alexanderwales
patreon
This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 99, Moving Mountains
🕑 Added 2022-04-27 16:07:40 +0000 UTC~~~~
“What do you mean missing?” asked Alfric.
Penelope was smoking a long pipe with something sweet-smelling, and didn’t seem terribly concerned. A breakfast spread was laid out in front of them, served so that anyone could take what they wanted.
“This is my seventh time through the day,” said Penelope. “So you’ll have to forgive me for giving the terse version. Kali is missing, and cannot be found. She was here for dinner and then went to her room, but as of the witching hour last night is missing, as though she’s vanished from the face of the Earth. I have talked with everyone present, all whereabouts of everyone else have been accounted for, but Kali must have either slipped out of the house after dinner when she should have been in her room, or been taken without anyone noticing. There are no signs of a struggle, and some of her things are missing, which would suggest she left voluntarily, but to where … I have no idea. I’ve spoken to every censusmaster within a three hex radius and none have been able to find her. I don’t think there’s anything more that anyone can do at the moment, so that’s that.”
“What’s in the pipe?” asked Mizuki.
“A blend of sweetgrass and honey-vetch,” replied Penelope, looking at the smoldering pipe for a moment. “I have a pipe you could use, if you wanted to join me.”
“It’s a mild poison,” said Isra.
“The sweetgrass releases tension,” said Penelope. “I was the closest thing that Kali had to a mother, and loved her like she were my own. So if I seem languid, it’s because I yelled at a great many people on my sixth time through the day, and don’t want to repeat that. There’s only so much that can be accomplished in a twenty-four hour span, and I’ve already finished everything I could think of.” She looked over at Pek and Willam, and Alfric was relieved to see that none of this was news to them. He suspected that they’d been woken in the middle of the night. Pek in particular seemed to be slightly dazed, though it was hard to tell with the rocks embedded in his skin and the different muscles of his face.
“Anything else to disclose?” asked Alfric. He felt mildly annoyed, because if she’d been through the day six times prior to this, there should have been a lot that she learned about them.
“Oh, this and that,” said Penelope. “I have to say that when I invited you here, I didn’t expect that I would be spending a week with you. I had cause to change my opinion about most of you, largely for the better, but there were no major secrets that came out, only minor interactions and some information that was disclosed during the questioning, which was largely about Kali.”
“Thank you,” said Alfric, though this was less than he would have liked. It was always like that with disclosure though, at least in his experience. People could hardly be faulted for not holding entire conversations in their heads, especially not over multiple days. Still, there was this sense that an incredibly one-sided thing had happened, and he had never liked it. He’d also come into his power later than most in his family, and been on the ignorant end of undone days far more often than he’d have liked.
“Can I try some of that?” asked Mizuki, pointing at the pipe.
Penelope regarded her. “You never seem too bothered by the fact that Kali is missing.”
Mizuki paused. “I mean, I like to think that if I could do something, I would, but you just said that I can’t do anything, so …”
“It’s fine,” said Penelope with a wave of her hand. “Just an observation. And yes, I can get you a pipe, I used to collect them. We can have a contest to blow smoke rings.”
“I don’t know how to do that,” said Mizuki. “But I bet I’m great at it.”
Penelope released a smoke ring that curled from her lips, moving slowly. “Yes, I’m sure.”
“What do you need from us?” asked Alfric.
“Nothing,” said Penelope. “In this case, Mizuki’s disinterest is warranted.”
“It’s not disinterest,” said Mizuki with a frown. “But if someone says to me that there’s nothing I can do, I’m usually going to believe them. Or if someone says that something is boring … usually they’re right, you know? I do want to know what happened to Kali, and I hope she’s okay, but — why worry about something that I can’t control?”
“And would you feel the same if one of your friends were missing?” asked Penelope.
