50. The road to Rockspire

After days surrounded by people in Akavel and months at home in Tiltspire, sleeping rough off the side of a road, Marius felt the dark and quiet like a physical presence. His companions asleep behind him, and their two horgalin mounts quietly snuffling to his right, Marius’ mind couldn’t help but be drawn to the simple comforts of Temila in Tiltspire. At this time of night, she’d be tucked safely into her hut, surrounded by the smells of drying herbs, aromatic roots and thick, sticky resins. Curled on her mattress stuffed with dried grass under a handmade blanket. Temila’s brown curls draped softly over her sleeping face. He brushed the curls aside in his mind, and her large brown eyes opened and looked up at him with complete trust and love. She opened her mouth to speak, but only a horrible blood-curdling scream came out.
 
The screaming tore Marius from his reverie as he realised it wasn’t Temila but one of the horgalins. Leaping from his seat in the leaflitter, he sprinted to where the mounts were tied up for the night against two trees. Around the sturdy leg on the nearest horgalin, a grey something gnawed, its face five overlapping flaps of skin. The beast was enormous, not as big as the horgalin, but certainly more than Marius wanted to take on alone. Charging up his armoured fists, he swung at the creature’s head. He had intended to gain its attention and lure it back to camp and help. In reality, he missed the creature’s head, overbalanced and fell, sprawling over the creature's shoulder and back. The shimmering grey fur, spiky and sharp, made it hard to judge where the beast began. A cold wave washed over Marius, and his grafted smart twitch cypher fizzled out with a spark.
 
Marius realised the cold wasn’t a wave washing over him. The energy was being drawn away from him. As he scrambled away, the creature forgot the horgalin and turned its attention to him, drawn by the tasty energy sources integrated into his body.
“Ha! Exactly as I planned,” He said with false bravado as he stepped back. It was now clear if he spent too much longer fighting this beast, every power he’d been able to graft into himself over the last half a year would be destroyed. The creature lunged, its five lips wrapping around his shoulder as hidden teeth sunk in. Now, the screaming was his.
 
Back at camp, Nox awoke with a start and rolled into the safety of a nearby bush before turning to see what had awoken her. Fureva-Yung’s eyes snapped open. She slapped the release for her rubber armour and let it bounce her up onto her feet. From her vantage point, she could see Marius fighting a grey… something not far from the tied mounts.
 
The beast's lips slurped, drawing the energy from Marius. Another pop as his combat enhancement cypher depleted and turned black. A dark shadow fell over him, and he wondered if the creature, drawing off his life energies, was now dimming his sight, too.
 
Thud! Fureva-Yung landed beside Marius, her chain hitting the ground. Now there were two of them, Marius took a moment to look over the creature and see where it kept its energy-drawing ability. A nerve cluster behind the head shuddered with each cold wave. Reaching out his armoured hand, he squeezed the nerve, and the monster wailed in pain. The cold abated temporarily, but needed this thing dead and fast.
 
Fureva-Yung swung her chain again, connecting with the beast with a crunch. The impact sent it flying back, crashing to the ground on its side and sliding to a halt. Around the edge of the battle, Nox crept, herself almost invisible against the night. She reached the second uninjured horgalin. Marius and Fureva-Yung stepped back as the creature found its feet and assessed the situation. It looked ready to bolt.
“Oh, no, you don’t!” Marius cried, his fist rocketing and smashing the creature in its teeth-filled maw. With the crunching of broken teeth under his fist, Fureva-Yung ran and leapt, striking again with the chain. This time, the creature did not hesitate to run.
 
“Harrrroooo!” A horgalin cried, rearing onto its hind legs and charging after the beast, Nox on its back. The two barrel-sized feet came down to strike the attacker. On the defensive, the beast slipped around the horgalin’s legs and bolted. This was not the easy meal the crature had first thought, and Marius was determined to make it its last. Running after the beast, he caught up, but his fist failed to connect. Behind him, Fureva-Yung sent out a shattering shout. It hit the beast in the shoulder, where a localised vibration began. The ‘pop’ echoed through the still forest as the shoulder gave way, and the great beast slid to a stop in the leaves.
 
