Harvest, page 15
Sarave cast her gaze toward the mountains. “Our enemies are coming, and the only way we can survive is by standing together. I spoke to a few of you yesterday.” Aspen looked at her, startled. When had she managed that? “I know that you have family and friends you left behind. Restur claims he has a way to get back through the mountains, though he’ll have to leave his wagons behind and buy new ones once he returns to Bright.”
Aspen felt another surge of surprised pride flow through him. How had she managed to speak to so many people? How had she gotten Restur to tell her something that he hadn’t mentioned even to Aspen?
“Write to them. If you can’t write, send them tokens along with a note written by someone who can. Let them know what’s happening here. Don’t allow Chester and his puppets to control everything the people of Quarternell know of us. Let them know that they are welcome to come here, if they wish to escape from the clutches of the madman who rules them now.”
Expression grim, Sarave gestured to the south. “We have a month, at the most, to be ready to defend our dreams with our lives. If you wish to run, you should do so now, but,” she waved her hand north, “we all know there is nowhere to go. The elves hide in their pretty cities, and the dwarves in their burrows. If you try again to start anew, you will lose all the benefits of a free city, from bluestones and walls, to people and leaders and a dream you can believe in. I hope you will stay. Stay, and we will all learn how to be free together.”
Silence fell over the crowd. Aspen looked around, and saw tears on more than one face. Though many people still looked hesitant, they no longer seemed disappointed or angry. Aspen’s eye caught on one particular face, however, and the scowl there caused him to turn and catch Florence and Horace’s eyes. His gaze flicked from ‘retired’ Captain Kyle to Sarave, and he saw that Nekthadt had his hand on the hilt of one of his knives and also watched the man. Aspen tilted his head toward the goblin, and his vassals moved smoothly through the crowd to flank Nekthadt, providing more of a buffer between the crowd and the royal family.
Satisfied, Aspen stepped back, just enough to show that he wasn’t taking a leadership role, but not so much that it looked like he was distancing himself from Sarave. Rouge edged around the outside of the crowd, coming up beside him. She was stuffing the last bite of a cinnamon roll in her mouth. Codswallop, trailing along behind her, gave a sad little chirrup as the final scraps vanished.
::That… was awesome. I mean, I seriously don’t even know what happened, but Sarave managed to succeed at so many [Persuade] and [Diplomacy] skill checks that I almost don’t care right now.:: Rouge grinned, licking her fingers, though Aspen thought he detected a bit of tension in the way she held her shoulders and how she flicked her eyes around as if half expecting a sudden attack.
Aspen nodded. He had always wondered what class Sarave was. Most of the goblins he’d met were Thieves, Fighters, or Berserkers, though he’d met a few Dark Priests as well. Once the war was over, the less battle-oriented goblins had begun to appear, and Miners, Foragers, and even Merchants could be found with fair regularity. Aspen assumed there were crafters of various kinds as well, though none of these seemed to venture beyond the edges of the insular areas where the goblins lived.
After today, however, Aspen knew. Sarave was a Queen, through and through. She had probably been trained in all of the required skills from the moment she had spawned, though doubtless no one had ever expected she would need to use them. As royalty, she would also get a boost to experience, similar to the one Aspen had received from Gina. This would allow her to gain stats, skills, and spells more easily than others.
His gaze lingered on the small woman’s face, watching as she gently soothed the fears of one after another of her new citizens. It was as if she spread a blanket of calm over the crowd, and for all he knew, that was exactly what she had done.
Wryly, he wondered exactly when he had begun to think of the goblin woman as more than just a friend. When had his emotions, frozen in place at the moment of Lark’s death, begun to thaw and allow so many changes? He remembered when he’d seen Calliope that day in Bright’s bustling market. Always before, when he saw her at parties or events, a stab of pain had gone through him, but that day, a single face had stood between him and that familiar ache. An angular, inhuman face filled with gentle understanding and fierce intelligence.
