Undermind

Saskia looked out at the fleet of airships, slowly sinking between the surrounding branchlets. Too slow. Far too slow. They couldn’t escape dragons. This had all gone so wrong, so fast.

When her frostling scouts had come here, barely a week earlier, there had been nothing to suggest this was waiting for them. They’d been prepared to face any number of humanoid defenders; dozens of Chosen; maybe even a few dragons. But not hundreds of dragons. Nor had they been expecting an impenetrable barrier around what just one week earlier had been a seemingly unguarded fortress.

It had been a trap, clearly. Abellion had lured them into committing their entire fleet. And now…

Now he was going to blow them out of the sky.

“You must not stay, Saskia,” said Kveld over their shared oracle link. “The drackens can outfly our airships, but they can’t catch you if you leave now. Fly while you still have the chance.”

“Bog that,” said Saskia. “You’re all here because of me. I’m not abandoning you.”

“’Tis not just you who will die for nothing if you stay,” said Kveld. “Everyone in Iscaragraithe with you…”

“Who said anything about dying?” said Saskia. “We’ll figure out a way. Just…let me think about this…”

She banged her knuckles against her forehead. If there were a tunnel they could shelter in—somewhere an enormous dragon couldn’t fit…

Nothing. No nearby caves or crevices or tunnels marked on her map, or visible to her vassals. The branches around here were far smaller and more numerous than the lower branches. Not much good for digging. The stoneshapers might be able to carve out a small shelter for a few of them, but what about the rest?

No, they couldn’t escape underground. But was there another way to escape?

She snapped her fingers. “We could deflate the balloons. Turn the airships into falling bricks, essentially. They can’t outfly dragons, but they may be able to outfall them.”

“You ken as well as I do what will happen,” said Ruhildi. “Splat.”

“Well yeah, but the frostlings…”

“There aren’t enough tempests to hold up the airships without their balloons,” said Kveld. “They’re heavier than Iscaragraithe, and they don’t have wings—just sails. Those sails will tear or buckle the moment we turn them downward at the speed we’ll be falling.”

“If there were more frostlings…” said Zarie. “Twenty or more per ship might be enough, yes?”

“Aye,” said Kveld. “We could transfer all of the frostlings to just three or four of our airships. They would stand a chance, but…”

“Everyone else would be stranded here,” said Saskia. “I hate that solution.”

“’Twould be better than everyone dying,” said Ruhildi.

“I still hate it. How would we even decide who lives or dies?”

“There are only three airships with our friends onboard,” said Ruhildi. “The two Ciendil airships, and Queen Vask’s flagship.”

Saskia scowled at her. “You expect me to prioritise our friends’ lives over everyone else’s? Abandon our allies?”

Even as she said it, she knew she would do it if the only alternative was everyone dying. Because…well, who wouldn’t choose a friend’s life over that of a stranger? There were other justifications for making that choice, too. Dwarves were practically an endangered species. Forest elves too, if she counted their mer and high elf cousins as separate species. Their lives were precious. And because they weighed much less than a troll, there were many more souls aboard the Ciendil airships than the Grongargian ones. More lives to be saved…

“There is no shame in wanting to save the ones we love,” said Zarie.

“If there’s no other way, I’ll consider it,” said Saskia. “But what are our other options? Could we fight and win, somehow? I know it seems impossible, but we do have Ruhildi. If we could kill a dragon or two, then you could raise them to fight for us, right? Once we kill enough of them…”

“Methinks you underestimate just how powerful a dracken is,” said Ruhildi. “A deepworm would be a light snack for a fully-grown dracken. If we do manage to kill some of them, mayhap I could command one or two of their corpses, but any more…’twould be beyond my limits, even now.”

“Damn,” said Saskia. She looked about the cabin. “Any other ideas? Any way we could lay a trap for them? Or…I don’t know, anything?”

The silence in the cabin was palpable.

“Frock!” she breathed. “Then it’s back to getting as many people out as we can. We can let the trows pick two of their ships to take the plunge down the trunk. But no matter what, I’m not abandoning the rest of our allies. If they’re stuck here, then I’m staying with them. You can drop me off, and fly Iscaragraithe without me. As long as Ruhildi’s onboard, you’ll be okay.”