“Er,” said Mizuki. “Depends on how and why they went missing. If Verity went missing before the concert, which is maybe not likely, but certainly possible, then I guess I would feel the same. I’d try to find her, but I’d also stay relaxed, because either she would show up or she wouldn’t, and there wouldn’t be much that I could do about it.”
“Was Kali in a guild?” asked Alfric. “A party?”
“She was in a house party,” said Penelope. “She’s left that. No guild, at least not that I knew of. But Alfric, you shouldn’t worry too deeply, Mizuki is right, and you’ve already done enough.”
“I haven’t done anything,” said Alfric.
“You know what I mean,” said Penelope.
Alfric did, but it was cold comfort. Hannah had talked about the other disappearances and what they entailed, and a part of him had wanted to do something, whatever that would be. There was no obvious connection to the dragon sightings, and Alfric could only imagine that people were mentioning them in the same breath because they were two rare things that were happening at around the same time. People feared dragons, so when there were a few sightings of them, flying far off, they would naturally draw conclusions.
“We might stay another night then,” said Alfric. “Just so we can be on hand tomorrow, if you need us to be.” He glanced at the others. “Or I’ll be on hand, at least.”
“Your gusto for public service is noted and appreciated,” said Penelope. “But there are people far more qualified to handle these matters, and in my experience thus far, more undone days being thrown at the problem aren’t likely to help. And after all, it might well be that Kali went off on her own.”
“She didn’t seem happy,” said Hannah. “And teenagers have done dumber things.”
“She, or whoever took her, took the disguise entad,” said Penelope. “It was one of the best we have, a lamentable loss, but outside of a censusmaster being able to tell us her true name, she might look like anything, might have taken on any disguise.”
“Dangerous,” said Alfric with a frown.
“Oh not at all,” said Penelope. “Or, we didn’t think. It’s restricted to someone not of your own species, so it would be worthless for humans, more or less. And I’ve been assured by many people in the know that when it comes to spying on our humanoid neighbors, we’ve got more than enough magical support.”
“There’s a dwodo mountain nearby,” said Mizuki. “Visible from the air, just barely. Could she have gone there?”
“How would she have made the trip?” asked Penelope, leaning forward and blinking slowly. The herbal mixture she was smoking seemed to be powerful stuff, and Alfric tried not to breathe too much of it.
“Well I don’t know,” said Mizuki. “It’s just, you said that you checked with the censusmasters all around, and I was wondering whether you checked with them, with their mountain in the ocean and whatnot.”
“They wouldn’t have a censusmaster,” said Pek, who so far hadn’t said anything. “When the Editors set up the voting systems, they weren’t thinking about moving mountains.”
“Or, more darkly, they were thinkin’ about them,” said Hannah. “And wanted to favor humans, or at least the human way.”
“They’re not nefarious,” said Isra.
“They make assumptions about the world,” said Pek. “The Editors have a frame that they operate within. Using the warp takes a hand with at least three fingers. Party communication only works with a voice. Guild communication works only with certain languages. There are languages that are dead now because of that.”
“Pek,” said Penelope with a sigh. “This isn’t helpful.”
“It’s an observation,” said Pek. He turned to Alfric. “Lady Overguard doesn’t seem to think that these observations help the cause.”
“People trust the Editors,” said Penelope. “And even if they didn’t, most of the grievance, from a bastlefolk perspective, is in the past. It’s crying over spilt milk.”
“It’s a necessary conclusion,” said Pek. “If you want an understanding of human society as built to favor humans in unexpected ways, then you have to have that same understanding of the Editors. The two go together. You want to bury the criticism of the Editors because it’s inconvenient.” He was upset, though it was fairly obvious to Alfric that this was about Kali, who was more or less his sister, rather than about what assumptions the Editors built into the systems of the world.
“Or,” said Mizuki. “Maybe it makes sense that we orient certain ways?”
“Let’s not get into this,” said Alfric.
“Right,” said Mizuki. “We should get going to the dwodo mountain.”
