Fool's Birthright

Adan’s eyelids fluttered open: images and conscious thoughts came streaming back into his dark, quiet brain. He became aware of ichor-stained stone walls and a low ceiling, crossed by massive wooden beams. Rubbing his face with his hands, he waited while the last gossamer veil of sleep dropped from his addled senses. Scratchy linen sheets tickled his shoulders and chest. Beneath him, a pallet covered with hay smelt vaguely of mold, but was pleasantly soft compared to the surrounding flagstone floor. Several tallow-candles were affixed to the walls, throwing molten light into the close space. He saw dilapidated bookcases against the wall opposite his pallet. At the far side of the chamber, there was a cluttered desk, and beside it a grainy oaken door, firmly shut; whether it was locked or not, he decided bore testing as soon as his wooziness had passed and he was prepared to get up and walk over.

Reaching up to his right temple, he felt a welt exactly where he remembered hitting his head when a certain mage knocked him flying across a dark room. So apparently the fight with the Goblins really did happen, he thought to himself. 

And then something else burst into his thoughts; a vision; a dream he had nearly forgotten upon waking, which was reasserting itself to ensure he did not.

Abruptly, he was reclining not on a pallet and moldy hay, but on a soft bed, draped in warm, rumpled sheets; a window across the room admitted light—bright, clear, crisp light. On the other side of the glass, he saw a line of snowy rooftops, and above them, a dazzling expanse of blue. Downy white clouds drifted idly across the glorious morning sky. Adan soon turned away from the window, rolling over to poke at a heap of sheets with his finger. 

“What is this place?” he asked the pile of sheets. A shudder went through it, and, like a butterfly’s silk cocoon, the heap split open. Two slender arms reached out, stretching; he heard a silvery yawn. Then one of the emergent hands pulled aside the sheets. 

Adan jumped from the bed, standing bolt upright—groping around with his hands, flustered by the apparent absence of his sword. 

“It’s you,” Adan snapped. “What is happening?”

The espa sat up in bed, face impassive. “Your undertaking isn’t done yet,” it said.

Adan frowned in confusion. “It is, though. The Oracle said she would release me after I did what she wanted. I did. I’m asleep and dreaming right now—that proves her hex has been lifted.”

The espa smirked. “Yes, the Oracle. That was amusing. But no—you’re being allowed to sleep because you’re on the right path, not because you’ve reached the end of it already.”

Adan stared at the espa, trying not to show how addlepated and alarmed he felt. “So,” he said, “the Oracle is indeed bound up in what I must do, but whatever it is, it has not yet been done?”

The espa nodded tersely. “Remain by her side. The rest will become clear.”

Adan glared. “Can’t you simply tell me what it is?”

The espa’s expression softened. “Very well. The person you know as the Oracle Of Magic is actually—”

Something chittered softly. The noise jolted Adan from the vivid memory of his dream, and the details of it streamed away like ice melting by a fire, returning him to the dimly lit stone room that smelled of mold. The sunlight was gone. Another slight sound in the room with him drew Adan’s attention, making him fix his gaze on the foot end of his pallet. He saw his own garments there, neatly folded. They were undulating slightly. Something was moving underneath his poncho. 

“What is this…?” Adan wondered aloud, and instantly the rustling in the fabric ceased. There was something therein—it had apparently thought the Elf was still asleep, until it heard his voice. Adan tensed: it could be anything, hiding there in his clothes. He had nearly been killed by a Goblin mage, but it was very possible worse experiences still were in store for him.

Screwing up his face in a determined expression, hoping he could embolden himself from the outside in, he lunged forward and grabbed the pile of clothes. With a flick of his wrist, he scattered the pile, simultaneously throwing himself backward away from it. 

There, beady eyes wide, nose and whiskers twitching as it sniffed the air, was a plump white-and-gray rat. Letting out a deep sigh, Adan relaxed, and sank down to sit on the hay. That could have been much worse. The startled rat, erstwhile, broke off with a loping stride, scurrying for cover. Reaching the baseboard, it changed direction and ran parallel to the wall, nosing the seam between baseboard and floor, looking for an avenue of escape. Sadly, none was to be had. The sparse room offered no real cover, and the sturdy stone walls were devoid of holes and crannies.

“I’m afraid you are trapped in this room,” Adan mumbled, rising and walking cautiously towards the door. “I may be trapped alongside you. That remains to be seen.” He touched the door latch. It moved freely—it was not locked. The Elf sighed in relief and shook himself, recalling the previous night more clearly than he had so far since awakening. He was not a prisoner. He was in a flophouse where Myna lived with a half-dozen other petty thieves.