“Sashki, you must ken what will happen to me if you die.”

Saskia stared at Ruhildi, not wanting to speak her thoughts aloud.

Ruhildi mercilessly put voice to them. “If you die, there will be naught holding me in the waking world. This body of mine becomes just a corpse once more. And without me…”

“Iscaragraithe becomes just a pile of bones,” said Baldreg. “We will not survive without you, Caesitor.”

“The frostlings and Zarie could crash-land Iscaragraithe without killing you, even if it’s no longer animated by necrourgy,” said Saskia. “They’ve done it before.” It was a weak argument, one she rejected even as she said it. She couldn’t allow Ruhildi to just…fade away. She had to survive.

“Then Iscaragraithe will never take to the skies again,” said Baldreg. “And even if that were not so, understand that you are key to everything, Caesitor. Our one chance to unseat the tyrant. If you die, it will have all been for nothing. We can’t allow that. If only one person has to survive, it has to be you.”

Saskia let out a long breath. It was quite plain she wasn’t going to be able to persuade them to leave her behind. She couldn’t even convince herself that was a good idea. Unless…

“Okay, so how about this, then? I’ll stay with the trows, do whatever I can to keep them alive. And if—when—we get overrun, then I’ll teleport back to your side.”

“Sashki—”

Saskia cut her off. “Look, we don’t have time to argue. This is my decision. It’s either this, or we all stay and die here. Choose.”

“It does sound like a good compromise, yes?” said Zarie. “The trows are more likely to respect our decision if Saskia stays to fight with them. Otherwise, they might…”

“Object,” said Ruhildi.

Baldreg gave a bitter chuckle. “That’s one way to put it.”

“We’ll do as you ask,” said Ruhildi. “And do not despair. No matter what happens today, we’ll larn how to breach the barrier and come back better prepared next time.”

Earlier, Nuille had landed near the base of the dome. She’d flung a few druid spells at it, to no avail. It seemed they wouldn’t be able to brute force their way through, so going there now seemed pointless, even if they could somehow get past the dragon swarm. Nuille was on her way back to them now, though she wouldn’t reach them before the dragons arrived to ruin their day. Saskia hoped she’d be okay, because she was going to miss the ride back down the trunk.

Saskia let out a long breath. “Thank you. And now it’s time to give the trows the bad news, and let them decide who among them lives, and who dies.”

It took the trolls all of ten minutes to decide. The queens and senior representatives from every queendom each picked out a handful of trolls to transfer to the designated airships. The queens and princesses themselves—every single one of them—chose to stay and fight. Seeing this, Saskia’s respect for the queendoms went up a dozen notches.

There was only one source of contention: Rover Dog.

“You stay, I stay,” said Rover Dog, turning a resolute gaze between Queen Vask and Garrain, who was Saskia’s surrogate on their flagship. “Not negotiable.”

“But I’m only staying until…” Saskia trailed off. “I can teleport away. You can’t.”

Garrain dutifully relayed her halting message.

“Other queens, princesses not teleport,” said Rover Dog. “Fight to last breath. I not abandon them. Not worry, princess. I will live forever. You will see.”

It was an absurd claim. If he stayed, he would die. It was simple as that.

“What about you?” she asked Garrain.

“I’m not leaving Nuille behind,” he said. “We’ll find our own way out. Perhaps we’ll be able to rescue a stubborn trow or two while we’re at it.”

Minutes later, Saskia was standing with Rover Dog, Queen Vask and hundreds of other stranded trolls atop a twisting branchlet, watching the four airship gondolas plunge down through the canopy of the world tree, weaving their way around branchlets and spurs as their frostling pilots shunted them about. Iscaragraithe dove after them, carrying its precious cargo to safety.

“Dogspeed,” whispered Saskia. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and turned to the other trolls. “Maybe we should still try to run. I don’t imagine many of us will survive, but some might be able to hide if we disperse.”

