Crossing his burly arms over his chest, Durvin surveyed the defenses from on high. He could easily envision the waves of monsters breaking like black water against the fortifications. But they weren’t stone, and he knew they would fail eventually.
Given time and plenty of stone, Durvin’s craftsmen could work wonders but they were not gods. No dwarf, excepting of course the great Mornhammer himself, could make a lasting wall out of dirt and a bit of wood.
Still, he was a dwarf. And so Durvin could not help but see the potential that lay before him. Like a painter gazing upon a blank canvas, Durvin envisioned a massive barbican taking up the entire gap. Inside would be filled with cunning dwarf traps, secret entrances, and barracks.
He spotted Noth’s dark armor easily, even in the deep shadows of the gap. She hadn’t been there a moment ago. That lass had a way of popping out where you least expected her.
Maybe she had some Delver blood in her.
She hadn’t let him go out in search of Hal. She wanted him to trust him.
Trust had nothing to do with it. Durvin was well aware that Hal wasn’t of this world. He didn’t understand the dangers, and even if he did, he was far from equipped to handle them on his own.
As much as the surly dwarf tried to deny it, a large part of his stony heart was given over to worry for the lad. He, and much of his clan, had come to care deeply for the boy.
If they hadn’t, they would have pulled up stakes and left already.
Durvin wasn’t sure if he could convince them to do so, even if he was of the mind to try. Not that he was stupid enough to try.
“Thought I’d find ye out here, me King,” said Bardan, emerging from the tunnel.
“Lay off with that, eh?” Durvin groused. “Ye seen yer handiwork?”
“Aye, the lads do good work. Me thinks that the dark-haired lass thinks like a dwarf,” Bardan said with a pearly grin beneath his graying beard.
“Aye, she sees beyond the knees,” Durvin said. It was often that humans, and many of the taller races mocked the dwarfs for their short stature.
It hardly bothered the stout folk, but it was amazing to them how short-sighted most races were.
And so the phrase, “seeing beyond the knees” was a compliment from one dwarf to another. It meant that while the other races were looking into the faces of the fellows, dwarfs could see through their legs to the future ahead.
Even the long-lived elfs had a way of looking only at the present, rarely the future.
A dwarf labored all the centuries of their life for a dream they would never see completed. A home they would never experience, for safety their grandchildren might know if they lived long enough.
That was what it meant to be a dwarf.
“I reckon she and the lad have that in common,” Durvin said.
“Ye thinkin’ he’s to be coming back?”
“A horde o’ hungry morbolgers wouldn’t stop that boy from defending his home,” Durvin said with utmost confidence. “He’s like to be late, but I ain’t fer doubting him. He’ll be here.”
“Jerky?” Bardan asked, handing a wrinkled strip to Durvin.
“Aye.”
Durvin chewed with powerful jaw muscles, shredding the tough and flavorless jerky. He chewed some more for good measure and turned to stare at his friend. A mentor well beyond his own years in the days when Clan Bouldergut went by another name.
Before his father’s fall from grace.
He saw the dawning realization lighten Bardan’s green eyes as he chewed on the same strip of jerky. Durvin took a long swallow, forcing the lump past his throat.
“Bardan,” Durvin said calmly. Too calmly.
“Aye?” Bardan mumbled around a mouthful.
“That weren’t jerky.”
“I reckon yer right,” Bardan said, leaning over to spit out the strip of leather he had split for them both instead of jerky.
“Bardan. Ye finish that ‘jerky’.”
The older dwarf slowly turned to Durvin and nodded, chewing with extra effort to break down the tough strip of hide. He took a painful swallow and then joined Durvin in pulling out a hip flask of hard liquor.
They both took a long draw on their respective flasks before capping them and putting them away.
“Gonna have a few more rocks for the pile afore lunchtime,” Bardan joked, nudging Durvin in the ribs.
“Aye,” Durvin agreed. “See to it that yer boys don’t be trying to build a wall outta it, eh?”
