by Stone Thomas
“Brewer’s booth?” I asked.
“A few of the tradespeople have set up wooden tables in an effort to trade their services and wares,” Cindra replied. “There isn’t enough currency to go around, but they’re bartering as best they can.”
“Is there anything I can do?” I asked.
“I doubt you need a skillmeister booth,” Cindra said. “You already have the temple. Maybe you could offer massages…”
“I mean for you,” I said. “I’m worried about you.”
“Oh,” Cindra said. “You can say it. I’m already thinking it.”
“Say what?” I asked.
“That I’m a lumentor in green skin,” she said. “Every time I’ve exhausted myself has been under the sun’s harsh glare. I feel it burn through my semi-transparent skin, sapping me of energy. In Avelle’s temple, the goddess of safe passage said she helped Mercifer bring his deceased daughter back to life. If I’m that daughter…”
“Lumentors are thoughtless, angry souls,” I said. “You have compassion, insight, warmth. You’re everything a lumentor isn’t.”
“Not everything,” Cindra said. “I’ve developed the same weakness. And I’m missing memories. I don’t know what I was or who I was before my time in the cave beneath our village. I don’t even know how long I was down there before you and Vix found me. Two years? Ten? I had no way to keep track.
“For a time, there was nothing, and then there was something and someone. Mercifer, an aging elf man with pale yellow skin and a floppy, pointy hat. A cave, rough brown rock in every direction.
“He only ever looked at me with sadness in his eyes. I wondered what I did wrong, but maybe it was nothing I did. Maybe it was what I am that was wrong. A daughter that couldn’t remember her own father’s face. An ungrateful soul who forgot to thank him for bringing me back from the clutches of death.
“What am I, Arden? I’m afraid that I’ll melt away into nothingness before I ever find out.”
I stopped walking and took her hand. I peered into her deep emerald eyes. “The first time I looked up at the stars, I guess I was a little kid. I don’t remember it though. Your first time was the night after Vix and I dug you out of that cave. You loved the stars so much you almost cried.
“Most nights I don’t give them more than a passing glance, but their beauty hasn’t worn off on you. I doubt it ever will. You gaze at those stars like each one has a separate story to tell, because it’s not just their appearance that intrigues you. You look deeper. You want to know where they’re from, why they cluster the way they do, why some choose to shoot across the night sky while others twinkle faintly in the background.
“You’re a woman that treats people the same way. You’re made of magically crafted ether like no one in the human lands has seen before. You’re a person of wonder, and beauty, and intrigue. Yet, you make other people feel that way about themselves. Like we have stories deep inside us, whether we’re the type to shoot across the sky in a showy blaze or not.
“Can people see through your body? Sure, a little. But you can see through their souls. You, Cindra, are a woman with the upper hand.”
She threw her arms around me and we stood there, beneath the trees, just breathing together. I tilted her head toward mine and gave her a light kiss. “I won’t let anything happen to you,” I said. “What we need now is to find Mercifer. He’ll know what to do.”
Cindra smiled and walked on through the trees. We had a long hike ahead of us, but after all the noise and destruction in Valleyvale, a long quiet walk was just what we needed.
That’s why I was so miffed that someone screamed. Maybe they just found the corpse of the mangled dolly we left behind?
I made my way back to the dirt path and saw a woman standing at the edge of what I’m going to call ‘Valleyhole.’
She turned back and saw me climbing through the bushes. She wore the shortest blue shorts, just barely containing a small, shapely rear. Her legs were slender, ending in shoes fit for an athlete.
“What happened?” she asked. Her shirt was blue too, and sleeveless. She carried a brown canvas bag on her back, with short dark hair pulled into a small ponytail. A lock of hair, too short to stay in her hair tie, drooped across her face. She tucked it behind one ear as we stared at each other.
“They moved,” I said.
“Who did?” she asked.
