Arcanum - Of Steamwork and Magic Ch. 19

***

When I found Virginia at the Toadstool Inn an hour later, she seemed to be her hale and happy self, and was getting the rest of the party ready to travel once more. As our belongings were gathered, I stepped up to her. My hand took her hand and I said: "Virginia..."

She looked at me. Her jaw tightened and I saw a gathering stormcloud. And so, I did the only thing that I could. "I understand," I said, my voice soft. "You don't need to talk about it -- once you are ready, I will be there for you."

Virginia sagged. She looked as if she dearly wished to lean into my grasp. Instead, she drew away from me, mindful of the people who might be watching. Even now, that tone of my voice and the closeness of our conversation was drawing a few suspicious looks from the rest of the people who had come down for their early morning coffee. Before Virginia could speak, 'Magnus' stepped up to me. Her voice was a soft burr. "Sir, I've been thinking. I know that we were planning to go to the Wheel Clan, to tell them about the Book of Durin but..." She gulped. "It's gotta wait. We need to find T'Sen-Ang before we do anything else."

I nodded. "Are you sure, Magnus?"

'Magnus' smiled at me. "Ah, sir, I've been hunting fer my clan fer...longer n' you been alive. It can wait."

I bowed to her. "You are a brave one, Magnus."

A small crowd had gathered at the large garden park that was set aside for most magick workings in Caladon. Apparently, rumors were spreading quite rapidly that Dr. Cog was going to do something remarkable, and Virginia had not made it any less overt. She had spent the last ten minutes making passes and making incantations, her palms glowing with purple light as she paced around and around the party and our gathered luggage. The onlookers whispered among one another, and more than a few children were watching. A fellow in a jacket and bowtie hurried forward, his straw hat perched precariously on a mop of blond hair.

"Dr. Cog!" he called out. "Tycho Munts, I'm a reporter from the Tarantian, do you have a moment of your time?"

"Oh, uh," I said, then looked at Virginia, whose brow was furrowed and focused as she made her passes. "I think I may have a few moments."

"Is it true," Munts said. "That you are seeking to foment socialist unrest among the orcish laborers of Caladon, as you did in Tarant?"

I frowned, then turned wordlessly to walk back to Virignia's side.

"Dr. Cog!" Munts called after me. "Did you assist the nefarious Daniel Thews, real name Donn Throgg, in his escape from the honorable and noble Captain Wheeler? Dr. Cog!" He shouted after me, but Sally transpired to be between him and the rest of the party. Somehow, this ended with Munts on his behind in the grass. How utterly unfortunate.

"Virginia, are-"

"Do not distract me!" She hissed.

Then she spoke a word that made the world around us flex. Purple rings flared around my ankles, then shot up about me in a rising, concentric pattern. They bounced off the air above my head, rebounding and striking the floor, and the world around me continued to strain and flex and bow outwards. The world seemed to tear, and then reform around us and I staggered as Virginia fell to one knee, her face flushed. She panted heavily.

"Bloody hell!" Gillian exclaimed -- and I could see why: We were, in the space of an instant, standing before a familiar looking tavern. It was the tavern that, a year ago, I had played a game of poker at, to win the ticket onto the IFS Zephyr. I shook my head in slow wonderment, then looked at Virginia, who was panting heavily, but she was already beginning to stand.

"Hah!" she said.

"How long would that normally take?" Gillian asked.

"Oh, a week on foot," 'Magnus' said, his voice gruff. But despite the remarkable speed by which we had traversed the world, 'Magnus' was clearly more than a bit sad. It took me a moment to realize why...Maggie could only go without her incredibly uncomfortable false beard while we were in the deep wilderness, far from prying, questioning eyes. While Virginia's spell could now save us incredible time -- vital considering the danger facing the whole of Arcanum -- I could see why 'Magnus' would be a touch pained.

Sally, meanwhile, had fished out a shovel. "Oi!" she bellowed to a constable who wore a uniform that looked several decades out of date. "Where -hic- 's the cemetery!"

***

We came at night. With a shrouded lantern and the rain pouring down out of a brooding February sky. Sally's shovel bit into the dirt again and again and again. The others kept watch, but I had nothing but eyes for the growing pit as Sally worked faster and faster. Her shovel thumped against the coffin -- and she reached down, tugging the top of the coffin up in a cascade of mud and water. The skeleton within looked charred and shrunken -- but clutched in its bony fingers was a book. The book was bound in thick leather, and I quickly moved to stand between it and the rain. I picked the book up and Virginia held out her hand, creating a small telekinetic shield, shrouding us from the rain as I opened the book.

