Chapter 29. Little Victories

  The descent down the wooden slide was quicker than he wanted, Jeremiah sucked air through his teeth as he was whisked along. It was so dark he couldn’t see the bottom before he slammed into it with a dull thud.

  “You alright?” asked Shugga.

  “Fine,” said Jeremiah, rubbing his back.

  “Keep moving,” said Monty behind them.

  “Moving where? I can’t see anything,” said Jeremiah.

  The others groaned. “Friggin humans,” said Shugga.

  “Can humans not see in the dark?” asked Sweet Melissa.

  “Nah, when there’s no light they’re blind,” said Shugga.

  “Oh, that’s terrible! No wonder they’re always carrying lanterns around!”

  “Quiet,” said Monty. There was a scrape and a burst of sparks that illuminated everyone in an orange flash, then a torch flame sprang to life.

  All around, as far as the light would reach, the cracked and dying walls of an ancient city reached into the darkness. Jeremiah stared in awe. “What is this place?”

  “This is the Undercity,” said Dronkal, “built and paved over long ago.”

  “Good getaways and hiding spots,” said Sweet Melissa. “It’s a labyrinth down here.”

  Something tickled Jeremiah’s memory. “Oh yeah. Aren’t there kobolds too?”

  “Not here,” said Shugga, “There’s another level deeper than this, that’s where the kobolds live. They’ll travel through here sometimes, but they’ll leave you alone if you look dangerous.”

  Monty led them down ancient cobbled streets, Jeremiah strayed from the group, holding the torch aloft. One house harbored the ancient remains of a collapsed bed. A stove, rusted to oblivion, sat in the corner. An open door led further into the building and, raising the torch a little higher, Jeremiah could make out the shape of a human curled into a ball, mummified.

  Jeremiah’s heart leapt in his chest. His throat tightened. He couldn’t move. The man in the closet. So afraid. Trapped. Trapped in the dark.

  “Jay!”

  He was yanked away from the window. His breath came back all at once and he panted like he’d been drowning. “I can’t…I can’t…” he wheezed.

  Monty walked over and put one immense hand on the side of Jeremiah’s head, and two fingers against Jeremiah’s throat. He pressed.

  Jeremiah woke up on the ground.

  “You okay?” asked Shugga.

  “Yeah, I’m okay.” Jeremiah struggled to his feet. “Sometimes when I see people dead like that…it just brings back some bad memories. Ones I have a hard time getting rid of.”

  “First thing you’ve said that I believe,” said Monty. “This way, we’re almost to the safe house.”

  They continued down the forgotten road until Monty led them inside a dilapidated building. Several rooms deep, they encountered an intact wooden door, clearly newer than anything else down here. Monty ushered them inside.

  The safehouse contained a stack of bedrolls and a large metal chest. Monty closed the door behind them and barred it with an oaken plank.

  “We stay the night,” he said. “They’ll be hunting for us now. If we’re found, kill anyone that lays eyes on this door. Food and water in the chest. Bandages too.”

  Dronkal pulled Jeremiah to sit beside the chest. As the others began unpacking bed rolls, he pulled a poultice and some bandages from the chest. “Let’s take a look at you.”

  He crouched beside Jeremiah, tilting his head this way and that to get a better look at the damage to Jeremiah’s face. The sense that someone was caring for him seeped the adrenaline from Jeremiah’s veins. “Not bad for soloing an armored merc,” he said, dabbing the poultice onto some of the nastier bruises. “Bet it still smarts, though.”

  “Eh, not so bad,” said Jeremiah. “I’ve seen my own guts pulled out before.”

  “And you…lived?” asked Dronkal. He was blocking Jeremiah’s view of the room, but there was a distinct pause in activity.

  Oops. “I’m exaggerating, I just took a cut to the guts once,” said Jeremiah.

  “Back to the lying,” said Monty. “Much better.”