“Everyone. Many of the people got out, and are now in either Roseknob or Halcyon. The rest of the city — like, for instance, the buildings — moved to parts unknown. You’re welcome to come to Halcyon with us though.”
“How am I going to deliver this if everyone has left?” she asked.
“Deliver what?”
“You don’t recognize the uniform then,” she said. “I’m a mailrunner. I have a letter for the Mayor.”
“You’re in luck,” I said. “He’s in Halcyon.”
“What’s a Halcyon?” she asked. The lock of hair fell from behind her ear and draped in front of her face again.
“A village a half day’s walk from here,” I said. “I’m sort of the leader.”
“I’ll need to know who lives there at some point, but Halcyon isn’t on my list of deliveries for the day.” She tucked the hair back behind her ear.
“I could take it to him.”
She hesitated.
“It’s not addressed to you.” The hair fell again.
“I understand that.”
She tucked her hair back, again. “You can’t open it.”
“Of course.”
“Are you going to open it?”
“Are you going to deliver it yourself?” I asked.
That short tendril of hair just wouldn’t stay put. She blew that renegade strand out of her face, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. Something told me she didn’t have the patience to keep fighting with me and that stubborn lock of hair, and unless she had a pair of scissors or a vat of hair shellac handy, I was the only one she could do something about.
“Just don’t open it, okay?” she asked. Then she handed me the letter and sprinted away. I’d love to get a closer look at her skillmeister menu. I had always struggled to run more than a few minutes without losing my breath, but she was a leg-pumping, calf-flexing machine.
Cindra hung back amidst the trees. “What are you going to do?” she asked.
I smiled and stuck my thumb into the envelope’s top flap. “Open it, of course.”
A single square of parchment sat inside the envelope, with a message I had to read twice. If I understood it correctly, it was a note from Lily and Ambry’s missing mother.
Dear Gruppin,
I expect you still govern Valleyvale or the mailrunner would have returned my last few letters. I’ll keep this one short. Please, lift the banishment so I can come home. The treatment worked and I’m no danger to our daughters anymore, or to you.
Give the girls my love,
Kinarma Ingriss
+27
“Honeys, I’m home!” I yelled as Cindra and I passed through Halcyon’s entry gates. It was late in the evening, but the village was alive with activity. Teams of men and women held torches and tools on the top of the hill, building Halcyon up while gi-ants patrolled our perimeter.
“We were so worried!” Vix yelled, running down the front steps to Nola’s temple. She didn’t stop running until she had one arm around me and one around Cindra. “I’ve been sitting by the portal arch for hours. Why didn’t you teleport?”
“The arch was blasted apart,” I said. “Valleyvale is gone. Kāya swallowed the whole thing up in magic smoke and took it away.”
“Oh gods,” Vix said. “I didn’t know she could do that.”
“Me neither,” I said. “I’m glad Halcyon’s still here though. That’s something.”
I pressed my hand against Vix’s back, pulling her closer into our three-person embrace. Something felt… different. Bigger.
I pulled back and started to question my eyes. Hey, eye
s, I thought. Didn’t you see her this morning?
Yep, they said.
I know it’s been a long day, but is she rounder now?
You bet, boss, they said. Believe me, if we could change how girls look at a whim, we’d have been doing that our whole lives. This is legit.
“What?” Vix asked.
Uh oh, my eyes said. We’re outta here.
“You just look larger,” I said. Each word made her a little angrier. “In the,” I continued, apprising the increased bulginess of her stomach. I didn’t think pregnant women could grow so quickly. Shows what I knew. Growing up in a temple run by Father Cahn meant no sex ed class. “In the,” I tried again. It wasn’t fair, those words were repeats and she used them to get even angrier! I needed a quick save. I raised my gaze just a bit. “In the boob region. I think your boobs have grown.”
She relaxed instantly. “I thought you were going to call me fat,” she said. “Pregnancy boobs are a nice bonus. They’re super sensitive right now. Want to check them out?”
