Chapter 34 - The Smallest of Blessings

Man. My editor got really up in arms about how vague the dream sequence got in this chapter. I know he doesn't like the reader having the possibility of being confused, but I'm standing my ground on this one. You're supposed to be confused! It's only supposed to make sense after the fact.

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I stared at the single slab of jerky between my fingers for some time, my face flat. If there is a word that simultaneously describes both unparalleled disappointment and profound gratitude in the same instant, I do not know it. But that was how I felt.

It was food. Finally.

I could barely remember the last thing I had eaten. Even in Raialie, I had missed out on a proper meal thanks to… certain complications—some welcome and others decidedly less so. Regardless, my diet had consisted solely on the Life Energy the lilim provided for so long, I had almost forgotten this most basic of human pleasures.

That said, there did not seem to be much of anything ‘pleasurable’ about this particular example. As food went, it was not exactly the most… appetizing. Nor at all sanitary. The hunk of dried meat had been sitting on the bottom of an old, rotted chest with neither wrapping nor any indication that it had been stored with anything resembling care. But… I was hungry enough not to look a gift-horse in the mouth. Or ask what kind of meat it was. Some answers are not worth knowing.

I don’t see any mold. And it seems… reasonably clean. Ish.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” Lynnria shouted, momentarily distracting me from my internal debate.

But she did not appear to be talking to me directly, instead addressing the room at large while angrily waving about the short stick she had dug out of the chest. I had to assume this was the ‘weapon’ she had lucked into.

Disgusted almost to the point of tears, she tossed the thing aside and collapsed into a high-backed chair, her tail hanging limp between her legs. That stick had been the only other thing we had found.

Well… almost. There had also been a singular copper piece—I assumed as the final cherry atop the gigantic F.U. sundae we had just been delivered.

I may have gotten Xhinn’s riddle correct—and deduced some small part of Her nature in the process—but if the contents of this chest were anything to go by, She was sending us quite the message. She was still in charge around here. Just because She had to provide the occasional treasure, that did not mean it had to have anything good in it.

“M’uh i' coo’ me a ma’ic ‘and,” I protested.

Lynnria listlessly flopped her head over to find me working at the wooden hunk of meat between my molars. It was a stubborn little bastard. I was even having to use both hands.

“Don’t eat that!” she shouted, straightening with alarm. “You don’t even know what it—give me that!”

She quickly grabbed at it, but I was not to be deterred. She wanted the precious! Growling like an animal, I jerked back, taking the two of us down in a heap.

“Would… you… just…”

Our brief wrestling match was quickly ended by a sharp elbow to my gut, and my reflexive gasp was just enough for her to leverage the thing from between my teeth. I came after it instantly, almost zombie-like in my single-minded determination to get at the food, but she held me at bay by pressing her outstretched palm into my face.

“What if it’s poisoned?” she shouted.

That made me hesitate. Also, my teeth were starting to hurt.

“Wha—? No! Come on,” I argued in obvious desperation. “There’s no way She’d give me a hunk of poisoned food in a treasure chest! Not after… slowly bleeding me dry with… all those traps.”

As realization set in, I petered out. That was just exactly the kind of evil crap a vengeful dungeon master might pull. Sure, we might be owed a treasure chest, but that did not mean the loot inside it need be uncursed or unpoisoned. Both were classic mainstays of D&D.

“Mia… come on, help me out here,” I said finally. “That’s against the rules. Right?”

Mia gasped in delight at the question. “Myes! I—I mean no. I don’t—want you to stop! Oh, ruddy…” She took a breath. “Apologies, my liege. It isn’t my domain, but I assume She can put whatever she likes in a chest like this. Poison Resistance is one of the more frequently requested skills amongst Questers, after all.”

“Damn it…” I grumbled. “And don’t apologize. It was my fault for asking.”

“But I like it!”

“There, see!” Lynnria said, triumphant. “There are steps for sussing out poison, and you’ve already skipped the first three.”

“The first three?” I rubbed at my brow in frustration. The promise of food had already awoken my stomach from its long hibernation, and it was now bouncing atop my intestines like a six-year-old in an inflatable castle. “How long are all of these steps going to take?”

