Chapter 12

  Dalex caught up to Hitasa and they walked together back to their cave campsite. The elf kept her lips sealed but Dalex noted she didn’t have the distant look that implied catatonia. Still, that state might rear its head again. He wasn’t sure what exactly brought it on.

  He walked into the shallow cave and stopped, staring at the empty back wall. “Why did I come back here?” he asked himself.

  All of his possessions were stored in the {astral mortar}, and his companion certainly didn’t have a scrap to her name right now. He turned around to see Hitasa staring at him, a judgmental expression on her face.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “Dalex of the Expedition 7.” He walked back out of the cave and called for the area map. It was time to decide where to go next.

  “What is the expedition seven?” Hitasa asked.

  “A {celestial ark}. I came here from the heavens, looking for a certain precious metal.” He set his hands on his hips and gave her a toothy grin. “I’m an explorer.”

  Naturally, Hitasa’s frown only deepened into the disgusted range. “Resources then. Humans and your metals. You’re always tearing up the land to dig out its life and spread your toxins. The dragons adore your rapacious hunger.”

  “I’m actually a little worried about that myself,” Dalex said. “I’d rather not strip mine this world, either.”

  Seventh made a frustrated grunt in his ear. “The extraction process is non-invasive.”

  Dalex smiled. “I’m told the extraction process is non-invasive, but that sounds a bit too convenient.”

  Hitasa shook her head. “Dragons only care about magnifying their hoard. Which dragon do you hunt this metal for?”

  Dalex dismissed the map momentarily and faced her. “I don’t work for any dragon. Like I said, I came from the heavens.”

  She gave him a blank stare. He sighed and tried a few other explanations. “I’m an alien.” Nothing. “I’m an extraterrestrial.” No reaction, which only made sense. Terra meant Earth, and this was not Earth. “I’m a {far realmer}.” That one was a fool’s hope. Of course, no reaction. “I came here in a ship that traveled through outer space from another world trillions and trillions of miles away.”

  Finally, Hitasa said, “A feverish lie worthy of a delusional human. There are only the Seven Worlds. All of creation is not so big as you pretend, and the only way to travel between the worlds is through the Waterfall Portals.”

  Dalex shrugged. His story was as unbelievable as hers. “Suffice it to say, I do not work for any dragon. What’s this about portals? Do you know about the six other worlds and have a way to visit them?”

  Her blank stare returned. “Are you entirely well?”

  “That depends on if you consider ignorance a disease. Whatever you think, I’m new in town and don’t know the rules. I thought dragons weren’t real until yesterday.”

  “Not real?” she asked, so confused that a fair amount of her disdain slipped away. “Tell me, how did you defeat Castreier and the Wolf Brigade? I did not see clearly what happened.”

  Before Dalex could answer, Seventh urgent voice barked, “The beastkin prisoner is mobile. His sedation wore of.”

  A voice roared from just outside the clearing, “Biosruser means I descend upon you!”

  The assassin must have been awake for a while, because his cry was full throated and passionate. A dark shape exploded out of the tree line, arcing through the air several yards off the ground straight toward Dalex.

  “Excuse me,” Dalex said, turning away from Hitasa. “{Skull Anchor}.”

  Still airborne, the assassin screamed, “Fleche means a dagger rain!”

  The air around him condensed into a thousand thick needles that shot forward in a cloud large enough to consume most of the clearing. They slammed into the earth all across the hill, burrowing deep into the dirt and blowing chunks away from embedded stone. A hundred of the missiles streaked for Dalex and Hitasa and flattened against {wall of force}.

  The assassin landed just in front of Dalex. He brought his void black sword around, cutting straight for Dalex’s exposed neck. With one final shout, he bellowed, “This sword bursts blood!”

  Dalex bashed him in the stomach with {Skull Anchor} hard enough to smack him all the way back to the edge of the clearing and into the thick trunk of a massive pine tree. The tree stopped him, but it broke in the middle and toppled into the clearing. The assassin broke in the middle, too. Mercifully, the felled tree kicked up a cloud of dust and hid most of the guts he spilled onto the grass.

  Dalex rested the handle of his axe on one shoulder and faced Hitasa again. “That’s more or less how I did it.”

  Hitasa stared wide-eyed as the dust settled. “I think that was the Shadow of Rundan.”

  “Who?”

