Undermind

“I’m going to kill him,” breathed Ruhildi. “’Twere his idea, I just ken it! After all he did to try to stop me… I’m going to kill the bastard!”

Saskia looked between her friend and the statue of her friend. “Kill who? Is your name Ruhildi or Vindica? What’s going on?”

“Do my eyes deceive me, or is that a…?” Soft words carried on the wind, coming from a group of four dwarves strolling into the stone garden.

“No, ’tis a trow alright,” said one of the dwarves, squinting at her. “Two of them.”

“Be that so, I do believe we should do something about this. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Och aye.”

“Aye.”

“Urgh. I drank too much.”

“You always drink too much, Vanglebrower. Up for a game of spears, my hardies?”

A sinking feeling crept into Saskia’s stomach as all four of them raised metal wands, pointed at her and Rover Dog. The ground began to tremble, and an orange glow appeared beneath her feet, rapidly turning red.

Oh crap.

She leapt aside just as two slender spikes of stone thrust out of the gravel where she’d been standing.

Rover Dog, lacking her early warning system, hadn’t been so quick to react. One of the spikes aimed at him had gone straight through his leg. Growling, he snapped the stone spear off at the base and tore it free, spilling copious amounts of blood out over the grass.

Rushing to his side, Saskia handed him a satchel of arlithite Ruhildi had given her earlier. “Here,” she said. “Take a pinch of this. It’ll speed your regeneration.”

Rover Dog sniffed at it. “Princess give divine dust?”

“Yeah, Rover Dog. Hurry up and take it!”

He sprinkled a pinch of arlithite on his tongue and swallowed. Then he frowned. “It not taste divine.”

It was having the desired effect though. The blood had already stopped gushing from his leg, and the wound was beginning to seal over.

Rover Dog bared his teeth and claws at the stoneshapers and prepared to charge, but Saskia grabbed onto his arm, forestalling him.

The dwarves in their party were already facing off against the stoneshapers. She trusted Ruhildi and her friends to have a better handle on the situation than outsiders like herself and Rover Dog. Best to stand back for now, and focus on avoiding whatever nasties the frockers might hurl at them.

Baldreg raised his triple-crossbow and stalked forward, together with Freygi and Kveld. “Shapers, shapers, there’s no need for this,” he said amiably. “The trows won’t be causing any trouble, you have my word. I suggest you turn around and pretend you never saw anything.”

“Afore I put my blades in your face!” added Freygi helpfully.

“Oho!” said a chubby-faced dwarf. “What’s this? You think those little toys can—urk!” The speaker toppled backward, having just taken the butt of a dagger to the forehead.

“Next one’ll hit you with the pointy end,” said Freygi.

The fallen stoneshaper’s companions turned their wands to Freygi. One of them snarled, “You dare—”

“Aye, we dare,” said Ruhildi, who crouched with her hands to the ground, a whisper of magic gathering around her.

It was then that the three stoneshapers who had thus far remained upright found themselves sinking into the ground. Their struggles only made it worse, and within seconds, they were up to their elbows in quicksand.

Ruhildi stepped up to the edge of the sand pit and calmly prised the wands from their flailing hands.

“We’re here on Guild business,” she said in a low voice. “Try anything like this again, novices, and I’ll see to it that your lives become a waking nightmare. Do you understand me?”

“Aye, mistress, er…”

“Good.” Ruhildi turned to her friends and said, “Let’s be away.”

They were stepping out of the rock garden when a plaintive voice called out, “Er…mistress? Could we have our wands back?”

“Och, how forgetful of me,” said Ruhildi. She hurled the wands into a nearby patch of thorny bushes.

“Happy hunting!” called out Baldreg.

“I hope you didn’t just make enemies of the whole Shaper Guild on our account,” said Saskia.

“No, those were just novices,” said Ruhildi. “Like as not, they haven’t held their wands for more than a pinch of years. The Guild won’t pay heed to anything they say.”

“To be true, we’re not on the best of terms with the Guild as it stands,” said Baldreg. “We’ve been excluded from all Guild contracts. Mangorn blamed me for your demise, Ruhildi. Supposed demise.”