Rouge nudged him with her elbow. ::Hey, Aspen, that was a hint. Tell me what happened!::
A deep, amused chuckle sounded from behind them, and Motte added his voice to the silent conversation. ::I’d like to know that as well. Though,:: the big man stepped up beside his daughter and looked down at her with a raised eyebrow, ::first I’d like to know what you’re doing here, young lady. You’re supposed to be reading Wuthering Heights.::
Rouge crossed her arms and glared at her father. Aspen’s eyebrows shot up as he sensed genuine anger and concern beneath the usual teasing. ::Me? I thought you were supposed to be at the clinic?::
Aspen turned to Motte, quickly looking the other man over before realizing that Rouge was implying that the warrior had been injured in his other world, his real world. He felt a surge of worry, and forced it down, though it was all he could do to keep from touching his friend’s arm and demanding to know if he was all right.
Friend. He reminded that small voice inside himself. Just a friend.
Motte looked a little abashed. ::Brent had to take care of a case of suspected mono. He’s going to send me a pm when he’s done. I’m just taking a little break before my first appointment, and Lyrec messaged me about this.:: He looked around at the stately buildings surrounding them, then back at Rouge. ::Would have been nice to hear about it from my daughter.::
Rouge looked rebellious. ::You didn’t want to talk to me.::
Motte sighed. ::I told you what happened-::
Aspen broke into what seemed like an argument the two had already gone over at least once. ::What did happen?::
Motte hesitated, then looked at Rouge. ::Homework before games.::
The girl huffed. ::Heathcliff is an emo jerk, and Cathy is a snobby, selfish brat.::
Motte raised a brow. ::Home. Work.::
Rouge growled, and then her eyes went blank. Her Zombie immediately turned and headed toward the castle tower, presumably to return to the small bed in Aspen’s house that had been set as its – her – resting place.
Motte sighed, though he looked more sad than exasperated. “Why do they make it so hard to protect them?” he muttered aloud.
Aspen shook his head, feeling his heart clench in his chest. “Sometimes in protecting them from one thing, we leave them open to injury from something worse.”
Motte seemed to realize what he’d said, then started to raise a hand to touch Aspen’s arm in apology before flinching and dropping the arm again. He grimaced, and gingerly touched his left forearm as he spoke. “I’m sorry, Aspen. I didn’t mean-”
Aspen cut him off, lifting the arm so he could look at it. Even to his Life Sense, it appeared fine, but it was clearly bothering the other man. “Don’t worry about it. What happened?”
Shrugging, Motte said, “I went to help a friend and got distracted. I made a stupid mistake and hurt my arm. I have a buddy in the clinic at work, and he’s going to look at it, patch me up and get me some antibiotics. It’ll be fine in a week or two.”
Aspen blinked. “So long? Can’t you afford a healer?”
Motte chuckled, and the deep vibration sent a little thrill through Aspen.
Friend, he thought to his rebellious innards, with more emphasis.
“We don’t have healers like you do here. We have physicians and medicine. It’s more like what Manuela does, though without her ability to tell exactly what the problem is. Sometimes our doctors are really just guessing from what little information they have.” He held up the apparently uninjured limb. “Though there won’t be any confusion about this.”
Aspen shook his head. “Sometimes I think your world must truly be a place of miracles, and other times it seems akin to the worst of our slums.” He felt the headache begin to build again as he thought about it, and flickers of metallic contrivances hurtling down unnaturally black roads vied with images of a girl with reddish-blonde braids. His vision blurred, and he blinked away the intrusive images.
Motte shook his head. “Both of those things are true, and neither. Your world is… a sort of idealized, simplified version of ours. We wish we lived here, with all of your magic and freedom, while we’re also unwilling to give up the conveniences of our own world and face the real brutality of yours.”
Aspen sighed and stepped away from the armored figure of his friend. “Brutality we have in plenty. Freedom? Not so much as you Travelers enjoy. I can see why you would rather be a visitor than a resident.”
“It’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.” Motte chuckled dryly. “That’s about right.”
Both men turned back to contemplate the scene in front of them. Aspen’s gaze was instantly drawn back to Sarave, like metal filings to a lodestone. The small woman was still answering questions, though her eyes were beginning to blink against the increasing light. Juniper, who had sat down beside her mother on the edge of the fountain, was swinging her plump little legs in boredom, and had somehow managed to tear a small hole in her pretty dress. Nekthadt no longer looked quite so inclined to reach for a blade, but neither did he look happy with the situation.