“We will not cower and hide like slinkbugs,” said Queen Vask. “We will show these tiny fools and their drackens what it means to face the trow queendoms in battle. It will be glorious.”

The other trolls growled in agreement.

Saskia nodded. Of course they’d feel this way. “If that’s what you want to do, then it will be an honour to fight beside you. At least we might buy the others some time. I’m…sorry it has come to this.” She rubbed her forehead. “God, what was I thinking bringing everyone here? I should have waited; gathered more information, maybe come with just Iscaragraithe first. Instead I’ve delivered everyone straight into…” A meat grinder.

Vask snorted dismissively. “Do not waste your words on what could have been. We are here now, and we will make them pay dearly for every chunk of flesh they tear from us.”

Saskia looked at the assembled trolls, and felt a stirring of…not hope, exactly, but anticipation. She wanted to see what these trolls could do. In the face of impossible odds, they weren’t going to go down quietly.

She reached into her bag of supplies, and pulled out a large container. Pulling off the lid, she showed it to Vask. “I want each and every trow to take a portion of this.”

Vask’s eyes widened. “Never have I seen so much divine dust in one place. You would give it to everyone?”

“It’ll go to waste otherwise,” said Saskia. “And as you well know, a trow can endure a lot with the help of this stuff. It helped me survive inside the belly of a deepworm. Think what an entire army of trows could do with it.”

Saskia poured a fistful of awakened arlithite into her mouth, then handed the container to Rover Dog. He took his fill, and passed it along to a huge, muscular mountain of a troll. A lifter, by the looks of her. She grunted, and looked at them quizzically. Saskia mimed swallowing the stuff. The troll scooped out a generous portion, and swallowed. Her eyes narrowed. Then she grinned, and let out a roar that shook the branchlet.

Garrain swallowed a pinch of his own supply of arlithite, sliced open his wrist, and drained some of his blood into a bottle, drawing on her essence as he did so. When it was full, he handed it to Saskia. She took a swig, and handed it to Vask.

“This will make you immune to most poisons,” said Saskia.

The arlithite and poison immunity potion passed from troll to troll, until all of them had taken their fill. Some of them began to rip into their own flesh, and watch in glee as the wounds closed in seconds.

“Careful,” she told them. “You’ll need to eat a lot to regenerate a serious wound that quickly.”

“Not problem,” said Princess Aele. She bared her teeth. “Our food comes to us. Today we dine on dracken!”

Saskia could see the approaching swarm on her own minimap now, not just on Nuille’s.

“Get into position,” she told the gathered trolls. “They’re almost here.”

The trolls had no intention of hiding, but nor were they going to stand around on one little branchlet, where they’d be easy pickings for a well-placed wall of fire. They still had airships; just not tempests to help steer them. Instead, they had ropes and grappling hooks—and plenty of branchlets to hook onto. Then there were the roptirs. The huge bats went a bit batty in this peculiar environment, but they were more easily controlled here than they would be further down the world tree, where they’d just fly straight into the trunk or out into space. Some trolls elected to stay on their flying vessels or mounts, while others leapt onto neighbouring branchlets.

Garrain, meanwhile, worked his magic on the creeping vines and strange woody spires that grew on and beneath the spurs. They began to grow and shift, sprouting thorny appendages, and uprooting themselves from the hard ground.

Flocks of tiny birds took to the air, merging into twisting, screeching coils of panicked flight.

Now the dragons were visible to the naked eye and…oh god, there were a lot of them, and they were huge. Bigger than Iscaragraithe, surely, although that might be because they had flesh. Their scales were red and golden brown. Their eyes blazed with inner light. And if she wasn’t mistaken, that was smoke leaking from their snouts.

Fantabulous. So these were the flying flamethrowers of legend. Ruhildi had mentioned that not all species of dragons breathed fire. These were the real deal, though.

Fire, thought Saskia. Why does it always have to be fire?

A drum beat of stamping feet set the ground trembling. Distant horns blasted. A roar shook the air like mountains of rolling granite.

