Tiamat's Kittens: Floodwaters
Aug. 30th, 2006 09:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aithne[Okay, she didn't die after all. Accounting later said that she hadn't. Yay for poor arithmatic skills on my part. Lots of little details in this one that may or may not bear fruit later.]
5/13/978
Palil:
Our priority right now was to find Penn and his bondmate Zadok. Fortunately, we had a powerful diviner who'd more or less put himself at our disposal, and we agreed to see what he could do for us. He also said he could convince divinations to say that we were dead for a few days, but he wouldn't count on it for long.
A few days is more time than we had before. I'll take whatever I can get at this point.
Orion came back and said that Penn was trapped in some sort of crystal structure, as was Zadok. They were separated--Penn was up high, while Zadok was underground. Crystal structure...that sounded familiar. Didn't Reuben have one of those? Last we checked, though, it wasn't big enough for a dragon in full form to get into.
A few more divinations and we had our answers. The crystal structure was a creation to amplify the power of that surveillance network that Reuben had in place. At the moment, it could see anything within a mile of a gate equipped with one of those crystals. It could even see through solid stone.
It had been a day or so since I'd lost my temper so badly that I'd attacked both Gannon and Jordan and almost Sondirra. Gratefully, I turned my attention to planning rather than brooding.
We had an advantage--we could use Reuben's network against him. With the cedar and iron disc, we could see into the crystal structure next to the gate at #1. It was something like four stories tall, a pyramid about seventy feet across at the base. We started at the top, and found an empty room with one person in it--Penn. He was pacing, looking angry. There were no entrances or exits around him.
Beneath that was a room made of crystal again. Moving pictures flickered beneath the surface of the crystal, as if they cast illusions of what was going on elsewhere. The pictures shifted and changed in a most alarming manner. There were no people in the room, as far as we could tell.
Beneath that room was a level of little room, like small offices; each of these had a single screen and someone watching it. It looked like these were fixed to one location.
Beneath that was a level with large rooms for meeting and eating, it appeared. Beneath that level, underground, was the largest room of all.
A hundred dragons lay in that room, breathing but not otherwise moving. Each of them had two tubes in them, one running into each side of their neck. Into the large veins we possess there, I assumed. Blood from those tubes was flowing into a vat at the center of the room, the black-red of dragon blood.
Some of the dragons were turned so we could see the tattoos under their right wings. They were our people. Probably our MI. Not all of the ones assumed dead were dead, it seemed.
The whole pyramid looked like it was in motion, upwards; growing rapidly. As we watched, the image that we were seeing changed; suddenly, we could see the magic on the pyramid. A few divine inquiries later, and we learned that the crystalline structure was going to be acquiring the properties of various detection spells. By the end of the day, it would have True Sight.
We all looked at each other. We needed to move, and quickly.
I messaged Paloma, who said that they were maybe ninety minutes out from the portal they were heading towards. We thought we'd take everyone with us; at the very edge of the mile we could see out, we'd seen the school at #1, heavily fortified on the walls. We'd have very little time to do this before the people from the school were on us. The guards at the crystal, we could handle, but not the battalion or so on the walls.
We pondered and planned. Orion was willing to go with us, but he wasn't much of a fighter despite being a great wyrm, so we would leave him behind as our listener. Sondirra and I would go to get Penn--there were people in the room he was in who were invisible, talking to him when he tried to fall asleep, trying to keep him awake. Bambi would lead a small group to take out the main mage, Purvis. The rest would go and dump a bunch of Neutralize Poisons in the vat that was feeding the dragons who were being blooded drugs. Everyone would get up and get out.
Simple, but it required fine timing. Sondirra and I would also take our entire supply of the burning stuff, and use it to make a hole in the wall and then toss it onto the floor, melting it--and the floors beneath it--into slag.
I'd be the last out of the gate, and I'd take the gate with me when I went. I went and consecrated some ground nearby for it to move to.
It was about then that I got a message from Admiral Coulter.
"Majors. We have a situation that we need Jordan's group to attend to. A commander named Duff has taken his command and is flying towards Isla's territory, with the intent of attacking her troops on the border. Use whatever means necessary to stop him."
I heard Sondirra swear, silently. I gritted my teeth. "Will do. Give me a location."
He did, and I went to Gannon and Jordan with their new orders. "It's a day or so out from the nearest portal," Jordan said. "It'll take us a couple of days." His voice said that he didn't like this in the least.
"We can keep Lida and Elfrida," Sondirra offered.
"Haven, too," Jordan said.
She frowned. "You might need him more than we will."
"We have Addison, we'll be fine." Jordan looked like he was willing to argue on this one, and Sondirra shrugged and said that we'd take him.
The three pairs of Jordan's team who were going left posthaste. I contacted Paloma and told her about the plan, and told her that we'd be transferring out as soon as they arrived. In the meantime, Beamer had been studying the images he was seeing, and came and got me. "Look," he said. "The robe Purvis has on. That magical signature look familiar to you?"
It did. Unfortunately. "It's an artifact."
"But what does it do?"
The Peacekeeper, our frost giant down with Isla, might know, and we messaged her. "It doesn't sound like quite the style we used to use, but from the description, I'd say it was an offset robe. Nice things, mages love them. The person wearing the robe is a sort of magical clone. He'll fight and cast magic like the real mage, but he's controlled from elsewhere. The original mage can sit somewhere safe, maybe invisible, and send his other self into battle."
Not good news. We signed off, and say talking amongst ourselves. The real Purvis could be a number of places. That central room with all the screens, the one that had been empty of people. Or at the gate, guarding it. (We weren't planning to use the gate, knowing that they had someone with True Sight up guarding it, but him being there would still make things difficult.)
Then Beamer came up with the really frightening possibility.
"What if," he said slowly, "he's in there with Penn?"
Sondirra and I looked at each other. Then she gritted her teeth and looked away. I really wish Jordan was coming with us, she said, her mental voice quiet.
"We'll deal with it if it happens. Are we ready to go when Paloma gets here?"
Beamer nodded. "I'll keep watching."
Bambi walked by, stopped, and sat down. "We'll need about five minutes to brief the other two teams. We've got the strike teams set, and we're just going to be taking buckets of those potions. You have the timing down?"
I nodded. "You guys first, then me, with the rest on our heels."
We made last-minute preparations, including arranging for Nasser to warn Penn that he was about to be rescued. If we were good, and fast, we might get out of this with a minimum of combat.
We could only hope.
As I was sitting, waiting for the time to be right, I noticed a strange sensation in my abdomen. It was a feeling of extra cold, as if something very, very cold had lodged somewhere within myself. It wasn't painful or even unpleasant, just different.
I bent my head so I could take a look at my belly. Nothing strange there, just the long scales of my abdomen and the several split scales covering various functional openings. It was just strange, and I made a note to ask Haven about it.
Unfortunately, the moment we started the final transit, the thought disappeared clean from my mind.
Sondirra:
We transported to the main temple gate and from there to the mother gate. I watched Bambi and her team disappear and checked my weapons one last time. Then I hefted the jug of burning stuff I was about to use.
Looked like everything was ready. Palil was in large form, and I patted her on the shoulder distractedly. Then I stopped, and looked, really looked, at Palil for the first time in a while.
When had she gotten so big? Her body was a good twenty feet long from shoulders to base of tail. Maybe longer. Her tail twitched restlessly, and I could see the muscles in her hips move under her hide and scales. She was heavily built now, almost as heavily as Gannon. White dragons were usually lightly built, but it looked like she was going to take after her father. And those scales--
White as snow, white as her hair in drow form. She'd lost her baby coloring, the violets that had tinged her scales. Growing up, I thought to myself. Quickly. Maybe too quickly. Maybe not quickly enough. I shook my head. I had a mission to do, I couldn't be distracted by wondering exactly how messed up Palil was going to be when all of this was said and done.
I mounted and strapped myself in pillion. The main seat's safer if you don't have a chance to fasten all of the straps, and Penn wouldn't have time. If we were lucky, we'd spend about thirty seconds inside.
I hoped we were lucky.
In position, the Purvis clone heading our way, Bambi said.
Time to go!
With exactly where we wanted to end up firmly in mind, Palil stepped through the portal.
We landed in the room, two feet from the wall, directly next to Penn. I had True Seeing up, so as I glanced over my shoulder and threw my jug, I could see the three other Invisible people in the room. Palil splashed the wall with a bit of stuff and tossed her own just behind her as Penn scrambled up into the saddle, locking his toes into the leather. I passed him an invisibility tablet, which he used immediately.
