54: BACK TO THE BEGINNING

Talea’s story The Lighthouse at Shadrag Gor

“Hey, welcome back.” Talea smirked at Janel and Teraeth as they joined the others. She didn’t think they’d had time to get up to anything sexy in the mindscape, but they were the last to wake by a significant degree.

Janel squeezed Teraeth’s hand as she smiled at Talea. “We’re ready.”

“I hope everyone realizes,” Senera said, “that the moment we’re back, we’re going to be staring down Drehemia and her lovely tentacled girlfriend.”

“You’re not going to gate us right back to where we left, are you?” Qown asked with indignation. “That would be a terrible idea. She was about to unleash her madness breath. Why would we—” He narrowed his eyes as he noticed everyone else shaking their heads and/or snickering. He scowled at the smile on Senera’s face. “Oh. You’re teasing.”

“I’m teasing,” Senera said. The smile melted then. “But we should talk about what, if anything, we are going to do about them.” She paused and looked at each of them meaningfully. “We could just leave it to the imperial military.”

Janel scoffed. “Last I checked, the imperial military was getting trampled like a gopher hole in a stampede.”

“My son’s there.” Kalindra’s voice was soft but scratchy. Her eyes looked haunted, shaken still by her experiences in Vol Karoth’s dreamland.

Talea cleared her throat. “I wonder if it might be worth it to spend another day here in the Lighthouse before heading out? We could use the time to recover.” She gestured at Xivan and added, “And also grow accustomed to uh … new skills?”

“Speaking of…” Teraeth stared directly at Xivan. “We’re going to need to have a conversation when all this is over.”

“Might be a good idea.” Janel ignored Teraeth’s comment in favor of replying to Talea. “If we take the day, we can sit down, figure out a strategy for dealing with not one but two city-smashing monsters.”

“Can’t Kihrin just send Drehemia home?” Qown protested. “I mean, doesn’t he uh … he…”

“No,” Teraeth said.

“No, he doesn’t control the dragons?” Senera’s tone was skeptical.

“No, he’s not going to send her home,” Teraeth corrected. “Because Vol Karoth wouldn’t do that. He can’t jeopardize that by having Vol Karoth suddenly break pattern and start helping people.”

Qown made a face and nodded. Talea wanted to pat the man on the shoulder. This wouldn’t be easy for any of them.

“Can’t we just give the Lash what she wants?” Sheloran said.

In the brief silence that followed that remarkable query, everyone turned to look at her.

“Unfortunately,” Thurvishar said slowly, sounding out the rebuttal even as he spoke it, “what the Lash wants is her girlfriend’s insanity cured—”

“Wait,” Sheloran said, “isn’t that because of Vol Karoth? But with what’s happened here, won’t that stop?”

“First of all,” said Talon, who had changed back into looking like Kihrin, “Teraeth already explained this: nothing will change. Nothing can change. Relos Var can’t know what Kihrin has done, or this was all for nothing. So no, Drehemia will not be miraculously cured or sent elsewhere or talked down by Vol Karoth. And on that note, we need to not talk about what happened here outside of these walls, ever. To anyone. Period. Got it?”

Qown shifted his feet nervously, cleared his throat. “Um…”

Janel nodded to Talon, then looked at the Vishai priest. “Yes?”

Qown twisted his hands, blushed, and looked at his feet. “I feel like people should be asking me questions about my loyalties, and it’s making me uncomfortable that no one is.”

Galen pried Qown’s hands apart, took one in his own. “That’s because we don’t have to.”

“Well, I know that,” Qown said, “but everyone else—”

“You’re not going back to him.” Teraeth softened his voice to make that sound like less of a threat than might normally be expected of him. “You were loyal to Relos Var because you thought he was the best option to save the greatest number of people. Now you know that’s not the case.” He shrugged as if that made the conclusion a foregone one.

Sheloran flanked the priest, putting her arm around his shoulder and fanning them both. “That’s the difference between Relos Var and us. He demanded that you be on his side.”

Qown looked confused. “And you don’t?”

“Why no,” Sheloran said. “We’re on yours.”

The former priest stared at her in shock for a moment, tears threatening to well in his eyes. He nodded, swallowed thickly, and tucked his head against Galen’s shoulder. It was adorably cute, Talea thought.

“By the Veils,” Senera said, rubbing her temples as if nursing a headache.

“So what’s the plan?” Kalindra asked. “What can we do? Under normal circumstances, the Lash is entirely bribable, but what could we offer her? And how would we get her to stop smashing us into us-shaped smears on the ground long enough to offer her a bribe even if we came up with one she’d accept?”

