It took every bit of willpower I had not to hug poor Emily and just tell her over and over that everything would be okay. But I could tell that it wasn’t what she needed at the moment. Whatever the demons had done to her, it had really left her with trust issues. So I had to take it slow with her and give her time to accept and trust all of us. Still, it was difficult.
It didn’t help that Terry seemed unable to handle Emily’s presence as well, though I can’t blame him entirely. It was obvious she didn’t trust that he was real, and I suspect that their relationship was probably a bit strained to begin with based on what I know of Terry. I mean, I’m sure that he was doing his best, but I highly doubt he was the kind of father who just seemed to know all the right things to say to make you feel better no matter how bad things seemed, or even the kind of father who could just make you laugh with a mere word. Maybe he could be the father that she could always rely on to be there to protect her, though after what happened with Typhon, she might have found that assumption shattered.
But still, he seemed lost, and had no idea what to do to mend things between himself and his daughter. It was going to take time, and likely would be harder than it needed to be – which, now that I think about it, is quintessentially Terry for you.
Speaking of fathers that have all the answers, I found instructions on how to be able to contact people inside the hut’s extradimensional space from outside in my phone. Apparently Daddy had done something similar once to allow himself to get phone calls when in his workshop demiplane. It was actually a pretty easy fix. So, once the hut came to a stop, I ran a cable from an antenna in our section of the hut to one placed just outside the doorway. I then tested it by calling Burin and having him call me back. He came through clear as day and sounding as goofy as ever.
Once that was done, I went to tell Emily that we were leaving, instructing her to mind Greta. Then I gave her a phone of her own, complete with its own Hello Kitty phone case. I taught her how to call me explicitly if she had any problems, leaving off how to contact anyone else. It was voice activated, so she could easily call any of the rest of us if necessary. And even if she tried to call “Boris”, the phone’s VI would know who she meant.
I was hoping she’d reach out to Terry, but I couldn’t force it. That’s why I specifically didn’t teach her how to call anyone else. If she wanted it enough, she could do it. It was the best I could do.
While I was chatting with Emily, the others headed outside, leaving me to catch up. “It’s so weird being in an adult body again,” Terry was saying. “Everything seems so much smaller. I keep missing the trigger hold on the gun.”
“You must train to get used to the body,” Gregor answered. “We will start you with a hundred push-ups. Eventually, you will be ready to climb the cliff.”
“How will that help me with things feeling smaller?” Terry asked dubiously.
“First, you train the body. The mind follows after. Burin gets it. Right? Strength of body leads to strength of mind.”
The dwarf considered it. “You can’t just be strong. You have to be hardy as well,” he said, pounding his hand into his chest.
“I’m going to regret asking you two for help,” Terry said.
Burin ignored him and looked around until he found a rock the size of his own head. He leaned down and picked it up, then tossed it at Terry with both arms.
“Hey!” Terry protested as he dodged the rock, which sunk into the soft ground at his feet.
“That defeats the purpose,” Gregor said, chiding Terry. He bent down, picked up the rock and tossed it back to Burin, who caught it. “See, like that.”
I rolled my eyes at them. Men.
Burin enchanted the rock with light so they could keep tossing it back and forth in the dark and we began heading in what I guessed to be the rough direction of our destination. We had been traveling for about ten minutes when Burin suddenly dropped the rock and ran forward, waving his hands and shouting “Hello!” in the language of water elementals.
Or, at least, that’s what Nebbie said he was yelling.
Shots rang out as the hidden snipers began firing at us. Gregor actually knocked a bullet out of the air like that hot superheroine, the one in the leotard. I have no idea why I’m blanking on her name when I can picture her perfectly. Oh well.
Terry tried to bring his gun to bear, but it jammed as he fired it and all he got for his trouble was shot. “With more training, you could have prevented that,” Gregor said to Terry as he charged through the snow. Gregor’s strike turned one of the snipers into a fine mist, coloring the snow red as what was left of the poor man collapsed to the snow.
