by Demi Harper
Although I felt for the lonely forrel that patrolled the tunnel in a forlorn vigil, I had not the heart to create more of her kind. Nor did I feel any urgency to do so; Grimrock had given me a month to make my decision, and while I couldn’t say I trusted him exactly – he’d proved treacherous in the past, after all – I somehow didn’t think he’d send more kobolds to finish us off while there was still the chance of my agreeing to an arrangement that would potentially cost him nothing.
And so my Augmentary remained closed. I didn’t bother to look at it except for the occasional brief glance at the parts that always remained in my peripheries. Thanks to the efforts of my dedicated acolytes (led by the ever-loyal Gneil), my seven mana globes had fully replenished following the battle. Given my lack of motivation to use any of my abilities, they had remained that way in the days since.
Truth be told, I barely even had the presence of mind to continue distributing tasks to unassigned workers. When the two builders who’d been constructing the improvised bridge had completed the job, I merely put them to work on a new gnomehome, though part of me doubted we’d ever fill it. There were still forty-four non-Faithful gnomes remaining – just over half our total population.
As for the two gnomes who’d become Faithful right before the battle, I simply left them to their own devices, unable to summon the wherewithal to assign them vocations or tasks. Neither of them was amongst the thirty-six that had been allocated places in the three existing gnomehomes, so both of them meandered over to the old village across the stream, there to sprawl among the tents like beached fish.
My emerald-green Faith triangle showed me I was still on the brink of reaching god tier eight, meaning its level had barely increased since the fight despite the fact that nearly half the gnomes in the tribe were now Faithful. Not that it seemed to matter anymore. What was the point of Ascension if it wasn’t going to save either me or my denizens?
There could be no doubt that any recent Faith gains had been directly offset by the death of my avatar. Ris’kin’s loss had dramatically affected morale – and not just mine.
Where before the gnomes who’d been assigned vocations and tasks had worked industriously, even enthusiastically, now they were gradually returning to their former state of listless apathy. Progress on the creche and barracks continued, but more slowly than before, so that it seemed they’d never be finished.
Particularly unhelpful was a new and disturbing tendency for workers to stop in the middle of a task and simply stare at the entrance to the half-blocked Passage, as though convinced a kobold raiding party was about to burst through at any moment.
The provision of construction materials had also ground to a near halt. I’d had no need to cast Growth on the shroomtrees since the battle, namely because Jack and Elwood and my other two lumberjacks were now barely managing to fell one per day – a fraction of what they’d been harvesting before. I could only watch glumly as they took aimless swings at the stalks with their buckle-axes, their clumsy hacking ensuring they damaged much of the resulting lumber beyond use.
Likewise, my six brickmakers had taken to seating themselves cross-legged on the floor of the brickyard, half-heartedly mushing their wet clay into the molds and dumping out, not bricks, but shapeless lumps, which they then picked up and squashed back into the molds once more.
Even Granny – my paragon of discipline and motivation – seemed to have lost her spark. She still toured the Grotto, but the lethargic workers ignored her equally lethargic prodding, and the wizened old gnome instead spent much of her time leaning on her cane and staring wistfully at the assorted mushrooms beginning to sprout around the edges of the cavern.
In fact, the mushrooms were the only things that still seemed to be thriving. Various spores, taken by the farmers from the samples Swift and Cheer had brought back from their last scouting expedition, had been planted around the cavern in various patches of soil.
They’d grown quickly even without my interference, popping up rapidly from the damp soil like – well, like mushrooms. They decorated the edges of the Grotto with splotches of color in varying shapes: red and purple, white and gray, squat and narrow, coarse and delicate; a diverse rainbow of strange fungi, happily living side by side as neighbors.
Less friendly were the green-tinged Death Caps, which had sprung up separately in their own circular clusters like poisonous little fairy rings, while here and there the gray-ringed puffballs stood out from the crowd like giant bloated eyeballs trying to fit in at a children’s party.
