Chapter 16.3: Defending the Summon-Stone

“Siphoning? How in the terminals did you come to that conclusion?” Skixx snorted, crossing his arms at Jinkke indignantly.

The other turned back around and strode the few steps back to the waypoint, fidgeting with the end of her blond hair. “Think about it,” she said coolly. “Light, especially unexplained light, is often a side effect of magical output. Given the clear connection between the malfunction and reactivation of these transmats and those lights appearing and disappearing down in the valley, it’s only reasonable to assume a transfer of magical energy from one location to the other.” She paused, coughing roughly into her hands. It was long enough for Skixx to raise a finger of objection but not long enough for him to get any words out. “And it should go without saying,” she continued, “that if that distant energy expenditure dissipates at the same time energy returns to the transmat, the latter is the engine and the former the output. Thus, siphoning.” Only then, at the end of her lecture, did she return her attention to the others around her. “Let me run diagnostics, and I can tell you definitively.”

Skixx looked irritated but said nothing as he stomped off to the edge of the gorge. Penny blinked. “You do that,” she said, starting off toward the stone outcropping they’d be setting up their camp beneath. “I’ll just be over here, in case you don’t need anything from me at all.” Minkus nodded, as he and Ventyr followed Penny’s lead back toward their chores.

Before long, their mats were situated on a bed of dry, snowless earth beneath the outcropping, and a cook fire was puffing to life under Minkus’ care. He acknowledged the campsite with pride, recognizing again that the group had become a rather cohesive traveling unit.

Looking behind him, it seemed Jinkke had nearly gotten the waypoint functional again as well. The repulsors caught an unseen flow of natural magic and lifted the device back into the air, but Jinkke couldn’t stop staring at the stick, still lying in a viscous glob of that repulsive ooze. Rubbing her chin thoughtfully with one mittened hand, she cleared her throat as she pondered.

Minkus stood and strode to her side, withholding a silly smile. He knew her thoughtful expression well. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Oh, Big Brother.” She shook herself awake at the sound of his voice and patted his hand between hers. “Well, the waypoint is operational again, but everything confirms my hypothesis. The initial readings were correct that the transdimensional conduction core was operating perfectly well, even when the energy flow was severed. That was not the issue with the conduction aperture.”

At best he only ever understood half of what his sister said, unless she was intentionally trying to tutor him in something. Still, he’d always listened to her as long as she needed. “What was the issue?” he asked.

She pointed, as confident as always but cautious. “That.”

“The stick?”

“Correct,” she affirmed, nodding. “It’s obviously nothing of asuran design, so it must have some more primitive spell bound to it, something so primitive, there’s no analysis I can do to understand it—at least not with what I have here. Still, after I removed it, the aperture closed, the onboard absorption unit began collecting energy from the ley-line again, and the transmat immediately powered back on.” Clearly still troubled, she shrugged. “Someone purposely tampered with this, using the open aperture to feed the energy that it was collecting into something else.” She pointed beyond the bluffs and down into the gorge. “Something down there.”

Minkus stared in awe at the stick on the ground. Perhaps the only thing more elusive to him than science was the magic that powered it. Much like the technology of his people, magic flowed even through him, and still Minkus couldn’t say he really understood it.

“There must be someone in Rata Sum who could do something like that,” Minkus replied, thinking hard. His gaze transitioned to his sister.

“Many,” Jinkke agreed, “but no one silly enough to do it like that.”

Skixx called to them from the edge of the gorge. “What did you call those beasts on that infernal walkway? Grawl?”

“Yes, grawl,” Jinkke confirmed. “Why? It would be very unlikely that they were responsible. But anything is possible, I suppose.”

Skixx scrambled back toward them frantically. “No. Grawl!” He shouted, pointing back at the bluff. “They’re coming this way!”

All eyes followed his finger. There, rising up over the edge just thirty feet behind him were at least half a dozen apelike figures with thick gray fur and random combinations of leather, wood, and bone that loosely resembled clothing and armor. As each one topped the ridge, they continued on with a half-sideways, crablike stride, maybe not sprinting but certainly moving faster than a walk.

“How do we keep finding these things?” Penny growled, drawing her pistol as she came up alongside Minkus and Jinkke.

“Good fortune?” Minkus offered. Penny and Jinkke both cast him sidelong glances.

Skixx fell into their ranks, and Ventyr stepped up behind them. “We don’t know if these mean us any more harm than the last group,” he reminded.

“Doesn’t look much like a welcome party,” Penny said, grimacing as she scanned their surroundings. She looked back at her pack resting at the campsite. “Really hope I don’t need that.”