“You must help my people,” the rat said, stopping its flustered search for an egress and turning to look at Adan. The Elf froze, hand arrested midair as he withdrew it from the door handle—as stunned by the high, chirpy voice as if it had been a lightning-strike.

The rat cleared its throat. “Perhaps we cannot pay handsomely, by your standards,” the creature continued, “but you will find your deed worthwhile.” 

Adan turned slowly and looked toward the errant rodent. It can speak? He shrugged. Ah, well. Odder things have happened. 

“What is this?” Adan asked.

“I climbed into your garments,” the rat explained hastily, “while you were asleep. There was a cheddar-polypore sandwich in your inside pocket, wrapped in waxed paper.”

“You ate my sandwich?” Adan asked, scowling at the rat.

The rat nodded. “Most of it, yes. Anyone would have done as I did. I make no apology.”

The rat and Elf silently stared at each other.

“Perhaps,” the rat said finally, “I acted somewhat thoughtlessly. Either way, after I had eaten my fill and started to leave, I noticed something else relevant to my quest in your belongings—namely, your sword.”

“What about my sword?” Adan asked, his single living eye narrowing.

“I assume,” the rat said, “carrying a sword means you have some training and skill as a fighter?”

“You assume correctly,” Adan said, crossing his arms in a way that he knew made his biceps appear subtly thicker.

“In that case,”  the rat said, “you are exactly the sort of person I came here to find.”

“And what sort of person is that?” Adan asked, narrowing his eye even more.

“I’ll explain everything,” the rat said, “when the other one is present, too.”

“The other one?”

“The girl,” the rat said. “The other Elf. Or Dwarf. Or whatever she is.”

•••

Leorsan paused, realizing he had heard nothing but birdsong and various soft noises of the forest for several minutes. He turned, glancing at the half-dozen troops behind him—ambling along the path carrying a bulky crate by rope handles nailed to its wooden sides. They had their heads down—uncharacteristically abstaining from banter, seemingly oblivious to the forest beyond the path immediately in front of their feet.

Leo’s second-in-command, Aalinor Caulada, was the only one to notice he had halted and looked back. She quickened her steps, leaving her spot beside the short column of troops and approaching him. “What’s the matter, Commander?”

Leo pointed his chin at the sullen troops. There was no need for him to articulate his question to her; he and Aalinor both knew that units of soldiers, like groups of children, do not fall silent for no reason, and they are most worrying when they are quiet.

“The troops are nervous,” Aalinor said, shrugging her bronze spaulders. Leorsan grunted in comprehension. There was likewise no need for Leo’s second-in-command to clarify her answer. They were going before the Elnaril Herself: and standing under Her gaze was a trial for even the strongest, with the effect of making the most grizzled warrior feel small and meek—despite the fact their mission had been an unqualified success and they were returning to Paragon Headquarters carrying what they had set out to find in the first place.

Leo turned to his troops. “My friends,” he began—pulling out all the stops and addressing them with the most florid language he had ever used—“it is good we’ve achieved what the Elnaril asked of us. She will be pleased—the courage and loyalty you have all shown is worthy of Her praise. However, as much as we might like to, we cannot dally in the palace when there is much to be done preparing for the night. Once we have brought the Fragment before Her, we will have to turn around and return to camp almost at once.” There was a relieved murmur amongst the troops, and Aalinor shot the Commander an amused look…

The trees folded back as the troops reached the edge of the woodland, revealing a mountainside ahead—with a huge arch consisting of two pillars and a crosspiece rising against the sky at the top of a sheer cliff, standing with its pair of colossal legs astride a gurgling waterfall where a river pitched over the cliff. A few conical pavilion roofs were visible amidst the rocks and gnarled trees high above, but though there were very few hints of the construction to see from the ground below. Swooping and swerving down the mountainside, a thin stream moved through fissures in the rock.

Leo waited, staring at the archway above, unable to see the lookout, but sure nonetheless that the lookout already saw him. A heavy grinding sound echoed along the mountainside, as the metal gears of some gigantic mechanism enmeshed and began to move. Something unseen thudded loudly. The waterfall issuing beneath the archway gurgled itself away. Before Leo’s eyes, the water thinned, cascading downward and not being replaced, like a tap had been shut off—like the natural stream was not so natural after all. Gradually, the watercourse turned to a stone staircase cut into the mountainside, ascending the steepness in switchbacks. Leo watched as the crisp, angular steps appeared while the water receded, remarkably—indeed magically—not eroded in the slightest.

