ellinor
Explorer
6x01
A stale breeze wafted up from behind the group, hot and stinky like the breath of a drunkard, carrying the stench of sweat and blood and smoke to the balcony on which they now stood. Dead derro littered the floor of the dining hall below.
“Stay there,” Kormick whispered. He pressed one finger to his lips and held his other hand out toward the crowd of dwarves, in the universal signal for “stop right there and do not move a muscle if you know what is good for you, in the name of all that is holy and sensible.”
They stopped, mostly. Corani pushed her way through, axes up. Savina hastened to her side, whispering “you are needed here, to protect your family.” Corani stopped.
<i>Expedient,</i> thought Kormick, and scouted ahead. The hallway terminated with a room to their left, and he peeked in.
As he sneaked back silently to report, Twiggy whispered to him. “You’re really good at that.”
“When you’re smuggling smokes, booze, and Handmaidens in and out of a magic academy at age 14, you learn some stealth,” he whispered. Twiggy smirked.
“So?” whispered Tavi, “what’s in there?”
Kormick explained in hushed tones. More of that electrical moss. Several cobwebs, thick enough to obscure the view, running from floor to ceiling in the far left corner of the room. Three derro, gathered around a web with something inside. Dark stairs descending from the back of the room, and some sort of natural crevice in the right hand side, leading to who-knows-where.
“What would make a spider web of that size?” Mena inquired.
“Well, naturally, that would be a giant . . . ooh.” Kormick clenched his jaw. She already knew the answer to that one, didn’t she.
But there was no use standing about. Tavi raised his sword. Twiggy pulled her new goggles down over her glasses. Kormick signaled to the slave, who sneaked up to the door with him and slid it open silently. They shared a look, nodded, and fired. One. Two. Kormick’s crossbow bolts sunk into one of the derro, and a rock from Arden’s sling sunk into the top of one of the webs. It stuck there, caught in the web. The hit derro screamed. The other derro raised their axes. The fight was on. But where is the giant spider? Kormick thought.
As the hit derro pulled Kormick’s crossbow bolts out of its arm, Twiggy cast from the doorway. An orb of force warped the air, whizzing past Arden’s head and careening off the already-injured derro, which stumbled as Tavi charged in, slicing a gash in its chest. Blood dripped down its armor and it gurgled a yell up toward the ceiling behind Tavi.
Tavi wheeled around. “The ceiling!” He pointed with his sword at the only corner of the room that had been invisible from the doorway. There was a derro clinging to the ceiling. Not just clinging: skittering forward, rearing back . . . and then it VOMITED, covering Tavi and Mena in web-like goo and spraying the rest of the room in splotchy webs. “Eew!” screamed Savina, as she tried to move in toward the action, her hair caught in the sticky net.
The room’s green cast became brighter as Tavi’s sword lit up and exploded in green flame. It burned Tavi—but it also burned the webs, and he was free. “We can burn them!” he yelled, and let loose another burst of green flame. The derro screeched as flames seared their flesh and shriveled the webs around them.
“Tavi! Behind you!” Mena was struggling in the webs, as one of the derro climbed up the wall behind Tavi, in a flanking position with the more-injured one. It’s not a giant spider, thought Kormick, it’s whole group of Ketkath derro-spider hybrid freaks of nature. He heard a satisfying CRACK as his hammer connected with one of their legs. That’s just wrong.
The spider-thing on the ceiling reared back to spit at Kormick . . . and THWACK. Kormick heard it before he saw it – a stone had flown from the slave’s sling right between the spider-thing’s eyes. The creature didn't fall, but it hesitated, obviously hurt. Kormick made a mental note to lay off the slave jokes.
The creature on the wall pulled an axe out of its belt and struck viciously, leaving a gash in Tavi’s arm. “Tavi, you need help over there?” Twiggy yelled, from near the doorway. She was barely visible through the thick webs, but she was raising her arms to cast.
