Chapter 35.2: Down to Earth

Several hours later, Penny woke once more. The sounds of rocking wheels and tossing tools had long since been replaced, and what she heard in their stead were ticking, squeaky voices rising sporadically around the wagon.

“Skritt help.”

“Unload shinies.”

“Shinies for big-ear lab—yes, for lab.”

“Skritt help. Skritt help!”

“Take shinies to lab.”

Penny blinked hard, rising, and wiping spit residue off her cheek. She had no idea what was going on.

“No, you troglodytes. Get back!” That one was the voice of the driver coming from the bench at the front of the wagon. She heard the snap of a rein, and the other voices all seemed to diminish a little. “Get back, I said. I have a shipment for Yerkk, not you. Where is Yerkk?”

Penny sat up and rubbed her face, and a pair of small, ratlike people came into view behind the wagon. They approached skittishly, with big, glistening eyes they focused suddenly on her.

Stuffing her orange knapsack back into the new pack, Penny tightened the straps to seal everything inside and scanned the milling, hairy host that surrounded them. The building ahead of them was decidedly asuran—she could see it over her shoulder—but that only made the troupe of skritt make less sense.

“Where in Torment are we?”

Minkus still sat beside her, though now more casually. His legs dangling off the edge of the tailgate, he shrugged, smiled a little, and waved at her.

“Brill Alliance Labs,” the driver groaned. Jinkke and Wepp were working at the makeshift workstation, and just beyond them, the driver called again at the skritt to go find this Yerkk person. A few of them finally scampered off as he looked back at the passengers again. “These little nuisances are their test subjects.” 

“Test subjects?” Penny had no particular affinity for the rat-people, but that didn’t mean they should be an asura’s science project.

The driver called the golem to keep moving forward, and it obeyed. “Perhaps research subjects is a more accurate definition,” he amended. “They claim to be studying skritt communication—as though there’s any scientific nuance to ‘Skritt help, get shinies.’” Shaking his head, the driver tugged at a rein to turn the behemoth golem toward the stairs ascending into the open-air entry of the cubic building. “Regardless, they’re always present and comparatively benign. Just don’t leave anything edible within their reach.”

The circle of scrawny figures parted, scattering back out into the surrounding fields and low brush, and the driver pulled his golem to a stop alongside the facility. At long last, the constant swaying came to an end. It felt for a second like the ground behind them was now sliding in the opposite direction.

When all motion both real and imagined had settled, Penny let go of the rail. Minkus slid down off the wagon bed, and Wepp seemed to roll off behind him, stretching as soon as his feet touched earth.

“That building there?” Minkus asked, pointing across the clearing to a diamond-shaped, stonework structure a few hundred yards away.

Wepp nodded flippantly. “That is what the driver insists.”

To Penny it looked like a tiny version of Rata Sum that had slammed back down to the surface. It and the building beside them were the only signs of civilization Penny could see, both situated along a road that came into the clearing through a deep gouge in one plateau and left the clearing through another. It was a small, isolated pocket of asura life in what must have otherwise been raw bushland. Suddenly she wished she’d been awake to see what more of this region had looked like.

Shaking her head, she quickly retracted that thought. She’d have days yet to see all the bushes and trees she could ever wish for.

“Just return as soon as you find a merchant with some food,” Jinkke called. “We still have substantial work ahead of us.” She was talking to Minkus and Wepp from over Penny’s shoulder, but it snapped Penny out of her thoughts.

Minkus nodded compliantly and took off at a bounding stride across the quarter-mile gap between the two buildings. Hiking up his loosening pants, Wepp tried to keep pace, but failed miserably, so Minkus slowed to wait for him. At more of a stroll, the two continued, drifting away into the swaying, golden-tipped grasses.

Penny dropped herself out of the wagon and onto solid ground as well. It was good to feel something firm beneath her at last.

She looked beyond the pair of asura, to that diamond structure and up into the sky. There, off somewhere south of them, she could still see Rata Sum. The foothills and rock formations they’d passed along the way seemed to want to block the city out, but to no avail, the pinnacle of Rata Sum hovered still above them all, visible through the haze even all these miles away.

“How long was I out?” she asked.

“Just over five hours,” Jinkke replied, not leaving the wagon. “My brother refused to let us wake you.”

Penny shook her head but didn’t take her eyes off the flying city. Five hours later, and she could still see it? Gods, the place must have been the size of the Reach. Instead of hiding behind impregnable walls, though, it floated so high above the world’s surface, it couldn’t be reached by anyone the asura didn’t want there.

She groaned. Now she was thinking about Divinity’s Reach. And with that thought, Penny was suddenly aware of just how far into the world she’d managed to get herself, again. Gods, she hadn’t even recognized it when she and Minkus had left Kryta this time. Yes, travel by asura gate was like the world’s worst hangover in a three-second span, but it didn’t really feel like travelling anywhere; you stepped in, emptied your stomach, and stepped out. The truth, though, was that Penny was as far from home as she’d ever been, and to make all matters worse, she knew there was no going back, probably ever. Gods only knew where she would go next, but it sure as hell wasn’t Divinity’s Reach—and that was assuming she didn’t die out here in the wilds of who-knew-where. As if leaving the security of the Reach wasn’t enough, she’d now left the safety of Rata Sum as well.

She laughed coldly. “Torment. I really have done it this time, haven’t I?” 

“I don’t know what it is,” Jinkke said from behind her, “but I’m willing to venture that, yes, you really have.”