Burin also charged, his axe biting deeply into the unarmored flesh of another sniper as he simultaneously apologized for having to do so. Terry quickly unjammed his gun and fired, wounding a third. She cried out in pain, and I launched a volley of force bolts at her to help bring her down quickly.
In the end, I believe Gregor killed three of them – maybe more, there was a lot of red snow – and we were all none the worse for the encounter, aside from some minor wounds that were healed quickly with nanite injections. It almost felt unfair fighting twentieth century soldiers with a combination of magic and the advancements in technology brought by more than a century.
On the other hand, there were more of them than us, so we needed what advantages we could get.
“I really don’t think they’re going to learn Aquan if we keep killing them,” Burin said, his tone serious.
“I’m not sure we’re here to teach them. Maybe we should try to be more stealthy?” I suggested. “I really would prefer not to get shot, if I’m being honest.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Burin said, pulling a bullet fragment out of his cheek as the nanites were doing their work.
“I have an idea,” Terry said. He found the least mutilated corpse and studied it for a moment, then used his ioun stone to disguise himself as the dead person. “I’ll scout ahead,” he said. “That way I might be able to warn you if anything’s coming.”
“Good idea,” I said. “Cortana, be a dear and turn on radio mode for our phones?”
“Radio mode activated,” the VI responded.
As Terry left, Gregor climbed the nearest tree. “I’m going to get my bearings,” he said in answer to my question. A few moments later, the fighter jumped back down. “Light and buildings a few miles in that direction,” he said, pointing. “I’m guessing that’s where we’re going.”
We started heading in that direction. A few minutes later, Terry called out over the radio. “I found some tracks. Some kind of patrol, I’m guessing. A horse drawn cart and at least two or three people on foot, from the tracks. I think they’re heading in the general direction of where you are. They might have heard the gunshots. I doubt you have more than a minute before they reach your position.”
Gregor and I exchanged glances. I immediately flew into a nearby tree, and he leapt into another in a single bound. That left poor Burin by himself. He stood there for a moment, frozen with indecision. Too long, really. In the end, Burin had to be Burin, so he waved at the approaching patrol.
The patrol consisted of three individuals on foot being led by a horse drawn cart with a machine gun in it. The soldiers immediately pointed their weapons at Burin. “Right,” Burin said with a sigh, growing to nearly ten feet tall and pointing his axe at the enemy.
Gregor dropped from his tree, turning into a frost giant as he fell. The machine gun grew panicked and began firing at Burin, since he was in their sights. As they did so, two of the men on foot unleashed volleys of fire from their light machine guns at Gregor while the third fired a blast from his flamethrower.
I cast a spell to turn Nebula into a moon dragon. Yes, that’s a thing that exists. Look it up. Meanwhile, Burin ran forward and began trying to flip the cart. I could see it begin to lift off of the ground as Gregor punched the guy feeding ammo into the gun. Then Terry came from behind them and launched a rocket. Directly at the guy with the flamethrower.
Of course, the flamethrower exploded. Luckily, Gregor and Burin survived. Burin even continued flipping the cart. He even managed to get it flipped just in time for when the tanks crashed through the woods.
Terry was so surprised by their arrival that he let go of his rocket launcher – it was on one of those harnesses people use for cameras, you know the stability ones – and pulled out his regular gun to take a shot at the armored vehicle for some reason.
I conjured a ball of lightning and hurled it at the nearest tank while Gregor charged the other and pummeled it into scrap. Terry kept shooting and the tank I’d hit stopped moving. Maybe he’d gotten lucky and hit the driver? I don’t know. I didn’t have time to think about it, as we could hear more tanks coming and the others had sustained wounds from the firing tanks.
And then something weird happened. “Hey, Burin, what’s going on with your hair?” Terry asked.
I looked over and Burin’s hair was standing straight up. There was a part of my brain screaming that there was something significant about that, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. Not before we spotted two more tanks coming through the woods at us.
And then it was a moot point, because there was a loud pop of electricity, and there, standing next to Burin, was a terrified looking Emily. Burin looked at her, then looked at the tanks, then back at her. “I FORGOT TO CARRY THE ONE!” he shouted, horrified realization dawning on his face.
