The mud splashed up Breac’s boots, then dripped down and off the enchanted leather. It was raining again. It was late at night. The dwarf could barely see through the sleet. But he pressed on desperately.
It had been 8 months since William Bregan had left Breac behind in Tokmor City with Prius and Narls. The first 6 months had proceeded without much incident. Henry Gleamwood dated briefly. He traded clothes and linen to Braeland. He brought back flour, rice and some sailing equipment. He did all the trading by proxy, without leaving his family manor. 6 months into his sentence, he won leave to live instead in a small room above his warehouse on the edge of town. It had many windows. He could be clearly seen moving about inside as he lived his life.
Then he had brought back a shipment of obsidian building blocks and construction tools. It sat in a store yard. Some of the obsidian was sold off locally, but always replaced.
He diversified his business, opening a small potions shop and apothecarium. They didn’t deal in Angel’s Trumpet, but they did regularly pass satchels of herbs back to Gleamwood’s primary business for industrial experiments. There would be no need to send a butler out to market to buy fresh supplies if Gleamwood were to choose to make another batch of Devil’s Powder. Narls began buying potions from this shop and paying in tracker coins, while Prius ‘borrowed’ a few of their herb pouches and stitched in some divination runes.
Then Narls uncovered that some of her tracker coins had paid a group of builders working on a new mansion, not far from the warehouse. It was being built for a wealthy, elderly couple moving from the north side of town. There was nothing that elderly couple would have sold to Gleamwood to obtain that coin. Surely enough, closer investigation revealed that the mansion was being paid for by Henry Gleamwood, and the family it was supposedly being built for knew nothing of it.
Prius snuck out one night and brought back a copy of the architect’s plans. It was a two-story affair featuring a wine cellar and a transit tower, and it was nearing completion. The kitchen had been moved to the other side of the building, well separated from the tower. There were various spring-loaded ‘anti-intruder devices’ – all of which were being declared to Skywatch, surely - and there was a quaint set of chutes and trapdoors that were supposedly to aid servants in moving linen around. But the trapdoors were all set in the floor. Gleamwood was installing traps in his new abode.
Last night, Prius and Narls had been called to an official function in the High Square. They were able to relay by sending stone that Henry Gleamwood was not in attendance. Breac cast a scrying spell and found one of Gleamwood’s herb pouches was in the cellar of this new mansion. As he cast a Sending back to Lord Bregan to update him, there was a desperate knock on his door. A nineteen-year-old elven man (not even an adult by elven standards) had not returned home to where he was caring for his crippled father, and his neighbors were out searching for him.
Splat-Splat-Splat-Splat-Splat-Splat. Elves were fleet of foot and long of limb, but dwarves were relentless. They could maintain a full sprint (a dwarven sprint, mind you) for hours through any weather. Breac did not slow or stop, not once, not for sleet or hail or mud or…
He stopped in amazement. Directly ahead of him was the new mansion. And the servants – mostly female maids and maidens – were fleeing it, screaming and clutching at their heads. An elderly maid in her seventies (or an elven equivalent) raced out the front door and directly towards him.
“The crow, the CROW!” the old woman wailed.“Its in my head!”
“Get it out, get it out, get it oooouuut….” Another maid, much younger, screamed as she jumped out a second story window with a crash, landing with the blood and snap of a broken leg. She paid neither the weather nor her injuries any mind as she desperately struggled to put distance between herself and the manor. Breac shouted a quick word of divine command to heal her body, but there was nothing he could do about whatever was assailing her mind.
The maids were at least running away from trouble and in no immediate danger. Breac had to prioritize. He ran further forward, ten feet short of the manor door, to assess the situation – Henry Gleamwood was still inside the manor, along with who knew how many followers. He could no longer see anyone inside, so they would be somewhere within that closed off central stairwell, likely the basement. But so, presumably, was the boy. Even with the servants clear, and knowing where most of the mansion’s traps were, could he risk a direct assault by himself?
And then, as the last of the servants bolted, the manor exploded.
