Chapter 11: Chapter 4, Part 2

“Am I going to die of old age, or is one of you going to come up here?” I yelled, only to be greeted by a wall of silence, and then a chorus of hurried whispering. It grew in pace and intensity until it was all cut off with a single sharp hiss, followed by the greasy voice of Eoin, doing its best to sound diplomatic. “I’m sure you can see how that might depend on a number of factors. May I presume I’m talking to the individual we saw running up the leg of this being we now find ourselves in?”

“You can presume what you like,” I answered.

“I see. Well in that case I may also be so bold as to presume you to be the person who so graciously allowed us to share their camp last night, for which you have my, and indeed our, thanks.”

“Is this going anywhere?” I heard a bit of a sigh drifting up the ladder before Eoin responded.

“Very well Mr Stoneshield, if that is in fact your name. I wish to ask you a few questions regarding the nature of your presence in this area, if I-”

“Bloody Hel, why don’t you all come up here then and we can have a proper chat?”

Alf chose a moment to jump in there. “How do we know you won’t violently assault us as we climb up this ladder?”

“The same way I knew you wouldn’t kill me while I slept last night,” I answered.

“And what way was that?”

“I didn’t.” There was a short silence, before Alf spoke again.

“Well that’s understandable. I’ve lived a fair while at this point and I’m also getting fed up with this, so I’m going to climb this here ladder. If you kill me, whoever you are, I will do everything in my power to violently haunt you.” I let him have the last word on that threat, before hearing the grunting noises of an old man climbing a ladder.

His head didn’t so much pop into view as he did ooze up out of the hole. I kept my weapons trained on it but stayed seated, and as his eyes crested the rim they widened slightly as he looked at me. I cocked an eyebrow, and his eyes narrowed again. “Oh for Sol’s sake…” he mumbled, “it’s a little girl, you halfwits.”

“Oi,” I snapped.

“Oh I’m sorry,” he groaned, heaving himself over the top of the ladder. “Is there some other term you’d prefer? Annoying child, perhaps? Red-headed midget, maybe?”

“Calling me a midget is rich coming from a Dwarf.”

“Ah but I am a statuesque, or at the very least marginally-above-average Dwarf, whereas you seem to be a rather small Human.” I could hear the sounds of others climbing the ladder, and Nalfis emerged next, annoyingly choosing to comment on exactly the same thing as Alf. “By Freja, he’s actually right for once. It is a little girl!” This was really quickly turning into a mess, so I chose to keep my mouth shut while the rest of them climbed up the ladder. I think I was about to say something when I heard this heavy, ungainly clanking, and shortly thereafter saw a metal antler poke up, followed by another, and then the head, body, and other constituent parts of a metal reindeer. I sort of stared in that way you look at something that’s just a bit wrong, before Gialli followed it, clocking my expression that had settled into a weirdly confused sort of anger, before saying something about “how clever she was, especially at her age”. I mostly tuned it out in favour of regaining my grasp on normality, at which point Eoin clambered into the room in last place, and my anger slightly reasserted itself.

I was now outnumbered to a concerning degree, and definitely cornered. I stayed seated as they arrayed themselves in front of me, again letting Eoin pipe up first. The look on his face was at once patronising and disdainful, which I really fucking detested. “Now then child,” (Gods he really has to die, I thought), “what do you have to say for yourself?”

“Excuse me?”

“I mean, dear girl, how might you explain your actions these last few hours? Deceit, attempted escape, endangering an agent of the crown of Elvenden?”

“I’m sorry but what the fuck are you talking about? Do I have anything to explain to you?”

“You will answer my questions, young lady.”

“For fuck’s sake!” I shouted. “Could you all stop with the ‘child’, ‘girl’, ‘young lady’ shit? None of you have a shred of authority over me, I don’t give a fuck about who any of you are, and this relentless talking-down to me would be impolite even if I hadn’t proven I was perfectly capable of looking after myself without ‘adult supervision’, which I pretty fucking clearly have, haven’t I? You followed me here, you saw what I can do by myself, and now you’re demanding I explain my actions? Where the Hel do you get off thinking you have anything even approaching the right to do that?”

There was a moment of quiet, which gave me long enough to think that perhaps flying off the handle and yelling at them might not have been the best idea, especially in proving my maturity. “Well I’m sorry,” I muttered, “but you were being dicks.”

“In the interests of dispensing with the ‘young lady’ shit then, as you call it, and in the interest of us not getting yelled at like that again,” said Teclis, “why don’t I just start with a simple question. What is your name?”

“Indy,” I said.

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“Indy…”

“Just Indy. It’s a mononym.”

“Well, Indy, it’s a pleasure to meet you for who I presume you actually are.” I chose to answer the implied question explicitly.

“Yeah, this is me,” I said. “Not quite as scary as Bert huh?”

“So, Indy,” Eoin jumped in, “if you’d forgive my earlier impoliteness, would you mind my asking what it is you are doing out here?”

“I would actually mind your asking, Eoin, because you’re a dick. I’ll let someone else ask though.” Call me petty, but he was really annoying me. And, I figured, if they were already writing me off as a young, dumb girl, I might as well use that to get away with a bit of pettiness. Nalfis stepped up to the metaphorical podium next. “Indy,” he said, “pleasure to make your acquaintance, and might I add my congratulations on what was a masterful performance last night. You certainly had us all taken in, and I pride myself on spotting that kind of talent. Would you be willing to share with us why you are here, or what you are doing?”