“And put a hold on that smoke ring contest?” asked Penelope.
“You can’t just fly to the dwodo mountain,” said Alfric.
“Is there a law against it?” asked Mizuki. She turned to Penelope before waiting for an answer. “This is something we haven’t tried before, right? So it’s worth trying?”
“There would be no way for her to get there,” said Penelope. “I’ve taken an entad inventory, the disguise one is the only one that’s missing. I’ve spoken with any number of boat captains and dockmasters, and if she left that way, she was very good at covering her tracks, including against provincial authorities, who have been looking into this as much as I have, aided by my observations. So, do you really think that she might have gone to live with the dwodo, or do you want some excuse to go see the dwodo?”
“Both?” asked Mizuki. “I don’t really have anything else going on today.”
“If this day isn’t going to be undone, I’ll be shopping,” said Isra.
“I was serious when I was asking whether it was illegal,” said Mizuki. “Because if it is, I won’t do it.”
“Do the dwodo speak Inter?” asked Isra.
“Ah crud,” said Mizuki. “But they probably have an attache or liaison or something, right? Or there are merchants who speak Inter?”
“I speak just a little,” said Alfric. “There’s a common core, three thousand words or so, that cover about ninety percent of the language and don’t vary much between their mounds.”
“Mounds?” asked Mizuki. “Uh …”
Alfric sighed. “Alright, no, we’re not doing this if you don’t even know what a mound is.”
“It’s just another name for their moving mountains, right?” asked Mizuki. “Or the city that’s in the mountain? I can see from your face that I’m close.”
“I’m not comin’ with for some mad quest to speak with the dwodo,” said Hannah. “It seems like a sort of tourism I’m not interested in.”
“I’ll join you,” said Pek. “It’s better than sitting here.” He looked at Mizuki and Alfric. “If that’s acceptable.”
“I haven’t said I’m going,” said Alfric. “Though I suppose it’s better than sitting here.”
“Then it would fall to me to sit with the trunk at the salvage yard?” asked Hannah.
“Or we can go visit the dwodo afterward,” said Alfric.
“I can do it,” said Hannah with a sigh. “You just keep Mizuki from makin’ trouble, will you?”
“I don’t know why I have such a reputation for trouble,” said Mizuki. “I haven’t done anything.”
“Didn’t you say you almost broke your legs yesterday?” asked Isra.
“I said I almost injured my legs,” said Mizuki. “And they’re still a bit sore. But that’s not trouble.”
“She has a high threshold for trouble,” said Penelope. “Bashing someone’s head in with an oversized spoon and narrowly avoiding provincial punishment, would that count?”
“Narrowly?” asked Mizuki.
“Well, from what I’ve heard,” said Penelope. “There was quite the campaign to string you up as an example, or just to make the Underhills feel better, or some such.” She took a long drag from her pipe and let out another slow smoke ring. “I have to say, I should have tried this as a method of cooling my head several days ago. I can almost forget that my charge is missing.” She looked at Pek. “She didn’t like me calling her my daughter.”
“I can stay, if you need me to,” said Pek. “Otherwise I’ll do something to feel busy.” He slipped back into his human disguise and looked at Alfric.
“We can go now,” nodded Alfric. He looked at Mizuki. “I want you to be on good behavior. No gawking.”
“Me?” asked Mizuki, placing a hand on her chest. “I wouldn’t dare, you know that.”
They ate what was left of their breakfast and got ready to go, with the party splitting up to go their separate ways. Isra didn’t seem to trust banks, and had simply taken her share of the lump sum in the form of copious and high-value rings. Alfric was slightly worried that she would be robbed, or if not robbed, then that she would entice some unsavory character to take advantage of her. That was much more likely, really. When Alfric was little, he’d traded away a quite valuable entad for a pittance, and didn’t realize the error until quite later. Isra didn’t seem the type to fall for a scam from someone she’d just met; she dealt with her relative naivety by being distrusting and brusque.
