Chapter 19
Chapter
Nineteen
The creature towered nearly to the roof of the passage, taller than Craghammer and almost twice as broad. The fire elemental reminded Braiden of the windwalker from Yhip Valley, shaped very much like a musclebound man, monstrously broad and thick in the arms and legs.
Braiden held his breath as a second elemental lumbered down the tunnel. Flames like hair rose from the top of its vaguely spherical head, licking at the top of the tunnel. Braiden gulped.
But not before he noticed the gleaming metallic bangles each of them wore on their arm-like appendages. The mercenary merchant in Braiden gave a small, delighted, “Ooh” at the sight of potentially lootable jewelry. Were they brass? Perhaps even gold?
“Worthless pyrite,” Augustin explained, as if he’d already read the inside of Braiden’s greedy mind.
“Fire elementals are strangely vain creatures, more likely than the other kinds to carry precious metals and gemstones, except perhaps for earth elementals. Still, we’ve seen how bereft of valuable minerals the dungeon has been, at least this close to the surface. ”
Disappointment twinged at the inside of Braiden’s chest. He opened his mouth to answer, but Elyssandra spoke first.
“Another fine lesson, Augustin,” she said, actually meaning it. “But it would help us more to learn how to fight these creatures.”
Before Augustin could answer, the air in the passage suddenly thinned. It was subtle, at first, but noticeable in the way that Braiden could feel his hair gently bend toward the elementals, as if they were inhaling strongly enough to — oh, no.
“On your guard,” Braiden shouted. “They’re about to attack.”
As one, the elementals thrust their arms forward, launching twin fireballs down the corridor at terrifying speeds. Braiden cringed, expecting the roar of dragonfire, surprised by the far more subtle hisses and crackles that accompanied their attacks. Huh.
Elyssandra ducked, spear at the ready, and Augustin muttered and gestured, still preparing his spell. Braiden bit his bottom lip, hands shaking as he attempted to weave a shield — but would anything he conjured even stand up to the flames?
Warren answered for them all, stepping forward as he brandished his quarterstaff, spinning it expertly in both hands. The lacquered wood blurred, blending into a whirring circle like the blades of a pinwheel.
The fireballs splashed into Warren’s quarterstaff, then dissipated, snuffed out by its rapid spinning. But wood clattered to the ground as Warren shook his paws, hopping from one foot to the other. Braiden’s nostrils filled with the smell of burning fur.
“Oh, gods,” he said, reaching for Warren. “Are you — ”
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Warren said. “They only singed me. It’s nothing.”
And then a strange susurrus issued from the twin elementals, like the rasp of coals stirring in a brazier, logs being jostled around in a fireplace. Were they laughing?
Braiden scowled. Too many times he’d run over Augustin’s lectures about the elements in his head. Mother Nature, he explained, was neither kind nor malevolent. But as their brushes with elementals of all flavors had shown, Mother Nature sure had a twisted sense of humor.
The elementals rushed and chuckled once more as the air sucked down the passage again. They were mustering another salvo of fireballs.
Hah. Not this time. Braiden thought of how he’d smothered the dust devils, then remembered how he and Augustin had this exact conversation about how a weaver might deal with creatures made of flame.
No different than putting out a grease fire on a stovetop, surely. Throw a big enough towel on a flaming pan and you could starve the fire out.
Heedless of the elementals’ overconfident laughter, Braiden conjured the thickest threads he could muster, warp against weft, a blanket fit to smother even the biggest blazing bacon accident.
He twisted at the hip as the great sheet of fabric materialized, gripping it by the hem, then tossing it at the end of his revolution, aiming for the elemental on the right.
It emitted a high-pitched screech, like a kettle on the boil.
The blanket dropped flat to the ground, consuming the fire elemental as it fell.
The elemental on the left shrieked in apparent fear, but it was too late. A howling wind was already rushing at Braiden’s back, bending expertly around him to speed straight at the fire elemental. This, too, he’d learned from Augustin, stories about wind magic’s intricacies in the wild.