  She shook her head. “No, this situation is inane. You’ve demonstrated your power. What do you intend to do with me?”

  “Inane?” Dalex said. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and let it out. He wasn’t going to let himself be offended by this traumatized elf. “That’s fine. Inane is fine. I don’t intend to do anything with you.” He pointed in the direction of the dead assassin. “Before he attacked, I was going to suggest we travel somewhere safe together. I have a map, but I don’t really know where I’m going or what I’m looking for.”

  “Why should I travel with you anywhere?” Hitasa asked.

  “You don’t have to. If you want, we can part ways right here. But I do think there’s value in it for both of us. I need information about this world and its inhabitants, which, I think you can tell, I don’t have a lot of.” He pointed at the smokey town still visible in the distance. “And as long as you’re in sight of those walls, I suspect you’re in quite a lot of danger. I think I can keep you safe, if you’re willing to let me try.”

  Her eyes went back to the town. Dalex watched as the catatonia struck. Inside of her, the driving irritation vanished. Suddenly, she was very still. He didn’t think it was anything he had said. Just seeing her home from a distance had reminded her of something.

  “What is it?” Dalex asked, softening his voice.

  But she said nothing, totally unresponsive to the world around her. Here was more grief, but different than the grief that had wracked her as she wept over her brother.

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  Dalex knew he was the wrong person to stand beside her at that moment. He couldn’t help her like her brother might or a true friend from her own people. But he also couldn’t stand by and do nothing.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.

  To his surprise, she whispered, “I want to go.”

  Dalex opened the area map again and plotted a course west along the river valley and away from the town. When he led her out of the clearing, he did not touch her and Hitasa did not fight him or complain. She silently followed him from a few steps behind, and it wasn’t long before the town vanished from view.

  ***

  Dalex talked as they walked, picking conversation topics as carefully as he watched his footing in the forest.

  "I know a bit about publicized weapons. The owner of the armory in town explained them to me, but he mentioned there was more to it. Something about 'word of mouth' power? Is that what the assassin back in the clearing used?"

  Castreier had been the first to use magic where Dalex could see it, but he didn't want to bring up that name right now.

  Of course, Hitasa didn't answer him. Despite her distant expression, she deftly stepped over roots and rocks and around thorny bushes. Dalex didn't know if she simply wasn't as catatonic as she seemed or if elves were just naturally suited to walking through the forest as if it were a sidewalk in the suburbs. But either way, she refused to acknowledge his questions.

  He pressed on anyway, hopeful that a running monologue would keep her mind off worse things. "If it works the same as the weapons, then I guess you just have to convince enough people that your spell does what you say it does, and it'll work? I'd like to give that a try."

  They came to a shallow glen made by a creek running down to the river. Dalex hopped over the stream and waited for Hitasa to cross, watching her carefully in case she needed help. Seventh had found a road that would take them west to a nearby city, but several miles of bushwhacking in the hills still stood in their way. Dalex figured the city would give him more chances to learn about Gaia BH-1 and might provide a place for Hitasa to disappear from anyone still hunting her.

  "What would my first spell be? That's a tough one. I always thought being able to stop time would be very useful."

  Hitasa walked straight through the stream, careless of its hidden depths. She soaked the cuffs of her beat up trousers in the process. Her only shoes had been simple slippers that quickly disintegrated after they left the clearing.

  "Are you sure you don't want some new clothes?" Dalex asked. "Or some shoes? They might not match your fashion sensibilities, but they're clean."

  His armor couldn’t make anything wearable, but, on the {voidstalker}, Seventh had knitted some suitable garments for the elf. Soon after Dalex and Hitasa departed from the clearing, she had dropped them from the heavens in one of her care packages. Dalex carried a new pair of boots laced together over his shoulder, along with a fresh set of clothes. He held out the shirt for her to examine again. “See, substantial and comfortable.”

  But she only walked up beside him and stopped, staring past Dalex as if he wasn’t there. Dalex shrugged. He turned around and kept walking. Hitasa resumed following.

  “Anyway,” he went on, “imagine all the stress you could save if you could stop time. Got a big project but you haven’t slept in two days? Stop time and take a nap. Late for work? Stop time and enjoy a nice bike ride. The possibilities are endless.”