But Granny’s favorites seemed to be the redcaps. She spent hours gazing mindlessly at their red and white spotted caps, which were flourishing despite the inattention of the farmers. The farmers themselves were instead lacklusterly tending to the shroomtrees – and by ‘tending to’ I mean ‘looking on in dull horror as the lumberjacks mangled the trees’ stalks with their clumsy chopping.’
Not even my acolytes functioned properly any more. All of them had stopped worshiping, even Gneil. Perhaps sensing that my mana would not be in need of replenishment any time soon, they had instead begun to construct… something.
At first, I thought the piling up of rocks meant they were upgrading my altar again, despite the fact that my Faith levels had not increased at all since the kobold assault. I quickly realized this wasn’t the case, and that they were in fact erecting some kind of effigy.
It wasn’t until a day or so later that the ‘statue’ started to take shape and I realized with a pang that it was actually an imitation of Ris’kin, poorly rendered in rocks and dirt. It was rather wobbly-looking, without arms or legs; basically just a big pile of stones topped with a smaller pile of stones, but it was definitely intended to be her. The intrepid crafters had even sharpened some of the stones into triangular points, the better to depict my late avatar’s angular ears and muzzle.
Unlike my regular gnome workers, the acolytes’ labor was imbued with painstaking care and dedication to detail – far more so than their usual ‘holy’ construction efforts. It made my non-existent heart twinge to watch, and reminded me that I shouldn’t just close myself off, despite my despair over the last battle and Grimrock’s new ultimatum. My denizens still needed me, regardless of my eventual decision – and whatever its outcome. But what could I possibly do for them?
The Ris’kin effigy took around three days to complete. When it was finished, the five acolytes and Gneil stood back, their hands and faces covered in the reddish clay they’d gathered from the stream and daubed onto the statue in a pitiful mockery of Ris’kin’s russet fur. Oblivious to the mess they’d made of themselves, the gnomes then knelt reverently around the statue. If I’d had breath, I would have held it as I watched and waited.
Nothing happened.
After a while, the acolytes began to dart furtive glances at my gem. When still nothing happened, one by one they lifted their lowered heads and stared openly between my gem and the new statue. I watched from above, helpless, understanding what they wanted from me but entirely unable to provide it.
‘If I could bring her back, I would,’ I told them, though of course they couldn’t hear me.
After a few gut-wrenching hours of this, the acolytes finally seemed to realize that their beloved Ris’kin was not coming back. Gneil rose to his feet and, in a fit of pique which surprised and dismayed me, gave the statue a shove. It toppled, then tumbled to the floor in a shower of clattering stone, dirt and dried clay.
The other gnomes immediately began crawling amongst the rubble, gathering up the largest pieces. Baffled, I watched as they began to dutifully rebuild the statue from the ground up, still sending glances toward my gem the entire time, as if to say, ‘See? Look how easy it is!’
My despair brought about inaction, yet Ket’s warnings not to trust Grimrock rang constantly in my mind.
Thinking of Ket no longer brought me anger; only pain. Her absence, and Grimrock’s last words, hung over the Grotto like a stormcloud. Though I was by now familiar with my own abilities, and had no
immediate need for the sprite’s tutelage, I missed her company. Everything seemed that much harder now I was alone, the world around me that much darker, and the way forward that much more unclear.
Even in the gray haze of my depression, echoes of Ket’s caution compelled me to keep a fragment of my attention on the mental threads connecting me with my skelemander watchers.
On the fourth day after the battle, those threads twitched.
Intruders had come.
Again.
Forty-One
Why, Why, Why Die, Lila?
‘Wait for me!’
Labored breathing accompanied the rustle of chainmail as Coll, the human warrior, jogged across the boundary of my Sphere of Influence. Ahead of him, Tiri the cartographer and Benin the scrawny mage had already entered my Sphere. It was they who had triggered my skelemanders’ alert.
Benin was waiting, one hand on his hip, the other holding a small flame in his upturned palm. The mage looked even paler and sweatier than usual, and his nose was wrinkled, as if he smelled something unpleasant.