“Only a day or so,” she replied, absently sniffing at the hunk of meat. “What did it taste like? Was it bitter or soapy?”

“A day?” I repeated weakly, close to tears.

My stomach made a loud gurgle of protest before slinking off back to bed. It kicked my spine once out of spite.

Sighing, I ran my tongue experimentally around my mouth for a moment, considering how to answer. If I were being completely honest, I was feeling more dried out than anything. I had not had much to drink lately, either. Oddly, that had not occurred to me until that very moment.

“No, nothing like that. It didn’t taste like much of anything. Unless boot leather is a flavor?”

“Weird,” she muttered. “It smells very strongly of pepper.”

“What does that mean?”

She shrugged. “Not sure. But we need to wait at least eight hours to see if you have a reaction. Let me know if you start feeling any burning or itching.”

I nodded, though what she planned to do about it in that event was a mystery. I knew I could do something about it, but that was not a bridge I was yet ready to cross. Not with Lynnria around.

I could not trust her not to take advantage of me once the Lust Ailment took hold… which is a peculiar vulnerability to have as a man. Not that I would be inclined to try all that hard…

“Alright… I guess we can stow it with the crystals,” I suggested, untying the bundle in question from around my waist.

“No,” she said quickly. “You’re too hungry to keep a temptation like that near to hand.”

I rolled my eyes. Not that she was wrong, but still. “Fine. Where exactly do you propose keeping it, then?”

She looked down at herself, noting her decided lack of pockets. Save the two, of course. For a moment, she glanced up at me, as if daring me to say something. I just quirked an eyebrow.

“Very well. I’ll carry the crystals,” she said finally, her hand outstretched.

“What if we run into that barrel-golem thing again?” I argued, though that did not stop me from surrendering the bundle. “Won’t the extra weight get in your way?”

“No more than it would you,” she retorted.

Carelessly, she tossed the hunk of dried meat in with the quartz-like rods and retied it. Not that I was too worried. If anything, the jerky could use a bit of tenderizing.

“I’m too injured right now, and besides, what would I fight it with? That stick?” she asked. Sarcastically, I assumed. “That reminds me… what were you saying about it earlier? I couldn’t make it out over your chewing.”

“Oh, just that it might have been a magic wand,” I replied.

Curious—but mostly trying to think of something other than food—I went to pick it up for closer inspection. If it was a wand, it did not look anything like what I would imagine. There was nothing fancy about it, just a length of wood—a touch shy of my forearm in length—and perfectly cylindrical. More like a dowel rod than anything. It had not even been varnished.

“Well, of course it’s magical. It was in a chest wasn’t it?” she replied carelessly. “But it’s still just a stick… or wand or whatever. How am I supposed to fight with it?”

So, little miss knows-everything-about-the-Dungeon doesn’t know what a magic wand is, eh?Instead of answering, I took her hand and slapped the stick back into it. “Mia, be a dear and tell me what you can about the engraving here, please.”

“No. You have to ask nicely first,” she replied primly.

“I did ask nicely.”

“You didn’t ask at all.”

I made a face. However much Mia might claim to be some extension of my Will, the farmer of my land, or whatever that ridiculous metaphor had been, she seemed determined to remain the bramble bush that grew upon it.

But maybe that was a good thing. If she was too compliant, it would probably upset me more.

“Fine.” Struggling not to roll my eyes, I rephrased. “Mia, would you be a dear and tell me what you can about this engraving? Please.”

“Mmm~ There it is! Haii love being your slut!”

Lynnria’s eyebrows knitted together. “Did she just… ask you to make that into a question?”

I did not answer immediately. My brain had decided that reality simply was not making much sense anymore, and a soft reset was required to set things right again. Which is to say that I been staring vacantly into the middle distance, beaten down by the weight of yet another floozy wrapping herself around my neck. Or I suppose, my waist would be the more appropriate metaphor. It was my lot in life.

However, I did eventually manage to form my lips around the word, “Yup.”

“But why would she want to swear at you?”

“Cram it, trash-fire baby!” Mia yelled before settling herself. “Now if you’ll excuse me, my world. I’ll be but a moment.”

I nodded absently before focusing back on Lynnria.

