Chapter 37.1: Exercises

Wiping sweat from her forehead, Penny plodded the last few steps up another mossy rise. At last they’d crested the thing, revealing the downward slope into a verdant basin between more of those towering plateaus they had been passing for days now. Trees dotted the expanse, surrounded by low shrubs that looked more like islands scattered across a concave, emerald sea. Off to one side, a series of hills rose, one atop the next into a treeline nestled up against the highest of those surrounding plateaus. Several paces to her right, Minkus stopped and took it in, if only for a moment. His unusually intense focus returned.

Penny had no need. She only wiped again at the stream of sweat flowing from her brow, and continued on.

Several yards ahead of her, Jinkke and Wepp led their procession, as they had most of the day. They’d acquired a map of the region in Mrot Boru, and only occasionally had they argued which was the best path toward the Vigil encampment they sought. Now nearing the end of that long journey, they clearly agreed and kept the group on a northeastern trajectory.

Penny kept on behind them: her goal at the moment was strictly keeping up. The air around them was wet and heavy, only getting worse the farther into Maguuma they went; any farther, and she’d demand an aquabreather. Somehow, though, none of the asura appeared to notice it. They too had thin rivulets of sweat running down their faces, but they simply didn’t care. Sweat flowed down their faces, and the two in the lead just kept theorizing, planning, and exchanging the occasional joke that made no sense to Penny. Gods, she would die of dehydration, and these people wouldn’t even recognize what had killed her. 

Of course, it didn’t help anyone that the four of them were now carrying as much of their equipment on their backs as they could manage. The asura could all shrug off the dank heat, but everyone felt the weight of copper and steel literally on their shoulders.

They’d been traveling without the aid of the wagon for two days now, which meant toting all their tools, documents, and the field-emitter itself on their own backs. Between Mrot Boru, that strange town built in the cliffs, and the Priory camp at Mirkrise, the four of them had tried to retain all their tools, materials, and belongings by pulling everything on a long, steel-runnered sledge they’d gotten off a local trader. It took only a handful of hours, however, to recognize the greatest asuran weakness: physical strength. Aside from Minkus, whose magical constitution gave him an edge even over Penny, none of them were worth a damn. For all their intellectual brilliance, Jinkke and Wepp were about as physically useful as a pair of children—snotty, constantly complaining children. The moment they reached the Priory fort they’d been told about, each was at another’s throat, but all of them agreed on one thing: some things absolutely had to go. After a late night of work to get the projector iris situated on its mount and linked up to the proper cards in the intelligence core, they exchanged the sledge for additional packs, sold away tools and anything resembling a spare part, and packed up for the final day’s hike.

Now, with everything they had strapped to their backs, they were a second day removed from the wagon and that lumbering ox of a golem, and gods help her, Penny actually missed it. Not only could they no longer work on the field emitter while travelling, but the constant weight of her smartpack had been the one thing about it she hadn’t missed after handing it over to the asura. Now here she was, lugging around a slack, leather sack full of clanging tools and parts without any of the helpful advancements she’d devised.

Penny groaned low so no one would hear.

No smartpack, surrounded by asura—albeit decent ones—and wandering around in the sweltering tropics. Why? So they could stop some little witch in a backwoods lab from causing more havoc on people’s lives than she already had. The remembrance actually halted her internal complaints.

This Kikka, or whatever her name was, had decided Penny’s livelihood was an acceptable loss. She’d held similarly that the life of an innocent librarian and his gods-damned daughter were acceptable losses. Hell, if Wepp was right, maybe even Ventyr and that weird, little scholar were the next in her long list of collateral damage. Just thinking about it all took Penny’s mind off her own complaints and gave her one big one to focus on. She fumed for a good quarter mile down the side of that rise.

Eventually, though, Penny’s balled fists made their way to the straps of her pack and took to a restless tugging and twisting of the leather. She fidgeted with the grip of her gun, then started to anxiously flick one of her wrenches in and out of their pouch on her belt.

