Fort Emergence - Part 1
The creature in the pen looked up at her with dark, mournful eyes, set in a long, bony face. Adrianna stared back for a while, trying to find some common ground with it, but it seemed to stay as vacant as ever. Eventually it made a low "baaaa" and went back to cropping on the lichen in front of it. Adrianna turned back to Eva.
"So what's it for?"
"Quite a few things, apparently," said Eva. "Meat and milk, same as the cows, but also for clothing. See all that curly hair it has? It can be shorn off and made into a thick cloth."
"Incredible," said Adrianna, turning back to look at the sheep with a new kind of appreciation.
"Someone who'd lived on the surface was telling me the other day that its fat is pretty good at keeping out the damp as well," said Eva, picking yet another clump of matted fur and dung from the skirts of her robe. "It seems a pity the Empire never thought to send a few of these down to us. They might have been more useful than the cows."
"Mmm. It looks quite a skinny thing, though, doesn't it?"
"It's the lichen," sighed Eva, coming up beside her and looking into the pen, where the sheep had abandoned the lichen and was now standing there, staring vacantly into space. "It's not what they're used to eating. Most of our sheep starved. We don't have the plants they have on the surface."
This Adrianna had learned soon after she'd arrived in Fort Emergence. The surface research laboratory was full of wonders, containing plants of dizzying variety, blooming with unimaginable colours and scents. There were trees of many species: upright, sturdy things encased in solid bark, not like the stunted, half-fungal cavewood trees that grew in the underworld. The pens, which Eva presided over, were full of odd creatures like the sheep, and the chickens that clucked and fussed next door. And a deep growling from one of the pens further along intimated that there were other, less benign creatures kept here. The mages of Emergence spent their days intensively studying these specimens of flora and fauna, snatched by teleportation magic from the surface, which, as Eva had explained to her, was almost directly above their heads.
"Nothing like this would have been possible down in Avernum proper - but with the help of a few scries, the teleportation magic has just enough range to bring a few things down."
Adrianna had had ample time to find out about the workings of Fort Emergence's magical laboratories, for it was here that she'd spent most of her time since she'd arrived, four days ago now. As soon as she'd accepted Aldous' offer, things had moved very quickly. Before she knew it, she had packed her things, dashed off a letter to her mother telling her of her destination, and had bidden all her friends at the Tower goodbye. Telling her team had been the hardest part, but despite her fears, none of them blamed her. Ramona and Morgant were both enthusiastic on her behalf - "if it was me, I'd leap at the chance!" - "don't worry, we'll make sure we don't have any major breakthroughs till you get back, ha, ha!" Only Deverell had been put out, but even so, he'd wished her well. One innards-twisting trip through the portal later, she was on the very next caravan from Upper Avernum's Portal Fortress to Fort Emergence. The stark, military atmosphere of the place had been daunting at first, and everyone seemed to be running around under a great deal of stress, but eventually she'd found her quarters and asked the guests' steward - a scrawny, nervous young man named Gordon - to send a message to her contact, Anaximander, to inform him that she had arrived.
Her written orders had implied a rather breathless urgency, so it had been something of a surprise when the rest of the day passed without her receiving any kind of reply. It was the sort of idiosyncratic approach she might expect from the Tower of Magi, where everyone had their minds on more esoteric matters than mere bureaucracy, but in a place like Emergence, where more than half the population were soldiers, it surprised her.
Then again, as she'd reasoned it over her first lonely dinner in the guest quarters' empty dining hall, if Aldous was anything to go by, maybe she should expect a more… casual approach from Unspecified Services.
When morning came and there was still no word from this Anaximander, Adrianna made up her mind to explore the fort instead - partly out of curiosity, partly out of a desire to scavenge some idea of what she had been sent here to do. The mages' quarter had seemed like a reasonable start. But Mazumdar, the head mage, had heard nothing of her assignment, and could offer no more advice than to simply sit and wait.
But for all that, she was kind enough to allow Adrianna to come and go as she pleased - the clannishness of the Tower extended even as high as Upper Avernum - and Adrianna was grateful, for there was a wealth of fascinating experiments to observe; and, despite how Mazumdar might grumble about the Triad keeping back all the really useful resources, the fort had a well-stocked magical library containing some surprisingly obscure texts that she happily lost herself in for hours, provided she kept well out the way of Berra, the irritable old wizard who frequented the library.
But now, despite these diversions, she was beginning to get restless. At best she felt like an especially useless ghost, just floating around with nothing to do. At worst, she felt like a nuisance. She said as much to Eva, who was now grinding unfamiliar herbs and roots together in a mortar, releasing sharp, pungent odours that made Adrianna's nose twitch.
"Perhaps I should send another message to Anaximander?"