“Uh… she’s been going through some… stuff…lately, so the swearing has… hmph…”

I shook my head, struggling for a way to clue Lynnria in while simultaneously avoiding the subject altogether. Not for the first time, I wished Jax were there, if for no other reason than to just blurt it all out in as crass a manner as possible. She was good for ripping the band-aid off. Something like, “Aye, the prude’s gone slattern on the Master, true. Fit to jingle ‘er fanny bell at the slightest, that one.”

But before I could piece together something more polite, Mia had returned.

“Okay, looks like a standard keyed-phrase-activation setup, though this one is pretty simple,” she informed me, thankfully returned to her regular no-nonsense demeanor.

For a moment, I heard some sounds in the background that reminded me of glass clinking together, then the hologram she sometimes used for visuals flickered on just long enough to focus on her hands. She was holding a pair of the Word-books up, though this time only bothering to point out their titles.

Generation and Dirt?

“You’ll be pleased to note, these two Words are contained within the engraving. Though, this one,“ she tapped on Generation, “has been modified by an article to change its lexical class. I can’t be more specific than that, though. You’re missing the Word that would allow you to understand it directly.”

Its lexical… class? I scratched my head. What is that? Like a part of speech? So… it’s using an article to modify… I guess, a noun into an adjective? Or a verb, maybe? Obviously, I did not say any of that aloud, nor should I have to explain why.

Ordinarily, the concept would have been pretty difficult to wrap my head around. It had been a long time since I had gone over any of this stuff in school, and it was hardly my area of study. However, I had recently been infused with quite the number of languages from binding Arx, so I now had enough counterexamples to be able to process it fairly well. At least in theory.

English often handles lexical transformations through the use of prefixes and suffixes—effectively altering the word itself. To use the most relevant example, the noun, Generation, could become Generational if it was an adjective or Generate as a verb. Though, using English as a baseline for understanding anything is a recipe for disaster.

English is horribly broken.

In any case, whatever this overall Language was called, it apparently used a system whereby Words could be directly modified by a separate Word—an article—to function differently as needed. It seemed a little clunky, but I had to suppose that since everyone had to collect each Word individually, it would not make sense to hand out a bunch of prefixes and etc. Especially because that sort of system would involve modifying the Word itself in terms of both Spelling and Pronunciation. Or, alternatively, handing out each version of the Word as completely separate awards. Neither of which sounded overly appealing.

Though, in thinking about it, some words existed naturally as either nouns or verbs or what-have-you. Like… what would the noun-form of ‘run’ be? I mean sure, you could refer to ‘a run’ but that really cannot be understood without the physical concept of running in play, which is itself an action.

But of course, merely by adding the article ‘a’ in front of ‘run,’ one is simultaneously given a direct example of both the concept in question and one of the myriad reasons that English is such a bitch of a language.

But I digress.

“So then… what?” I said aloud and to no one in particular, trying to come up with the most likely interpretation. “It makes dirt?”

Lynnria blinked. “Dirt?!”

The moment that single syllable left her mouth, the wand jerked and, with a sound vaguely akin to splork, a wad of lightly moistened soil launched out of the tip with what legitimately felt like the force of a shotgun blast. Straight to my chin.

I am not entirely certain what order events took directly following that, but the next few moments of my life involved a lot of agonized screaming from me, a lot of panicked screaming from Lynnria, a lot of quasi-concerned, quasi-orgasmic screaming from Mia—I really did need to pay more attention to my phrasing—and a lot of unseen Faen suddenly rattling the rafters with their laughter.

And to be fair, if ‘Entry of the Gladiators’ had suddenly begun playing in the background, I would not have been surprised.

*****

Sometimes it can be the smallest of blessings that one will find themselves latching onto. And I do mean, the very smallest.

The corridor I was currently stumbling through—while long, winding, and seeming without end—did at least have the good grace to be lit just dimly enough to see without straining the eyes over much. And in that moment, I could conceive of no greater solace. I had a raging headache.

Actually, I had a lot of things, but that was the latest to join the queue of shit I could do nothing about. As such, it was very much the most pressing thing on my mind. The rest had sort of faded into so much background noise.

