Celsian watched doubtfully as Corbin ladled some soup into a tin bowl and passed it back to the dwarf. He prodded a chunk of white meat floating in clear broth alongside black seaweed and a chunk of hardtack that hesistated to soften. Salvisa felt her heart sink.
"It's not poison." Salvisa said, "We shouldn't eat our preserved food when there's fresh available."
"It's spider." Celsian protested.
"Think of it like crab. It tastes just like white fish, doesn't it, Lop?"
"Yep." Lop nodded, adding, "Like saltwater, more like."
He had already finished his first helping and reached out for a second. Corbin dipped his ladle into the section of carapace Salvisa had used as an impromptu cauldron to boil up a soup after Freia roasted the spider.
Celsian's nose wrinkled and he said, "I can't understand Harmonian tastes." He took a hesitant sip and grunted, his further spoonfuls assuring Salvisa that her cooking was worse more in anticipation than in actuality.
"It's not really Harmonian." Salvisa explained, "We had to deal with bushmeat often in the Guard. Let me tell you, at least we're not eating Ulse-meat. Absolutely rancid. Worse regular wolf, but when you have nothing else it's better than starving. Don't dwarves ever need to just get by?"
"Never! Not even when your people invade." Celsian huffed, "We plan our villages well and we don't need to worry about weather."
"That must be nice, to be so secure." Salvisa said, thinking of her childhood where there was never want for anything except the gilded things of life. She felt a pang of nostalgia for that distant bliss as a girl and as a young woman in her husband's arms.
Stomachs full, it was time to clean up camp. It would be safer to rest ahead in the light, Salvisa judged, so long as they kept their tracks to a minimum. While Freia and Lop cleaned the dishes, Salvisa set to work turning the inedible remains of the spider to dust. Now that it was dead, there was no resistance to her magic. The last thing that Salvisa wanted was the stench of food drawing more monsters out of the woodwork.
When they finally found an alcove to unpack their bedrolls, even Corbin was beginning to drag his feet. They drew lots for who would stand watch, though time was nearly meaningless without sun or moon, or the need to burn torches for light. Salvisa volunteered for the third shift, after Celsian and Lop. Salvisa lay down to sleep, hoping that this would be a night without the True Rune's dreams.
When she woke up, Lop was gone. He was supposed to wake her. The others still slept. Salvisa rose to her feet, listening intently for any sign of the boy. This couldn't have been another one of his tricks, could it? She shouldn't have trusted him to behave for one second out of eyesight, but he had been behaving so responsibly lately. Freia needed him to be responsible, Salvisa thought. There was no helping it now. Salvisa sighed and tiptoed around her sleeping companions and into the tunnel that lay ahead of them.
Every so many steps, Salvisa paused, straining to hear anything other than the flow of water. She could hear no clattering of spiders' legs, at least, and it was bright enough in this location that she could assuredly see one of them if it decided on a quick meal of human. She wondered what else would live in a place like this. Bats would not be out of place. If she could find a river-dwelling snake or a turtle of any size, that would make much more appetizing food than spider. Salvisa couldn't imagine insisting to everyone left at the fortress that arachnids would be the only fresh meat for weeks, but even that was better than nothing.
The sounds of a fight came as a whisper over the ever-flowing canal. Salvisa picked up her pace.
"Corbin! Freia! We need help!" Salvisa shouted behind her, running after the sound until she came to a side passage, its door left ajar. Salvisa pulled it open the rest of the way, only to be nearly toppled by Lop as he came rushing out. Behind him lurched a band of skeletons, blue fire burning in the sockets of their yellowed skulls. They were human, once. Pieces of armor covered fleshless ribs in green corroded scales. Some had not yet lost all of their boots to time and dragged scraps of leather and fur along with each stride. Two skeletons in back wielded bows and were nocking them to strike at Lop and Salvisa. The other four shambled in to attack with battered axes and sword.
"Gods dammit, Lop!" Salvisa cursed, pushing the boy to the side as she tried to pull the door closed before the skeletons came past. She hoped they were stupid creatures, that if they saw no threat, no threat existed.
