Chapter Text
Fire! Brandy woke with a gasp, looking for the threat, but there was no sign of flames in her cabin… only a searing heat against her chest. She fumbled with the satin cord around her neck, and the pain stopped as soon as she got the metal disk hanging from it away from her skin, though it felt just as hot when she poked it with one finger. “Fuck!” She’d felt the badge vibrate whenever someone not in the guild went into the old mine’s upper cavern—mostly their neighbor Demetrius, looking for mushrooms or something—but it had never heated up like this. That meant someone was in the mine who really, really shouldn’t be, and she had a terrible suspicion of who it might be.
She lunged out of bed, jammed her bare feet into her boots, and grabbed her coat off its peg without bothering to put it on. A few seconds further delay as she doubled back to snatch her utility knife off the table, and she bolted out the door. Across the packed-dirt road that ran between their cabins, she saw Neel doing the same, until he slipped on the icy front stoop and landed on his ass. An ass that was wearing satin pajamas, rather than her own sensible sweats… “I’ve got this, hon!” she called over her shoulder. She shoved one arm into a coat sleeve as she ran up the back road.
She should have picked up her phone, too, she thought, making her way up the uneven, snow-covered path as fast as she dared. Rasmodius’s “alarm” spell on her guild badge had worked as advertised; she could only hope that the ward he’d put on the mine really would slow down an intruder long enough for her to arrive while they were still in the entrance cave, because if she had to go deeper into the mine without being able to give anyone a heads-up, Trisha was going to be pissed. Had Ab—whoever the intruder was found out that Marlon and Gil got stranded in Grampleton when the snowstorm blew in? The two had called her and Neel to update them, but who else would they have told about Gil’s out-of-town doctor’s appointment? She swore as she stumbled over a fallen branch the snow had hidden. Her phone would have come in handy as a flashlight, too. Instead, she spared a few precious seconds to unclip what looked like a cheap plastic ring from the little carabiner holding it to her knife. When she shoved it onto her thumb, an eerie light rose around her; it cast no shadows, which made depth perception tricky, but at least now she could see some of the obstacles in her path.
By the time she finally reached the flatter ground up by the carpenter’s shop, her lungs were burning almost as much as her badge did whenever she checked it. If the senior adventurers had to go out of town again, she decided, she was going to set up an air mattress in the guild cabin. She fumbled her utility knife out of her pocket with half-numb fingers as she neared the mine entrance, just in case, only to drop it in the snow as a scream issued from the darkness inside—in a voice she knew all too well.
That wasn’t the only sound she could hear, and she threw herself to the ground as a cloud of wings and ear-piercing squeaks and squeals poured out of the cave. She twisted around for a better view, her hand groping through the snow until she found her knife—thank Yoba she hadn’t unfolded it—but relaxed as she got a better look. These were the normal bats Marlon had warned her were passing through a few days ago, not a mass-release of monsters from the depths of the mine. Not exactly harmless—they could carry some scary diseases—but they weren’t headed off to attack the town.
But it was late enough, or more like early enough, that they should be going into the cave to sleep through the day, not out, and she had a damned good idea what had startled them into flight. Once the animals had passed, she stood up, shoved her knife and ring back into her pocket, and stalked into the cave.
The darkness inside was broken by a flashlight dropped on the far side of the space, and the beam showed a figure huddled in the corner, arms clasped defensively over their head. Another few steps proved that yes, the hair pulled into a ponytail beneath the bicycle helmet was purple. The other woman hadn’t noticed Brandy’s arrival, and as she got closer, she could hear her girlfriend sobbing. She picked up the pace, worry warring with the sting of betrayal. “Abby?” Ordinary bats wouldn’t attack, but they’d bite if scared, wouldn’t they? “Are you okay?” She crouched beside her.
Abby took a couple of shuddering breaths before lowering her arms. “Brandy…” She slowly got to her feet and turned to lean against the wall, the scabbard of the sword she wore at her hip clattering against the stone. “I’m all right. I think.”
A part of Brandy wanted nothing more than to wipe away the tears that streaked her girlfriend’s face and tell her everything was fine—but it wasn’t, because this was bigger than just the two of them. “You told me you wouldn’t do this,” she said instead. They had only been dating for a few weeks, but the promise she’d extracted had come well before that. “It’s dangerous for you to be here.”
“You know I’ve been practicing my swordsmanship for a while,” Abby said, scowling at her boots. “Way longer than you, in fact.”
“You’ve been practicing moves that work against other people with swords. That’s better than nothing, but it’s not the best training for what’s actually down there.”
