Interlude: Olaf

Olaf had barely registered the downward descent, and if it hadn’t been for Gillian and Tissa would probably have fallen in more than one of the glacier’s crevasses.

The image of Marci kept on replaying through his mind: the ruby red light surging through her veins, the look at terror and anguish on her face as she realised that she was about to die, the words that had been lost on her lips: ‘I lo…’

‘I love you.'

Of course she still did, he’d been able to see that when he’d caught up with her in Krefeld am Nain. At least, the part of him not shocked by how far she’d let herself go, by her shabby clothes, the grub marring her cute face and the way her once lustrous blue hair had hung, matted and lank. Sure, he’d brushed her flirting off as her not being serious, but had that been fair?

He took a deep breath and exhaled. Probably not. And now he’d never know. Marci was- Marci had been a difficult woman: proud of her independence to the point that she had problems letting others in; snarky and dismissive at times when it was not appropriate; and smart enough to run rings around most of the people in her vicinity. She’d also been wounded, although she hid that with a veneer of cynicism and drowned it in alcohol. But despite her many failings, she’d been a wonderful, amazing woman, and she’d deserved better than what she’d gotten.

“Kitten, you need to eat,” said Anke, running a hand down the back of his neck.

Olaf blinked and turned to his girlfriend, who was looking at him with kind eyes and a worried smile, then down to the hunk of bread and cheese he’d barely touched.

“Oh, right,” he said, mechanically putting it into his mouth.

They’d stopped for dinner about an hour’s walk from Goltburg at Anke’s insistence. Like Olaf, Tissa and Gillian were downcast. Anke was… well, Anke hadn’t liked Marci, partly from jealousy because she knew that Olaf still had deep affection- had had deep affection for the fairy, partly because Marci had been rather condescending to what she regarded as a ‘lesser’ calibre of spellcaster.

“We will miss Friend Marci terribly,” said Tissa, tearing off a strip of dried jerky with her razor-sharp teeth morosely. “We were so happy when she rejoined our party. But now we regret it. If she had not come, she would still be alive.”

“Ach, you can’t think like that, Tiss,” said Gillian, shaking his head. “None of us knew that thing was a Shardfort—how could we have?” He took a swig from his waterskin. “And without Marci, we’d probably have never known before it was too late. She was a great wizard, and we won’t forget her—aye?”

Tissa nodded, and then began to cry openly, putting back her head and wailing.

Olaf had lost friends before. It was part of the business. But not for a while, and not someone who, for all her failings, had been so monumentally competent and powerful and brilliant like Marci had been.

“What in the Middle Realms possessed her to touch that thing?” said Olaf angrily as tears once again spilled down his cheeks. “She knew better than that!”

“Hush, Kitten,” said Anke, pulling him close as he began to cry. “Hush.”

“Do you remember when she joined up?” said Gillian with a bark of laughter. “And Anke called her a ‘child?’ Never seen a frog with pointed ears before!” He cleared his throat and then put on a voice. “’Turn me back, turn me back!’”

“We don’t think that it is generally good to turn one’s comrades into frogs,” said Tissa, still crying. “But we confess that it was very funny.”

Anke pursed her lips and rolled her eyes. “It was grossly immature,” said Anke. “A defining trait of hers.”

“Oh, come on Anke,” said Gillian. “You’ve really got nothing good to say about her? Not even one thing?”

Anke sniffed and looked away, clearly struggling a little to find kind words for the woman she had so disliked. “She was… she was very intelligent,” said Anke. “While I think that Clarence was an infinitely better member of the party, it was true he was not nearly as good as magic as Marci was. She was exceptionally gifted. There, happy?”

“You, saying something nice about Marci?” said Olaf weakly. “Never thought I’d see the day.”

“I can give credit where it is due,” said Anke, sniffing. “And… and I am sad that she is dead. She did not deserve such a gruesome end.”

The group fell into silence. The images of her final moments played through Olaf’s mind again, and again, and again.

“What about that time she got into that raging argument about mathematics with that wizard’s shade?” said Gillian in a forced voice, tears dripping down through his beard. “Damn thing was so distracted we just walked right in and took the loot. Of course, Marci didn’t notice we’d gone in either.”

“We had to drag her out of that tomb,” laughed Olaf hoarsely. “You know, I still don’t know what Gulliver’s Paradox actually is, or why she was so adamant that it wasn’t solvable, or why it was worth threatening to exorcise someone for.”

“To Marci,” said Gillian, pulling out a wineskin with what smelt like blisteringly strong alcohol. “The best damned wizard in the South. The afterlife won’t know what hit it.”

