Knights of Alchemy
Chapter Twelve: Never A Dull Moment
"It's really not such a big deal, is it?" asked Cata. Squall, flapping calmly by her head, wasn't moved by this tactic any more than the last few. "Come on, if you do it, it's got to be fate, doesn't it? Because you did do it, so you were always meant to do it. Otherwise you'd be messing up destiny."
"On the other foot," said Squall, who didn't have hands (or, for that matter, arms), "if I pretend all I can hear right now is a faint humming as of bright butterflies swirling about in the breeze, that's destiny too, because I was always meant to ignore you."
"What's going on, Cata? You look so serious," said Elys, coming up between them.
"A discussion of fate. There's not much else to do right now." Cata glared at her Djinni. "For a variety of reasons, many of which are contained within a nearby purple object."
The Knights had been marching for days, leaving Tolbi far behind to start rebuilding the coliseum after the chimaera attack. Jastyx and Dullahan had escaped cleanly during the chaos, probably after their summoned creature was obliterated by Padriac's strange summoned spirit. He was ambling with deceptive speed at the back of the group, looking lost in thought but easily keeping up with the others.
"Well, by now you've probably noticed that every time we meet someone with a Djinni, that person ends up joining us," Cata began. All three of them looked back at the dwarfish inventor, Dagna, who was currently in the middle of a rant. He was speaking to Howl, but it could as easily have been a rock for all the chances Dagna was giving the lycanthrope to speak.
"This were te be me year!" Dagna was growling. "I had the bes' invention, I were as clever as the rest o' the lot mixed t'gether, an' these two Adepts come along an' steal the prize afore I can win it, as I would ha'e?! Nowt a bleedin' chance! 'Sides which, I can be plenty o' help, an' if it's help ye wan' fer blasting this Dullyhan inter the stars, this are precisely the dwarf ye're lookin' fer. Got plen'y o' surprises in store fer that one, on me ancestor's souls. Thinks he can get away wi' stealin' me rightful property, I'll show 'im a few pounds o' blastin' powder what ha'e a dif'rent point o' view!"
"Yes," Elys agreed as the raging went on. "I think that people across Angara are probably aware of that, now that we've got Dagna."
"So obviously a person with a Djinni is fated to join us, right?" Cata went on. "Right. So if it's just a matter of who's got a Djinni and who doesn't, then I don't see what's wrong with Squall going ahead, finding Djinn, and getting them to the right people."
"Do I want to know who the right people are?" asked Elys.
"Cute boys, as near as I can tell," said Squall.
"I did not say cute. Nor boys," Cata insisted. "And anyway, the people I was referring to would be precisely the ones who are supposed to join us. It would be fate. If you don't do anything, that'll go against the natural order of the universe."
"What are you doing with my Djinni?" Meg demanded.
"Zephyr refused to listen," Cata replied sullenly.
"And Squall can't resist and argument," Meg finished, nodding her understanding. "You haven't agreed to do anything, have you?"
"Of course not," Squall answered. "And if I hear the phrase 'dashing young men' again this century I may retch. Are we near the next city yet?"
"It's not exactly a city," Cian answered just behind them, and Cata twitched in startled annoyance, suspecting that he had been listening all along. "Hesperia is sparsely–"
"Heswhat?" Elys repeated, cutting him off.
"When we crossed the river northwest of Tolbi, we left the continent of Angara and entered Hesperia, one of the lands on which Jupiter Lighthouse shines," the Lemurian explained.
"And one of the most boring foreign places you could ever imagine," Padriac muttered. "Nothing worth seeing, nothing worth drinking, and the women are more likely to beat you senseless than take a compliment." The captain glanced around and then continued in a low voice. "Also, not that I ever had anything to do with this sort of thing, there's not a blasted thing worth stealing for a thousand miles from the village."
"Village?" Elys echoed. "We're going to a village? There's got to be a better place."
"Hesperia's mostly wilderness,"
Cian explained. "Rocks and trees, and
trees and rocks, and rocks and trees, and trees and rocks–"
"We get it," Meg informed
him, unsheathing her shorter sword in a meaningful way.
