The spriggan held its three-fingered hand to its chest. “I be Khyriaxx.”
Xexial nodded to the spriggan and looked at his strange brass contraption only a few feet away. Deep scratches crisscrossed the brass framework. “Why are you so far from your people?”
“They not be so far,” Khyriaxx responded. “Closer than you think really. But in truth, I just prefer the solitude. Unusual for my kind yes, but it allows me to tinker in private.”
“And yet you saved me?”
Khyriaxx scratched behind his pointed ear. His quills bounced wildly with the aggressive motion. “Yeah, well, it’s not like you be talking much for the last few weeks. You be an ideal guest.”
“You’re evading,” Xexial said flatly.
The spriggan shrugged. “So what if I am? You be easier to handle while you slept. All I had to worry about is when you be going to foul yourself, and if you be taking enough nourishment. Not so much to deal with. Now you have questions. Questions about me. Questions about time, about the new wasteland, about moving.” He turned away and began busying himself with his brass device.
“Questions are good,” Xexial stated. “It lets us get to know one and other. Builds trust.”
“I have no use for your questions.” The spriggan twisted something so hard Xexial heard it pop. “They cause too much thinking, too many variables.”
Perplexed, the wizard asked, “You don’t like to think?” He took in all the strange contraptions the tinkerer had about his room.
“You want to answer many problems. Hue-mons, all they see are problems. You don’t narrow your focus.” Khyriaxx tinkered with something then continued, “You look only at the problems, and not at solutions. People be like this. Solutions are easy with inventions though. A single algorithm to solve using steps. Machines they… they create different problems, sure, but steadier variables. It be easy to locate their root. Solve their equation. People, be not so easy.” He shook his head. “They be very random.”
Xexial nodded. “I think I am beginning to understand then.”
And he was. For a long time Xexial had been alone, before Ashyn. He became accustomed to the solitude. Until the boy came along, he never had to answer so many questions. Yet, Xexial found such questions refreshing after decades as a hermit. Khyriaxx obviously didn’t feel the same as he. People made the little tinkerer nervous. They were random and chaotic. He liked order. A path. His question about what happened was easy to answer. The spriggan eagerly shared what he had witnessed in the battle. He wondered what Khyriaxx might be hiding? Why he was so far removed from his kin?
Xexial found himself in a predicament. He needed answers. Normally he would just take them, demand that the spriggan answer his questions. Never before was he indebted to anyone for saving his life. Ashyn may be what prevented his death, but it was Khyriaxx that kept him in the realm of the living for the last month. That changed things. No one had ever cared if a wizard lived or died, except those wanting to be a wizard themselves. This creature had, knowing what he was, and thus far made no demands of him or his abilities. Xexial found that very odd.
Then he understood what the spriggan was saying about narrowing his focus. His question was very broad, more of a statement really. The real question was why the little one saved him. Given the way Khyriaxx spoke he ventured a guess, “You saved me because you think I am a solution?”
Khyriaxx looked back up from the machine, his hazel eyes sparkling. “See you solve problem on your own!”
Xexial thought long and hard to why he could possibly be a solution. He knew of no conflicts with the spriggan people. In fact, very few people even knew of the secluded race. If not for his dealings with the gnomes, Xexial would not be among them. The Gnomes had told him of their eccentric, tinkering neighbors at great length, yet he never expected to meet one. So few being away from their home cities.
“Are your people in some type of trouble?” he prodded, “Is that why you need me?”
“No, no,” Khyriaxx answered quickly, “They be fine. Be safe. This be personal.”
“Do you want to be a wizard?”
Khyriaxx’s quills fluttered wildly on his head as he shook his head at Xexial. “Too many variables. No need. Keep narrowing.”
Xexial thought for a while, but nothing came to mind. “I just don’t know how you expect me to be the solution.”
“Sometimes not all is revealed to you quickly. Sometimes it takes time.” The curious creature finagled something on the device. “When you can walk, we will leave, and then you will see.”
The surly wizard harrumphed. “We’ll see.” He studied Khyriaxx, saying again. “We’ll see.”
~ ~ ~
Two days later, Xexial found himself mobile enough to want to stretch his legs and get out of the cramped quarters.
Khyriaxx rarely spoke to him. If Xexial tried to engage the spriggan in anyway, the creature would just ignore him and dive deeper into tinkering with its bizarre contraptions.
