Chapter 54: One Road’s End

Throwing back another swig of water from the Metamagicals well, Penny eyed the canteen in her hand before re-capping it and dropping it beside her satchel. It was one of several pieces of Vigil gear gifted to her in the last— gods, how many days had it been? She knew it hadn’t been quite a fortnight, but it had been close. Regardless, she didn’t plan to look any of the Vigil’s gift horses in the mouth. No, that day every reminder that she was in a Vigil camp was, at the same time, a reminder that they were at last leaving said Vigil camp. The supply wagon had returned the day before, and they’d been assured that just as soon as the wagon crew got themselves ready to go, she, Jinkke, and Scholar Yissa would finally be leaving that sweaty, gods-forsaken place.

Of course, leaving led to a completely different series of problems Penny didn’t look forward to solving, but she wasn’t thinking about that right now.

With a hard sniff, Penny raised her pistol and lined up its new sights against her test target. She’d more than put the weapon through its paces over the last few days: taking her time, drawing breath to steady herself, and giving complete focus to her intended target over and over again, all to verify the accuracy of what she and Jinkke had created. It was what any weaponsmith worth her salt did. The truth was, she and Jinkke had done a pretty good job of it, crafting sights that weren’t merely sufficient, but precisely measured, cut, and mounted in such a way that multiple points of rear-and-fore alignment could give the shooter relative accuracy at two different ranges, accounting for the dropoff inherent to the average round’s muzzle velocity. And Grenth’s ass if it hadn’t worked. After days of going back and forth between engineering and testing, Penny told herself she was now testing the gun’s quality in quick-draw situations, but really, she was just shooting for the hell of it.

She holstered the weapon, drew, and shot. Then again, and again.

With each round fired, chips of wood exploded from a new bullseye in the row of targets. Shots embedded themselves somewhere between the densely layered woodstack they’d constructed against the jagged stone wall of the cavern.

Penny lowered the weapon and stepped forward to inspect her work, a dissatisfied sneer touching her lip for the umpteenth time. Only one of her shots was a dead bullseye. The others were all close: slightly up and to the right of each target. Any error, though, was now on her, not the sights, and the pressure in her clenched teeth testified to how she felt about that. Gods, was she blowing off steam or building up more of it?

Tugging wads of wax from her ears and cursing under her breath, Penny moved back toward the worktable, where Jinkke stood stock still examining a series of designs. Over their time working together, from Rata Sum to this middle-of-nowhere place, Penny had gotten used to the asura’s myopic focus on her tasks. It annoyed her at times, but she figured it was the same thing Eddie and Minkus had experienced with her—albeit worse, if only because it was someone else.

That thought, of Minkus, almost stopped Penny’s movement. Eddie too, but not in nearly the same way. It had been too long since she’d seen the kid, but she could still do something about that. Minkus was gone. Gods, he’d been dead for, what, eight days? Nine? She still didn’t like to remember that, but it burned a little less acutely than it had when she and the others had first returned from Thaumacore. Most of her nightmares had stopped, or at least they no longer dominated her nights. Simply having something to do with her days left Penny so damned tired each night that even if she was dredging up terrors in her sleep, she couldn’t remember them the next morning. She felt tense and short when she wasn’t solving problems in their makeshift workshop, but every moment she and Jinkke had their minds set on solvable problems, Penny found just that much respite. She’d always found relief in work, but what was getting her through these days wasn’t just that; there was something about doing the work with Jinkke that added a comfort to the distraction.

What was neither comforting nor distracting, though, was Penny’s stark awareness of Minkus’ pack, which Jinkke had left very conspicuously beside their workbench. As long as Penny was at the table working, it was hidden from sight beyond the left front corner, but from almost anywhere else in the chamber, it taunted her. Every morning when she entered, Penny saw it afresh. Then, as she came back to the table from shooting targets, she’d catch sight of a limp strap or its top cover. Every day they’d worked, it had sat there, with Jinkke making no effort to even move it. Penny had genuinely offered it to the asura as a gift, a kind of inheritance she thought Minkus’ sister deserved—the contents of which Penny could conveniently escape if someone else had it. But Jinkke had shoved it aside, and in doing so, she’d ensured Penny didn’t escape a damned thing: losing Minkus, leaving him behind, not knowing why he’d saved her father’s old gifts, actually having told Minkus out loud what had happened to her father, Biggie’s response to it all— gods, the swimming weight of it all made her want to throw punches and toss her lunch all at the same time.

To make matters even worse, Penny had realized days past that, before they’d left for Thaumacore, Minkus had folded her childhood knapsack, the one her father had dyed for her, and set it gently aside near the mouth of the cavern. In the days since their return, Penny hadn’t touched that either, but together, the two bags threatened to break her multiple times a day.