"And water," the Lemurian added. "Furthermore, I only call it a village because that's its name. However, Shaman Village is as big as any city on Osenia or Gondowan, and exceptionally populous."
"Do I want to know about the shamans?" asked Elys, falsely cheerful. "For example, do they often curse people in creative ways involving plagues of locusts or lightning or vampire slugs?"
Cian frowned. "Elys, we've fought Grassils, Lemurian sentinels, Alhafran soldiers, giant yellow creatures with bat wings, healed a phoenix and slain a chimaera. What could possibly be threatening about Jupiter Adepts and some sacred rites?"
"What if their standard greeting for foreigners is to hurl blessed fruit?"
"Let 'em!" Howl said fervently. "I'm starving!"
"This man are a great conversationalist," Dagna informed the rest of the Knights. "Never've I known a man ter keep up with me when 'm on a roll about thermite reactions! Did ye know tha' a shoddy thermite charge c'n spray molten iron fer thirty feet in all directions? Used 'em once 'r twice on some o' those mad monsters what lair in the deep mines back in Loho, but ye'd not believe the stories 'bout accidents in the forge. There are more'n one way to superheat a magnesium strip, say nae more."
"By the way, as the person who's been listening to this for the past six miles, I feel you all owe me in vast amounts of whatever I decide to call in," Howl reminded them. "To start with, Elys, I'd like it if you could make those really tender marinated steak strips like that first night out of Alhafra."
"I don't see what your problem is," Fever remarked, still watching the slightly oblivious dwarf from his perch on Howl's shoulder. "He's riveting."
"I would, but we don't have the meat. Strictly packed food from here to Shaman Village, and meat doesn't keep well," said Elys. "Unless you've got side of beef in your pack."
Howl blinked a few times and rubbed his grey-furred forehead with one paw, as though checking something. "You know," he said after a while, "as much as I appreciate being treated like any other person, there are times when you really ought to take note of things like wolfish noses or fangs." He inclined his head to sniff the breeze. "Would a small deer serve?"
"Serve for wha–" Elys began, but Howl was already gone, leaping off the faintly-beaten path and into the deeper vegetation, dropping to all fours and speeding out of sight, dislodging Fever as he went.
"He'll be back," Meg stated lazily, contented as all predators in their homelands.
"Ya-ha!" Fever shouted and darted after Howl.
"…Probably," Meg added.
Rish moved fluidly through the forest, not bothered at all by the rain, which tended to turn to steam before it touched her. The corrupted trail of the Tomegathericon had led her a long way, and if she was fortunate, she was now catching up with the thieves. Fools that they were, they'd either destroy themselves soon or they had sold themselves into another's service. If the second was the case, Rish had no choice but to intercept the book first.
"I do hope you realise what your problem is," said Flash.
"Yesu," Rish replied tersely, wondering if it was worth trying to cross over a stream in the rain, or if she should simply walk through it.
"Really?" the Djinni continued. "And what's that?"
"I have to deal with sarucastic Djinn wherever I go," she explained, and sprung to the far bank.
"Hah, that's funny," Serac remarked flatly. The Mercury Djinni was perched on her head, trying to see ahead through the woods, since water never obscured his vision.
"Thato was sarucasm right there," Rish pointed out.
"No, your problem is that you try to be subtle," Flash went on, ignoring Rish. "Take those yellow creatures that we saved the girl from back outside Contigo. Any normal person would have contacted the rest of the Yu Clan and started burning a trail through every obstacle in her path until she found the person who can actually create totally new kinds of monsters."
"And the worud would be safe while the peroson who has been making demons knew thato they were being hunted, would it?" Rish asked, matching her Djinni's sarcasm.
"'World', 'person', and 'that', Rish," said Serac. "I admit your accent is getting better, but you've got to work harder or you're going to end up just seriously confusing people when you're trying to save their lives."
"If these Knights keep up what they're doing," Flash commented, "then we might have a lot less saving to do. You did see the Coliseum in Tolbi, didn't you? And hear the gossip? They actually defeated a chimaera."