Her anger was justified, sure, but gods, she was going out on a limb with all this. Sure, she still felt guilty for what had happened to that kid’s father. Maybe she even felt a little guilt for the problems she might have caused Ventyr in Bloodtide. But people lived with guilt every day—the critical part of that phrase being that they lived. Here she was, planning to use a magic backpack to get even with some genius wielding the power to drive anyone insane as she murdered them. How was any of this going to work, and what the hell had possessed Penny to give it a second thought? Did she really think anything she personally did for these utter strangers would make a hair’s difference? Gods, that wasn’t the way the world worked at all, and she knew it; she’d learned that lesson all too long ago. People who told themselves the lie that they could make a difference only made one difference: they didn’t come home. So, what in Tyria had compelled her into this gods-awful plan?

Her runaway cart was interrupted by a voice. “Penny?”

Blinking herself almost awake, she looked down.

“Penny?” Minkus said again. “Are you ready?” His voice felt clearer to her the second time, and the world seemed to come back into relief around her. Gods, she’d let herself wander off in her head again. What she wouldn’t have given for something, anything to do with her hands.

She shook the haze away and focused on her friend, still walking beside her just a few steps away. He looked like he was trying to pass a stone, and it all came back to her. Before she’d drifted off in thought, they’d been “exercising.”

“Yeah, Biggie.” She shook away the last traces of her fog and took in the environment again. “I was just— yeah. Yeah, I’m ready.” Concentration and relief mixed on his face as she raised the small rock she’d forgotten was still in her hand.

“Excelsior,” Minkus piped, still visibly concentrating. “On three?”

She nodded and began to count down. “Three.”

His look of concentration deepened.

“Two.”

Both of them cocked back.

“One.”

Penny snapped her arm across her chest, chucking the stone at Minkus even as she tensed, awaiting the stone she knew would be coming back at her.

Like the hundred times before, their two rocks crossed paths, hers dipping toward the asura and his rising up at her in an opposite arc. When his struck her in the shoulder, she should have felt its bite against her bare arm, but she didn’t. As so many times before that day, a twinkle of cerulean light sparked to life where the rock should have struck, and the projectile bounced off into the grass. A rush of magical energy ran across her body, just above her skin and clothing, and shot the force of the impact harmlessly away from her in the other direction.

Penny shivered and grinned a little, looking down at the spot where that puff of breeze marked the exit of the stone’s force. No matter how many times it had happened, she just didn’t get used to it.

In only two days’ time, Minkus had actually gotten good at this. At the beginning he’d discovered that he needed the fear of actual harm in order to harness this ability for just himself. Now, though, he was not only able to form the shield without an honest threat present, but he could shift it off of himself and onto another person—most of the time.

“Gods. That really is a trick, Biggie,” Penny mused. “It’s one of the weirdest, damn things I’ve ever...” Turning back to him, though, she cut off. He’d stopped a pace behind her, rubbing the side of his face.

What Minkus still couldn’t do with any consistency was keep his shield while also giving one away.

“Ooh, sorry, pal.” Penny frowned, coming to a brief stop as well. Moving again, he caught up with her. “Still didn’t work, huh?”

“No,” he sighed. Big ears already drooping, he let his face fall as the two carried on ahead.

They walked in silence a ways, taking in the trilling sounds of wildlife that broke the tepid silence otherwise engulfing the moors. Occasionally Jinkke flashed a glance back at them over her shoulder. Minkus never seemed to notice, which was clearly his sister’s intent. Whatever she thought of what he was attempting, she’d refrained from intervening.

Minkus stooped, then came closer to Penny again and held out a pair of rocks. Raising an eyebrow, Penny eyed them and then at him. He was sweating even more than she was now, but the glum cast to his eyes said it probably wasn’t because of the heat.

“Biggie, take a break,” she said, pushing his hand back. “You haven’t managed to shield us both since this morning, and you’re not getting any better at it the more you wear yourself out.”