“Of course Nalfis, I’d be delighted,” I tried to keep as much cheer in my voice as I could, just to be annoying, “but what do you mean by ‘here’?”

“Well, I-” he stopped for a second to ponder, “I suppose we can start small. Why are you in this construct?”

“Because it looked interesting.” He looked like he was waiting for me to elaborate, so I shrugged.

“I see.”

“I mean… why are you all here?” A few of them looked around at each other, and Eoin honestly looked cross. Teclis piped up this time.

“Well,” he said, “we thought you knew something, seeing as you started running towards it.”

“I was curious.” I gave another shrug.

“And when you’re curious about things you… run towards them no matter how little you know about them?”

“Yes.” Again there was a bit of looking around, a bit of shrugging. “I weighed the risks and rewards first obviously,” I elaborated, “it’s not like I didn’t think at all.”

“And what,” Eoin interrupted, “did you assess the rewards to be?” I stayed silent long enough for him to sigh dramatically and wave a hand at Nalfis again.

“What did you think the rewards would be?” he asked.

“Look around.” I said. “All of this.”

“All of what? It’s not like we can take this thing with us.”

“That’s not the point though, is it? The point is just… getting to experience it. Being the first people in Gods know how long to see inside something that’s been forgotten and empty for this long. Having the chance to learn about it, learn from it.”

“You sound passionate about this,” said Gialli. I wanted to be casual, maybe even a bit nonchalant about the whole thing, but he was right, and the fire was being kindled as I spoke, doing my best not to ramble. I needed to be cool. “I wasn’t joking last night when I said I was an archaeologist. I’ve always loved old stuff, and Gnomish tech like this? It’s been my focus for a while now,” I saw Gialli nod, an approving expression on his face, “so when I realised what this was, there wasn’t really another option as far as I was concerned. There’s so much we can learn and apply from this, and I want to be right there when we do.”

“What have you learned so far then?” asked Tove.

“Mostly how long it takes to get to the top of this thing.”

“So why are you still in here, and not up those stairs?” She nodded in the direction of the door.

“Ah. Yeah.” My excitement dampened as reality caught up with me again. “That would be the lightning net.”

“Lightning net?”

“I opened the door, some floating orby-things drifted out of the ceiling, started screeching, and then floated into a grid, shot lightning between them, and started drifting towards me. Wasn’t much I could think to do in the moment aside from duck back in here, and then I heard you guys coming and figured I’d wait.”

“You’re joking,” Nalfis said. I just pointed at the doors.

“Check if you like,” I said, “but the doors are really heavy and can get stuck, so don’t blame me if you get zapped.”

“How many of them were there?” he asked. “Are they big? Fast? Do anything other than float and make a ‘lightning net’, as you call it?”

“In order? Roughly 8, they’re a bit bigger than my head, didn’t seem very fast, and the only other things were changing colour from white to red and saying something in Gnomish. Why?”

“Wait,” Gialli interrupted, frowning, “they talked?”

“I wouldn’t call it talking,” I hedged. “More like… you know how there’s kinds of magic that trigger in response to certain conditions?”

“I’m passably familiar with the fundamentals of glyph-theory.” He could really have just said ‘yes’, I thought. Whatever.

“Yeah, it was probably more like that – the magic was just whatever they were made to say, like a recorded message, except aloud.”

“What did they say?”

“Don’t know,” I lied. I wasn’t really averse to them knowing I understood Gnomish, but I didn’t want to raise questions about whatever defective equipment meant, especially since I didn’t have a good answer for that myself. “If I could return to the question you asked in response to mine,” Nalfis said, “the ‘why’ I asked was to try and assess if we could simply overpower these guards.” I gave that a thought.

“I don’t see why not,” I said. “I panicked a bit when they appeared, but they must be a bit worn-out by now, right? Honestly I can’t see it being that difficult if you’re expecting it – they’re not very big or fast.”

[Dear Reader, Gialli Gætir here, contributing at last! A true pleasure to make your acquaintance and to be permitted to add some insights in my own way and voice. This part of my life is not one I try to reminisce on too frequently, but is nevertheless seared into my mind in many ways. This isn’t a space for me to talk about myself however, but to offer what I believe Indy described as “a bit of objectivity”. Whether I’m the right person to ask for that is questionable, but I can certainly offer another perspective on events.

This point of my journey was a tumultuous one as you may or may not be aware, and having this stranger veritably cannon into our lives (pun intended) was certainly not a calming factor. It was memorable however, and the particular moment above is one I remember especially. It was when I first began to truly catch glimpses of Indy the scholar, the inventor, and one whose interests so closely aligned to my own. Suffice it to say, I was thrilled.

It was also, however, possibly the moment that cemented my understanding (if the last few hours hadn’t) of Indy the… I’ll say ‘impulsive’ to avoid causing too great offence. I felt I should choose this particular moment to make my opening comment since it was, as I say, formative. More to the point though, and without wishing to ‘spoil’, I believe many of you will be familiar with the fact that both in life and in framing an exciting and mildly comedic narrative, pride does so frequently come before a fall. Do, I implore you, read on.]