Chapter 16.2: Siphoning

Minkus turned back to Penny and his sister. “Ventyr says we have to cross.” He pointed at the rickety wooden planks running alongside the great wall of granite. Penny was sure she saw a hint of uncertainty even in his eyes.

“There must be another way,” Skixx coughed, grasping the cliff behind him.

“Only the gorge,” Ventyr replied, “which is full of dredge and will take us at least a day out of our way.” He was still the closest one to the walkway.

“I don’t believe it,” Skixx countered. His eyes kept wandering toward the downward view through the slats.

Penny noticed that Jinkke had stood by silently through this short exchange. She’d been a chatterbox to that point, but suddenly she paid no attention to the squabble, instead focusing on the bridge: the anchors in the cliff, the suspension cables, and the wooden structure running perpendicular to the cliff’s face. She took a step past Minkus, who shot out a hand to stop her, but she pressed right by it without missing a step—perhaps there were likeable things about this sister of his after all. Gently she hung one foot over the walkway and laid it down. Nothing moved. She pressed her diamond-shaped boot into it harder, while again inspecting the anchors overhead. Still nothing happened.

The little female walked out fully onto the wooden planks and began jumping up and down. Even Penny’s eyes widened at that. The timber creaked gently below her, but there was no noticeable movement from it at all.

Jinkke looked back at the others. “There appear to be additional anchors below as well,” she commented emotionlessly. “And if I had to guess, those anchor pikes above must be driven several yards into the cliff. It should retain its structural integrity in the face of anything shy of a passing herd of oakhearts. We certainly won’t do anything to it.”

Ventyr nodded, stepping out alongside her. Indeed, in spite of its rickety appearance, the walkway showed no effect at the added weight. Minkus and then Penny stepped out next. As each person cautiously joined, the ones before moved forward to accommodate. Still, the walkway didn’t sway or buckle an inch, and before long, they were taking steps ahead again, gaining courage with each one.

Skixx, however, still didn’t move, watching the others make their way along. “But—” he called after them, still very clearly afraid, “there’s no rail. Any of us could just fall off to premature annihilation!”

“Well then,” Penny called back over her shoulder, “you’d better stay away from the edge. Just get out here.”

“And don’t look down,” Minkus added. “It’s a long way.”

As the others continued getting farther away, Skixx took a deep breath and timidly stepped out on the walkway, inching forward and never taking his hand off the cliffside. Penny briefly took her own eyes off the planks ahead to look back at him. She could just barely hear him continuing to curse under his breath.

For a couple of hours, the group traversed that sturdy but intimidating wooden path. Paying close attention to each step, they hardly noticed when the sky grew white with clouds and a thin snow once again began to fall. It was sparse enough, that nothing substantial accumulated on the planks, but it still added a little to their anxiety.

“I’ve never seen an uglier structure in all my life, but this is a surprisingly sturdy design,” Jinkke observed to no one in particular.

Penny eyed the structure above them again, quickly looking back down at her own next step. “Yeah, great bridge. How about we get the hell off it, and then we can assess how it kept us from dying.”

Jinkke didn’t even look at her before continuing to voice her thoughts. “Its simplicity would likely impress even those luddites at Statics. I’m mildly perplexed by its clean surface, though. There should be a great deal more snow accumulated.”

“At the guardholme,” Ventyr replied, “Donnegal said he and his kin were responsible for its maintenance.” Penny rolled her eyes. Now there was no way to shut them up.

“Ah, I see,” Jinkke mused. “That explai—” Her words were cut short by a slight vibration in the boards and the sound of pounding feet just around the curve of the cliff. It was the first movement they’d felt in the walkway at all. Everyone froze.

“What’s that?” Minkus yelped. Penny looked back to find Skixx once again plastered to the cliff’s face. The pounding grew louder, vibrating the boards more intensely.

“I’m not certain, big brother,” Jinkke replied, obviously leary as she and Ventyr leaned out to see around the bend. “But it seems to be originating from—”

“Everyone against the wall!” Ventyr ordered, grabbing Jinkke’s hood and falling back into the cliff with her in tow. “Weapons free!”

Without pause, each member obeyed and the next moment three of them bore weapons, but all were pressed into the mountain, their packs starting to soak up melting ice as they waited painfully long seconds. Only Ventyr had really seen what was coming, but his command conveyed every bit of his concern into the hearts of the others. Penny quickly made additional rounds easily accessible in one of her hip pouches.

