As the Crimson Calling crests the stairs and takes in the fire lake, Alexis pauses. He tilts his hat back and wipes his forehead.
“When we first got here, Red said the griffin ‘room’ had a sense of air about it.” He gestures back down the stairs. “Mist. Bare ground. We’d felt air magic before, so it tracked.” Another gesture downward. “Then the next level. All that vegetation. Earth.” He looks out over the fire lake. “And now this.”
After the group has retreated from the eruption of the fire bats from the fire lake, Alexis sits with the Crimson Calling on the steps between the two levels. He adjusts his whip.
“Good. Now we know what’s in the fire.” He looks at Rask, Gustav, and Ca’armine. “First, the bats. Then we try talking to the giant again.” A slight pause. “He must be desperate for conversation by now. Desperate might work in our favor.”
He glances up toward where the giant would be.
“How long does he think he’s been here?”
He lets that sit for a moment, then continues.
“If talking doesn’t work, we have options. That unnatural forest below, we can harvest from it. We could build a ballista again.” He waves a hand slightly. “Long shot.” Alexis looks at Ethelred “But maybe you can find something in that idea worth working with.” He looks at Ca’armine. “Raiden can reach him too. The determined wall of the north, your bolts. That right?”
“If it comes to it, we hit him from range, keep him from throwing those boulders, rest, come back the next day. Repeat. Not my preference, but it works.” A beat. “We might need more food if we’re doing this over days. Gus, you have options. Rask, Carm, you two as well?”
He looks at Gustav, Ethelred, then Rask.
“Any of you have anything that reaches at this range?”
Alexis takes a moment and looks at all his comrades. “But that’s just where I’m starting. Any other ideas? Rushing to the stairs? Blinding the giant somehow if we need to? Something else?”
While the group has a little downtime on the lush forest level in the tower-out-of-time of Nodden-Torr, Alexis muses out loud.
“Something’s been sitting with me.” He waits a moment. “The orcs that tore through Nodden-Torr had black veins running through them. Unnatural. Shadow infused in them, or some-such. Clearly altered by Shasherak. And that shadow creature we fought under Nodden-Torr, same thing: Black veins.”
He glances at the group.
“And Bandesingh uses orcs too. Different mark, same foot soldier.” He glances back. “Why orcs for both of them? Not stink lizards, not hobgoblins, not gnolls. Orcs.” A beat. “Did Bandesingh learn that from Shasherak? Is there a connection between them, or did two men arrive at the same answer separately?”
Another beat.
“There’s a spellbook tied to Shasherak that nobody’s seen in an age. I’d very much like to know where it is. I wonder if it’s being held by the Dark Hand.”
Four or five days into Elthered’s Compass project, Rask approaches Alexis while Alexis is between tasks and the group is resting after Ethelred has been working on his Magic ‘Compass,’ the in the misty first ‘room,’ or level of this strange place, he waits for Alexis to acknowledge him and then respectfully speaks:
“Alexis, do you think it would be useful to us all to better understand what you know or have heard about Sasherak, this King Illceros, and that ‘Kobos’ place the dwarves,”
Rask pauses and glances down, a little ashamed of having slaughtered the dwarves so brutally,
“mentioned?”
Rask pauses breifly, before resuming his inquiry.
“The Dragon and Spider,” the warrior glances at Alexis’ ring briefly, “they are connected to King Illceros, right?”
“Was… Handonis telling the truth about the Time Magic? Do we really need giant hearts as anchors?”
Rask is confused and perhaps even a bit frightened.
The group has been awake for a little while, moving through the quiet routines of breaking a camp that was never quite a camp. Eight plush chairs in a room that has no business existing where it does. Everyone present.
Alexis sits forward, elbows on knees, and tilts his hat brim up toward the shaft in the ceiling.
“Before we move, I want to talk about that hole.” He looks up at it for a moment. “There’s light up there. And this room is clean. No debris, no dust, nothing that should have fallen down from wherever that shaft goes.” A pause. “That’s worth understanding before we decide what to do with it.”
He looks around the group.
“Carm, I want to ask you something that might be a long shot. Your connection with Raiden,” he chooses his words carefully, “is there any chance he could tell us when we are? Not where. When.”
He looks back at the shaft.
“And does anyone have a way to learn more about what’s up there before we commit to anything? I’d rather know more than less before we start climbing.”