The travel arrangements took some time, and Alfric began to second guess himself. Flying off to the dwodo mound was crazy, and definitely the sort of thing he wouldn’t have done if he didn’t have an undone day available. Mizuki had asked a third time whether going to see the dwodo was legal or not, and Alfric had given her a long yes or no answer that he’d hoped would dissuade her from going. It was the only real untried avenue, which was confirmed by probing his aunt Penelope a bit more. He suspected that the herbal blend she was smoking had a little something extra in it, because she was going through it quickly and growing increasingly slow with her answers.
Alfric suspected that she’d spent at least some of her six undone days crying, and now there was only emptiness left and the hope that something on a longer time scale might find her wayward ward.
None of the other disappearances had been solved. It might have been that they weren’t disappearances at all, that separate groups of people had, for whatever reason, decided to leave lives that had often been fairly stable without much in the way of clues about where they’d gone, or by lying about where they’d gone. If it had been one or two people, it could be chalked up to something like suicide, or someone doing a dungeon on a lark and being swallowed up by it, but the circumstances didn’t suit that, and the demographics didn’t either.
Critics of dungeoneering sometimes said that they were workshops that produced tragedies, but at least these were tragedies that mostly happened to people who were young and without much to lose. This was a view that wasn’t particularly popular, but Alfric considered it good that dungeons weren’t regularly gobbling up children or parents. And even then, it wasn’t as though death was a regular outcome, not for someone who’d passed the qualifications set by the League.
“I’ll be flying,” said Alfric.
“Mmm,” said Mizuki. “I propose a game of chance.”
“You don’t speak the language,” said Alfric.
“I still propose a game of chance, but I’ll give you a handicap,” said Mizuki.
Alfric glanced at Pek. His sister — or at least the only other person of his kind — was gone. Mizuki was being a bit unserious about it, though that was more or less her style. Even after the stuff with Lola, and sometimes after a bad dungeon, she was generally pretty upbeat about it.
“Fine, fine, you can fly,” said Mizuki. Alfric wasn’t sure whether or not she’d caught his glance. “I’ll stay in the stone with Pek. Watch out for dragons though.”
As Alfric rose into the air, he tried to think about all the ways in which a dragon wasn’t a threat to him. Firstly, he was a chrononaut, and secondly, he had practiced the warp extensively. As fast as a dragon could move, it would be visible from a very long way off, and while there were all sorts of stories about dragons and their abilities, Alfric had never took the ‘loads of flying invisible dragons’ theories all that seriously, especially when there had been dragon sightings around Plenarch. If dragons could turn themselves invisible, why would they allow themselves to be seen?
He kept low to the ground anyhow, and in short order was out over the water, where he stayed close to the caps of the waves. He quite enjoyed flying, and was hoping that Mizuki wasn’t making an ass of herself with Pek — though she had a way with people sometimes, and for all that he thought she was sometimes a bit too casual with what she elected to say, there was something winning about it. Maybe you didn’t need to carefully control your speech if what was at the core of you was something most people liked.
The moving mountain of the dwodo loomed on the horizon, and Alfric kept most of his attention focused on it. They moved slowly, and this one was headed away from Plenarch, continuing on its long walk across the seafloor to parts unknown. Somewhere at the base, hidden beneath the waves, were legs so massive that up close they would look like features of the terrain, and if the mountain was in deep water, they might extend down so far that a human would need entads to survive. The part of the mountain that Alfric could see, that which wasn’t hidden beneath the water, was red-colored, like rust, with tiny spots of green that seemed like they might be moss, except that at the scale of it all, they were surely gardens, orchards, or parks. There were terraces in place, but less than he had expected, perhaps because their mountain didn’t stay perfectly level as it moved. The march was slow, the movement perceptible mostly by the wake, surely no more than a mile a day — still more than most mountains moved.