Blow at a brushfire the wrong way and you would only risk spreading it further, feeding the flames. But blow hard and strong enough at a smaller fire with overwhelming winds? The elemental never stood a chance.
The twin elementals died out. The bangles on the one that Augustin destroyed fell to the ground with a metallic clink, then immediately turned to ashes.
Braiden tried not to look so disappointed.
He didn’t bother checking under the blanket, leaving it on the ground to expire at the end of his spell’s natural duration.
Each member of the party turned to check on each other, their standard silent post-battle assessment to make sure that everyone was okay. And everyone was okay, but none more so than Elder Bahul, who was once again lying on his enormous treasure chest, his bandanna pulled over his eyes.
Braiden threw his hands up. “Were you planning to lend us a hand in the fight, maybe, or — ”
Elder Bahul shrugged. “Seemed like you had everything under control.”
Apparently this elder could be just as much of a thorn in the side as the other one.
They carried onward in relative peace and quiet, Braiden’s preferred way of carrying onward.
But it was also nice to know that the fire elementals were more of a pushover than he’d initially feared.
The demon Valefour was still a big, red question mark, but they’d cross that bridge when they got there.
Braiden blinked hard in the semi-darkness of the passage, the rock walls glowing orange and blue in turns between the lanterns they carried and the soft pulse of Elyssandra’s floating blueberry pin.
A different and familiar color of light was streaming toward them from the far end of the tunnel, accompanied by a familiar and welcome warmth.
The luminous cavern! They were almost there. And just in time, too. One by one, the butterfly wings on Braiden’s shoes were beginning to slough off, disintegrating into colorful puffs of glitter as the flutterbutter’s magic faded.
Elder Bahul stood with his hands on his hips as he surveyed the luminous cavern, taking great big breaths of the balmy underground air.
“Quite cozy,” he remarked. “Perfect place for a pit stop.”
Braiden could scarcely disagree. Several of the local plants were good for eating, and the pool, while not as tasty as Augustin’s Effervescent Elixirs, still offered a novel taste of something different to drink.
“I’ll need to get rid of all of the traps,” Warren muttered sulkily. “And my Pulverizers, too.”
Braiden remembered the giant swinging ball of brambles that had nearly turned Augustin’s head into a thorny pincushion.
“The what, now?” Elder Bahul asked.
“It’s nothing,” Warren grumbled.
Instead of resting in the cavern, the party decided to push all the way through to the Underborough. Even without the flutterbutter, Braiden could feel his legs carrying him faster toward their destination.
The crystal passage to the Underborough grew brighter and brighter with every step, each crystal absorbing and reflecting a portion of sunlight from far up above.
When they emerged in the village’s great cavern, even Elder Bahul stopped to gasp and take it all in.
And Braiden knew he shouldn’t be surprised to see it happen anymore, but Grandest Mother Magda was already standing at the village entrance waiting to greet them, as if somehow sensing that friends were on the way.
Ever the professional, Grandest Mother Magda approached the elder first, but not without throwing Warren and his friends a subtle wink. They needed to get the business of business out of the way, first.
Elder Bahul greeted Mother Magda with all the energy one might expect out of a traveling merchant, that same cheerful persona he’d donned when he’d sold the party their flutterbutter.
He receded to his normal self just as soon as Magda finished shaking his hand. Mother Magda didn’t notice or didn’t care, rushing to greet the rest of the party, but not before embracing her grandson tight. And then she finally came to Braiden.
“You’re finally back,” said Mother Magda. “The moongrass! Tell us everything.”
Flanked by Warren and Mother Magda, Braiden found himself ushered back to the weaving room, the place where the many grandmothers of the Underborough worked their wicker magic.
He welcomed the warmth of their greetings, the comforting fuzz of so many motherly paws brushing against his cheek. He told them of how he’d woven all sorts of enchantment with singular strings of moongrass, making magical garments with so little of the stuff.
The grandmothers listened intently, curious to learn how to put their homegrown resource to good use. One produced a quill and ink, taking feverish notes.
Warren nudged Braiden after his explanation, nodding at the bulge in his rucksack and waggling his eyebrows.