“Nope, got it,” Tavi said, and a cyclone of red flame exploded from his sword as he swung with a vicious backhand. Like roasting from the inside, Kormick thought, as the blade and fire together sliced into derro-spider flesh. The walls behind them sparked as Tavi’s fire hit the glowing moss. But suddenly the creature on the wall in front of Tavi reared back and spit its sticky web, and Tavi was pinned to the wall, exposed and defenseless against the poison axe of the creature’s still-standing ally.
A spell from Twiggy had confused the spider-thing on the ceiling—it had swatted at the air and skittered to the other side of the room—but now it was rearing back again, ready to let loose another shower of web-like goo. “That’s disgusting!” yelled Savina, and she pushed past Kormick until she was almost directly underneath the spider-thing. Didn’t we talk about not doing that? Kormick thought—as Savina raised her arms and cried out to Alirria. Sacred flame descended, searing the spider-thing and burning away several webs. But Savina couldn’t retreat as well as she could attack: the creature spat again, trapping Savina in a gooey mess, and then lunged forward to BITE the girl. Its fangs sunk into her shoulder. “Poison!” yelled Savina, squirming and writhing against the webs that pinned her to the floor.
Kormick felt a rush of fraternal compassion and frustration for Savina. She was caught in the webs, flailing with her staff, her face twisted from the pain of the poisoned gash on her side. Blood flowed from her wound, and she could not reach to staunch it. It had taken a lot of faith— and a lot of stupidity, but mostly a lot of faith—for her to rush to the front of the fight like that.
He raised his hammers to swing again. But the spider thing reared back and spit again, covering Kormick’s face and arms with webbing—and then, just as it had with Savina, it LUNGED, digging its teeth into Kormick’s shoulder. Poison burned into the wound. He couldn’t move. “You,” he said, pointing at Savina as she hung, trapped, beside him—“hang in there, kid.”
On the other side of the room, Tavi was also taking a beating. Two derro-things—one standing, the other clinging to the wall— were swinging at him with axes, and connecting. He was weak with poison. Frankly, the webs pinning him to the wall seemed to be the only things holding him up. His sword hit stone as often as it hit derro.
Then Mena’s voice rang out as she freed herself from the webs and struck out at the back of the standing derro. “Come on, Tavi, you trained for this!” Tavi’s eyes grew determined, his sword ignited, and he began burning away the webs that held him to the wall. It’s amazing what you can train for, Kormick thought.
Kormick and Savina remained trapped, menaced by a spider-thing on the ceiling, but the slave was—ironically—still free. Arden dove through an impossibly narrow gap in the webs surrounding Kormick, somersaulted as she landed, and came up right behind the creature. STAB. It staggered and fell, and Arden stepped back, her hand covered in its blood. “Where did you learn—” Kormick began.
“Dodging the whip, Justicar,” she replied. And flashed a grim smile.
Okay, if the slave is making slave jokes now, then I'm still making slave jokes.
“Tavi!” Savina broke free and rushed forward to heal Tavi, and then raised her arms again. “Alirria!” A burst of sacred flame erupted from the ceiling, scorching the standing derro-thing that had been attacking him. It fell in a heap on the floor, and Tavi cut through the webs with renewed strength.
The last remaining derro-creature clung to the wall with the panicked look of a debtor about to run out the back door when the crew came to collect. But there was no outlet. SLICE. Tavi’s blade found a home in its neck and it fell, landing with a dull THUD in a thick tangle of webbing.
And the room was, finally, quiet.
“Jan, are you hurt?” Savina asked, softly. Kormick had freed himself from the webs, but still could barely move.
“Actually, yes.”
Savina laid her gentle hands on his shoulders, and Kormick felt the warmth of her healing. “Thanks.” He lit the torch from his pack and began burning the webs that now filled most of the room, gathering pouches and amulets from the dead derro as he passed. He handed the pouch of residuum to Twiggy and the potions to Savina. “More healing,” Savina explained, and handed one to Mena, who quietly passed it to Arden. Kormick didn’t stop her.
“Fire is cleansing,” Tavi said, as he watched the webs shrivel and burn.