“How far into pregnancy does this sex drive continue?” I asked.
“Birth,” she said. She ran her hands across her belly. “Which may be sooner than I thought. Either I’m carrying twenty little foxkin inside me, or I gestate very quickly.”
“Ha!” I said. “Vixette Volpia, use your Incubation ability! Like you have a ‘babymaker’ sub-class or something.” I laughed, and thereby lost all of the goodwill I had just achieved.
“Come to think of it,” Vix said, “Mamba offered me any help I needed. I’ll see what she thinks of this sex drive.”
“Vix, wait!” I sighed. “Is she really going to find Mamba instead?”
“Oh, Arden,” Cindra said. “What do you think us girls do when you’re not around?” She patted me on the cheek and headed for the stairs to the hilltop.
I shook my head and walked into the temple.
“Arden!” Nola yelled. She pressed her hands against the front panel of her crystal cocoon, sliding it open and walking toward me.
“Poor Cindra,” I said. “She thinks she’s no better than a lumentor in green.”
“She’s a sharp one,” Nola said. “I was thinking along the same lines.”
“Nola!” I said.
“She’s obviously not a lumentor,” she said, “but she is something. She has a robust juicy soul but she inhabits a body of magic slime. If we had more slime like that, we could give lumentors bodies.”
“That’s what they want though,” I said. “I saw one tear apart a person’s soul and take over his body. Otherwise they’ll blow away under the sun’s harsh rays.”
“We can stop them from taking over people’s bodies,” Nola said, “by giving them slime bodies instead, which are susceptible to physical damage. We need to know how Mercifer created Cindra. If we can’t get our hands on that ghost book, she’s the key to fighting the army Kāya and Duul already have.”
“And saving Valona,” I said, “is the key to preventing them from adding to this ghost brigade. It all sounds like too much for someone that just lost an entire city. Our last mission wasn’t exactly a success. Kāya is still out there, Valleyvale is gone, and—”
“That’s on me,” Nola said.
“I’m the one that pulled the trigger on her giant anibomb,” I said. “If I had been more careful, I could have shut it down without letting it sweep everyone away. If I had thought harder first—”
“You’re not the goddess of clever insight,” she said. “I am. And I failed today. I was so confident that we could sway Kāya with words that I didn’t have a backup plan. We need to neutralize her without violence, I know that. It’s the only way forward. But I don’t have the faintest idea how to.
“Meanwhile,” she continued, “you saved so many of those people today. You didn’t get timelined back to the day you were born, didn’t let Kāya blow you to bits, didn’t let Telara soak her hands in divine blood, and didn’t take one of Brion’s nine lives away from him.”
“Do lionkin have… Wait, you’re pulling my leg.”
“Yes,” Nola said. “But for our first practice siege on a beleaguered city, you did well.” She stopped a few inches from me, kissed me on the cheek and placed her hand flat against my chest. My body filled with holy energy and my skin glittered with golden light.
“What—”
“I gave you every one of my boons as a reward,” she said.
My hands tingled with divinity. There’s a sentence no one has ever said before. “At a loss for words, with a gift I don’t deserve, I stand here humbled,” I said.
“Aw, you gave me a haiku!” Nola said. “Now, be a dear and unclog your psychic pores. I don’t have free reign inside that empty little head of yours, and I sort of miss it.”
“If it isn’t the man of the hour,” Gowes said, wafting into the temple with Eranza close behind.
“Gowes,” I said. I couldn’t look the god in the eye. “Valleyvale…”
“Its future stands as bright as ever,” Gowes said.
“Your temple is gone,” I confessed. “Kāya swept the city away. There is no future for Valleyvale and I’m sorry.”
“Valleyvale was never a place,” Gowes said. “Well, of course it was a place, but it was also a people. Most of those people have found their way to Halcyon now. What better future could they have? Allow me to add a boon of wishful thinking to your bounty, as my thanks for your valiant effort.”