It was hard not to think about what Pek had said, and how right he had been. The Editors had reshaped the world, setting down new rules, and those rules were at odds with how the dwodo lived. With their moving mountains, the dwodo were essentially nomadic, which meant the system of hexmasters and the other associated roles were effectively non-functional for the mounds. At a mile a day, they wouldn’t be in any hex for longer than two weeks, and that wasn’t even enough time to establish residency. Similarly, the warp was less than useless to them, it was both a vulnerability and a liability. If someone used the warp, they would more than likely be sent into the ocean, or if ne’er-do-wells mapped things carefully, they could use the warp to enter into secure areas.
The really shocking thing was that Alfric had never considered any of this. He knew quite a bit about both the dwodo and feil, and actually had one of the dwodo as a tutor for a time, largely for language learning. Still, he had never considered how their way of life was disadvantaged by the systems as they’d been set up. He’d never seen that it was different for them, and had never asked. If possible, he would ask some questions during the visit, but he suspected that they’d be turned away in short order, or possibly sold something and then turned away.
The complicated answer of whether or not landing on a moving mountain without permission was legal hinged largely on the differences of their nations and what each considered to be criminal, and in what circumstances. Inter considered itself to have good relations with all the dwodo mounds, and engaged in some level of trade with them, though it was Alfric’s understanding that the mounds considered each other to be different nations — or nations in some nominal sense, because they didn’t meet the necessary prerequisites to be a nation in the same formal sense that Inter was. The dwodo considered humans to be two-eyes, mildly elevated in dwodo culture, but still heavily bound by rules and strictures, and anything more than a short visit was likely to create some serious issues that might get a person punishment of one kind or another, particularly in the form of enucleation — surgical removal of an eyeball.
Alfric hoped that they would be okay, but it was definitely more risk than he normally burdened himself with. He did want to talk to the dwodo and see if they had any information about either Kali, or the dragon, or the other missing people, since it seemed like it might have been something that was overlooked. He didn’t expect anything that happened to be fruitful, but this was the sort of venture you embarked on because you never really could say.
Alfric circled the mountain once, looking for a good landing spot, then double-checking to make sure that the courtyard he’d seen was a public space and not one of some cultural significance. Each of the dwodo mounds was different from the others, with meetings between them to facilitate trade happening only on the order of every twenty years or so, and even then, unequally. That meant that as much as you might know about “the dwodo”, you couldn’t say that an individual dwodo mound didn’t do things differently.
Alfric was swarmed by dwodo children from almost the moment he touched down on the tiles, and he greeted them with kindness, apologizing for the intrusion and asking whether one of them could find an adult. His skill with the language was rusty, and if he ended up doing the day over, he resolved that he would spend at least an hour or two brushing up. He could make out only every other word the children spoke, but part of that was because there were a half dozen of them, and all were talking at once, asking him questions and talking excitedly. They were calling him ‘stranger’, ‘human’, ‘sink-eyed’, and a few other things that were less polite, but they seemed to mean well. One of the children ran off, and he hoped that it was to get an adult.
The dwodo didn’t look that different from humans in most respects. They looked slightly hunched, largely because their necks held their head forward rather than being stacked upright like a human’s spine normally was. Their skin was various shades of grey, their mouths were wide, their noses small and rounded, and they were, to a one, bald, but none of that was terribly exceptional. Pek was far more different from human than the dwodo were, given the rocks on his face that were ringed with wetness. No one would have mistaken the dwodo children for human, but the way they moved and played wasn’t so different from what human children did.
There was one exception to this general sameness though, and that was in the eyes. Dwodo had large foreheads, which looked similar to a person’s but were doughy to the touch — not that Alfric had ever touched one — and for the children, the eyes seemed to be placed almost at random in that expanse of flesh. The dwodo could move their eyes though, plucking them from their face and placing them in a different location, and they could trade eyes with each other, or give them over as a measure of respect. Quite a bit of their culture revolved around this, and people were divided into classes on the basis of their number of eyes. Out in the wider world, they tended to have two eyes in the conventional position, which they considered to be ‘as the human custom’, but Alfric was prepared for more exotic arrangements. The underclass on a moving mountain had only a single eye, and their clerics and leaders could have as many as a dozen.