He cleared his throat, giving his troops a desultory look, unmoved by the remarkable sight before him. “Let’s go…”

Leo furrowed his scarred brow, staring at the strange, pitiful creature on a granite altar-top. With wrists and ankles in bronze manacles, attached by stout chains to rivets embedded in the stone, the creature was not going anywhere. Olive skin and white hair veritably glowed in candlelight, as if the manacled thing was an Elf; but the proportions were wrong. The body was too small and slight, the arms too long, the shoulders too broad; Leo grimaced, but in no other way showed the lingering fear he always felt when seeing the unnatural, manufactured hybrids. Those abominations of science, magic, and will had a weird sort of beauty, but their beauty held something chilling. It was the splendor of an approaching storm-front, or the enticing colors of a venomous snake; it was a placid northern sea whose crystal-clear waters were deceptively inviting, and would freeze a swimmer to death. Leo had not, at first, believed that the espa of the Aumunas had truly been captured and forcefully incarnated in the creature. After his mission, though—with the location of the Fragment having been successfully taken from the creature’s brain when only the Aumunas would have known it to begin with—Leo could do nothing but accept the mind-blowing triumph the Elnaril had wrought, using technology to blur the line between life and death—collapsing the distance between eons so the unfinished work of the past could become the defining labor of the present, and blaze the way into the future. 

Leo’s gaze wandered from the figure on the altar, traveling up a short flight of stairs—coming to rest on someone sitting in meditation upon a raised platform. She was seated on a floor of shining lacquered hardwood, her back against a wall of spotless white paper. To an Elven eye, the spiritual might radiating from her was unmistakable; in the candlelit gloom, her halo ringed her like the light of a full moon on a frosty night; a half seen, half felt virago of power with a seated feminine form at its center, legs crossed at the ankles, her hands resting in her lap. Heart beating faster with a mixture of awe and fear, Leo waited for her to open her eyes and see he had entered the huge room with five of his troops, bearing a wooden crate (Leo had deigned to take a place on the rope handles himself, freeing one of the bearers to depart for camp with Aalinor ahead of the rest.) Yet, the meditating figure above did not stir; her lightly closed eyes did not so much as flicker.

“Set the crate down,” Leo said quietly, looking at his troops. “We’ll tell the palace servants it's here. They can handle it now.” There was a slight scrape while Leo's troops moved as one, depositing the heavy thing on the marble tiles almost silently. They turned to creep away, heads down, filing out of the room the way they had come.

“You have found it,” a voice said. Leo paused on his way through the door, his back to the room. His troops craned their necks to glance at him.

“Go,” Leo said, face grim. His troops nodded, and continued on their way as Leo turned towards the altar. The manacled creature was sitting upright now, glaring at him, gaunt face half lit by candlelight, vibrantly green eyes glittering.

“Yes,” Leo answered steadily. “We found it. It is only a matter of time before we find the other two Fragments as well.”

The thing scoffed. “That may be. Perhaps I can’t stop you. But even after being in its presence, feeling the power of it, you have not stopped to reconsider what you are doing?”

It was Leo’s turn to scoff. “Reconsider loyalty to the Elnaril? What you say is absurd.”

“Before swearing loyalty,” the creature said, “you’d do well to be sure your leader is wise.”

Leo’s face turned even harder than it already was. “You would speak ill of the Elnaril, knave?” His fingers touched the pommel of his sword, tugging slightly, loosening the weapon in its scabbard.

“Don’t let him bait you,” a calm voice said. Leo’s gaze snapped towards the raised platform as he released his grip on the golden-green metal pommel. The Elnaril stood at the head of the stairs, her hand gently outstretched, hooded eyes seeming focused on nothing. Then her eyes moved to Leo. He shuddered, almost knocked backwards a step as if pushed. She began to descend the steps, slowly, one slender, booted leg in front of the other. Her aura followed, a huge mantle of light overlaying her dark robes, flowing from her, dragging in her train, and brushing the ceiling above.

Leo dropped to his knees, bending at the waist, bringing his forehead forward to kowtow on the marble tiles. “Elnaril,” he said, “we have succeeded. We have brought you the first Fragment of Swiftcry. It was hidden exactly where your vision told us it would be.”

“I never doubted you would succeed,” the Elnaril said, breaking into a radiant smile. She reached the bottom of the stairs, and sauntered past the creature chained to the altar as if he was not there—not looking daggers at her. She reached Leo; unhesitatingly, she stooped to guide him up from the tiles. “You have done well,” she said. “This is only the first step of a long journey, but what you’ve achieved is too important for mere words. Your faithfulness, and the faithfulness of your soldiers, will long be remembered for the part it will have played when this is done.” Her gaze moved to the crate, giving an elated smile. “Is that it?”