Aspen hesitated. It wasn’t his place to interfere in this. In order for the fragile sense of authority Sarave was winding about herself to remain intact, Aspen had to keep his distance. Fortunately, someone else seemed to have realized that, because Plum and Manuela were making their way up to the front of the crowd.
Plum bobbed a curtsey to Sarave, while Manuela offered her a bow, and Sarave smiled in acknowledgement, lips closed. Plum murmured a few words to Sarave, and the goblin looked relieved and held up a hand. “Miss Millie would like to invite everyone to the inn for a proper meal. Miss Plum says that the dining room has been prepared. I’ll move there, where I hope we can continue to speak in a more relaxed setting.” Putting action to words, she regally stretched out a hand to her brother and stepped off the edge of the fountain, somehow managing to look perfectly graceful as she landed in a poof of skirts and velvet slippers.
The crowd flowed away, leaving Aspen and Motte standing alone in the courtyard. The two men exchanged speaking glances, and Motte shook his head. “How did that happen?”
Aspen smiled. “It seems that Sarave is the Goblin Queen-in-Exile. Honestly, she’s the only one qualified for this position.”
Motte shot Aspen a sharp glance. “Not you?”
Aspen sighed and began to walk toward the inn. “There were two problems with that. First, if a member of Quarternell’s nobility used the Seed, the city thus formed would become part of Quarternell, subject to its laws and ruler. Secondly,” he quirked a smile, “I didn’t want to.”
Motte reached out and caught Aspen’s arm. “You know you’ve declared war on them, right? They’re probably on their way here right now.”
Aspen stopped and tugged his hat down over his eyes. “Akuji is smarter than that. The City Seed was the wild card in the deck, and now it’s anyone’s game. Akuji has never been one to settle for even odds. He’ll send scouts, then smaller parties to harry us and find our weaknesses.”
“Of which we have many,” Motte said, looking around as two unicorns and a glorified guinea pig raced through the square, followed by a small mob of laughing children, who were followed in turn by a very large goat, who stamped his hooves threateningly but somehow managed to stay just behind the slowest of the children.
Aspen nodded. “We can’t let them get here. There is literally nothing we can do to prevent them from crushing us through sheer numbers.”
“So, what’s the plan?” Motte’s voice was steady, as were his eyes, betraying not a single doubt.
Aspen held up a pale blue gem, raising it so the brilliant spring sunshine streamed through it, fracturing into a million rainbow hued glimmers. Opening his hand, he let it fall down into his palm, then squeezed. There was no way mortal strength should have been able to destroy the solid stone, but somehow it crumbled beneath his touch, trickling from between his fingers as glittering dust.
“I’m going to ask a friend for a little favor.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
ROUGE
Rouge laid back on a grassy hill beneath the Tree, one leg propped on the other, her foot kicking idly. She was bored. In fact, she’d forgotten just how boring farming could be. Even with all the new people, and the town-building, and forming councils and making laws, it was booooooorrring. In fact, if anything, it was even more boring. At least last winter, she’d been able to play with the sparkles, and adorable baby Juniper, and talk to Aspen and Sarave and Sumi and Silus and, yes, even Khor.
Now, nobody had time for her. Aspen was hiding in the fields, which had been magicked off to the east when the city was built, so now instead of house, fields, orchard/Tree, now it was castle/city, orchard/Tree, fields. That meant he had a longer commute, and a lot more mouths to feed, and he used that as an excuse to avoid everyone except Sarave. Queen Saravelle.
Queen Saravelle, of course, didn’t have time for Rouge either. No more time spent cooking dinner together, or snuggling Juniper, or even doing dishes, laughing as they nearly fumbled slippery plates. She never would have thought she’d miss doing dishes.