He took a swig, and then offered it to Tissa, who was sitting next to him.

“To Marci,” said Tissa. “We loved her like a sister, and will miss her most dearly. She was always kind to us; she always made time for us; and even if she could be supremely irresponsible and would not let others help when she needed it, she was so dear to us.”

The lizard-like woman took a very long swig from the skin, and then began to sob as she passed it onwards to Olaf.

“To Marci…” he began, staring numbly at the skin and fumbling for words for a few moments before finding what he wanted to say. “I have so many regrets about how things turned out that I’ll never be able to share with you; I hope you thought well of me, in the end. I did of you.”

He drank, the alcohol—gnomish whisky, from the intensity—searing as it went down. He coughed, and passed it onto Anke.

The beautiful elvish woman looked a bit put out, and flushed when he gave her an unamused stare.

“To Marci,” she said slowly. “I’m sure there were worse people than you.” She sipped daintily at the flask, so much so that the whisky probably barely touched her lips.

“Really?” said Olaf with a glare.

“Sorry Kitten, I’m just being honest,” she said with a shrug.

Olaf exhaled and looked up at the gathering dusk.

“Goodbye, Marci,” he whispered.

Then he took a deep breath, and did what he had done when he’d been seven, and he’d stumbled southward with a train of desperate, injured, and hungry refugees; what he’d done when demons had swooped them and people had been dying all around him; what he’d done when he’d arrived in Saxmoor as a penniless orphan. He picked himself up, wiped away his tears, and he kept on going.

“Come on,” he said. “We need to warn Goltburg about the Shardfort, and deliver that damned report Marci found.”

“Maybe there’ll be a reward?” said Anke hopefully.

Everyone glared at her.

“I’m just saying…” she muttered.

***

Shardkeeper

Marci became slowly aware that she was lying face down on something cold and metal, which she could feel from head to toe with her… bare skin?

Something poked at her shoulder.

"Gerruf," she grumbled, batting at the small reptilian man with scales who was poking at her gingerly with what looked like the haft of a pickaxe.

Marci frowned, her eyes were still closed, she was face down on a gantry in a circular room, but she could, nevertheless, see?

What?

Her eyes snapped open, and she jerked up and away from the reptilian man who was standing in front of an assembled crowd of other reptilian beings, what looked like small Arana, or lizardfolk as people like Tissa were usually known. Well, they weren't small so much as normal sized: between four and five feet, with a few who were taller than Marci—who was, despite what other people said, tall for a fairy.

They were dressed in little linen tunics and dark trousers and brown jackets not so different to what manufactory workers wore, and had a wide variety of coloured scales which glinted and flashed in the baleful red light of the Shard-

Marci jerked and turned around, her eyes widening as the memory of what had happened came rushing back: the burning pain, the agony of the Shard's energy coursing through her, her terror as it had seeped into her soul, burning her and filling her up with power until-

Marci blinked.

Why wasn't she dead?

She looked down at her bare, ash-strewn skin. She poked her belly.

She didn't feel dead.

But she had felt herself explode, the beginnings of it. She remembered it vividly. She had died, and then…

And then she had woken up, being poked by weirdly small lizard-people.

She raised her eyes back to the Shard, staring it and… looking back at herself?

No, it wasn't looking. It wasn't seeing or smelling or feeling or hearing or any other sense she was familiar with. It was awareness of the contours of the room and those within it, the spherical dimensions, the gantries, the lizard-creatures, herself.

And not just herself or the room, but beyond, too: past the innermost sanctum she could feel the entirety of the massive structure and all of its innumerable rooms: armouries, barracks, smithies, workshops, bedrooms, kitchens, lounges, libraries, closets, and many, many more. She could feel each and every one of them, either in a general, fuzzy sense, or by focusing more specifically on one of the parts. There was no colour, only a feeling of where objects began and ended.

She furrowed her brow and began looking for her friends, her eyes flicking from side to side as in her mind's eye she peered into the nooks and crannies of the fortress. She couldn't find a trace of them, which, she supposed, made sense, they would have run. She couldn't blame them, they'd seen her explode—typically, people didn't get better from that kind of thing.

"Lady Keeps?" said one of the small lizard-folk, the one with copper scales who had poked her, speaking in Infernal.

She jerked back around and stared at him. Then she yelped and tried to cover herself as her brain suddenly caught up with the fact that she was naked in front of a group of strangers.

"Who are you!?" she said, her infernal heavily accented and probably rusty, but hopefully intelligible.

"We is Kobolds," said the small man.

Kobolds… had she read about that? They were some kind of… slave race, weren't they? That served the demons?

