Volume 1, Chapter 14: Diplomacy Has Entered the Chat (Patreon)

“Do you really want to go down there and talk to him?” Her flames shortened and bent backward, away from the orc below, as though some invisible wind were pushing her in the opposite direction. “He doesn’t look, um… very friendly.”

I understood her hesitation. The creature below had a sizable axe hanging from its belt, and even from this distance, I could tell the blade was smeared with blood.

“I’m trying to keep an open mind, Bri. I worked with plenty of criminals back on Earth, and I could reach an understanding with every one of them. You just have to know what to say. And if something does go wrong, we’ll have a Plan B ready.”

“A Plan—um, Plan B? What would that be?”

“So far, I’ve always followed one simple rule in life, Bri. Forgive me, but I have to do it again. First, stick to the main plan. Second, whenever possible, prepare as many alternative ways out of an uncomfortable situation as you can. Third, if none of your backup plans work, run as fast as your legs—and arms—can carry you. Fourth, if escape is impossible, fight to the fucking death if necessary. With a strong preference for it not being your own.” As I spoke, I bent back one finger after another, illustrating the order and importance of each point, smiling widely on the last point.

“So what will that, you know, look like here?” she asked, raising one eyebrow.

“We’ll jump down together. You’ll make a wide circle around the cavern walls and check the tunnels. Look for the route you think would work best as an escape. He’s bigger and more muscular than I am, which means he should be slower and have more trouble squeezing through narrow spaces. You can’t cheat physics—” I stopped when I realized that, with magic involved, that might not be entirely true anymore. Bri merely nodded, apparently failing to notice the flaw in my reasoning, so I continued. “Find somewhere difficult for him to enter but relatively easy for me. If possible. If not, just choose whichever tunnel seems best. We’ll lead him wherever we need him to go.”

“So if the, um… conversation doesn’t work, the plan is to run away?”

“No. Let’s call that Plan D. Plan B is that ledge.” I pointed toward a narrow shelf of stone near where the creature stood. It extended from the main ground along the cavern wall, jutting only slightly outward. “I’m certain he won’t be able to catch me on it. The wall is sloped enough that if I jump across that small crevice, I should be able to climb up and reach a shelf like ours on the opposite side.” I pointed to the place I meant. “Do you see it?”

“I see it.”

“If that doesn’t work, I’ll have my lighter and try to stop him with magic. It’s time I started relying on it more. My Psyche has recovered, and now I feel full of energy. Like I can’t stop moving.”

“What about me during, um… Plan B? You’ll go onto the ledge, but what will I do?”

“If he’s focused on me, he’ll try to reach me, and I’ll have the advantage from higher ground. While he’s distracted, fly to his tent and set everything on fire.” I pointed toward the creature’s small camp.  Two buckets stood beside it, presumably filled with water collected from the nearby blue grass. “Once everything starts burning, he’ll probably rush over and try to put it out. I’ll use the distraction to climb down and follow him. Then I’ll either deal with him using the crowbar while he’s occupied, or wait until he gets close to the flames, increase their size, and set him on fire.”

Bri stared at me with an expression that begged us not to kill him.

“Do we have to?”

“Bri, I don’t want to do it. But with limited tools and time, no knowledge of the terrain, and no idea what his species or abilities are, this is the best plan I can come up with. We have to do something.”

She lowered herself and gave a small nod, by moving her face along the sphere that constituted her.

“Remember, though, that talking to him is still the first part of the plan.”

“Mhm.” Her expression brightened. “That’s true!”

“Assuming, of course, that we can understand each other. He only looks partly human, and we’re on an alien planet. The creators of our beautiful Gauntlet may have deliberately made communication impossible, which would be a very dick move—but considering everything that’s happened so far, I’m not ruling it out. Seems to be a theme, so far.”

“Doesn’t it really bother you, how do I put it… taking his life?” Bri’s eyes dropped toward the ground, and her lips twisted with distaste.

She was so innocent, despite having been born from pure fire, that against my better judgment, I was beginning to sympathize with the way she saw the world.

Fortunately, not enough for her to convince me she was right.

“It does,” I replied, moving closer to the edge when our target turned away from us. “Just not enough for me to stop valuing my own life.”

I waved her over.

“It’s time. Check the tunnels.”

