A deal worth making

Zewrepa is guarding the gate. Closing it while an ally she insisted on sending out for recon isn’t accounted for is out of the question. The weather is worsening. Different from the days before this time the snow is not driven by biting winds. It is coming down in big, lazy flakes. They will have to clear away snow in front of the gate soon, but it will allow for the operation of sleds.

Finally he appears, flying a low path as if not to get lost. He is carrying his sword unsheathed, the tip still bloody with what she recognizes as goblin blood. He lands and walks up to her with a gait wider and slower than usual. His gaze does not meet hers. „Do you think the snow will soon cover our traces?“ he asks in her language he mysteriously learned after he had teleported away. She agrees. He continues „They may be coming. He was most likely only a scout. Please organize a watch on the gate. It does not look like it will stop a troll for long.“ His voice, which, being human, lacks the variations in pitch her mother tongue is usually spoken with anyway, is way flatter than usual.

She bars the gate and voices the song of the homecoming warrior. He closes his eyes and leans against a wall. Slowly tension leaves him, almost making him drop the sword. She takes it from his hand, saying „I will clean it and inspect the edge for damage. Anything we need to know immediately?“. He answers „A goblin throwing curses on a troll mount. I reckon they were scouts. I burned them both thoroughly. They’ll probably not find the spot they died.“. She is surprised. That does not sound like an opponent that explains the blood on his clothing. But then a small troop of dwarves should not have caused her caravan to be massacred.

„We have prepared the Atlantean’s camber for you. Right of discovery.“ Zawerepa remarks. He laughs and replys „Shower first. This is fitting for a reason I’ll need to explain. For now the only important thing is that we cannot go out.“. She accepts his words and helps him out of his armor.

Melo wakes up right next to her tree. The location makes sense. The cavern housing her tree has a sealable door. If you want to hold her securely with minimum effort, you just put her here, provided you have Marental’s keys. She didn’t expect to wake up ever again, nor to find the fungus gone from her tree. She’d still need to prune branches too damaged to recover, but that could wait. She finally yields into the trunk of her tree.

Anjali finds the wizard in the kitchen sitting in front of an inordinately large selection of fruit and eggs. „Good evening Anjali, up late?“ he says with a voice definitely too cheerful for the hour. She replies „Coming off watch. Good evening to you, too, uh …“ „Call me peregrinus“ he interrupts and continues „It means wanderer in a dead language of Europe apparently still in use for communication between people of different ethnicities in this world. Do you want some fruit? I am particularly proud of my mangosteen. The plain blueberries are also good. If you insist, I’ll make you a mango, though I can’t stand them. By the way, I also found out that I can make eggs. In case you think that size matters, here it is.“. With a gesture he presents her a humongous egg. „It is an ostrich egg“ he claims and adds „No little ostriches themselves though. I am pretty sure that I can make them only unfertilized, though I would not want them any other way. Caviar?“. He holds up a bowl and very softly hums a melody.

„A mangosteen would be nice“ she confesses momentarily at a loss for anything but a plain truth as a response. He gets up and quickly produces two cut up mangosteen on a board decorated with a multipronged leaf. She notices that he used another leaf for cutting the fruit open. Her eyebrows go up. Interpreting her expression he explains „I found out that I can put a vanishing effect on objects. If I limit it to the edges of a thin object, it’ll cut extremely well.“

Her command of Atlantean is really not up to certain topics and the need to spoon delicious slices into her mouth overrides any other desire. Mangosteen are a piece of childhood. He takes advantage of her silence for another monologue. „I do understand that I am reacting badly to almost losing a fight. But I thought that if I wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway, I could just as well try and understand things by experimentation. Plus, most of this stuff is edible. I think I even understood what biological stuff I can make. Stuff that is made to be used up for a productive purpose by an organism is available to me, but not the organism itself. Hence I can make eggs, because birds make eggs just in case, not just when they are fertilized, as do fish, but not actual seeds. I can even make body parts to be sacrificed or used only temporarily, hence all those leaves. And it is not even limited to plants. In case you insist on eating meat …“. He takes a leaf off a board revealing a few lizard tails.

If you even have seen a few types of demon eat, lizard tails are not a problem to you and Anjali has seen a lot. She is surprised that a powerful wizard opens up to so personal a level. He is revealing deep weaknesses. She needs to answer something meaningful „I do not understand. I thought you’ve lost only personal memories. Surely you learned what your sorceries can do during your apprenticeship or in wizarding school?“

He frowns and answers „You are obviously right. The obvious options are that I never had wizarding school or an apprenticeship or that I did not have my powers when I had them. But that are only the obvious answers. Perhaps I hid my powers to become my family’s secret assassin and was abducted before they trained me. Or I had a hostile relationship with my master. Anyway, does it matter now?“

She purses her lips in thought, decides to go for a risk and states „I don’t know. From a vista of pure logic I suppose it might if, for example, your powers changed regularly. But I have never heard of a wizard like that. That said, you seem to be exploring one particular power in minute detail, while almost neglecting the other powers. Can you tell me what concrete issues you were facing in your fight?“

He fidgets and his answer comes haltingly. „I think … I have to admit … that I do not want to go out anymore. It is not viable. We need somebody who can defeat goblin spellcasters, if we want to survive the trip and we need a scouted route. Yet we have very little supplies, not enough to last till spring. I think I am hoping that I can make enough to allow us to stay here till spring.“

Anjali notices that he has evaded the question after his actual weaknesses, but he is not angry, in fact he seems cautious, even a bit afraid. She needs to do something, lest he draw the obvious conclusion that by lowering the number of mouths to feed, supplies could be stretched, so she quickly answers „I can see how your memories being blocked makes you weary of your foe, but you need to remember that you beat an Atlantean and escaped his traps. Very few can boast of that. You also beat your last enemy even without all the things still blocked from you. We will prevail. You just need to calmly analyze your difficulties.“ She dares giving his arm a reassuring squeeze. He smiles at that and responds „Yes, he just outranged me. And in hindsight, he made tactical errors. If he had waited to get behind me, I might not have noticed his curse in time.“ She is not sure how to deal with a discouraged wizard. Most of them are either boisterous or calculating and would not have done a flight without equipment under any circumstances. Well, flight was rare in any case. She decides to give him more encouragement „I like eggs and fruit. At least it is a plan. I suppose you should also use the time to rebuild your equipment. The stuff plugged into the circle in the ritual room has enough precious metals for at least basic equipment. With Ragnarök coming even the cities in Europe may not be safe, so you’ll need it.“ He has only a monosyllabic answer to that „Ragnarök?“