Leo nodded, and the Elnaril strode towards the crate. She held her hand above the wood, not touching it, immersed in some sensation which was not so easy to define. She opened her mouth to speak, but was interrupted. 

“Pause to remember,” the creature on the altar cried, his voice taunting, “that you are not the first betrayers to crave the power of Swiftcry for your own ends. And those fools were not the first betrayers to be enticed by figments, either. Ceros, throughout long eons, has seen no shortage of the frail-minded and flawed, slaughtering each other over rewards they imagined matter. There have always been those who would kill their family for land, or sell their friends to be slaves, if it could get them jewels, tubers, or cowries. But what, in the sea of time, became of the various things our brothers and sisters have sold their souls to obtain? Cowries, tubers, land…surely if those things mattered enough to turn friends against each other in the glimmer of a moment where they existed, then they left a lasting mark on Ceros.” The creature on the altar fell silent, as if Leo or the Elnaril was going to interject an answer. He shrugged, making the links of his chains rattle. “Where are the tubers? The cowries? Who remembers the owner of the land, bought in blood a lifetime ago, a thousand lifetimes? They are gone. The land has shifted. Generations have lived and died upon it. In the end, nothing is sacred—not even our blasphemies.”

“Are you finished?” the Elnaril asked, turning from the crate to face the creature chained to the altar-stone. She sashayed towards the altar, eyes fixed on the olive, white-haired thing. He did not flinch, meeting the pressure of her accipitral stare immovably.

“I am not tempted by the power of Swiftcry,” the Elnaril said. “Power only tempts the weak. The strong are tempted by the opportunity to struggle for a righteous cause. This weapon will change the balance of the coming fight, yes, but it will usher in a new start, not spell the end. It will blast apart the logjam. It will let the work of recreating the world commence. The faith and courage of believers will matter then more than ever.”

The creature on the altar scowled. “You will be killed by what you’re attempting to do. I would kill you myself, if I could.”

The Elnaril giggled. “You have killed me before,” she said, “but that only got you here. To live and fight is the limbo I cannot escape. In my soul is a paean orchestrated by heaven, and because we both have parts to play in it, it will not let you or me die until its melody is done. My inevitable victory has been delayed for many centuries, but it will at last arrive.”

Leo turned silently, and stepped towards the shadowy doorway. 

“Wait,” the Elnaril commanded, looking again towards Leo. “You have another mission.”

Leo whirled around smartly. “Command me.”

“You won’t—” the creature on the altar started; the Elnaril snapped her fingers without glancing back, and he fell supine against the stone. Leo’s astonished gaze drifted towards him despite his best efforts.

“You are to travel east,” the Elnaril said, drawing Leo’s eyes back to her calm face and impassive eyes. A splendid tiara glinted on her brow; ornaments hung from her earlobes, alongside her delicate neck; shades of gold, olive, and black blended in the candlelight. “Our bargain with the Merchant Governor of Kingsholm has borne fruit, so we must give what we promised in return.”

“What did we promise?” Leo asked. He knew only that the Governor Jedun Bhedir of Kingsholm had stretched the deadlocked negotiations on for the better part of a year, stridently refusing to allow the Elnaril’s shamans to carry their work inside the city limits—but he had abruptly reversed course, and permitted Paragon mystics to search anywhere they wished throughout Kingsholm for the burial site of the Aumunas, where they were ultimately successful. In the end, he even dropped the stipulation that his Watch oversee where they went and what they did. What exactly the Merchant Governor had been offered to finally make him change his mind, Leo did not know. 

“What can one offer,” the Elnaril said, smirking, “to a man who has everything?  Jedun Bhedir was a member of the King’s economic council before he was appointed to the administration of Kingsholm. In actual fact, Human politics follows money, so in some ways even the King is now secondary to what the Governor Bhedir has become. He can forgive—or not—the debts of royals, and finance wars at his whim. He can sign a document and cause a thousand deaths, or sign a different document and save a thousand lives. Such a man is immune to most things Paragon can leverage for persuasion, simply because he has become inured to everything.”

Leo nodded, totally unsurprised the Elnaril, in her divine judgment and insight, had ultimately found a way to break the impasse—but filled with admiration nonetheless. “What finally tempted him?”