“That sounds like Pap,” said Ruhildi. “I’ve no doubt that ridiculous statue with my name on it helped bolster support for whatever ’tis that the shapers are doing up there. But you who fought at my side and lived to tell of it—you’re just an inconvenience to him.”

“The statue with your name on it,” said Saskia. “Your name…as in Vindica.”

Ruhildi groaned. “’Twere the name my deeds earned me, not the one I were born with. Somehow it stuck. ’Tis not what my friends call me.”

“And Mangorn, your father, he’s some bigwig—uh, important person—in the Shaper Guild?”

“Aye, he’s the Chancellor,” said Ruhildi.

“Wait…Chancellor? You mean the leader of the city?”

“Och no,” said Ruhildi. “My Pap is the Chancellor of the Shaper Guild, not the Grand Chancellor. Not now, leastwise. He did serve as Grand Chancellor for a time, when ’twere the Shaper Guild’s turn at the head of the table. Hated it, if I recall. Who’s the current imbecile in charge, Baldi?”

“Walben of the Scriber Guild,” said Baldreg.

“A librarian?” Ruhildi snorted. “Could be worse, I suppose. Remember when the Harlots had the high seat?”

“Och aye, I remember it well.” Baldreg’s face took on a wistful expression. Freygi smirked at him.

The crypts they were setting out to explore were spread out across a large swathe of land along the western shore of Torpend. There were several known entrances, but their entrance was a closely guarded secret kept by Baldreg’s crew and a few close associates. It lay beneath the basement of an abandoned spire in one of the seedier parts of town.

Saskia had a lot of trouble squeezing into the tiny basement, but the dwarves assured her that the crypts themselves were much more spacious. Sure enough, once she slithered down the hole excavated in the floor, she found herself in a wide corridor with a high ceiling.

Stepping briskly through the musty, winding corridors, Saskia got a definite sense of deja-vu. These were a lot like the crypts around the Dead Sanctum. Cavities spaced evenly along the walls held the withered husks of long-dead dwarves. A few were clad in bronze ceremonial armour that had survived the ages relatively intact. Most had been buried in animal hides or clothes that had fused with their flesh, or rotted away entirely, leaving only bones.

“Are we looking for anything in particular down here?” asked Saskia. “Or just exploring?”

“Always explore,” said Rover Dog. “All else secondary.”

Baldreg looked at Kveld. “You want to tell them, lad? ’Tis your wee black box that led us here.”

Kveld’s gaze shifted nervously from side to side. “Aye, I suppose…”

The silence lingered for nearly a minute before Baldreg said, “Well lad? Are you going to talk or aren’t you?”

Kveld gave a nervous cough. “I…er, well, I’ve this…thing, you see…”

Another long silence.

“This…thing?” prompted Saskia.

“Aye.”

Freygi snickered. “We’ve all seen your thing, Kveldi.”

“I haven’t seen his thing,” said Saskia. “What thing?”

“Well you haven’t missed much,” said Freygi. She looked at Rover Dog. “Now his thing, on the other hand…”

Kveld reddened. “’Tis…an heirloom. Uncle Bogglebork said it came from him.”

Saskia bit back a laugh. These dwarves and their ridiculous names… “It came from your uncle?”

“No, not my uncle. Him.”

She shook her head. “You’ve lost me.”

“Och for the love of Thondberg, lad!” Baldreg looked up at Saskia. “Kveldvorgvarl’s uncle thinks the artefact were given to his forefather by none other than Calburn the Great, the demon king himself.”

Saskia exchanged a glance with Ruhildi, who nodded up at her. “And do you believe him?”

“I didn’t at first,” said Baldreg. “But then the lad told me he’d found a way to talk to his…thing.” He frowned at Freygi, who had doubled over with mirth. “Now that must have been an interesting conversation. But there’s some truth to his madness, leastwise, because he led us to a hidden chamber beneath these very crypts.”

Saskia’s ears perked up at that. “A hidden chamber? Did you get attacked by armoured skeletons?”

Baldreg scratched his stubbly chin. “Eh? No. A stone guardian, bigger than any dwarrow. Bigger even than the lad himself. That monster were too strong for us. We had to retreat.”

Stone guardian; does he mean golem? Another glance at Ruhildi revealed that her friend was just as perplexed as she was.