But no, the last week had dragged by, and when Rouge reminded Aspen that FantumHat and Akuji were Coming For Them, he had just smiled and said that he’d asked a friend to watch the pass. What friend, he wouldn’t tell her, claiming that she should be able to figure it out for herself. As if she knew all of his old war buddies, since she assumed he must have called in some favors while they were in Bright. Without telling her, because of course she didn’t need to know about things like powerful friends, hidden royalty, and, say, City Seeds.
Sighing, she glared at her game clock. She, Lyrec, Motte, Fluff, Tess, Doom, and Wiki had worked up a schedule so that at least one of them was online at all times. If something happened, they would log out, send a group at to everyone, and then get back in to help. She’d agreed to her shifts without really thinking about it, and now it was Friday, and there were people upstairs installing her new pod, and she was lying here under the stinky Tree instead of watching. Worse, she had another hour before she could log out, which meant she’d only have four hours (well, eight, game time) to play in the New. Pod!
Rouge growled and rolled around in the grass, not even caring that Viqa was right there, capable of seeing a fourteen-and-a-half-year-old throwing a fit like she was a decade younger. No, Viqa didn’t care. The glyphis had probably patented the term all-business, and unless something was coming to attack the Tree, she didn’t twitch from morning until afternoon.
Speaking of attacks…
Rouge rolled her head to one side and eyed the faint slash marks in the smooth bark of the Tree’s trunk. That had happened on… Wednesday? A whole herd of giant wild pigs had suddenly come rumbling down from the mountains as if their piggy posteriors were on fire. They hadn’t paused in their headlong retreat until they caught a whiff of the Tree, and their leader, an enormous pure-white swine with glaring pink eyes, had screeched to a halt, made a hard right, and headed straight for the Tree.
Rouge was pretty sure they hadn’t even meant to attack the Tree, they just weren’t exactly made for climbing, and so they’d tried ramming the trunk with their hard heads instead, trying to shake loose some fruit, which, unlike other trees, never dropped unless someone picked it. This had resulted in incidental gouges from their pointy tusks, and Aspen had had to come do some plant magic to repair the damage after Khor and Viqa ‘convinced’ the piggies to keep moving. Not before a few of them managed to grab a low-hanging fruit or two, however, and remembering the violet hog with deep fuchsia stripes and a horse-tail still managed to lighten her mood.
A little.
Then a quiet voice came down from the Tree, and Rouge sat bolt upright.
::Rouge? Is that you?::
The voice was familiar, and yet not, but since it was coming through on party chat, there was really only one person it could be.
“Sumi?” she squealed, jumping up. She grabbed the Tree trunk, clinging to the smooth bark thanks to her high [Climb] skill. Quickly, she shimmied up, reaching the joint of the thick branches where Sumi’s disturbingly lifeless shell had been resting silently since they returned to the farm. In fact, if it weren’t for the fact that the arachnid still showed up on the party list as Unavailable and not Dead, Rouge would have thought the spider had ‘returned to the Chaos Pool’, whatever that meant.
When she finally caught a glimpse of her friend, however, she nearly lost her grip on the Tree. The spider was nearly as white as the big albino boar, though her fangs still held a hint of blue, and her feet were… Rouge squinted in the deep shadow of the Tree’s interior. Was that… pink?
Behind Sumi, curled and dry, lay her abandoned husk, as empty as it had appeared when Rouge first saw it. A sort of hatch in the abdomen splayed open, revealing the inner surface of the shell. Rouge shuddered, then looked at Sumi, who clung to a branch nearby. Her new exoskeleton was already darkening, and Rouge could tell that the spider was definitely bigger than she had been before. From the tip of her front leg to the tip of the back leg, the arachnid was easily four feet long, a full foot larger than she had been before.
“Uh,” Rouge cleared her throat, feeling a little awkward. “How are you, um, feeling? Do you need anything?” She gestured vaguely toward the fields, where Aspen was undoubtedly already working. Surely he could help Sumi recover from the… What? Birth? That didn’t seem right, somehow, but what else would it be?