Fire streaked across the sky, aimed at Saskia and those gathered nearby—Vask and Garrain, in particular. They stepped out of the way, and watched the vegetation around them erupted in flames.

“You’re gonna have to do better than that!” shouted Saskia. She lifted her crossbow, aimed high into the air—and fired.

Nearly ten seconds later, a white-clad elf tumbled from the back of his dragon, with an arrow in his eye.

Vask stared at her. “The luck of the gods…”

“Not luck,” said Saskia. “I got a memory download from Earth that came with some handy new tools.” When Vask continued to stare, she added, “It’s an oracle thing.”

Following some interesting dreams featuring her Earth counterpart, Saskia had taken another trip into the between a couple of months back, just to sync her memories. Now she remembered an attack on the temple in Nepal, and Padhra’s death. Not a pleasant place for the memories of Earth to end, but she had picked up a lot of useful oracle interface tweaks and abilities, including her Earth counterpart’s targetting aid.

Today, she’d also shared that ability with Garrain. With her help, he sent a scorching sap spell at the enemy, searing the flesh from the bones of a trio of skarakh fire mages sitting astride one of the dragons.

More fireballs streaked toward them. Saskia tensed, preparing to dodge—only to realise these weren’t coming for her.

Flames licked into the air from Queen Raku’s flagship. It wasn’t a full-on Hindenburg-style explosion—these balloons weren’t filled with hydrogen. But there were flames, and screaming. The ship rose for a few seconds—then dropped like a stone. Several onboard managed to leap to the dubious safety of a nearby branchlet. Queen Raku of Riverside and half a dozen retainers went down with their ship.

Watching the wreckage tumble into the abyss, Saskia felt as if she’d been punched in the gut. They were just the first. Her fault. This was all her fault.

Fanning out, the enemy circled around to come at them from multiple sides at once, flinging fireballs all the while. Those standing on the branchlets could dodge fireballs lobbed from that range. The airships, though…

After watching two more airships go down in flames, the rest of the crews decided to abandon their rickety deathtraps and take shelter on solid ground.

“Aim where I’m aiming,” said Saskia, as she prepared to take another shot.

Watching Saskia with narrowed eyes, Vask lifted her crossbow, tilting it in the same direction as Saskia. Rover Dog and the other nearby trolls did likewise. A swarm of spear-sized crossbow bolts shot skyward.

Ten seconds later, a dragon let out an ear-splitting roar. Crossbow bolts jutted from its eyes and forehead and snout. Without Saskia’s exact targetting system, most of the other trolls’ shots had gone wide, but enough had hit their mark to blind the creature. It careened about in the air—and smashed headlong into a branchlet, sending its passengers plunging to their deaths.

A cheer broke out among the trolls. Hitting moving targets from this range would normally be impossible. But Saskia wasn’t about to let the impossible stop her. She hastily reloaded, lined up another shot…

And swallowed. The dragons had wheeled about in the air, and were now coming straight for her from three sides.

“Scatter!” she shouted, even as they loosed another volley.

They bounded away from each other on all fours. Saskia half ran, half slid down the steep branchlet, watching on her map and through Garrain’s eyes as the dragons turned to follow her. They were coming for her, and her alone. That was probably for the best.

As their thunderous wingbeats drew closer, she briefly considered teleporting away, before rejecting the idea. She wasn’t done yet. She closed the visor on her duanum helmet, and pressed herself flat against the ground.

Fire swept over her; four different streams of bright flame, from four different angles. Even through her full-body heat-resistant armour, it seared her flesh, drawing a whimper of agony from her lips. The stone beneath her softened and sagged.

Then she was falling, amidst red hot rocks and billowing flames, tumbling end over end down the slope. She splashed into a dark pool, swathed in steam.

Something coiled around her chest. In a flash, she tore it loose, and plucked what looked like a triple-tentacled octopus out of the water. It reached for her, its beak snapping at her armour. She ripped it in half, pulled up her visor, and took a bite out of it.

Mmm…not half bad.