Nox, on her mind-controlled horgalin, trotted to the downed creature. One large foot raised and stomped down on the head of the monster, ceasing all discussion about it being still alive.
 
“You’ll ruin the fur,” Fureva-Yung said, walking up with Marius to examine the beast. The fur was thick, with each strand as transparent as glass and just as sharp. It meant the beast didn’t have a colour. The browns and greens of its world reflected and refracted through the fur, blending it in.
“You could make a good coat for yourself out of this.”
“Do you think?” Nox said, getting off her mount to examine the fur herself. Burying her hand deep within the strands, she changed the colour of her skin, and the furs fuzzily altered to suit.
“Say, I wonder if I could graft that onto my body,” Marius said, thinking over the possibilities. Besides providing a rather cool-looking coat, it would make him even harder to hit.
“Hey, he’s stealing my coat!” Nox complained to Fureva-Yung, who laughed, a deep, rolling laugh.
“I believe there will be enough for both of you, little one.”
 
Marius thought deeply about replacing his checkerboard hair with a thick pelt of shimmering grey. His arms and legs bulked out with fur that would break up his shape while he stalked through the forest around Tiltspire. Ahead, he imagined Temela, stopping now and then to collect fungus, berries and useful herbs. Silently, he moved, one with the bush around him, barely perceptible. He crept up on the unsuspecting apothecary, wrapping his hairy arms around her waist. She turned in their circumference, her large brown eyes surprised and delighted to see him. She ran her fingers through his hair as her lips reached for his.
“Bristly!” Her smile turned to a disappointed frown, and she walked away.
 
“Nope! All your.” Marius said, “I thought it over and decided it wouldn’t make sense as I’d have to go around naked for it to be of any use.”
“Ah-ha,” Fureva-Yung replied knowingly as Nox plucked a large canine from the broken head.
 
The moans of the injured horgalin reminded the group others needed their help. Fureva-Yung dragged the creature back to their camp as Nox looked for healing herbs. Marius walked over to the poor beast and comforted it, checking the wound as he did. It was bad and probably life-threatening if untreated. Pulling out his first aid kit, he cleaned, sutured and wrapped up the wound. The horgalin couldn’t carry them for the next few days, but at least it would live.
 
Nox had left Marius to finish bandaging the horgalin and was now elbow-deep in skinning the beast. Her small worm tooth knife was perfect for paring the skin from the flesh, and after an exhausting and sticky few hours, the fur was hanging from a branch drying, the body a crumpled mess of red at the far end of the camp. While the camp settled down again, Marius claimed another cypher he had put aside for this eventuality. Implanted, it would now allow him to grow in size and strength. Though, not a perfect replacement for what he’d lost, it would do.
 
Fureva-Yung settled down to take the watch until dawn, and the group relaxed into sleep once more. Too soon, the sun rose, and with it, a well-rested Jaden. She looked around the camp surprised to see Marius and Nox still fast asleep, even Fureva-Yung looking worse for wear.
“I thought I told you, kids, no late parties,” She joked with Fueva-Yung as she got up and stoked the coals for breakfast. Her movement disturbed a mob of flies that had found the beast's carcass, “At least without me.”
“There was an incident during the night,” Furva-Yung explained from her seat near the fire, “One of the mounts was injured.”
“Oh?” Jaden looked at the two horgalin and realised one wore a bandage around a foreleg, “And no one thought to wake me to join in the fun?”
 