“Immortality,” the Elnaril said, face going blank. “I saw into his greedy, covetous heart, and realized that was what the scientists of Paragon could offer the man who already possessed a superfluity of everything else. We made the Merchant Governor understand, to a point, what our objective was in Kingsholm; we steered him towards believing he’d had the idea himself about what our technology could mean for him. We maneuvered him into asking us to share it. And so we struck our bargain—unfettered access to the lands now occupied by Kingsholm, to seek the ancient burial site of the Aumunas; in exchange for the technologies by which we create the hybrids, and force a disembodied espa to incarnate in an artificial body. He wants access to that technology because it could mean immortality for himself—a means of incarnating again and again in fresh bodies as each one wears out from too many years of pleasure and vice.”

Leo scowled. “What a wretched scapegrace the Governor Bhedir must be. He sounds like an exemplar of everything I hate about Humans. I hope I never have the misfortune of meeting this heel.”

The Elnaril nodded. “Yes. But he upheld his end of the bargain. We have the Aumunas, and things are proceeding apace. Even amidst the coming work and upheavals, we will deliver on what we promised. Your mission is to escort the inventor of the hybrids to Kingsholm, and embed in the Merchant Governor's mansion to provide security while our scientists do the work of establishing a permanent laboratory there.”

Leo frowned like he’d tasted something sour, mouth tight, eyes narrow. “The Professor can’t get there with a teleport spell?”

The Elnaril shook her head. “Our dear Professor,” she said, “is not a well-traveled person, and has never even been to Kingsholm. He cannot safely teleport somewhere he’s never seen. So he must physically walk there. You will make sure he arrives in one piece.”

“Yes, Elnaril,” Leo said.

“Do not forget,” the Elnaril said, voice dripping with sympathy, “that the words ‘guard’ and ‘reward’ are linked. That is no accident of etymology. Whatever we may think of Jedun Bhedir, he will be important in the aborning order of the world—at least parenthetically. That is why I am sending my most able Commander to see that the fulfillment of our obligation in Kingsholm goes right.” She nodded, dismissing him. He turned and strode from the acheronian chamber.

•••

Adan and two of the petty thieves who lived in the flophouse sat around a rough table, awaiting Myna’s return and staring at the rat in silence. Nibbling a piece of brie rind held in its tiny hands, the rat stood amidst junk on the table, and did not seem to feel the same awkwardness felt by the Elf and two Dwarves.

Finally, a door cracked. Dazzling sunlight cut momentarily into the gloomy room. A figure slipped through the opening, and closed the door behind herself with a slight thunk, holding back the rising heat of the day.

Myna strode forward, eye drifting to the rat on the table. “What’s this?” she asked, scanning the seated people. “Have you noticed…” She nodded at the rat between them.

Adan grunted. His eye roved over Myna, head to toe, admiring the new armor she had very obviously just bought with her share of the Goblin gold. Done in shark leather, it made her a vision in gray, and looked expensive—at least compared to the blanket she had worn on her shoulders previously. The breastplate was covered in many layers of smaller leather pieces, overlapping like the scales of a dragon, covering the entire front and back. The pauldrons on her shoulders were narrow and pointy at the ends, like two capsized boats, with copper rerebraces which sat perfectly underneath protecting her upper arms. Her lower arms were covered by leather vambraces, each with a small bronze blade attached to the outer side for blocking incoming weapons and striking. Her upper legs were covered by a skirt of layered shark- and ray-skin reaching down to the knee. Her lower legs were protected by leather greaves, and dark pants were worn beneath all of this. Under one arm, she carried her helm: Adan saw a nasal and cheek-guards made from layers of leather, mimicking the appearance of scales and continuing the overall reptilian motif. On the brow, a bright red heart-shaped ornament was fashioned from dyed shagreen.

“What’s with the rat?” Myna asked, looking puzzledly at the rodent on the table.

“That’s what we’re about to be told,” Adan said, crossing his arms and glancing towards the rat. “We’re all here. Say your piece.”

“You expect that creature to answer you?” Myna asked, looking askance at Adan. “Surely you—”

The rat cleared its tiny throat, and Myna’s wide eyes darted to it. “I have come here,” the rat began, “looking to hire mercenaries.” Myna’s highly decipherable face showed much the same train of thought Adan had experienced upon first hearing the rat speak.

“Why does a rodent need mercenaries?” Adan asked, a frown-line crossing his forehead.

Ever pragmatic, Myna asked, “And why have you come to us, then? We are not sellswords.”

“You are gigantic,” the rat said, “and armed. You meet my criteria. And what’s more, you have been kind to my colony in the past.”

The other two Dwarven thieves at the table exchanged glances. Tentatively, one coughed to capture the others’ attention. “In what way,” she said, “have we been kind to you?”

