.
Brigitte was on her feet, in a deep crouch, her tail back and stiff, her ears laid back flat. She had the fingers of her left hand spread and slightly curled to make the best use of her claw-like fingernails. Her right hand was clutching my dagger. And the mysterious intruder she was facing looked like nothing I had ever seen before.
A ‘cloud’, but crouching close to the floor, giving the faint impression of a lobster or scorpion thanks to tendrils of mist that extended forward from the sides and a fat tail of more mist behind.
I realized that Lucy was flying around it, inspecting it curiously. She didn’t seem at all frightened of it.
I pushed the [Fireball] toward the mysterious thing, and it floated back to avoid it. But when I pulled the [Fireball] back to its original spot, it floated forward again. I pushed it out again, and it obediently retreated.
“What is it?” Brigitte demanded.
“Don’t know!” I snapped as I scooped the Starfire Jade Writing Brush off the floor. It was toasty warm and dry.
The thing started moving forward, apparently acquiring courage when the [Fireball] didn’t press an attack. I didn’t want to incite something that might be non-hostile into fighting us, so I pointed the brush handle at it and channeled Wind through it. I had yet to try this, so I wasn’t sure of the consequences of it, but when I did it with my fan, it would blow a nice breeze.
This act generated a high-pressure stream of compressed air. It was enough to cause the thing to halt, so I stopped the stream. After a few seconds like that, it tried again, and I blew it back, again.
Milady, ask Lucy to talk to it, Durandal suddenly suggested. I’ve yet to determine from exactly what range he can talk to me, but at that moment, he was right near my feet.
“Lucy!” I called, “Can you talk to that thing?”
“Try!’ she declared, then flew down and landed on it. My heart went into my mouth for a moment. If it were hostile, it might attack her… except I remembered she was something like one of Diurhimath’s ‘outriders’ or ‘proxies’, a sort of remote control scout for the spirit hiding inside my spirit stone.
She flew back to me and reported, “Cleaning!”
“Uh…” I mulled over it.
I spoke to it myself, My Lady. I just had you send Lucy over to cover for me, Durandal explained. It’s some sort of magical creature for cleaning. It’s very simple, so it couldn’t say much. Just ‘cleaning’. ‘ahead’. ‘go’. ‘move’.
I thought about the lack of debris or dust on the floors and the stairs, at least on surfaces above lake level. I concentrated my fairy sense on the thing to inspect it closely. It seemed to have more substance than a spirit or something constructed from multiple spirits, but its magic substance did resemble Durandal’s to a degree.
It moved forward again and I zapped it again. It moved back again. It didn’t seem bothered at all, or agitated. It was just responding to stimulus, and moving forward again once it thought the stimulus was gone.
“It’s a Roomba?” I asked nobody in particular.
“It’s a what?” Brigitte demanded. She was still tense as hell, but I had already lost all my tension.
“It seems to be the janitor,” I told her instead. “It’s trying to clean up all this stuff we left lying on the floor.
It might just give up if we played this game long enough, filing the position in memory and scheduling a return visit for later. Or it might maintain the standoff, doggedly pursuing its simple-minded goal forever.
I pushed the fireball farther forward, causing the cleaner to move back farther, then began picking up all the items that had been in my wallet. I put the leather necklace holding Lucy’s pouch back around my neck and began dressing.
Brigitte did the same. She also told me, “Sorry about grabbing your dagger.”
“You should probably hang onto it for now,” I told her. “I’ll detach the scabbard from my belt.
“That’s nuts. What would I attach it to?” she demanded.
I pointed at the breechcloth she was in the middle of donning and said, “I think that’s the only choice. Thread the cord through the scabbard’s belt-loops.”
She shook her head. “The weight would drag it down. Just lend it to me again if the need comes up.”
I had to hit the cleaner several more times with air before we had everything on and everything picked up. My clothes were still clammy and uncomfortable, but there just wasn’t any helping it. Brigitte’s underthings seemed to be dry and that was more important. A mortal might get sick wearing damp clothes in this cool cave environment.
While I finished putting everything in place, I commented, “How did you sense that thing coming? I only felt it when you were already yelling.”
“I didn’t,” she said. “That bug of yours woke me up.”
“Lucy did?” I responded, surprised.
The ‘bug’ in question showed no interest in our conversation, but Durandal commented, I told her to do it, My Lady. That cleaner has a spiritual device in it that I could sense from a distance.