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," said Eva. "Unspecified Services are all over the place, but somehow it works for them. Just sit tight and all will be revealed. That's their way."
"You seem to know a lot about them."
"There's a fair few of them here, doing this and that. They come in here every so often, looking for something. One group came in looking for information on surface flora and fauna."
"Why was that?"
Eva looked suddenly wary, and sent a swift, covert glance across the room. The mages' offices had only a very small staff so far, and save for themselves, the laboratory was empty. Mazumdar was over in the administrative quarter, and Berra was ensconced in the library, as usual. All the same, Eva moved in a little closer, and spoke so softly that Adrianna had to lean right in to hear:
"I probably shouldn't be telling you this, but you'll find out eventually, anyway, if you're here. There was a group of adventurers posted here a while back - Unspecified Services, obviously. The cream of the crop, it was said. They had been trained at the Castle by King Micah's own guard, given special magical items by X - do you remember when X was shut up in the labs all those months, working on those secret projects? - and they were given their orders. I saw them all march out of the north gate myself."
"To the surface," Adrianna breathed. Almost as soon as she'd arrived in Fort Emergence, she'd learned that the rumours were true, that they had found a route to the surface. It lay beyond the north gate of the fort, guarded by a grim basalt gatehouse and an equally grim detachment of soldiers, with plenty of signs loudly proclaiming that AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY were permitted past this point. Certainly, in four days, Adrianna hadn't seen one person pass through the gate in either direction. The security was far heavier than that at the south gate, as if they half-expected Imperial troops to storm the place at any moment. A taut sense of apprehension seemed to hang over the whole fort, an uneasiness at being so close to the Empire. A fear that, having got so close to the dream at last, it might be snatched away from them in a heartbeat.
But it was real. It was really happening. Avernum was really sending people up to the surface.
"How long ago did they leave?"
"Quite a few months ago," Eva admitted, her expression clouding as she continued to grind her herbs. "And as fas as I know, they haven't reported back. Mazumdar and Berra were shut up together for days. I don't know for sure, but my guess is they were trying to scry them."
A sense of dread lurched in Adrianna's gut. "Then... did they find...?"
Eva shook her head. "I don't think so."
"Then - what? They've disappeared?"
"Either that or run," Eva said grimly. "There have been a few who have done that: come up, saying they want to help with the building work, or the supply trains, and given the guards the slip at the first moment."
Adrianna nodded. She couldn't say she approved - growing up with a mother working at the city hall, civic duty had been a virtue hammered into her from a young age - but she guessed she could understand. She wondered, fleetingly, if she had been chosen to go up to the surface, would she have done the same? After a lifetime in the underworld, would she have been able to resist the temptation just to forget about everything else and disappear into the wide blue yonder?
It was food for thought as she returned to the guest quarters that afternoon, unwilling to get under Eva's feet any longer. Her footsteps echoed eerily up the gloomy passageway, almost disastrously loud in the utter stillness. Busy as it seemed, Fort Emergence was as yet running at a fraction of its full capacity. Most of the buildings were barracks, and they were barely half-full. The guest quarters were hardly touched. The stone was fresh, the smell of limewash was still sharp, and the air hadn't yet had time to take on the smell of mildew that all buildings in Exile acquired before too long. Adrianna hadn't even seen another guest in the whole time she was here. She had been assigned to a large, empty common room crammed up at the very end of the passage, as far away from the main courtyard as she could be, cut off from the bustle by several thick stone walls. That was another compelling reason for spending all her time in the mages' offices: the isolation of that remote room, in that eerily silent cave of a building, made her deeply uneasy.
It was thoughts like that which occupied her when she reached the door at the end of the corridor, pushed it open, and realised that there was someone on the other side. Two someones.
"Aaargh!"
She screamed. So did one of the someones. It took a few seconds for her vision to clear and her heart to stop pounding quite so hard, before she realised that the intruders were definitely not Empire troops or any other nasties, that they were just as startled as she was, and that they probably weren't dangerous.
When she had opened the door, they'd both swung round, wide-eyed. Now she saw that they were a human man and a slithzerikai female. They had both gone for their weapons when she had come in: the slith hefted the heavy, two-pronged spear of her people, while the man's hand had gone instantly to the hilt of the short stone sword at his belt. Now they relaxed, glanced at each other in palpable relief, and the man laughed.
"Gods!" he cried, clapping a dramatic hand over his chest. "You shouldn't go around scaring people like that!"
"I could say the same thing for you!" she replied, caught between indignation and laughter herself. She realised she still had one hand half-raised, the beginnings of a fireball warming her palm. She closed her hand over; the spell snuffed out.
