§121 Side Track (Patreon)

Curator Meltissa Jane – Dimmik Borderlands

They had to camp without fire, but that didn't mean they ate cold food. For a woman far from home, a good portable stove was a necessity if she wanted the comfort of tea or the occasional cup of warm broth to go with her nighttime reading. Meltissa's Personal Librarian skill was a cheekily-renamed Inventory, in which she kept her most important references, her current reading, writing utensils, and other survival basics – the aforementioned stove among them.

Their camp was cleverly concealed in a slight hollow of a hill, behind a blind of living bushes. Cadmius hadn't picked the position with the best view; that location showed evidence of repeated visits. He deemed it likely that their adversaries used it as a lookout post. They took instead a spot with superior concealment and adequate views of the tracks going west into the hills, and the wooden-railed spur line hidden from the main tracks. They spent their days in near silence, especially Cadmius. He could sit for hours on end, saying and doing nothing. At times, he would take a pencil and a small pad of thick paper in hand and sketch some detail he observed: the way the morning mist crept through the spaces between hills. A bird that visited them to pilfer crumbs. A strangely twisted bush.

The silence would have driven Melstissa mad if she didn't have her books. She was finally able to read Permutations, Taylor's latest revelation. She followed that with A Child's Folly, dedicated to critiquing the new magical theory into irrelevance. In the near term, Taylor might be in for a rough time as academics and vested interests vocally shredded his theories. It wouldn't matter in the long run. Permutations let people do things they couldn't do before, making the arguments pointless. History might rewrite the facts of who invented the new system and when. Taylor's contribution to the world could be erased. No matter what happened, the new theory was here to stay until something better came along.

Meltissa had resolved to wait a full week. Luckily, their target appeared on day four. Cadmius had just returned from fetching water, a hike of some distance, and was scanning the hilltops. He put a quieting hand on her arm and pointed to the hilltop they suspected was used as a lookout. Two figures stood in plain view, shielding their eyes with their hands, looking for watchers. She wasn't any good with spells, but Meltissa could write simple wards and circles. She dropped a mana stone onto the wards she had carved into sections of wood and placed across their hideout, a simple blurring effect and monster repellent. It would never bear close examination, but it hid them very well from a distance. An opponent would need a Sense Mana skill to spot them, or have superlative scouting ability.

Two hours later, they heard the unmistakable noise of moving cargo. The wagons groaned on wooden rails. Animals coughed and strained. After several minutes of that commotion growing louder, a procession of harnessed monsters passed into view. They were bighorn sheep, a dozen of them, grown large and strong from excess mana. Although it was hard to gauge their exact size from a distance, each was substantially taller than Cadmius at the shoulder. A tamer kept the reins and urged them onward with his praxis, a wooden instrument fashioned to look like a whip but which did its work through magic instead of pain. For all of that noise, the train was only fifteen wagons long.

People rode at the rear of each car, next to the manual brake levers, dressed in ragged clothing. They rocked passively with the train's occasional motion. One figure stood over the driver, larger than the rest, dressed in a long cloak and a wide-brimmed hat. A toothy muzzle, unlike any beastkin feature Meltissa knew, protruded from under the hat. The creature's hands ended in claws as long as her forearm. The leader gestured and grunted something like words, indistinct from their distant vantage point. The train pulled into the side track, putting it close to the main line yet hidden from it.

At more grunted commands from the leader, the brakemen halted the train with a long, grinding screech of iron wheels on wooden rails. The animals paused in their traces. The brakemen sat and were still. The sun closed in on the horizon and seemed to linger for too long. Meltissa checked her watch at least a dozen times during that resting interval. The last scheduled passenger train had passed hours ago. They were waiting for darkness and, eventually, the freight train.

Meltissa took a small telescope from her bag and held it to her eye. It wasn't as powerful as Cadmius's, but it had a focus ring on the end that could turn. Instead of adjusting the focus, turning the ring caused the view to go black. The mana scope was a prototype, one she procured from a Taylor-aligned workshop by leaning on her prior connection to its principal inventor and promising a detailed field report. 

Meltissa kept turning the ring until the view turned from a solid field of black to one with blurry splotches of light where the foreman and the driver were. She checked the markings on the ring to confirm what she had already guessed: their auras were the same as mana beasts. She raised the scope and looked again, turning the ring almost to its furthest extent. The mana beasts disappeard and the train became rectangles of dim light. She checked the markings: the entire train glowed faintly with corrupted mana, with a few brighter spots scattered through the load.

The train and all its workers were still until well after dark. Meltissa and Cadmius had to switch off looking through the enchanted telescope to see what was going on, and the visibility was poor because of interference from her wards. First, the mystery railmen removed the netting that hid the side rail, then roused the animals enough to pull them close to the junction. One person was sent to the junction with a signal lantern. Then commenced another hour of waiting.

The Imperial Rail ran quietly compared to the mining train, but in that remote place where nothing moved and nobody spoke, Meltissa heard the rails humming as the train drew close. The signalman could hear it too, and opened the door to his light, swinging it back and forth. The train must have stopped well short of the junction, because the rails ceased to ring. They were left waiting for some time until the cargo train crept forward very slowly, pulled by a team of four aurochs. Fewer animals were needed thanks to their larger size and the extensive magic used by the Imperial Rail System. The train passed the junction and pulled well ahead of it. The miners pulled their short train forward until the first two cars were on the imperial track, and uncoupled their animals from the train. The imperial train moved backward until its last car coupled with the miners' first car.

The connection made, the imperial train pulled forward with care until the fifteen newly attached cars were past the junction. The rails began to sing again, as the train picked up speed, heading north to Radegonde and then East into Rossignol. Eventually, the load would find its way hundreds of miles north in Avimore.