The terrified girl grabbed onto the giant dwarf, who spun to shield her with his body. Terry stood there, his mouth agape. “The tanks!” I shouted to him.
“Right,” he said, aiming and squeezing the trigger as his gun jammed again. His shoulders visibly slumped and I knew I had to do something.
I wasn’t letting anything happen to that girl.
“Nebbie! Get the girl off the battlefield!” I shouted at the cat-turned-dragon as I weaved another ball of lightning and flung it at the closest tank and tapped into the storm within. The ball of lightning was followed by a magical ray that struck the tank, completely disintegrating it.
I wasn’t the only one who tapped into my inner pool of power. Gregor batted aside a tank shell and teleported forward. He hit the second tank so hard that its front end crumpled with an ear-splitting creak and flipped into the air like a tiddly wink. As it flipped through the air, he spun around and gave it a hard kick, sending it flying twenty feet through the air until it slammed into a tree, sending splinters flying everywhere.
The battlefield was clear for the moment, so I flew down to where Emily and Burin were. The poor girl was hyperventilating and shivering at the same time. I whipped off my coat and gave it to her, not that it would do much, since it was made for looks, not function. And she wasn’t even wearing shoes.
“We should move,” I said. “Before anyone else comes to investigate.”
“Am I back in Hell?” Emily asked.
“No, kitten,” Nebbie answered.
“Wait, are you the cat?”
“She is,” I said, dispelling the transformation. Emily picked her up and held her tight.
“Then where are we?” Emily asked. “If this isn’t Hell?”
“Roosha,” Burin answered in the language of water elementals, which Nebbie helpfully translated. “It’s a country on Lyriana’s home world.”
“Then we can get her mommy and daddy to help us?”
“Sorry,” I answered. “They haven’t been born yet. We’re on my world, but more than a hundred years in my past.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“It’s pretty simple, actually,” Burin said as he began explaining. It was so technical that Nebula couldn’t even translate it. But Emily hung on every word, soaking up the knowledge like a sponge.
“That’s amazing!” Emily said, finally. “I’ll have to tell Miss Greta about it as soon as I… OH NO! MISS GRETA’S GONNA BE SO MAD I LEFT!”
I suddenly realized I probably should have called Greta already. “Crap!” I said, grabbing my phone and making the quick call to let my wife know that Emily was with us.
I looked up from my phone call to spot Gregor and Terry returning. I hadn’t even noticed that they’d left. “I’m not saying it’s a bad idea,” Terry was saying. “I’m just saying I’m not wearing the robes.”
“The robes are an important part of the training,” Gregor countered. “They are weighted to improve your strength, and are very stylish.”
“Where have you been?” I asked, interrupting their discussion.
“We found a cave, not far from here,” Terry said. “We can get warm there.”
“Good thinking,” I said. He was trying, at least.
Gregor walked over to Emily. “We will take you somewhere and get a good fire going,” he said. “But you are not wearing shoes, and have not had Sergei’s training, so you are not ready to walk through the snow barefoot.” He grabbed an old fur from his bag – I think it was the one from the hamster, maybe? – and wrapped it around her. He then picked her up. “I will carry you this time, until we can make you some shoes.”
“Thank you, Mister Gregor,” Emily said. She sniffed. “This fur smells weird.”
Gregor sniffed it and made a face. “I may not have cleaned it properly. You will be fine for now. Enduring will be part of your training.”
“Okay,” Emily said.
“So, what happened?” Terry asked Burin from the back of the group as Gregor led the way.
“I was wrong in my calculation. The effect that bound us was tied to our bodies, not souls.”
“I see. Then we’ll need to take you and Emily back to the hut.”
“I am thinking we will not find another dwarf capable of taking twelve bullets and continue fighting,” Gregor answered.
Burin beamed. “I am a wizard. I could not allow something as silly as a gun to stop me.”
“And you nearly collapsed after just a single bullet,” Gregor pointed out to Terry.
They continued arguing about whether to leave Burin and Emily behind or not for several minutes before Terry finally pulled me aside. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But in truth, I worry that we might not be able to do this without Burin.”