Mena looked at the back of her hand, marred by burn scars. “Don’t care for fire.” She paused. “Then again, I don’t care for killing, and I don’t care for dungeons. Yet here we are.” She moved a derro body, to inspect it . . . but discovered that the tangle of webs it had landed on was more than it seemed. There was a body tangled among the webs. She pulled the webs away from the body. It was a dwarf. A male dwarf, with salt-and-pepper hair. Once strong, but now gaunt. Its face was twisted in a rictus of terror.
Corani gasped from behind the group, then pushed forward through them to approach the body. “No! Kartan!” Her husband, now dead from some derro horror.
The elder wife, Sertani, strode forward and looked down at the body, putting her hand on Corani’s shoulder. “We must find Thurran,” she said, softly. “He is the head of the Rockminder clan, now.”
Corani knelt down beside the body with effort, brushing a limp strand of hair back from the once-proud forehead, peeling away a cobweb. Then she looked up at Kormick. “He was a sculptor.”
Savina was looking at Kormick.
Everyone was looking at Kormick.
“Oh,” Kormick said. “Right. Um, rites.” He pulled out his little text and flipped through it, as dwarves filed into the room. Sertani pulled the three-year-old to the front of the group. The kid looked up at Kormick. Kormick kept flipping pages. Where is that section with the rites . . .
And he looked at Savina, her eyes bright with hope, and he looked down at the kid, his eyes wide with expectation, and he stopped flipping pages. He closed the book, and said what came into his head. About honor. Bravery. Then…craftsmanship. Singlemindedness of purpose. Devoting oneself to family. Doing what is necessary. Dedicating one’s life to a single, certain, goal.
Savina translated.
At the end, there was a little tear in Sertani’s eye.
There was a little tear in Kormick’s eye, too.
As they silently built a cairn over Kartan’s body, Kormick considered the experience of performing rites for what felt like the first time. Hm. Religion can be comforting, he thought, touching the spot on his shoulder where Savina had healed him. Not just a tool for establishing authority. It felt new. Strange. More comfortable than he would expect.
The three-year old placed the last stone atop his father’s grave.
A stale breeze wafted up from behind the group, hot and stinky like the breath of a drunkard, carrying the stench of sweat and blood and smoke to the balcony on which they now stood. Dead derro littered the floor of the dining hall below.
“Stay there,” Kormick whispered. He pressed one finger to his lips and held his other hand out toward the crowd of dwarves, in the universal signal for “stop right there and do not move a muscle if you know what is good for you, in the name of all that is holy and sensible.”
They stopped, mostly. Corani pushed her way through, axes up. Savina hastened to her side, whispering “you are needed here, to protect your family.” Corani stopped.
<i>Expedient,</i> thought Kormick, and scouted ahead. The hallway terminated with a room to their left, and he peeked in.
As he sneaked back silently to report, Twiggy whispered to him. “You’re really good at that.”
“When you’re smuggling smokes, booze, and Handmaidens in and out of a magic academy at age 14, you learn some stealth,” he whispered. Twiggy smirked.
“So?” whispered Tavi, “what’s in there?”
Kormick explained in hushed tones. More of that electrical moss. Several cobwebs, thick enough to obscure the view, running from floor to ceiling in the far left corner of the room. Three derro, gathered around a web with something inside. Dark stairs descending from the back of the room, and some sort of natural crevice in the right hand side, leading to who-knows-where.
“What would make a spider web of that size?” Mena inquired.
“Well, naturally, that would be a giant . . . ooh.” Kormick clenched his jaw. She already knew the answer to that one, didn’t she.
But there was no use standing about. Tavi raised his sword. Twiggy pulled her new goggles down over her glasses. Kormick signaled to the slave, who sneaked up to the door with him and slid it open silently. They shared a look, nodded, and fired. One. Two. Kormick’s crossbow bolts sunk into one of the derro, and a rock from Arden’s sling sunk into the top of one of the webs. It stuck there, caught in the web. The hit derro screamed. The other derro raised their axes. The fight was on. But where is the giant spider? Kormick thought.