Absently, I scratched at my lips. They had started to tingle. I knew I needed to be looking out for signs like that, but I was not sure whether that was from the allegedly poisoned jerky or yet another side-effect of having been shot in the face with particulate soil. Besides the likely concussion I was suffering through—my cheeks and lower jaw were throbbing with the mother of all friction burns—I was pretty sure I was breaking out into a fantastic rash, and half of my beard had been blown clean away.

And if that was not a clear sign I was due for a shave, I did not know what else I needed. I might have been wearing a frayed and ripped skirt, matching tunic, variously-colored paisley bandages, and been bloody and bruised enough to have marched right out of a Mad Max film… but I was not going to be seen in public with mutton chops.

I had my standards. They were battered and weak—and a few of them were being dragged along with a single thread of bailing wire—but I had them, damn it!

“Dirt!” Lynnria shout-whispered, and I flinched before I could stop myself. For a moment, I stilled to wait while the resultant thud and subsequent rain of soil settled to the ground behind me—and for the lance of pain that had just shot through my temples to subside.

I turned stiffly to cock an eyebrow at her.

“What?” She straightened and planted her hands on her hips, totally ignoring the mess she had just made. “I’m experimenting. What if I need it for a stealth attack? I had to know if it would work if I said it quietly.”

I did not reply. I just let my gaze bore into her for another couple of seconds before turning back to resume our trek.

I was not exactly sure what this place was, but that was nothing unusual. All I knew for certain was that it was different than the place we had left. Honestly, it sort of reminded me of walking around backstage in a large auditorium. Dimly lit, not much of anything going on, winding and seemingly endless corridors? It all spoke to some sort of service area.

There had not even been so much as an intersection since we had left that room. And while the ethereal and unchanging mood of the place was starting to weird me out a little, I still wanted to see what was on the other end of this thing before turning back. I did not like our odds against that golem. Dirt-launcher or no.

I mean, what was the wand even going to do? Mildly inconvenience it to death?

My right eye fluttered closed as another wave of pain from my concussed skull passed over me. Okay… maybe it’s not totally useless. I did have an 11 in Toughness now, which was slightly over the natural human maximum. That was probably the only reason I was still on my feet right now.

That and necessity. I knew if it were strictly up to me, I would have preferred a month in a nice hospital bed somewhere. With lots of fancy and unpronounceable painkillers conveniently pumping into my veins. So there was a good chance that the wand might punch a hole through the golem’s wooden carapace. Given enough applications.

“How long are you planning on giving me the silent treatment?” Lynnria chirped, and I unconsciously flinched from her abrupt appearance at my side. Once again, an echoing throb reverberated through my head, protesting the sudden movement.

I whimpered slightly.

“Oh, don’t be that way,” she pouted. “How many times do I have to say I’m sorry? You know I would never do something like that on purpose.”

I raised a hand weakly to forestall her. “Shhhh… too loud.”

She grimaced apologetically. “Right. Sorry. Again.” Sighing, she slapped the wooden rod into her palm. “Still, you have to admit, it’s a pretty interesting little thing. Now, if I could just get my hands on a sword or something, it would make for a fantastic off-hand weapon. I can just imagine the possibilities.”

I refrained from comment, preferring to let her prattle on.

“I’ve noticed I feel kind of drained after I use it, though,” she continued undeterred. Then she glanced up at me with a thoughtful frown. “Do you think it might be stealing Life Energy when I use it? Like your spells do?”

I sighed. It seemed she was determined to drag me into this conversation whether I liked it or not. Weakly, so as to not move my jaw as much as I could, I murmured, “Drained how?”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

I grunted then pointed at her gut. “Feel hungry?”

“Well…” She paused to consider it. “I haven’t eaten since I escaped from the island, so yeah, I guess so.”

I glared at her, half-considering just taking the blasted wand and answering the question once and for all myself, but then my rationality slapped my impatience back into the corner where it belonged. As if I had the resources for that kind of nonsense. I would not have been suffering this crap otherwise. In fact, I had half a mind to just down the stick of jerky and damn the consequences.

Yes, it was probably poisoned, and yes, either Lynnria or I would naturally be compelled to grind our bits together until the Lust wore off, but would that really be such a bad thing? It was just sex. I was sure the lilim would understand. They might not have been forgiving, but they would understand. Eventually.

