Lights sshing through the rain and refracting weirdly in the darkness off wet pavement and through the falling drops, and sirens echoing like the wails of the damned, and someone was screaming and someone was crying and I was out of breath and there was pain...
I woke up sharply, heart pounding, and grabbed for the thing beeping near me. That turned out to be my monitor, which fell silent as soon as I touched it.
Probably it was a good sign I’d been sleeping properly, if I could have a nightmare.
The cavalry had showed up. No more cave.
I wished I could say no more pain, that it had vanished like my nightmare, but there was still some of that. It was nowhere near the same level, though. Breathing freely felt like a luxury. So did the absence of a throbbing headache.
There’d been multiple potions, I had a foggy memory of that, and also real food that wasn’t mushrooms, and sleep that wasn’t just passing out from exhaustion. All of that had gone a long way to making me feel a lot more like I might survive after all.
Serru was lying beside me on the outside edge of the folded-out couch, still asleep. She looked tired. It was too easy to imagine her finally catching up, only to find out that I’d gone missing. How she’d tracked down the mouth of the cave system, I had no idea. There was sure to be a story there. But catching up could wait.
The monitor showed green on all vitals, though my heart was still going a bit fast and that was affecting other things in mild ways.
I didn’t bother removing the sensor discs from my chest, since they weren’t in the way and I had little confidence in my own condition. I just set the monitor back down on the table, gd that I’d caught the beeps before they woke anyone else. Guess I was a lot more attuned to sounds like that than any of my exhausted friends.
I eased myself off the end of the couch as carefully as I could, and it only proved how tired she really was that she didn’t wake up when I did. I would have liked to just lie still for a while and appreciate the comfort and her presence but I badly needed the bathroom. Heket and Myu were in the two hanging chairs, both sound asleep.
Where the ornithians usually slept, there was a cot with a sea-haired jotun asleep on it—but even though I saw subtle joints suggesting it folded into thirds, it wasn’t just a simple minimalist thing. The frame was ornate metal that ranged from matte bck to polished bronze to chrome-bright silver, and there was a telescoping pole on each corner with thick wires linking them, and draped over that framework were gauzy curtains. Unsurprisingly, they were blue and green with touches of yellow and pink; currently they were tied back to the poles, out of the way.
That thing was big. Probably the size of the bed upstairs, actually.
Had it really folded up tightly enough for Zanshe to have that in her bag? Without the kind of compression used on mecha or house? That was impressive engineering.
Then I saw past the sleeping jotun, out through the gss wall behind her.
The snowstorm was much quieter than the thunderstorm in the Shallows had been, but it was no less ferocious for that. Wind was driving snow in chaotic swirls, lit mostly by the muted lumina stones in here, and it was building up rapidly against the gss wall. The drift I could see was as high as my chest, so the snow out there on the ground was probably at least waist-deep. I couldn’t recall whether the gss doors could open in as well as out. If not, going outside wasn’t even an option.
Neither was anything getting to us, so I was actually good with this. A chance to recover while we were cut off from everything by the weather sounded fine to me.
I made my way into the bathroom, pleased that I was only a little unsteady. Peeing didn’t even hurt, and that was definitely a more healthy colour, so my kidneys were responding well to the potions.
I looked around the kitchen for something easy and quiet, and in a cupboard found a tin box of, well, the closest I could think of was thick and chewy cookies, but they tasted like oatmeal and maple syrup so I took two more, closed the box, and put it away. There was juice in the fridge, so I filled a cup.
I wasn’t sure I was quite ready to tackle the stairs to my workroom, so I sat at the extended isnd in the kitchen with my snack, watching the snow.
“I thought I heard motion,” Terenei said softly, from the bottom of the stairs.
“Sorry. Did I wake you?”
“I was already awake, trying to decide whether to move. Feeling better? You look much more coherent. Although as much as I’d like to hug you, I think that had better wait a bit longer.”