"Yeah, sorry about that," said the man, scratching the back of his head. "Just the quiet of the place, y'know? Put us on edge. I tell ya, I've been in haunted tombs that weren't half as creepy as these quarters."
"It's an edgy kind of place," Adrianna agreed.
"You're telling me." He grinned and put out a hand. "Truce?"
She shook his hand, and found herself smiling back at him. He was probably about her own age, she realised, tall, lean, and loose-limbed, and that broad smile seemed to come very easily to him. He had an unruly mop of auburn hair, and very bright blue eyes: a startling combination against his pale Avernite skin. She might have thought of him as boyish, if it wasn't for the suggestion of well-hewn muscles beneath his dark tunic, and the battered leather armour and cavewood buckler which had obviously seen some wear and tear in their time. Unspecified Services, very definitely.
"Name's Jenneke," he said. "And this here's my old friend Thissa."
"Pleased to meet you. I'm Adrianna." She nodded to Thissa, who inclined her head in acknowledgement. The slith was a big, powerful specimen of her kind, with hard grey-and-green scales that gleamed in the lamplight, and wickedly curving claws. She wore a drakeskin loincloth, and around her neck hung a variety of different charms, fashioned from polished stones and what looked suspiciously like goblin teeth. Her eyes were red slits that stared steadily about her, and Adrianna had the feeling that there wasn't much that escaped that keen, considering gaze.
"So, Adrianna," said Jenneke, "how long've you been here?"
"Four days."
"Just yourself?"
"Yeah. Well, up till now."
"You Unspecified as well, then?"
Hesitantly, she nodded. It was the truth, but she still felt a bit fraudulent. "Just."
"Just?" Thissa prompted, in a soft, sibilant voice.
Adrianna coloured. "I was only recruited a week ago. I'm probably the newest recruit they have."
"And they sent you straight up here? Not bad!" Jenneke laughed, then he paused. "Have you been in touch with any Unspecified contacts since you've been here? We've been told to report to someone called Anaximander."
She shook her head. "So was I. I sent a message to him as soon as I got here, but I've not heard back."
"Huh." He frowned. "Well… maybe we can try again. Thing about Unspecified is, they have their own system. But maybe if we let him know there's more of us here, this Anaximander guy'll move his arse a bit."
"Maybe. If you want to send a message, you can do it through Gordon, the steward."
"Oh, yeah. Him." Jenneke shared a look with Thissa. "We've met him. He showed us up here. Is he always so… jittery?"
"Every time I see him." She sympathised with the poor man - the atmosphere of Fort Emergence was enough to put anyone on edge - but his hovering, anxious presence unnerved her. "I try not to bother him, if I can help it. Anything seems to set him off."
"You're telling me. He nearly dropped a brick when he saw Thissa!"
"I take it there are no other slithzerikai here in Fort Emergence," said Thissa.
"None that I've seen," said Adrianna. "I've heard there are some working up in New Formello, but no, not here."
"I thought not. These upper caves would be a cold place for my people."
"We can get a brazier in here for you," Jenneke said. "And while we're about that, we can see if Gordon'll pass on another message to our contact." He unbelted his sword and dropped it on the nearest bed, quickly followed by his buckler, cloak, and armour. "Now the important question - what time's dinner?"
The guest quarters of Fort Emergence were probably the most luxurious Adrianna had ever seen, and the food - when they had managed to calm Gordon down enough to send for it - was some of the most palatable that Exile could offer: prime lizard steaks, a savoury soup of roots and herbs, the less spongy kind of mushroom-meal bread, and thick mushroom ale. After a long day on the road, Jenneke and Thissa both went at their dinner with gusto, demolishing the steaks and downing a whole bottle of ale between them, but they still managed to fit some conversation around their eating.
"This is where it's at," said Jenneke rapturously, sopping up the last of his soup with a hunk of bread and guzzling it straight down. "Normally when we're on assignment, they shove us in the crappiest little inn room they can find."
"The two of you have worked together often?" said Adrianna, keen to know more about her new companions.
"About four years now, I think, yeah."
"And a good thing it was for him, too," said Thissa, with a wry note to her usual measured tones, "or he would have been gremlin fodder long ago."
"Can't argue with that," laughed Jenneke, and the two of them shared a warm, affectionate smile, such as Adrianna had never imagined could pass between a human and a slith. Since the Slith Wars, there had been a reconciliation between the Kingdom of Avernum and the friendly sliths of the caves, and she had met slith mages who had come to the Tower as envoys. But there was still tensions, factions on both sides who regarded each other with distrust, even hostility, and many sliths who came to live amongst humans were treated with contempt, sometimes outright cruelty. But a deep, genuine friendship seemed to exist between Jenneke and Thissa, and Adrianna found herself moved.