Overhead, a dragon thrashed in the air, caught in a huge wire net. Spears jutted from its side. Flames billowed, melting thick metal wires into slag. Roaring, it pulled free and launched itself at an unseen foe.

Large claws closed around her ankle. Dropping half of her impromptu meal, she spun, and drove at the new threat with her gauntlet. At the last moment, she drew back. It was Princess Aele, lying in the water beside her.

Aele was in a bad way. She was more lightly armoured than Saskia. Even though the dragonfire hadn’t struck her directly, the splash damage had seared a big hole in her leg.

It would grow back—if she survived.

“Here,” said Saskia, handing her the carcass. “Stay in the water and feed until you can walk again.”

“Appreciated,” growled Aele around a mouthful of rubbery tentacle.

Saskia scrambled back up the branchlet—and into pandemonium. Dragons soared every which way, spewing jets of flame. Arrows and fireballs filled the air. Explosions rippled across the soot-clouded sky. Half of a mangled head lay among a pile of torn and blackened bodies. She recognised that single, lifeless eye. It was Queen Moebe, Aele’s mother.

Her minimap was painting an equally grim picture. Nearly a third of the blue markers representing her allies had winked out. The violet and red markers of her enemies outnumbered them twenty to one, and more were on their way.

Even so, her friends and allies were giving as good as they got.

Rover Dog and Vask and several other trolls had thrown grappling lines over one of the dragons and leapt onto its back, where they were peeling off its scales and laying into the flesh beneath with blades and claws and teeth. Another dragon was sprawled across her branchlet, held in place by thick coils of vines. Garrain hacked at its neck with his glaive, Trowbane, while the struggling creature belched fire like an out-of-control fire hose.

Saskia came to his aid, taking up his glaive and laying into the beast’s throat with all her strength—which was far greater than his, even with the enhancements provided by the weird plants infesting his body.

“Ardonis, Saskia, are you there?” It was Nuille’s voice.

“Little…busy…right now, Nuille,” said Saskia, between swings.

“It’s important,” said Nuille. “Tell your allies not to attack me when I come for you.”

“Why would they…?”

Saskia stopped swinging just as Garrain pressed his hand to the wound they’d opened up. He released a spell that sent creeping tendrils down the dragon’s throat, shredding it from the inside. It lurched and shuddered, and the flames sputtered out.

“Seriously?” said Saskia. Through her vassal’s viewpoint, she’d just watched as Nuille’s elven form suddenly expanded. And now through the corner of Nuille’s eyes she could see great golden wings and a long, sinuous tail. “Oh my god, you have a dragon form now?”

At that moment, an enemy dragon came crashing to the ground in a bloody heap. Rover Dog leapt from its back, landing before her with a shaz-eating grin on his face.

“Good fight!” he proclaimed.

Vask scrambled down behind him, with a gleam in her eyes. She caught sight of Queen Moebe’s remains, and her expression wilted.

Saskia pointed at a vast winged form spiralling down toward them. “That’s Nuille. She’s going to get as many of us out of here as she can. Don’t attack her!”

A large serpentine head rose up from beneath the branchlet, jaws gaping wide, flames already coiling between its teeth. Saskia tensed. Help may be on the way, but they weren’t in the clear yet.

By the time Nuille came in to land, the bodies were piled high around them. Dragons, their riders, and trolls. So many dead trolls. Nuille’s massive scaly body crouched low, while an elf and thirteen trolls scrambled aboard. These were all who had survived in the immediate vicinity—and all Nuille could realistically hope to carry, in any case. Thirteen out of hundreds. At least Rover Dog and Vask were safe.

Another dragon had landed at the base of the branchlet, by the pool where she’d left Aele. Flame licked across the water, turning it to steam. Saskia felt bile rising in her throat.

Then they were diving down through the canopy at breakneck speed, past burning trees and snapping jaws, past fire and stench and blood.

This was what she had wrought. Her grand assault on the heavens. What a joke she was. Somewhere behind his impenetrable barrier, Abellion was surely laughing at her.

Several hours into their dive, Rover Dog pointed at what appeared to be a large knot in the side of the trunk.

“What is that?” said Saskia.