“There are many in Kingsholm,” the rat said, “who would kill a rat for seeking shelter, or a morsel of food, if they are deemed to be in an inconvenient spot, or even for no reason at all. I have lost cousins this way. But you have never harried us. You have even shared scraps with us. We do not forget.” The rat turned towards Myna, meeting her eye.

Myna’s lips parted twice without a sound before she decided what to say. (She nearly blurted that she hadn’t meant to share the moldy bread she tossed into the gutter a week earlier, and if there had been rats there to nab it, it was merely serendipity—but she thought better of volunteering anything so utterly honest.) “Do members of your colony,” she asked after a pause, “generally speak? I must confess I’ve never heard a rat say anything before.”

“To each other, yes,” the rat said. “Speaking in your words has come much more recently.”

“How?” Adan gave voice to the question which was foremost in everyone's minds.

“I don’t know,” the rat said. “That development came suddenly. What force wrought it, none of us can say. But it is not the only inexplicable change which has swept through the tunnels below the city. Another colony of rats—The Creeping Dynasty—has always been greedy and cruel. For generations, their expansion was checked by other factions around them, but that is no longer true. A terrible transformation has made them powerful enough to act on their vindictive nature. Their reach is increasing by the day. Those factions which do not ally with them out of fear are crushed and looted. My people would choose death before joining the Dynasty, but we cannot endure if we are left by ourselves when this tide breaks upon us. Hence my coming here, seeking mercenaries.”

Adan and Myna looked at each other. “You think,” Myna said, “if you can entice us giants to wade into your rat war, we’ll change the course of it in your people’s favor.”

“You mentioned payment,” Adan interjected. He returned his gaze to the rat. “So, what can you offer us for doing this?”

“I happen to know that the Watch,” the rat said, “will pay one copper in bounty for every rat tail you bring to them, and I’m offering you a chance to get many tails—you could easily earn one gold each.”

The two Dwarven thieves at the table exchanged glances again. “One gold,” the same thief as before asked, “for rooting around the dank tunnels beneath Kingsholm in search of rats, for who-knows how long?”

“I don’t find that very enticing,” Adan said, frowning. “What do the rest of you say?” The Elf glanced around the table, but the Dwarven thieves who had been seated there had vanished in the past second. Their chairs were suddenly empty. 

“I suppose that is enough of an answer from them,” Adan grumbled. He turned his eye to Myna. “And you?”

Myna chewed her lip, brow furrowed. “The payment is meager,” Myna said, “but given everything we learned just now, I have to say I’m curious about what is happening in the tunnels. Aren’t you?”

Adan shrugged.

Myna nodded briskly. “Very well,” she said. “I will go. Adan, you are free to leave and—”

“I will accompany you, Oracle,” Adan cut in. Myna blinked at him, wearing her surprise on her face.

The rat let out a delighted squeak. “With the two of you,” it chirped, “fighting alongside us, we will surely prevail!”

Myna grinned, looking at the rat. “Before we go into battle together, we should know your name, and the colony for which we fight.”

The rat bowed its head. “I am Hanmeron Gus-Sharie, warrior of the Shimmerscars.”

•••

A few more words passed between Myna, Adan, and Hanmeron, as they prepared to leave the flophouse. After a minute or two, a knock sounded on the door.

Myna glanced at Adan. A knock at the door was seldom, if ever, a harbinger of anything good. “Expecting someone?”

The Elf shook his head, then moved cautiously towards the door. After waiting for the space of a deep breath, Adan wrenched the door open, making the person on the opposite side spring back in surprise—hand raised for a knock which would never land. 

His eyes partly closed in the bright sun cascading onto the stoop, Breakaleg gazed at Adan in the doorway.

•••

“What are you doing here?” Myna asked, pushing forward to stand in the threshold alongside the Elf, facing their visitor. “How did you even find me?”

“You mentioned you live in The Foreigner’s holdings,” Breakaleg began. “Knowing generally where to begin asking around, it wasn’t hard to locate someone as, uh, unique as you are. Anyway, I’ve recalculated our shares of the Goblin gold and our finder’s fee for the Ixian machine, and realized you should have gotten more. We didn’t divide the take exactly fairly.” The cleric reached into his robes and produced a small pouch. He pressed it into Myna’s hands as she watched him through narrow eyes.

“Oh,” she said cautiously. “I’m surprised a realization like that made you come here. I would have thought you’d just be glad you’d gotten a bit extra.”

Breakaleg winced. “Certainly not! I am a cleric of Alithia. We value fair-play and trustworthiness above material gain.” He cleared his throat. “Now, our business is concluded on that front…”

“Yes,” Myna said, crossing her arms after pocketing the small pouch of coins.