Slowly, the camp awoke, broke what fast they could, and continued. Fureva-Yung and Nox walked beside their injured mount, Fureva-Yung, out of the necessity of not harming the creature further, Nox for other reasons. It had been a while since she’d had a chance to look for trinkets and little shinies. Not the cyphers and iotum that Marius hunted, just pretty pebbles, polished pieces of wood, a colourful shell or scraps left in the world by civilisations past. She’d been studying the ground near the road all morning with nothing to show for her efforts until a glint caught her attention twenty metres into the forest.
 
“See the glint?” She pointed out something sparkly to Fureva-Yung, “I’m going to check it out.”
Slipping through the forest, she was soon at the side of a collapsed earthen hill. The glint now revealed as a sheet metal door. Knocked aside in a landslide, she soon discovered it still hid a large space behind. Using reshape, she drew out a metal circle and looked through the hole into the darkness of a hallway half submerged in water.
 
“Look, I found something,” She said, placing the metal circle in her bag and widening the hole through the door.
Fureva-Yung led the horgalin into the scrub, and Marius followed on his and Jaden’s mount. Using Nox’s hole as a handhold, Fureva-Yung pulled the door out of the remaining dirt and led the way down the passage, Nox stealing through the shadows behind.
 
A turning in the tunnel and a small flight of steps led down to a large pool of cold, stagnant water. Two tunnels led off to the left and straight ahead, with fifteen metres of black opaque water between. Striding forward confidently, Fureva-Yung walked into the water towards the left-hand bank. Though not deep, the pool’s ground was slick with algae. Her second step slipped out from under her, and she crashed into the water with a splash that sent a small tidal wave over Nox, standing just behind on the shore. The sudden movement caused something to slither away around her legs and swim away.
“I’m pretty sure I got it,” She said to the drowned Nox before leaving the pool for the other side. Marius followed through the pool with better results, and Jaden hopped on board bellyache and rode across. Nox gauged the distance and stepped back a few metres before sprinting for the pool and launching herself into the air. She glided above the water, propelled only by momentum until she was caught on the other side by Fureva-Yung.
 
Turning the corner, the group were assailed by an intellect attack from a glittering-coloured something stalking out of the dark, lit by a crack of light from behind. Nox brushed aside the assault and peered deeply into the gloom to see a giant monitor lizard several metres long. It was a riot of colours shifting and changing. Around its neck, a collar of brilliantly coloured scale shimmered and swirled in hypnotic patterns. Slinking behind Fureva-Yung, Nox slipped into the shadows and disappeared.
 
Food….shineys….leave… A voice in their heads seemed to say.
“Ooh, you are very pretty, and I’m not coming any closer,” Jaden cooed, crouching low as Marius waved his light hands to break up the lizard's mind-control abilities.
 
From out of Bellyache, Jaden pulled out a few scraps of food and tossed them toward the beast. It Turned its glittering head towards her, seeming pleased with the offering. Fureva-Yung, her six eyes unaffected by the hypnotic patterns produced by the lizard, started waving her arms around to distract it. She succeeded in scaring the lizard who was confused that the shinies were not appearing.
 
While the rest of the party created their distractions, Nox crept in beside the lizard to a small pile of sparkling trinkets and shin left by other explorers.
 
Leave the shin, The group said as Nox started collecting cyphers and iotum. From her bag, she pulled out another four shin she’d carried with her all the way from Cerelon. Outside of that community, she’d never found a use for the scraps of rare metal and plastic that were the basis of currency. She left them beside the lizard's small pile of shin and started back the way she had come.
 
The group as one started backing up. As a final salute, Fureva-Yung wriggled black backside at the lizard before following the rest down to the pool. There, Jaden was making sense of what Nox had found. The io was exceptional and inspired her to create a plan for a wheeled vehicle she would later call the ‘Screaming Wheeler.” Marius found a replacement for one of his lost cyphers, a cypher that adds heat to a weapon as extra damage. Nox picked up a cypher that claimed to grow wings. She thought about how Marius incorporated cyphers into his body and carefully put it aside in her pouch.
 