With a quick motion, I planted one hand on the natural stone ledge and swung myself over it. I twisted in the air, brought my other hand up, and caught hold of the edge. Searching for grooves in the rock, I pressed my toes against the wall and found myself thinking that the shoes I had butchered into makeshift sandals were not half bad after all.

Finding one handhold after another and clinging tightly to the rocky protrusions, I quickly worked my way down the wall.

Once I was low enough to drop without making much noise, I did so, watching Bri simply descend from the ledge above me. Despite falling fairly quickly, as though gravity did possess at least some authority over her, she stopped at the height of my chest, then rebounded off absolutely nothing, flattening herself slightly as she soared back up to the level of my face.

Her face drifted toward the far side of her flames. The fire around her mouth pinched inward while a thin breath of smoke escaped above it.

Then she hurried toward the nearest tunnel, lowering herself closer to the ground and weaving between the stalagmites so she could remain unnoticed for as long as possible.

I stayed hidden behind the larger formations, waiting until she had put a safe distance between us before stepping into the more open part of the chamber and heading toward the humanoid creature.

Once I was close enough—but still far enough away that a thrown axe would not catch me so completely by surprise that I ended up with its blade buried in my chest—I pulled the lighter from my bag and concealed it between my fingers the way one might palm a card during a trick, keeping my hands open enough that they would not look clenched.

I did not want him thinking I was hiding something.

Then I spotted several loose pebbles on the ground. Instead of carefully stepping around them as I had been doing until now, I kicked them aside with deliberately sloppy movements, letting the noise announce my presence.

The sound made the humanoid’s slightly pointed ears twitch like a dog’s. He spun toward me instantly, pulling the axe from behind his belt at the same time. Gripping the handle with both hands, he fixed his gaze on me just as I spread my arms wide in a gesture that said, I’m unarmed, and you caught me.

“Good day!” I called to him, bending into a slight bow. “Beautiful weather we’re having, isn’t it?” I added, trying to knock him out of the familiar patterns these sorts of confrontations usually followed. Then I sighed and shook my head. “I can hardly believe a place this magnificent was hidden beneath the earth either.”

The humanoid watched me, though not constantly. His small black eyes were difficult to read, but the complete lack of anything resembling a neck—thanks to the sheer mass of muscle surrounding it—forced him to turn his entire upper body whenever he looked around. That made it easy to see that he was checking the nearby tunnels as well as my hands, which I deliberately kept well away from my body.

Perhaps it was nothing more than nervousness on his part. Or perhaps it suggested combat experience. It was still too early to determine exactly what kind of person I was dealing with and, consequently, what sort of persona I should create for the conversation.

“You don’t look so good,” I added with a mildly provocative tilt of my chin, exposing my throat. “Like shit, actually.” I bared my teeth, hoping for some kind of reaction, but found not even a hint of offense.

So I took a step forward, showing that despite catching me in the middle of approaching him, I was not afraid. He made no display of strength in response, though he continued gripping the axe tightly while watching both me and the exits. His movements were subtle, but he was unmistakably positioning himself closer to one of the tunnels, shifting gradually from foot to foot.

That suggested either cowardice, considerable self-control, or that he understood, just as I did, the value of keeping an escape route available in a difficult situation.

Standing with the chasm behind him, he was the one in the worse position.

“What human seek here?” he finally asked in a guttural, broken version of the language I somehow understood and knew how to speak, despite being fully aware that it was neither English nor any other language from Earth. The experience threw me off rhythm for a moment.

“I took shelter from the sandstorm,” I replied, leaning on a convenient truth that would be difficult to challenge. “Then I started looking around. Saw you and figured I’d come say hello. See what’s what.”

“Which way human come?”

He took broader steps toward the tunnels while simultaneously increasing the distance between us. He behaved like a soldier or a lawman evaluating a potential threat, but the question suggested something else.

He was standing watch. He wanted to know where the weak point was—the direction from which danger might arrive. It also occurred to me that the horn he had been using earlier might somehow have been a surveillance device. After all, he had not discarded it. He had quickly tucked it behind his belt when he drew the axe.

“Not from south,” he added on his own when I remained silent, confirming my theory. I noticed then that his nose had never stopped moving, as though smell were one of his primary senses. “North.” He looked toward the rocky ledge from which I had dropped only moments earlier.

If he was a scout for some army or other organized group, then despite being a soldier, he probably spent most of his time separated from the main force. That meant he would likely value competence more than intimidation, displays of rank, or attempts at dominance. His determination to uncover the truth pointed in the same direction.