After the conversations have died down in the room with many fine chairs Ethelred waits for everyone to settle down to sleep. Red nudges Alexis to make sure he is awake. In a low tone he speaks.
“So a lot of words were said about Hedonis and his possible plans. And while we know little there is one part of his story the rings true. For what ever other reasons he wanted us to fight the Giants, the one reason he did state I believe. The part about needing an anchor.
It is just such a specific claim. He could of said anything as justify to killing the giants, why that one very clear goal?
I have gone over all my inventory in my mind trying to piece together what ‘anchors’ we might have. When we passed through that strange metal door things changed. This room feels out of place, different than where we were just before.
When we find the Tear how will we escape? Hedonis said little but made it clear that there was something different about where the Tear is. That an ‘anchor’ was needed to get ‘back home’.
We should have some solutions to this riddle before we are faced with a rushed decision.”
As the group is resting in the room with the comfortable chairs, Alexis looks at Ca’armine. “You sensed evil behind that door back there and wanted to go in.”
He pauses a moment.
“We also ran straight past the key we needed.” He glances at Ethelred. “You and I need to be the ones asking what we’re running past. That’s our job. We need to remember it.”
After the group has finished fighting the Ogres and moved back the way they’ve come.
“At the end of this series of monsters there could be some amazing treasure!” Alexis looks back the way towards the Ogres and beyond noticeably wistful. “With that protection, the working would surely be amazing.”
Alexis keeps walking but looks back a couple more times.
As the group is walking back from getting the third key of Nodden-Torr, Alexis brings up a question.
“I’ve been thinking about the ring.” He keeps looking straight ahead. “If I go deeper with it, it could help us understand what’s between us and Bandesingh, and what’s waiting for us when we get there. Same way Gus was the only one who could use Dauntless, I’m the only one who can use this. Red could get there someday, but he’d have to make some choices he hasn’t made. That’s not where he is.”
He’s quiet for a few steps.
“If it didn’t cost anything I wouldn’t be bringing it up. There would be moments where I’m looking at too many possibilities at once and I’d need someone to help narrow it down to a decision. Someone with a clear head and strong convictions who can cut straight to what matters.” He glances at Ca’armine. “That kind of thinking would be useful.”
He keeps walking, lets that settle.
“There’s no danger of the ring taking me over. Same as there was never any danger of Dauntless possessing Gus. This ring was forged for one purpose: knowledge in the service of keeping humanity alive. Red wants knowledge, full stop. The rest of you want to protect humanity, to varying degrees. I’m the only one who combines both enough that the ring and I are truly aligned.” He says it plainly, but something in his face tightens. “I wish that wasn’t true.”
He keeps his eyes on the tunnel ahead.
“This is one of the great artifacts humanity has ever made. We’re going after the Tear because it improves our chances against Bandesingh. Should we let me lean further into the ring for the same reason?”
He glances sideways at the group, still walking, clearly waiting.
After the group has left the room where four of the group had to deal with their doubles. Ca’armine addresses Alexis. Alexis is clearly emotionally wrapped up with both watching himself die and losing the possibility of having two Alexis’ to plumb the secrets of the universe.
“Boss, in that room, remember that we had a plan.” Alexis nods, and Ca’armine continues. “And I would be such a disloyal team member if I didn’t keep reminding you that you had a plan and we needed to follow the plan and I’m going to keep doing that. Changing the plan in the middle is not—”
“We changed the plan in the middle, in the bead room, because there was an opportunity there. And Red followed through on that opportunity.” Red agrees with Alexis as he says this.
“There is no universe in which both of those Alexis’ could have survived.”
Alexis and Ethelred enthusiastically agree, with Ethelred adding, “but they might have been able to fold them back into one.”
“They did by walking through the door.”
Alexis and Red both disagree, and Alexis adds, with just enough self-awareness to take the edge off, “But five minutes could have gained so much for the world.”
“From studying that trap?!” Rask stares at him.
“Yes,” Alexis and Ethelred exclaim together, with Ethelred adding, “It was a working much like the other workings we’ve discovered.”
“Sleep on this, but think about how dangerous that could end up being.”
Alexis looks at Red, then back at Rask. “We’ve thought about it.”
After a second Alexis turns back to Ca’armine “A plan is where you start, Carm. But when something changes on the ground, that’s a conversation you bring to me. Not a reason to hold the line by yourself.”