Within seconds, there was a large enough hole for Palil to fit through. She folded her wings tightly to her sides and leaped, slamming her wings outwards once she was clear of the wall. She winged strongly upwards--we were supposed to be the last through the portal--and then her worried voice came to me. Unless you've been having a halfling feed you on the sly, I think there's someone else on me. I've got maybe a hundred and fifty pounds or so I shouldn't--right behind you--
Crap.
I twisted around and there indeed was Purvis, hands raised, casting a spell. I went for a spell of my own, and I could feel Palil casting a Silence--
Too late.
Fire bloomed around us, and in front of me Penn grunted in pain. I wasn't too happy myself as I went after the guy as best I could, loosing myself from all but the strap that would keep me from falling to my death if I were knocked off Palil's back.
Purvis figured out the silence and scooted backwards, down to Palil's hips. Another fireball, and Palil bucked and writhed, trying to free herself of him. She managed it as Haven and Neda came up. Haven hit Palil with a Heal, and Purvis was floating down, and she swung around for the attack--
The sky was dark with wings.
That battalion was arriving ahead of schedule.
Palil, run!
I felt her lurch and shift directions as Neda dove in front of her, down to the portal. Everyone else was gone, the last of the woken dragons disappearing, chaos on the ground below, Tchar and Galen waiting next to the portal to defend it.
Fire again--
Palil:
I felt Sondirra go unconscious--alive, still alive, thank Karop-- and thought from the way Penn suddenly became a dead weight in the saddle that he might have as well. Tchar's breath weapon crackled past me, and I hoped beyond hope that it had hit the mage who'd hurt us so badly. There was no time to check, I dove towards the portal, seeing Neda and then Tchar go ahead of me.
Through the portal. It disappeared behind me, moving to the place I'd set for it. I pulled up short and set down in the large cavern of the portal room near #2.
Haven was next to me. "Palil, down, I need to get your passengers!"
I dropped to my belly and Haven, with Neda's help, got both Sondirra and Penn down. I crowded in close, and Haven shoved me back. "Don't, let me work!"
I mantled but sat back. Haven bent over Sondirra, checking her pulse and her wounds, and then put his hands on her shoulders and chanted briefly.
If I'd been in my small form, I'd have wept when she opened her mismatched eyes.
Sondirra:
Someone was flicking my nose with their finger. "Hey, you awake in there?"
I opened one eye and then the other. "Yeah. What happened--oh. Damn."
Haven was looking down at me. "You didn't die, but you came real close. Glad you didn't. Jordan would have killed me."
"I'm the one who got hit with a bunch of fireballs--owwwwwww!" The pain was starting to spread over my skin, burns announcing themselves.
"I'm the one supposed to be keeping you alive." He transferred his attention to something behind him as I closed my eyes and took stock of myself. Haven had only given me enough to bring me back from the brink of death, and damn this was going to hurt for a while. Palil hurt too. I got myself sitting up and she came and curled up around me. I leaned back on a spot that was protected by her harness.
Close one, I said. How's everyone else?
We got hit the worst, it looks like, she replied. Haven's checking out Penn.
In fact, Haven was standing, shaking his head. He turned towards us. "Penn's dead. He was already wounded when you got him, and the fireballs did him in. There's nothing I can do, nothing left to work with."
Palil and I looked at each other as from somewhere nearby, I heard a scream erupt from three different throats.
Zadok, his bondmate. Nasser, his twin. Folke, Zadok's twin.
Painfully, Palil and I got up so they could crowd around Penn's body. Nasser was openly crying, Zadok was crouched down next to his bondmate's body. Folke spread his black wings, shielding the two of them from view.
Goddamnit. I liked Penn. Didn't trust him, but I liked him.
Palil didn't respond, except with a delicate feeling of failure.
Palil:
with a heavy heart, I messaged in to Coulter.
"Admiral. We've rescued Zadok and Penn, as well as a number--about ninety, it looks like--of our MI. It's the dragons, I assume the bondmates were killed. Unfortunately, Penn was also killed during the rescue. We're up at #2. Do you want us to send the MI folks to Petrozav?"
There was a pause, then the message came back, Coulter's familiar tenor. "Send them down for debriefing. Store Penn's body, along with the other three, in the portal system."
"I was planning on it. We have a couple of people badly wounded--" I didn't mention it was Sondirra and me-- "and we'll need a couple of days to recover."
"Rest, then, I'll contact you in a few days. Coulter out."
I sat, thinking, then messaged the Peacekeeper. "We have Penn and Zadok. Penn was killed during the escape. Should we bring them to the portal nearest you?"
The reply was immediate. "We will be there in two days. Be sure to bring Penn's body along with you. Did you get ahold of that offset cloak?"
I sent a question to Bambi, who nodded that they had. "We did. We'll bring it along."
"Good. Two days, then."
I nodded, broke the connection and set my head down on the floor. The cold of the stone seeped into me, soothing my hurts. We did all right. Even though we lost Penn--we disabled their surveillance center, we got our people out.
I was unable to entirely reassure myself.
Sondirra:
Haven looked critically at my arm, brushed the soot off the skin. "There. Don't overdo it for a couple of days, you're going to be sore." He rose then and went to look at Palil's burns without further comment.
I sniffed myself and wrinkled my nose. The smell of burned hair and cloth was clinging to me, and I thought I might need to trim the ends of my hair. What I really needed was a bath, but I was probably going to have to settle for a change of clothes.
Thinking of fire, I reached out to Jordan. You guys doing all right?
We're done here, just getting ready to leave. We're closer to the portal than we thought, we'll be there in a few hours, he said. Things go all right over there?
I chuckled. Mostly. How did it go?
Had to kill pretty much everyone down to the captains. What do you want me to do with the rest? There's about two hundred pairs down here that have nothing but lieutenants.
He'd done what? Damn. Send them to Petrozav the long way, give them time to cool off. Bring back some bodies for us to talk to.
Will do. See you in a few hours.
I went outside the cave to go scrub myself with snow, thanking the staff that let me wander off from Palil and still be immune to cold. I got Blaise to trim the burned ends of my hair for me. It had been getting in my eyes anyway, so it wasn't a big loss. By that time, Haven had pronounced Palil done, and she was talking quietly to the portal.
I came up and leaned on her shoulder. "Sounds like Jordan was thinking with his sword first this time."
She snorted. "As usual. Do you want to help me get Zadok and the rest into the portal? The portal's ready for them, we'll just tell them they're going home."
I agreed, and after a little bit we got Penn wrapped up in a makeshift shroud and got his body and the three living members of the quartet into the portal. "They'll stay in stasis for a bit," Palil said. "Let's get everyone fed, I think we're staying here long enough for that, anyway."
We went and organized a meal for the humanoids, and the dragons flew to the nearest hunting ground to hunt for themselves. As Palil left, I saw Olin watching her go, an unreadable look in his eyes.
When we'd managed to put together something edible, I plunked myself and my bowl down next to Olin. Everyone was clustered in groups, catching up with each other. "You all right?" I asked.
He nodded, looking down at his bowl. "Fine."
I rolled my eyes. "Oh, come on. What's up?"
He grimaced. "It's been a long few weeks, is all. And then Palil doesn't even really say hello when I see her again."
"She was a little distracted. So was I. Come on, Olin, cut her some slack. I know she still likes you and wants to be your friend, but this last little jaunt hurt her more than she's saying." I grinned and poked his shoulder. "Try to catch her when she doesn't have Haven fussing over her and when she's not trying to arrange a thousand different things at once."
"And when exactly might that be?" Olin chuckled. "Well, as long as she hasn't suddenly decided that she hates me."
"Pfft. She wouldn't. Talk to her when she gets back, she should be in a better mood when she's had a chance to kill something." We ate and chatted, and Olin seemed immensely cheered up. When Palil got back, he did go over and talk to her, and now that we were just waiting for Jordan's folks to show up, she had time to catch up with him.
I sort of wished all of our problems could be solved as easily as that.
Palil:
A few hours later, Jordan's team arrived back. Jordan was the first through the portal, with a large black dragon slung over one shoulder.
"Showoff," Sondirra told him, making a face.
He laughed and set the dead dragon down. The others came through after him, Gannon carrying an elf who was identified as Commander Duff. "We've got more bodies we can go and get if you need them," Jordan said.