‘For the hundredth time, can’t you just dump the mail?’ he demanded of the struggling warrior. ‘We might have gotten out of here by now if not for you and your portable armory.’
Coll bent over, hands on his knees, heaving for breath. ‘We’d also have died a hundred times already if not for me and my “portable armory”,’ he managed between gasps.
‘Well, you might at least try taking it off to wash every now and then. I feel like I’m being followed around by a really shit iron golem. Who stinks.’
‘Yeah? And what d’you propose I wash it with, given that we used up the last of our water yesterday?’
‘It wasn’t yesterday. It was the day before, you helmet-brained—’
‘Enough,’ said Tiri quietly. To my surprise, both men fell quiet, albeit with sullen expressions still marring their faces. They turned to face the young woman.
Tiri was holding a ragged piece of parchment up to the light of Benin’s flame. What looked like a map was scrawled upon the paper, and for a moment I was confused. Hadn’t their map been accidentally destroyed when the lantern exploded back in the Sinkhole?
Then I saw the piece of charcoal in Tiri’s other hand, noticed the black smudges all over her fingers and even on her nose and cheeks. Had she… had she been charting the tunnels from scratch this whole time?
Admiration warred with my alarm. The circular and dead-end routes the group had been following when I’d previously encountered them had clearly been the result of a wildly inaccurate map. What would happen if Tiri managed to plot the tunnels correctly and then return to the Guild with that information?
Lucky for me, it sounded as though the Guild was the last thing on her mind.
‘He’s right, Coll,’ she said. ‘The water ran out two days ago.’
The mage raised his chin triumphantly and opened his mouth, no doubt to gloat, but Tiri snapped, ‘Shut up, Benin.’
Finally lifting her gaze from the charcoal-smeared parchment, she eyed the two men. ‘You both stink. We all do. It’s been nearly two weeks since we entered these gods-forsaken caves, and if we don’t stop snapping at each other’s throats, it’ll be another two weeks before we manage to leave them.’
Her voice was outwardly calm, but I could hear hoarse desperation beneath it. It was obvious by the looks on Benin and Coll’s faces that she didn’t need to tell them what would happen if they had to endure another fortnight without drinking water – namely, they couldn’t.
In spite of their bickering and general filthiness, seeing the now-familiar faces of Tiri, Benin and Coll came almost as a relief. What’s wrong with me? Too much time alone, methinks. No one to talk to any more, and all that. Thoughts of Ket threatened to come flooding back in, so I focused as hard as I could on the three humans instead.
Their faces were familiar, yes, but they were also grimy and haggard, worn and drawn and stained with rock dust and old blood. A scabbed-over cut marred Tiri’s right cheek, perhaps where an arrow had narrowly missed its mark, and Coll’s chainmail armor was scratched and dented, the leather beneath riddled with holes from what I presumed were numerous obsidian spearpoints.
All three humans’ eyebrows were singed. I suspected Benin’s signature fireball spell might have had something to do with that. Their eyes were bloodshot, sunken and ringed with dark bags of exhaustion – and, I realized now, dehydration.
Since my own ‘ascension’ into a God Core, I’d almost forgotten how frail mortal beings were. Skinbags required a lot of maintenance. With its abundance of vegetation and steady supply of fresh running water, the Grotto had provided for my gnomish denizens the resources I hadn’t even considered they might need. These humans had had no such luxury. It really was astonishing that these fragile sacks of blood and organs had survived underground for so long.
Though not all of them, it seemed.
Why are there only three of them? Where was the red-headed archer, Lila?
Apparently, the same thought was weighing on the humans. Benin leaned heavily against the rock wall and slid slowly down it into a sitting position. He dropped his head to rest in one hand, the other still holding the wavering flame out to one side, as though he couldn’t bear to look at it.
‘We can’t do this without Lila,’ he mumbled.
‘And what would Lila say if she saw us all moping around?’ asked Tiri.
She spoke gently, but there was a hint of steel in her voice as well. Whatever had happened to them during the last few days had clearly shaken the whole group, breaking brittle Benin, but reforging this quiet young academic into something stronger than she had previously been.