Even as a mere initiate in service to the sun goddess, Breac did not have much cause to fear fire. Smoke was another matter entirely. He picked himself up from where he had been flung back away from the door, tried to push himself inside, but the air felt like it had turned solid. He could taste the charred oak with every breath. The air stung his eyes and throat. It was even worse past the door’s threshold. He chocked, gagged, but with all his strength pushed on, one step at a time …
“Sunfist!” a familiar voice called from behind him. “Over here!”
Breac whirled away from the manor with relief. There was no mistaking that voice.
Lord Bregan was encased in a bubble of air, kneeling over a young elven adult male in a dark blue tunic and grey breeches. The silver hem of Bregan’s cloak was soaking up the mud, and his hair was covered in ash.
The elf stirred. “Hhgggaaa…”
“Slowly, now. You are alright,” Bregan bade him softly. “Take this to your father, it will make him well enough to travel. You must leave the city. Tokmor is not safe. You will remember the truth of this information, but not its source.”
The boy slowly came to, then with a start bounded to his feet. He looked at Bregan without recognition. Then he looked back at the manor, turned, and fled. Bregan slowly rose from his knee, flicking the damp mud off his rich silk hose.
“Gleamwood?” Breac asked as he approached.
Bregan extended his rain-proof bubble around his friend with a gesture. “Dead. But not by my hand. Look back there.”
Above the manor, glimpsed dimly through the smoke, an airship was circling. Breac couldn’t see its markings but didn’t need to. It was only about a hundred feet above the ground and even through the smoke he could make out the oversized arcane weaponry bristling from its underside. It was a Skywatch vessel.
“Prius said if Gleamwood were to die before I left, I would be blamed,” Bregan said. “He should have said ‘I will be blamed’. I didn’t destroy the manor. Skywatch did.”
“As a Gleamwood, Henry was supposed to be above reproach,” Breac agreed. “They didn’t need us to catch a killer. What they needed was a scapegoat.”
“In more ways than one, initiate.”
There was something Bregan wasn’t telling him, but Breac was getting used to that. One thing he had come to trust from his mentor. Lord William Bregan always meant well, and saved as many lives as he could.
“Do I now?” William murmured. “Ah, the innocence of youth…well, that’s not the story the Council will tell their people, but their own lies are for them to live with.” William clapped a hand down on Breac’s shoulder. He barely felt it through his pauldron. It was easy to forget, sometimes, that physically Lord Bregan was just a frail old man. “You’ve learned well, young Sunfist. I’ve alerted Prius and Narls, they’re already recalling to the Tree. I trust you still have your own way home?”
“Of course.” Skywatch would be here any moment, and if they were to avoid the dungeons now was the time to run. Breac fumbled a moment with his belt and brought out his shield token. He waited for William, looking at him expectedly.
“Go on, then.” William gestured to him.
“You’re…not coming back?”
“Maybe in time, but I will have to take the long way. I no longer possess a shield token.”
“…what?!”
“It’s for the best,” William smiled at him reassuringly. “I will be going places where it would be unsafe in the extreme to be caught with one of those on my person. And I will be seen doing things it is best the Little Warriors are not associated with.”
“But…the work. The other worlds, our homeworld! How will you move about the multiverse, without the aid of the Tree?”
“Oh, there are other ways. Ones I don’t care to share with you. For your own sanity, you understand.”
“Right,” Breac chuckled. “Of course.” He looked about at the wreckage of the Gleamwood Manor. “Maybe next time we’ll catch up over something that isn’t blowing smoke everywhere?”
“What would be the fun in that?” William replied with a rare grin.
Breac turned his token over in his hand. The world turned over under his feet – and William Bregan faded from view, to be replaced by the familiar calm sight of the lower boughs of the World Tree.
The next time Breac would see him, he would know him as Whisper.
*******************************
Breac shuddered with the memory of that grin. William Bregan almost never grinned with genuine mirth. Whisper did it all the time, he had grinned as he killed Adele, as he…had he been falling, even then? Or was this just another part of Whisper’s legacy, that Breac would never be able to remember William’s warmer smiles without feeling pain?