Horror Among the Dark Elves

by Dr. Renford A. Terwilliger

I dedicate this book to my darling Raven. I would gladly face these horrors again, and a thousand others, for only another moment with you.

I turned the next page to find that rot and time had claimed many pages of the book. Despair smote me -- my heart turned to ice...but then I saw there. On the final page not eaten by rot, just barely legible, was a small and detailed drawing of the Glimmering Forest, with a marking of Quintarra, the Boddekan Village...and, in the northwest corner, near the coastline itself, was T'Sen Ang itself.

"We have it," I whispered. I could not overstate the feeling of pure relief that flowed through me at the final end of this mystery. We had tracked this damn book across the entire continent. Rivers of blood had been shed to silence this truth -- and yet, evil had still failed to find that last chink in their armor. Something about that filled me with a great deal of relief.

"Aye, we do," Virginia murmured.

The next day, we visited the outfitter in Roseborough to ensure we were well stocked in bullets and supplies, and gave Virginia time enough to ready the spell. However, as a crowd watched us prepare the ritual, Virginia paused mid casting, her brow furrowing. Her palms pressed to the air and she scowled. "Something...prevents me from reaching it..." She said, quietly.

"Huh?" Sally asked.

"T'Sen Ang..." Virginia shook her head. "It has a protective field around it, that prevents teleporting straight there."

"Damn!" I growled.

Virginia grinned. "Quintarra doesn't." She nodded. "I can whisk us there, then we walk to T'Sen Ang on foot."

"Weeks on foot?" 'Magnus' asked, trying to conceal her excitement and failing rather abysmally.

I smiled at the dwarven lass. "It seem you get to enjoy the woods after all, Magnus," I said, my voice playful. "I'll be sure to tell the elves how much you enjoy their woods." 'Magnus' looked utterly affronted. Virginia had only to adjust the direction of her ritual and, within ten minutes, the world once more bent around us. I wondered how long it would take before such a thing became utterly mundane. It was not yet: We looked around the Glimmering Forest with wide eyes, as if we could not believe that the world had shifted under our feet so completely. But once the wonder had passed, I set a brutal pace. We headed away from Quintarra, cutting deeper and deeper into the forest.

I took notes, just as I had last time, but these notes were far sparser and less intricate. There was no time to stop and measure trees. Instead, we only had time for driving ourselves deeper and deeper into the woods. Here, ironically, the dark elves' use of magick backfired on themselves. With her conveyance mastery, Virginia was able to 'feel' for their power source by attempting to teleport, allowing us to continually change our directions to make our passage safer and faster.

At last, on the evening of the 21^st of February, we came to the edge of T'sen Ang.

The forests here...were different. The leaves were darker and the character of the animals and beasts around us had taken on a distinctly vicious appearance. Insects became more common, and those that we saw were larger, and less prone to skitter away from us. Rather, they would hiss and threaten, and more than one spider had tried to crawl into my bedroll, only to be bashed away by a flinching hand -- but the memory of the close brush with the insectoid life had left me feeling as if something was crawling on my skin all night. But T'sen Ang itself was, from all intents and purposes, a mirror to Quintarra -- but shrouded in thick darkness by the thick, black brambles that grew from every twisted tree.

Two guards stood at the entrance, just as they did at Quintarra. I made sure that each of us were wearing our Molochean amulets, then started towards the guards. The dark elves looked exactly like the elves of Quintarra...until one looked into their eyes. While the elves of Quintarra had a merriment and humor that even the most stoic could not conceal, the dark elves of T'Sen Ang had dark, black pits for eyes. They were the eyes of the dead, not merely killers, and they looked at us from between a fringe of unruly hair.

"Ah," one of the guards said, sneering. "Have you useless assassins finally managed to bring us the head of-" He stopped as I held up a small package roughly the size of...of well, of my head. It had been stuffed with a mixture of bedding and bits of rock to give it a proper weight, and we had dipped it in the blood of a deer we had shot dead for its meat, to give it the proper browning along the false neck stump. I grinned, toothily.

The dark elf sneered, then opened the elevator carriage.

