A/N: Sorry this took so long. I haven't been on the Internet very much, and all my Betas appear to be out on vacation or at camp or something, so this hasn't been Betaed yet. winces and sighs But for those of you who haven't heard, I have a lame little website up at the moment at http / solowrite . bravehost . com (no spaces), and the blog is up at http/solowriting. and there's a link to the new forum up. I need to mess with the forum too. Meh. I was kind of sad about the reviews (32 hits on the new chapter, but only 3 reviews. sigh). But oh well. On a good note, I should be starting to update more regularly in a few weeks. Yay!

Chapter Thirty-three: Change of Plans

"So what's up with this 'Hekhzervon, made by the Dwarves of Syulikhung Mountain' thing your mom was going on about?" Shean asked as I put the small paper into my lap and was about to open the long scroll.

I shrugged. "If you wouldn't disturb me and would let me read this thing, I might be able to tell you." He promptly shut up.

I unrolled the scroll and spread it on my lap. It was a large map with pretty decent detail. Shean leaned over my shoulder. "Hey, that looks like a map from LotR."

I glanced at him. "Are you kidding? There is no way that this looks like one of Shelly Shapiros' maps."

"Yeah, well there weren't all that many other fantasy books that had good maps, so what else can I compare it to?"

I shoved him away with one hand while using the other to keep the map spread out. "Okay, let's see, we're right here-" I pointed to the spot on the map. "-and we want to go somewhere around… here." There was a circle drawn on the map encompassing a sizeable area which must indicate the vicinity of Syulichung Mountain. "Oh boy, this should be 'fun'," I groaned. Shean came and sat next to me, slinging an arm around my shoulders.

"Hey, we've come this far fine; we should be able to get some lil' ol' Hechzervon fine too."

I looked at the smaller paper with the instructions and gave Shean a raised eyebrow. "Uh, yeah, the 'lil' ol' Hechzervon' should be easy to find, especially since it's being guarded by dwarves and is actually not so little, being about two, possibly two and a half feet long and the handle is solid, strong wood, and the head is iron. Oh yeah, that should be a cinch." I wrinkled my nose at him.

"Yeah, well…"

I stood up and began to gather up our supplies. "Well, since almost everything is essentially hopeless, let's get our things together and get started, and then pray that God will help us get through this in one piece, if that's what he wants."

Shean nodded, knowing I was serious, but Relakk just shrugged, not knowing me quite as well.

We mounted up and rode away into the wild blue yonder.

We were now quite a ways away from any villages now, and the villages there were, were not very close to each other, so we had to camp outside that night. Relakk huddled inside his own tent, insisting that he'd be fine, though the weather was beginning to get cold now. We had only brought two tents, and since we had been sleeping out under the stars, we hadn't thought to buy one at the last village we'd stayed at, so Shean and I had to share a tent. We shivered inside our sleeping bags, trying to get warm.

"It's so cold," I muttered to myself through chattering teeth.

"C'mere," Shean offered, raising an arm to gesture that I could slip under. I shimmied inside my sleeping bag till our bags were right next to each other and I could slip under his arm. With another body near mine, our combined body heat kept us warmer than a few minutes ago. I was about to drift off to sleep when I felt Shean gently running his fingers through my hair. I snuggled up closer.

"Shean?"

"Hm…"

"Do you think we'll actually do it?"

"Do what?"

"Defeat Ferrel and Sselth."

"I think so, but who knows."

"God."

He chuckled. "Yeah, but I meant any of us mortals." He sighed. "I think, if it's his will, we'll make it through with flying colors."

I smiled. "You're such an optimist sometimes."

"Is that a compliment or an insult?"

I just laughed. "Whatever you want it to be." We were silent for about a minute before I spoke again, almost fearing the answer to the question that I had to ask. "So what are you going to do once we finish this? Are you going to go back home?"

He didn't answer and I was almost certain I knew what he was going to say. I stiffened and pulled my arms up and rubbed them as I began to shiver again, though not so much from the cold this time. Then I felt his other arm come around me and squeeze me tightly to him. I let my head lay on his chest and tried not to cry.

"I could never leave you, Val."

"What?" I almost jerked out of his hold.

"What, you thought I would go back?"

"Well, yeah…"

"Val, I can go back and visit whenever I want with the bauble I got from that machine, but I don't ever want to leave you for longer than I have to."

I smiled and had to hold back tears again. "You really mean it?" I asked, my throat tightening.

"Of course." He reached down and turned my head up to his, kissing me softly before letting me go. "Now, do you know anything about this Sselth guy? I think that we should learn as much as we can about him so we can defeat him even more soundly."

I had to shake my head. Shean was such an optimist most of the time. But knowing that he believed we could do it helped give me some extra strength.

"Uh… let's see, what have I told you so far?"

"Only that he was allies with our side for a while, then pulled an Anakin."

I laughed. "You have quite the way with words."

"Yeah, I get it from my girl."

I smacked him, then began. "Let's see… yes, Sselth was on our side. He was one of the most powerful lords that we had at the time, and probably still is. But he was a bit too power hungry. He thought that our side would give him that when we won, so he made the Seeing Stones for us, and instructed several wizard-smiths on how to create the Listening Stones, which are better known as the Minor Stones, so that we could keep better communication lines. See, usually, we have to send a messenger or something, which will usually take at least one day, if not more, and a lot of times, by then, it's too late for our field commanders to do much. So, with the Seeing Stones to control the Minor Stones, our royals could communicate with any field commander that had a Minor Stone.

"But then Sselth decided that we weren't powerful enough to give him what he wanted. So he took all of the Seeing Stones he could find and hid them or gave them away. Most of them were either never recovered from their hiding places, or they were lost by the person Sselth gave the Stone to. But we managed to keep one Stone, and Sselth thought we'd lost it, which would mean that we wouldn't be able to use the Minor Stones, because you need at least two Seeing Stones to activate the Listening Stones."

"So that's why we needed the first one we found?"

I nodded. "Now that they have that one, they can link it to the Stone that's still in Ayrlan. Once they link them, they can control as many of the Minor Stones as they can manage."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, with only two Stones, they can control all the Minor Stones – can I just call them comm-links? I'm tired of saying 'Minor Stones' all the time."

I could hear Shean grinning when he replied. "Of course. Now hurry up."

"Well, like I was saying, with the two Stones we have right now, we can control as many comm-links as we can manage, but it's rather hard to keep all of those comm-links organized with only two Stones, because we still have to communicate either by messenger or a comm-link with all of the other allies. So once they have the other Stones, they'll be able to not only communicate better with the other kingdoms, but they'll be able to spread the field commanders more evenly through all of the Stones so no one gets overloaded."

I felt Shean nod. "All right, now I understand."

We were quiet for a moment. I sighed. "I'm tired. G'night."

"'Night, Val," I heard Shean whisper back before I drifted off to sleep.

A/N: Okay, well, I'm well into work now. In fact, I get to work every single day this week. Which, although it is not good in the way that it means I'll have less time to write, is good in the way that I now have earned more than $150, so I can now afford Dramatica Pro, which will (hopefully) dramatically improve my outline (which has drastically fallen behind the story itself, hehe), so I might actually be able to write more. (Go figure that I have little scenes here and there that I know I need to put in, plus the ending almost plotted out, but nothing else. )

And hey, I think I figured out why I (and several of my writing friends) like to use smilies and lols and some of them don't always use caps: we figure that, well, we write correctly in our stories, so it's kind of nice to get a break from it in our casual writing. ;) So thank you all for accepting lols in my A/Ns, because I was about to go mad from 'hehe-ing'. ;)