Of Love, Bathrooms, and Laser Pistols
I’ve been very busy recently, with programming and life and writing and… well, stuff. This passage is from the the third act of Revelations of Darkened Souls, the forthcoming sequel to A Journey of Dragons. I’ll be posting more int he coming weeks… as always, this is preliminary text, from before major editorial passes and final polishing. :)
Norgrim is the leader of the Loreseeker dwarves, a sect devoted to the acquisition of knowledge; Kalinda is his daughter. Alanora is the leader of Caerelon, the only remaining major human city in the world, and Zarah is a young woman who’s their friend. And now for the story segment…
“Where is Gyre?” Alanora asked.
“Fifty leagues northwest,” Kalinda told her. “They’ll take Zarah there by underground steamrail, but the terminus on this end is under the Theorist compound. There has to be some other way to get there quickly.”
“Are you insane?” Norgrim yelled. Alanora shot the dwarf a look he’d only seen once before, and his blood froze.
“Norgrim, take the viricide to Caerelon,” Alanora ordered. Norgrim started to object; her eyes told him it would be unwise. “Make it look like I’ve gone with you.”
“No!” Norgrim burst forth. “We’re lucky to have gotten out of this as well as we have. Zarah accepted the sacrifice.”
“Then she made a bad choice,” said Alanora. “There is no Caerelon if we abandon our principles. I will not leave Zarah behind to be picked apart and murdered.”
“Where do you keep your toys, father?” Kalinda asked.
“What toys…”
“Where?” she demanded.
“What are you talking about?” Alanora asked.
“My father collects interesting things,” Kalinda replied. “Odd devices, forgotten technology, whatever comes his way in dusty old ruins and hidden vaults. He must have some of it here, in case of emergency. Hidden.”
“I don’t even know how most of it works!” her father insisted.
“We’re bright girls,” said Kalinda. “We’ll take what we can figure out.”
“You’re not going!” Norgrim said, realizing what her “we” implied.
“Yes I am.”
“No you’re not!” Norgrim declared. “I like Zarah, but to throw your life away –”
“It’s my life and my choice,” Kalinda said, firmly and calmly. “Zarah is more than my friend. I love her, father.”
Norgrim looked very confused for a moment.
“That’s part of what upset those Theorists, isn’t it?” Alanora asked. “Under the drugs, she told them how she feels about you, didn’t she?”
“Maybe. Probably,” said Kalinda. “The two of us keep dancing around our feelings, not quite sure what to do. It didn’t happen overnight, and it certainly wasn’t planned. It just happened. And I’ll be damned if those zekts are going to take her away from me.”
“It makes no sense!” exclaimed Norgrim. “You’re both –”
“Yes, we’re both women. I’ve noticed. And we aren’t even the same species. But we make each other happy… as Tohkay once said, does anything else really matter?”
“You discussed this with Tohkay?” His eyes went wide.
“He’s a wise little lizard. I think he’s been talking to both of us, and I should have listened to him sooner. If she dies before I can… well, that’s not going to happen.”
Norgrim shook his head. “You aren’t serious about this.”
“More serious than you imagine,” said Kalinda. “You’d fight a pack of dragons for mother. Alanora risked her life to rescue Kaylen. Don’t deny me the right to protect the person I love. Now – where are your toys?”
Norgrim was silent.
Alanora kicked him.
“Fine, fine,” Norgrim growled. “This way.”
He lead them through the house, to the bathroom.
“You keep toys in the toilet?” Alanora asked.
“Would you look here for a cache of deadly antiques?” Norgrim asked. “What did you expect me to have? A secret door behind a bookshelf?”
“Actually, yes.”
He mumbled under his breath about people who lacked imagination. Taking the top off the toilet’s cistern, he reaching inside; two loud clicks later, the bathtub slid sideways into a compartment in the wall, revealing a stairway down.
They descended quickly. Light came on automatically, revealing a large room, lined with shelves, cabinets, and crates. Devices strange, wondrous, and incomprehensible surrounded them.
“Most of these are dwarven make,” Norgrim said. “A few come from human ruins or Roqat. I’ve never had time to study them all.” He walked to one set of shelves, and picked up a folded piece of shimmering cloth. With a quick motion, he wrapped it around himself – and disappeared.
“An invisibility cloak?” Alanora asked. “What is this, your collection of clichés?”
His head appeared, disembodied, smiling. “It’s not perfect,” he said. “People will see distortions from certain angles, or when you’re moving.”
Kalinda’s attention was drawn to a complex device. The central component was a long, wide cylinder made from orange-red metal, its surface inscribed with dull blue runes.
“This has a power port,” she said. “Do you have a charged anpheric crystal at two thousand peranils?”
“Careful!” he father exclaimed, tossing the cloak aside and moving quickly to her side. “That thing’s dangerous.”
“Only if I aim it the wrong way,” she said. She pointed to the blue symbols. “This is an ancient form of Dwarven – here’s Istona’s signature mark. She built this! You found this in Roqat, didn’t you?” For the first time in hours, she smiled, but it was a dark smirk Norgrim had never seen on his daughter’s face. “This says something about quantum displacement,” she continued. “That’s one of the principles underlying the harmonic gateways – what’s that whining noise?”
Instinctively, she and Norgrim dropped to the floor. A burst of intense purple light filled the room, accompanied by crackling sounds and acrid odors. They looked to see Alanora rubbing her eyes amid settling dust, holding an object with pulsing red and blue crystals on top.
“That was fun,” Alanora said. “I made your storage room bigger.” In the wall across from her, a smoking hole extended into darkness.
“Gah!” Norgrim said. “What did you do?”
“This looked interesting,” she said, examining the weapon closely. “It had two color-coded sockets, so I plugged in a pair of these glowing crystals from this cabinet. I didn’t know what this button did, so I pushed it. It seems to be working.”
“Be careful!” Norgrim said. “You can’t rescue anyone as a corpse!”
“Why in hell do you hide all this stuff?” she asked. “Why are you afraid of anything? Just this one weapon could –”
“I could conquer all of Syraqua in a day,” Norgrim said. “And so could anyone else who got their hands on my collection. I’ve spent decades keeping Theorist hands off tools like these.” He pointed to a table against one wall. “Those were made by your species, Alanora. You might want to see if any of them make sense to you. Just don’t blow us all up, please. I want to live long enough to see if we survive.”
(more to come)