“Usin’ Life Energy’ll make you hungry fast,” I grudgingly explained in a mumble. “Other stuff—endurance-type spells—they feel like exercise. Running. Jumping.”

“Oh,” she said shortly. For a moment, she just stood there thinking, as though she could not quite decide how she felt, but then she eventually aimed the wand at the wall again.

That’s enough of that noise.

Gently, I placed my hand over hers. “Find out later. No food.”

She grimaced again and reluctantly nodded. “Right. Of course.” She hesitated, and I could tell from her expression that she wanted to ask me something.

“What?”

“Well, it’s just…” She chewed on her lip for a moment. “Do you think the hair will grow back on your face? After you’ve healed it, I mean? I kind of liked it.”

There was a beat of silence. Then, without another word, I turned to resume the long shamble down the corridor.

“No, seriously,” she persisted, limping after me. “I mean… no offense, but you look like you’ve got a hole in your chin right now.”

I just sighed.

*****

Mia stared at the wall suspiciously.

While it was true that her world had been totally upended in recent days and the mechanics of her new one were, as of yet, strange and mysterious, she was beginning to gain an intuitive sense of what belonged and what did not. And this wall did not belong.

Not that her intuition was overly helpful. Many of the things that did belong remained utterly foreign in most respects. Not all, but many.

Certainly, some were easy enough to understand. A chair was a chair. A door a door. Even her new bed was… well, a bed! And that was all fine. Though why this place needed such trappings still eluded her. It was like he was creating the environment just to accommodate her… perhaps to make her feel like more of a person.

She snorted softly. Foolishness. As if she might need a bed!

Distracted for the moment, she hooked the inside of her collar with a claw, tracing it down past the deep valley of her bust. She really did like the new wardrobe. Though she wondered whether he fully appreciated the implications.

Likely not.

He seemed even more baffled by the place than she was… which was completely absurd. But that was her new world for you. Strange. Illogical. Beautiful.

She was beginning to love it.

Her body thrummed with pleasure at the quiet admission, radiating in waves from her center. Training her. Reinforcing her feelings of attachment. Rewarding her growing loyalties. She knew these things quite well. She had existed for far too long not to know this game.

Yet she also knew he was neither directly responsible for it nor at all happy to know it was going on. And that was perhaps the most absurd thing of all. To think… he would actually try to stop it, if he could just figure out how.

For a brief moment, she considered whether or not to help him. She had little doubt she could create a skill to grant him a measure of control over the situation—at least in theory. But she quickly discarded the idea. That would spoil her fun!

No. Unless he asked, she had no intention of ever bringing it up.

But none of that helped with her current conundrum: she had to get rid of this wall. It was blocking… something. Something important. Something he needed.

It had to be. The floor told her so.

Idly, she ran a hand over the barrier, trying to get a sense of it. Most of the things in here responded to her in some way. Even the furniture. Not in words. Just basic sorts of impressions. And mostly they made sense depending on what the thing was. A chair felt like a thing for sitting. It… wanted you to sit on it. To comfort you.

Then there were the odd things. Things that… shifted about and changed from moment to moment. Formless, yet somehow not. Like the thing in the main room. It was always there, calling her each time she passed it.

‘Look,’ it seemed to say. ‘Look through me, and see what his eyes see.’

And that was exactly what it did. She just had to sit on the cushioned bench in front of it and, like some sort of scrying pool, it would reveal the world outside. Yet she still had no name for it. Nor could she even describe its form. Perhaps… something like a mirror? It stood upright, after all. But it was not reflective.

There were other strange objects, as well, seemingly quite normal, but they presented themselves inconsistently. Like the Words. Books, he had said. Utterly ridiculous. As if a Word could be contained within something so mundane. To her eyes, they presented themselves as the gemmed decachorons they should be. How he was able to read within them was a complete mystery… yet undeniable. She had even begun using the phenomenon to their advantage.

She suspected that coming into such close proximity to Ahnbe and that treacherous bitch might have been the cause of it. Young as he was, his mind was still quite fragile, and something might have been… perhaps fortuitously damaged. However, she would have to go deeper to find out. No good could come of that while he was awake… though waiting for him to sleep presented its own hazards. It was a conundrum..