"So you just showed up and killed them?" Sondirra asked. I was keeping my own mouth shut.
Jordan shrugged. "They didn't seem inclined to listen to me. He was being stubborn, so I killed him. Then I pretty much had to kill the rest of the command. I didn't have a lot of time to do anything else."
My bondmate narrowed her eyes slightly, but didn't comment. She got a Speak with Dead potion out of the case and sat down for a chat with Duff's shade.
Both Duff and his bondmate insisted that they had been under orders from Admiral Coulter. "Of course they didn't believe Jordan," Sondirra muttered. "He's just a Captain. He could have used some higher bars, he might have gotten a better response from them. He might not have outranked them, but they might have listened."
Not something I expect Jordan to think of, but I do expect Gannon to think of it, I said. I'll have a chat with Gannon about what happened in a bit. Let me message in to Coulter and see what we should do. I think they're pretty blameless--raise them, send them back with some potions, and let them catch up with their command.
That was what we did, in the end. Jordan talked to Haven and then insisted on fussing over Sondirra, she rolling her eyes but not arguing too much. "I'm fine," she told him. "Just sore." I was sitting nearby, checking over my harness and saddle with delicate claws.
"You could have been killed."
"But I wasn't! See, still alive." She waved her arms above her head to prove her point. "I just..." She trailed off, looking abruptly uncertain. Palil, I think I have a headache coming on. I don't have any of Haven's stuff made up, can you get a packet out for me?
I abandoned the harness and went for our packs, changing down into small form in order to open them. Claws aren't too good with small buckles. I could feel her in the back of my mind, the tingling skin and the flashes of light in her vision that always preceded a bad headache. I pulled out a packet from the place where she kept it, and frowned. This is the last one. Didn't you have six doses in here before?
I've been getting them a lot. They wake me up in the middle of the night, I haven't had one during the day for a while. I forgot to make more up last time I used some--ow, it's coming on quick--
Jordan was at my side, and I handed him the packet without a word. There was a fire burning at the back of the cave where a natural chimney directed the smoke up and out, and fortunately there was water on for tea. Sondirra curled up with me until the remedy was steeped, and then gratefully drank it to the dregs. Fortunately, the nausea hadn't hit her yet.
Haven had been talking to Neda, but as Jordan walked by him he raised his head and sniffed. He glanced at Jordan, and then watched as Jordan handed the cup to Sondirra and she drank. Looks like that particular cat's out of the sack, I thought to myself. Jordan was hovering over Sondirra a bit, and while he was distracted I went to find Gannon.
I inclined my head towards the door. "A word?"
He nodded, and we walked out together. As we stepped outside, I noticed that Addison and Blaise had also gone this way, and they were walking down the valley together. There was a side path up and around the invisible hill, which Gannon and I took.
"Glad I took that potion," Gannon commented as we dusted off some rocks to sit on. "Cold as hell up here still, even though it's spring."
"And here I was thinking it was getting warm," I said, smiling. "Gannon, what happened with Duff?"
The red dragon sighed. "The long and the short of it was, that Jordan wasn't in a talking mood when he went to Commander Duff."
I'd wondered. "Any particular reason why he wasn't?"
"He was worried about your mission and he wanted to get back as fast as he could, to be honest."
I made a wry face. "And the shortest route to do that was to kill anyone who gave him trouble. Well, I can't say his concern wasn't warranted, but...well, I guess Coulter was expecting him to at least kill the Commander, since he sent Jordan rather than one of the other groups." I shook my head. "That worries me, but I can't really say why."
"It worries me as well. Coulter assigning him makes it pretty plain that force may have be necessary but Jordan didn't really want to talk much, he was in a hurry to get back."
"I think the words I want here are lack of professional distance. He wants to protect Sondirra, I know, but she knows what she's doing. Sometimes, we pull the bad card like we did this time, but usually we come through all right. Jordan can't be killing people rather than trying to talk to them just because he's worried about her."
Gannon looked down, crossing his arms. "I fear that had nothing happened, this might be an isolated incident, but with her so close to dying--he may react badly."
I looked at him, seeing worry in the set of his shoulders. "Badly how?"
"That he may do this again, because the last time he wasn't there she nearly died."
I could see it, and it wasn't a pretty picture. "And knowing him, you probably can't talk him out of these moods." I shook my head. "I'll have to keep an eye on things. I'm going to try to keep us all together as much as I can, anyway."
Gannon looked up, giving me a half-smile. "He was pretty adamant about it. Duff wasn't convinced that Jordan was telling the truth, and Jordan didn't want to wait. Several squads were in the air heading into Isla's territory."
"I can see why things went the way they did. He may have had to kill Duff anyway, even." I chuckled. "Haven sounded really worried when he was working on Sondirra. Said he was glad she hadn't died, because Jordan would have killed him."
He nodded. "Haven is Jordan's pick to take over the group if we die, so Jordan keeps him in the loop about most things. He has a standing order to make sure everyone survives, and the implication was that goes double for Sondirra."
It would, wouldn't it? "Ah. I don't have any problems with how Haven conducted himself on this one. He couldn't get to us right away, and by the time he did he had a choice to either heal me or Sondirra. He could have healed her, but I probably would have died, and she would have been hurt by the fall and probably at least captured or maybe killed. And the rest might well have had a battalion on their heels, in that case." I thought about how Haven had spoken. "You know, there was real worry in Haven's voice when he said Jordan would kill him. Real fear."
Gannon sighed. "Haven is scared of anyone with more than two bars on their shoulders. The only one he isn't is Paloma, and that's because he sleeps with her. Has he ever talked to you directly?"
I blinked. Funny. He hadn't, except in the context of healing me. "No, he's never really talked to me much directly, you're right. I never really thought about it, but he also doesn't talk much to Sondirra, and that is more unusual. I guess it's harder to be intimidated by someone you've seen naked quite a bit," I said.
"Haven, of all of us, has seen most of us at our worst. Sick, throwing up, overdrinking. He gives all of us a physical every three months, I swear, and he is poking in places you don't want to know. Still, you put that uniform back on and he runs like a rabbit."
I hadn't ever noticed, but I'd never had a reason to notice. "Odd. He's not from a military family, is he? You see that sometimes when bad stuff's happened in a military family. Maybe it's just a quirk."
Gannon frowned. "I think both his parents are military, one elf and one human."
I always forgot that Haven was a half-elf. He looked nearly full-blooded. "He must take after his elven parent in a big way." I shook my head. "Something may have happened there, or something might have happened while we were in school that he didn't tell anyone about."
"Haven didn't want to be in the military. His calling was clerical, and he excelled quickly at it. He didn't want to have to fight and take lives, he only wanted to heal them. I think he fears the day that he will have to kill someone."
I blinked, thinking back. Sondirra had been sixteen, and Jordan had not yet become such a menace. She had come in one day after weapons practice and flopped down on the bed in the room we shared. "I got put up against Haven today," she'd complained. "I hate fighting Haven. He never hits back. Put me against Paloma or Jordan, sure, but not against the guy who all he ever does is dodge."
I'd forgotten all about it until this moment. I shook my head to clear it of the past. "We have a number of people among us who shouldn't have to be in the military. He's one of them."
Gannon nodded. "Maybe it will change so his children won't have to, if they don't want."
"If we succeed with what we're doing, I certainly hope so. At this point, even I am going to be glad to get shut of the military," I said, unexpected bitterness in my voice. "Once things have calmed down."
"So say we all," he said, vehemently.
"Say we all," I echoed. "And when this is over, I swear I am going to sleep for a week."
"Same here. But you have a bit of time, I think, before you can do that."
I snorted softly. "I know, but I'm still looking forward to it. We've got a lot of things to do--revolutions to create, world leaders to try to outthink. You know, the usual."
"Yes, Reuben is a problem. Finding him is the first one."
I pulled one knee to my chest, wrapping my arms around the leg and resting my chin on my knee. "Well, we knew approximately where he was. With the crystal gone, who knows where he'll be. If we're really lucky, he'll head back to his palace."
"He was smart enough to hit us where it hurt the most," Gannon said. "He is probably smart enough to have a decoy on the throne, or will just hide so that what he did to Yafa can't happen to him."
"I think I'm going to see if we can't get Isla to throw herself at him. At least at that point, he'll be distracted." Distraction on Reuben's part could only work in our favor.