  After Jeremiah’s wounds had been dressed, they turned their attention to the stolen chest. The lock stood no chance alone in a room with five thieves. Inside were four bricks of a gray, clay-like substance wrapped in a thick cloth. “Not bad,” said Monty.

  “This is Dismal?” asked Jeremiah. “What’s it do?”

  “It’s a narcotic,” said Melissa. “You can melt it and drizzle it over pipe weed to smoke. Makes you really sad.”

  “What? Why would anyone do that?” asked Jeremiah. Bruno had skipped the lesson on narcotics, summarizing it only as, “Try it if it’ll make people think you’re cool.” To which Delilah had responded, “No”.

  “Because afterwards you feel euphoric,” said Monty. “Well, for a day or so, but then the sadness comes back, and stronger. So you need more Dismal. Eventually you can only ever feel happy when you’re on it. Sells great.”

  Hearing that made Jeremiah feel a little bit awful, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. Instead, indulged the question he was most curious about. “So, how'd I do? I know I didn't really steal anything, but we got it, right?”

  Monty was quiet for a long time, and while he sat silently so did the others. “Admirably,” he said at last.

  “Wooaaah,” said Shugga, Dronkal, and Sweet Melissa.

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  “Really?” It had been a long time since anyone had praised Jeremiah for anything he’d done.

  Monty nodded. “You assessed the situation. You determined your skill set wasn't the appropriate response. You used what you had available to accomplish your goal. I've known others who'd try to do it on their own out of pride. You showed discretion and vision, and I appreciate that.

  Jeremiah nodded as well. Clearly it was definitely wisdom that carried the day, definitely not blind luck or a bumbling lack of creativity.

  “So what now?” asked Jeremiah. “Any more tests?”

  Monty smiled. “Just your initiation.”

  The others whooped. “Oh, that’s going to be such a shit show,” said Dronkal.

  “Don’t worry,” said Shugga, “it’s basically a bar crawl.”

  “Except it’s more like a rampage!” said Sweet Melissa, bouncing with excitement.

  “Enough,” said Monty. “Bed down, get some rest. I’ll take first watch.”

  They settled into their sleep sacks. As the torch was doused, Jeremiah asked, “So if you guys can all see in the dark, how do you sleep? Isn’t it like there’s always a light on?”

  There were snickers around him. “You close your eyes,” said Dronkal.

  “You really can't see in the dark?” asked Sweet Melissa.

  “No, it's pitch black.” Without the torch, the entire Undercity had no light at all.

  A few moments of silence, then the air near Jeremiah shifted. His ears strained, he swore he could heard something metallic scraping.

  “Melissa,” said Monty in an authoritative tone.

  Jeremiah heard a sigh near his knees. “Oh relax, I wasn't really gonna do it.”

  No one spoke after that. Jeremiah drifted, and was prodded awake between the vague dreams that skirted up against memories.

  “Your watch,” said Shugga’s voice.

  “Watch? I get to be on watch?” said Jeremiah. He was instantly awake, having never been asleep.

  “Yes? I’m sure as hell not taking it,” said Shugga.

  “You realize I can’t see?” said Jeremiah.

  “Your listen then. Wake up Dronkal in a couple hours.”

  They got up when Monty told them it was day. They made their way through the darkness and emerged from a trapdoor hidden in the backroom of a filthy pub, the owner turning pointedly away when he investigated the noises coming from his establishment.

  Monty clapped a hand on Jeremiah’s shoulder as the others continued towards home. “Good work, Jay. Keep it up.

  If Contact And Contact Heat.

  The metal scrap became hot enough to burn within moments. Jeremiah dropped the plate into the empty basin where it couldn’t damage his bedding, and waited for the heat to destroy the enchantment so the plate could cool again.

  Alone in his room, Jeremiah had torn himself away from Flesh to work on Delilah’s heat plate, as he thought of it. Only problem was, it still wasn’t working.

  He tried If Contact And Contact Heat Gently.

  It jumped to scorching again. “Right, right, right,” said Jeremiah shaking the pain out of his hands. The runes were in the wrong order. It acted the way it had before, instantly heating the metal, and then Gently was just sitting at the end doing nothing.