The two older dwarfs shared a laugh at that ridiculous notion.
Eventually, a solemn silence lapsed between the old friends. That was until Bardan spoke up. “Ye ever going to tell the lad yer true name?”
“Ain’t no other name fer me,” Durvin answered. “I’m a Bouldergut now through and through. Wouldn’t take back me sire’s name if it came with a whiskery kiss from the Anvil Gem herself!”
Bardan nodded. “We’ll make ye proud, me King.” He turned to leave as he spoke, but Durvin caught him on the shoulder.
The older dwarf looked back at Durvin curiously. “Ye make yerselves proud,” he said. “I ain’t fer rulin’ like them soft-handed, beard-trimming, shale-spined lot!”
A glint of the inner fire Durvin had always looked up to in old Bardan flickered to life. “We’ll do just that.”
Durvin watched the older dwarf stalk back into the tunnels, his spine straighter than he’d ever seen it before.
Your Leadership has risen to Level 78.
+1% Clan damage (+78%).
+2% Clan capacity (+156%).
Your Royalty Skill has risen to Level 33.
+0.85% Warcrown effect (+28.05%).
+0.65% Influence range increase (+21.45%).
+0.5% Statesman effect (+16.5%)
Clan Bouldergut Reputation: +1,200 (Beloved King-in-Exile).
Your reputation is already at the highest tier and can go no higher.
You gain 1,398 Experience Points (+16.5%).
You earn 179 Sparks (+28.05%).
Durvin turned back to the growing light to the south of the kingdom. Hal was out there somewhere. “Ye get yerself back here, lad. Yer people be needin’ ye.”
143
Mira sat cross-legged with her new spear balanced across her knees. She breathed in then breathed out, counting each exhalation and allowing nothing else to cloud her mind.
She couldn’t feel her aether, not in the same way as she would back home. Even if she could, she supposed it would be called mana here.
The thought popped through her head, and she let it fall away. A dozen other small thoughts that had been bothering and distracting her for a while now bubbled up to the surface.
Like foul swamp gas, she let them burst free and was glad to be rid of them.
Despite being on an entirely different Worldshard, her mana began to churn and flow through the various channels in her body. It was a familiar, comforting sensation. One she had gone entirely too long without.
“It would seem, my dear, that they have finished the wall,” rumbled the smooth, posh tones of her host. “Will you be joining them in defense of your new home?”
Mira popped open one eye to regard Orrittam. “What kind of florking question is that?”
The golden dragon studied her curiously. “Gaining back some of your powers will not allow you to subvert the language block,” Orrittam said calmly. “You must know how futile it is, would not your energies be better directed elsewhere?”
She shrugged her lean elven shoulders. “Eventually it’ll break. Many former masters of mine have given me much the same instruction as you have. And I have surpassed their expectations many times over.”
“I do not underestimate you. I merely point out that your efforts may be put to better use elsewhere. Unless, of course, you do not mean to stay much longer?”
A strand of coppery hair had fallen over Mira’s face, she blew it aside and cast a sharp glance at the golden dragon. “You keep saying that, do you think I woul
d abandon my friends?”
“You have been spending a great deal of time apart from them,” Orrittam pointed out without judgment. “One would think that, perhaps, you wish to distance yourself from your friends. One might also believe that in doing so, you might feel less inner turmoil at your decision to leave them. Or is it that you wish to spare them the pain of your departure?”
“You know what they say about assuming,” Mira said with a grin. “You made an ash out of me and- oh for the love of florking shirt!” She glared at Orrittam, who wisely shied away as much as was possible, considering the bulk of his body was trapped by a White Dragon. “You know what I meant.”
“Indeed,” Orrittam said with only the slightest hint of a grin on his draconic features. “There is little doubt that my present circumstance has escaped your powers of observation. I have little else to do but think and ponder. Forgive me if I have overstepped.”