That grin crossed Breac’s mind again. Adele had been ripped from existence with an explosion of shocking violence, and Whisper had turned towards Breac…
Come here. You can’t hide from me. Whisper’s mind had almost crushed Breac’s brain inside his skull, he could see nothing but that leering face as the cleric’s fingers clutched desperately for his shield token. He had stumbled back into the Hall in agony both physical and emotional. It could not have happened, it had felt impossible. Prius had been right.
Whisper was William! William was Whisper!
He took a deep, long, slow breath. And Whisper was dead. T’Lau was dead. Taboo, and Alice, and Nathrael were all gone and would not return. It was time to clean up the mess and rebuild.
The ruins of the old Guild Hall lay under the mountain in an ancient dwarven fortress, where a column of quartz fed sunlight into the chamber of the World Tree. Sunlight otherwise did not enter the Hall. There had been a time when lanterns ensured the inner halls followed a rough sense of night and day – one not necessarily in sync with the outside world. Today, Breac had to light his own way down the hall towards the clink of moving rubble, masonry and broken furniture. There was something cool and comforting about the underground that, even after his reincarnation, Breac found soothing and reassuring.
Of course, any decent dwarven abode would feature underground highways to link to other halls. And sending stones to contact them by magical means. And a tower on the signal fire network outside, as a last-ditch backup. Breac was fairly certain there was a sending stone somewhere in here linked to the Ivory Bureauplazia in Eal city, but that was almost 3 days sail upriver from here.
He would have to speak to his initiates about this. It was still far too dim in these halls, he almost expected that devil Thal’tai to come hurtling out of some dark corner and try to assault him with his latest ‘bargain’. From far up ahead, at the end of the Hall, he could see the roots of the dead World Tree. He stopped and watched for a moment but saw no further movement.
“Hey, ah…Brian!” Breac reached out to tap the shoulder of a worker carrying a wheelbarrow of shattered slate, limestone and wooden panels from what was left of one of Rhillaine’s libraries.
“Ah, it’s Troy, sir,” the man replied with a grin. The lad looked barely older than Rin. He didn’t seem too offended, Breac’s lack of ability to remember names was legendary.
“Is Wintergreen about in here?”
“Lady Wintergreen? No, I haven’t seen her enter or leave. She might be down there…or maybe she went to visit the naturalist conclave? I hear she’s almost finished setting that up.”
Breac smiled down at him and clapped him on the shoulder, before heading further into the ruins of the tavern, which had been mostly cleaned of rubble. A group of carpenters were taking measurements and preparing to drill fresh plumbing holes into the stone walls. Of course, it was also possible Ruby was around a corner, in the living quarters perhaps. It was impossible to know.
After all, this was the inner Guild Hall. No one was able to look in. And no one was able to look out.
Was it truly any wonder that no one had seen Nathrael coming? It wasn’t just about the windows. It was the Hall, the gate, the tavern, all of it.
When you build your house anew exactly like your old abode. Then, Sunfist, you will know.
The original guild tavern had started like this. It was a small place for time-pressed officers to retreat to without having to trudge out to town. But that set the example – the officers wouldn’t associate with the locals on the river, so why should the guild agents? Their little tavern in the hall grew, and grew…and without realising it, they had decided they would carouse between missions with themselves, without leaving the Hall, without so much as poking a head into the world outside.
Why didn’t Tara Mills join them in the Guild Hall? Because the guild had never thought to invite her. She was gone before anyone thought to check on her.
Then they lost the need to farm the mountainsides for food, as it could be acquired off world. Then they lost the need to sleep in the inn, as they could just grow more bedrooms in the Tree’s pocket dimensions.
And then, and then…
You haven’t learned a thing. You’re just going to do it again.
It would be easy to blame Rhillaine. But she never asked them to build a tavern within the Guild Hall, when they already had one on the docks outside.
Or buy their boots in Eberron. Or neglect to check on the neighbouring town once a week.
“Oh, gods,” Breac sighed, looking about the wreckage. “I did this.”
“We did this,” Ruby Wintergreen corrected him. She was standing near the Hall entrance, a single ceramic pot of water under one arm. Breac hadn’t even heard her approach. “We all got so horribly complacent. Don’t cheapen our choices by implying yours were the only ones that mattered.”