“That’s why we brought you with us today,” continued Baldreg. “My hope is that trows as big and strong as yourselves can help us get past the guardian.”

“And here I thought you wanted us for our wit and charm and good looks,” said Saskia.

“Smell good too,” offered Rover Dog.

Ruhildi coughed. “You go on believing that, Dogi.”

Saskia gave a little chuckle. “You know, he smells better than most dogs back home.”

“I don’t ken what you mean,” said Ruhildi.

“A dog is a domesticated animal where I come from. We keep them as pets, put them to work in farms; a bunch of stuff. I had a pet dog, growing up. His name was Cerberus.”

“Och, well now you have another pet Dogi,” said Ruhildi, smirking at her.

Freygi murmured into Ruhildi’s ear, just loud enough for Saskia to make out her words. “Where is that then?”

“Where is what?” asked Ruhildi.

“Where does your trow hail from? She speaks the stone tongue as fluently as we do. The other trow speaks well enough too—far better than the brutes I’ve encountered afore—but he’s still more…trow-like than she.”

“I already told you, Frey,” said Ruhildi. “Sashki’s story isn’t mine to tell. If you want to ken something, ask her yourself.”

Freygi pouted at her. “Ruhi, you’re no fun!”

Saskia looked at Rover Dog. “So earlier, you acted like you’d never taken arlith—I mean divine dust—before. Why?”

He looked at her, confusion clear on his face. “I not princess.”

She laughed. “No. No you are most definitely not a princess. So what?”

“Divine dust only for queens and princesses.”

“But…” Saskia stared at his rough hide. She’d assumed trolls became rock trolls after healing enough wounds with the help of arlithite, but now she thought about it, her skin had started to thicken before she ever started taking the stuff. It had just happened much more slowly. How much time would it take to grow a hide like that without arlithite? Decades? Centuries? “How old are you, Rover Dog?”

He looked away, and it was a long time before he answered. “I not know.”

“How can you not know your age? Can you at least give me a rough estimate?”

“Not even estimate,” he said. “Too many spans. Too many… Memories not always grow back.”

She stared at him. “What’s the first thing you do remember then?”

Again he didn’t reply immediately. When he finally spoke, all he said was: “Fire.”

It seemed that was all she was going to get out of him. Which was a bit strange, because normally she couldn’t get the guy to shut up.

When the party stopped for a snack break, Saskia turned to Kveld. “Could I take a look at your…thing?”

“I happy to show princess my thing,” said Rover Dog.

Reaching into his backpack, Kveld produced an object both familiar and strange: a black cube, so smooth and dark that the only way she could discern its shape was from its silhouette. It looked like a smaller version of the keystone they’d found back in the Dead Sanctum.

Kveld peered into the object as if mesmerised. The air seemed to hum with potential. Something magicy was about to happen, she just knew it.

Something magicy happened. The cube shot out of his hands, coming to an abrupt halt in front of her face. It floated there, rotating lazily just beyond the tip of her nose.

Before she even knew what she was doing, Saskia reached up and plucked the cube out of the air.

A blinding column of light enveloped her. In the same moment, a message scroll unfurled across her interface:

Say your command, mouthlet of the master.

“Dracken’s tits!” cried Freygi.

“What did you do?” said Baldreg, looking at Kveld with narrowed eyes.

“I didn’t…” said Kveld. Then his eyes widened, and he blurted, “The master! ’Tis her!”

“What are you blathering about, lad?”

“She’s the master!” said Kveld, pointing at Saskia. “The one it kept telling me about.”

Saskia looked back at the message scroll. Yup, it seemed he’d been seeing messages like this too, somehow. She wrote on the scroll: Is this a keystone?

The words rotated around the scroll, and in their place was a new message: Yes.

Saskia: Like the one in the Dead Sanctum? Does it control a similar site?

Keystone: It can be used to control any of the master’s facilities.

Interesting. So if she understood correctly, this was a mobile keystone. The one in the Dead Sanctum had been too big to carry, but this…

Saskia: Facilities like the Dead Sanctum and the Vortex Roost?

Keystone: Yes.

This keystone had led Kveld to another such site beneath these crypts. But why hadn’t that site shown on the map the other keystone had given her? Could it have only shown her ones with keystones already plugged in?