"Gossip, Flash, the key word there is gossip. It was probably just a big manticore," Serac said.
"I don't buy it. Manticores wouldn't wreak that kind of destruction that fast," Flash insisted.
"Do I havu to spell-tag you both to geto some quiet?"
Flash and Serac looked at each other, then Rish. "Maybe you should just stay with Izuman and let us warn people about danger," Serac suggested.
"Dagna, have I ever mentioned how often I've told Cata that we desperately needed a dwarvish inventor to join our group?" asked Elys. "Every day. Usually twice."
"Aye, we're useful enough," Dagna agreed solemnly. "Pass another strip o' deer ter show yer gratitude, would ye lass?"
Elys leaned out of the opening in the large domed tent, a haven from the rain that Dagna had produced from his large pack and constructed within three minutes of the rain beginning to truly pelt down on the Knights. Just beyond the tent's mouth, a small supported flap kept the fire from being doused by the rain and kept the roasting meat from being soaked.
"Aside from the fact that you're lying, that's absolutely true," Cata agreed, ripping into her portion of meat with feral satisfaction.
"I can't take all the credit for this, of course. Cata made the sauce," Elys remarked nonchalantly.
While Cata protested this revelation and Cian assured her that he wished he had known more heroes who could cook during his old adventures, Howl and Zak rested under a nearby tree. Zak was there because he didn't fit into Dagna's tent, while Howl felt that it was impossible to eat properly in a small space.
"Hgarrrgh!" he growled, tearing the meat apart with his fangs.
"Do you have to do that near me?" Zak asked, mildly disgusted.
"How far away would be enough?" Howl asked, looking up.
"Another world?" Zak suggested hopefully.
"Can't help you there," the lycanthrope replied, and resumed his savagery. Zak simply lay there and fumed, highly affronted by the entire scenario and wishing fervently that the rain would stop. Hopefully Howl wouldn't get drenched; if Cata thought a wet dog smelled bad, she should trade noses with a horse for a day and then count her blessings when she switched back.
At that moment, a scent drifted to Zak on the winds of irony. He didn't recognise it, but certain things are burned into the instincts of herd animals, and immediately Zak's ears perked– there were predators nearby.
Howl was busy with the food he and Fever had so fiercely sought out, and so didn't notice as the horse rose to his hooves and began creeping about the wide trunk, trying to determine which way the tumultuous winds had been blowing when he had caught the presence of danger. Zak stopped, ears quivering. Something was nearby, but he couldn't see any motion in the bushes except from large drops of rain, and the clear patches of grass were, naturally, totally clear and grassy.
The creature fell on him from the branches above, landing on Zak's back and immediately drew a roughly-hewn blade from its wooden armor, with Zak's neck as its intended resting place. Fortunately, Zak was smarter than a regular horse, and rather than panicking, he simply threw himself backwards, smashing the attacker between himself and a very large tree.
"Enemies!" Zak shouted, trying to hurl the stunned foe off his back.
Meg shot out of the tent in mid-air, stretched flat so that she could fit between the awning and the fire without bothering to deal with either, although the result was that she dove into muddy earth. Rolling to her feet, Meg's swords seemed to spring to her hands, and just in time, for a figure armored in blackened wood with a pair of sickles was just about to try to harvest her.
"Is there really anything out there?" Cata called from inside the tent, although she had already reluctantly allowed Cian to douse the fire.
"YES!" Zak shrieked, as he had finally dismounted the creature only to discover that another three had emerged from the undergrowth. They were short but human-sized, thickly muscled with wooden armor and plain masks, armed with a variety of stone weapons from simple daggers to wickedly curved sickles.
Three foes was two more than a horse could be expected to handle on his own, and they were eyeing Zak in a hungry manner. He vaguely wondered if they could be convinced that talking horses were inedible, but when they were approaching from all directions in approved hunting fashion, diplomacy rarely worked. Zak summoned up deep-lying power and slammed a hoof to the ground.