“How long have you been watching?”
“Most of the morning. I wanted to see if you’d figure it out yourself. You had me worried for a while there.”
She’d been more patient with him then he ever would have been with himself, then. “Stop.” Breac called across the wreckage of the old tavern. “Stop! Down tools.”
“M’lord?” asked one of the workers in confusion. “Is it the bar? I know it never used to be quite so long, but I’ve been told the barkeeps used to complain of bumping into each other.”
“Keep clearing the Hall of this mess,” Breac ordered. “But we’re headed back to the Tomfoolery Inn. If that’s not fit for purpose, we’ll have to help Oswald expand it. We’re not building another tavern in here today.”
“We might not build the Hall in here,” Wintergreen added, softly for only Breac’s ears. “I’m fine with cleaning out this space and reusing it, but the tavern was always the soul of the guild. Not having the Hall built around it feels odd. And maybe the Tree needs to grow outside. Behind Tomfoolery’s, closer to the river.”
“Wouldn’t it be safer in here?”
Wintergreen looked about at the ruin of the old dwarven fortress that Gus had once declared unassailable. There was a soft snap as her feet crushed an old, giant rat’s claw that still hadn’t been shovelled away, from a foe killed here only a month ago. Nathrael wasn’t even the latest to succeed in breaching the Hall. She let her silence stand as her reply.
“Point taken. We’ll talk it over,” Breac promised.
A heavy-set man burst in from the courtyard outside. It was a wagon master, one of the new ones who’s name Breac had never learned. “M’lord…oh, M’lady. Wintergreen. It’s an honor. My apologies, Lord Sunfist…”
“Just a…delay, m’lord. Ah…the equipment. The brewing vats, piping and casks you asked for. They won’t be able to be brought up today. We were almost there, we’d brought it all up, but the securing ropes snapped…well, actually, looks like someone’s cut them. And some of those vats have rolled all the way back to the docks…”
Breac stared at him for a moment, and then burst out laughing.
“Oh,” Wintergreen gave the man a small smile in reassurance. “Of course. Miko.”
*****************************
Breac returned late from the Tomfoolery Inn. Oswald had been right. He had been too tense. A night relaxing before a fire, talking nonsense with his fellow guild members…it had done him good.
He returned to his room and dropped onto his bed to begin his nightly trance. It wasn’t coming easily. There was a green glow. From…that. He hadn’t covered it completely with that spare tablecloth. He reached out to adjust it.
Why did he reach under the cloth to touch the glowing half-circle instead? It was like wiggling a sore tooth, he supposed later. He had to touch it to remind himself of how much it hurt.
A young woman’s voice filled Breac’s room.
“Can anyone hear me? My name is Amber Mills of Neverwinter. We are under attack. Valindra's forces are too strong. My father's dead, the General...Hell, everyone's dead. Valindra's w..won, I can't believe I'm saying this, Valindra's won, there's nothing we can do. If anyone can hear this, send help, please!”
It was clear the world of Elanora needed their attention. But while the Guild remained cut off from the multiverse, their old enemies were not waiting for them. If they wanted to reconnect with their allies out there, and find anything more than smoking ruins…
They were running out of time.
***********************
By Shaun Ryan, 2024.
This is a work of fiction. Unless otherwise indicated, all the names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents in this book are either the product of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
The world of Elanora, its history and lore, and its characters are the collective works of the Little Warriors Adventurers Guild, a local Dungeons & Dragons community in Brisbane, Australia. This is a not-for-profit community that hosts game events and promotes the Little Warriors charity, which provides D&D gaming kits to sick children in hospitals. Acknowledgement is given to the Dungeon Masters and players of this community for their contributions to Elanora’s lore and their support in developing this work. https://www.facebook.com/littlewarriorshields/
This work is released for non-commercial purposes to the community of the Little Warriors Adventurers Guild. Permission is not and will not be given for it to be commercially distributed for any reason. It includes quotes derived from text in Julian May’s Magnificat (1996) and Rocksteady Studio’s Batman: Arkham City (2011).
