Day 18
Kiara wakes up the next morning, with the feeling that there’s something in the air. At first, she thinks it’s leftover excitement from the night before, but as the day wears on, the feeling doesn’t go away.
She talks to Annika about it. “It’s like… It’s almost like someone is baking bread, and I can just get a hint of it. It’s not quite the same as the feeling that brought me to the Academy, but it’s a little similar.”
Annika tries not to show her worry. “Maybe there’s something in the valley. We must be getting close now.”
By the time they make camp that night, the whiff has become a faint pull. Faint, but comfortable.
Day 20
Kiara’s feeling only grows warmer and stronger as time goes on, although not at all urgent. Since it appears to lead in their direction anyway, Reyu advises the young girl to be patient and deal with the source when she comes to it.
Anvil trudges along. His cold has been better for several days, but he is forced to admit that taking a fifty pound rock with him everywhere he goes is getting just the littlest bit wearing.
And at mid-morning, he suddenly feels a sharp pricking in the middle of his back.
Immediately he stops in his tracks, throwing his pack down on the ground with a shout.
Eva stops short to avoid tripping over the not-evil rock. “What’s going on?”
“I’ve been wounded.” Anvil replies sharply.
He hears Lira casting detect magic behind him followed by a stifled gasp. “I can’t see anything sticking you, but… your back is… tainted. With the same aura as the not-evil rock,” she clarifies. “Take off your shirt.”
Anvil lifts the back of his tunic. He is bleeding and seems to have been stuck by some kind of splinter. A white spine is still poking out of the skin.
Reyu grasps the white spine to pull it out, but when she tugs, meets firm resistance. With a shock she realizes the object isn’t poking in from outside, but is growing out of Anvil’s backbone. Carefully, she runs a hand over his back. Every vertebra is growing a pronounced lump.
Informed of the situation, Anvil immediately casts cure moderate wounds on himself. He stops bleeding and skin heals around the protrusion, but the spine itself, and the rest of the growing lumps, remain.
“Well,” says Thatch, “we’ll have to find a new way to carry the rock.”
They finally hit upon the idea to sling it in the middle of a long stick carried between two bearers.
However, when Thatch goes to lift it, he finds Anvil’s pack is stuck to the ground. Upon closer examination, he notices that the leather has become unnaturally stiff and the material itself seems to have grown tiny thorns, which dig tightly into the ground beneath.
Anvil reflects. Now that he thinks about it, the damned thing has seemed heavier for the last few days. At the time, he had simply assumed he was tired of lifting it.
Although the pack isn’t going anywhere, experimentation finds that the rock moves freely. Thatch levers it onto a blanket, ties the corners of the blanket to the pole, and then he and Anvil lift the entire assembly off the ground.
With the pack still refusing to be budged, Anvil burns it—and his shirt for good measure—until nothing remains but a pile of ash. The ash is still slightly tainted, but the party decides there is little they can do about it.
Thatch and Anvil hoist the rock between them (Anvil walking behind so he can keep an eye on the rock), and the march resumes.
*****
That night, Anvil casts another augury to see if weal or woe will befall him if he attempts to remove the bone spine growing out of his back.
Kettenek remains silent.
Deciding that the lack of response means it is up to him to find the course of Justice in this matter, Anvil decides that he would rather not have a tainted bit of bone growing out of his back, if it is all the same to Kettenek.
###
It’s a relatively simple operation. Reyu cuts open the skin surrounding the abnormal bone growth and then proceeds to cut it off, using the bone saw from her masterwork healer’s kit.
(Note: And they thought we'd never use that masterwork healer’s kit!)
Benedic stands by to assist, and Thatch is on hand, literally, holding down Anvil’s shoulders.
By now, Thatch has gotten used to a certain amount of blood in his day to day life, and doesn’t find the proceedings themselves all that off-putting. The disturbing part is that his role isn’t really necessary. Anvil seems to be—through sheer force of will—holding himself still. His fists periodically clench and relax, but aside from that, the Justicar remains perfectly immobile.
Thatch figures if it came to it, he could probably do the same. He glances back to see how the operation is going.
Swallows.
He sort of hopes he doesn’t have to find out.
smiley!)