"Punji!" Spears of bamboo, a faint green glow the only hint of their Psynergetic origins, burst in concentric circles around Zak like a stabbing shockwave that did far more for prolonging his life than arguments were going to. "Gaia!" The ground exploded with Venus power, hurling one of the hunters away and spewing ballistic rocks in all directions. Zak carefully watched the now-falling attacker, and was relieved to see it turn grey and disintegrate on impact. "It's okay! They're monsters!"
Cata, who was currently picking her way through a punji-spear barricade to rescue her noble steed –yes, she really does think like that– stopped at that shout and stared baffled at Zak. "That's a good thing?"
"Yes," Cian agreed, his hands flaring blue as he brought them together. "No mercy needed. Froth Sphere!" Even in the heavy rain, his barrage of exploding whirlpool-orbs were a force to be reckoned with.
"Well… I'm still a little worried," Lynn admitted, brushing wet hair out of her face as she kept watch for further ambushes. Far enough away not to hampered by Zak's bamboo strike, Meg and Howl were tearing a flaming trail through a half-dozen of the murderous beasts. One dropped out of a tree and swept its sickle at the lycanthrope's unprotected back, and Lynn acted instantly. "Unleash Gale!"
The Djinni's windstream picked the creature up off its feet and hurled it back into the same tree's trunk, where a pair of arrows made sure it stayed put. "Not that worried, it would seem," Cian remarked.
"Not where friends are concerned, no," she agreed absentmindedly, peering through the rain for more friends. "Where's Dagna? And Padriac, for that matter?"
If she hadn't been distracted by another pair of armored monsters at that moment, Lynn would have liked to know that the two brawler friends were currently chasing three more through the woods, hurling taunts, insults, and occasionally Psynergy blasts in their direction.
"Ye be doin' this all the time?" Dagna asked cheerfully. "Firs' that grand beastie in th' coliseum and the great flappin' fiery thing, an' now ye're findin' crazy hunter types in the middle o' a bleedin' tempest!"
"Fantastic, isn't it?" Padriac called back through the roaring wind and rustling undergrowth. "Reminds me of the old days playing cannon tag with the Alhafrans in the Osenian inlets!"
"Jus' as wet?" Dagna suggested.
"I meant the tactics," Padriac replied, and now he was frowning slightly. "That's interesting… That's very–"
The thick undergrowth, which was tall enough in some places to be on its way to overgrowth, suddenly gave way to clear air and a trip wire, which pitched Padriac down a steep slope with incredible speed and began a one-dwarf avalanche to his left. They crashed to a halt at the dusty base – formerly dusty, now turned to mud by the still-raging storm.
"A dast-blangdin' trap?!" Dagna roared, emerging from his half-sunken pose. "Nae a bleedin' monster are goin' ter get awa' with settin' a flamin' trap fer Dagna o' Loho!"
"If you've got an idea…" Padriac suggested, raising himself on his elbows. The liquid earth had a hold on his entire body, and that included rather more surface area than densely-built Dagna. Having pulled his head upright, Padriac saw the four monsters they had been chasing emerge from the foliage with murderous intent.
"Aye, that I dae," Dagna replied, and hurled a strangely wheeled contraption from a side-pack into the mud. All of them eyed it expectantly, even the confused beasts.
"As incredibly useful as diversions are, couldn't you have found something more intimidating?" the pirate asked hopefully.
"Ah…" Dagna said knowingly, although he was watching the no-longer-interested monsters warily, too. "Mus' be an ignition problem. Won' be a moment." With that, the dwarf dove forward, reaching for the odd device, and slammed his fist on one part of it in a clinical, expert manner. The wheel began to glow red and spin with impressive velocity, spraying ever-hotter mud at one of the approaching creatures. In a few moments its front was coated in rapidly-cooling earth, and between the immense heat and the rain, Dagna had half-petrified two of them before the others had the sense to run.
"That's a bloody merciless weapon," Padriac blurted.
"Nah," said his Venus Djinni. "That's inventive. It's actually supposed to be a prototype boat driver. This is merciless."
"Unleash Geode!" Dagna roared, and a glowing orb of earth power that mirrored the surrounding forest crashed down on both immobile monsters, smashing them into rapidly-vanishing grey dust.