Saskia: Are there any other such facilities nearby?

Keystone: Present location unknown.

Saskia: Beneath the city of Torpend in the Underneath, below Ciendil.

Keystone: There is one inactive facility in that location: the Stone Bastion.

Saskia: Did you show Kveld—the dwarrow who held this keystone before me—where to find this facility?

Keystone: Yes.

Saskia: Would you do this for anyone who asked?

Keystone: No.

Saskia: Then why Does Kveld have guest privileges?

Keystone: No.

Saskia: What access privileges does Kveld have?

Keystone: The dwarrow designated Kveld has Kveld privileges.

She stared at the message. Kveld privileges? What was that supposed to mean?

“Sashki?” Ruhildi pinched her on the leg.

Blinking down at her friend, Saskia realised she’d probably been standing there staring into space for several minutes. Closing the keystone interface, she looked at the dwarves and the troll, who were all watching her expectantly.

Well…crap.

Handing the cube back to Kveld, she drew a deep breath and said, “I guess I should tell you about my father…”

Ruhildi had been right. Spilling her secrets wasn’t as much of a disaster as Saskia had feared. They didn’t try to stick her with pointy things or set her on fire. No-one called her a blasphemer or pretender. And best of all, they didn’t fawn over her or kneel before her or try to kiss her smelly feet.

She wouldn’t put it past Rover Dog to make the attempt at some point though—for entirely different reasons. He grinned at her. “Trow babies. Demon babies. I not mind which we make together, princess.”

She scowled at him. “Still going with the princess thing are you?”

“Demon princess is still princess.”

Saskia sighed. “That’s what Ruhildi said.”

While the party worked their way through the crypts, she answered their questions as best she could—so many questions. Questions were to be expected after delivering the news that, oh, by the way, this troll who they’d originally thought was Ruhildi’s pet was actually a demon from another dimension, and the daughter of…yeah, it was a lot to take in.

Saskia had her own questions too. Such as…how the hell had Kveld managed to get the keystone to obey him? When she asked him about it, Kveld just mumbled some magitechnobabble about, “…re-routing ward lines into a substitute nexus primed to my animus.” Saskia’s confusion core was about to go critical when Baldreg came to her rescue.

“Kveldvorgvarl is a shaper,” he explained. “Or he would be if he ever studied at Spindle and took up a focus. Can’t fling any spells, but there’s one thing he can do better than any of those poncy wand-wavers. No disrespect, Ruhildi.”

“It’s alright, Baldi,” said Ruhildi. “Most of them are fair poncy.”

“Wards,” continued Baldreg. “The lad can inscribe a ward faster than he can say his own name.”

“It’s quite a long name,” said Saskia. “So what do wards have to do with the keystone?”

“Keystone?” said Baldreg. “Is that what his thing is called? He just told me it uses ward magic.”

“Keystones are used to control wards, Sashki,” said Ruhildi. “If Kveldi’s keystone is anything like the one in the Dead Sanctum, ’tis fair complex—its construction far beyond the abilities of any shaper alive today. ’Twere almost as if it had a mind of its own.”

“I got that impression too,” said Saskia. “Artificial intelligence. Or at least a very sophisticated program.”

“I don’t ken what you mean,” said Ruhildi.

“Never mind.” Saskia frowned as a thought occurred to her. She turned to Kveld. “You hacked it!”

He looked at her blankly.

“You hacked the keystone to give yourself a special set of access privileges! Oh wow, I know what you are now. You’re a nerd!”

Kveld’s look of bafflement intensified. “I…er…is that a good thing or…?”

“It’s good! Great, even! Most of my friends on Earth were nerds. Well, some were geeks. A couple of dorks too. If only I could’ve introduced them to you.”

He stared at her for a long moment, before saying, “I…I’ve not an inkling what you just…”

“Get used to it, Kveldi,” said Ruhildi.

Shifting aside a stone panel on the floor of an otherwise innocuous-looking room, they uncovered a short staircase. At the bottom of the staircase, one of those magical dwarven palm readers was set against a smooth wall. However, no light emanated from this one when she saved her hand over it. And the door it was meant to open…was already open.

“’Tis much like the Dead Sanctum,” said Ruhildi. “I can sense nought but solid rock down there, though my eyes tell me elsewise.”