“Which you won’t tell me about, beyond the vaguest hints! How am I supposed to train the right way if you won’t help me?” She pulled a little farther away from Brandy. “I was keeping Sam company on his latest community service gig when I overheard Lewis on the phone with Marlon, something about him not being able to get home because of the blizzard, and… well, I decided today would be the day I venture into the caves. I figured I could take a quick look around and be back out before anyone else could get here. But I got scared. I couldn’t do it! It was like my knees had turned to jelly. I knew better than to go into the elevator shaft—I don’t know jack about climbing—but when I finally worked up the courage to try the ladder… how do you fight so many monsters at once? There had to be a million of those bats!”
She should probably keep this to herself, but… “They’re not usually there, and those weren’t monsters. Just ordinary bats flying south for the winter. The mine’s on their route.”
Abby stared at her, then gave a shaky laugh. “So I freaked out over nothing, huh?”
“That many bats aren’t nothing. You didn’t get bitten or scratched, did you? That’s a whole different sort of risk—Doc Harvey’s kind, not the guild’s.”
“I… I don’t think so.”
Fresh worry stabbed at her. “Are you sure? Adrenaline can make it hard to notice small injuries, or even big ones.” She grasped Abby’s chin with her other hand and tilted her face a little, trying to get a better look. She should have picked up the flashlight on the way over.
Her girlfriend pulled away and shook her head. “I ran pretty fast when they started pouring out of the hole… I guess I’m not as tough as I thought.” She hunched in on herself, fresh tears welling in her eyes.
“Listening to your instincts when they tell you to get the fuck out isn’t weakness.” How much of those instincts were her own and how much was Rasmodius’s creepy “second thoughts” spell was less important than the fact that Abby had listened to them. Against her own better judgment, she laid a reassuring hand on her girlfriend’s shoulder. “Courage isn’t not feeling fear, it’s knowing whether it’s worth doing the thing despite being scared shitless.”
Abby sniffled. “Like you’re ever afraid of anything.”
“Pfft. I’ve just got a fucked-up standard for what ‘worth it’ means. I get scared, too. Like when I heard you scream, and had no idea what had happened. I hoped it was just the bats startling you or something, but Marlon says sometimes one of the things in the mine finds its way out. What if you were really hurt?” She brushed away a tear on Abby’s cheek with her thumb… and left a smear of dirt behind. Or… fuck, given what she’d been told about what the bats left behind in the cave every year, it probably wasn’t just dirt she’d gotten on her hands when she’d hit the ground.
Before she could suggest they move this chat to somewhere that wasn’t covered in literal shit, Abby threw her arms around her. “I guess when you have something to lose, it’s normal to be afraid,” she sobbed. “I’m sorry, Brandy, I know I broke my promise and I really hope I haven’t screwed up too badly for you to forgive me.”
“Abby—”
“No, please listen, Brandy, I… I really like you. I have since the day you got here. And not just as a friend, even if it took me way too long to figure that out. You know that, right?” She loosened her embrace enough that she could look her girlfriend in the eyes.
“Sure, but—”
“I can’t believe I’m actually saying this… But I can’t keep it in anymore. I’ve felt this way for a long time.”
“Abb—”
“You’re strong, and brave, and really nice, and I didn’t know I felt this way about other girls until I met you—I mean, I’ve known I was bi since forever but like I told you last week, high school sucked so much that I never imagined I could trust another woman enough to fall in love with her.” She pressed their lips together.
For a moment, Brandy leaned into the kiss. Half the fun of a good adrenaline rush was how easily it could turn into a different kind of excitement, after all. But she was familiar with the effect, and this wasn’t the time and definitely wasn’t the place. She pulled away and placed her hands on Abby’s shoulders, holding her at arm’s length. “Abby…”
Her girlfriend’s lower lip quivered. “I really did fuck this up, didn’t I? I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I—”
“Abigail!” She gave the other woman a little shake, and she finally fell silent. “I’m pissed at you about this, yeah, but the we-need-to-talk kind of angry, not break-up mad. But we’re standing in at least half an inch of bat shit, and I hit the deck when the swarm came pouring out of the cave so while I hope to Yoba that what’s soaking through my pants is snow, I’m pretty sure not all of it is. Plus, I don’t have a clue whether me coming in here shut off the alarm or if Neel is still getting blasted and doing a frantic wardrobe change before charging up the mountain after me. We need to have a long chat, but we need to have it somewhere else.”
Abby’s gaze dropped to the floor, then to Brandy’s clothes, and her own. “Oh. Ugh, yeah, let’s get out of here.”
There was no wind outside, but the air was still fucking freezing and the sky was barely beginning to brighten in the east. There was, however, an unexpected source of extra light. “Greetings, young ones,” Linus called as they crossed the footbridge, waving to them from the ledge by his tent. “It’s a bitterly cold morning to be outside this early, if you aren’t accustomed. Please, come share my campfire.” He added another chunk of wood to the small but growing flames.