As she stepped up to Jinkke’s side, Penny was again aware of it all. She worked to suppress it, though, focusing instead where Jinkke stared down at parchments covered in drawings.

The asura didn’t look up, but she sensed Penny’s arrival. “What are you fuming about now?”

“I’m not fuming,” Penny huffed, crossing her arms and hunching forward. She knew she looked like a pouty child, but she sure as hell wasn’t telling Jinkke that.

 “You’ve shot several dozen targets in recent days, revealing a twenty-yard accuracy deviation of 1.73 inches, roughly. Any additional inconsistencies you’re discovering now are most likely stemming from your operation of the weapon, not our modifications.”

“Thanks, Professor,” Penny grumbled. “Makes me feel so much better.

Jinkke glanced up at her with the quickest shimmer of a grin, and Penny curled her lip into something between a grimace and smirk. Banter took the edge off.

“What’s that? A second set of projectors?” Penny asked, pointing down at the rail-mounted projectors on either side of the rifle in their topmost schematic. Sure enough, immediately beyond the first pair was a second set of sketched holo-projector angled to produce a second targeting image farther down the barrel. “I thought you said it’d be hard enough to scale down one set, and now you want to do it a second time? For what, redundancy?”

Jinkke turned, raising an eyebrow at the human. She sniffed and straightened, patiently impatient, and her brow remained lifted as she waited for Penny to put the pieces together.

After refining the sights on her current weapon, she and Jinkke had begun theorizing potential alternatives to standard sights on a firearm. They’d agreed that the worst inherent drawback of steel sights was the way the metal blocked the shooter’s view of the target. That had sent Jinkke down the rabbit hole of modern asuran holography. Her experience with the field was limited, but with what she did know, they’d worked out a theoretical means of projecting translucent, light-based sights into the marksman’s view, aligning each shot without costing as much broader visibility. Whether or not the theories would pan out in practical application was yet to be seen, but the theorycraft gave them something more to do.

Penny looked down at the schematic again and finally caught the cause for the change. “Wait. You want to remove the physical sight from the barrel’s end, too?”

The asura tapped her temple in mock celebration. “Excelsior. I knew your brain would catch up with your mouth eventually.”

“Har har,” Penny scoffed, considering the idea. “It’s not as big of a visibility gain as replacing the rear sight, though. Not even close. I don’t think it’s practical, Smalls.”

Still, she drew out her pistol and spun to the targets, raising the weapon to gaze down the steel sights at one of the bullseyes. She imagined the sights replaced with open air and two holographic overlays that no longer blocked any part of her target. The rear sight had been their original concern, but if the barrel fore sight could also be replaced, a shooter’s view would be even more clear; only a pair of aligned, translucent points of light would impede her aim, and those aligned right on the target. Maybe it would be a slight improvement to acquiring a target, but gods, adding that new hardware would start getting unwieldy at some point.

She turned back, sliding the gun right back into the holster at her hip.

“It’s going to make for even more awkward holstering on a sidearm,” Penny said.

Jinkke huffed. “I keep expressing to you that this design is not for—”

“Not for a pistol,” Penny groaned. “I know. Keep your pants on, will you? I’m just thinking ahead to what we could develop later.” Penny screwed up her face in thought, tapping an insistent finger against the larger sketch of a miniaturized hologram projector beside the schematic of the whole weapon.

“I’m telling you,” Penny said, “The rifles are good. But the smaller the weapon, the closer the combat, the more valuable broad visibility and target acquisition are. Developing this tech for handguns is the sweet spot.”

Pausing, Jinkke lowered her pencil to the table. The patience in her expression dwindled. “We are in the middle of the wilderness, merely conceptualizing an application for a technology neither of us is expert in, with materials we don’t possess. It may be an enjoyable puzzle to play at, but I would hardly call it development. In a matter of days, you and I won’t even be in the same…” She cut herself off, but Penny knew perfectly where the statement was going.

“Right,” Penny muttered, straightening herself and sniffing back another threat of emotion. “You’re right. We’re just screwing around, wasting time to keep from going nuts.” Her eyes fell unbiddenly to the satchel on the floor beside the worktable. She gawked a moment at the thing, virtually staring through it as she absorbed the facts she’d nearly forgotten. However distracting this project was, it had a shelf life, one that was likely no longer than their time with the Vigil. Any minute or hour now, they’d get the OK to make their way back south, to their real lives, and— Well, without a shop, without a job, without a home, and without a friend, there would be no more avoiding reality for Penny, not with this project or any other.

