Lorelei
Lore wished they would be attacked. Wished that there would be something to prove Jack wrong. But instead there was simply silence and emptiness in the tunnels, as they walked further and further from where they had left him. But there were no more attacks. Whatever had let the dead find them so readily in the undercity had left with Jack, and his bloody clothes. So they would all be following him, and attacking him, now that he was alone.
Lore 's grip on her thunderstick tightened. She loved Jack's gallant nature, his kindness – they were an amazing change from the world she had grown up in. But now those same traits had taken Jack away.
There was the sound of a stomach growling behind her, and Lore realized that she was quite hungry. When had she last eaten? In the morning? She didn't have any food on her. She kept walking, one hand high to ward her head.
The tunnels were cold.
“Hey miss. Um... Lore, was it?” Kallaster was speaking behind her. “I don't know the time, but I think we should stop for dinner.”
“In the tunnels?” asked Lore. Her arm jammed into some hard protrusion, and she winced, then ducked under it. “Mind your heads.”
“Well, it's the safest place I've been all evening.” Kallaster said. “I think I packed some food.”
That did sound good. “Okay, we might as well stop here. Could you shine a light?”
There was a pause, then light shined from an arrow, revealing Kallaster, Kara, and a small private tomb. Lore looked around. She had hit her hand on the archway that separated this tomb from the rest of the catacombs, and the tomb itself—dominated by an imposing coffin carved of pale white stone—was yet another dead end.
Kall had set her pack down beside the coffin, and was rummaging through it. She took out a few odd items Lore didn't recognize, then an apple. “Okay, I think Glynn had most of our food, but I did pick these apples yesterday, outside this town.” She tossed one to Lore, and then another to Kara. “Should be still good. A little bit mushed.” She stuffed her gear back into the pack.
“Thank you, Ms. Poe.” said Kara, with a slight hint of a curtsy. Lore nodded, habitually trying to clean the apple on her shirt. The leather armor of the city watch made it a practice of futility.
“Ms. Poe? Ha!” Kallaster grinned, and bit down into her apple. She chewed for a second, then swallowed. “My dear lady, if you're not going to go by my full title—Kallaster Poe, Lady Adventurer—then you might as well just call me Kallaster. Or just Kall.”
“Poe is a bit of a strange family name, for a southerner. It means 'nothing' doesn't it?”
“More like 'gone' or 'extinguished'. Or 'ghost', for that matter. Never had any Northerners try to translate my name before.”
“Scholarship is my hobby – I send for the books traders bring, and the Varnya library is not insignificant.”
“You know, you're probably the first proper Lady I've rescued up here. You come up to these wild lands for adventure, like the Heroes of tale, but there's nothing but a long string of milkmaids being stolen away by hags, farm boys led off by will 'o wisps, and children lost in the woods. Save but for you and Mr. Sunder, there's not much of saving high Lords and Ladies from terrible fates. And this is the time when everything gets bothered up!” Kall laughed. “But what am I saying! Such hardship and few rewards are the lot of any gallant adventurer, right?”
Lore could see Kara smiling in the pale light of the magic arrow. “Like in the books, hm?” The lady leaned back against the wall, in between two engravings.
“Except the best rewards I manage come from gladdened farmboys, not handsome lords, or grateful kings. If you know what I mean.” Kallaster winked, and Lore thought she could see Kara redden.
“Dear Lore, you seem very quiet.”
“Oh. I... I'm just worrying over Jack.” Lore looked at her feet. “He's not getting an apple to eat, and there's probably a horde of zombies following him.”
For a few long moments, there was silence, cut only by the drip of water in the distance. Lore regretted bringing up the subject.
Kallaster was the first one to speak, but she was far more somber than usual. “He'll do okay. We'll see him in Parveno. He... he probably didn't need my saving anyway.” She stared blankly for a bit, her eyes looking through the coffin, then blinked and laughed. “But that's out of our hands, so I say we shouldn't fret over it!”
Lore bit her lip. It felt wrong not to fret over him. But on the other hand, Kallaster was right in a way.
“I mean, he wouldn't want us to be sad, so we should think about other things. Talk about other things.”
More silence.
“Okay, then. I must provide the distraction. My dear lady Kara, you said you loved to read stories about the rest of the world – now you have a most excellent and knowledgeable example of humanity, a worldly traveler hailing out of the south, from the great republic! What do you want to know? The politics of the Enlightened Magocracy and the Council of Twelve? The delightful foods and delicacies that we enjoy in the republic? The rules and mechanics of magic that are commonplace for us, but so mystical to northerners such as yourself?”
Kara smiled. “I... uh... well, I don't suppose you have a magic technique to help me stay warm, do you?”
Kallaster blinked. “Uh, well, that's just a matter of changing the temperature of a substance with your mind. Not really magic, per se.” She cocked her head. “How much have you read of practical magic?”
“Some. The books are banned here, obviously, but my family's library had a few volumes dating back to before Archimeridies formalized the worship of the Aspects.”
“Uh. A bit outdated, probably.” Kallaster shook her head. “Well, for your benefit, under the authority vested in me by the Council of Twelve, I accept you as my pupil in the technique of magical manipulation and wizardry.”
Kara curtsied, a bemused expression on her face. “Thank you? That was strangely formal.”
“Well, I could, so I thought I might as well.” Kallaster placed the glowing arrow on the center of the coffin. “Before you can heat an object, you have to learn how to imbue an object with your energy. This gem attached to the arrow is specially built to convert energy into light. Making it glow like this is just a matter of pushing the energy out your mind and body into the gem – the gem converts it for you.”
