Framework of the Frontier, Sain Artwell [read me a book .TXT] 📗

hair, pulling her close to kiss her clammy brow. “Good job, Rulu.”

Red trickled down her cheeks and chin. She nodded, eyes glazed over with a droopy gaze. Her gills flared out bright, fanning in rapid motion.

“Are you okay? Let me help.” Ember reached to trickle a bit of water on her hand, washing Rulu’s blood and moisturizing her gills. It made the aboleth smile happily.

“Mmh… I thank you Ember, for this as well as leaping to our aid. It was brave of you, given the limitations of your powers.”

“You’re welcome.” Ember gave her a caring hug, which Rulu did not resist. The faun’s gaze shifted to William and her hand shifted to pat his arm. “How about you, Will? You got hit a few times there.”

“Okay-ish. Good enough.” William gave her a kiss. The feel of her adoring lips worked like opiates on his knee. Her smiling did the same to his soul. William squeezed his girls tight.

Trotto fell onto the street with a clank of metal, surrounded by his doting party members.. “Sorry about that, guys, everyone. Thanks Ranger, Ember, Rulu.” He paused on Rulu and gave her a respectful tip of the head.

Orien frowned at the floor in shame. “Trotto, you have to lose that fucking belly. Fuck. If it wasn’t for sheer dumb luck…” She bit down her curses.

Trotto put an arm around her. “Aye aye, the belly goes bye bye by the next delve. Promise.”

“Soo…” Veren scratched his neck. “Two of us thought of something to bypass the forge. We could hollow out one of the golems, strap the pieces on Trotto, and he could walk around there pretending he’s one.”

William clicked his fingers. “Yes, yes! That’s brilliant. Fuck, why didn’t we do this before, we could’ve avoided the whole fight. The slugs we killed on the way kept their face mimic magic after death. Maybe we could carve them out and wear them.”

“It is possible their magic originally evolved so they could pass by the golems.” Ember whipped out her moleskine and began writing furiously.

“We shot down a few last night,” Eren said. “Three, right?”

“Nah, I got two, so five. I remember where they fell,” Veren confirmed. “We can fetch them real quick and come back.”

“That’s…” Orien bit her lip as she mused the idea. “That’s not a bad idea.”

“Worth a try,” William agreed, “If it fails me and Trotto can flip one of the coffers around and turtle-walk under it.”

They tried the face masks first. Veren and Eren soon returned with the five carved out faces.

William planted the gooey end of the slug’s face on top of his and tried not to gag. Washed though they were, the acid had left a pungent eggy stench behind. He peeked around the corner of the archway, inching further in until the cores dotting the monolithic forge focused on him. They inspected him and looked away, disinterested.

He laughed out a sigh of relief. “It works, come on.”

Trotto was behind him, followed by Orien, Ember, and Rulu — who all wore the cut off faces on their necks rather than face.

William paused when he saw it. “Wait. That works?”

“Of course it does,” Rulu shrugged. “It’s magic. Your face is not.”

“Oof.”

Rulu gave him a cheery giggle, which the others joined, him included.

The five proceeded into the core chamber, making a beeline to one of the ten car-sized stone coffers. Dust covered loot was piled up like trash.

“These are all from Iram. I’ll need to inspect their magical energies to be sure whether they’re intact or not.” Ember grinned as she bounced on the tips of her hooves. “We’ll find weapons to help you with from here Rulu, I bet we will.”

Rulu brushed Ember’s leg with her tail.

William snatched the thick foot-long sceptre off the top. It was of the same black metal as Letter King’s throne and hewn into it was glass-like wiring in blues and reds. It matched the angular tree-branch patterns on the brown crumble of paper in William’s grip. He secured it on his person with an extra belt, right up in his armpit, as secure as possible.

Finally, he had a way to get in contact with the old gang.

And yet, a gnawing stress remained.

Only two days left. Maybe he could get it back to Letter King, but could she arrange Rulu asylum in two days? And would the leviathan honor it? Rulu’s fate was still a stack of ‘what ifs’ teetering on a knife’s edge.

***

Embers of charred wood and bone crackled happily in the night. Ember cleaned greasy dust from runic grooves and gilded filigree of a beautifully ornamented crystal of some lemon-gray mineral. It might’ve been citrine.

Magical energies within it looked healthy. The complex sequences of neatly organized optic, olfactory, and audio illusions indicated it was an advanced version of the bardic crystal. Which meant, the other hundred or so crystals they recovered were not weapons either.

She placed it in the ‘identified and functional pile’, right between the similarly sized ‘identified broken’ and the quickly shrinking ‘unidentified’ piles.

Will’s face perked up again. That hopeful grin he’d worn had wilted over the course of the evening to a tense facade.

“Anything good?” He asked.

Uh-oh. Frowning, Ember tilted her head from side to side. “It’s a sophisticated version of the crystal we found earlier, which can be reset to record an echo of reality. I think, most likely, these contain echordings of a famous theatre play from ancient Imar. They fetch great prices from the wealthy.”

“Ah…” His mouth pursed in a line to hide disappointment. “Well. That’s cool.”

“It is,” Ember agreed.

“Why do the golems gather entertainment gadgets and weird miscellaneous gadgets?”

“Perhaps they were tasked to preserve the culture of Iram? Whoever last ruled this Maze was likely one of them. Survivors must’ve holed up in here, hiding from