As the hit derro pulled Kormick’s crossbow bolts out of its arm, Twiggy cast from the doorway. An orb of force warped the air, whizzing past Arden’s head and careening off the already-injured derro, which stumbled as Tavi charged in, slicing a gash in its chest. Blood dripped down its armor and it gurgled a yell up toward the ceiling behind Tavi.
Tavi wheeled around. “The ceiling!” He pointed with his sword at the only corner of the room that had been invisible from the doorway. There was a derro clinging to the ceiling. Not just clinging: skittering forward, rearing back . . . and then it VOMITED, covering Tavi and Mena in web-like goo and spraying the rest of the room in splotchy webs. “Eew!” screamed Savina, as she tried to move in toward the action, her hair caught in the sticky net.
The room’s green cast became brighter as Tavi’s sword lit up and exploded in green flame. It burned Tavi—but it also burned the webs, and he was free. “We can burn them!” he yelled, and let loose another burst of green flame. The derro screeched as flames seared their flesh and shriveled the webs around them.
“Tavi! Behind you!” Mena was struggling in the webs, as one of the derro climbed up the wall behind Tavi, in a flanking position with the more-injured one. It’s not a giant spider, thought Kormick, it’s whole group of Ketkath derro-spider hybrid freaks of nature. He heard a satisfying CRACK as his hammer connected with one of their legs. That’s just wrong.
The spider-thing on the ceiling reared back to spit at Kormick . . . and THWACK. Kormick heard it before he saw it – a stone had flown from the slave’s sling right between the spider-thing’s eyes. The creature didn't fall, but it hesitated, obviously hurt. Kormick made a mental note to lay off the slave jokes.
The creature on the wall pulled an axe out of its belt and struck viciously, leaving a gash in Tavi’s arm. “Tavi, you need help over there?” Twiggy yelled, from near the doorway. She was barely visible through the thick webs, but she was raising her arms to cast.
“Nope, got it,” Tavi said, and a cyclone of red flame exploded from his sword as he swung with a vicious backhand. Like roasting from the inside, Kormick thought, as the blade and fire together sliced into derro-spider flesh. The walls behind them sparked as Tavi’s fire hit the glowing moss. But suddenly the creature on the wall in front of Tavi reared back and spit its sticky web, and Tavi was pinned to the wall, exposed and defenseless against the poison axe of the creature’s still-standing ally.
A spell from Twiggy had confused the spider-thing on the ceiling—it had swatted at the air and skittered to the other side of the room—but now it was rearing back again, ready to let loose another shower of web-like goo. “That’s disgusting!” yelled Savina, and she pushed past Kormick until she was almost directly underneath the spider-thing. Didn’t we talk about not doing that? Kormick thought—as Savina raised her arms and cried out to Alirria. Sacred flame descended, searing the spider-thing and burning away several webs. But Savina couldn’t retreat as well as she could attack: the creature spat again, trapping Savina in a gooey mess, and then lunged forward to BITE the girl. Its fangs sunk into her shoulder. “Poison!” yelled Savina, squirming and writhing against the webs that pinned her to the floor.
Kormick felt a rush of fraternal compassion and frustration for Savina. She was caught in the webs, flailing with her staff, her face twisted from the pain of the poisoned gash on her side. Blood flowed from her wound, and she could not reach to staunch it. It had taken a lot of faith— and a lot of stupidity, but mostly a lot of faith—for her to rush to the front of the fight like that.
He raised his hammers to swing again. But the spider thing reared back and spit again, covering Kormick’s face and arms with webbing—and then, just as it had with Savina, it LUNGED, digging its teeth into Kormick’s shoulder. Poison burned into the wound. He couldn’t move. “You,” he said, pointing at Savina as she hung, trapped, beside him—“hang in there, kid.”
On the other side of the room, Tavi was also taking a beating. Two derro-things—one standing, the other clinging to the wall— were swinging at him with axes, and connecting. He was weak with poison. Frankly, the webs pinning him to the wall seemed to be the only things holding him up. His sword hit stone as often as it hit derro.