In any case, those feelings were what had finally clued her in to this wall. All the other ones around here seemed to radiate a cheerful confusion when she touched them—as if delighted that she would bother investigating.

Not this one.

Oh, it certainly looked like a wall—totally identical to the rest—and she could not pass through it. What more could one expect of a wall? But this was not a place of should-be’s. It was a living place. And this wall was as a dead thing.

So then, why was the floor so eager that she go this way?

Narrowing her eyes, she trailed her fingers along the foreignness until they again met her living world. The wall there was giving off a feeling of… edginess? Like the end of one thing and the beginning of another. And like the others, it seemed overjoyed that she might be interested, yet confused as to why she would need to be.

“Hello…” she murmured tentatively… to the wall, she supposed, feeling ridiculous. “I want to go through here, but there’s… a blockage?”

‘Oh! Just a moment,’ the wall seemed to say. Though of course, it said nothing.

Then, the wall simply… moved out of the way. With a soft sort of swish, an inset opened up—complete with runners, crown-molding, and an appropriate little corner table—revealing a hallway beyond. And conveniently circumventing the dead wall. The blockage simply remained where it was, attached to nothing and hanging—still quite wall-like—in the empty air.

“Huh… that was easy,” she muttered. Stepping forward, she caressed the polished surface of the table gently. “Thank you.”

It seemed to thrill a bit in reply, as though only too happy to help.

She stood there for another few seconds, intrigued by this new development. It definitely bore further investigation, but it could wait. For now, she was much more interested in finding out what had been hidden away.

Cautiously, she padded into the carpeted passage, scenting the air. She knew she had never been down this way before, yet it still had a familiar sort of atmosphere. There was pressure to this place. A warning.

Abruptly, a wind blasted through the tunnel, plastering her dress to her skin. Like all the things in her world, this too was alive. She could feel it. Yet this wind carried a strange… hollowness with it. An emptiness. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it simply died away, leaving the air still once more.

“Well… that was unex—“

Without warning, the wind thundered back, this time in the opposite direction. And this time, the wind was… vibrant. Giving. As though the stuff of life itself were carried upon it… but with a strained quality to it. And yet again, before she could think to buckle down or move away, it simply died, leaving the corridor still.

She blinked into the echoing silence. “It’s… breathing?”

She had thought she knew what this was. It had seemed just like the other tunnel. The one to her little project… though this was far more solid and well-defined.

Another mind. Another world.

Yet this one… breathed?

Possibilities spun through her mind, each more outlandish than the last. Eventually, she discarded them all. It was best to stick with the basics. And if she were right then the next breath…

Right on cue, the wind came again. This time… gentler. Less desperate. Relieved, almost. The second breath after far too long underwater.

She nodded as the wind faded away, then looked back to the dead wall. It was still there, quite oblivious to what she had done. And equally uncaring as to what it had been doing.

As the returning breath pushed past once more—this time with a questing and hopeful verve to it—she balled her hand into a fist. “The audacity! The sheer unmitigated… Agh!”

There would be another wall, she knew. Or something like it. She had to find it. And soon.

Then she gave a start as a strange sensation passed over her. Slowly, she raised her hands and, turning them from back to palm, she looked them over curiously. They were the same as ever. The same delicate yet long fingers, each tipped with a bone white claw. Each fading to black at their points.

Yet now, for the first time, she was aware that she was not exactly alone in seeming them.

“My lord?”

“Hey, Donum,” Lynnria called from just ahead.

I gave my head a slight shake, the daydream already fading to the background. We had been trudging along the seemingly unending corridor for so long, nothing to consider save putting one foot in front of the other, that my conscious mind had slipped away. Yet now that I was fully aware, that just brought all of the horrible pain and fatigue to the forefront.

With a groan, I leaned against a wall. I had to rest. I had to. I was so hungry. So exhausted. So fucking tired…

But then… I gradually became aware of something. It was faint at first, but slowly growing stronger. As if my heart—long grown cold and still—had suddenly remembered what it was to be truly loved.

Jax?

“Donum!”

With a start, I glanced up. Lynnria was standing there with arms crossed and, if her twitching tail was any indication, clearly annoyed.

“Are you even paying attention?” she grumped. “I said we’re there!”