A hug would have been reassuring, but he was almost certainly right. “Feeling much better. Peace and Cheer are safe, right? I think I asked before.”
He sat on the stool across from me. Like Serru, he looked tired. I tried not to feel guilty. “The settlement we ran to for help searching has a farm with a pair of female ornithians. The farmers pnned to take them on a trip to the nearest farm they know of with males, but that’s in the Midnds and it will take a few days. They are more than happy to host the boys for as long as we need.”
“Well, at least they won’t be bored. And they’re with someone who knows what they need.”
“They have a lovely big barn divided in two, goats on one side and ornithians on the other. They’re fine, I promise.”
“They’re safe, we’re safe... I assume Ary’s asleep upstairs?”
“Yes. Everyone’s short on sleep. We weren’t about to waste any more time than we had to.”
“I could have been dead.”
“We... had a reason to believe you weren’t.”
“I obviously need to hear this whole story. Things clearly happened.”
“They did,” Zanshe said sleepily. “Could someone put the kettle on?”
Terenei hopped off the stool to comply. “Sorry.”
“Why? I think we’ve slept quite a while.” She stretched and sat up. “Long enough for a storm to blow in and get well underway.”
“Normal?” I asked.
“Snowstorms happen. Do you have snow?”
I had to grin. “My part of my world is known for it. But this looks impressive.”
She shrugged. “We’re safe and warm with water and food. Let it do what it does.”
Serru stirred, over on the couch, and rolled onto her back before yawning audibly. “It’s dark.”
“Storm,” Zanshe said.
“All right. Nathan?”
“Much better,” I said. “Still a bit sore and tired, but about a million times better than I was just before you found me. And I have no idea how you did. That really seems improbable.”
“Not for one of the best gatherers of all time,” Heket said drowsily. I saw Myu jump down from her chair and head for a broad round pot gzed bck and white, positioned near the gss wall. I didn’t remember that being there before. Myu hopped into it and dug around in the dirt within.
“Where’d that come from?” I asked, confused.
“One of my parents,” Serru said, sitting up. “Another sent a dried version of the pnt that usually grows in them, so it smells right. I wasn’t able to get away without telling my family, or at least the ones close to my parents’ house, everything. Somehow several gifts showed up while I was packing. Including about half the baked goods we’d need to open a bakery. Charlisa kept showing up to tell me she had something else she thought would be filling or comfort food or something new for you to try.”
“This is definitely a good time for Myu to have an indoor litter box.”
Serru was dressed differently, but still pragmatically. She had the same kind of close-fitting but sturdy leggings, now in a dark grape-like colour, and a white blouse with a subtle leafy pattern in pale vender and azure and mint, the sleeves long but gathered at her wrists and the neckline a bit higher than her green one. Instead of a sleeveless vest-like bodice, she had a sort of jacket with minimal sleeves and a wide deep neckline that buttoned up the front but had ces at the sides, partly dark grey leather and partly heavy fabric in three shades of violet. Her knee-height boots were dark grey instead of brown, but still looked comfortable. I’d gotten used to her wearing green, and it contrasted with her bright hair, but this looked good too, and more importantly, it looked durable and easy to move in.
Aryennos came down the stairs, one step at a time with a hand on the railing, still rubbing at his eyes. “Is it time to wake up?”
“Sure, why not?” Terenei said. “Two kettles on, we can do lots of tea, and I’m sure we can find bakery goodies for breakfast.”
“And lunch,” Serru said. “And dinner. For about a week.”
“Oh, hush. Charlisa’s food is great.” He set two potion bottles in front of me. One was red, the other a rich gold, much deeper than the bright lemon of an energy potion. “You need those. Do you want me to take the monitor off?”
“No rush. At least you can check what’s up if I fall over.” I gulped the Anodyne first, then the Quickheal.
“I never said her food wasn’t great,” Serru said. “She just might have gotten a bit enthusiastic.”