The captain and the dwarf had nearly recovered from their unexpected tumble and crash when several more people arrived, but fortunately for the two Knights, they really were people, if oddly dressed. They didn't speak any language Padriac knew, and although Dagna had heard it before, he wasn't near fluent either. The newcomers, who were dressed appropriately for the local heat and painted with substances that didn't wash off in the rain, searched the area thoroughly while a few of them stood guard on the Knights and tried to communicate.
"Do I look like I speak Jabber?" Padriac demanded, rubbing his bruised arms sourly. "Hail, can you make any sense of this?"
"Arr, I be havin' a plan," Hail said sagely, and hopped onto Padriac's head. "AVAST, ye hull-clingin' invertebrates, start makin' sense or I'll be loadin' ye inter the cannons, an' the cannons are about five hundred miles southeast o' here!"
"My thanks, Hail," Padriac growled sarcastically. "That'll be all, I think."
((What in the name of Jupiter is that thing?)) asked one of the Attekans.
((I don't even want to know where it came from, just don't let it bite you,)) he was advised.
((Can it bite? I don't think it has a mouth.))
((Oh, the blue creature? That's a Mercury Djinni. I meant the dwarf.))
"Has it occurred to you," Zak asked pleasantly, wedged into what seemed to be the only safe space left, "that you've got a sword?" Cata was in the middle of crawling over, around, through, and under the chaotic forest of spears that had been created by Zak's further Punji Psynergies, which had finished the battle neatly in one sense, and a bit messily in the sense that a faint greyness had settled over much of the surrounding earth, left over from the disintegrated monsters.
The Jupiter Adept paused, partly straddling a spiky cluster of bamboo spears that had come up at strange angles due to a large and apparently un-puncturable rock. "I knew that. I was… uh…"
"Save it, Cata," said Zak. "Just get me out of here."
"Hold on, I think I can do this," said Meg. "Everyone duck, okay?"
"DOWN!" Cian shouted, pulling Cata and Elys to the ground instantly, with Lynn just after him. Howl decided that mud and fur was another combination worth avoiding, and dodged behind a tree. Meg scowled at them all for a moment, but then put her mind to Psynergy. If she could master it, she would be undefeatable, and every chance to practice counted.
"Fireball!" Repeated blasts of fiery wrath spread from her outstretched hand, shredding row after row of the punji spikes. Meg smiled, seeing the powerful Psynergy held so easily under control, but she did have to try several times to stop the flow of flaming orbs, and still got little response. Growing frantic, Meg shoved her hand into a rain puddle and the charge of Psynergy dispersed (along with the puddle, which instantly became steam).
"Good, very good, thank you Meg," Howl said, emerging from shelter with a protective death grip on his tail. "Don't ever do that again, okay?"
"I had it under control," she insisted.
"Do I still have a mane?" asked Zak, who was as flat to the ground as a horse gets.
"Yes," Elys assured him.
"And the rest of my body?"
"Still there," she continued, washing mud from her phoenix-engraved bracers.
"So I'm not imagining the feeling that I've been sautéed?" he went on.
Cata groaned. "Lynn, anything you can do here? If Zak's complaining all the way to this village, we're just going to call in more of these hunter creatures, and I'm not exactly feeling great either."
"Easy," she assured them, and cleared her throat theatrically. With a raised arm, she proclaimed "Lyric!" and a fountain of violet sparks exploded upwards, raining ghostly musical notes on the heroes. A quarter-note bounced along the ground, remaining perfectly upright the whole time, before bursting against Cian in a rush of healing power. Similar impacts were occurring to the other Knights, mending their injuries and soothing the burns from Meg's fire-sweep.
"Psynergy with musical accompaniment? That's a new one," Elys commented. "And has anyone figured out where the other two got to?"
Howl tilted his head back, resigned now to being thoroughly drenched, and smelled the humid air. After a second's inhalation, he staggered and almost fell back against the tree again, but Meg caught him in time. "Whoa yeah, that's dwarf all right. It's a good thing they don't have lycanthropes around here; that's the most distinctive smell since curried shrimp."
"Just lead the way," said Cian, "before they get us into more trouble."
