Chapter 30 – Back Again

The flight had been a success in every way, with the sole exception that Grimbart had not survived it.

At least, that’s what he claimed.

“I AM DEAD,” he yelled into the wind as his grasshopper caught a thermal and shot ten feet upward. “I AM DEAD, AND THIS IS THE FORGE FATHER’S PUNISHMENT FOR MY SINS!”

Mirrsoss zipped through the air beside them, wings flapping wildly, face turned toward the sun, and made a small detour to get closer to Grimbart’s grasshopper.

“Grimbart! Look, down there is the river we built the bridge over, isn’t it?”

“I CAN’T SEE ANYTHING! MY EYES ARE CLOSED!”

“You’re missing so much! The world from up here is-”

“GO AWAY!”

Mirrsoss giggled, performed an elegant loop, her antennae twitching with delight, and left behind a fine trail of golden dust that sparkled in the sun.

Behind Shaelith, on another grasshopper, Honor blew in the wind and commented on the landscape with hardly less enthusiasm.

“LOOK! Where the forest thins, a truly formidable valley! No doubt noble warriors once lived here-”

“That’s a swamp,” Benderast said tonelessly.

“But what a GLORIOUS swamp it is!”

Vyriz still slept in front of Shaelith in the saddle, leaning against her chest, and didn’t react to any of this. His breaths were shallow but steady. Shaelith held him tight and tried not to think about how weak he was.

When the locusts finally began their descent and the familiar gorge at the gates of Myzelemaerlazin appeared below them, Grimbart let out a sound that was half prayer and half death rattle.

The landing was hard. The grasshoppers touched down one after the other on the rocky plateau outside the outer gates, their powerful hind legs cushioning the impact quite robustly, and the riders swung elegantly out of their saddles.

Grimbart fell.

He released the hand of his chronosteel arm from the rider’s armor and tipped sideways off the grasshopper like a sack of ore.

He landed on his hands and knees. Then he placed both palms flat on the stone and pressed his forehead against it.

“Ground,” he said reverently, as if touching a holy relic. ” Firm, solid, sensible ground, pleasing to the Forge Father.”

Then he stood up, his legs wobbly and his face green. “I will never fly again. Never. Not if the world is on fire. Not if the Forge Father himself commands it. Not if-”

“That crazy dwarf dented my armor,” the rider hissed in Shaeravyn, feeling the indentations in his chestplate in disbelief.

Mirrsoss landed next to him, folded her wings, and beamed at Grimbart.

“It wasn’t that bad, was it?”

Grimbart looked at her. Then he turned wordlessly and marched toward the gates.

Thaelon slid off his grasshopper with the silent grace of his people. His face was expressionless, but when his gaze met Grimbart’s, he nodded to him in solidarity.

The mycelium masks were distributed, and the group allowed themselves to be blindfolded without a word, except for Shaelith and Vyriz, of course.

 

~

 

Laenre received them in the small audience chamber of Vyrnara Palace, not the large one. Shaelith read it as a message that she considered this a family matter and not a public triumph. The public triumph would come, no doubt, but Laenre would stage it carefully and with more preparation.

Her mother looked as if she hadn’t slept that much in the last few days, but her hair was immaculate as always, with appropriate messages of victory, the usual Vyrnara pride, and other more subtle messages that were irrelevant to Shaelith.

She greeted the group with appropriate graciousness. Politically it was probably the best week for her in at least a hundred years.

The party was politely escorted to their quarters and Benderast much to Shaelith’s chagrin, back to her own rooms, with the Battle Standard commenting on the interior design all the way down the corridor.

Then the door closed, and Laenre dropped the mask.

Not completely. Laenre never completely dropped the mask. But enough for Shaelith to see the satisfaction beneath it, the rare sparkle in her eyes that meant things were not just going well, but excellently.

“The war is as good as over,” said Laenre. “Without their master, the goblin tribes are falling back into their usual tribal feuds. The coalition is holding. And House Vyrnara is at the center of it all.”

“Good,” Shaelith said.

“More than that.” Laenre looked her over. “My daughter played a key role in the victory. The diplomat who helped build the coalition. The sorceress who fought the Warlock.”

Not to mention the concubine of the man who slew him.

But Shaelith said nothing. Praise from Laenre was rare enough not to ruin it with sarcasm.

“Mirilenre sent a report ahead,” Laenre continued, her tone shifting. “About the portal.”

Of course she did.

“A window into another world, opening above the Warlock’s corpse and closing again. And your human runs toward it as if he wants to jump through.” Laenre tilted her head. “His claims of coming from another world suddenly seem much less like the delusions of an eccentric human.”

“Yes.”