"Let them fight the war that's coming, and maybe we can take over." Gannon shifted on his boulder, kicked at the snow at his feet.
"That was my thought, really." I began musing aloud, putting my thoughts in order. "I wish we had a better handle on just how much of his troop strength Reuben's expended recently. He's sacrificed a lot of people recently."
"Have you talked to Oberan's group. You had a friend there, didn't you? They might know."
I nodded. "Paquita, the gold, yes. They're in the palace, and last Sondirra talked to them they'd hit a dead end. We'll be checking in with them shortly to see if they managed to get Albina in, and whether she was able to help."
"Might want to ask her," Gannon said.
"I'll ask and see what they've come up with. I'm overdue for dropping her a message anyway--we've more or less cut out most of our talking since she's gone into deep cover. Which is really too bad, but I can see why." I missed talking with her, and I thought she'd be at once pleased and appalled by certain events of late.
Thinking of said events, I glanced over at Gannon. I'd have expected some awkwardness between us, after the way I'd acted, but I couldn't feel any trace of it. The lack of that awkwardness made me a bit uneasy, for some reason. I was expecting resistance, but finding none. "His troop strength has to be a major concern of theirs," Gannon said to me. "But he is letting them die in droves, he may have troops to spare."
I cocked my head, thinking. "The other possibility is that he wants everyone else to think he's letting them die because he has plenty in reserve. Though, honestly, the strongest argument against that is the fact that he sent only white dragons against us. If he has that many of only one clan, you have to wonder how many he has of the rest."
"Far too many. The golds have been leaving in droves since the massacre."
It was all too true, unfortunately. "Almost everyone who lives in his country must be in the military. Can you imagine?"
"From what I understand, all people that are in the military can retire but can be reactivated at any time for any reason."
"That would explain why he was able to get hundreds of unbonded white dragons to throw against us." I shuddered at the thought. "That was a bad blow for us, and a heartbreaking waste for me personally. If we hadn't had the dragons in the portal, there wouldn't be very many white dragons left in the world at this point."
Gannon looked thoughtful. "They seem to be on some sort of extermination policy of the whites, and on the whole as well."
"That seems to be the case, but I can't understand why. Unless it's Reuben having a grudge against Chaim or something. Or the silvers, since our territories overlap. We've shared the world pretty well for the last while, though." It had to be something else. What was it?
"All the dragon races are suffering losses, just from this war. And it takes us longer to rebound than the humanoids." He grimaced as if just struck by a terrible thought. "Is it possible that he is trying to rid the world of dragons? He did just lock up his bondmate."
I felt like someone had just hit me in the chest. Could it really be so simple? "Wait. Back up. He has a sudden personality revision, goes from nasty to just plain insane. He fights with his bondmate so badly that he gets his back broken, and then locks him up. He throws away dragon lives like they're worth nothing--but not humanoid lives. We were thinking that he might have been taken over by a frost giant. What if said frost giant is still fighting the war they lost three thousand years ago? Trying to eliminate the dragons from the world."
Gannon nodded, evidently trying the thought and not liking it much. "Makes sense if he got taken over. Dragon blood to create his items. And that offset cloak you talked about. What if that was new, and not old?"
"That might very well be. If so, this gets a bit scarier. He may have new artifacts that we know nothing about." I wrapped my arms a bit tighter around my knee. "I wish I'd managed to actually get ahold of the mage who was hitting us. He'd have had useful information."
"If the frost giant way of doing things is the same, there is a dragon in that cloak."
"True. we could talk to it and see what's what before we send it off." I made a face. "Now, I'm worried about the frost giants we sent down to Isla."
"If the Peacekeeper is bad and working for Reuben, a frost giant, Isla may be dead already." He shook his head. "Now, I don't see that likely, as she just got out from the portal system."
"No, I don't think so. And nobody but us had any reason to know she was in there, which is why I was all right to set her loose in the first place. I think she's on the level, but I'll need to talk to her when we transfer Isla's kids to her in a couple of days."
"It would be best to talk to her. Maybe she knows something we don't, or might recognize a giant by its method of operation."
I nodded. "I hope so. I'm rather hoping we're off base with this one., but we'll see."
"All things considered, it makes the most sense."
It did. Unfortunately. "It does. Can you imagine trying to explain this to his army? If we could get them to believe us, he'd be one dead elf."
"If, is the big question. Though his actions are suspicious. Suicide missions, draining of prisoners' blood."
"I'm sure he's got a lot of doubters in his troops. Well, I hope, at least. Though he may brainwash his people more thoroughly than we were. Well, really, it was only MI who were suspicious that there was something up with Yafa in the first place." I paused, frowned. Almost reluctantly, I said, "One has to wonder, though, if Yafa did everything we blamed on her. I don't know. It's difficult to sort the truth from the half-truths and the outright lies."
Gannon took a long breath. "I begin to believe that most things that were blamed on her were Reuben's doing."
It was a dangerous line of thought, and one that made me hurt just to think of it. How wrong had be been all along? How wrong had MI been? "Looking at how the Bulkaric massacre came out, and knowing that orders can and have been faked by Reuben, I am more than willing to pin that one on him."
"And the white dragon conversion to silver?"
I spread my hands. "How better to piss off a bunch of white dragons than to make them believe that the leader of one of the territories is trying to eliminate them by poisoning them and changing their children into silvers?"
He looked like he liked this about as much as I did. "Blame it on the person who has the most whites and do the conversion there and there you go, instant blame. Leave a hunter there that thinks he has only been dealing with Yafa."
"And that sets it up so a lot of unbonded white dragons will volunteer for a suicide mission."
"Yes, to destroy the only people that were getting close to the truth. His target wasn't Yafa, it was us. Yafa was the decoy."
"With the side effect of creating chaos in her territory with her death. As a distraction for what little MI is left," I said.
He shook his head. "We are rushing around, putting out the fires, and can't put our information together to find out what he is really doing."
I rubbed my temples. "We've got to figure out where he's vulnerable, and hit him there. He's too smart to leave very many holes."
He quirked his mouth. "The crystal structure has to be a blow."
"A major one. I'm thinking of seeing if I can remove all of the portals from his territory. He can still use teleport potions, but it limits his troop movement." We needed to limit his mobility.
Gannon nodded. "And increases their chances of dying with each teleport. If you consecrate enough ground I am sure you can."
Five percent casualties with each attempt. The chance got larger with every jump. He'd lose a chunk of his army with every long move. "I'm wondering if I can't somehow recall some of them to the mother, or something like that."
"Why do they call that one the mother, anyway?" he asked.
"In a way, the portals all came from it. I haven't had a chance to sit down and study how they were built, but I have a feeling that they're all something like buds of that portal. It has the raw ability, the child portals have that ability contained to within the network."
"If so, can she call them back to be reabsorbed?"
"That's what I'm hoping, but I'd need to probably go talk to her about it and see. The problem is what divinations say in response to 'where did this portal go?'. The mother is a secret. I'd like to keep her that way."
"Might be a problem," he admitted.
I gave him a wry smile. "I may have to destroy the system soon anyway. I hate to do it, but it may be necessary."
"It hurts us, but it hurts him more."
"Isn't that the truth." I sighed and rubbed my eyes. There was a long silence between us, broken only by the complaining creak of spring snow.
There was a moment there, when the silence was almost stretched to breaking, when both of us looked at each other at once, when something was about to happen, I wasn't sure what--
Hey, starshine, we've got some stuff to plan. You planning on stopping snuggling with Gannon and getting back here any time soon? I flushed, and from Gannon's look, he'd just gotten the same sort of message from Jordan.
I looked over at Gannon. "Guess we're wanted."
"As usual," he said, chuckling. He got up off his rock and brushed himself off, then extended a hand to me. I took it and he pulled me upright.
On our way, I replied to Sondirra. And we weren't snuggling, we were talking!
For you, that is snuggling, she replied, laughing. Some people snuggle, others plot revolution. It's all foreplay.
I gave her the mental equivalent of a stuck-out tongue, and the two of us started walking back. The odd feeling in my midsection was back, but once we got back, I was distracted enough to forget about it again.
I had enough to worry about right now. I could worry about that later...
Quotes:
"What you need to do is persuade Derek to do your character sheet."
"Right, look cute and say please!"
"Hey, cuteness generally works…."
--storm, Graham, Derek
"It seems so strange that something so dangerous is…pink."
And phallic!"
--Kris, Storm
"Listening post seed, just add water!"