Jinkke looked back at the waypoint hovering behind them and shook her head again. “I’m still only beginning the reinitiation sequence on the conduction core; it’s not woven into the waypoint network yet. We can’t use that as an escape.”

“We’re also not registered for waypoint usage,” Minkus reminded her.

“Yes, that’s right,” Jinkke groaned. “Nevermind. For now, get behind the human.” Pushing Minkus behind Penny, Jinkke also gripped the woman’s arm to force her weapon up and to the ready.

“Hey, knock it—”

“You do your job,” Jinkke instructed. “Stop them!”

Minkus winced. He could feel Penny’s attention shift even before she turned her head. “Look, you little—”

Ventyr raised a hand and deepened his tone. “Both of you stop it,” he snapped. “We don’t know their intent yet. Don’t be caught off-guard, but do not strike the first blow.”

Minkus blinked; he’d never heard impatience from Ventyr before. The sylvari’s shoulders were raised, his body tense, and Minkus could swear he saw tiny cracks of electricity popping and arching along his wrists.

Jinkke, her hand still on Penny’s pistol, began to regurgitate the facts of their team’s briefing, “While a few isolated tribes are peaceable—” The whiz of arrow fletchings slicing the air over her head cut her short.

“Not these ones,” Penny called, pulling free of Jinkke and leveling her sidearm at the first hairy body she saw.

“Hold,” Ventyr commanded, the energy sizzling brighter at the base of his hands. Minkus could feel that anxious electricity out of everyone around him.

A guttural voice boomed from among the grawl, “Norn!” The rest of the pack stopped in their tracks, a haphazard battle line now only a long stone’s-throw from the group at the waypoint. A breeze kicked up, gripping snow and flicking it into the air between the two parties.

“I think you have the wrong people,” Penny called back across the gap. “No norn here.”

“No play game, norn,” came the reply. “You big, you little, you still norn. Koopeki knows. Koopeki also knows you break summon-stone. Put back, or Koopeki put you in earth!”

Penny leaned subtly toward Ventyr. “What the hell is this guy talking about?” She paused. “He is a guy, right?”

“It seems he thinks we’re all norn,” Jinkke postulated. “They must be unfamiliar with the other races.”

“Norn? Preposterous!” Skixx objected.

Jinkke barely acknowledge him. “I’m not sure what they’re summoning with our summon-stone, but they must have been responsible for all this. It confirms every part of my hypothesis.”

“Well, fantastic. It confirms your hypothesis,” Penny scoffed. With a frown, she waved her gun. “Now what do we do with these furballs?”

By now the evident leader of the grawl had moved to the front of the troop. He wore a headdress of black and white feathers so long they arched backward over his surprisingly bald head. Hunched forward, he rested the weight of his broad upper body on his foreknuckles, dug into the snow before him, much the same posture as those behind him. Each one of them held a weapon of some kind, a random collection of whittled branches and sharpened stones made to resemble axe or sword or spear.

“Koopeki wait no more,” he cried. “Norn leave summon-stone now!”

“We can’t do that,” Ventyr said, his staff at the ready. While the others had been talking, he’d silently stepped between them to the front of the pack. The electricity crackled, flickering here and there into seeming flame. “This does not belong to you. Leave now, and leave in peace.”

The grawl chief laughed. It was feral but still derisive. “Koopeki no want peace. Koopeki want summon-stone!”

Jinkke took up the stick by the slime-less end and threw it most of the way across the empty space between them. “You can take your stick,” she called.

Ventyr extended a hand toward them. “Leave now.”

The skulled stick lay on a patch of bare stone, a trail of goop and feathers behind it. The grawl chief grated his teeth looking at the object, then at the powered waypoint behind the group. He pounded the ground, raised an arm, and tomahawked it forward with a primitive roar. All at once, the two grawl on the ends drew bows and let arrows soar. The other six raced forward in a frenzy of rabid cries.

One arrow flew far high and wide of Skixx. The other was a second delayed but struck Minkus square in the eye, ricocheting off in a flash of blue light. He felt the force of that pinpoint strike ripple along a layer of energy coating his body and rush off behind him into the open air as the magical shell around him dissipated in its wake.

He felt his face. That particular blessing of the light never failed to astound him.

“Big Brother?” Jinkke gasped, holding her mouth. Her eyes were as big as he knew his were. “What just—”

“Minkus!” Ventyr yelled, drawing the asura’s attention back to the fight. Another volley was already nocked on grawl bows.

As they let fly, a shimmering sheet of light rose before the group, catching the arrows in flight and sending them hurtling back into the grawl ranks. The arrows caught one attacker in the shoulder and another in the shin, but they pressed on.

