CHAPTER 16

Rock Troll Jokes Are About as Unfunny as a Punch to the Eye

Stoney was indeed blind.

And it wasn’t one of those temporary things where his eyesight would return after a few hours or days or weeks. No, his eyeballs had basically been incinerated, and his eyelids fused shut by the heat. Stoney would be blind forever.

Dwarven magic was powerful, but as far as anybody knew or had ever heard or read about in the texts, there was no spell that could re-create lost eyes or resurrect the dead, etc. Dwarven magic was still rooted in nature, and fixing such severe injuries was, well, unnatural.

But Stoney was actually taking it pretty well. He didn’t even seem distraught and was already making jokes about it. Like when he held up one of the Rocnar’s long, severed fingers by the knuckle and tapped it on the ground in front of him a few times and said, “AMBULATORY ASSISTANCE CANE?”

“Gross, Stoney,” Ari said, gagging, even as Lake and Tiki howled with laughter behind her. “You can’t use that thing’s finger as a walking stick!”

Glam was definitely taking Stoney’s injury the hardest. She had apologized to him (and thanked him) so many times in the hour after the battle that we’d basically had to restrain her to keep her from going near him. We all knew he’d do it the same way all over again if he had to.

Sadly, though, Stoney wasn’t the only casualty of the battle.

Sentry Two and Sentry Three had both died during the initial Rocnar ambush. But it was weird; the other Sentry didn’t seem to care. They didn’t express sadness or regret for being unable to save them, and in fact didn’t even mourn their fallen comrades at all. They just got to work butchering the two Rocnar carcasses for meat and salvaging what was left of our tents and supplies.

“Don’t you even care?” Ari asked at one point. “They were your teammates, your fellow warriors, your—your . . . friends!”

“Incorrect,” Sentry One replied, emotionless. “None of us are friends. The Sentry don’t have friends.”

“At least take some time to mourn the loss of your squad members,” I suggested.

“Negative,” Sentry Five scoffed. “Death is a part of our job. We do not mourn our losses. That only wastes time and distracts from objectives. Once you join the Sentry, you cease to be an individual whose death can be mourned. We are all small parts of a larger whole and shall be treated as nothing more.”

“It’s part of the Sentry code,” Sentry One added. “‘We serve, we fight, we protect, we uphold our mission, and die for it willingly if the gods make it so.’ There is nothing to do now but reassess how best to proceed in an efficient manner, having lost 40 percent of our forces.”

Ari and I exchanged a look and finally gave up.

After all, they did make a valid point: the fate of the world possibly rested on the success of our mission, and so it was largely irresponsible to waste time mourning the loss of two, when our failure would mean the loss of millions, or perhaps even billions.

Thankfully the only other casualty (aside from minor bumps and bruises) was Froggy, who had suffered a badly sprained ankle. But Tiki was already busy working on a spell to reduce the swelling and pain in his leg.

Tiki Woodjaw had always had the Ability. But she never received any training until she moved with us to the Chicago Underground. Once there, she began magic training with Fenmir Mystmossman while I was a prisoner in Edwin’s base at Alcatraz. And it turned out that Tiki had two talents:

1. Vulgar and creative cursing

2. Learning and casting healing spells

While her spells couldn’t always instantly fix an injury, they did go a long way to reducing the pain and speeding up the recovery process.

All in all, we considered ourselves very lucky as a group, which was a very un-Dwarf-like feeling.

A few hours after the Battle of Rocnar Clearing, we’d salvaged what we could of the tents, butchered and packaged as much of the Rocnar meat as we could carry,* and carved Stoney a walking stick.

We gathered up our things, ready to embark again on our quest.

“Okay, which way from here, Stoney?” I asked.

Then we all went still. One by one, our heads turned slowly toward the Rock Troll. We stared at the charred remains of his eyes in silent realization.

“STONEY’S CURRENT BEARING?” he asked. “STONEY DISORIENTED.”

“Um . . .” I said.

“We’re really kunked now,” Tiki said. “Our navigator can’t even plorping see where he’s going!”

The Sentry gasped at Tiki’s infamously obscure and obscenely vulgar Separate Earth curse words. But she was right: What were we going to do now? Stoney was our only guide to the amulet.

“Regular compasses don’t work in this forest, Stoney,” Ari said quietly. “None of us can tell you what direction we’re facing.”

Then Stoney began making a gravelly, lurching noise, almost like he was about to barf. But I recognized what it really was right away: Rock Troll laughter. Stoney was giggling, almost in stitches.

“HOAX,” he said. “STONEY UTILIZE PAGEANT WITTICISM. COMEDIC SUBTERFUGE. MACHINATE PSEUDO-APPREHENSION. CONSTRUCT JOVIAL SCENARIO. STONEY DISCERN APPROPRIATE BEARING. ADVANCE FORTHWITH.”

The huge Rock Troll pointed a finger and then began walking in that direction, tapping his massive walking stick on the ground in front of him to help detect obstacles.

Nobody laughed at Stoney’s practical joke as we followed.

But I was pretty sure I heard the sound of nine collective sighs of relief as we trekked deeper into the Hidden Forest.