--Graham
"You can smell everything Bambi does, which may not be a blessing considering that we don't bathe very often."
*dark look* "We will now."
--Kris, Derek
5/13/978
Palil:
Our priority right now was to find Penn and his bondmate Zadok. Fortunately, we had a powerful diviner who'd more or less put himself at our disposal, and we agreed to see what he could do for us. He also said he could convince divinations to say that we were dead for a few days, but he wouldn't count on it for long.
A few days is more time than we had before. I'll take whatever I can get at this point.
Orion came back and said that Penn was trapped in some sort of crystal structure, as was Zadok. They were separated--Penn was up high, while Zadok was underground. Crystal structure...that sounded familiar. Didn't Reuben have one of those? Last we checked, though, it wasn't big enough for a dragon in full form to get into.
A few more divinations and we had our answers. The crystal structure was a creation to amplify the power of that surveillance network that Reuben had in place. At the moment, it could see anything within a mile of a gate equipped with one of those crystals. It could even see through solid stone.
It had been a day or so since I'd lost my temper so badly that I'd attacked both Gannon and Jordan and almost Sondirra. Gratefully, I turned my attention to planning rather than brooding.
We had an advantage--we could use Reuben's network against him. With the cedar and iron disc, we could see into the crystal structure next to the gate at #1. It was something like four stories tall, a pyramid about seventy feet across at the base. We started at the top, and found an empty room with one person in it--Penn. He was pacing, looking angry. There were no entrances or exits around him.
Beneath that was a room made of crystal again. Moving pictures flickered beneath the surface of the crystal, as if they cast illusions of what was going on elsewhere. The pictures shifted and changed in a most alarming manner. There were no people in the room, as far as we could tell.
Beneath that room was a level of little room, like small offices; each of these had a single screen and someone watching it. It looked like these were fixed to one location.
Beneath that was a level with large rooms for meeting and eating, it appeared. Beneath that level, underground, was the largest room of all.
A hundred dragons lay in that room, breathing but not otherwise moving. Each of them had two tubes in them, one running into each side of their neck. Into the large veins we possess there, I assumed. Blood from those tubes was flowing into a vat at the center of the room, the black-red of dragon blood.
Some of the dragons were turned so we could see the tattoos under their right wings. They were our people. Probably our MI. Not all of the ones assumed dead were dead, it seemed.
The whole pyramid looked like it was in motion, upwards; growing rapidly. As we watched, the image that we were seeing changed; suddenly, we could see the magic on the pyramid. A few divine inquiries later, and we learned that the crystalline structure was going to be acquiring the properties of various detection spells. By the end of the day, it would have True Sight.
We all looked at each other. We needed to move, and quickly.
I messaged Paloma, who said that they were maybe ninety minutes out from the portal they were heading towards. We thought we'd take everyone with us; at the very edge of the mile we could see out, we'd seen the school at #1, heavily fortified on the walls. We'd have very little time to do this before the people from the school were on us. The guards at the crystal, we could handle, but not the battalion or so on the walls.
We pondered and planned. Orion was willing to go with us, but he wasn't much of a fighter despite being a great wyrm, so we would leave him behind as our listener. Sondirra and I would go to get Penn--there were people in the room he was in who were invisible, talking to him when he tried to fall asleep, trying to keep him awake. Bambi would lead a small group to take out the main mage, Purvis. The rest would go and dump a bunch of Neutralize Poisons in the vat that was feeding the dragons who were being blooded drugs. Everyone would get up and get out.
Simple, but it required fine timing. Sondirra and I would also take our entire supply of the burning stuff, and use it to make a hole in the wall and then toss it onto the floor, melting it--and the floors beneath it--into slag.
I'd be the last out of the gate, and I'd take the gate with me when I went. I went and consecrated some ground nearby for it to move to.
It was about then that I got a message from Admiral Coulter.
"Majors. We have a situation that we need Jordan's group to attend to. A commander named Duff has taken his command and is flying towards Isla's territory, with the intent of attacking her troops on the border. Use whatever means necessary to stop him."
I heard Sondirra swear, silently. I gritted my teeth. "Will do. Give me a location."
He did, and I went to Gannon and Jordan with their new orders. "It's a day or so out from the nearest portal," Jordan said. "It'll take us a couple of days." His voice said that he didn't like this in the least.
"We can keep Lida and Elfrida," Sondirra offered.
"Haven, too," Jordan said.
She frowned. "You might need him more than we will."
"We have Addison, we'll be fine." Jordan looked like he was willing to argue on this one, and Sondirra shrugged and said that we'd take him.
The three pairs of Jordan's team who were going left posthaste. I contacted Paloma and told her about the plan, and told her that we'd be transferring out as soon as they arrived. In the meantime, Beamer had been studying the images he was seeing, and came and got me. "Look," he said. "The robe Purvis has on. That magical signature look familiar to you?"
It did. Unfortunately. "It's an artifact."
"But what does it do?"
The Peacekeeper, our frost giant down with Isla, might know, and we messaged her. "It doesn't sound like quite the style we used to use, but from the description, I'd say it was an offset robe. Nice things, mages love them. The person wearing the robe is a sort of magical clone. He'll fight and cast magic like the real mage, but he's controlled from elsewhere. The original mage can sit somewhere safe, maybe invisible, and send his other self into battle."
Not good news. We signed off, and say talking amongst ourselves. The real Purvis could be a number of places. That central room with all the screens, the one that had been empty of people. Or at the gate, guarding it. (We weren't planning to use the gate, knowing that they had someone with True Sight up guarding it, but him being there would still make things difficult.)
Then Beamer came up with the really frightening possibility.
"What if," he said slowly, "he's in there with Penn?"
Sondirra and I looked at each other. Then she gritted her teeth and looked away. I really wish Jordan was coming with us, she said, her mental voice quiet.
"We'll deal with it if it happens. Are we ready to go when Paloma gets here?"
Beamer nodded. "I'll keep watching."
Bambi walked by, stopped, and sat down. "We'll need about five minutes to brief the other two teams. We've got the strike teams set, and we're just going to be taking buckets of those potions. You have the timing down?"
I nodded. "You guys first, then me, with the rest on our heels."
We made last-minute preparations, including arranging for Nasser to warn Penn that he was about to be rescued. If we were good, and fast, we might get out of this with a minimum of combat.
We could only hope.
As I was sitting, waiting for the time to be right, I noticed a strange sensation in my abdomen. It was a feeling of extra cold, as if something very, very cold had lodged somewhere within myself. It wasn't painful or even unpleasant, just different.
I bent my head so I could take a look at my belly. Nothing strange there, just the long scales of my abdomen and the several split scales covering various functional openings. It was just strange, and I made a note to ask Haven about it.
Unfortunately, the moment we started the final transit, the thought disappeared clean from my mind.
Sondirra:
We transported to the main temple gate and from there to the mother gate. I watched Bambi and her team disappear and checked my weapons one last time. Then I hefted the jug of burning stuff I was about to use.
Looked like everything was ready. Palil was in large form, and I patted her on the shoulder distractedly. Then I stopped, and looked, really looked, at Palil for the first time in a while.
When had she gotten so big? Her body was a good twenty feet long from shoulders to base of tail. Maybe longer. Her tail twitched restlessly, and I could see the muscles in her hips move under her hide and scales. She was heavily built now, almost as heavily as Gannon. White dragons were usually lightly built, but it looked like she was going to take after her father. And those scales--
White as snow, white as her hair in drow form. She'd lost her baby coloring, the violets that had tinged her scales. Growing up, I thought to myself. Quickly. Maybe too quickly. Maybe not quickly enough. I shook my head. I had a mission to do, I couldn't be distracted by wondering exactly how messed up Palil was going to be when all of this was said and done.
I mounted and strapped myself in pillion. The main seat's safer if you don't have a chance to fasten all of the straps, and Penn wouldn't have time. If we were lucky, we'd spend about thirty seconds inside.
I hoped we were lucky.
In position, the Purvis clone heading our way, Bambi said.
Time to go!
With exactly where we wanted to end up firmly in mind, Palil stepped through the portal.
We landed in the room, two feet from the wall, directly next to Penn. I had True Seeing up, so as I glanced over my shoulder and threw my jug, I could see the three other Invisible people in the room. Palil splashed the wall with a bit of stuff and tossed her own just behind her as Penn scrambled up into the saddle, locking his toes into the leather. I passed him an invisibility tablet, which he used immediately.