His face fell. “I see.”
“Sorry,” I said. “We’ll do everything we can to keep her safe, but I don’t see another option at the moment. Maybe I can come up with something after we finish with Rasputin, but I don’t know how much time we have for me to deal with it at the moment.”
He shook his head. “No, it’s okay. I understand. I know you’ll do your best.” He sighed. “There’s the cave. I’ll get Gregor’s magic bead and set up a fire for her.”
Once the fire was going, I set up the box and used my phone to scan Emily for her measurements. “Is everyone mad at me?” she asked me, her voice quavering.
“No,” I said. “Why would you think that?”
“You’ve all been fighting since I got here.”
I nodded. “You’re right. We have. But it’s not because of anything you’ve done, and no one blames you. But I think we’re going to have to take you with us. It’s going to be dangerous and we’re going to need you to be brave. Can you do that?”
“I don’t know. I’ll try.”
“Try as hard as you can,” Burin said. “We’d all be sad if you died.”
“Thanks, Mister Burin. But if I die, I’ll just go back to Hell, so it’s not like you need to worry about it.”
“NO,” Burin said emphatically. “You are not going back there, even if you die.” He began speaking rapidly in Aquan as he stooped down and drew diagrams with a stick. She listened intently, looking more than a little nervous at his tone. I couldn’t quite tell what he was saying, but the diagram was of the multiple planes of existence. Even Nebbie was having trouble following what he was saying and couldn’t translate it.
“So I’ll go somewhere better?” she asked with trepidation.
“Yes,” Burin answered finally as he stood up.
“Thank you, Mister Burin,” she said, giving him a hug.
I patted her head. “Good girl. Now let’s get you some stuff to keep you safe and warm. And especially some cute shoes.”
“They won’t have big heels, will they?”
I laughed. “No, kiddo, no big heels for you.”
A few minutes later, I had used the box to make a chain shirt and a suit of base layer thermal clothing for Emily as well as a warm dress to wear over it. Then I had the box turn one of Gregor’s many furs into a panda hoodie to wear over everything. It even had little ears on the hoodie, it was adorable.
Once she was dressed, I gave her some more things. “This little box is called a wayfinder,” I said. “Clip it onto your belt and the stone inside will protect your mind from evil spirits.”
“Oh! Wow! Where did you get this?” she asked.
I smiled. “It was mine. But I think you need it more. I also had the box make you this.” I handed her another box. She opened it, revealing the pizzicato within. “It’s a gun,” I said. “Be careful where you point it. And this is how you load the ammo.” She immediately took to it, as if she’d been holding a gun for years.
In a way, I guess she had.
“Did you know my mom was a princess?” Emily asked me.
“Oh?” I asked.
“Yeah. That’s what the spirit in the magic mirror said. Apparently my mom was the princess of an island called, um, Megalos? Mellan?”
“Melos,” Terry supplied grumpily from his position keeping watch by the cave entrance.
“Yeah, that. And you’re a princess too,” she said.
What? “How do you figure?”
“Well, your daddy rules a nation, so that makes you a princess.”
“Rules a nation?” I thought about it. “Oh! The Runelord thing. Right. He says the council pretty much rules the place and he’s just there to keep them from killing each other. But I guess you’re not wrong.”
“Also, Greta says you can kill people with a wave of your hand, so please tell me if I’m making you angry enough to kill me so I can stop?”
Just what had Greta been telling her? I was starting to wonder about my wife’s image of me. “Fair enough, but remember that if I ever tell you to eat your veggies,” I said playfully.
“Yes ma’am,” Emily said dutifully. She looked at Gregor. “Excuse me for asking, Mister Gregor, but when we were fighting, were you turned into a giant?”
“I was,” the fighter said. “We killed some giants and I used the box to turn their skin into magic armor.”
“You killed some giants?”
Gregor flexed. “Yes, though I must admit that the others helped. You should see Burin when he gets going. He can grow big without magic armor.”
Emily’s eyes grew wide. “Really, Mister Burin?”
The dwarf nodded. “Yes. I’ve always been able to do that.”