Breakaleg cleared his throat again, making Adan and Myna wonder if something about his diet was causing him to be phlegmy. “I see you’re preparing to leave,” Breakaleg said, leaning slightly to glance past Myna and Adan at the fighter’s sword and the thief’s bow laid on the table—clearly ready to strap to their bodies before striking out into the city.

“Yes,” Myna said again, keeping her arms tightly crossed. She added nothing—but a barely perceptible tilt to her head made Breakaleg realize he had better provide a reason for his interest.

“Given how profitable it was,” the cleric said, “to work with you before, perhaps it would be prudent for me to work with you again, on whatever it is you’re about to undertake.”

Myna narrowed her eyes. “You want to wander into dank tunnels to find rats?”

“Who wouldn’t?” Breakaleg said, giving a performatively chipper smile. He hesitated, as it filtered into his brain what Myna had just asked him. “Wait, what? Why are you doing that?”

A slow, mischievous grin spread across Myna’s face. “If you want to accompany us,” she said, “you can. But I can’t tell you our objective until we’re actually in the tunnels. The information is too valuable. There’s as much as a gold coin at stake for each of us, potentially.”

Breakaleg knew when he was being made fun of. But in the interest of maintaining harmony, he projected obliviousness. Face drawn, the cleric nodded. “Very well—I accept these terms.”

Myna chuckled. “But did you not just say clerics of Alithia don’t value material gain?”

Breakaleg shook his head. “I said we value some things more highly,” he clarified, “not that we do not value it at all.” 

Without further colloquy, Myna and Adan moved to the table and grabbed the objects laid out on the grainy surface. They quickly, silently, buckled belts and tied fastens, attaching their weapons and equipment. Breakaleg stood back, watching Myna attentively as she looped one arm through her satchel’s strap and let it drop into place at her side.

“Is that all?” Breakaleg asked, eyes fixed on her.

Myna nodded at the bag. “I travel light,” she said. “I find it’s best to bring little besides low expectations and a sense of the absurd.”

“No, I mean: do you need to report to anyone where you’re going, or what you’re doing…?” Breakaleg kept his voice casual. 

Myna squinted slightly, flicking her eyes to give the cleric an acidulous once-over. “What are you talking about?”

“Nothing,” Breakaleg said quickly. “Let us go.”

Adan turned to the table, reaching his hand towards it. A svelte white-and-orange rat moved into view from behind some junk on the tabletop, scurried up Adan’s arm, and nestled into the folds of the silver-blue poncho on his shoulders. Breakaleg watched, opened his mouth to speak, then resolved not to comment.

•••

The area in the Outer Boroughs where The Foreigner's slum was located had, at one time, mainly consisted of stables for horses. As Kingsholm grew, and the demand for urban dwellings rose proportionally to the influx of denizens from elsewhere in the Barrow Valley region and beyond, many former agricultural buildings were converted (minimally) for habitation. One such row of stables had become Albion Mews. The main thing which differentiated Albion Mews from a group of nameless stables was the sign which had been erected near the tumbling-down group of drab yellow brick structures which comprised Myna’s home.

Turning off the front stoop onto a street too narrow to accommodate even sparse traffic, Myna, Adan, and Breakaleg wound through meanly-dressed individuals going about their morning routines and navigated past ramshackle buildings. They proceeded in silence as far as a dense row of houses with tiny fenced dooryards of hard-packed dirt—which were obviously transmuted dairy barns and pigsties, respectively. They paused at the corner of an alley, squinting in the hot sun which was becoming heavier as the day got started. The orange-y orb had climbed high enough in the pale sky for its beams to spill fully into the narrow street as if into a canyon, with the low, squalid buildings unable to offer much in the way of shade. Breakaleg recognized their location; they were close to a particular library he knew, but had never known anyone to frequent (apart from the lone librarian who wandered the stacks of mouth-chewed books and scrolls.) The cleric sometimes availed himself to the desolation of those rows of tables and bookshelves to conduct clandestine meetings with his employees, when circumstances made the location convenient. Just visible beyond a clutter of projecting eaves and roof ridgelines, which very nearly obscured the view to it from the street, The Foreigner’s own tower was visible—its abnormous masonry standing starkly against the cloudless welkin. His mind buzzing with possible explanations for where they were going and why, Breakaleg lapsed into thought—nearly missing the surreal sight of the the rat poking its head out of a wrinkle of Adan’s poncho and looking at the Elf with what Breakaleg believed was an expression of stoic resolve (it isn’t always easy to tell, with rodents.)