While he was waiting, Alfric took out the stone and placed a hand on it, calling Mizuki and Pek back. Mizuki came out in a hurry, and as she appeared in the courtyard, the children yelped in surprise, then crowded around her.
“Their eyes!” she said as she looked down at them. “That’s amazing!”
It was hard to tell how old the children were, but if they had been human, Alfric might have guessed that they were seven or eight.
When Pek came out, he was in his disguise, which Alfric was silently thankful for. He did wish that being one of the bastlefolk wasn’t a problem, but in point of fact, it was a problem, and if they could pretend that Pek was simply a human, it would simplify matters enormously.
“Oh gods that one tried to grab my eye,” said Mizuki, standing up. “They do know that our eyes don’t come out, right?”
“They’re kids,” said Alfric. “They’ve probably never seen a human before.”
“What do we need to do to speak to whoever is in charge?” asked Pek.
“One of the kids is going to get someone,” said Alfric, though there were adults on the periphery looking in and apparently content to allow the children to dance around the visitors.
“She wouldn’t go here,” said Pek.
“I know,” said Alfric. “But it’s still something to try.” He hesitated, because this wasn’t the sort of thing he was good at. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” said Pek. He bit his lip. “She’s run away before. Penelope didn’t mention that. I thought you should know.”
“Penelope has had six days to find her,” said Alfric. “Is your sister good enough at running away to hide from a chrononaut with enormous wealth and power?”
“No,” said Pek. “She’s not.”
“We might find something here,” said Alfric.
“It’s better than nothing,” nodded Pek.
“Okay, that one was too fast for me,” said Mizuki, rubbing one of her eyes. “Ah, crud that stings. No more crouching down.”
“There’s our man,” said Alfric. An older dwodo with seven eyes and coming toward them, carrying a gnarled walking stick he was using for support. The child who’d gone to fetch him went back to the others and began talking rapidly and loudly, gathering them up and moving them away.
“Visitors,” he said to them in a gravelly voice. Dwodo lived a bit longer than humans, which made it hard to estimate his age, but everything about how he moved and spoke said to Alfric that he was an elder. He wore flowing robes and simple sandals, but all of it was well-made, and Alfric suspected that much of it had come from the humans. Some of the gold threads looked expensive. “Why have you come?”
“It’s a matter of some urgency,” said Alfric. The dwodo’s eyes were arranged in a honeycomb shape, and Alfric kept his focus on the central eye. “People have been going missing in Plenarch. A young girl went missing yesterday, and we were hoping that she might have just come here. We don’t mean to intrude, we’ll be gone once we know whether she’s here.”
“We have questions about the disappearances,” said Pek. “And whether you’ve seen the dragon.”
“Mmm,” said the old man. “Disappearances.” He shook his head. “You are the first visitors since we started moving south two days ago. Your girl is not here. We would know.”
“But the disappearances?” asked Pek. “The dragon?”
“Mmm,” said the old man. “You have time?” he asked.
“Nothing but,” said Alfric, though that wasn’t strictly true.
“Then come,” said the dwodo, turning from them. “We can talk.”
Alfric followed, feeling reluctant. There was a chance that this was nothing, a very good chance, but he naturally hoped that they were about to learn something important from the dwodo after all. If the day could be reset, and Kali could somehow be saved from whatever fate had befallen her … but she’d been gone when Penelope had reset to the witching hour, and it seemed likely that whatever force had removed Kali from the world, it had known to work around a chrononaut. That would be especially true if Kali were complicit in her own disappearance in some way.
When he turned to Mizuki, she mouthed ‘seven eyes!’ and raised her eyebrows up and down.