Kallaster stepped back. “Okay, I'm going to stop providing it with energy. It will be dark for a bit, but I'm sure you'll get this, Kara.” The room was suddenly pitch-black. Lore leaned back against a wall, and did her best to pay attention.
“Feel how your life flows through your body. Visualize yourself as a ghost, and your life-energy as a swirling vapor, or smoke. Feel it like an extension, a flow you can send to wherever you want. An extra limb. Breathe in, then breathe out, squeezing your breath into your body, and your life energy out, flowing into the gem.”
Lore waited, expectantly. Maybe Sunder was having a better time finding his way than they were. At least he would know what direction to go to get to the edge of the city. Maybe right now he was in clean clothing, eating a feast of abandoned food. Well, no – that would be stealing to him, after all.
“Magic is founded in imagination, the freedom of your mind. You've lived your life reading books about things that you can't touch or see or taste or feel – this is just the same, just as real.” Kallaster giggled. “There's a reason they say all the best mages are crazy, and why we have to pity folks like my partner Glynn.”
“Just... imagine it,” said Kara.
“Oh, it is as real as anything, just insubstantial, like the knowledge in a book.”
“Hmm...” said Kara.
Suddenly the gem flared into life, shining brightly. Kara was there, standing with her head slightly bowed, her eyes gently shut, expression serene. Kallaster was on the other side of the coffin, grinning broadly. And... in the archway there was a ratkin, face clawed apart, one eye hanging out of the socket. In a horrible, stretched moment, it turned to Kara, and crouched to spring.
“Kara, watch out!”
The Lady's eyes snapped open, and everything went black.
Kara Varnya
It was working! She was actually using free magic, just like the books had described it! Projecting her will onto reality! No... those two were not separate – her will was part of reality, like everything else. Kara wanted to grin, wanted to open her eyes, and look at the jewel she knew was glowing... but even to notice the glow from beyond her eyelids was weakening her concentration. Maybe if she could put the illumination into the back of her mind, then she could use conscious...
“Kara! Watch out!” screamed Lore.
Kara's eyes few open, and for a split second she could see some manner of small, wretched creature next to her. A sewerfiend? And then everything was dark, with only the afterimage in her eyes.
And then it was upon her, knocking her back against the wall. Kara must have gotten her arms up, as it crashed against her forearms, small and light. She could feel damp fur brushing on her hands.
“Gragh!” she cried, flailing outwards and making contact with something cold and wet. Whatever she did must have knocked the creature back, as there was a light thump a few feet away.
“Kall! Light!” shouted Lore. “I can't shoot!”
There was the scrape of claws on rock, and Kara flailed some more, but her arms intercepted nothing. Instead, there was a cry and a crash from her right side, where Lore had been shouting, and the sounds of scrabbling and struggle. “Lore!” Kara shouted. She stepped forward, but rammed her knee into the sarcophagus.
“Get it off of me!” yelled Lore, and then the light was glowing again. Lore was slumped between the tomb and the back wall, unable to completely fall in the tight confines of the tomb. The sewerfiend, while a mere half of the young lady's diminutive size, appeared to have the upper hand, clinging onto her with one clawed hand, and scratching and biting with the other.
The sudden light changed things, however, and Kara saw Lore land a well-placed fist on the sewerfiend's side, which knocked the creature off of her. It collided with the side of the sarcophagus, and landed at Kara's feet.
“Aah!” Kara yelled, and kicked out at the creature. She could feel the creature's small bones breaking against her shin, and the thing flew backwards into a finely engraved wall. There was a thundering boom, and the sewerfiend was ripped apart by a hail of projectiles.
It lay still.
“Oh... oh my.” Kara slumped back against the wall. The rush of fear and danger was still flowing through her bloodstream, and she could feel herself trembling uncontrollably. Kara took a deep breath, taking in the damp, stale air of the undercity. “Urgh...”
“Kara, are you okay?” Kara looked up. Lore was reloading her weapon, but glanced up at Kara. “Did it bite or scratch you?”
A prickly feeling went down Kara's body, and she could feel the itch of scratches and cuts, but when she looked down, none of the injuries on her arms had pierced the cloth, and the scratches on her hands hadn't drawn blood. Some of the places that itched of cuts were just spots of dampness from the creature's fur. Kara decided she was overreacting “I... I think I'm alright. No cuts.”
“Yeah, those claws weren't very sharp.” Lore put down her weapon, and looked at her gloved hands, opening and closing them. “They scraped my leather, but I don't think I'm injured, either. Good thing I could keep it away my face.” Lore reached back and rubbed the back of her head. “Though I did get a pretty good knock when it knocked me over.”
Kara shivered, then looked over at Kallaster. The adventurer was standing in the archway, peering down in the light of her arrow. “What are you looking at?”
“I thought there was something down that way. More of them, maybe.” The adventurer looked back at Lore. “Was that a... ratkin? Sewerfiend?”
“They call themselves ratmen and ratwomen. I was hoping that they would be okay, but that one seemed to be infected.”
“They don't normally attack?” asked Kallaster. Kara nearly voiced a reply, but Lore seemed to have more direct experience.
“No, they don't. From talking with one of them—a friend of mine—they don't believe in attacking people. They just scavenge for meat.”
Something clicked in Kara's mind. “I know what happened to them. They eat corpses, including human corpses, according to what I read. And there's a lot of corpses up there right now, but not ones that are good for eating.”
Lore looked distressed. “Oh... oh dear...” She looked to be holding back tears. “Then they are all...”
“Not all,” said Kallaster. She was still peering into the darkness beyond the light of her arrow. “I see one watching us right now.”
Next: Chapter 12