Mira waved his apology away. “You’re pretty close to the mark,” she admitted with a soft sigh. “I’m not supposed to be here, you know that. You have the same aura as I do, neither of us is from this Worldshard.”
“We are both Realmwalkers, yes.”
“Well, aren’t you afraid that the Worldshard is going to give you the boot?”
“Not precisely.”
“You’ve been to many different Worldshards,” Mira said. He’d been to more worlds than she had. Considering her wanderlust, that was an achievement. Then again, he was a dragon. Deklin was going to be so mad when she told him that she had met an actual dragon. And a Gold at that!
“Indeed, and not a single one has ousted me. I would have thought your Order trained you to deal with such potentialities?”
“Orders are so 13th century, they’re called Academies now. But yes, they did. It’s just….”
His large serpentine eyes widened as he finally caught on.
“Now you get it,” Mira said. “I snuck in the proverbial back door. Sooner or later - sooner more like, considering how much attention Hal is garnering - the Worldshard is going to notice ‘one of these things is not like the other’ and yeet my well-toned bum out of this Worldshard.”
“And that is why you have been in the caverns below,” he said, catching on. “You think I was able to stay here so long because I have stumbled upon a pure vein of Ialite. I take it that is why I am graced with your present company?”
“More or less,” she said with an additional shrug. “I was hoping you had something that could help me to stay. I know you don’t have any reason to help me, but Hal needs-”
“I will help you, Miss Lavilieur. Of course I will. I only have one condition.”
“I’ve got a heavily used ‘bad dragon’ at home,” she said, giving Orrittam a stern glare. “I don’t need to compare it to the real deal, you feel me? If that’s what you’re after, keep looking pal.”
If dragons could blush, Orrittam was right then. He stammered several times, started and stopped some apology before Mira finally took some measure of pity on him.
She held up a hand to stop him. “Calm down, I’m just florking joking with you. What is it you want?”
“Ahem, yes, quite. Jolly good laugh all around. I was hoping you would have Sunday Tea with me and share some of your stories of other Worldshards. It has been a very long time since I have seen another Realmwalker, much less had the opportunity to speak with them at length.
“In exchange for my help stabilizing you, all I ask is for a moment of your time to keep an old dragon company. If you will do this, I will see to your stabilization. I take it you are already feeling the first ill effects?”
Mira nodded. “Tremors, bouts of reduced corporeality. Nothing too severe that I can’t overcome with force of mind-”
“But you would be a liability on the battlefield, where you are already quite taxed forcing your aether to act as mana in order to use your Class abilities. Yes, I could see how that would be a conundrum. Very well, could you grab that box of cookies over there?”
Without thinking, Mira looked to the faded box of Famous Amos cookies and willed it over to her waiting hand. It was an automatic motion. One, back home, she had done several times once acquiring the ability.
But she was not home. And her use of aether caused a sudden and severe backlash.
The System popped up one notification after the other of garbled text as it tried to sort out what she had just done. Of course, it couldn’t, and the painful feedback had her sprawled on the floor nearly unconscious.
All sound became muted and dull. The steady thumping of her heart drowned out all else. Her vision blurred. She could feel the tether at her navel draw itself taut as if she was a fish snagged on the line.
The Worldshard was rejecting her.
She tried to calm herself, to use the techniques Professor Imau taught her. She envisioned herself as a placid cup of water resting on the sand.
Despite the pain, she let her emotions boil up and over. She didn’t try to stop them or channel them. They passed through her and spilled out onto the sand in her mind’s eye.
There, they were soaked up by the thirsty parched desert all around her. The pain became distant. Her cup stilled and became calm once more.
When Mira opened her eyes, the worst of the pain had passed. Orrittam was there… mixing something that looked like a cake. He was whipping together ingredients by commanding those oversized black bats - keinse, she believed they were called - to fetch ingredients and stir them together.
