day after day, pretty though they are.”
“A pattern seems to be emerging,” Titania mumbles.
The man hoists himself up by the britches, clears his throat and asks, “Would you consider… letting me come with you?”
Something about the stablemaster’s sincerity, even if just the eagerness in his eyes and tone, appeals to your softer side. He even seems ready to depart: silvery geegaws poke out of his pack at awkward angles, complementing fancy hiking boots that seem drastically out-of-place when surrounded by horse manure.
“One moment,” you say to him. You pull Titania aside.
“We’ve already rejected one such possibility,” you argue. “Maybe the universe insists that the two of us are not enough.”
Titania hesitates and glances over her shoulder at the stablemaster.
“You make a good point,” she concedes. “All right. He’s harmless enough, anyhow.”
You turn toward Matthias and invite him to join the expedition. He gleefully bolts toward his nearby home, wherefrom he soon returns with an assistant, instructing her to take over for the day and possibly longer. The stablemaster unhitches his own mount, then assists Titania in boarding hers, and the three of you depart.
As the main path outside Whitetail meanders slightly toward the northwest—connecting the capital to the port town of Sungaze—you soon find following Darlayne’s instructions to be trickier than you expected. Knowing how far you’ve come breaks down to guesswork, as the northern woods contain few landmarks or anchor points. Your horses struggle to maintain footing among throngs of thorny brambles. Before long, you begin to wonder whether you’ve saved any time via this plan.
When you have arrived at your best guess as to due north from town, you tie your mounts to trees and begin the search on foot. Dusk approaches, and a twinge of panic sets into your heart, as it becomes gradually harder to see what you want and where you’re going.
Matthias groans, dragging his legs behind and him and strectching creakily. “What exactly are we looking for again?” he asks, extending an arm toward a nearby oak.
It fails to hold him up. He stumbles, barely preventing himself from falling. “What the?”
“An illusory surface,” Titania reminds the group, smiling. “You found it! Good work!”
Matthias blushes.
We push forward.
After some discussion, your group decides to travel along the main road. After all, the more eyewitnesses there would be to any trouble, the less chance that anyone would try to stir it up in the first place.
Titania cautions, “we won’t be able to dilly-dally. We must travel late into the night before resting, with as little watch duty as possible.”
Galumnuk crosses his arms and glares at your love. “You used to giving orders so readily?” he grumbles.
Titania stands her ground. She turns toward the orcblood. “Yes, in fact,” she replies, “I was once mayoress of Sungaze, a port town in the northwest. Not that I would expect you to know that recent of Ambrosinian history.”
“Pardon me?”
The big guy stands stiff as a board. His shadow reaches across both your bodies and even a yard or so beyond. He frowns.
“Galumnuk not one to get angry,” he continues, “but your tone remind me of days when generals get abusive. Their shouts, their hatred. Everything need done, and need done quickly. They even use whip to get their way. I saw.”
A look of pity crosses Titania’s face. She reaches toward the orcblood and lays a palm on his arm.
A long pause ensues.
You let the tension dissolve a while longer before saying, “Galumnuk, you weren’t just a conscript for Koraxon, were you? You were a slave.”
He blinks twice, then rubs his eyes. Finally, he shrugs.
“Galumnuk suppose,” he admits, “When you put it that way.”
Titania says, “I owe you an apology.” She looks into the orcblood’s eyes and smiles warmly. “I will try harder not to trigger these memories. Thank you for sharing this difficult part of your past.”
“Is okay.” He grins in return. Several of his largest teeth glint in the evening sun.
Galumnuk lets you sleep in his chamber that night, on small, uncomfortable cots, while defending that they are the best the inn can provide without the two of you paying for a stay of your own.
The next morning, you pass many small bands of onlookers, some of whom glance over their shoulders or shoot suspicious glares at the orcblood. Midday, a small boy approaches your party and looks up to shout a greeting, but a woman in blue closes the distance quickly and pulls him back. Together they rush past, refusing to make eye contact and seeming to shrink as they go.
Galumnuk just gawks at a large field to the south as he marches, covered as it is with deep purple wildflowers. His feet sink into the soft dirt with every step, leaving prints larger than the beasts of burden that traverse these trails every day.
Is it a greater weight, you ponder, to suffer these prejudices daily, or instead to be oblivious to them?
The day passes without much fanfare. Hours of idle conversation later, the flow of travelers slows and your horses’ heads start to droop from fatigue. As Titania suggested, you press onward, and soon the constellations of the northern spring sky are the only guide left.
“Galumnuk back hurt,” the orcblood grumbles as he stretches and twists his torso, “and feet, too.”
“How far away are we from Whitetail, would you suppose?” Titania asks you.