Within seconds, there was a large enough hole for Palil to fit through. She folded her wings tightly to her sides and leaped, slamming her wings outwards once she was clear of the wall. She winged strongly upwards--we were supposed to be the last through the portal--and then her worried voice came to me. Unless you've been having a halfling feed you on the sly, I think there's someone else on me. I've got maybe a hundred and fifty pounds or so I shouldn't--right behind you--
Crap.
I twisted around and there indeed was Purvis, hands raised, casting a spell. I went for a spell of my own, and I could feel Palil casting a Silence--
Too late.
Fire bloomed around us, and in front of me Penn grunted in pain. I wasn't too happy myself as I went after the guy as best I could, loosing myself from all but the strap that would keep me from falling to my death if I were knocked off Palil's back.
Purvis figured out the silence and scooted backwards, down to Palil's hips. Another fireball, and Palil bucked and writhed, trying to free herself of him. She managed it as Haven and Neda came up. Haven hit Palil with a Heal, and Purvis was floating down, and she swung around for the attack--
The sky was dark with wings.
That battalion was arriving ahead of schedule.
Palil, run!
I felt her lurch and shift directions as Neda dove in front of her, down to the portal. Everyone else was gone, the last of the woken dragons disappearing, chaos on the ground below, Tchar and Galen waiting next to the portal to defend it.
Fire again--
Palil:
I felt Sondirra go unconscious--alive, still alive, thank Karop-- and thought from the way Penn suddenly became a dead weight in the saddle that he might have as well. Tchar's breath weapon crackled past me, and I hoped beyond hope that it had hit the mage who'd hurt us so badly. There was no time to check, I dove towards the portal, seeing Neda and then Tchar go ahead of me.
Through the portal. It disappeared behind me, moving to the place I'd set for it. I pulled up short and set down in the large cavern of the portal room near #2.
Haven was next to me. "Palil, down, I need to get your passengers!"
I dropped to my belly and Haven, with Neda's help, got both Sondirra and Penn down. I crowded in close, and Haven shoved me back. "Don't, let me work!"
I mantled but sat back. Haven bent over Sondirra, checking her pulse and her wounds, and then put his hands on her shoulders and chanted briefly.
If I'd been in my small form, I'd have wept when she opened her mismatched eyes.
Sondirra:
Someone was flicking my nose with their finger. "Hey, you awake in there?"
I opened one eye and then the other. "Yeah. What happened--oh. Damn."
Haven was looking down at me. "You didn't die, but you came real close. Glad you didn't. Jordan would have killed me."
"I'm the one who got hit with a bunch of fireballs--owwwwwww!" The pain was starting to spread over my skin, burns announcing themselves.
"I'm the one supposed to be keeping you alive." He transferred his attention to something behind him as I closed my eyes and took stock of myself. Haven had only given me enough to bring me back from the brink of death, and damn this was going to hurt for a while. Palil hurt too. I got myself sitting up and she came and curled up around me. I leaned back on a spot that was protected by her harness.
Close one, I said. How's everyone else?
We got hit the worst, it looks like, she replied. Haven's checking out Penn.
In fact, Haven was standing, shaking his head. He turned towards us. "Penn's dead. He was already wounded when you got him, and the fireballs did him in. There's nothing I can do, nothing left to work with."
Palil and I looked at each other as from somewhere nearby, I heard a scream erupt from three different throats.
Zadok, his bondmate. Nasser, his twin. Folke, Zadok's twin.
Painfully, Palil and I got up so they could crowd around Penn's body. Nasser was openly crying, Zadok was crouched down next to his bondmate's body. Folke spread his black wings, shielding the two of them from view.
Goddamnit. I liked Penn. Didn't trust him, but I liked him.
Palil didn't respond, except with a delicate feeling of failure.
Palil:
with a heavy heart, I messaged in to Coulter.
"Admiral. We've rescued Zadok and Penn, as well as a number--about ninety, it looks like--of our MI. It's the dragons, I assume the bondmates were killed. Unfortunately, Penn was also killed during the rescue. We're up at #2. Do you want us to send the MI folks to Petrozav?"
There was a pause, then the message came back, Coulter's familiar tenor. "Send them down for debriefing. Store Penn's body, along with the other three, in the portal system."
"I was planning on it. We have a couple of people badly wounded--" I didn't mention it was Sondirra and me-- "and we'll need a couple of days to recover."
"Rest, then, I'll contact you in a few days. Coulter out."
I sat, thinking, then messaged the Peacekeeper. "We have Penn and Zadok. Penn was killed during the escape. Should we bring them to the portal nearest you?"
The reply was immediate. "We will be there in two days. Be sure to bring Penn's body along with you. Did you get ahold of that offset cloak?"
I sent a question to Bambi, who nodded that they had. "We did. We'll bring it along."
"Good. Two days, then."
I nodded, broke the connection and set my head down on the floor. The cold of the stone seeped into me, soothing my hurts. We did all right. Even though we lost Penn--we disabled their surveillance center, we got our people out.
I was unable to entirely reassure myself.
Sondirra:
Haven looked critically at my arm, brushed the soot off the skin. "There. Don't overdo it for a couple of days, you're going to be sore." He rose then and went to look at Palil's burns without further comment.
I sniffed myself and wrinkled my nose. The smell of burned hair and cloth was clinging to me, and I thought I might need to trim the ends of my hair. What I really needed was a bath, but I was probably going to have to settle for a change of clothes.
Thinking of fire, I reached out to Jordan. You guys doing all right?
We're done here, just getting ready to leave. We're closer to the portal than we thought, we'll be there in a few hours, he said. Things go all right over there?
I chuckled. Mostly. How did it go?
Had to kill pretty much everyone down to the captains. What do you want me to do with the rest? There's about two hundred pairs down here that have nothing but lieutenants.
He'd done what? Damn. Send them to Petrozav the long way, give them time to cool off. Bring back some bodies for us to talk to.
Will do. See you in a few hours.
I went outside the cave to go scrub myself with snow, thanking the staff that let me wander off from Palil and still be immune to cold. I got Blaise to trim the burned ends of my hair for me. It had been getting in my eyes anyway, so it wasn't a big loss. By that time, Haven had pronounced Palil done, and she was talking quietly to the portal.
I came up and leaned on her shoulder. "Sounds like Jordan was thinking with his sword first this time."
She snorted. "As usual. Do you want to help me get Zadok and the rest into the portal? The portal's ready for them, we'll just tell them they're going home."
I agreed, and after a little bit we got Penn wrapped up in a makeshift shroud and got his body and the three living members of the quartet into the portal. "They'll stay in stasis for a bit," Palil said. "Let's get everyone fed, I think we're staying here long enough for that, anyway."
We went and organized a meal for the humanoids, and the dragons flew to the nearest hunting ground to hunt for themselves. As Palil left, I saw Olin watching her go, an unreadable look in his eyes.
When we'd managed to put together something edible, I plunked myself and my bowl down next to Olin. Everyone was clustered in groups, catching up with each other. "You all right?" I asked.
He nodded, looking down at his bowl. "Fine."
I rolled my eyes. "Oh, come on. What's up?"
He grimaced. "It's been a long few weeks, is all. And then Palil doesn't even really say hello when I see her again."
"She was a little distracted. So was I. Come on, Olin, cut her some slack. I know she still likes you and wants to be your friend, but this last little jaunt hurt her more than she's saying." I grinned and poked his shoulder. "Try to catch her when she doesn't have Haven fussing over her and when she's not trying to arrange a thousand different things at once."
"And when exactly might that be?" Olin chuckled. "Well, as long as she hasn't suddenly decided that she hates me."
"Pfft. She wouldn't. Talk to her when she gets back, she should be in a better mood when she's had a chance to kill something." We ate and chatted, and Olin seemed immensely cheered up. When Palil got back, he did go over and talk to her, and now that we were just waiting for Jordan's folks to show up, she had time to catch up with him.
I sort of wished all of our problems could be solved as easily as that.
Palil:
A few hours later, Jordan's team arrived back. Jordan was the first through the portal, with a large black dragon slung over one shoulder.
"Showoff," Sondirra told him, making a face.
He laughed and set the dead dragon down. The others came through after him, Gannon carrying an elf who was identified as Commander Duff. "We've got more bodies we can go and get if you need them," Jordan said.
"So you just showed up and killed them?" Sondirra asked. I was keeping my own mouth shut.
