It turned out that on three hours of sleep and coming off two fights, one of which resulted in the righteous swollen bruise on her left knee, Rose had even less endurance than she had thought. The paths would have been much easier, but Rose wasn’t willing to add six days to their trip just to make herself comfortable. The compromise they reached was that they’d hit the roughs and if it got too difficult, they’d simply rest more and do it in three days. But really, Rose was determined to make it in two.
At least, she was determined until about two hours into the trip, at which point in time her only real goal was not to cry too much. The poetry that she was doing this whole thing to save her mother when it was her mother’s fault it was so difficult in the first place was not lost on her. She harbored a secret fantasy that she’d arrive just a little bit too late to save her mother from being sacrificed, but not too late to deliver a few words. ‘Damn! If only it weren’t for this chair, I would have been here hours ago!’ But that wasn’t fair. She wasn’t doing this because her mother was a good person who deserved to be saved. She was doing it because she was a good person who saved people when she could.
And in this moment she was also the type of person who had sore arms, a sore back, and a sore tummy because leveraging the chair up and down hills and over rocks was a workout. They were taking a bit of a breather before tackling what looked like a mile of scrubby ground ahead. Decima said, “Rose, I do not wish to pry, but last night. It seemed that you – I don’t know – hurt yourself somehow? It did not seem as if the disorientation was caused by the dwarf striking you. Do you know what I speak of?” Emrys kept his mouth shut and pointedly looked at a peak in the distance, muttering something under his breath about the visibility.
Rose sighed. “Yeah, I guess that’s only fair. I’ve had this talk with Emrys a bit. What I do, we call the Talent. It isn’t like magic. It is more like what you do, really. I didn’t learn it, but I learned to practice it. I got better at it. Actually, I think I’ve actually gotten better at it in the last few weeks than I have in the last year! It comes from,” she paused for a moment because she had a lot of thoughts on the subject, but she wasn’t really sure what the truth was, “shit, I don’t know where it comes from really. It’s part of my mind or my will or whatever. And if I try to push it too hard, I can overdo it. It’s usually minor. Headaches or nose bleeds or whatever, but I’ve heard of Talents who pushed themselves so hard that they couldn’t stand – clearly not an issue in my case. But I’ve heard stories of blood coming from the ears or folks losing their whole sense of self for a while. Just having no idea who they are or where or why. And …” she looked at Emrys, who was paying direct attention now, “The word is that if you keep pushing past that you could push so hard you die.”
Decima took that in stoically, the way she took most things in. Emrys looked as if Rose had just confirmed a dark suspicion, which …. yeah, she probably had. Decima said, “that sounds like most physical endeavors. I could fight or work myself to death as well.”
Rose nodded. “Right. Same idea, but on a faster timeline. Think of each power I use like running an acre or something. But they don’t take long. I could exhaust myself fast. Not everything, of course. There’s plenty I can do that will almost never really mess me up. Rewriting small items, I could basically do all day. It’s one of the first things I learned to do.” To illustrate the point Rose looked at the necklace Emrys was wearing. No glow in the stone today, which made it easier to rewrite it into a little silver cock and balls around his neck. He didn’t notice, but Decima giggled. Actually a real giggle, which Rose would have assumed she was incapable of. “Anyway, The blast I learned from my teacher and it’s harder to get right. What happened last night was not even really the normal kind of strain I mean, I just tried to do something stupid. I tried to split my focus between two powers. I’ve never heard of anyone doing it. It’s probably not possible, but I gave it a shot.” She suddenly felt really stupid for even thinking it. What the hell, Rose? You’d never have tried that a few days ago. “I’m really lucky you two were there or I’d probably be part of that group of merry assholes by now and my mom would be a meal for some cult’s god.”
Decima waved her hand as if to minimize the moment. Emrys gave a small grin, though. “This is what friends are for, no? I think it is safe to say that we are friends now, Rose, whether you wish it or not.” Rose scowled, but didn’t deny it. But then she suddenly looked away when he absently grabbed hold of his necklace and made a curious face. She hurriedly let the rewriting fade and to distract him she said, “Hey, also, Emrys, did you get anything off that crystal? I saw you snag it last night. I’m pretty sure that thing, whatever that was, it was using a talent like mine. I mean, probably it didn’t learn it like I did, it’s probably innate somehow, but still, I’ve never seen anything like that. The only creatures that I’ve ever heard of that use powers like me are -” she hesitated a moment, but there was no sense now. “Dragons.”