I frowned about that. Why hadn’t he called for me?
Maybe he guessed, or heard the question in my thoughts, but Durandal said, You were a bit too far away at that time, My Lady. You didn’t seem able to hear me.
That was information to file away for the future. I made a note to do an experiment at some point to determine exactly what our conversation range was.
With a quick casting, a [Fairy Light] replaced the [Fireball]. In response, the mist creature immediately drifted forward while we backed into the landing. It slowed down over the spots where the clothing had been laid out and began doing whatever it did.
“I guess we should go,” I commented. “I wonder how we tell this outrider thing to start guiding us?”
Probably in response, the outrider which had been patiently floating all this time above the first step of the next flight of stairs suddenly began drifting forward and upward.
I told Brigitte, “Looks like it wants us to go to a higher floor. Let’s go.”
Water level was only about halfway up to our destination’s level. We had another four levels, another fifteen paces, and another eight long flights of stairs to climb.
“Can that thing make itself visible?” Brigitte wondered as we followed it. “I could see it when it was bigger.”
It acquired a subtle glow. I asked, “Can you see that?”
She looked a little disturbed, probably because it was obvious the thing had reacted directly to her, but she admitted, “Yeah.”
A few moments later, she ventured, “Do you think that Jurmat guy…”
Although she didn’t finish, I knew what she was wondering. I said, “I would rather not think about it.”
She chuckled uncomfortably.
Treading these stairs was definitely a less than secure feeling. The ones we were on first were tipped toward the bannister and the open space beyond. Once we rounded the first corner, we were climbing stairs tipped downward in the direction we were climbing. And the tilt wasn’t in the exact direction we were going. I could feel them tilting slightly to the left as well.
“Why would anyone ever build a place like this, My Lady?” Brigitte complained. “Were your people crazy?”
Technically, it was Gaia that built this place for the Elders to use, but I left that aside.
“They weren’t crazy,” I told her. “The place was level when it was first built. The ground has tilted over the millennia. That’s what caused the lake to form.”
“The ground has tilted? Why would Gaia do such a thing?” she asked.
It wasn’t Gaia doing it, but the mechanics of plate tectonics. But explaining that to a girl who believed that the gods cast everything in its place would be difficult.
“Did your village priest ever tell you that the ways of the gods are a mystery that surpasses human understanding?” I asked.
Well, I was quoting the priest who led Robert’s confirmation lessons, but I figured Ostish priests probably went with the same dodge when they couldn’t answer all the ‘why’s.
“He and Mom didn’t get along, so we didn’t go much,” was her grumbling answer.
When we at last reached the top, the outrider turned into the westbound corridor and forged ahead, but I wanted to take stock of the surroundings first. I called out, “Wait.”
It dutifully halted. I sent the [Fairy Light] ahead, passing the outrider and floating on down the corridor. But, as it floated, I noticed a square on the wall. As if by a long-ingrained habit, I placed my fingertips on it.
The corridor lit up with soft white light. Brigitte let out a yipe and fell into an instant fighter’s crouch, ready for an unseen enemy.
Oh, yeah, I thought as the memory came back to me. It was a memory shared by Senhion, using exactly this style of control, by Robert, using the hall light switch, by Daq R’mion, waving his hand across a motion sensor, and even by Fan Li, flicking her sleeve at a qi-powered wall sconce in the Imperial Palace.
What a curious thing to become a universal act. I suppose it was a matter of function and practicality.
“Relax,” I told her. “I did that.”
“You did?” she shouted, incredulous, but I could see her tension falling.
I pointed at the square on the wall and told her, “That’s a light control.”
If the lighting system in this hall were typical, another touch would turn it off. I did so, and the light vanished. Brigitte had encountered magic lanterns that worked the same way, so she only had to wrap her mind around a magic lantern being the scale of this entire corridor.
After another touch to turn it on a second time, I pointed at the ceiling. “The light is coming from the ceiling.”
Literally. No fixtures, just a soft glow from the ceiling itself. If it was working correctly, it should stay lit as long as we were present in the hall, turning off after we exited. Unless I found a light control on the other end and turned it off manually.
Our destination was a cavern a mile away, but the corridor wasn’t a mile long. About three hundred paces distant, it ended in a dark rectangle. It was too far for fairy sense and I didn’t want to stand still to use vampire sense, so we would just have to go see what was there.