Salvisa leaned against the door, pushing it closed. The door shuddered with ax blows. Salvisa rolled to the side, drawing her sword again, panting. She hoped that the skeletons were vulnerable to her True Rune. She wouldn't be able to fight these six with the same vigor as the spider. The undead on the other side of the door began to push it open again. Salvisa looked down the hall, relieved to see Corbin racing towards her side with Freia and Celsian trailing behind.
"What do we have? Get behind me, Salvisa." Corbin said.
"Six skeletons. Three axemen, one swordsman, two bowmen. If they can't use door handle, I don't expect much for tactics."
"Understood. Lop, stay just by the door. I'll draw them out. See what you can do, Salvisa."
The door opened wide enough for one of the skeletons to pass through. An axe was raised in its bony hand. Salvisa pushed at the creatures and the ones behind it with her Rune, willing their armor to fall further apart. She corroded their scale armor further until loose links clattered to the ground, dried the leather that remained until it was too stiff to move freely. She hoped there would be something akin to a heart or a soul nestled in the ribcage that she could expose, but she could not push her Rune to move so fast.
Lop struck at the closest skeleton, breaking a rib off but not causing it to as much as stumble. A left-handed strike to its forearm was more successful as one of its arm bones fell away with part of its axe hand. Two arrows sailed out of the door in quick succession towards Corbin, who dodged them before getting a quick strike in with his sword that crumbled the first skeleton into a pile of bones. The blue light in its eye sockets dissipated like rising smoke before the skull had even hit the floor. The others continued forward, heedless. Two more had fallen by the time Freia arrived, and her flames made short work of the bowmen's arrows, leaving them defenseless in the face of Corbin and Lop's blades.
Lop gave a pile of bones a childish kick of triumph and turned around with an amused grin. It fell when his eyes met his companions'. Celsian may have made a more imposing front of exasperated rage than Salvisa ever could have. To hear Lop fall at the receiving end of a string of Dwarvish curses and exhortations made Freia recoil and even Salvisa was taken somewhat aback by so many harsh-sounding foreign words strung together.
"Come on, we're all okay." Lop protested. Though he wasn't smiling anymore, he wasn't afraid either- in fact, the wiry boy was more indignant than anything for having been yelled at.
"Lop, if you're going to continue to be so impulsive I will leave you back at the fortress." Salvisa admonished, "It's more than just us. What if we were killed? They could have gotten to everyone behind us. How many of their lives are you willing to risk?"
"You're no fun."
Salvisa grabbed Lop by the collar of his shirt and pulled his face close to hers. The white-knuckled tightness of Salvisa's grip hurt her, but she needed to see some acknowledgement of fear from the boy. If not fear, at least understanding.
"No, I am not fun." Salvisa growled. "I have had every bit of 'fun' squeezed out of my life. And you are not here for 'fun' either. You are here to work and to learn to be an adult. You are here to watch and listen and think. For Freia, if no one else."
She bit her tongue, catching herself before she said more of what she thought. She couldn't spread her inkling that Freia was bearing his child. Being an orphan, she doubted that Lop would care much for a haranguing about making Freia's family worry.
"Fine, I'll go back. Yuber's better to be around anyway."
"He's a coward." Salvisa growled, echoing the words that Sasarai had said, "You can't be blind to how no one wants to be near him. Do you really want to be like Yuber? You think you could deal with over two hundred years of being alone, everyone hating you?"
Some flicker of confusion, then understanding, crossed Lop's face. "What is he?" he asked.
"I don't know. A Rune bearer? A monster. Malice incarnate, pure chaos in the flesh." Salvisa let Lop go, continuing, "I don't even want to know. There is nothing but evil about that man."
"Then why is he even here?" Corbin cut in.
"Because he wants to be. And I would rather have him with us than against us."
"He could be a spy."
"Austen and I already talked about that. We don't think he's the one."
Corbin startled. "You mean, you know there is one?"
"Austen is certain of it."
"Damn…" Corbin looked off into the gloomy stretch of darkness ahead of them in the tunnel. "Only one way out of here. I'll scout ahead."