She leaned toward Ventyr and whispered, “What is it?”

Suddenly her field of view was overtaken by a large, hairy form that slid to a stop when it noticed them pressed into the rock face. Ventyr gripped his staff for a fight. “Grawl,” he answered, staring at the being.

“What in Balthezar’s beard is a grawl?” Penny asked, grimacing at the simian before them.

“Hairy humanoids with dim wits and heavy fists,” Jinkke whispered, eying it with the same distrust.

“I don’t know if insulting him is a good idea, Jinkke,” Minkus interjected, barely above a whisper. “I think he understands us.”

Hunched forward on its crouched legs, the grawl stood only up to Ventyr’s chest, despite having a back and shoulders so thick with muscle it looked almost charr. The two stared each other down, the red feathers atop the grawl’s headdress fluttering gently in the icy breeze. Despite his unmoving poise, the pounding sound didn’t stop, and in a moment more than a dozen additional grawl were coming to a halt behind their apparent leader, stamping and grunting as they awaited something.

Before Ventyr could act, though, the leader sniffed the air in his direction and sneered, looking back at the other grawl and then quickly to the road beyond the travelers to the north. Bellowing what must have been some type of order, the leader continued, stepping cautiously around the group while still giving each one a menacing, toothy snarl. Each of his companions did likewise as they passed, and in a few short moments that seemed longer than they really were, the troop of creatures were past them and down on all fours once more, pounding off toward Belldron’s Guardholme.

The five were left there, still as the stone they leaned on and holding their weapons in cold hands. The rattle of the boards beneath their feet slowly subsided.

Penny finally popped. “What the hell was that?”

Staring after the grawl still racing up the walkway, Skixx wiped the sweat off his forehead. “Alchemy knows. I’m just pleased that it worked in our favor.”

“It would seem that way,” Ventyr acknowledged.

After another moment, everyone took a half-step away from the cliff-face, slowly resheathing weapons and still gazing northward up the wooden road as the grawl faded into the distance. When they all turned back to Ventyr at the front of their party.

“Is something wrong, Ventyr?” Minkus asked.

A small dusting of snow fell from Ventyr’s branched head as the sylvari shook his thoughts away. “I suppose not.”

“Except that that’s highly unusual behavior for that species,” Jinkke mused. Hands on her hips, she was suddenly standing beside them both, closer to the edge than any of the others but paying it no mind. “If our field briefing was correct, which I assume it was, grawl tribes, with rare exception, are extremely territorial, tending toward violence at even the possibility of a threat, or plunder. Honestly, they sound like skritt.” She pointed up the road as she finished her thought. “In any case, that didn’t seem anything like what I was told to anticipate.”

“No, it didn’t,” Ventyr replied, almost to himself. “And that’s exactly what I was thinking.”

“So we were lucky is what you’re saying?” Penny asked. “Then why are we standing around asking why we were lucky? Let’s just thank Dwayna, the Alchemy, or whoever else you like and keep moving. I’m freezing my ass off standing here, and I don’t want to still be here on this rickety thing if those hairballs change their minds.” Skixx nodded avidly.

Jinkke shrugged. “I suppose she has a valid point. I’m curious, but It’s not my real objective.”

“Yes,” Ventyr agreed. “Let’s move.” Without further commentary, he turned and led them on.

For the next few miles, their trudge along the suspended walkway continued at a slower pace. Ventyr retained the lead, watching ahead for any indication of further grawl activity as they wound their way through the pass. Penny, pistol in hand, walked at the rear of the group, keeping an eye out over her shoulder should the pack that passed them return.

Ventyr explained to the others that he’d been warned at the guardholme of a particularly disruptive tribe in the area, one far more aggressive than most and obsessed with some sort of arcane summoning practices. Donnegal had been insistent that they work to avoid interaction. Perhaps the grawl troop they’d encountered was part of the tribe he’d been told of, or perhaps it wasn’t. In either case, the presence of grawl at all made him more cautious, and now it was making the rest of them more cautious.

Eventually they were off the cliff face and back on solid ground. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, none more so than Skixx. Penny didn’t miss the wooden walk of doom any more than he did, but the the illogical terror on his usually snotty face was at least a little entertaining. She laughed at him openly, slapping his shoulder as they all started growing accustomed once more to walking paths with no immediate threat of death.