Sumi chuckled, a slightly rough sound, even though it was purely mental. Her voice was definitely a little deeper than it had been before, too. Not masculine, but richer, in some indefinable way. ::No, thank you, Rouge. I’ll be fine in a bit.:: Carefully, the spider settled herself onto a particularly wide branch. ::Please, tell me what has happened while I was sleeping. Is Aspen here as well?::
Aspen felt another surge of surprised pride flow through him. How had she managed to speak to so many people? How had she gotten Restur to tell her something that he hadn’t mentioned even to Aspen?
“Write to them. If you can’t write, send them tokens along with a note written by someone who can. Let them know what’s happening here. Don’t allow Chester and his puppets to control everything the people of Quarternell know of us. Let them know that they are welcome to come here, if they wish to escape from the clutches of the madman who rules them now.”
Expression grim, Sarave gestured to the south. “We have a month, at the most, to be ready to defend our dreams with our lives. If you wish to run, you should do so now, but,” she waved her hand north, “we all know there is nowhere to go. The elves hide in their pretty cities, and the dwarves in their burrows. If you try again to start anew, you will lose all the benefits of a free city, from bluestones and walls, to people and leaders and a dream you can believe in. I hope you will stay. Stay, and we will all learn how to be free together.”
Silence fell over the crowd. Aspen looked around, and saw tears on more than one face. Though many people still looked hesitant, they no longer seemed disappointed or angry. Aspen’s eye caught on one particular face, however, and the scowl there caused him to turn and catch Florence and Horace’s eyes. His gaze flicked from ‘retired’ Captain Kyle to Sarave, and he saw that Nekthadt had his hand on the hilt of one of his knives and also watched the man. Aspen tilted his head toward the goblin, and his vassals moved smoothly through the crowd to flank Nekthadt, providing more of a buffer between the crowd and the royal family.
Satisfied, Aspen stepped back, just enough to show that he wasn’t taking a leadership role, but not so much that it looked like he was distancing himself from Sarave. Rouge edged around the outside of the crowd, coming up beside him. She was stuffing the last bite of a cinnamon roll in her mouth. Codswallop, trailing along behind her, gave a sad little chirrup as the final scraps vanished.
::That… was awesome. I mean, I seriously don’t even know what happened, but Sarave managed to succeed at so many [Persuade] and [Diplomacy] skill checks that I almost don’t care right now.:: Rouge grinned, licking her fingers, though Aspen thought he detected a bit of tension in the way she held her shoulders and how she flicked her eyes around as if half expecting a sudden attack.
Aspen nodded. He had always wondered what class Sarave was. Most of the goblins he’d met were Thieves, Fighters, or Berserkers, though he’d met a few Dark Priests as well. Once the war was over, the less battle-oriented goblins had begun to appear, and Miners, Foragers, and even Merchants could be found with fair regularity. Aspen assumed there were crafters of various kinds as well, though none of these seemed to venture beyond the edges of the insular areas where the goblins lived.
After today, however, Aspen knew. Sarave was a Queen, through and through. She had probably been trained in all of the required skills from the moment she had spawned, though doubtless no one had ever expected she would need to use them. As royalty, she would also get a boost to experience, similar to the one Aspen had received from Gina. This would allow her to gain stats, skills, and spells more easily than others.
His gaze lingered on the small woman’s face, watching as she gently soothed the fears of one after another of her new citizens. It was as if she spread a blanket of calm over the crowd, and for all he knew, that was exactly what she had done.
Wryly, he wondered exactly when he had begun to think of the goblin woman as more than just a friend. When had his emotions, frozen in place at the moment of Lark’s death, begun to thaw and allow so many changes? He remembered when he’d seen Calliope that day in Bright’s bustling market. Always before, when he saw her at parties or events, a stab of pain had gone through him, but that day, a single face had stood between him and that familiar ache. An angular, inhuman face filled with gentle understanding and fierce intelligence.