"OK," said Marci slowly. "And what are you- actually, can I- can I borrow that coat?"

The Kobold shrugged out of the coat and handed it to her. She pulled it on, buttoning it up and making a makeshift dress. It pinned her wings down, which was a bit uncomfortable, but it was better than being naked in the cold, creepy air.

"OK, thanks, now… what are you doing here?"

"We serves the Lady Keeps," said the kobold. "We serves the Dreadfort."

The Dreadfort? She knew that name. It was one of the Thirteen Shardforts, and had been controlled by a powerful succubus named Aisling, who had been one of the most terrible of the Keepers in the last war. The fort hadn't been seen since shortly before the end of the conflict, with it just vanishing from the battlefields from one day to the next.

"This is the Dreadfort?" said Marci, taking a half-step back. "Where is the Shardkeeper?"

The kobolds looked at each other in confusion, muttering to one another in broken Infernal.

"Is Lady Keeps mad?"

"Careful, could be trick."

"Is we being tested?"

"Keeps is tricksy…"

"Stop that," snapped Marci. They shut up instantly. "Just tell me where she is. Please."

"You is Lady Keeps, Lady Keeps," said the copper-scaled man.

"Lady Keeps? What does that even mean?" said Marci. "Why are you calling me that?"

"Because Lady Keeps is Lady Keeps," said the copper-scaled Kobold, as if that explained anything.

"Lady Keep…" began Marci, before her eyes widened and her stupid, thick head caught up with what was being said. "You think I'm the Shardkeeper?"

The kobolds nodded warily. "You is Lady Keeps," they chorused.

"But I'm- that's stupid!" said Marci. "I'm not even a demon! And all I did was touch the stupid thing! And, well, it did blow me up…"

Her mouth went dry.

There were rumours that Shardkeepers were immortal, and that so long as their Shard endured, so would they. There were several accounts of them being cut down, only to then show up a week or so later on another battlefield.

Marci's heart began to thunder in her ears, and she stumbled back from the Kobolds. Her back brushed against the Shard, and she screamed and jerked away, but this time there was no pain, no sticking, no burning, nothing.

Marci turned to look back at the Shard.

Marci looked at herself through the Shard.

"Oh fuck," she whispered.

"So, you're telling me that the Underworld knows that this Shardfort has been reactivated?" said Marci, pulling a book off the shelf, checking the blurb, before shoving it back. "They sent you?"

The lead kobold, or at least, the one who had poked her and called himself 'Likes-Hammers,' was standing a meter or so behind where she was rifling through tomes in the library. She had managed to locate the large trove of books a few levels up with her 'Shardsense' as she had mentally dubbed it. For some reason he seemed almost as nervous as Marci felt. No, actually, Marci wasn't nervous—she was terrified.

Which was why she was doing research. She was a wizard, step one to solving any problem was always to do research.

"Demons say Dreadfort was reactivated, so they binds Kobolds to Dreadfort," said Likes-Hammers, looking over enviously to where two of his fellows were playing with a large marble fireplace behind a grand desk, alternately turning some kind of dial that clicked and hitting it with rubber mallets. "Then they makes Kobolds take the transporters to Dreadfort. It is taking a while, Dreadfort transporter been offline for a long time-"

"How- wait, how long?" said Marci. She had just assumed that she hadn't been out long…

She waved a hand and cast a simple Timekeeper's Charm.

The book fell from her hands.

Three days.

She had been… asleep? Unconscious? Non-existent? For a whole three days?

"Then we finds Lady Keeps in Shard chamber," continued Likes-Hammers.

"So, more demons could just… show up!?" said Marci in alarm, rounding on him, her wings flaring uncomfortably in her makeshift coat-dress. "Through this- this transporter?"

Likes-Hammers gave her a look that implied he thought she was a bit stupid. "Noes, only those bound to Dreadfort, or allowed by Lady Keeps can use transporter."

Marci relaxed a fraction. Alright, not about to be immediately overrun by teleporting demons…

"And how do you know that I am the Shardkeeper?" said Marci, reaching down and picking up the book she had dropped, 'Seecrets of thee Yunderwold,' which was written in a particularly archaic looking Infernal. She flicked it open, before nodding and putting it on the small pile she was building up next to herself.

Likes-Hammer's frowned. "We feels it," he said. He stamped his little feet impatiently as Marci took down another book. "Lady Keeps, can we works yet? We is a good Kobold!"

"What do you mean, you 'feels it?'" said Marci in an exasperated voice, shoving 'Only you can prevent Slave Revolts!' back onto the shelf. "And why is this so badly catalogued!? What, doesn't the Underworld have book classification systems? I know they're supposed to be evil, but this is ridiculous!"