Jordan shrugged. "They didn't seem inclined to listen to me. He was being stubborn, so I killed him. Then I pretty much had to kill the rest of the command. I didn't have a lot of time to do anything else."
My bondmate narrowed her eyes slightly, but didn't comment. She got a Speak with Dead potion out of the case and sat down for a chat with Duff's shade.
Both Duff and his bondmate insisted that they had been under orders from Admiral Coulter. "Of course they didn't believe Jordan," Sondirra muttered. "He's just a Captain. He could have used some higher bars, he might have gotten a better response from them. He might not have outranked them, but they might have listened."
Not something I expect Jordan to think of, but I do expect Gannon to think of it, I said. I'll have a chat with Gannon about what happened in a bit. Let me message in to Coulter and see what we should do. I think they're pretty blameless--raise them, send them back with some potions, and let them catch up with their command.
That was what we did, in the end. Jordan talked to Haven and then insisted on fussing over Sondirra, she rolling her eyes but not arguing too much. "I'm fine," she told him. "Just sore." I was sitting nearby, checking over my harness and saddle with delicate claws.
"You could have been killed."
"But I wasn't! See, still alive." She waved her arms above her head to prove her point. "I just..." She trailed off, looking abruptly uncertain. Palil, I think I have a headache coming on. I don't have any of Haven's stuff made up, can you get a packet out for me?
I abandoned the harness and went for our packs, changing down into small form in order to open them. Claws aren't too good with small buckles. I could feel her in the back of my mind, the tingling skin and the flashes of light in her vision that always preceded a bad headache. I pulled out a packet from the place where she kept it, and frowned. This is the last one. Didn't you have six doses in here before?
I've been getting them a lot. They wake me up in the middle of the night, I haven't had one during the day for a while. I forgot to make more up last time I used some--ow, it's coming on quick--
Jordan was at my side, and I handed him the packet without a word. There was a fire burning at the back of the cave where a natural chimney directed the smoke up and out, and fortunately there was water on for tea. Sondirra curled up with me until the remedy was steeped, and then gratefully drank it to the dregs. Fortunately, the nausea hadn't hit her yet.
Haven had been talking to Neda, but as Jordan walked by him he raised his head and sniffed. He glanced at Jordan, and then watched as Jordan handed the cup to Sondirra and she drank. Looks like that particular cat's out of the sack, I thought to myself. Jordan was hovering over Sondirra a bit, and while he was distracted I went to find Gannon.
I inclined my head towards the door. "A word?"
He nodded, and we walked out together. As we stepped outside, I noticed that Addison and Blaise had also gone this way, and they were walking down the valley together. There was a side path up and around the invisible hill, which Gannon and I took.
"Glad I took that potion," Gannon commented as we dusted off some rocks to sit on. "Cold as hell up here still, even though it's spring."
"And here I was thinking it was getting warm," I said, smiling. "Gannon, what happened with Duff?"
The red dragon sighed. "The long and the short of it was, that Jordan wasn't in a talking mood when he went to Commander Duff."
I'd wondered. "Any particular reason why he wasn't?"
"He was worried about your mission and he wanted to get back as fast as he could, to be honest."
I made a wry face. "And the shortest route to do that was to kill anyone who gave him trouble. Well, I can't say his concern wasn't warranted, but...well, I guess Coulter was expecting him to at least kill the Commander, since he sent Jordan rather than one of the other groups." I shook my head. "That worries me, but I can't really say why."
"It worries me as well. Coulter assigning him makes it pretty plain that force may have be necessary but Jordan didn't really want to talk much, he was in a hurry to get back."
"I think the words I want here are lack of professional distance. He wants to protect Sondirra, I know, but she knows what she's doing. Sometimes, we pull the bad card like we did this time, but usually we come through all right. Jordan can't be killing people rather than trying to talk to them just because he's worried about her."
Gannon looked down, crossing his arms. "I fear that had nothing happened, this might be an isolated incident, but with her so close to dying--he may react badly."
I looked at him, seeing worry in the set of his shoulders. "Badly how?"
"That he may do this again, because the last time he wasn't there she nearly died."
I could see it, and it wasn't a pretty picture. "And knowing him, you probably can't talk him out of these moods." I shook my head. "I'll have to keep an eye on things. I'm going to try to keep us all together as much as I can, anyway."
Gannon looked up, giving me a half-smile. "He was pretty adamant about it. Duff wasn't convinced that Jordan was telling the truth, and Jordan didn't want to wait. Several squads were in the air heading into Isla's territory."
"I can see why things went the way they did. He may have had to kill Duff anyway, even." I chuckled. "Haven sounded really worried when he was working on Sondirra. Said he was glad she hadn't died, because Jordan would have killed him."
He nodded. "Haven is Jordan's pick to take over the group if we die, so Jordan keeps him in the loop about most things. He has a standing order to make sure everyone survives, and the implication was that goes double for Sondirra."
It would, wouldn't it? "Ah. I don't have any problems with how Haven conducted himself on this one. He couldn't get to us right away, and by the time he did he had a choice to either heal me or Sondirra. He could have healed her, but I probably would have died, and she would have been hurt by the fall and probably at least captured or maybe killed. And the rest might well have had a battalion on their heels, in that case." I thought about how Haven had spoken. "You know, there was real worry in Haven's voice when he said Jordan would kill him. Real fear."
Gannon sighed. "Haven is scared of anyone with more than two bars on their shoulders. The only one he isn't is Paloma, and that's because he sleeps with her. Has he ever talked to you directly?"
I blinked. Funny. He hadn't, except in the context of healing me. "No, he's never really talked to me much directly, you're right. I never really thought about it, but he also doesn't talk much to Sondirra, and that is more unusual. I guess it's harder to be intimidated by someone you've seen naked quite a bit," I said.
"Haven, of all of us, has seen most of us at our worst. Sick, throwing up, overdrinking. He gives all of us a physical every three months, I swear, and he is poking in places you don't want to know. Still, you put that uniform back on and he runs like a rabbit."
I hadn't ever noticed, but I'd never had a reason to notice. "Odd. He's not from a military family, is he? You see that sometimes when bad stuff's happened in a military family. Maybe it's just a quirk."
Gannon frowned. "I think both his parents are military, one elf and one human."
I always forgot that Haven was a half-elf. He looked nearly full-blooded. "He must take after his elven parent in a big way." I shook my head. "Something may have happened there, or something might have happened while we were in school that he didn't tell anyone about."
"Haven didn't want to be in the military. His calling was clerical, and he excelled quickly at it. He didn't want to have to fight and take lives, he only wanted to heal them. I think he fears the day that he will have to kill someone."
I blinked, thinking back. Sondirra had been sixteen, and Jordan had not yet become such a menace. She had come in one day after weapons practice and flopped down on the bed in the room we shared. "I got put up against Haven today," she'd complained. "I hate fighting Haven. He never hits back. Put me against Paloma or Jordan, sure, but not against the guy who all he ever does is dodge."
I'd forgotten all about it until this moment. I shook my head to clear it of the past. "We have a number of people among us who shouldn't have to be in the military. He's one of them."
Gannon nodded. "Maybe it will change so his children won't have to, if they don't want."
"If we succeed with what we're doing, I certainly hope so. At this point, even I am going to be glad to get shut of the military," I said, unexpected bitterness in my voice. "Once things have calmed down."
"So say we all," he said, vehemently.
"Say we all," I echoed. "And when this is over, I swear I am going to sleep for a week."
"Same here. But you have a bit of time, I think, before you can do that."
I snorted softly. "I know, but I'm still looking forward to it. We've got a lot of things to do--revolutions to create, world leaders to try to outthink. You know, the usual."
"Yes, Reuben is a problem. Finding him is the first one."
I pulled one knee to my chest, wrapping my arms around the leg and resting my chin on my knee. "Well, we knew approximately where he was. With the crystal gone, who knows where he'll be. If we're really lucky, he'll head back to his palace."
"He was smart enough to hit us where it hurt the most," Gannon said. "He is probably smart enough to have a decoy on the throne, or will just hide so that what he did to Yafa can't happen to him."
"I think I'm going to see if we can't get Isla to throw herself at him. At least at that point, he'll be distracted." Distraction on Reuben's part could only work in our favor.
"Let them fight the war that's coming, and maybe we can take over." Gannon shifted on his boulder, kicked at the snow at his feet.