All with tea, and with a considerable ptter of assorted baked goods on the gaming table for everyone to help themselves to, we settled in the living room. The couch had room for three if they were friendly, which meant Serru and Terenei on either side of me, and there were two hanging chairs, Heket in her favourite one and Aryennos in the other so he had room to write in his journal; Zanshe just retrieved a couple of pillows from her cot, dropped them on the floor, and sat there, legs crossed. Myu sniffed at me, then climbed up on my p and arranged herself there, purring.
“Missed you, too, sweetie,” I told her, stroking her gently, then looked up. “How did you manage to find me, and how did you know I wasn’t dead?”
“I caught a ride with a wagoner,” Serru said. “At least, I thought he was. Wagoners travel all over so I had no reason to think twice about a human in the Highnds. He was very talkative, chatting about miners still finding cave systems with unknown minerals even close to the Midnds, let alone farther out in the Highnds, and gatherers finding unknown pnts even in well-known areas, and the world’s still evolving and developing. It was an odd conversation, really. When he stopped to let me off near the Quincunx shelter, I only noticed then that he had one metal foot. The st thing he said to me, as I was turning away, was, ‘Oh, just so you know, he’s not dead but might be wishing he was.’ When I turned back around, he was gone and so was the wagon, and there was nowhere they could have gotten out of my sight that quickly.” She shrugged. “I was... confused. It sounded more like it would be about Ary, really, but I couldn’t think why I’d get a message like that. Sorry, Ary.”
“Well, it’s true,” Aryennos said. “I’m the most likely to fall off something but no one’s ever been warned of that before.”
“So I was more than a little worried when I found no one at the shelter, just a note from Zanshe telling me that they were at Blue Goat Heights, the nearest settlement, and I should come there.”
“I went back to the water,” Zanshe said, “and you weren’t there. I searched the whole maze and found only your bag at the very edge of the gorge. None of us believed you’d actually left the water by choice. All things considered, Heket stayed at the campsite in her mecha with Myu, in case you came back, and the rest of us went to the nearest settlement to ask for help. The wardens there were extremely concerned, they’d seen zombie and mossling activity, and they found more people to help us search the whole area. Including caves that they were familiar with. We were running out of pces to look when Serru showed up.”
“Which was impressive,” Heket said. “She listened, and then demanded a map, and started asking questions of everyone who was familiar with the pnts in the area. Where certain pnts grew, and to point it out on the map.”
“The ground is different over cave systems,” Serru said calmly. “The temperature and moisture and even the density are not the same as they are even a short distance away where there isn’t a cave underneath. Once I knew of three different pces that had the right pnts, we left the ornithians safe and the rest of us went back out. Together, obviously. We tracked the cave systems by the pnts until we found a way into each, and searched them. One was quite small. One was rger. It’s unfortunate that the one you were in was the third one, but the entrance was surprisingly far away.”
“You found a cave by looking at the pnts,” I repeated, letting that sink in.
“Isn’t that just the most Serru thing in the world?” Terenei ughed.
“It is. It absolutely is.”
“Exploring the cave took longer than we liked,” Zanshe said. “It branches a lot. Heket anchored herself near the entrance, I stayed in the middle, and Serru explored, all of us linked by ropes.”
“Remember where it is,” I said. “There are morning star crystals in there. Lots of them. And edible mushrooms called blushing mooncaps that taste pretty good but I am so tired of them. Zombie Boy said they weren’t in the cave before and he had no idea what they were, but the cave system is old.”
“You were able to use Identify?” Serru said.
“You weren’t really in good condition for that,” Aryennos said.
“I might have had a little help,” I said. “Okay, from the beginning. Multiple zombies, maybe three? I couldn’t see them. They came out of nowhere and grabbed me and tied me up. They kicked me around a bit and then dumped me down a hole and put a rock or something on top.”