Likes-Hammer's gestured between them. "We feels it, you is Lady Keeps."

It was true that she could feel some kind of metaphysical bond between the Shard and the kobolds, and thus, apparently, herself. She reached out for Like's Hammer's link, and it grew stronger in her mind, bringing with it hints of the kobold's mind, emotions, thoughts…

Marci withdrew, not wanting to violate his privacy, and rubbed her face.

She needed to figure out a way to disentangle herself from the Shard, and quickly, because while she had noticed the ebb of energy away from Goltburg four days beforehand, back then it had been a relatively small trickle of power. A slow corruption of the surrounding nature that hadn't been particularly noted by anyone in the way that a Shardfort's typical presence would be.

That, however, was no longer the case.

She could feel torrents of ley energy flowing inward from all directions into the Shard, at a vast accelerated rate. If before she had touched the Shard like an idiot, it had been 'asleep,' it was now very much awake.

That, coupled with the fact that her friends would already have raised the alarm in Goltburg meant that probably sooner than later there would be adventurers and troops showing up to try and smash the Shard.

Which would most likely kill her. That had been a leading theory amongst academics in the south, and… made sense.

Which was why she was in the library, trying to figure out how to get herself out of this insane situation.

She grabbed another book.

"Lady Keeps!?"

Marci looked up at Likes-Hammers. "What?"

"Can we… work?" he said.

Marci frowned. "You want to work?"

"We is Kobolds," said Likes-Hammers proudly. "We works!"

Marci grimaced. What had been done to these poor little people? To like work…

She shuddered.

Truly unnatural.

She could feel the industrious little lizardfolk scurrying about throughout the fortress, doing maintenance, mending broken bits and pieces and cogs and gears and drive shafts that did… things within the guts of the giant, inscrutable fortress, and in the workshops even starting up forges and setting looms. Everything that it probably took to actually maintain this flying monstrosity. Well, currently grounded monstrosity.

"And this work, do I… pay you?" said Marci, shoving 'Hydras: a solution to world hunger?' back onto its shelf and crossing to the opposite stack.

She had some money, or, at least, she could sense quite a lot of what she thought was money in a treasury which was off from the throne-room behind a heavily reinforced and pretty well-hidden door. Which was good, because she had… well, nothing, her wallet had burnt-

She started. Olaf's poetry. They would have burnt too. She exhaled and put a hand to her chest. That hurt more than it should have given the terrible situation she was in. She could remember most of them, might even be able to recreate a few, but there had only ever been one copy, they'd been for her.

"Pays?" said the Kobold, drawing her back out of her morose thoughts. "No! We is Kobolds!"

"But wouldn't you like some money to buy things you want?" said Marci.

"We- we is Kobolds!" said Likes-Hammers in an outraged voice, as if the very idea was as offensive as if Marci had insulted his brother or insinuated she'd slept with his mother.

Marci sighed.

"Look, I'm not comfortable having… slaves," said Marci. "So how about I pay you all a salary? The average wage for a worker in Krefeld is about ten silver a week, so… how about fifteen?"

That sounded fair, didn't it? Marci, back when she'd had a job in a manufactory, had been part of a union. Sure, it had only been brief, but she'd liked the idea of it academically—the powerless working together to wield power. She might not have been the most responsible or, perhaps, ethical person, but she still had some standards.

Likes-Hammers looked at her suspiciously. "We is Kobolds. We works. No pay!"

"No," said Marci firmly. "I am not having slaves. Fifteen silver a week-"

"Tens!" said Likes-Hammers.

"What- that isn't how bargaining works," said Marci. "You should be going up."

"Nines!"

"No, that isn't-"

"Eights!" challenged Likes-Hammers.

Marci growled in exasperation and rounded on him.

"Sixteen!" said Marci, jabbing a book at him. "No, actually, twenty!"

Fear entered Likes-Hammers' eyes. "Okays we takes fifteens!" He scratched one of his small horns. "We works now?"

Marci nodded. "Yes, fine, OK. Thank-you for your help."

The deranged little work-a-holic waddled off enthusiastically, and Marci looked over to see the other two cheering as they finally got the weird magi-tech fireplace started, which began to pump out heat.

Marci rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. She would have done unspeakable things for a beer: a nice warm blanket to ward off the utter panic that was threatening at every moment to overwhelm her.

But she couldn't, because she needed to figure out how to not get killed.

She took a deep breath, gathered up the books that looked like they might be halfway useful to figuring out how Shardforts worked, and then trooped over to the desk.