When they finally did reach the waypoint at Refuge Peak, the sun was well past setting, which made the waypoint only discoverable by its all too faint glow. Penny only noticed it when Jinkke pointed it out, almost compassionately noting that the device looked sickly. Its blue light flickered in and out around the edges and was no longer bright enough to illumine the ground beneath it. Worse still, the waypoint smelled of burnt toast. That didn’t bother Penny, actually none of it did. According to Jinkke, though, that smell was a terrible sign, though she failed to give any indication as to why. She got to work immediately, stretching out the docking unit beneath it and extending her slender ladder upward.

The others took pause under a nearby outcropping while Ventyr surveyed the landscape. His bioluminescence pulsed in the darkness, reflecting off the lonely flakes that had started falling from the clouds again. Penny always forgot about that particular trait of sylvari. She paused a second to observe it. Honestly, it was nice, calming, maybe even beautiful, if she’d been comfortable using that word to describe her friend, or really anything else. She reached to put a hand on his shoulder, but he stepped away to survey the gorge in another direction, just before she made contact.

She quickly pulled her hand back and crossed her arms, only then noticing that Ventyr wasn’t the only thing glowing under the cloud-blanketed sky. Off in the distance, deep in the gorge below, was a bright blue glow rising over the hills and casting shadows through the trees. The coloration was much like that of the activated waypoint she’d seen when Jinkke’s team left.

“This is as far as we go today,” Ventyr said, drawing Penny’s attention back from the gorge. “I’d hoped to make it to the Priory, but that simply won’t happen, not with the work Jinkke has to do on this waypoint.”

“But—” Skixx began to interject.

“No,” Ventyr replied before he could finish. “We establish a camp here.” He turned, looking to each member as he gave assignments. “Minkus, find some wood and start on dinner. Penny, you and I will get to the shelter—that outcropping is perfect. Skixx, help Jinkke with whatever she needs.”

“Now just hold your leafy greens,” Jinkke replied, descending the ladder. “Noodle-fingers doesn’t have the transmat experience to help me. I’m not putting up with any nonsense in the name of helping.”

“Noodle-fingers?!” Skixx protested.

Jinkke dialed in some setting on the dock before climbing the ladder again and continuing as though Skixx had said nothing. “Besides, this should take no time. We can carry on as soon as I’m—” Jinkke paused for a moment, staring into the gap between the center and lower segments of the waypoint.  “What in the Alchemy?”

All eyes rose to her. “What is it?” Minkus asked, more curious than concerned.

She carefully reached in and felt around a bit. With a few sharp tugs, out popped a stick covered in skulls and that same putrid ooze. “Smoke and sparks!” She yelped, flinging the object to the ground and wiping her hand vigorously on her trousers.

Penny approached the object in the snow, now illumined by the waypoint’s growing light. “What the hell? Is that one of those skull-sticks again?”

“Yes,” Jinkke replied with a scowl. She’d come down from the ladder and begun to wipe her hand off in the snow. “Or at least it’s uncannily similar, down to the chemical burn from that viscous fluid. And—” she stopped, looking up from her stinging hand and down into the gorge. “That light is gone.” Penny turned to look at the light again, but the asura was right; it was no longer there.

“You saw that too?” Minkus asked.

She nodded. “Yes, Big Brother, I did.” She turned back to the waypoint. “And now the transmat is active again.”

“Is it just me,” Penny said more quietly than usual, “or have we seen all this before?”

“We most certainly have,” Skixx agreed. His mistrustful sneer held on moments longer than his comment. “The likelihood that the two are unrelated—”

“Is not even a number worth calculating,” Jinkke finished. She spoke quickly, almost to herself, paying more attention to the thoughts in her head than the people at her back. “It’s been 29.3 hours since that other flash of light we saw in a similar direction, and that was also accompanied by a disabled transmat, up until the removal of one of these objects,” she said, pointing back at the stick. “At which point, the transmat reactivated and the light in the gorge died out. A nearly identical situation.”

“That,” Skixx said, biting off the words and glaring at the back of her head, “is what I was getting at.”

“Then you should have gotten there faster.” she said. She was curt but not unkind, merely wrapped up in her thoughts.

“OK, OK,” Penny said, gripping Skixx by the shoulder to stop his frustrated quiver. “So there’s a big flash connected to your waypoints somehow. So what? What’s that mean?”

“Probably—” Skixx began.

“Siphoning,” Jinkke interrupted. “Someone’s siphoning magic off our transmats.”