If she were being honest with herself, and Talea liked to think she was normally quite honest with herself, she was only half listening to the conversation. Instead, she was staring at Senera as possible scenarios and likely outcomes flitted through her mind. Most of them were awful, terrible ideas filled with horrific body counts or acts of moral cowardice that would haunt them all and sabotage everything they were trying to accomplish.

Talea kept coming back to one idea that might work. One series of events that might possibly see them through this with skins and self-respects equally intact. The problem was that the odds were terrible. Not of the plan succeeding; the odds of that were decent. But of the group even trying the plan, even volunteering to enact it—those odds were abysmal.

It would require a sacrifice, one Talea didn’t think would be offered.

Senera looked up, met her stare. Talea glanced down at the woman’s waist and then back into her eyes. She nodded solemnly.

Senera frowned for a moment, and then her eyes widened.

Teraeth, who hadn’t noticed that little interplay, replied to Kalindra’s question. “I’m not sure we could. Maybe a stealth mission? We might not be able to stop them from destroying the monastery, but maybe if they’re too busy—”

“You’re all forgetting that it’s not just Drehemia and the Lash.” Xivan interrupted whatever terrible idea Teraeth had been about to propose. “Suless is there also.”

“Shit,” Teraeth spat. “Yeah, that complicates—”

The man was not having a good day when it came to finishing sentences.

“We can cure Drehemia,” Senera said. She glanced at Thurvishar, her face contorted in anguish.

Qown must have been thinking along the same lines. He figured it out before anyone else, and gasped.

Thurvishar frowned at Senera, and then his eyes also widened. “Of course,” he said. “But … are you sure?”

“I don’t see another choice.” Senera’s voice cracked. “Not one I can live with. Sheloran’s right: let’s just give the Lash what she wants.”

Talea grinned. Sometimes the long shots came through.

Janel’s story The Monastery at Devors

Senera’s gate deposited them in the middle of the main library.

The library itself wasn’t entirely deserted. Normally, the building was warded against most physical catastrophes such as fires, but with the scorpion casks being tossed about with abandon, and dragons and lunatics and undead rampaging through the buildings, it was merely a matter of time before those protections failed. A handful of monks and librarians stood by to begin the task of rescuing as many precious books as they could when the inevitable happened.

Janel looked around the room. She could feel a scowl growing. She found the place … unfamiliar. Belatedly, she realized that for all that Elana Milligreest had founded this library, it had changed and expanded too many times between then and now. Of course she wouldn’t know where anything was anymore.

“It’s over there.” Thurvishar pointed toward a row of glass-fronted cases.

Janel nodded her thanks and marched over. A special alcove of the room had been set aside for books and documents valued less for their contents than their historical significance. The particular case she approached bore a small brass plaque that read, “The first book donated to the library,” and a date. It was well over four hundred years old. If there was any single object could be said to symbolically represent the entire library, it was this one.

Janel shattered the glass with her elbow, then reached inside and lifted out the book.

“Hey!” one of the monks shouted. “You can’t—”

Xivan drew her sword and pointed it at him. “It’s one book,” she said. “Consider how many more you’ll save if you’re still alive to do so.”

The monk swallowed and retreated to the company of his peers.

Janel examined the book in her hands. Thanks to magic and meticulous care, it was in as good a condition as it was when she’d donated it centuries before. Elana Milligreest’s travel journal, filled with a highly edited and nearly fictional account of her journey into the Korthaen Blight.

Despite it being entirely nonsense, Janel hesitated for a moment. Then she opened the book to a page about one-third of the way from the end.

“I can’t watch,” Thurvishar said, looking away.

Janel tore the book lengthwise down the spine.

Qown made a wounded, choking sound as Janel handed the smaller piece to Teraeth before opening the book again in at the half-way point and ripping it apart a second time. She tapped Thurvishar on the shoulder with one-third of the mangled book twice before he would look at her.

He took his third. She kept the last one for herself.

“Everyone knows what they need to do,” Janel said. “The tunnels are downstairs. Off you go.”

Xivan saluted with her sword, jerked her chin, and led the others away.

Thurvishar opened another gate. “This will take us outside the monastery,” he said, gesturing for Janel and Teraeth to precede him through the glowing portal.

“Thank you,” Janel said. “Once we’re through, split up. When we get the signal—” Her eyes met Teraeth’s as she let out a brief, dry chuckle. “I cannot believe that I am again going to be waiting for an all-clear signal from Senera. I am not a fool, am I? I do have the capacity to learn from my mistakes, do I not?”

Teraeth winked and leaned over to kiss her on the cheek. “Let’s just see how this turns out before we start deciding who is or is not a fool.” He stepped through the portal.

“Exactly what I feared you’d say,” Janel told the empty air.

She squared her shoulders and followed him.