Rouge nudged him with her elbow. ::Hey, Aspen, that was a hint. Tell me what happened!::
A deep, amused chuckle sounded from behind them, and Motte added his voice to the silent conversation. ::I’d like to know that as well. Though,:: the big man stepped up beside his daughter and looked down at her with a raised eyebrow, ::first I’d like to know what you’re doing here, young lady. You’re supposed to be reading Wuthering Heights.::
Rouge crossed her arms and glared at her father. Aspen’s eyebrows shot up as he sensed genuine anger and concern beneath the usual teasing. ::Me? I thought you were supposed to be at the clinic?::
Aspen turned to Motte, quickly looking the other man over before realizing that Rouge was implying that the warrior had been injured in his other world, his real world. He felt a surge of worry, and forced it down, though it was all he could do to keep from touching his friend’s arm and demanding to know if he was all right.
Friend. He reminded that small voice inside himself. Just a friend.
Motte looked a little abashed. ::Brent had to take care of a case of suspected mono. He’s going to send me a pm when he’s done. I’m just taking a little break before my first appointment, and Lyrec messaged me about this.:: He looked around at the stately buildings surrounding them, then back at Rouge. ::Would have been nice to hear about it from my daughter.::
Rouge looked rebellious. ::You didn’t want to talk to me.::
Motte sighed. ::I told you what happened-::
Aspen broke into what seemed like an argument the two had already gone over at least once. ::What did happen?::
Motte hesitated, then looked at Rouge. ::Homework before games.::
The girl huffed. ::Heathcliff is an emo jerk, and Cathy is a snobby, selfish brat.::
Motte raised a brow. ::Home. Work.::
Rouge growled, and then her eyes went blank. Her Zombie immediately turned and headed toward the castle tower, presumably to return to the small bed in Aspen’s house that had been set as its – her – resting place.
Motte sighed, though he looked more sad than exasperated. “Why do they make it so hard to protect them?” he muttered aloud.
Aspen shook his head, feeling his heart clench in his chest. “Sometimes in protecting them from one thing, we leave them open to injury from something worse.”
Motte seemed to realize what he’d said, then started to raise a hand to touch Aspen’s arm in apology before flinching and dropping the arm again. He grimaced, and gingerly touched his left forearm as he spoke. “I’m sorry, Aspen. I didn’t mean-”
Aspen cut him off, lifting the arm so he could look at it. Even to his Life Sense, it appeared fine, but it was clearly bothering the other man. “Don’t worry about it. What happened?”
Shrugging, Motte said, “I went to help a friend and got distracted. I made a stupid mistake and hurt my arm. I have a buddy in the clinic at work, and he’s going to look at it, patch me up and get me some antibiotics. It’ll be fine in a week or two.”
Aspen blinked. “So long? Can’t you afford a healer?”
Motte chuckled, and the deep vibration sent a little thrill through Aspen.
Friend, he thought to his rebellious innards, with more emphasis.
“We don’t have healers like you do here. We have physicians and medicine. It’s more like what Manuela does, though without her ability to tell exactly what the problem is. Sometimes our doctors are really just guessing from what little information they have.” He held up the apparently uninjured limb. “Though there won’t be any confusion about this.”
Aspen shook his head. “Sometimes I think your world must truly be a place of miracles, and other times it seems akin to the worst of our slums.” He felt the headache begin to build again as he thought about it, and flickers of metallic contrivances hurtling down unnaturally black roads vied with images of a girl with reddish-blonde braids. His vision blurred, and he blinked away the intrusive images.
Motte shook his head. “Both of those things are true, and neither. Your world is… a sort of idealized, simplified version of ours. We wish we lived here, with all of your magic and freedom, while we’re also unwilling to give up the conveniences of our own world and face the real brutality of yours.”
Aspen sighed and stepped away from the armored figure of his friend. “Brutality we have in plenty. Freedom? Not so much as you Travelers enjoy. I can see why you would rather be a visitor than a resident.”
“It’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.” Motte chuckled dryly. “That’s about right.”
Both men turned back to contemplate the scene in front of them. Aspen’s gaze was instantly drawn back to Sarave, like metal filings to a lodestone. The small woman was still answering questions, though her eyes were beginning to blink against the increasing light. Juniper, who had sat down beside her mother on the edge of the fountain, was swinging her plump little legs in boredom, and had somehow managed to tear a small hole in her pretty dress. Nekthadt no longer looked quite so inclined to reach for a blade, but neither did he look happy with the situation.