“There’s another entrance,” Zanshe said. “That expins a lot.”
“He left one zombie, a felid, in there to follow me around and enjoy watching me, or something. There were enough pces with water that I didn’t get dehydrated. Weird thing, I remember trying my magic dispy and it looked broken but then it sort of fixed itself, at least partially. It was hard to do much, I know I had a concussion, and nothing worked as smoothly as usual, but I was able to turn water into Recovery a few times without him noticing. Since he was the only one who knew where I was, I didn’t want him thinking I was doing well. He might have changed the rules on me. I used Identify on the mushrooms to make sure they were safe. There was something else they do, I can’t remember, everything’s really disconnected and fuzzy. But I found one crystal that was loose, not in the wall, and I picked it up to take it with me because there were tunnels that didn’t have any light. I used Identify on it to make sure that it wouldn’t hurt me somehow. It said they’re advanced alchemy ingredients and... something about the light, I think. And the one I was holding said to keep it.” I had a blurred memory of a lot of excmation points.
“There must have been a gentler way to find that,” Aryennos said unhappily, though he was scribbling madly in his journal.
“I don’t know. Maybe. But you guys found me and I’ve got everything I need so once I feel decent again, we can see what my advanced potions are.” I frowned, trying to remember. “He got angry once. Actually, he got angry a lot, but once, it was something about cheating, but said it wasn’t me. It was just after I found water in a little side cave where I actually had a bit of privacy. I wonder if I had just a little help, with being able to do magic at all and with water being right there.”
“It would be consistent with that message,” Heket said. “And the gifts you’ve been given. I think someone approves of you, or of what you’re doing.”
“Useful, I suppose. Zombie Boy kept telling me not to go to the Axis. I think... I think he implied that there are more newcomers than you could find records of. He’s done that before. I think those two intervene and discourage newcomers from doing the full Quincunx. He told me that if I promise not to go to the Axis, he’ll promise to leave me and my friends alone and ask her to do it too but it would be harder now she’s upset. If they dislike each other, he must think she’d want that too. Unless it was completely a lie.”
“Did you get any sense that it was a lie?” Zanshe asked.
“Hard to say, with a concussion and filtered through a zombie. Honestly, I don’t know. He acts... I know he’s been active here for over a century, but the way he acts reminds me of a very young man from my world.” Was he even twenty when he’d woken up here? “I might be wrong, age isn’t everything and there are people who never mature, but that was... that was what it felt like? He’s clever but has no life experience. I don’t know. Like I said, concussed and in pain. Not great conditions for building a coherent profile. I can’t even remember everything either of us said.”
“He did seem genuinely upset when I mentioned the music festival and that he should be thanking Nathan,” Serru said.
“There was something before that he reacted to...” I searched my memory. “Oh. I told him to stay away from my friends, he said something insulting about me being a healer. I pointed out he should be scared of healers, he said the ones that can stop zombies are easy to avoid and there are a couple right now. I told him his worst fear should be a healer from outside who can see things differently. It stuck in all the mess because it was kind of funny watching him get all armed and demanding to know what I meant and what I’d done.”
“That would be funny,” Heket agreed.
“Speaking of which, did you get to a post office?”
“I did take a minute to send my grandfather a quick message,” Terenei said. “I promised more of an expnation ter on how we reached that conclusion, but he might not need it. I haven’t been back to check for replies, but that information, healers with Cleanse who learn Panacea and Antidote, is out in the world and he’ll spread it around, I’m sure. There’s no way to stop it now. Even if we’re only almost right, because I don’t think we’re completely wrong, someone will be able to figure out what’s missing.”
“Good.”
“And all that’s left,” Serru said, “is to wait out the storm, safe and secure with good company, and then get back on the road to the Quincunx.”
“Are we far from it?”
“We have a bit of a hike from here to it, and from there to retrieve Peace and Cheer. We’ll work it out. Right now, eat and rest and recover.”