“So it’s not because you’re a wizard? Then can other dwarves grow big like that?”
“No. I’m pretty sure one of my ancestors was a duergar.”
“A what?”
“A gray dwarf. They’re a people who live entirely underground and most of them are very bad. So be careful if you’re ever underground.”
“Yes, sir,” she said.
Gregor got up from where he was seated. “Come, we should make sure you know how to shoot that thing. Let us go catch lunch.”
“Okay,” Emily said, getting up. “Mister Burin, will you come with us?”
“I don’t know, I’m not good with animals.”
“Please?” she pleaded.
Burin sighed. “Alright, let’s go.”
After they left, I went over to where Terry was sitting. “You okay?” I asked.
“Not really. I have no idea what I’m doing. It was so much easier at the farm. Persephone handled the kids and all I had to do was make sure everyone was safe. I thought I was doing a pretty good job at it, but then I went and pissed off Typhon, so I even failed at that.”
So he hadn’t been a very involved father? I mean, I can get that. Some families are like that. But if my parents’ love of sappy Christmas movies has taught me anything, you can choose to do better after learning an important lesson. “Well, this is your chance to learn to be better. Don’t waste it. Time to man up.”
He winced. “Yeah, I deserved that. Say, can I ask you something?”
“Ask away.”
“Well, it’s just that, and I hate to ask because I don’t want to seem greedy, but, well, Emily’s not an only child.”
I remembered what Emily had said earlier. “Toby?” I asked.
“Yeah.” He laughed bitterly. “I named him that just to irritate Persephone. She wanted to name him Helios.”
“What happened to him?”
“One of Typhon’s thugs kicked him into the fireplace,” he said, anger in his eyes. “The boy couldn’t even but barely walk on his own, and those bastards kicked my terrified son into the fireplace.”
“I see. And you’re hoping to bring him back as well?”
He nodded. “But even if that’s not possible, even just knowing he’s not suffering like Emily was would help.”
“Reviving him will be beyond my personal ability,” I said. “Since we lack his intact body. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to do. It will be expensive, though.”
“I’ll pay whatever I have to.”
“I thought you might. As for finding out his fate, well, that I might be able to do something about. It will take some time to research, though. Sorry I can’t give you an immediate answer.”
He shook his head. “No, that’s enough. Thank you.”
We sat in silence for some time before I spoke again. “Are you okay with us taking Emily with us?”
“Honestly? Not really. But we don’t have a choice. As much as I hate to admit it, we really do need Burin. Though I’ll deny it if you tell him I said that.” He turned to Nebula. “Please, look out for my daughter while we’re fighting?”
“Me?” Nebula asked, perplexed.
“I’ve seen you die and come back like nothing happened. You’ve turned into various fantastic monsters. Heck, you can even become a dragon. In truth, you scare me more than a little. But I know that you can keep my little girl safe.”
“I will protect her with everything in my power,” Nebula answered.
Less than an hour later, the other three returned. Emily rushed over to me. “Miss Lyriana! Look!” she said, holding up a dead rabbit that had already been gutted. “I got one!”
“Very good, Emily,” I said, patting her head.
“Mister Gregor said he’s gonna make me some even better shoes out of it.”
The others followed her in, holding over a dozen other small critters. Or, at least, their corpses. Gregor looked like he was trying not to laugh. “Did we really need that many?” I asked.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Burin said grumpily.
“We couldn’t just leave them,” Gregor said, the corners of his lips quivering as he suppressed a laugh.
“Leave it be,” Burin said.
“They would have eventually –“
“I said leave it be.”
I looked at Emily with a raised eyebrow. “We were watching a rabbit hole from a bush when suddenly an entire swarm of squirrels and bunnies started trying to eat Mister Burin,” the girl answered truthfully.
Gregor couldn’t take it anymore and began laughing heartily. It was infectious and I found myself laughing as well. I even heard Terry chuckle a bit.
After I regained my composure, I shot Gregor a look. “It is true,” he said. “Though, they were so busy biting him that they didn’t even notice when we came up behind them and began killing them. It took all of the sport out of it.” He actually looked a bit upset at that.
Men.