“Which means that the concubine contract with him is much more valuable than even Zinvere probably anticipated. A man from another world, possibly with a magic system we don’t know, bound to House Vyrnara.” Laenre smiled at this fantastic investment. “I wonder what magical potential his bloodline might carry. Unknown abilities, never before seen in the Shaeravyn breeding lines. Perhaps you should reconsider your stance on having children with him.”

“No.”

“Shaelith.”

“No, Mother.”

Laenre sighed but let it go. For now.

No, Mother. The man from another world certainly does not have magical super sperm. His world is extremely unmagical. Don’t ask me how I know.

“That Battle Standard,” Laenre said, changing the subject. “An heirloom of the Grevue dynasty parading around on the shoulders of your contract holder could be a diplomatic nightmare.”

“Or a bargaining chip.”

Laenre smiled mischievously at her.

“Yes,” she said. “Or that. We’ll see.”

The Warlock’s documents Shaelith reported on earned her an appreciative nod and the assignment to continue looking into them herself. Shaelith had the expertise, the time, and the interest.

Laenre had more important things to do. For example, taking care of the future of the former Warlock’s fortress in the north, which was to serve as a joint garrison for the coalition against future goblin incursions, requiring negotiations with three peoples at once, not to mention the claims of the other houses.

“Take care of reviewing these documents,” Laenre said. “And take care of your human. In that order.”

Aye, aye, Captain.

 

~

 

As expected, the group’s acclimatization was uneven.

Grimbart was reasonably relaxed now that he had solid ground under his feet again. He knew the Shaeravyn well enough from trading and had a soft spot for their mycelium artifacts. Within an hour, he had found one of the Vyrnara workshops and was discussing alloying techniques with a craftsman.

Thaelon was another matter. He stood in his guest room like an animal locked in a cage. He was polite and calm as always, of course, but it was obvious that he did not feel comfortable so deep in the grotto. Every time he looked up and found a cave ceiling of glowing mushrooms instead of the sky, he flinched a little.

Mirrsoss, on the other hand, was in paradise. Shaelith encountered her in the corridor, where she was enthusiastically asking a Vyrnara servant questions about the meaning of a particular hair knot, which quickly turned into questions about Shaeravyn skin color and then, inevitably with the curious Umilari, into questions about Shaeravyn mating habits.

The servant seemed less shocked than amused, which was typical of Shaeravyn, of course. Other peoples, humans in particular, would probably have been much less patient with her.

And Honor. Honor had been hung up by Benderast in front of the entrance to Shaelith and Benderast’s shared quarters because he had found out within the first ten minutes that a Battle Standard that commented on everything non-stop was simply unbearable in closed rooms, especially in one where you wanted to sleep at some point.

“GOOD EVENING!” the cloth called out to a servant hurrying by with a tray. “What a pious and demure young woman… wait, is that a knife? GUARD! GUARD!”

“Don’t worry. It’s only a hairpin,” Shaelith said as she passed by.

“…oh. Well then. One can never be too careful!”

 

~

 

Vyriz looked better.

The healers in the Vyrnara hospital wing had done a solid job. They had fed him herbal infusions and tonics and applied more healing glyphs to his skin, which pulsed in a steady rhythm. He was lying on a wide bed, and when Shaelith entered, he turned his head and attempted a grin, which he almost managed.

“Your finger,” Shaelith said, sitting down on the edge of the bed.

He raised his left hand. The healers had reimplanted the severed finger, which had been preserved in a mycelium solution since the arrival of the tongueless messenger. The reimplantation had been successful, but the result looked… not quite right.

The finger worked. He could move it, bend it, stretch it. But the regenerated tissue that the healers had used to reconnect nerves and vessels was partly mycelial. Pale threads shimmered beneath the skin, like fine roots under a thin layer of ice, giving the finger a somewhat eerie appearance.

“More fungus than finger,” said Vyriz, looking at it. “The healers say the feeling will come back with time. But it will always look like this.”

“At least now you have an excellent icebreaker at parties.”

“True. I can show it off at banquets. Women love that kind of thing.” He laughed softly. But then his gaze became briefly distant, and something flitted across his face that didn’t match the laughter, a shadow that came and went in an instant.

Shaelith saw it but said nothing. Instead, she took his hand, the one with the mushroom finger, and simply held it tight.

“Rest,” she said. “I’ll come back in the next few days to check on you.”

 

~

 

Shaelith had sorted the Warlock’s documents into three piles. The maps and fortress plans went to the left, she would make copies of them and then have them given to House Baerelin, as agreed. Magical diagrams and everything related to his runes went in the middle. This was complex, fascinating material and completely beyond her current understanding. The journals and personal notes went to the right.