Benin just shrugged, still not looking up. Tiri’s voice grew harder. ‘We’re not helpless, Benin,’ she said. ‘We’ve come this far, and your magic and Coll’s sword will get us further still. Now stand up.’ She held out a hand. ‘We can rest when we’ve found water.’
After a long moment in which Coll shuffled awkwardly from foot to foot, the mage finally looked up, squinting at Tiri in the dim light of the flames that still licked his palm. With his free hand, he reached out and took hers, and she hauled him firmly to his feet. They both swayed a little; it was clear they were both exhausted and on the verge of collapsing. The gods only knew how they’d come this far.
I felt a surge of some emotion I did not immediately recognize, though it was similar to that which I sometimes felt when surveying my denizens. What had Ket called it? Protectiveness? Or was it sympathy?
Either way, I didn’t need my estranged sprite’s voice to tell me that I should probably help these humans, Guild members or no. They clearly needed aid, and I’d spent enough time observing them to no longer be able to claim indifference to their plight. I didn’t want to watch them die of thirst. I had an inkling it wasn’t the most pleasant way to go. Besides, who needed their corpses cluttering up my nice tidy tunnels?
Moreover, leaving them to die was what an evil Core would have done, and I was no evil being, whatever my origins. I needed to prove – if only to myself – that I wasn’t the monster both Ket and Grimrock seemed to think I was doomed to be.
As the three humans began to drag themselves along the tunnel once more, I summoned my single surviving forrel from where she guarded the Grotto’s entranceway and brought her scurrying along the passage toward us. It took her a few minutes, but eventually she bounded around the corner and came to a halt a short distance away from the adventurers.
It took the exhausted humans a moment to notice her presence. After a series of staggered gasps, they fumbled to a halt, Coll’s hand reaching sluggishly for his sheathed sword.
The forrel didn’t move. Her eyes glittered in the light from Benin’s magical flame, but she held still, and her teeth remained unbared. She crouched patiently on her hind legs, bushy gray squirrel’s tail curling up above her shoulder, head tilted inquisitively to one side. Her pointed fox ears twitched with curiosity as she regarded the t
hree strangers before her.
Would they attack her? I hoped not. Not only would the lone forrel probably die, it would also mean I’d have to create more to deal with her killers and protect against a potential incursion. Attacking my non-hostile creature would show that these adventurers needed to be destroyed for the good of the Grotto. And just when I’d been starting to like them, too.
But the humans did not attack. Though Coll’s grip on his now-unslung hammer was tight and Benin twitched in a way that implied fireballs might come accidentally shooting from his fingernails with a single wrong glance, they made no move to aggress.
Tiri had raised both her hands in the universal gesture of peace immediately upon sighting the forrel, and now lowered them slowly. She edged forward a few steps.
‘Er… hello?’ she said to the forrel. The creature’s ears twitched, but otherwise she made no move in response.
Tiri was walking forward more confidently now. I could see her gaze roaming over the forrel, from pointy muzzle to fuzzy tail. The academic’s brain was no doubt working overtime to try and process my creature’s existence.
As Tiri moved closer, the forrel twisted around and scurried away, bushy tail flicking behind it. After a few feet, it stopped and turned, waiting on its hind legs once more.
‘I… I think it wants us to follow it,’ said Tiri uncertainly, glancing between her companions and the patiently waiting forrel. She took a few steps closer. The forrel chirped happily and bounded away a few more steps. I tried to command her to wave a paw encouragingly, but it seemed the basic forrel’s coordination was not quite so advanced as her evolved sister Ris’kin’s had been.
‘What if it’s a trap?’ hissed Benin. Coll grunted in nervous agreement.
‘This is no trap,’ said Tiri. Her confidence was surprising. I’d certainly anticipated more wariness from the woman who was now the supposed brains of the group.
‘I studied Cryptozoology back at the Guild,’ she explained, ‘but I’ve never heard of these creatures before.’