"I hope werewolves dry out really fast," Zak grumbled, trotting through the forest at the back of the group. "He can talk about dwarves all he likes, but I'm the one with a sensitivity to predators. Not that anyone else cares."
"We would care," Elys assured him as she finished folding up Dagna's tent and stuffing it back into a saddlebag. She patted his flank again and ran to catch up with the others, with Zak following.
"If?" Zak prompted– as a Jupiter Adept horse, he didn't need breath to speak.
"We were prey," Elys replied shortly, as though it were obvious.
"Ah. Right." Zak consider this, the mud, the tangling undergrowth, and the unflinching rain. "Bloody humans."
"I like these people," Padriac decided, reclining in a long, well-cushioned chair. "I am positively infatuated with these people. I have never encountered a more wonderful culture. Another one, Dagna?" The dwarf shook his head; he was still contentedly devouring some kind of dense local fruit. "That'll be enough." He waved the attendant away, successfully not noticing the growing glower on the man's face, and settled in to enjoy the drink they had supplied him with.
Padriac and Dagna were inside a house at the edge of the village, now safely out of the rain, the cold, the monsters, and into a warm haven where a man with stripes painted onto his face showed them to comfortable chairs by a fire and supplied strong drinks.
He realised precisely why life was going so smoothly when a white-robed woman with gravely serious blue eyes and laughably fluttery pink hair threw the door open and stepped in out of the rain (curiously dry, as well). Complications in life happened because of females, and he had temporarily shaken them all off. It seemed that luck was over.
"You are the delegate." Some of her statement's close relatives were probably questions, but this one wasn't. And unfortunately she was looking directly at Padriac. "Although I find your appearance to be of questionable consideration for someone speaking to the Shaman Council, I trust that your skill in debate will more than make up for it." Finally noticing Padriac's blank stare, she added, "I am Lori. You do speak Gondowanish, do you not?"
"That's the first actual question you asked," Padriac noted. "Most people start somewhere around 'who the devil are you' and work from there."
"I know who you are," Lori said, and tilted her head in confusion. "You are the delegate from Shaman Village. You could not be an outsider; everyone knows that trespassing on our hallowed earth is punishable by death."
"So this time it's Cian's fault instead of one of the girls," Padriac said knowingly, nodding. "That's a refreshing change, but I think I'm still going to have to beat him into blue sludge." Lori was growing ever more confused by this, and the pirate decided it was time to change the topic. "Have you met Dagna?"
"Your bodyguard, of course," Lori agreed, extending her hand to the dwarf. "You have the thanks of all the women of our village for your diligence. Our scouts saw you destroy two Slayers even after their ambush; a feat few of our own people could manage so effectively."
"Slayers? Are that what ye be callin' the pesky things?" asked Dagna, placing the fruit on a table, wiping his hand on his beard, and shaking hers heartily.
Lori actually giggled, to Padriac astonishment. "Indeed we do, noble dwarf." Then his astonishment turned to minor horror when she spun back his way. "When were you last briefed on matters in the issue and the potential violence?"
Have ye the slightest clue what ye are doin'? asked Hail.
Yes. Not being executed, Padriac replied. "As a matter of fact, I'm not the one you want. The Slayers in fact separated me from the rest of my party, and they are the ones you'd be more interested in speaking to."
Lori's eyebrows took on a complicated twisted angle that conveyed not just confusion, but the precisely level, pressure, and humidity of her confusion as well. This woman's face was expressive. "There are more of you? We only requested a single delegate."
Pirates are quick thinkers. "I hardly think that anyone would deny the importance of the issue at hand," he said. "My comrades are also skilled warriors, I have no doubt that they are already approaching this village. Dagna can stay here and rejuvenate himself, I had better go meet them."
"…As you wish," Lori decided eventually, though she still looked off-balance about the whole idea. Padriac bowed low in the sailor's fashion, then stepped out into the weakening downpour and tried to not looked overly relieved about escaping her.
"Aye, tha' went well," Hail commented.
"We're still breathing," Padriac agreed. "But Cata is not going to be happy about this."