“I didn’t mean for you to threaten to burn the place down,” Eternity complained as it dug talons into my shoulder. “Furnars are fascinated by flames. It calms them.”
It waited a moment, as if thinking.
“Perhaps not the best solution in a moment of crisis.”
“You think?! I panicked,” I huffed, trying to figure if I should run back to the well, or just hide for a while. “Can’t you talk to her?” Talking and running felt difficult now, each word a gasp of effort.
“Furnar queens do not communicate with me. They consider themselves above the interface.”
“Fucking. Lovely.”
I skidded to a halt at the first intersection, boots slipping on smooth stone. Right to head back to the well. Left or forward for whatever else. Harriet showed up on my map, rushing now down the avenue, her clicking screams sending echoes among the buildings.
“Fuck.”
I took off down the left path, just to lead her away from the well. I couldn’t imagine how showing her a whole bunch of furnars knocked out cold would help my case, much less get her to calm down.
Shadows grew dark as the road narrowed, then became an alley. Overhanging, interlocking eaves hid any sight of the sky above.
My MP was not regenerating at all. Night had come. A chill dug into my skin. And I ran straight into some fucking bench, went down ass over heels, and almost cracked my head on a rock. I would’ve screamed if I had the air for it.
What I managed was a hiss of pain and a silent curse against the whole universe conspiring to drop something right in my path. I’d dropped the sword and couldn’t find it through the gathered dark.
“Need light,” I gasped out. “Don’t make it too bright.”
Eternity complied and dropped a cone of light in front of me.
Bad. Fucking. Choice.
I’d run right into another group of furnars, all of them knocked out and spread about the narrow road, each sleeping in a more uncomfortable position than the next. So fucking many of them, they basically filled the alley with their bodies.
My sword glittered in the light, right by a furnar’s head, the edge of the blade a millimetre away from its throat.
I had to force myself back up to my feet and limp on over to where the blade lay.
Just in time to hear the same bellow of rage behind me and the sound of a hundred little legs pumping across the cobbles. I’d passed out for a moment it seems, and Harriet had made up the ground. Something as big as she should not move that silently.
With my head swaying and my heart thumping in my throat, I stood like a deer in the spotlight and watched the furnar queen drag itself into the small plaza between buildings, leaning down into the narrow passage.
I stood in Eternity’s spotlight, with sword in hand, looming over a fallen furnar. This was getting better and better by the moment.
“The flame,” Eternity said from above.
“I don’t have enough MP.” Maybe enough for a spark. Definitely not to do anything more.
The mental assault almost punched me off my feet again. Pressure built up in my sinuses and blood burst from my nose again, thick like snot, not doing a thing to ease the pressure. My eyeballs bulged, the pain as sharp as if someone scraped the inside of my skull with a spoon.
I panicked again.
It was impossible not to, with no idea how to defend myself without attacking her.
I turned and ran, this time straight through the nearest door, slamming my shoulder against it. For once, I got lucky and the door swung inward and slammed against the wall, with me toppling through, gasping for breath. Eternity zipped in, still holding its light on.
“She’s trying to attack me too,” it complained. “The nerve!”
“Smite. Her.” I croaked, crawling on hands and knees to get away from the door as Harriet’s presence loomed outside. She sounded as if she was ripping off the meagre protection above.
“I don’t do that,” Eternity huffed. “If Methol said that, she did it out of cruelty.”
I was in one of those great big houses of theirs, built of thick logs that looked like they could survive a rhino charging through. Then again, one hadn’t really withstood Tusk, so my hope of safety was a bit optimistic.
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Rich carpets covered the floors and there were also clothes hung on the walls. This looked like some seamstress’s workshop, judging from all the spools of thread and the ungodly amount of pins and needles strewn about. The smell of the room was musty, like it desperately needed airing out.
Harriet prowled outside, still screeching, her tone one of despair. Then anger. She screamed into the night, loud enough that the room shook around me. Then the whole building shook as she clearly charged right through into the gap.
“Edible. I am definitely edible right now.”
I was trying to breathe and failing miserably at it. Without actually attacking her, I had no idea how I’d survive the crazy bitch.
Was there another way out? There were no glass windows, just drawn wooden shutters. Eternity shut off its light, landed on my shoulder, and gripped tight to me. My eyes were used to the darkness now and I could pick out details.
Mannequins. Cloth hung around the place. Dyes in jars. Indeed a seamstress’s parlour, minus the seamstress herself. The contrast between this comfortable place and the squalor I’d seen down in the mine was hard to ignore. Whatever memories had spawned that mine, it looked like Oresstria had been kinder to the furnar than whatever world they originally came from.
For a moment my heart tightened and I thought of Melenith and her people.
Then Harriet crashed through the wall, her upper body slamming through one of the shutters, claws scything the air. I squealed at the sudden explosion of timber and dust, at the queen’s scream, and the whoosh of those huge claws cutting the air by my head.