One keinse was fluttering madly with a wooden spoon clutched in his taloned feet as he helped mix the ingredients of the bowl. Meanwhile, the other keinse were bombing the bowl with all sorts of strange ingredients.
There were cheetos, funyuns, bugles, oreos, all manner of junk food from her home, and several others she didn’t recognize like galax-o’s, oppa beans. There was an unending assortment of other treats from other Worldshards.
“You’re not going to make me eat that, are you?” she asked, growing a little nauseous just looking at it.
A keinse dropped in an egg. One whole, raw egg.
“Afraid so, my dear, afraid so! Your disassociation is coming along faster than I would have thought. No doubt spurred on by that silly action, you really should know better, but it is quite all right. We all make mistakes! If only I had some Ialite, but this will do instead.”
Mira let her head bounce against the stone floor as she dropped it with a groan. “At least put some hot sauce in there,” she groaned. Anything to overpower the stomach-churning mixture.
144
“Are you sure this is going to work?” Mira asked, looking at the lumpy, misshapen mess of a cake. It was the most putrid gray-green she had ever seen.
It didn’t help that Orrittam had generously splashed it with hot sauce, she could tell it was going to be bad.
“It will, temporarily at least,” he hedged.
“Hold the flork up, what do you mean temporarily?”
The stone at the far end of the room groaned as Orrittam shrugged his massive shoulders against the entrapping stone. “You will need to regularly eat such a mixture until a permanent solution can be found. Thus, the solution before us is a temporary one.
“If it is any consolation, you need not eat it all. A single slice - about a sixth - should suffice. It would stabilize you almost immediately. It’s really not as bad as it looks. I call them ‘Anchor Cakes’ on account-”
Mira belted out a horrendously fake laugh. “Yes, yes, I get it. They anchor you to the current Worldshard.” She eyed the gross baked cake. Even calling it a cake was an affront to all cakes that ever existed.
As she held up the hot-sauce splashed cake, her hand began to tremble. Her forearm became ever-so-slightly translucent, reminding her of the severity of her problem.
With a mental curse, she shut her eyes and took as big a bite of the cake as she could.
Dragon tastebuds, she understood then, were completely different than human. Or, she gue
ssed, an elf’s. In either case, Orrittam was a big fat golden liar.
Bile rose in the back of her throat, but she managed to choke down the first bite. It still had crunchy bits in it.
“Ah… terribly sorry, Mira,” Orrittam said sheepishly. “But that is not a sixth. Another bite of the same size should suffice. We dragons have an excellent sense of proportion.”
Mira cast him a baleful glare, swallowed hard, and took another bite before she could lose her nerve. It didn’t hurt that her forearm was already fully corporeal.
She felt more… herself. Rooted and grounded.
By the time she finished with the second bite, she was sweating and gasping for breath. “Did you put Cap’n Crunch in there, or was that glass?”
“The former.”
Stomach churning, Mira propped herself up against a nearby chair and groaned for the next half hour. If Orrittam seemed bothered by it, he never said anything.
In fact, if it wasn’t for the devil’s brew in her stomach - she was not looking forward to its exit - she would have had a decent time. Orrittam regaled her with tales of his own Realmwalking.
The untamed breadth and fury of Telsara, the somber fields of Lormar, the brutal wars of Ferraen, and even the wondrous (and dangerously unchecked) magicks of Gyrand of which Mira had heard a great deal about.
She let the dragon’s soothing, cultured voice wash over her. It was a great deal like meditating. By focusing on his voice, she could forget about the bubbling cauldron in her gut.
Eventually, she felt good enough to sit up properly, and from there it was another hour until she could stand. Clenching her fist tightly, Mira could feel the power that was suddenly and inexplicably drained away in the last few days.
“Thank you,” she said sincerely. “It’s been months since I’ve felt this strong. It’s almost like the first week I came here. Only I’m not trying to acclimatize myself to the System.”
“Then I take it you will answer the summons?” Orrittam asked.
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