"That was my thought, really." I began musing aloud, putting my thoughts in order. "I wish we had a better handle on just how much of his troop strength Reuben's expended recently. He's sacrificed a lot of people recently."
"Have you talked to Oberan's group. You had a friend there, didn't you? They might know."
I nodded. "Paquita, the gold, yes. They're in the palace, and last Sondirra talked to them they'd hit a dead end. We'll be checking in with them shortly to see if they managed to get Albina in, and whether she was able to help."
"Might want to ask her," Gannon said.
"I'll ask and see what they've come up with. I'm overdue for dropping her a message anyway--we've more or less cut out most of our talking since she's gone into deep cover. Which is really too bad, but I can see why." I missed talking with her, and I thought she'd be at once pleased and appalled by certain events of late.
Thinking of said events, I glanced over at Gannon. I'd have expected some awkwardness between us, after the way I'd acted, but I couldn't feel any trace of it. The lack of that awkwardness made me a bit uneasy, for some reason. I was expecting resistance, but finding none. "His troop strength has to be a major concern of theirs," Gannon said to me. "But he is letting them die in droves, he may have troops to spare."
I cocked my head, thinking. "The other possibility is that he wants everyone else to think he's letting them die because he has plenty in reserve. Though, honestly, the strongest argument against that is the fact that he sent only white dragons against us. If he has that many of only one clan, you have to wonder how many he has of the rest."
"Far too many. The golds have been leaving in droves since the massacre."
It was all too true, unfortunately. "Almost everyone who lives in his country must be in the military. Can you imagine?"
"From what I understand, all people that are in the military can retire but can be reactivated at any time for any reason."
"That would explain why he was able to get hundreds of unbonded white dragons to throw against us." I shuddered at the thought. "That was a bad blow for us, and a heartbreaking waste for me personally. If we hadn't had the dragons in the portal, there wouldn't be very many white dragons left in the world at this point."
Gannon looked thoughtful. "They seem to be on some sort of extermination policy of the whites, and on the whole as well."
"That seems to be the case, but I can't understand why. Unless it's Reuben having a grudge against Chaim or something. Or the silvers, since our territories overlap. We've shared the world pretty well for the last while, though." It had to be something else. What was it?
"All the dragon races are suffering losses, just from this war. And it takes us longer to rebound than the humanoids." He grimaced as if just struck by a terrible thought. "Is it possible that he is trying to rid the world of dragons? He did just lock up his bondmate."
I felt like someone had just hit me in the chest. Could it really be so simple? "Wait. Back up. He has a sudden personality revision, goes from nasty to just plain insane. He fights with his bondmate so badly that he gets his back broken, and then locks him up. He throws away dragon lives like they're worth nothing--but not humanoid lives. We were thinking that he might have been taken over by a frost giant. What if said frost giant is still fighting the war they lost three thousand years ago? Trying to eliminate the dragons from the world."
Gannon nodded, evidently trying the thought and not liking it much. "Makes sense if he got taken over. Dragon blood to create his items. And that offset cloak you talked about. What if that was new, and not old?"
"That might very well be. If so, this gets a bit scarier. He may have new artifacts that we know nothing about." I wrapped my arms a bit tighter around my knee. "I wish I'd managed to actually get ahold of the mage who was hitting us. He'd have had useful information."
"If the frost giant way of doing things is the same, there is a dragon in that cloak."
"True. we could talk to it and see what's what before we send it off." I made a face. "Now, I'm worried about the frost giants we sent down to Isla."
"If the Peacekeeper is bad and working for Reuben, a frost giant, Isla may be dead already." He shook his head. "Now, I don't see that likely, as she just got out from the portal system."
"No, I don't think so. And nobody but us had any reason to know she was in there, which is why I was all right to set her loose in the first place. I think she's on the level, but I'll need to talk to her when we transfer Isla's kids to her in a couple of days."
"It would be best to talk to her. Maybe she knows something we don't, or might recognize a giant by its method of operation."
I nodded. "I hope so. I'm rather hoping we're off base with this one., but we'll see."
"All things considered, it makes the most sense."
It did. Unfortunately. "It does. Can you imagine trying to explain this to his army? If we could get them to believe us, he'd be one dead elf."
"If, is the big question. Though his actions are suspicious. Suicide missions, draining of prisoners' blood."
"I'm sure he's got a lot of doubters in his troops. Well, I hope, at least. Though he may brainwash his people more thoroughly than we were. Well, really, it was only MI who were suspicious that there was something up with Yafa in the first place." I paused, frowned. Almost reluctantly, I said, "One has to wonder, though, if Yafa did everything we blamed on her. I don't know. It's difficult to sort the truth from the half-truths and the outright lies."
Gannon took a long breath. "I begin to believe that most things that were blamed on her were Reuben's doing."
It was a dangerous line of thought, and one that made me hurt just to think of it. How wrong had be been all along? How wrong had MI been? "Looking at how the Bulkaric massacre came out, and knowing that orders can and have been faked by Reuben, I am more than willing to pin that one on him."
"And the white dragon conversion to silver?"
I spread my hands. "How better to piss off a bunch of white dragons than to make them believe that the leader of one of the territories is trying to eliminate them by poisoning them and changing their children into silvers?"
He looked like he liked this about as much as I did. "Blame it on the person who has the most whites and do the conversion there and there you go, instant blame. Leave a hunter there that thinks he has only been dealing with Yafa."
"And that sets it up so a lot of unbonded white dragons will volunteer for a suicide mission."
"Yes, to destroy the only people that were getting close to the truth. His target wasn't Yafa, it was us. Yafa was the decoy."
"With the side effect of creating chaos in her territory with her death. As a distraction for what little MI is left," I said.
He shook his head. "We are rushing around, putting out the fires, and can't put our information together to find out what he is really doing."
I rubbed my temples. "We've got to figure out where he's vulnerable, and hit him there. He's too smart to leave very many holes."
He quirked his mouth. "The crystal structure has to be a blow."
"A major one. I'm thinking of seeing if I can remove all of the portals from his territory. He can still use teleport potions, but it limits his troop movement." We needed to limit his mobility.
Gannon nodded. "And increases their chances of dying with each teleport. If you consecrate enough ground I am sure you can."
Five percent casualties with each attempt. The chance got larger with every jump. He'd lose a chunk of his army with every long move. "I'm wondering if I can't somehow recall some of them to the mother, or something like that."
"Why do they call that one the mother, anyway?" he asked.
"In a way, the portals all came from it. I haven't had a chance to sit down and study how they were built, but I have a feeling that they're all something like buds of that portal. It has the raw ability, the child portals have that ability contained to within the network."
"If so, can she call them back to be reabsorbed?"
"That's what I'm hoping, but I'd need to probably go talk to her about it and see. The problem is what divinations say in response to 'where did this portal go?'. The mother is a secret. I'd like to keep her that way."
"Might be a problem," he admitted.
I gave him a wry smile. "I may have to destroy the system soon anyway. I hate to do it, but it may be necessary."
"It hurts us, but it hurts him more."
"Isn't that the truth." I sighed and rubbed my eyes. There was a long silence between us, broken only by the complaining creak of spring snow.
There was a moment there, when the silence was almost stretched to breaking, when both of us looked at each other at once, when something was about to happen, I wasn't sure what--
Hey, starshine, we've got some stuff to plan. You planning on stopping snuggling with Gannon and getting back here any time soon? I flushed, and from Gannon's look, he'd just gotten the same sort of message from Jordan.
I looked over at Gannon. "Guess we're wanted."
"As usual," he said, chuckling. He got up off his rock and brushed himself off, then extended a hand to me. I took it and he pulled me upright.
On our way, I replied to Sondirra. And we weren't snuggling, we were talking!
For you, that is snuggling, she replied, laughing. Some people snuggle, others plot revolution. It's all foreplay.
I gave her the mental equivalent of a stuck-out tongue, and the two of us started walking back. The odd feeling in my midsection was back, but once we got back, I was distracted enough to forget about it again.
I had enough to worry about right now. I could worry about that later...
Quotes:
"What you need to do is persuade Derek to do your character sheet."
"Right, look cute and say please!"
"Hey, cuteness generally works…."
--storm, Graham, Derek
"It seems so strange that something so dangerous is…pink."
And phallic!"
--Kris, Storm
"Listening post seed, just add water!"
--Graham
"You can smell everything Bambi does, which may not be a blessing considering that we don't bathe very often."
*dark look* "We will now."
--Kris, Derek