Aspen hesitated. It wasn’t his place to interfere in this. In order for the fragile sense of authority Sarave was winding about herself to remain intact, Aspen had to keep his distance. Fortunately, someone else seemed to have realized that, because Plum and Manuela were making their way up to the front of the crowd.
Plum bobbed a curtsey to Sarave, while Manuela offered her a bow, and Sarave smiled in acknowledgement, lips closed. Plum murmured a few words to Sarave, and the goblin looked relieved and held up a hand. “Miss Millie would like to invite everyone to the inn for a proper meal. Miss Plum says that the dining room has been prepared. I’ll move there, where I hope we can continue to speak in a more relaxed setting.” Putting action to words, she regally stretched out a hand to her brother and stepped off the edge of the fountain, somehow managing to look perfectly graceful as she landed in a poof of skirts and velvet slippers.
The crowd flowed away, leaving Aspen and Motte standing alone in the courtyard. The two men exchanged speaking glances, and Motte shook his head. “How did that happen?”
Aspen smiled. “It seems that Sarave is the Goblin Queen-in-Exile. Honestly, she’s the only one qualified for this position.”
Motte shot Aspen a sharp glance. “Not you?”
Aspen sighed and began to walk toward the inn. “There were two problems with that. First, if a member of Quarternell’s nobility used the Seed, the city thus formed would become part of Quarternell, subject to its laws and ruler. Secondly,” he quirked a smile, “I didn’t want to.”
Motte reached out and caught Aspen’s arm. “You know you’ve declared war on them, right? They’re probably on their way here right now.”
Aspen stopped and tugged his hat down over his eyes. “Akuji is smarter than that. The City Seed was the wild card in the deck, and now it’s anyone’s game. Akuji has never been one to settle for even odds. He’ll send scouts, then smaller parties to harry us and find our weaknesses.”
“Of which we have many,” Motte said, looking around as two unicorns and a glorified guinea pig raced through the square, followed by a small mob of laughing children, who were followed in turn by a very large goat, who stamped his hooves threateningly but somehow managed to stay just behind the slowest of the children.
Aspen nodded. “We can’t let them get here. There is literally nothing we can do to prevent them from crushing us through sheer numbers.”
“So, what’s the plan?” Motte’s voice was steady, as were his eyes, betraying not a single doubt.
Aspen held up a pale blue gem, raising it so the brilliant spring sunshine streamed through it, fracturing into a million rainbow hued glimmers. Opening his hand, he let it fall down into his palm, then squeezed. There was no way mortal strength should have been able to destroy the solid stone, but somehow it crumbled beneath his touch, trickling from between his fingers as glittering dust.
“I’m going to ask a friend for a little favor.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
ROUGE
Rouge laid back on a grassy hill beneath the Tree, one leg propped on the other, her foot kicking idly. She was bored. In fact, she’d forgotten just how boring farming could be. Even with all the new people, and the town-building, and forming councils and making laws, it was booooooorrring. In fact, if anything, it was even more boring. At least last winter, she’d been able to play with the sparkles, and adorable baby Juniper, and talk to Aspen and Sarave and Sumi and Silus and, yes, even Khor.
Now, nobody had time for her. Aspen was hiding in the fields, which had been magicked off to the east when the city was built, so now instead of house, fields, orchard/Tree, now it was castle/city, orchard/Tree, fields. That meant he had a longer commute, and a lot more mouths to feed, and he used that as an excuse to avoid everyone except Sarave. Queen Saravelle.
Queen Saravelle, of course, didn’t have time for Rouge either. No more time spent cooking dinner together, or snuggling Juniper, or even doing dishes, laughing as they nearly fumbled slippery plates. She never would have thought she’d miss doing dishes.
But no, the last week had dragged by, and when Rouge reminded Aspen that FantumHat and Akuji were Coming For Them, he had just smiled and said that he’d asked a friend to watch the pass. What friend, he wouldn’t tell her, claiming that she should be able to figure it out for herself. As if she knew all of his old war buddies, since she assumed he must have called in some favors while they were in Bright. Without telling her, because of course she didn’t need to know about things like powerful friends, hidden royalty, and, say, City Seeds.