The elevator rose into the canopy, and when we stepped from it, I once more felt that dark sense of deja vu. Quintarra in duplicate had been too subtle: This place was Quintarra's shadow. The same pathways, the same buildings freely suspended from rope and cable, the same structures...but all twisted. All darkened. The wood was a darker hue, and the lights that shone among the dim trees were a blood red, casting everything in looming darkness. But what was the biggest inversion was not the color, nor the shadow...it was the silence. Even the wind felt distant and dim here, and there was not a sign of elves anywhere. Only by peering as hard as I could did I spy a distant, robed figure striding from one pool of darkness to another.

A guard flowed from a shadow. Her chainmail armor clinked softly and her sword clicked as the scabbard bounced against her thigh. She looked me over, coldly. "You are the assassins?" she asked.

"Aye," I said, trying to sound like a swaggering, blustery assassin. "Where is everyone here. I thought this was, like, the fuckin' capital of the dark elves."

The guard sneered at me. "Ah yes. You expected us to all be here, singing and dancing and braiding flowers in our hair?" She shook her head. "We're out in the world. Doing what those fools in Quintarra won't. Now." She pointed. "Go. Min'Gorand is waiting for you."

Another echo. There had been no structure in the place she pointed -- not until she directed our attention to it. Like the Silver Lady's home, this place was concealed by magick until it was required. I walked forward, and nodded subtly to Virginia as we stepped into some shadows. When I emerged, I walked up to the front door of the home of Min'Gorand. The door swung inwards and I stepped into a chamber of horrors. The walls were decorated with tapestries made of a hideously familiar leathery material, painted inn colors that hearkened to the hues of dried blood and fresh brains. The furniture was carved of bone and wood and wicker...and sprawled lazily in a throne, caressing the curved forehead of a human skull, was an elven woman.

She was as breathtakingly beautiful as Raven -- but where Raven's coldness had felt like the natural chill of a winter storm, this elf's features were the cold harshness of steel. But like Raven, she had midnight black hair. Unlike Raven, her face was covered with winding, angular tattoos -- vines and thorns, clinging to her sharp cheekbones and her curved ears. She was dressed in a thin leather strip that clung to her smallish, apple sized breasts, and a tight thong that clung to the paleness of her thighs, vanishing between the cleft of her legs. She smirked as she eyed me.

"So," she said, her voice a quiet croon. "Molocheann. You come bearing the head of our target?"

"Min'Gorand?" I asked.

Her eyes glittered. "Yes," she said, casually. Then her finger pointed at the 'head' that hung from my belt. I opened my mouth -- but before I could say anything, her fingers twisted. Purple light flared around her palm and magick grabbed the head, yanking it from my belt and into her hand. She hefted it and then looked at me.

"Molochean," she said, her voice soft. "What is this?"

"The head of the blimp crash survivor," I said, my voice firm.

Min'Gorand put her palms to either side of the skull's 'temple.' "It's...a faaaaaaaake," she hissed, then stood in a single fluid motion, her palms crushing the 'skull' together, forcing the laundry and carefully chosen rocks to patter onto the floor.

I blinked, then slowly, I sighed. I tugged my amulet over my head,, tossed it to the floor, then grinned at her. "That's true," I said, casually. "I'm Rayburn Cog. And I want to know one thing before I die..." I paused. "Where. The. Fuck. Are. The. Gods. Damned. DWARVES!?"

Min'Gorand grinned, slowly. Her hands opened and she let the sack drop to the ground at her feet. She stepped casually over it, her movements lithe and beautiful, her eyes meeting mine. She grinned. Like a cat. A cat about to toy with its prey. "You want to know what happened to the Black Mountain Clan?" she crooned. "Whatever for?" She reached out and caressed my chin. "You don't really think you are Nasrudin, do you?"

I frowned, keeping my face impassive.

Min'Gorand laughed, then walked away, turning to show me the tautness of her perfect ass. The thong she wore vanished between those cheeks too. She looked over her shoulder at me -- utterly aware of how beautiful she was, reveling in it. "Well, Nasrudin," she said, her voice freighting the name with mockery. "Since you are going to die soon, I suppose I can tell you. The dwarves were banished to the same place that you sent them. To the Void." She smiled coldly, reaching down to pick a knife up off one of the tables near the edge of the wall. She put the tip to her finger, twisting the knife from side to side, teasing her skin with the point. "The barrier between Arcanum and the Void is magickal in nature-"

"Technology!" I exclaimed. "You're having them build a technological countermeasure -- to weaken the magickal barrier."