Minkus stepped forward to join the others, but Jinkke lunged for him. “Minkus, no!” she commanded, grabbing his chestplate by the back. “Get back!”

“But Jinkke, I—”

“You can’t help here, Big Brother,” she cut him off. “We’re getting back to safety.” With that, she leaned into him with both hands and pushed him behind a nearby boulder. He flailed a little, but her gaze grabbed him as hard has her pressing hands did. He looked on over his sister’s head, helplessly watching his friends as he gave in.

Ventyr stepped forward toward the iridescent wall, wringing his staff with both hands. His bioluminescence flashed brighter than usual, synchronized to the rise and fall of his heavy breathing. “We offered you a peaceful solution, and you attacked us,” he called, his wrists now wreathed in fire and lightning. “The offer is past!”

He raised his staff over his head, and a jagged line of raw energy cut the sky in two, driving itself like a spike through the leader and into the snowy earth below him.

Everyone stopped: grawl, asura, human. Everyone.

For a moment, the figure stood still on a smoldering patch of steaming dirt. All eyes watched as it toppled into the snow, smoke still rising from its blackened head. The gazes shifted to the sylvari, including Minkus’.

Ventyr’s eyes bored into the grawl directly behind the charred corpse. “Go,” he repeated. A single cloud overhead crackled with latent electricity. “I will not say it again.”

For what seemed like minutes, there was no movement but the thin tendril of smoke dancing through windblown snowflakes. Gazes shifted between Ventyr, the body, and the two lines of combatants. Minkus’ eye briefly met Penny’s. He cringed.

“Not over,” that second grawl finally growled at Ventyr. “Koopeki come back.” Even as he said the words, he eyed the skies overhead, quickly grabbing the headdress off his leader and waving the others away with him. One now limping, they slid back down the slope and disappeared from sight.

Ventyr walked to the edge to watch as they vanished into the darkness.

Penny approached as well, eying the smoldering body as she passed. A moment passed before she opened her mouth. “A little angry, Carrot-stick?” Minkus could just make out her words.

Ventyr, however, said nothing, only staring into the gorge.

“Hey, Vent,” she said again, putting a hand on his shoulder. He pulled his shoulder away, still making no response.

“Fine,” Penny grunted, turning back toward the others. She took a few steps before her face hardened. Minkus could see the thoughts aligning as his friend watched him and Jinkke creep out from behind the boulder. He let his gaze fall to the ground, digging his foot in the snow as Jinkke continued the lecture and questions he hadn’t really been listening to.

“Don’t ever risk yourself like that again, Big Brother,” she demanded. “What are the odds a shot like that would happen, let alone ever happen again? If I ever lost you, I—”

“What the hell, Minkus?” Penny interrupted, approaching them with arms wide. “Were you hiding behind a rock?”

Both siblings turned. “Penny,” Minkus stammered. “I— we— I mean, Jinkke and I—”

“Yes, we hid behind the only barricade we could find,” Jinkke broke in, physically stepping between them.

“I’m not talking to you,” Penny said. She nodded at Minkus beyond her, “I’m talking to him.”

Minkus took a step forward, his face contorted in apology. “Penny, we— we were just—”

“Minkus, no,” Jinkke interrupted. She extended a hand back, stopping him, all the while keeping her gaze up at Penny. “He did nothing wrong by hiding. I did nothing wrong by hiding him. Whatever he’s been consigned for on this mission, you have no right requiring it of him. You should be ashamed for jeopardizing his safety.”

“Ashamed?” Penny scoffed. “You’re ridiculous, lady. I don’t give a drake’s ass about this mission or what Biggie signed up for.” Her attention shifted to Minkus. “But I do care about people ducking out of trouble and leaving the rest of us to rot. That’s a centaur-shit move, and something I—”

“Bookah, it was my doing, not his,” Jinkke cut in, drawing Penny’s attention back. “I thought I just expressed that, and I will not apologize for it.”

Minkus approached again, gently touching his sister’s shoulder. “Jinkke, I can—”

“Big Brother, no.” The little female flashed a warning glare at Penny as she turned and took her brother’s hand in both of hers. She was gentle but forceful as she led him away. “I need your assistance disassembling the workstation. Your friend’s unfounded complaints can wait.”

“What?!” Penny demanded. “Unfounded? You can’t just—” But they did.

Minkus looked back over his shoulder, but Jinkke continued to talk, drawing his attention back repeatedly as they walked to the equipment. He tried once more, but between Jinkke’s insistence and Penny’s displeasure, Minkus turned away, following his sister without further objection.