It enraged Xexial to see such a simple creature ignoring his questions, but after watching the thing work, he realized spriggans were anything but simple. The creature acted otherwise in most instances, but Xexial could see a very intelligent mind. The way Khyriaxx was able to manipulate items in its home was amazing. The strange contraption he had been working on when Xexial had first awakened turned out to be a wind driven device that cooled Khyriaxx’s entire domicile.
Xexial watched with much curiosity, when the spriggan finished, how it had turned the thing around and affixed it to a strange pipe that ran through his wall to the outside. Once connected, the spriggan disappeared outside and soon Xexial felt cool air emanating from the device, reducing the growing heat that was filling the room. As Xexial stared at the weird thing, he began to make out details. The front of it was covered in brass slats, like that of a keep window. The spriggan could move those slats open and close, leverage them up or down, and even left and right. The slats directed where the air was blowing.
As Xexial looked further, he could see blades turning behind the slats. When Xexial was able to move around, he checked outside to see what was the source driving the fan. When he opened the door he was amazed to see a small windmill hidden amongst the rocky fissures of the lowlands the spriggan lived in. This windmill generated the power necessary to help the small creature survive. It made cool air, made energy to run some of this other ludicrous devices, and even helped keep a fire burning in Khyriaxx’s stove.
Khyriaxx had made an impressive home in the lowlands. He had a small crop farm, two goats for milk and cheese, and he had even created his own well and irrigation system, using the windmill to drive the water to and from the well to the interior of his home and his quaint farm fields.
Xexial also recognized where in the lowlands he was. He was slightly north of the crater that the Onyx Tower resided in. Dark brown and craggy, the split rocks hid the spriggan’s modest dwelling from drifting eyes, and the sharp obsidian sliver that jutted skyward to his west kept most intruders at a wide berth. Xexial protected Khyriaxx all this time by his proximity to the Onyx Tower, and the wizard never knew.
“That’s why you needed me alive,” he said looking away from his home and down to the diminutive creature beside him.
“Hue-mons fear wizards. They be avoiding the crater at all costs. Keeps Khyriaxx safe.” The spriggan nodded. “How long after you dies does the word gets out? Then many elves, many hue-mons.”
Xexial chuckled deeply. For once, someone had gotten the right of it. Wizards value all life. They protected the balance of life.
“Well Khyriaxx, I will never tell you to leave this land. Fear not, you are always welcome here.”
Khyriaxx smiled at him with a large toothy grin. “Good, because Khyriaxx not want to make you mostly dead again for trying.”
The spriggan reached up and handed Xexial a bag. The wizard looked down with a questioning eyebrow raised. “These be all the things I find on you.”
Xexial nodded and took the satchel. He would very much like to be equipped with his things again. They were an eclectic collection of items that he had gathered over the winters. Many useful, some personal. His eyes glanced at the bareness of his hand as he held the satchel. He hadn’t traveled feeling so barren in a long time.
“Be you heading to where it was so important that you couldn’t miss it?” Khyriaxx questioned.
Xexial shook his head. “No. Not anymore. First I must head back to the Onyx Tower to re-stock fully. Ashyn bore much of our traveling supplies and he has too long a head start. If he hasn’t reached the tower of the Seven already then he will be there soon.
“If the Ferhym truly think me dead, that will give me an advantage that I would be a fool to pass up. I must know why they have started this crusade against wizards. I must know how they think they can win. Wild Elves are fervent and brave, but they are not stupid. They have something. Something they think will give them an edge. I must find out what.”
Khyriaxx looked at him. “When you get ready to leave then, stop back here. I thinking I be able to help you with that.”
Xexial thought briefly on asking him what he meant. If Khyriaxx had information for him, he should just give it now. Still the thought of coercing it out of him only lasted a moment. The spriggan kept him alive. That deserved a certain amount of latitude. Besides, it wouldn’t hurt to stop back on the way to Buckner. Xexial hated sailing, maybe the spriggan had a device or remedy for that nauseous feeling he knew he would be living with once on open water.
Xexial nodded and turned towards the dark spike on the horizon. It was time he went home. There were pressing things that he absolutely needed to know. Like what Ashyn did and how he did it? And what were the ramifications of such an act?
Most importantly, he needed to know why he was still alive.