"How did you two meet?" The question was out before she could stop herself, and she bit her tongue, wondering if they'd resent her poking her nose in.
Rather, Jenneke looked vaguely embarrassed, and even Thissa's still reptilian face had a trace of humour about it.
"Ah…" Scratching the back of his head sheepishly, Jenneke said, "well, I was scouting some caves in the Honeycomb, and I kinda got into a spot of bother with some rogue nephilim, who hauled me off to their fort."
"Fortunately for him, I happened to be… exploring the place," Thissa continued. "The nephilim had purloined something from a friend of mine, and I had pledged to recover it. When I found this poor wretch languishing in one of their cells, I freed him out of sheer kindness."
Jenneke grinned. "It definitely evened the odds for me when I made my big escape."
"It has evened the odds for you six separate times since then," said Thissa.
"Five," Jenneke said quickly. "I had that bandit chief exactly where I wanted him."
"Flat on your face, with your sword broken in two?"
"It was a feint!"
Thissa gave a hiss that seemed to stand in for a human scoff, and they continued to bicker good-naturedly over exactly how many times each had saved the other's life, and which one of them had really finished off that vampire in the Mertis Spiral. They had so many stories between them - it seemed they'd been inseparable since the moment Thissa had broken Jenneke out of the nephil cell - and Adrianna listened avidly. These were proper Unspecified agents, cut out of the same cloth as Aldous and his comrades, and she was assailed - yet again - by a hopeless sense of inadequacy. How could she possibly match the sort of things that Jenneke and Thissa had done? They had explored uncharted caves, fought bandits, cleared out monster dens. Although she had helped ward off the odd bandit raid or undead host between the Tower and Formello, she had never done anything to compare with all that.
Of course, Jenneke would decide to ask her about herself. "So, Adrianna, what d'you do at the Tower?"
"Well, for the last few years, I've been conducting magical research with some colleagues of mine."
He gave a low whistle. "Sounds impressive. What sort of research?"
"Elder runes." At the comically blank look on his face, she laughed and explained, "The very first runic system developed by mages, thousands of years ago. Runes have gone through several evolutions over the ages, before the development of the ones we use today, and we believe that some subtleties have been lost over the course of these evolutions. So my team and I are trying to recreate the elder rune system, to have a better idea of how rune magic worked in its rawest, most arcane form. And, hopefully, by doing so we'll be able to harness some of that lost magic. We've been trying to reconstruct the original runes by studying the various intermediary systems, and-"
"Whoa, there!" Jenneke threw up his hands. "You'll have to use small words; I don't have the brain for that kinda thing!"
"Oh!" She blushed furiously, cursing herself. She had an embarrassing tendency to go on when she was enthused, and bringing up her research was always guaranteed to get her going. "Sorry."
"No worries," said Jenneke. "Unspecified hire me for my sword, not my grey matter. Magic's way over my head. Thissa knows a thing or two about it, though."
"Only in theory," said Thissa, and to Adrianna she explained, "I was once tutored by Sssh-Tha, one of the great mage-priestesses of Gnass, but I chose the warrior's path instead."
"So we've got two warriors and a mage," said Jenneke, suddenly thoughtful, leaning back in his chair. "Wonder what that's all about?" He looked at Adrianna. "Don't suppose Aldous told you anything about this assignment?"
She shook her head. "I got my order to report here and that was about it."
"Yeah, same with us. We was cooling our heels in Fort Draco after cleaning out a goblin camp, when Aldous found us out and gave us our marching orders. That must've been… how long?"
"Nearly two weeks," said Thissa.
"Two weeks, yeah. And that was it. Gave us our papers, and off he went, just like that."
"It was much the same for me," said Adrianna, considering. Nearly two weeks. If Aldous was in Fort Draco nearly two weeks ago, and at the Tower of Magi one week ago, then he must have travelled straight down. What sort of assignment could need that sort of urgency? Certainly everything seemed to be happening at lightning-speed. Maybe it was just an inevitable side-effect of the rapid colonisation of Upper Avernum. But she couldn't shake the feeling that there was something more, some underlying mystery about their presence here.
"Did Aldous tell you he was recruiting anybody else?"
Jenneke shook his head. "Nope, nothing like that. Unspecified does like to keep everything on the hush-hush, whether it needs it or no."
"We are clearly intended to form some part of a team," said Thissa.
"Yeah. But why be this mysterious about it all? Strange, very strange…"
Adrianna thought about what Eva had told her today, about the group that had been sent to the surface, and she allowed herself a wry chuckle. "Maybe we're to be part of the emergence initiative?"
Jenneke snorted. "Yeah, right. If they're dumb enough to trust me with something that important, I'll eat drake dung."