“You don’t have to kiss me too, do you?” I asked.
“I do not,” he said.
“And you’re not upset?” I asked as another boon washed over me.
“My only worry now is hunger,” he said. “I’ll need to start a new city with a new temple. It’s the only way.”
“It’s not,” I said. A surge of hope welled up inside me, no doubt the result of Gowes’ boon but that was fine. That, mixed with Nola’s boons, and I was making big plans that would save Halcyon, the world, the netherworld, and possibly all of time and space.
I pulled the blueprints from my back pocket. “This is what Kāya was building. A shrine, to feed Duul a portion of the souls she consumed. We could build one here, to you. I’m sure it would work.”
Nola took the plans from me and looked them over. “These plans are crude. A curved wall will absorb as many vibrations as it reflects. We’d need flat surfaces—”
“Set,” I said, “so that the wavefront of soul vibrations isn’t reversed, but rather incident to the coefficient of theta—”
“Is my Arden doing advanced calculations? In his head?” Nola asked.
“It’s about time I used this noggin for something, don’t you think?” I asked. Then I winked. I never wink, but I was just in such a clever happy genius mathy mood I didn’t know what to do with myself, and what not to do. Because I could do anything right now.
“I’m going to find Vix,” I said. “Kāya may not be ready to come around just yet, but we can gain allies by building shrines, and improve your power in the process!”
“I’d better follow him,” Nola said.
I jogged up the steps to the top of our hill and was impressed with what I saw. Teams were constructing, and quickly. Our walls were back in top shape, with all twelve of our hilltop defensive towers standing proud, and the six pairs of towers that led to our front gates were fully repaired. Electric energy pulsed through the walls again, and the metal mechanism that coordinated our defensive energems was still in place.
“Cindra!” I yelled. I hadn’t found Vix yet, but I would. “I’m glad you didn’t wander far. We’re going to Mournglory. It’s high time we met this Mercifer fellow.” Fellow. I sure do talk funny on boons. “If Lana can’t heal what ails you, the man that made you can, plus he might help with our lumentor problem.
“We just have to make a quick stop in Barren Moon first. Get Mamba and one of the portal mages Avelle sent us and meet me outside the temple first thing tomorrow morning. I have a plan.”
“What is this pl
an?” Nola asked.
“You’ll see,” I said. “Oh look, your father!”
As I walked the hilltop, the gleaming silver body of the god of passing time soared through the clouds overhead.
“I see you all made it back in one piece,” Akrin said, lowering himself toward the ground with his hands on his hips. “And yet, the air has a bit of tension in it. Challenge. I sense an opportunity! People are not entirely happy here, are they?”
Nola crossed her arms and spread out her wings. “That’s no problem of yours.”
The god of passing time stepped toward his daughter, the joviality gone from his face. “I saved your head priest from the dangers of Landondowns, on the condition that you would afford me a game. That game starts now, and as you know, I require a wager.”
I had never seen him so serious before. Nola looked worried.
“He won’t leave until we’ve accepted his challenge,” Nola said.
“I’m not a man you want to say ‘no’ to,” he said. “I thought we could go for a round of ‘survive the dungeon master.’ Roll some new characters, plunge through a devious campaign. We can set the boy up as a mute halfling barmaid with a secret goal at odds with the rest of her party.”
“I’ve never played these kinds of games before,” I said. “And I’ve never been a barmaid, but I love learning new things!”
Akrin seemed pleased for a moment, then displeased again as Cindra lifted a hand to her mouth. “Do forgive me for yawning,” she said. “I thought a real challenge was in store, the kind that people would flock to watch. My mistake.”
“I’ll have you know,” Akrin said, “that parchment and graphite games are a thrilling chase through the imagination.”
“Mmhmm,” Cindra said. “Is that how you’ve recruited so many people to Roseknob? Impressed them with your dungeon mastering? Do they crowd around a table and watch you roll dice for three, five, maybe ten hours at a time?”