“I came from there.” I pointed toward the ledge I had jumped down from, and the moment I looked in that direction myself, I took several steps the opposite way, trying to position myself closer to the tunnel I had sent Brigid to investigate. “Nasty, twisting tunnel, with a narrow passage along a rock ledge.” I looked him up and down when his gaze returned to me. “I think you’d have trouble keeping your footing there. Wouldn’t recommend it. The approach was slippery. Water leaking from behind the plants ran across the ground, creating dangerous slides and puddles whose depth was impossible to judge. A few times, boulders came loose and fell into cracks lined with stalagmites.” I was making most of it up, hoping to improve my standing in his eyes—or rather, his ears. “Generally speaking, I’ve come from far away. Beyond the desert and the forests, from a land where plants aren’t afraid of sunlight or sand.”

“Understand,” he replied with a grunt. “Not place for human. This orc land.”

“Orc?” I asked, thinking of how they had been portrayed in media back on Earth. “There are no orcs where I come from.”

“Orc everywhere.” He grunted again and adjusted his massive hands around the shaft of his axe. “That how orc win.”

I took another step and realized too late that his gaze was fixed on the exact spot I had just moved into.

When my foot pressed down on a steel plate hidden beneath a layer of wet dirt, I had no one to blame but myself—and the orc’s distinct lack of visible whites in his eyes or a proper neck, either of which might have helped me track his attention more accurately.

Fortunately, the device beneath my foot was not an antipersonnel mine, as I feared for a fraction of a second. Instead, steel bars shot out of the ground around me and snapped together overhead, trapping me inside a metal cage.

“Human stupid.” The orc spat on the ground after delivering his verdict. Despite all my confidence, this time I could not disagree with him.

I had to admit, he deserved credit for his professionalism. Despite his clothing, he was clearly no savage, but a well-prepared soldier. Even after I was trapped, he did not immediately rush toward me. Instead, he kept glancing from side to side and sniffing the air as he slowly approached in an arc, trying to position himself between me and any potential escape route.

The cage that had closed around me was shaped like a cone, and the bars were spaced too narrowly for me to squeeze between them. Looking down through the bars, I finally saw what I should have noticed before stepping there. The mud covering the plate was smoother than the ground around it, without pebbles pressed into its surface. Someone had spread it there by hand. There was no lock that I could see either, which suggested that either I was never supposed to be released or the mechanism controlling it was somewhere near the ground, where I could barely bend down because of the bag on my back and the shape of the cage.

Not that I believed it would be that simple. Quite the opposite. The orc had already demonstrated considerable competence, so whatever he had built was probably equally well designed.

I did have enough room to move, however, that I could reach one hand down to around knee level and raise it all the way to my face. And I only needed to remove two of the bars in front of me. So I flicked on the lighter, silently thanking whatever gods were listening for the absence of wind, and brought my joined fingertips to the flame.

I felt the Soma travel from my spirit all the way to my fingertips, illuminating them briefly before that light seized the flame. Guiding my hand through the air while keeping the lighter as close to the bars as possible, I wrapped the fiery lines I drew around them, as though tying the two together near the bottom with a rope sketched into existence.

Then I raised my hand along one of the bars and repeated the motion above my head, continuing my Pyrography. Holding the construct in the air with my Authority, I extinguished the lighter, slipped it into the pocket of my sweatshirt, and pressed myself against the opposite side of the cage.

That left me under no illusions. I was still too close, and making the fire hotter when it was already heating my skin more than I liked was not going to do me any favors.

“You mage!” the orc shouted from a distance, then suddenly turned toward his tent, when it erupted into flames. “You trouble!” he roared, then shouted something else in a language I did not understand before breaking into a faster run toward his camp.

Brigid shot out of the tent like the fireball she was. The sight startled him badly enough that he stopped dead, raising his axe to shield his face.

“Leave my, um… friend alone!” she shouted, stopping halfway between the tent and the warrior.

The orc peered at her from behind the axe, raised the heavy ridge above one eye, bared his teeth, and crossed the remaining distance in several rapid strides.

Bri was so shocked that she failed to react at all. Before either of us understood what was happening, the orc seized her in his bare hand. His fist immediately began glowing with fierce heat, smoke pouring between his fingers, but he did not slow down.

He reached the buckets of water I had noticed earlier and plunged Bri completely into one of them.