"Precisely." Min'Gorand chuckled.

"But how did Stennar get through?" I asked, frowning. "If he can get through-"

Min'Gorand scoffed. "He's a dwarf," she said, in the same way Captain Wheeler might have said 'he's an orc.' "They barely have souls, let alone magickal impressions. He could squeeze through the tiny crack they've opened so far. But if Arronax tried to bring his majesty through..." Her eyes shone and she beamed. She didn't seem to be aware that her finger was now bleeding -- blood flowed along her pale white skin, dripped from her wrist, pattered to the floor. "Well. Lets just say it would be a very unpleasant death."

I nodded slowly. "But once they complete their machine, Arronax comes through."

"Yes. Though, you won't live to see it," Min'Gorand said, chuckling. "Guards?"

A dark shape rolled from one of the shrouded corners of the room. It came to a stop near Min'Gorand's feet. She looked down at it...and blinked slowly.

It was the severed head of an elf. Another corpse hit the ground to the other side of her, splattering face down on the floor. Harrower was buried between their shoulder blades. Sally and Maggie emerged from the darkness. Maggie yanked Harrower from the dead dark elf's back, casually, while Sally wiped the longsword I had purchased for her from Roseborough clean with a napkin. Sally was whistling cheerfully.

Min'Gorand snarled. "How!?"

"We're in the teleporter suppressor," I said, cheerfully. "Virginia described it as being a bit like a hurricane. I trust her."

Min'Gorand lifted her palm. "You-" She growled, her fingers clenching. Lightning crackled and sparkled around her hands, growing in energy and power. I didn't even bother to reach for my accelerator pistol. A dark shape appeared behind Min'Gorand and the tip of a blade exploded between her breasts. The crackling energies that Min'Gorand had been gathering sparked and flared, going out of her control as her face went slack, her eyes widening. Virginia jerked back, almost tripping over the throne as magickal energies coursed into Min'Gorand -- and in a single instant, shriveled the elf into ash.

"Bugger!" Virginia hissed.

"Sir!" Gillian hissed from the door. I turned to see that she was peeking out, having opened the door a crack. I suppose that Virginia had sent her there to serve as a look out. "We're clear!"

I breathed out in a slow sigh of relief. Then, grinning, I clapped my hand to Virginia's shoulder. "Good show, old girl!" I said, beaming at her.

"We need to go, now," Virginia whispered, her face wan -- clearly, teleporting the party about had tired her out. I nodded and the lot of us started for the door, which Gillian opened for the lot of us. We closed the door quickly and started to make our way towards the exit -- but as we walked, my heart hammered and my mind whirled. Arronax had a plan. A real plan. A plan that could work. The vision of him now made sense -- as did why he hadn't tried to push his luck again. A pinhole crack like that would let his magick through, but his magick could interfere with any technological device in the area. He wouldn't want to risk damaging the dwarves' work -- doing so would delay his entrance into the world.

How long did we have?

How long until the engineering skill of the dwarves overcame their natural inclination to resist their captors?

I did not know -- but I knew that we had to return to Quintarra. We had to return there immediately.

But as we hurried towards the elevator, a figure stepped form the shadows, standing between us and the exit. They were a human being -- a male, with a completely bald pate and cold, cold blue eyes. He was as tall as I was, and just as muscular, though his clothing was oddly nondescript. It was the kind of clothing that would fit in anywhere, from Stillwater to Tarant to Caladon, so long as he either avoided high society...or simply aped a servant. He had a pistol clasped in his hands and was regarding us with a stern expression. I slowed, then stopped. Tension crawled along my spine.

"I know who you are," the bald man said, quietly.

If he raises a hew and cry, who knows how many dark elves will be upon us. We don't have long before they discover that Min'Gorand is dead as well, I thought. Quietly, I said: "Ah, but I don't know you. And I would like dearly to know..."

The bald man inclined his head. "I am Gideon Laier. I am the grandmaster of the Molochean Hand." He pursed his lips. "I must admit, I did not quite expect you to be so brazen as to come here, to the heart of your enemies." He shook his head.

"Why do you want Ray dead!?" Virginia hissed, stepping forward, her hand on the hilt of her sword.