Brandy glanced at her girlfriend. Abby, though better dressed for the weather than herself, was already starting to shiver, or maybe shaking from the adrenaline wearing off. In either case, it wouldn’t hurt to warm up before having that talk—that would give her a chance to sort through her own feelings, too. “Thanks, that’s really nice of you,” she said, and led the way up the slope. He waved the two of them to the pair of crates beside the cheerful blaze, then ducked into his tent to find a seat for himself.
Brandy scrubbed her hands with some clean snow before holding them out to the fire. As the feeling started coming back into her fingers, a new thought popped into her head. “Do you have your phone on you? I didn’t think to grab mine on the way out the door, and I should let Neel know the emergency’s over.”
Abby set the helmet she’d just pulled off on the ground beside her and reached into her coat pocket. “Of course. I figured it’d come in handy if I ran into trouble, since you said you’d gotten cell service working down there.” She unlocked the device and tapped the screen a few times before handing it over with hands that were still trembling. The text app was already up, and she even had Neel’s contact selected.
Hey its Brandy
U can guess who it was cuz of the phone
Bat shit is fucking nasty but were both fine so you can chill
“The phone wouldn’t’ve helped much if I hadn’t figured out how to wire Maru’s gadgets into the power down there. At first we had to turn them off whenever we left, to save the batteries,” Brandy said, handing it back. She glanced at the tent; Linus was still inside, loudly rummaging through something, so she kept her voice low as she asked, “Why, Abby? I thought you understood there was a reason, even if I wasn’t allowed to tell you what it was. There’s got to be more to this little stunt than just some ‘when the cat’s away’ shit.” She had a sudden pang of sympathy for how Trisha must have felt last Fall.
Her girlfriend bit her lower lip and leaned closer to the fire. “How’d you put it, about knowing when something’s worth doing? I had to, Brandy. I—I can’t explain, not really, but there’s something wrong down there. Something that needs me to fix it.”
Brandy felt a chill that had nothing to do with the weather. “Abby, love, that’s exactly why you shouldn’t be in there,” she said, getting up from her crate. She crouched beside the other woman, taking her hands. “What you’re hearing, or feeling, or whatever, is—”
“Is not what you fear,” Linus said. Brandy jerked upright; she hadn’t heard him come out of the tent. The old man placed a rough wooden stool on the ground, but didn’t sit. He studied Abby for a long moment, then turned to Brandy. “You need to take her to Max. Not now, of course, he’s a terrible grouch if you wake him up too early. But once the sun’s been up a few hours, yes, go see him.”
“Who?” The only Max she knew was a bartender back in the city, and while she could sure use a stiff drink, that couldn’t be who he meant.
“Tch. Sometimes I forget. Rasmodius. Take her to Rasmodius.”
“But Marlon and Gil said we couldn’t because—”
He waved her to silence. “I’ve heard the reasons, theirs and his. If he does give you trouble about it, tell him I sent her, and if he doesn’t approve, he can haul his stubborn self out of his tower to discuss the matter with me in person.”
Abby had been looking back and forth between the two of them with growing confusion, but now her face went as pale as the snow around them. “Tower? You’re talking about the wizard? No, I—I can’t go there!”
Linus, Brandy saw out of the corner of her eye, looked as surprised by the outburst as she was. “Abby, he’s—well, he’s kind of a pompous windbag, honestly, but not in a nasty way. More like Elliott, the type that forgets most of us don’t eat dictionaries for breakfast. Trisha’s spent way more time with him than I have, but the stuff I know about the mine that I didn’t get from the guild? It came from hm.”
Her girlfriend shook her head. “Can’t we just wait until Marlon and Gil get back? I mean, I know they’ll be pissed, but…”
“They can’t help you.” Linus scooted his stool a little closer to the fire and sat down at last. He leaned forward, his weathered face kind. “They might accept, based on my word, but they can’t teach. Not what you need to know, anyway. Tell me, why do you fear my old friend so?”
“I’m not afraid of him,” Abby said.
“Then why not speak to him?”
“Because… because he’s probably… my father.” Her voice had dropped to little more than a whisper.
The old man burst into laughter, clapping his hand over his mouth to muffle the sound, and then to cover the coughing fit that followed. “Young one…” he began when he could speak again.
Abby shook her head, ponytail whipping around her. “I’m serious! Dad’s always throwing it in Mom’s face when they argue. How can he believe I’m really his when we’re nothing alike, and what about all those ‘long walks in the woods’ she used to take, and—” She broke off in a sob and covered her face with her hands.
“Oh, love.” Brandy wrapped her arms around her girlfriend, because bat shit or no bat shit, this called for hugs.
The amusement that had crinkled Linus’s eyes was gone. “My deepest apologies. I spend so much of my time alone with nature that sometimes I lose sight of how cruel we humans can be to one another. I can assure you that your worry is groundless, though. I’ve known Rasmodius for his whole life, and he would never stoop to an affair with a student nor another person’s spouse, let alone someone who was both. Even if there’s the slightest chance I am mistaken about that, you could not be the result of such a relationship. Magic has its limits.”