I rolled through the crumbling debris and tried to find my feet. It was for nothing. Harriet slammed forward again, came almost entirely through the wall, screaming mad. I didn’t want her to get eyes on me again as I was still bleeding and my eyes stung.
Where to run? What to do? Fuck!
“Bright light,” I demanded. “Bright as you can!”
I rolled on my stomach and pressed my hands to my face as Eternity did as I asked. Even so, I still saw red, the imprint of my fingers over my eyes, the flash. Then my ears rang with Harriet’s wild scream and the crash of her retreating from the flare. Half the building came down behind her. I crawled forward, under the nearest table-like piece of furniture I’d spied. The whole ceiling collapsed, heavy beams crashing to the floor all around me with earth-shaking noise.
Within a breath, the whole building stood ready to topple atop me. I cowered under that table, drawn into a tight ball, hoping the thing was strong enough to withstand the collapse.
“Klaus,” Eternity spoke in my ear. The dragon was draped over my shoulder, clutching to my clothes. “Door on the other side. Three paces.”
“Can you open it?” I asked, blinking blobs of after light and dust from my eyes. “I can’t see.”
Another piece of the ceiling came loose and crashed over the table holding the dyes. A great cloud of coloured dust rose into the air, stung my nose, eyes and mouth, and sent me into a coughing fit. I rose and knocked my head on the table.
Eternity slithered off my shoulder and rushed forward through the crashing ruin around us.
Moments passed. I tried not to breathe more of the fucking powders. Then a bang, followed by the rush of cold air blowing the dust away.
“Now,” Eternity’s voice called.
With the world still screaming as if on death’s door, and Harriet stomping somewhere outside on the other side of the building, I swallowed down the lump in my throat and crawled out into the ruin. A heavy beam fell by my head but I didn’t stop, crawling forward as fast as I could towards Eternity’s voice, utterly blind in the moment.
I rose when the debris blocked my path. Swung a leg over. Stumbled. Slammed my shoulder into the door frame. Then stumbled out into nothing. Cold air on my face. The sound of the whole building crashing to the ground behind me.
I shambled forward, blinking furiously. Anywhere away, just not near that insane queen again. I spared a short thought and prayer for all the furnars that had been crumpled in that plaza, and hoped Harriet hadn’t hurt them.
Not like I could do anything for her just then.
My sight cleared though my eyes remained scratchy with sawdust and whatever powders I’d been covered in. I smelled like a chemical spill and my head felt as if I’d been trodden on by the furnar blacksmith. I didn’t even know where I was anymore and checking the map was far too much effort. Part of me wanted to burst out into the Brightleaf and leave the furnars to their fate when the glitch artefacts arrived.
Part of me remembered Crystal and Tusk were still in the village, behind Methol’s barrier. If the drake-born didn’t return by morning, they’d both be in trouble.
“Choices. Choices.”
I stopped and rested against some wall, my side burning with pain, my heart thundering, lungs heaving like bellows, stomach in full revolt.
Should’ve stayed in the fucking bubble. Now I was stuck out here with the thing and no way to fight back. What skill even was that shit? Psionic attack?!
Staying hidden until morning wasn’t the worst idea. As long as I got out of sight, the queen would eventually see to her people. Right?
A roar like thunder filled the village with crashing echoes and the earth shook. It sounded like another building coming down.
“What the fuck’s happening?” I asked, head on a swivel trying to figure out where the noise was coming from.
“Harriet has demolished another building,” Eternity said. “Ever is appraising me of the situation.”
“You have contact?”
“Yes. Naturally. Same as you, I can contact people I am connected to within your area of influence.” It let out a spark. “I have connected to Ever. I believe I will regret it.”
“What’s happening?”
“Harriet has found Ever and the others, saw the unconscious furnars, and has gone berserk. She appears to be looking for something.”
“Yeah, looking for me.” I crumbled to the floor, hidden in the narrow gap among houses, too tired to think. “I need to stop her. She’ll kill someone if she hasn’t already.”
Why did I care?
No idea. Somehow, this felt like my mess to clean. Granted, I was in the mess because I did a good thing and was now still here because more trouble was coming. But Harriet didn’t seem like she was in any mood to listen or understand the finer points of why her village was suddenly unconscious.
“Ask Ever if he can rouse Crystal and Tusk,” I said, feeling a plan forming. “If so, I want to try and get them to help me get the queen out of the village. I can’t do it alone.”
“And after that?”
“We’ll run around the fence until she calms the fuck down? I don’t know. Just wanna make sure she doesn’t hurt anyone.”
How stupid could the night get?! I was now awake for well over thirty hours, battered, bruised, and absolutely exhausted. My MP bar was crawling back towards the right with the speed of a constipated snail. And now I had to get the furnar queen, somehow, out of her own village lest she ended up killing some of her own children in mindless fury.
I was ready for some decent news for a fucking change!
All I got was the sound of thunder on the horizon, and a flash of distant lightning.