Then Mena’s voice rang out as she freed herself from the webs and struck out at the back of the standing derro. “Come on, Tavi, you trained for this!” Tavi’s eyes grew determined, his sword ignited, and he began burning away the webs that held him to the wall. It’s amazing what you can train for, Kormick thought.
Kormick and Savina remained trapped, menaced by a spider-thing on the ceiling, but the slave was—ironically—still free. Arden dove through an impossibly narrow gap in the webs surrounding Kormick, somersaulted as she landed, and came up right behind the creature. STAB. It staggered and fell, and Arden stepped back, her hand covered in its blood. “Where did you learn—” Kormick began.
“Dodging the whip, Justicar,” she replied. And flashed a grim smile.
Okay, if the slave is making slave jokes now, then I'm still making slave jokes.
“Tavi!” Savina broke free and rushed forward to heal Tavi, and then raised her arms again. “Alirria!” A burst of sacred flame erupted from the ceiling, scorching the standing derro-thing that had been attacking him. It fell in a heap on the floor, and Tavi cut through the webs with renewed strength.
The last remaining derro-creature clung to the wall with the panicked look of a debtor about to run out the back door when the crew came to collect. But there was no outlet. SLICE. Tavi’s blade found a home in its neck and it fell, landing with a dull THUD in a thick tangle of webbing.
And the room was, finally, quiet.
“Jan, are you hurt?” Savina asked, softly. Kormick had freed himself from the webs, but still could barely move.
“Actually, yes.”
Savina laid her gentle hands on his shoulders, and Kormick felt the warmth of her healing. “Thanks.” He lit the torch from his pack and began burning the webs that now filled most of the room, gathering pouches and amulets from the dead derro as he passed. He handed the pouch of residuum to Twiggy and the potions to Savina. “More healing,” Savina explained, and handed one to Mena, who quietly passed it to Arden. Kormick didn’t stop her.
“Fire is cleansing,” Tavi said, as he watched the webs shrivel and burn.
Mena looked at the back of her hand, marred by burn scars. “Don’t care for fire.” She paused. “Then again, I don’t care for killing, and I don’t care for dungeons. Yet here we are.” She moved a derro body, to inspect it . . . but discovered that the tangle of webs it had landed on was more than it seemed. There was a body tangled among the webs. She pulled the webs away from the body. It was a dwarf. A male dwarf, with salt-and-pepper hair. Once strong, but now gaunt. Its face was twisted in a rictus of terror.
Corani gasped from behind the group, then pushed forward through them to approach the body. “No! Kartan!” Her husband, now dead from some derro horror.
The elder wife, Sertani, strode forward and looked down at the body, putting her hand on Corani’s shoulder. “We must find Thurran,” she said, softly. “He is the head of the Rockminder clan, now.”
Corani knelt down beside the body with effort, brushing a limp strand of hair back from the once-proud forehead, peeling away a cobweb. Then she looked up at Kormick. “He was a sculptor.”
Savina was looking at Kormick.
Everyone was looking at Kormick.
“Oh,” Kormick said. “Right. Um, rites.” He pulled out his little text and flipped through it, as dwarves filed into the room. Sertani pulled the three-year-old to the front of the group. The kid looked up at Kormick. Kormick kept flipping pages. Where is that section with the rites . . .
And he looked at Savina, her eyes bright with hope, and he looked down at the kid, his eyes wide with expectation, and he stopped flipping pages. He closed the book, and said what came into his head. About honor. Bravery. Then…craftsmanship. Singlemindedness of purpose. Devoting oneself to family. Doing what is necessary. Dedicating one’s life to a single, certain, goal.
Savina translated.
At the end, there was a little tear in Sertani’s eye.
There was a little tear in Kormick’s eye, too.
As they silently built a cairn over Kartan’s body, Kormick considered the experience of performing rites for what felt like the first time. Hm. Religion can be comforting, he thought, touching the spot on his shoulder where Savina had healed him. Not just a tool for establishing authority. It felt new. Strange. More comfortable than he would expect.
The three-year old placed the last stone atop his father’s grave.