“There’s an access-point to the tunnels nearby,” the rat was saying, “which I believe is large enough to admit all of you.” Breakaleg took a moment to adjust to the unexpected revelations that the rat could not only speak, but was apparently the mastermind behind whatever they were doing. 

After walking a bit longer in the increasingly strong sun (hungrily smelling a bakery nearby, baking what was probably its ninth or tenth batch of loaves of the day so far) the quartet walked into the small yard of a dilapidated building. Breakaleg immediately saw a dry culvert running through the dirt. It was no more than knee deep, on a Dwarf, dug into the ground and reinforced with cobblestone along the bottom and sides. It began and ended with matching semicircular arches of stone and mortar, where water had obviously flowed at one time. Since the building seemed to be a refurbished barn, it was easy to guess that this trench in front had once been a watering trough for animals.

“Is this the entry-point you thought we could all use?” Adan asked the wrinkles of his poncho.

The rat peeked its head into view. “Yes,” it said. “You won’t need to crawl far. It feeds into wider tunnels.” The rat climbed down Adan’s body, hopped to the ground, and darted for the culvert. It scrambled in, then vanished through one of the archways. Grumbling, Adan, Myna, and Breakaleg followed, wriggling through the tight space.

•••

Leo sat upright, roused from sleep by the low growling of the dog in the corner of his simple tent. He raised one hand, his fingers crackling with flames, while the other hand flashed towards his sword. The light of his arcane fire leapt across the small space, illuminating a figure in the doorway of the tent, frozen in the action of timidly brushing a canvass flap aside, face ashen. Clutched in its tiny hand, a straw-colored metal amulet gleamed.

“You are not the first Messenger,” Leo said, voice low, “to surprise me in my sleep.” He glanced at the growling dog; it fell silent.

The Messenger in the doorway swallowed painfully, features stretched tight. “What happened to the other one, my lord?” the Gnome squeaked.

“I immolated him,” Leo said, “to teach him the harsh realities of life.” He lowered his burning hand slowly, allowing the crackling flames to dissipate. “Speak. Why are you here?”

“The Elnaril sent me, my lord,” the Gnome blurted, dropping to the rugs which were scattered across the tent floor, kowtowing. “Forgive me, I would have waited for dawn, but it is urgent.”

Leo sat straighter, fixing the Gnome in a steady gaze. “What did the Elnaril say?”

The Gnome grimaced. “She sent me after you with a message soon after you left the palace.” 

“Obviously,” Leo snapped. “But why did She?”

The visitor cleared his throat, and Leo winced. He knew the Gnome was about to launch into the uncanny imitation of other people’s voices which made the Elnaril favor them as Her private Messengers. As far as Leo was concerned, hearing the silvery voice of the Elnaril come from the squat, homely creatures was never anything but unsettling and surreal. 

“The Fragment,” the Gnome blurted—in a tone suddenly imperious, feminine, and loud enough to make Leo flinch and the nervous dog shrink farther away, “is sealed inside a locked box we cannot break. I’ve reached into the Aumunas’ mind seeking an explanation for this trickery, and discovered that the Triad members were more wily than we knew before. Not only did they divide Swiftcry into three fragments and hide them separately, but they sealed each of the Fragments in an unbreakable box which can only be opened by applying a Key. Each box has a corresponding Key, and those three tricksters each hid a Key without knowledge of where any other was hidden, so no single member of the Triad could reveal all the secrets of accessing Swiftcry even if they wanted to. Your mission has evolved; you will no longer remain in Kingsholm after you escort the professor there. When that is done, you must strike out at once to retrieve the Key to this Fragment. I managed to extract the location from the Aumunas, despite his efforts to block me from the memory. I will contact you again with the location when the time is right.”

The Gnome finished, gaze drifting to the tent floor—suddenly devoid, again, of even an imitation of the power and confidence which exuded from the Elnaril.

Leo hooded his eyes, lapsing into contemplative silence as his barely-awake brain absorbed the content of the message.

The Gnome fidgeted with the amulet in its hand. “Apologies, my lord, but I am supposed to bring your reply to the palace.”

Leo raised his face, looking at the Gnome inexpressively. “I acknowledge the receipt of this message and I will be ready for further instructions.”

With a palpable rush of relief, the Gnome nodded, stooped, and vanished from sight—discharging the teleport spell which had been charged in the amulet it carried. 

Leo swiveled his gaze towards the dog—huddled in a corner, watching the proceedings inside the tent vigilantly. “It’s alright,” Leo mumbled. “You’ll soon have a new home in Kingsholm, and it seems I’ll be leaving straight away. I can imagine that will be a relief to you.” He settled back on his bedroll, sighing deeply.