“Oh. Right! You’ve all helped me so much already, but I was wondering if you might help us with another matter.
” He unwrapped the wooden device to a chorus of curious, excitable chirps from all around the room.
“What would you make of this contraption? It’s supposed to be from my grandmother. She called it an Heirloom.”
“An Heirloom? Or a hare loom?” one of the burrowfolk women joked. “A loom for hares, he brings us.”
The grandmothers laughed, Mother Magda included. Good to know that the burrowfolk had a healthy sense of humor about these things.
Warren and Braiden took turns struggling to explain the concept of string instruments to a puzzled room full of grandmothers. Braiden even gave the Heirloom a halfhearted twang to demonstrate.
“That’s no music,” said one of the grandmothers with a sniff.
She drummed an energetic tattoo with her feet, which the other grandmothers soon took up, an orchestra of stomps shaking the room and coming together to make a merry burrowfolk jig. One final stomp, and the grandmothers cheered, drumming one last time in self-congratulatory applause.
“But it doesn’t strike me as a loom, either,” Mother Magda said. “Do you see, sisters? Why so many weights of string? And why so few of them to work with? You can hardly weave a strip of something with this, much less a tapestry.”
Braiden plucked another note on the Heirloom, more confused than ever about its actual function. He twanged a second thread, thinking of how Bones could probably play a mean tune on this thing even with strings that weren’t meant for making music.
Bones. They needed to keep moving. With a whisper to Warren and an apologetic explanation to the grandmothers, Braiden excused himself from the weaving room, only too delighted to endure another gauntlet of adoring burrowfolk paws.
Grandest Mother Magda walked with Braiden arm in arm back to the great tree’s veranda, where they found the rest of the party tucking into a hearty meal of rooty tooty stew.
Elder Bahul had apparently finished eating — and so had Elyssandra, which was far harder to believe. The two were engaged in a portraiture session.
The elder struck a series of surprisingly professional poses: hand in chin while deep in thought, reclining on top of his chest like a beached merfolk. Elyssandra excitedly shifted places, drawing him from a variety of angles.
Braiden peered over her shoulder, alarmed to find a series of excellent drawings, all in a fresh new sketchbook.
“He’s quite the subject,” she said, cheeks flushed, breathless, her eyes sparkling with artistic inspiration. “It’s exhilarating, getting to play with rough sketches without all the pressure of a perfect final picture.”
Whatever made the two of them happy, Braiden supposed, for as long as Bahul didn’t suddenly blindside them with a surprise surcharge for his modeling fees.
“I do wish we could stay longer,” Braiden told Mother Magda after indulging in his own portion of stew. “But there’s a reason we’ve come through this way again. Our friend Bones is in trouble.”
Mother Magda narrowed her eyes. “Don’t tell me. Is it the firewalkers?”
“A demon, actually,” Augustin said. “But you’ve encountered them, too? One hopes that they haven’t given you as much grief as the rockwalkers.”
Mother Magda chuckled. “It’s warmer in the Underborough now that the frosty cube is but a memory, but the firewalkers are no threat to us.
We burrowfolk have long devised ways to quickly put out fires.
Very important when all your homes are made of wood, you see.
We use buckets of sand and soil, to be sure, but other methods, too. Observe.”
She waved a hand at a half dozen children at play.
Braiden raised his eyebrows when he saw them squirting water at each other out of wooden devices that reminded him of bellows for fireplaces, or even piping bags for icing cakes.
They laughed as they soaked each other in harmless streams of water.
It probably doubled as a lovely way to cool down in warmer weather.
“The little ones are our strongest deterrent against the firewalkers, if you can believe it. A few wandered too close to the village, but no more than that. Too frightened by our soggy little tyrants, I imagine. Squirts, we call them, those water pumpers you see them carrying. Squirts for our little squirts.”
The laughter of the little burrowfolk children felt like a gentle reminder for Braiden to keep his spirits up for the rest of the journey. They would find Bones soon enough. Everything was going to be all right.
Perhaps Braiden could convince Mother Magda to let them take a couple of squirts along for their journey. If only they were half as useful against demons.