Emrys had a predictable, amazed reaction to this and asked her the predictable questions, but she’d never met or even SEEN a dragon before, so she wasn’t much use to him. It was all just rumors from her teacher, after all. “Ahh, no, not as yet. Not really, at least. I can tell you that the crystal isn’t any stone I’m familiar with, but I definitely don’t know them all. It has stopped glowing for certain, and there is no trace of energy within it that either I or the elementals I spoke to can perceive. But I have summoned only the most minor of spirits. Larger spirits may know more, and I will ask when we rest tonight.” He paused for a moment before saying, “Speaking of which-”.
Five minutes later they were on their way along the cleared path that the earth elemental he’d summoned had created. It felt like a waste of magical power, but Rose was amazingly grateful for it.
The shortcut turned out to be three ugly days of hills, rocks, scrabby grass, and misting rain. The nights were chilly, unpleasant, and full of lizards nestling into their bodies while they slept. More than once, Emrys woke with a yelp and hurtled a lizard into the darkness with a grunt before stalking about the camp angrily. Rose tried not to laugh at him too obviously, but his glare seemed to imply that she’d been found out. Rose tried to rely on the others as little as possible, but even she couldn’t refuse when Decima pushed on the second day. It wasn’t the whole way. Sometimes they had elemental paths and often Rose managed herself, but she was grateful for the reprieve. It felt strange because she knew she’d have refused even days ago. Shit, she had refused days ago. Had she only known these people for a few days? Okay, a few weeks where Emrys was concerned, but still, they felt like they belonged here. She hoped her quest didn’t get them hurt.
After three days of some of the worst aches and palm blisters and morning muscle cramps of her life, even the crusty, broken village ahead was a welcome sight. They’d stopped a bit under a mile away and were overlooking the place from higher ground. The morning sun was behind them, which meant that whoever was down in the valley almost certainly couldn’t see them properly, if they were looking at all, and cultists had never struck Rose as the early rising types.
She’d never seen a proper dwarven village before. She figured she probably wasn’t now, either, but it was still sort of amazing. The individual structures were thickly built and circular, like gears or building materials of some sort, and stuck only about halfway out of the ground, like Opal’s hut had done. Most had a central chimney that was a thick square column, almost like they could all spin together as part of one huge machine if they were situated correctly. But, of course, they weren’t. Also, she didn’t think that they would have been halfway overgrown with scrub grass and dirt when the dwarves lived here.
Decima was frowning like she saw something rotten. ‘No fires.”
Emrys nodded sagely. “Yes, the place is not on fire.”
Rose and Decima gave one another a glance. Decima said, slowly, “I mean that the hearthfires aren’t burning.”
Emrys frowned. “Well, it wasn’t chilly last night, but ….” he thought about it for a moment before he got there, “but there should still be fires for cooking, baking, even just light, right?”
Decma looked out over the city again. “I hope that means that this place isn’t populated. Or perhaps sparsely populated. But … it’s still strange to see the dwarvish architecture and not the smoke.”
Rose had never seen a dwarven village. Or a dwarven city. Or anything other than a small number of actual dwarves, usually one at a time. She knew what they looked like, but she’d never seen them living their lives. “Do they use more fire?”
“Dwarven forges are almost never cold. They have a holiday for cooling and cleaning them, in fact. But it’s more than that. I served under a dwarven captain once. He said that their underground cities don’t even have ventilation. The smoke doesn’t affect dwarves the same way it does us or elves. For them it’s sort of like a smell. Like fresh baked bread maybe?” She smirked. “His tent was always unbearable. He’d build it right around a small fire and the smoke built up so much that officer meetings were a coughing fit. It DID get us in and out quickly, though.”
Rose looked out at the huge chimneys. “So why do these have ventilation?”
Decima shrugged, but Emrys spoke. “Oh, I know this one! Smoking food. Dwarves eat a lot of heavily smoked foods. They do it to conserve fuel.”
Rose hadn’t ever thought about dwarves eating different foods than humans, but of course it made sense. Then she narrowed her eyes. “Well, that’s interesting, but sadly it’s not going to matter today. There’s movement down there, but it’s not dwarves.” She glanced at her companions gravely. “Not anymore.”
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