Abby lifted her head, and Brandy could tell she didn’t have any more of a clue what the old man meant by that last bit than she did. Then her eyes widened. “Wait, back up—what was that about Mom being his student?”
“Uh, Caroline told me he’s the one who taught her about all the fortune-telling stuff,” Brandy said. “You didn’t know?”
“All she ever said about him was to keep my distance,” Abby said. “I figured she got the tea leaves and other stuff from books, since the internet wasn’t a thing when she was young.” She sniffled. “But… his hair’s purple, too.”
“Love, I’m pretty sure taste in hair dye isn’t genetic.”
Abby’s eyes dropped. “I don’t—I mean, I do dye my hair, but…”
“Ah, it is amethyst then, rather than plain quartz.” Abby gave Linus a sharp look, and he smiled sadly. “Diamond was mine. My hair was blond in my youth, and if anyone noticed it becoming, perhaps, a little paler, it was dismissed as early greying. Max—Rasmodius doesn’t have that issue, and while the color doesn’t come from a bottle, it’s one he chose for himself.”
“But… if you’re like me, why do I need to go to the tower?” Abby protested.
The old man sighed. “Was, young one. Was like you. Long enough ago that I had almost managed to forget their voice, until I heard its echo in your music.”
Brandy tensed. That sounded a lot like what Abby had been talking about. “Do you mean the… what’s in the mine?”
“If that mewling whine could reach this far, we would all be lost already. But oh, I can believe the mountain cries out, for what I did to them.” He stared into, or maybe through, the fire. “Take her to Rasmodius. Tell him there’s no need for one of his concoctions, for she has already accepted the charge, even if she didn’t know what she was doing. The last sage of the mountain recognizes his successor.” He stood abruptly. “Feel free to remain by my fire if you wish, but I have said all I can bear, for now.”
“Brandy, what is he talking about?” Abby whispered as he vanished into his tent.
“It’s a really, really long story, and I will fuck it up if I try to explain, ’cause I don’t understand some of it myself. But Rasmodius can give you the details. Are you ready to get out of here? We can meet up later this morning and go see him.”
Abby looked down at herself. “I can’t go home like this,” she said. “Dad’s always in the shop bright and early for a new season, and I… well, we both kind of reek. I don’t think I could hide what I’ve been up to. Could I maybe get cleaned up at your place?”
Brandy thought about it for a minute. She could use some time to herself to sort through it all. On the other hand, if Pierre—or worse, Caroline—saw their daughter coming home covered in bat shit and mine dirt… well, their reactions would not be good. “Sure, I should have enough propane for us both to get hot showers. My clothes’ll be a bit big for you, but I can find something for you to borrow while I put what we’ve got on through the laundry.”
“Thanks. And… maybe we could save a little fuel, help each other get clean?” Abby looked up through her eyelashes.
Brandy recognized when adrenaline was doing the talking, and gave her a crooked grin. “You haven’t seen my shower. If we both squeeze in there we’ll need Neel and a crowbar to get back out, and none of us want that.” Not to mention she was still kind of pissed at her girlfriend, but Abby didn’t need Brandy dumping that on top of all the other shit that had just landed.
“Ugh, no.” Abby stood up and, with a final glance at the patched-up tent, started down the mountain path “Well… I’m sure we can think of something else to pass the time while the laundry’s going, instead.”
The sun was just breaking over the horizon when they reached the farm, turning the snowy ground into a blinding field of white light. They hurried inside the cabin, where Brandy dug through her dresser for a change of clothes for each of them before insisting Abby take the first shower.
Brandy took her time when it was her turn, trying to sort through all the night’s shit. At least the searing heat from her badge hadn’t done any damage; the Adventurers’ Guild logo wasn’t too tacky, as such things went, but that didn’t mean she wanted it branded onto her skin. But her feelings were still all tangled up, relief that Abby hadn’t gotten injured—or worse—battling with hurt anger that she’d shrugged off the promise she had made. But if it really was the mountain, not the demon, calling to her, did that change things? She’d assumed Abby would eventually catch on about talking to Rasmodius and maybe become one of the sages, with Brandy as her shield, but everything seemed to be happening ass-backwards, instead.
The water pounding out of the shower head didn’t offer any answers, so once she was sure she’d scrubbed off any hint of bat shit she shut it off. By the time she dried off and put on some clean clothes, she’d decided it was best to wait and see what Rasmodius had to say about all this.
She cracked open the bathroom door and was unsurprised to find her girlfriend curled on her bed, fast asleep. “Love the rush, hate the crash,” she murmured as she pulled a blanket up over the other woman, then grabbed the laundry basket and went outside to deal with that and her barn chores.