Sighing, she glared at her game clock. She, Lyrec, Motte, Fluff, Tess, Doom, and Wiki had worked up a schedule so that at least one of them was online at all times. If something happened, they would log out, send a group at to everyone, and then get back in to help. She’d agreed to her shifts without really thinking about it, and now it was Friday, and there were people upstairs installing her new pod, and she was lying here under the stinky Tree instead of watching. Worse, she had another hour before she could log out, which meant she’d only have four hours (well, eight, game time) to play in the New. Pod!
Rouge growled and rolled around in the grass, not even caring that Viqa was right there, capable of seeing a fourteen-and-a-half-year-old throwing a fit like she was a decade younger. No, Viqa didn’t care. The glyphis had probably patented the term all-business, and unless something was coming to attack the Tree, she didn’t twitch from morning until afternoon.
Speaking of attacks…
Rouge rolled her head to one side and eyed the faint slash marks in the smooth bark of the Tree’s trunk. That had happened on… Wednesday? A whole herd of giant wild pigs had suddenly come rumbling down from the mountains as if their piggy posteriors were on fire. They hadn’t paused in their headlong retreat until they caught a whiff of the Tree, and their leader, an enormous pure-white swine with glaring pink eyes, had screeched to a halt, made a hard right, and headed straight for the Tree.
Rouge was pretty sure they hadn’t even meant to attack the Tree, they just weren’t exactly made for climbing, and so they’d tried ramming the trunk with their hard heads instead, trying to shake loose some fruit, which, unlike other trees, never dropped unless someone picked it. This had resulted in incidental gouges from their pointy tusks, and Aspen had had to come do some plant magic to repair the damage after Khor and Viqa ‘convinced’ the piggies to keep moving. Not before a few of them managed to grab a low-hanging fruit or two, however, and remembering the violet hog with deep fuchsia stripes and a horse-tail still managed to lighten her mood.
A little.
Then a quiet voice came down from the Tree, and Rouge sat bolt upright.
::Rouge? Is that you?::
The voice was familiar, and yet not, but since it was coming through on party chat, there was really only one person it could be.
“Sumi?” she squealed, jumping up. She grabbed the Tree trunk, clinging to the smooth bark thanks to her high [Climb] skill. Quickly, she shimmied up, reaching the joint of the thick branches where Sumi’s disturbingly lifeless shell had been resting silently since they returned to the farm. In fact, if it weren’t for the fact that the arachnid still showed up on the party list as Unavailable and not Dead, Rouge would have thought the spider had ‘returned to the Chaos Pool’, whatever that meant.
When she finally caught a glimpse of her friend, however, she nearly lost her grip on the Tree. The spider was nearly as white as the big albino boar, though her fangs still held a hint of blue, and her feet were… Rouge squinted in the deep shadow of the Tree’s interior. Was that… pink?
Behind Sumi, curled and dry, lay her abandoned husk, as empty as it had appeared when Rouge first saw it. A sort of hatch in the abdomen splayed open, revealing the inner surface of the shell. Rouge shuddered, then looked at Sumi, who clung to a branch nearby. Her new exoskeleton was already darkening, and Rouge could tell that the spider was definitely bigger than she had been before. From the tip of her front leg to the tip of the back leg, the arachnid was easily four feet long, a full foot larger than she had been before.
“Uh,” Rouge cleared her throat, feeling a little awkward. “How are you, um, feeling? Do you need anything?” She gestured vaguely toward the fields, where Aspen was undoubtedly already working. Surely he could help Sumi recover from the… What? Birth? That didn’t seem right, somehow, but what else would it be?
Sumi chuckled, a slightly rough sound, even though it was purely mental. Her voice was definitely a little deeper than it had been before, too. Not masculine, but richer, in some indefinable way. ::No, thank you, Rouge. I’ll be fine in a bit.:: Carefully, the spider settled herself onto a particularly wide branch. ::Please, tell me what has happened while I was sleeping. Is Aspen here as well?::