The miners and their dreadful foreman did not go home, and Meltissa could not understand why they stayed. Their load was delivered. The riddle was solved when empty replacement wagons appeared on the track, pushed from behind by the same monstrous sheep that had hauled the full wagons down from the hills. Of course, the cargo train brought them empty wagons and had to disconnect them before accepting the fully loaded ones. Meltissa counted one more car than the miners had received.

Animals, people, and foreman took their places to repeat their journey in reverse. The animals strained at first, and the train crept forward. Once moving, they gained speed and left the scene faster than they had arrived.

Meltissa made to say something as they vanished into the hills, but Cadmius stopped her with a strong grip around her hand. His hand was cold and wet with nervous sweat. He shook his head, a dark form barely discernible against a darker night, but the message was clear. He feared the foreman as much as Meltissa, but he also feared the scouts that could still be at their superior vantage point, checking their tail for followers. Meltissa didn't know what kind of monster the foreman was, but whatever it was, it would be clever, and it would be cruel. Truly intelligent monsters, capable of coercing humans to serve them, were exceedingly rare, but they invariably spelled major trouble.

Meltissa couldn't risk a light while scouts might be watching. She had to wait until sunup to use her tablet and report to the governor.

Governor Syndony Edgecomb - Bostkirk Palace

"How good is your intelligence?" Asked the emperor in the mirror. He was reading from his tablet, no doubt scanning through the field report. He was asking about the sender and their circumstances, not the report itself.

It was early, barely an hour past daylight, but both the governor of Esfold and the emperor were dressed as if expecting a day at court. Among the many thousands of people who wanted a minute of the emperor's time, only a handful could call upon him at will. Top ministers and provincial governors were the only people who held such a privilege, and a wise person used it sparingly.

"My best curator, and a third-tier fighter. They verified the corruption mana with a new magical device. That detail aside, there is enough reason to mobilize the IEF." She didn't need to recount those reasons: the large monsters, illegal mining in borderlands, hidden shipments, and the fact that the iron in question was sold as material in an imperial project. The last fact alone made the issue an imperial responsibility, which should be enough to goad the emperor into action.

"There is no location to deploy to."

"There will be. I propose Your Imperial Majesty mobilize Midway to stage at Pritchard. By the time they arrive, my people will have a more specific location."

"And if they don't?"

"Then two good investigators are most probably dead, further proof of the severity of the situation."

The emperor seemed to hesitate, but Syndony knew he was listening to advice from outside of the mirror's range of view. 

"We will deploy the Midway garrison," he said at last, "with the addition of supporting resources from Avimore."

"Thank you, Your Imperial Majesty. What about the Divine Envoy? Does the imperium have a way to contact him?"

"We are able to protect our own people without relying on interlopers, divine or otherwise. However, we will send a specialist in corruption to assist. Be well, Syndony."

The governor bowed deeply, and the window into the capital became a simple mirror. She was staking a lot on Curator Jane's report. This wasn't the first time she had called on her emperor for aid, but it was the first time that she had asked for a major military deployment inside her borders.

Typically, when she asked for anything, there was some argument from the emperor. The objections weren't entirely genuine. An emperor always had an audience, and these exchanges were transcribed for future reference. It was necessary to show that the empire acted judiciously, and so questions were asked, all in the vein of "why can/should you not handle this problem on your own?"

The emperor's quick acquiescence and even quicker departure troubled Syndony enough to give her pause. If he didn't ask the usual questions, then there was a reason. And that reason most likely had something to do with the ore's destination, a mysterious imperial metalworks. Many people worked there producing intermediate products. The IEF was the sole purchaser of its output.

Jax - Midway

Jax's beard had barely come in, healthy around the chin and weak in the cheeks, like most dwarves his age. Despite his youth, he was the best roving reporter for Arcaic Times, the granddaddy of publications all others wished they could be. Only the Avimore Herald could compete with the old fellow, and only on its best days. In truth, Jax would write for anyone, no matter how quickly they came and went, even the recent oddball magazine Glide, about a throwable toy and the games people played with it. If he could sell a story, then he'd write it, and AT was his best client.

Jax had come to Midway to talk to people about Dux Twilight. Few people seemed to know the young hero personally. His servants were well known and well-regarded, and the youth himself was often seen traipsing above the city at speed. Alas, there was no sign of him now. Jax went to the boardinghouse where he used to stay, and discovered the only one there who knew him was a priest named Rasmusen, who invoked the seal of spiritual advisor to avoid answering any questions about the boy.

Despite the priest's refusal to help, Jax took a room in the same boardinghouse. There was a good pub down the street, often frequented by off-duty IEF personnel. He took a tiny corner table for two and sat with his spirit companion in the other chair.

"What's the word among the spirits, Akoto?"

The fox spirit used her delicate muzzle to snatch morsels of cheese from the plate in front of her. "He will build his lair inside Mount Uroda. His armies train in mock battles, but he hasn't used them in weeks. They're restless."

"We might have to move on to Mourne," mused Jax. He badly wanted to write the first profile of Dux Twilight. If the boy flamed out early in his career, it would be an interesting record. If he went on to greatness, Jax would have been witness to his beginnings.

Bells rang in the street, three short rings followed by a long pause, over and over again. The uniformed IEF soldiers in the pub stood or raised their heads, alert to the sound. Units were being called into duty. One of the younger soldiers ran outside and soon returned with a bell-ringer in tow.

"Attention!" called the bell-ringer. "The following units will muster immediately." He read from a list so long that it would have been shorter if he had said who wasn't being mobilized.

"The Dux will have to wait. Something big is happening," Jax told his spirit. "We'd better arrange transportation while we still can."