“I…not know,” said Rover Dog. “We should go there.”

“We need to catch up with the others,” said Saskia.

“We should go there,” repeated Rover Dog.

“Oh…kay,” said Saskia. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to take a brief stop. Nuille could use a break from flying. Assuming there’s anything there for us to land on.”

As they got closer, she saw that there was an immense hollow in the centre of the knot, perhaps a quarter the diameter of a typical branch of the world tree. The inside of the hollow was positively bursting with greenery. There was a sizeable lake at its base, and waterfalls down its walls. They circled over the lush inner landscape, looking for a suitable landing spot.

Rover Dog pointed at a ledge high on the back wall of the hollow. “Land there,” he said.

Her map told her that there was a cave behind the ledge, though it wasn’t visible to the naked eye.

“You’re acting kinda weird,” said Saskia. “You sure you’re okay?”

Rover Dog frowned, and nodded. “I not can explain. I just…know.”

Nuille set them down on the ledge, before shifting back into elven form. Saskia and Rover Dog scraped aside a mound of dirt piled up against the back wall, uncovering a slab of flat stone. Sliding the stone aside revealed a small tunnel, about half her height. Rover Dog tugged at Saskia’s hand, almost dragging her forward in his eagerness to get inside.

After much grumbling from the other trolls, they squeezed through the tunnel, which soon opened out into a huge cavern, bursting with greenery. It wasn’t quite the scale of the hollow outside, or even one of Ciendil’s Outer Hollows, but it was impressively huge nonetheless. The cavern had an eerie stillness about it, despite the abundance of life within its walls. The ancient trees were silent, without so much as the hint of a breeze disturbing their pitted, yellow leaves. Ropey vines as thick as tree trunks crept up the walls and hung from the ceiling, and coiled about an immense silvery pillar at the cavern’s centre. The head of the pillar was carved with an ouroboros, the symbol of a snake eating its own tail. Atop that, an immense tongue of yellow flame licked into the air, bathing the cavern in its warm glow. But it was no ordinary flame. This flame was frozen in time, its light unchanging.

At Rover Dog’s continued urging, they trekked deep into the primordial forest. Along the way, they encountered a herd of lumbering beasts with armoured flesh and few survival instincts. These proved too tempting a target for a band of hungry trolls. Saskia was not impressed with the resulting meal. Their meat tasted like old leather—tough and dry and hard to chew.

In a hilltop glade near the base of the pillar, they came upon a small circle of stone houses. At the village centre, a large granite statue depicting a troll kneeling in a meditative pose, eyes closed. Saskia was struck by how lifelike it appeared. It must have been a really talented sculptor who—

Oh. That was no statue.

A little green-skinned woman glided across cobblestone steps between buildings, while balancing a bucket on her head. Saskia did a double-take at the sight of her. Was she a goblin? She sure looked like a goblin, but no goblin depicted in Earth’s fiction had ever moved with such grace.

On the far side of the village, a door opened, and out stepped a man, who stood facing them with raised eyebrows. He looked very close to human, with only the pointed tips of his ears and a faint dusting of golden splotches on his skin marking him as a distant kin to the elves. His chin was beardless; his skin unwrinkled; his features vaguely oriental.

The goblin woman halted in her tracks, and slowly turned to face them. Barely a ripple stirred the water in the bucket atop her head.

At the same moment, the ‘statue’ at the village centre stirred, and opened her eyes, looking up with glacial slowness. The stone troll’s gaze settled on Rover Dog, and she addressed him in a low, rumbling voice. Saskia recognised the name, ‘Dougan,’ but she couldn’t make sense of anything else the troll said.

An unreadable expression crossed Rover Dog face. He replied in the same unknown language.

“What did she say?” asked Saskia.

Rover Dog translated for her. “She ask why I wait so long to come home.”

“Home?” Saskia looked between the human, the little goblin, and the ancient, statuesque troll. And it all clicked into place. “These people are immortal, like you. And that…” She gazed up at the ouroboros symbol and frozen flame atop the pillar. “…is the seed of eternity.”