Blindly fidgeting with the bolt at the butt of her pistol, Penny turned back to the wagon, where Jinkke stood looking at her as though about to say more. But she didn’t. Instead, she puckered her face like she’d just swallowed something sour and looked past Penny to Minkus and Wepp.

“You, me, Minkus, and Wepp,” Jinkke mused in a neutral tone, “we seem to have all done it together. The Alchemy only knows what awaits us farther along our trajectory, but you’re not alone in this regrettable predicament.”

Something about this exchange seemed new.

Penny squinted at the asura and climbed up beside her. With the wagon no longer moving, she could remain standing without a problem now. She passed Jinkke, who only watched her, and stepped up to the crates that were now covered in parts and schematics. It seemed like half the tools were currently serving as paperweights.

She lifted the corners of sheets in search of anything to indicate how far along Jinkke and Wepp had gotten in her absence—not that she had any delusions of importance. None of the sketches or calculations bore marks that she hadn’t seen before. Whatever, if anything, the two had accomplished, they weren’t documenting the progress, at least not there. Gods knew there were still a dozen pieces of this lunatic project that she still didn’t fully understand, however fast it seemed to be coming to her.

Penny found the generator they’d already adapted and turned it over in her hands, searching its surface for any indication of changes. Nothing about it was different than it had been that morning. She picked up the other and inspected it as well. What the hell had these two been working on that day? She really didn’t want to have to ask.

That was when Penny noticed Jinkke again.

No longer behind her, the asura had crept up alongside, slipping just beneath her elbow to inspect the generator box from her distinctly lower angle. Of course, that was just a pretense. In only a moment, the huge asuran eyes were focused squarely on her.

“I— wanted to thank you.”

Penny dropped the device back to the crates. “You what? What in Torment for?”

That sour pucker returned to Jinkke’s dark face, but she visibly pressed through it, stepping back and leaning against the sidewall of the wagon. She almost melted into the afternoon shadows cast by the trees. It made her expression ever so slightly harder to see, but that didn’t seem to matter. Her tone said she’d resigned herself to whatever it was she had to say.

“Earlier in the day,” Jinkke said, “whatever it was you proposed to my brother, it made him stop that perturbing self-flagellation he’d been submitting himself to. He wasn’t listening to me, but he responded to you. For that— well, thank you.”

“Self-flagellation?” Penny cocked an eyebrow. “You mean the thing with the rocks?”

“Yes,” Jinkke said. She seemed to make a concerted effort not to roll her eyes. “The rocks,  not literal flage—”

“Gods. Yes, I understand,” Penny interjected with a wave.

She considered what had passed between her and Minkus before she’d fallen asleep. It really hadn’t been anything dramatic, and Penny couldn’t say she’d have been particularly troubled if he’d kept right on with the strange exercise.

“So he stopped?”

Jinkke nodded.

“What was he doing the whole time, then?”

Jinkke sighed, staring back out across the clearing again. Penny followed her gaze, just making out the two little silhouettes against the waves of gold and green that seemed to shimmer in the breeze.

“I can’t say with full certainty, but it was most likely some form of meditation.” She didn’t sound pleased by the idea, only resigned as she took a few steps to the back of the wagon and kicked Minkus’  little pile of pebbles off into the dirt. “I still wish he would have spoken more to any of us. Meditation or not, his prolonged silence is unusual. My brother isn’t comparatively talkative, I realize, but his emotional buoyancy and love of connection generally leads to more interaction than this. It’s unnerving.” The little woman wrenched at her hands as she turned back to Penny, but her attention was caught by something new.

At her feet lay Minkus’ open pack. The handle of his sword peaked out from the built-in sheath, and his focus hung halfway out of the pack’s mouth, partially wrapped in some piece of clothing. Penny only barely made out what it was, but the asura seemed captivated by it.

Penny scanned the tabletop. She had no idea what she was looking for, but her hands craved something to work on, something to play with—just something.

“He’s just trying to pull his weight, to help us—his magic walls and all that.” She shrugged, not entirely sure what she was saying. This was, after all, the sister who’d lied to Minkus, using him for years.

Somehow, though, anger just didn’t come to her the same way. “He’s just focused, you know? Your brother really likes helping people.”

“Yes, I do,” Jinkke agreed.  “That is what worries me.”

Shaking her head, the asura looked back up from the floor. The uncertainty left her voice. “Still, I am mildly relieved that he stopped whatever ill-conceived activity he’d been engaged in with the rocks. So, for that, Arkayd, thank you.”

“Penny,” she said without thinking. “Just call me Penny, alright?”

Jinkke nodded, and silence passed between them for a long moment.

Returning to Penny’s side, Jinkke picked up the unmodified generator and set it down where it had been before Penny had moved it. Whatever had just happened between them, it seemed to be over.

“So you’ve finally determined to help?” Jinkke asked.

Penny glowered down at her. “What do you mean, finally determined to—”

“I mean, you had a lengthy nap while Wepp and I expended the remainder of the day working. I’d expected more assistance out of you, so perhaps now we’re receiving it?”

Penny stared. What a little pain in the ass.

“Expected more engagement?” she demanded. “You know what I expected? I expected to be riding on this monster-cart with adults—albeit tiny ones—who would have the guts to wake a person up if they were unsatisfied with her work.” She snatched up the generator again, and just before she could continue her sharp rebuttal, Penny noticed the smug hint of a smirk on the asura’s face. It looked far too much like her brother’s.

“What? What are you grinning at?”

“Minkus was correct,” Jinkke mused. “It is entirely too easy—and surprisingly enjoyable—to wind you up.”

Gods. Penny rolled her eyes. They were definitely siblings.