“How’d you get the door open?” asked Saskia.

“’Twere like that when we got here,” said Baldreg. “Don’t go inside just yet. The chamber with the stone guardian lies just around the corner. Gather close, everyone, and let’s talk strategy.”

“Alright,” he said when they drew near. “Ruhildi, can you do your…” He waggled his fingers. “…with the residents of these crypts?”

“Aye,” she said. “Though the dead won’t hold up against the stone guardian if ’tis as strong as you suggest, Baldi.”

“Wait,” said Saskia. “You told them you’re a…”

“Of course, Sashki. I told them all ’cept the secrets that were not mine to tell.”

“The dead don’t need to last forever,” said Baldreg. “They just need to distract the guardian so we can either disable it or get around it. Should they fall before we can do that, it’ll be your job…” He nodded up at Saskia and Rover Dog. “…to keep it from smearing the rest of us across the walls.” He paused, before adding, hesitantly, “If it pleases the Caesitor.”

Saskia sighed. Caesitor was the name they gave to the demon king’s heir. Which was her, apparently. “I have an idea. Before you all go rushing in, I’d like to try something…”

Half an hour later, she stepped out into the corridor, breathing heavily. Her whole body ached. That had been a serious workout.

“Okay, you can come in now,” she told them.

Stepping through the hole in the wall, they followed her down a short tunnel and into the chamber beyond. She watched with rising amusement as the dwarves peered around the room.

“Where is it?” said Baldreg.

“Where is what?” said Saskia, grinning at him.

“The stone guardian! ’Twere right here!”

“Oh that,” she said. “I moved it.”

“You moved it,” he repeated.

Ruhildi let out a groan. “Not this again. Just so you ken, I amn’t letting you carry me in a bag this time.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Saskia assured her. “This site is much smaller than the Dead Sanctum. There are only a few stone guardians, and I dragged them into the side chambers. There’s a clear path all the way to the control chamber. Just don’t go opening any doors, and you’ll be fine.”

“And they just let you drag them,” said Baldreg.

“Yup. Weighed a ton though—literally, I think. It’s because of my…heritage. They didn’t see me as a threat. They might not have attacked Ruhildi or Kveld either, if they’d come in here alone. I’d rather not test that theory yet though.”

They followed her through empty halls lined with the blue glassy material Ruhildi had once told her was an altered form of arlium.

“Princess no fun,” said Rover Dog. “I want fight.”

“The trow speaks true,” said Freygi. “This is boring.”

Saskia rolled her eyes. “Any of those guardians we don’t destroy will become our faithful servants once I’m through with them. So you’re welcome!”

The control chamber was much like the other one; a nexus of converging blue lines. But where the keystone had sat in the Dead Sanctum, here there was just a small rectangular indentation in the floor.

Taking the keystone from Kveld, she set it in the slot. Immediately, she leapt back as the jet black stone swelled to ten times its original size. The lines on the walls flared brilliant blue, drawing gasps from the dwarves.

Reaching out with trembling fingers, she touched the newly embiggened keystone.

Keystone: Say your command, mouthlet of the master.

After some negotiations with the keystone, she asked Rover Dog and each of the dwarves to touch it in turn, granting them guest access. When Kveld’s turn came, he stood there a lot longer than the others.

“There’ll be time enough to play later,” said Saskia, prising him away from his toy.

They spent the rest of the day exploring the newly awakened facility. There were living quarters, a library, an armoury and what appeared to be a golem foundry or laboratory: an immense chamber filled with slabs of inanimate rock shaped into various humanoid and animal forms. On a bench sat a smooth chunk of blue arlium that might very well be the heart of a golem.

As they sat around a roaring fire, enjoying an evening meal, Saskia told them, “I think I’ve found my new home.”

“’Tis home enough for us all, if you’ll have us, Caesitor,” said Baldreg, to murmurs of agreement from the other dwarves.

“I need no home, princess,” said Rover Dog. “But I stay a while too.”

That night, as she curled up on the floor of her very own bedroom (one of these days, she’d have to make a proper bed), Saskia felt something she hadn’t truly felt in a long time. Here, in this bastion of stone, hidden beneath the last city of the dwarves, she felt content.