The journals were written in several languages. Some were in Tulvian, some in Dwarvish, some in the strange geometric symbol language she had not yet been able to decipher.

And three of them were in English.

The Latin letters jumped out at her like old friends. It was a strange feeling to read English again. Every letter, all the words and phrases were still there, somewhere in a drawer of her brain that she rarely opened. When exactly had she started thinking in Shaeravyn? She didn’t even remember anymore.

Day 24,833. Maenwallon thinks I’ve gone too far this time, and maybe he’s right, who knows. He still thinks he can find the answers somewhere in the archives of the Collegium. He doesn’t understand that this maze has no exit. It’s just there to make us run and run and run and run…

Maenwallon. She remembered the name. The Warlock had mentioned it.

It was all here. He had obsessively documented everything for decades. It was the work of a brilliant, desperate man who had obviously done excellent research, who was actually on to something, but it had simply led nowhere. And at some point, he had completely lost his mind in despair.

But she couldn’t read it openly. She would have to talk to Benderast about it and would not be able to explain how, as the daughter of a Shaeravyn matriarch, she was fluent in a language allegedly spoken by exactly two people in this world, one of whom was dead. Well, maybe three. If this Maenwallon also spoke English.

Shaelith picked up one of the English journals, opened it to a page that didn’t contain any particularly sensitive information, and walked from the work area over to the sleeping area.

He sat on the bed, hands on his knees, staring at a wall.

Since the fortress, he was like a lamp that someone had turned off. He functioned, he walked, he ate, he answered when someone spoke to him. But his restless, annoying energy had disappeared.

Man, I didn’t think I’d miss that.

“Benderast.”

He looked up.

“I need your help.” She placed the open journal on the bed in front of him. “Can you read this?”

He looked down and his eyes widened. His fingers touched the paper, stroking the letters as if to make sure they were real.

“That’s English,” he said. “That’s… where did…”

“These are the Warlock’s personal journals. He wrote some of them in a language I don’t know.” The lie came easily, and she hated how easily it came. “You said you came from another world. Does that world have writing that looks like this?”

“That’s my language,” Benderast said. There was suddenly something brittle in his voice. “That’s… he wrote in English. He really was…”

“When he spoke to me, he mentioned a name, some… character who rescues princesses,” Shaelith said, casually enough not to seem calculating. “He called him Plumber Dario. Does that mean anything to you?”

Benderast’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.

“Plumber Dario? Are you… sure he didn’t say Super Mario?”

“I’m sure he said Plumber Dario, I have a good memory.”

“Hmm, that sounds like a cheap bootleg. Or…” His gaze became thoughtful. “Or another version. From another Earth.”

“Another Earth?”

“Parallel worlds. Different versions of the same reality, with slight variations.” He turned a page and continued reading, faster now. “He was like me. He really was like me. And… oh God, he spent decades researching all this…”

And there it was again. Not quite the old ‘Level Up!’ energy, but at least a certain interest in answers that lifted him up and filled the emptiness in his eyes.

Shaelith watched the transformation with some relief. It was better when he was functioning. The group needed him functioning. She needed him functioning.

But there was also the quiet realization that she was doing this partly for him, that it had bothered her more to see him so broken than she wanted to admit. Sometime in the last few weeks, she had grown accustomed to him being there, loud and annoying and utterly unshakeable. His absence, even when he was physically present, had felt wrong.

“Benderast. Could you translate sections of it for me? I want to understand what drove the Warlock, and I need the content for my research.”

“Sure, sure, I-” He leafed through the pages frantically. “There’s so much, it’ll take days-”

“True, but maybe…” She hesitated for a second, just long enough to make it seem natural. “Could you teach me the basics of your language? So that I can help you with the translation work at some point.”

He looked up in surprise.

“You want to learn English?”

“I want to be able to read the documents.”

But he interpreted it differently, of course he did, and she could see exactly what story he was constructing in his head. She wants to learn my language, he thought.

Shaelith let him believe it. It helped him, and it was useful for her. And it was a game she could control as long as she remained careful.

I am a terrible person.

Benderast continued reading, murmuring passages to himself, translating fragments of sentences. Then he paused. His forehead creased. He read the paragraph again, more slowly.

“He’s writing about someone here,” Benderast said. “A man named Maenwallon. His… partner? Companion? They researched together for years. He stayed at a place called Cobalt Collegium when the Warlock left to…” He read on. “To do his own thing, I guess.”

His finger followed the lines.

“His tone is… it doesn’t sound like a clean break. It sounds more like someone who knows he made a mistake but can’t apologize.”

I trust your experience on that one, buddy.

He looked up.

“We need to find this guy, this Maenwallon.”

Shaelith nodded slowly.

Yes, she thought. We probably do.