An angry hiss behind told them the lizard had discovered the theft. Leaving the lizard, the group waded, rode and glided across the water to the northern passage. This was little more than a crack in the wall that opened into a new area, but as Fureva-Yung crossed the pool, she once more slipped and fell. The water wasn’t deep, and she was already pulling herself up when a black tentacle reached out of the water and grabbed her, dragging Fureva-Yung under. Able to hold her breath for many minutes, Fureva-Yung relaxed and allowed the tentacles to pull her towards a pile of boulders. Ahead, she could see a long, thin, squid-like creature with ten short, stubby tentacles that stretched and contracted to reach every corner of the pool. She noted where the tentacle touched, a tingling numbness started to spread through her limbs. More severe than breath, she could now feel her arms and legs grow slow and sluggish as the creature’s poison took effect.
 
“Furry?” Above water, Marius activated his new hot hand cypher and prepared to attack. The water churned as black tentacles, and Fureva-Yung fought.
“For goodness sake,” Jaden rolled her eyes and pulled out her electrified staff, “Poke it!” She thrust the staff into the water, hitting the creature and making the whole pool tingle with electricity. However, the draw from the water was too much for the staff, which crackled and sparked. Nox ran and jumped for the thrashing lump that was Fureva-Yung and the tentacled creature. She plunged her tiny worm tooth dagger into a tentacle as Marius grabbed hold of the beast from the other side. The smell of calamari filled the space as the tentacles finally loosened their hold on Fureva-Yung and slipped away. Fureva-Yung head burst through the water's surface.
“Don’t hurt it! It’s cute!” She lamented as the tentacles floated lifelessly around her.
“Hmmm, who wants lunch?” Jaden announced, suddenly ravenous.
 
Fureva-Yung dragged herself out of the water, where Marius applied a poultice to stop the squid’s poison. She made her feel strong again, but she was still sad the creature had to die on her account.
“Sure you’re not hungry? There’s some good eating there.”
“No, thank you,” She said instead, dragging the remains of the squid back through the pool towards the lizard’s home.
Shinies?? A desperate projected image of its once hoard appeared in Fureva-Yung’s mind.
“I’m sorry, here,” Fureva-Yung pulled the beak out of the squid and threw the rest as an offering to the lizard.
Shiny?
 
While Fureva-Yung was away, the others searched the northern passage. The whole tunnel was a dead end, ruined by a collapse centuries ago. Still, Marius found a few iotum, and Jaden was able to put together a simple plan for a bezoar discharge. That night, as Nox was busy with her trinkets and Marius was off getting a good night's sleep without the party, Jaden set off her new toy. Jaden, Fureva-Yung and Nox were covered in a red-brown stain which, though blended in well with the environment, did nothing for Nox’s camouflage.
 
“Jaden! How will I sneak?” she complained, running to the nearest stream to try scrub what she could of the pigment away.
“Yes, how indeed,” Jaden said under her breath, satisfied at a good job done.
 
For the next four days, the group followed the road. They found what food they could in the wild and slept when they found a good camp for the night. One by one, Nox presented gifts to each of her friends. To Marius, she gave a small ring (too small for his fingers) made from the canine tooth of the crystal-furred beast. Mounted into the tooth, a small brightly faceted piece of crystal from the crystal caves discovered during their first travels.
“That’s not for you,” She said simply to Marius, who looked at the delicate ring in confusion before carefully putting it away for safekeeping.
 
To Fureva-Yung, she handed a chain link made from the bright metal she’d salvaged from the door, inlaid with a polished swirl of wood from the forest they’d been travelling. Engraved into the wood were the Ferrian words, Our link.
 
For Jaden, Nox presented an earring that attached to the ear cuff Marcus had made for her long ago. Twisted strips of the same bright metal held another iridescent crystal that hung as a bright drop of light.
 
By the fifth day, the walls of Rockspire began to loom above the forest around them. They had made it to their destination. Now to save a worthy friend.