You scan the horizon. You recall passing a warehouse you infiltrated six years ago as a part of your pursuit of Thomerion’s worshippers, but it’s so dark that you can’t tell whether the capital lay ahead.
“At what point,” you counter, “does this become counterproductive?”
“All right, ya sissies…” Titania says in a kidding tone. “Let’s set up camp, over here.”
Nearby lay a clearing in the surrounding wood, overgrown with enough wild thistle to protect you from the stiffening winds. Galumnuk removes his pack and hastily sets up a bedroll.
“Who take watch, and when?”
The low possibility of danger notwithstanding, someone must take each watch, and Titania has a point about summoning just a little more stamina.
What do you do?
I take first watch.
I take second watch.
“The leftmost seems safest,” you postulate… “Here, safe is good.”
Who will enter the chamber with the statue?
Titania.
Matthias.
Myself.
“Maybe we’d better deal with the middle one,” Matthias states.
Who will enter the tunnel with the goblins?
Titania.
Matthias.
Myself.
“That bear sure does seem dangerous,” says Titania, “but that might be all the more reason to get it out of the way.”
Who will enter the tunnel with the bear?
Titania.
Matthias.
Myself.
“The blocks look like they belong in the gap, in some arrangement or other,” Titania tells the stablemaster as they step toward the middle chamber. “You’re good at fitting things together, what with horseshoes and all. Give this one a try.”
Matthias nods, and enters. You watch for several moments. The goblins’ skittering changes tone and pitch in unpredictable waves as the stablemaster handles the blocks. He looks back and forth between the goblins, the blocks, and the wall. He tries speaking to them occasionally, but a clear language gap keeps much from getting accomplished.
Upon Matthias’
s placing one of the largest blocks in an awkward position, two goblins begin screeching and grumbling, and thump their fists into your friend’s legs. “Ow, ow. Owww!” He bolts out of the chamber, rejoining you and Titania.
“Those little brats were trying to beat me up!” he shouts directly at you. You shrug, helpless.
“I get the feeling,” Titania offers, “that they want their independence after all. They didn’t want you to solve the puzzle for them.”
“So much for putting things together,” Matthias mumbles as he brushes dust off his tunic.
“I have an idea. Let me try something.”
What does she mean by that?
At dawn the next morn, you hear a raucous rap upon your door. After you dress and exit, you find Stephano standing at the ready. The paladin leads you to his gryphon, which greets its master with a nuzzle of its head. You are told that while the beast is large enough to hold three people, it can only accommodate one saddle. It seems the two of you will be riding bareback, with only a safety rope connecting you to each other, and to the paladin.
Knowing what lay ahead, you and your love each take a warm cloak out of your packs and tie it around your neck. As Stephano helps Titania and then you mount, you exchange glances with Titania. She wrings her hands.
“Afraid of heights?” you ask.
“No,” she defies. “Would I not have brought such an issue up earlier, if I were?” Her eyes, however, tell a different story.
“We’ll be all right,” you reassure.
“All set!” Stephano shouts. “Hang on tight.”
The paladin snaps the reins with a casual air, as if guiding a mere horse. With a screech and a lurch, the gryphon flaps its tremendous wings. You rise straight into the air and begin cruising. The gryphon gradually rotates by a third of a circle, now facing a precise north by northwest. It accelerates, rising through a low-hanging cloud bank until townsfolk below look tiny as ants. You marvel at the creature’s speed, and the time flies by; the sight of the land below gives way to the expanse of the sea within what seems like minutes.
More time passes. The whoosh of a rhythmic wingbeat is the only sound, beyond Titania’s occasional whimper. She grips you around the waist. You turn, see that her eyes are shut tight, and comfort her with a squeeze of the hand.
“There!”
Ahead, you can barely see an expanse of white peek over the horizon. As you approach, the moonlight glints off what appear to be crags of ice and smooth rock, shooting nearly vertically from a barren landscape.
“What is that?” Titania asks.
Not until you land, dismount, and light a torch do you get a good look at it: A single-story frozen fortress stands here, its walls thick and cloudy but semi-transparent. Four towers complement the structure, one at each corner, as if a castle, made for a king like any other.
“When did this get here? And how?” you ponder aloud.
“Such things matter not,” Stephano posits, “Rather, note that since it takes up most of the territory here, what you seek is probably within.”
You arch an eyebrow at your transporter. Unhesitant, he takes the lead and marches toward an open archway in the structure’s center. You exhale hard and run your hand across the surrounding wall’s smooth surface. Its cold bites into your fingertips, and you pull your cloak tighter against your skin as a shiver pulses through you.
Beyond, you see a narrow passage, bound on each side by more semi-opaque ice walls. The floor here is made of natural dirt and frostbitten vegetation, as if the walls lack a foundation.