He sighed, almost conceding, but then looked up at his sister, who still walked ahead of him, discussing safety fallbacks for the essence processor with Wepp. Minkus’ hand remained extended toward Penny.

Since her talk with him on the veranda in Rata Sum, Penny had noticed moments like this, and she understood what he was thinking—at least as much as she ever understood what he thought or did. She didn’t agree with him and his unnecessary sense of duty to absolutely everyone, but she also wasn’t going to talk the stubborn, little man out of it; that would prove all but impossible at this point. The least she could do was try to keep him from killing himself if all this really did go sideways.

Gods, she thought. It really could all go sideways.

Grunting, she cracked her knuckles. She’d be down and working again on that emitter the second they reached this Vigil camp.

“Please, Penny,” Minkus implored, still holding a rock out to her. “Just one more?”

She stopped flexing her hand and snatched one of the stones from him. “Fine. One more.”

That, of course, wasn’t the end. That last one predicated many more repetitions of the exercise over the next hour, and Penny, of course, had been right. Tired as he was, Minkus was unable to shield them both even once in that time; he’d actually begun to falter at passing the shield even to Penny. He’d concentrate, they’d each throw, and Penny would get hit with a rock. Sometimes Minkus did too.

“OK, Biggie,” Penny finally barked after getting hit one too many times. “Enough.” She brushed back raven hair and rubbed at the already tender spot on her temple that he’d managed to hit twice.

“I’m sorry, Penny,” he said, rubbing his own head where her stone had struck him as well. She couldn’t see his face, but she didn’t have to. The sullen tone in his voice told her where the real damage was.

“Gods, you got hit too?”

He nodded.

“Alright, that’s it.” She tossed the couple of rocks she’d been holding in her free hand, and waved her empty palm at him. “I know you want to learn to do this fancy new magic better—hell, you almost have—but you’re exhausted. I’m cutting you off before we knock each other out.”

He tried to smile, but it was weak, and then it was gone. “I know. It’s just— I am so close to getting this, Penny, and I just have to. I— well, I should be able to put it on both of us. I don’t know how I know, but I do. I just know I should be able to.”

Reaching back to the side-pocket on her huge, clumsy pack, Penny grabbed her waterskin and tossed it to him. Thanking her, he threw his head back and drank deeply before returning it.

“I just have to,” he muttered again.

Penny nodded. “I know,” she said. “It’s what you ‘have to offer.’ There’s no way in Torment I’m arguing that point with you again.”

Penny felt a small grin touch her face. She really wouldn’t argue that point again, because it was a debate she had no hope of winning, however much Minkus might appear to waver.

Penny closed the gap between them and nudged him with an elbow. “At least I didn’t get hit with all your rocks.”

He glanced up from the corner of his eye, and she saw it crease with the faintest raise of a smile.

“Eyes forward, associates.”

Both Penny and Minkus snapped to attention. Wepp was looking back at them, both he and Jinkke only a few strides ahead now. “It appears we’ve arrived,” he said, gesturing forward.

Some fifty paces off, two figures stood in the shade of a stone outcropping that projected from the side of the plateau they’d been aiming at across the basin. The strangers made no move toward the party, but squinting, Penny made out motion, like that of reaching for weapons.

Penny’s fingers drifted toward her own weapon. “What exactly have we arrived at? How do you know these are people we want to run into?”

“Stop that,” Jinkke hissed, leaping back a step and smacking Penny’s hand clear of the holster. “You want to get us killed by the people we’ve come to assist? That’s the Vigil.”

“How do we know—”

“Because I can see them,” Jinkke answered, pointing to her big eyes and opening them even wider. “Smoke and sparks. I know your human vision is substandard, but at least make an effort to utilize it.”

Penny was about to snap back when Minkus stepped past them both. He seemed more alert suddenly, as though he hadn’t been running himself ragged the whole day. He leaned forward, squinting, and then hopped in surprise. “Crusader Jindel?”