  He yammered on, asking all the fantasy related questions that came to mind and providing his own answers when Hitasa, of course, said nothing. When he grew bored of the routine or wanted to give Hitasa a rest from his voice, he took a few minutes to catch up with Seventh on the repairs to the {voidstalker}. Since the space battle, many of its skills were still inoperable, but she said they would be available soon.

  Dalex brought up a list of skills the {voidstalker} and its support vessels provided him—things that his armor could not accomplish on its own.

  Dalex learned what everything did, assigned each skill a new name, and went back to trying to bring Hitasa out of her shell.

  Eventually, they came to within sight of the road that Seventh had spotted. Dalex stopped to examine who currently might be using it, poking his head out of the trees to find no one to his left or right. Satisfied they were still alone, he motioned for Hitasa to follow him onto the road.

  “I have been observing this highway via [satellite] for some time now,” Seventh said. “Checking both ways was unnecessary. I will inform you if humanoid travelers approach or if potentially dangerous fauna become interested in you.”

  “It doesn’t hurt to be careful, you know,” Dalex said.

  “In this case, it also does not help.”

  They walked for another hour west along the road and encountered a few other travelers. First, there was a group of beastkin civilian game hunters carrying bows unstrung on their backs and the carcass of a four-legged mammal Dalex didn’t recognize. Its back was hunched like a camel’s, but its other features were dainty like a deer. The beastkin, obviously not soldiers, stopped and bowed for Dalex and then kept walking when he was a few feet beyond them.

  He and Hitasa came across a horse-drawn wagon carrying a family of elves that stopped as soon as they recognized Dalex’s race. Before he could say anything, the entire family piled out of the wagon and knelt by the side of the road, heads bent toward him in respect.

  “It’s okay, you don’t have to do that,” Dalex said as he walked by them. “Please, keep going. Don’t worry about me.”

  But they stayed kneeling until he and Hitasa passed around a corner and couldn’t see them anymore.

  “Is that seriously what the average human expects of them?” Dalex asked, his shoulders shuddering in indignation. “It’s humiliating. How could anyone feel comfortable demanding that kind of unearned reverence?”

  Hitasa hadn’t even glanced at her fellow elves. Dalex walked in silence for a long time after that. Had the balance of power in this world always been the same? Were the human of Gaia BH-1 extraordinarily evil compared to his own experience? Had elves done something in the past to deserve this kind of treatment? That last option he dismissed. He knew it led down a dangerous path.

  After another hour, during which time they didn’t run into any more travelers, Dalex realized he hadn’t asked Hitasa about the {adamantine} he was looking for. With her current state, he didn’t think she would give him any clues to work with, but he also figured it couldn’t hurt to ask. Maybe she could stew on the question until the catatonia relaxed again, if it ever did.

  “That metal I’m looking for,” he said, “we call it {adamantine}.”

  “We do not call it that,” Seventh said.

  “It’s hard to find, but I’ve been told there are a few signs you can look for to know if it’s nearby. The first clue is usually a bending in light. Physical objects distort. When you touch them, your touch doesn’t line up with what your eyes see. There’s a persistent noise like a– well– I don’t know how to describe it in terms you understand.”

  Seventh had played the noise in his ear when she had explained what to look for.

  “It’s kind of a brumrumrumrumrum. Or maybe more like a bromeromeromeromerome. Apparently, you have to be pretty close to hear it, and it makes most living creatures feel nauseous. And the metal doesn’t–”

  “Mutts make that sort of sound,” Hitasa said.

  Dalex stopped and stared at her. It was the first thing she had said in almost ten hours. She stopped as well, looking straight at him for the first time since they left the clearing. Was it just distance from home that had made her open up? He started to ask for details at the same time Seventh piped up in his ear.

  “I am experiencing sensor fluctuations in your area,” she said. “Something is affecting the satellite feed. Check your motion detectors.”

  “Hold on,” Dalex said, “this is important.” He walked closer to Hitasa and asked, “What’s a mutt?”

  “Check your motion detectors,” Seventh repeated, her voice urgent. “Now.”

  Dalex sighed. “I thought we needed to find–”

  An enormous creature shaped like a giant dog exploded out of the tree line. In a fraction of a second, it reached Dalex and snatched him between its jaws before barreling through the trees on the other side of the road.

  Just before he was carried out of earshot, Dalex thought he heard Hitasa say, “That’s a mutt.”