The two of you enter and catch up with Stephano. The passage leads to a turn to the right, which in turn leads to a tee-intersection. Both offshoots lead to more of the same. You keep exploring in this fashion without much rhyme or reason as to your direction, until you begin to hear grotesque smacking sounds. Another archway lay ahead.
You approach from the side and peek carefully around the wall’s edge. Within a chamber beyond, at the end of a short tunnel, a massive white-furred monster with fists the size of hams sits upon the dirt, its back turned to you. It seems to be munching on the carcass of a bear or other large mammal.
Within a nook in the wall behind the yeti lies a metallic construct no larger than your palm, in the shape of the top half of a monkey.
“That,” you indicate, “is what we came here for.”
You lead your group in a retreat, to beyond earshot.
“You clearly need to deal with that... thing,” says the paladin, “and what better way than to have you and I fight it while milady here runs around behind it and grabs the item?”
You arch an eyebrow. “You would help us do that?”
Stephano shrugs and nods.
At the same time, the sharp points of a raised porticullis’s many spears glint in the light from within the archway above. A tense moment passes as you scan the area, cautious. Titania crosses her arms, and says, “Look here…”
From the outer surface of the icy wall protrudes a vertical lever. Somehow free of rust or moisture, it looks as if it could be flipped with little effort.
“Might that operate the porticullis?” you ask.
Titania shivers harder than you did, and whispers, “No real chance to test it without getting the yeti’s attention. But it certainly looks dangerous, even deadly…”
What do you do?
We follow through with Stephano’s idea.
We try to lure the yeti toward the porticullis, to drop it upon the creature.
“You’re a compassionate soul,” Titania notes, “maybe these goblins could use your guidance.”
“I’m not sure I’d know what to say,” you counter, scratching your chin in thought. “But I’ll try.”
You step into the chamber and immediately your feet and legs feel like they’re drowning among the creatures. Yet, while they dart about in random directions, they look at each other, the blocks or the ground instead of at you.
You kneel and tap one on the shoulder.
“You know,” you say gently, “this reminds me of growing up among humans, and of some of the toys we’d play with…”
It turns a block over and over in its hand, feeling its texture with a leathery finger, and glances back and forth between it and you.
You turn back toward your companions. “I’m not sure it understands at all.”
“Keep trying.”
Scanning the goblins, a commonality jumps out at you. They’re all quite young, with one exception: the tallest has some level of authority over the others, and you’re quite sure it’s a male.
The father. And yet, it’s not really helping matters.
“Where is your mother?” you ask, even as you realize they won’t answer.
“Intriguing…” Titania remarks.
Who will try the middle chamber next, if he or she hasn’t already done one?
Matthias.
Titania.
You react without the slightest regard for your own safety.
If we both must cling to flotsam for an eternity to survive, you think, at least we will be in it together.
You hurdle the aft siderail and drop twenty feet straight into the sea. It takes several moments to get your head back above water, but after taking a tremendous breath, you zero in on Titania and start pumping your arms and legs to close the distance.
She sees you and shouts, “You are a confounded fool! A romantic one, but a fool nonetheless!”
“You’re welcome,” you grumble as you wrap your arms around her.
Despite the pounding currents, you wave back upward toward the ship in hopes of gaining someone’s attention. Soon, your worst fear comes true. The storm pushes the ship farther away from you, and no one on board seems to be able to get it back under control. In the meantime, the water freezes you, soaking straight through your vestments and into your bones. Titania sets her head on your shoulder and starts to weep.
You tread water with one arm and shout at the top of your lungs. But
within minutes, the vessel appears as nothing more than a brown dot floating near the horizon.
Do such strangers deserve the trust that I gave?
Go back to the previous choice, or start again.
At your proposal of sending Titania into the rightmost chamber, she leans to one side, shoves her fist into her hip and glares at you.
“What?” you say.
“You would send me to face a ferocious bear?”
“You’re a perfectly capable woman. Soothe it with your gentle touch.”
Matthias snickers.
“If anyone knows the power of your touch,” you continue, “it would be me.”
“I may be brave,” Titania counters, “but I’m not stupid.”
You frown. “So you won’t even try?”
Several moments of silence pass, during which you each stare daggers into the other. Finally, she turns aside and stares at the wall, her arms crossed.
“Fine,” you grumble, “But we’re going to have a talk about this later.”
Who will attempt the rightmost chamber instead, if he hasn’t already?
I will (to get out of the doghouse).
Matthias will.
You shake your head in confusion. Your devotion to your deity is at complete odds with human logic right now. Besides, nowhere in your holy education were you taught that you must do everything that the sun deity says (mostly, you had heard the opposite, as to what you’re not supposed to do during your short time alive.)