  If Contact And Contact Gently Heat.

  The first problem was solved and created a new one. Now it heated so slowly Jeremiah had to sit with his hands on the metal for several minutes before any change of temperature could be detected.

  “At least I’m getting lots of inscribing practice,” he said, scratching Gus under the chin. He was getting faster, which allowed him to test his ideas much more quickly. Unfortunately, he was starting to run out of plates.

  If Contact Heat If Heat Heat

  He charged the scrap and held it in front of him. The metal was charged, but remained cool, and would remain cool until he touched the Contact point.

  Jeremiah touched the point, then threw the scrap into the basin as it entered an infinite loop of heating itself until it warped and destroyed the enchantment. The wood of the basin bottom was beginning to become charred.

  He sighed. “I don’t think I know enough to do this…or anything for that matter.” He tossed his enchanting files aside and flopped backwards on the bed. Flesh was under his hand, like a sympathetic friend.

  Jeremiah patted the book. “I just want to try one more thing first, okay? Then it’s your turn.”

  Jay’s last plate was a poorer shape than the others. In fact, he would have left it in its refuse pile if it weren’t for an idea that had popped into his head after using Decay on the wood plank. Decay wasn’t a rune he used often, barely even practiced. Enchantment was all about creating things and making them better, not making them worse.

  If Contact Gently Heat And Gently Decay.

  The dented and pockmarked plate of metal began to warm and soften. Keeping one hand on the Contact point, Jeremiah let the plate grow warm before pressing down on it as hard as he could against the floor. The metal, softened by heat and the rune of decay, started to flatten under his hands. Normally even such a thin metal would take require much higher temperatures to reshape, far too hot to touch, but Jeremiah suspected that the decay rune was doing the heavy lifting.

  When the heat started to reach intolerable temperatures, Jeremiah lifted his hands away, inactivating the diagram. The plate held its new, flatter shape. “Hey, it worked!” Jeremiah said. Gus croaked his support.

  This opened up a world of possibility in terms of salvaging trash for enchantment practice. He looked at the plates he’d already inscribed. “Do you think we could use this to erase those? Cuts are sort of like little dents right? What if I…no wait, that would stop the Decay rune before I finished.”

  Gus croaked again and began kicking at Jeremiah, urging him on.

  “The bridges! What if we bridge two plates together?! Like the recharging diagram!” With a burst of energy, Jeremiah picked up a used discarded plate, and aligned it alongside his newest creation.

  “Okay, let’s first get rid of that Heat rune,” said Jeremiah. Simple enough. He activated the Contact again on the newly flattened plate and struck the connecting line leading to Heat, severing it. He scratched a new line from the Contact to Decay, and wrote a new rune, Cohesion. The plate now read If Contact Gently Heat And Gently Decay And Cohesion.

  Placing a bridge between the two plates used a precious strand of gold wire, of which he had little left. “Let’s see if this works.”

  He touched the Contact and felt the two plates adhere to each other with a click. He waited. Decay on its own would ruin these plates in moments, he didn’t know why Thurok made him learn it—

  “ That only further proves your ignorance ,” said Thurok.

  —but the Gently rune kept the process under control, if painfully slow. After almost ten minutes he reached over and rubbed his free hand across the surface of the trash plate. It was cold, but something felt…different. He pressed a finger down, and felt the barest sense of yielding. The metal was molding under his touch. He watched in wide eyed astonishment as the effect compounded. When next he wiped his hand across the surface of the discarded plate, all of the inscribed runes blurred and disappeared. Buffed out with just a touch.

  He removed his hand from the Contact, and the plates separated. He held up his new creation—nothing. A blank plate, swept clean like a harvested field. Separate from the Decay rune, the metal rehardened to its normal unyielding form.

  “I think this might be a big deal, buddy,” said Jeremiah. Gus closed his eyes and settled in for a satisfied nap.