As if the gods had read her mind, footsteps and the irregular clatter and clank of armor at the grotto’s entrance announced the arrival of someone from the Vigil outpost. She turned, already registering Yissa’s whistle-pitched approval of the newcomer. “Is it time?” the giddy scholar asked. “Is it time? Oh, excelsior. It’s time!”

Penny had almost forgotten Yissa was even there. She’d been there for the last hour, in fact, simply waiting near the two of them for nothing but convenience. Instead of interacting, though, she’d been silently taking notes, as she had for the last several days. Though she’d spent most evenings with Penny and Jinkke, Yissa had spent her days off somewhere else, pondering and documenting something very secretively. Penny could only assume it was related to what they’d experienced with that jade monster, but the scholar didn’t want to say, and Penny didn’t want to ask.

A vigilwoman stood now at the cave’s entrance. “Yes, it’s time,” she said to Yissa. “The supply wagon is ready to leave. They’re just waiting on the three of you.”

“Excelsior!” Yissa cheered, already bouncing toward the cavern’s ruined mouth as she rolled up her notes.

“It’s about time,” Penny sighed, feigning relief.

Gods, she wasn’t relieved to be leaving, was she? But why not? She would have been just an hour ago, right?

Grimacing, Penny forced the thoughts out of her head. Wherever she would go and whatever she would do after all this was a matter for another time. All that mattered now was that she was leaving this place, damn it. She began scouring the worktable of all her remaining tools, taking them in hand and jamming them artlessly back into her toolbelt.

Though no one listened to her, Yissa prattled excitedly about returning to the Priory, while Jinkke collected her remaining things into the jute sack she’d purchased off one of the vigilmen in the camp. She scooped up her pencils, straightedge, and other simple drafting tools before rolling up the holo-sight schematics and sliding them into her shoddy new sack. Before Penny knew it, the asura had hoisted her larger pack to a shoulder and was walking away toward the grotto’s entrance, casting a curious eye back at the human.

Penny turned, almost to follow, but something nagged at her, pulling her back toward the table. “Wait,” Penny called, snapping a glance back at Minkus’ pack lying in the dirt. “Are you just going to leave that there?”

Jinkke turned back, recognizing what Penny was referring to and replying with a cool, rehearsed precision that angered Penny almost as much as her words did. “I’ve come to the conclusion,” Jinkke said, “that you should have it and its contents.”

Penny blinked. She felt the fire stoking up inside her, but her words were slow to come. “What? No. I—”

“Gave it to me?” Jinkke offered. “Yes, I comprehend, and trust me, I am grateful for that. Any reminder of my big brother is an unequivocal gift.” Swinging her own backpack around and reaching inside, she wrestled something out past the rest of the contents. It was Minkus’ magical focus, the ultramagnet the siblings had built together as kids. Despite her frustration, Penny knew exactly where this conversation was going.

“This,” Jinkke said, caressing the two-pronged magnet with her free hand, “carries more meaning than anything else. My brother accumulated and sent me numerous things in his travels, and those gifts were always kind—I still possess most of them. But this—”

A cough cut her off. It went on for a moment before she could collect herself, something that had become more common in the last few days. Penny didn’t know if the wet glimmer in Jinkke’s eye was the result of their conversation or the little woman’s coughing fit.

“This magnet,” she finally continued, “was something that he and I shared, something that I imparted to him before ever receiving it back. It carries the emotional mass of years between us. A lifetime, really. I have no concrete theory as to how his magical gifts actually operated, but I have substantial reason to believe this memento literally protected him long after I’d forgotten is existence. It’s as if— as if his faith, his kindness, and my intellect are somehow intertwined in this device. It’s— Alchemy, it’s like I have him right here, now.”

The little woman’s voice quavered at that last note, and her misty eyes pooled further with tears. She clutched the focus to her chest and set her attention on the leather pack flopped over against the worktable, but Penny refused to follow her gaze.

“Unfortunately I have no such tie to his backpack,” Jinkke said, “or the trinkets he held inside it. But I hypothesize that you do.”

For a moment she stood still at the center of the workstation cavern, waiting to see what Penny would do. Torment, Penny didn’t know what she would do. She didn’t even know what to say. She felt her own tears in her throat, and whether they were made of rage or grief, she opted to quash them.

The two stood there a moment before Yissa’s patience ran out. “You did hear what the crusader just stated, correct?” the scholar said, her wiry braids trembling with her excitement. “Our transport is prepared to depart, only awaiting us. In mere minutes, we could begin the journey back to Rata Sum, back to wherever each of us is going.

“I for one have every intent of boarding and returning to the Durmand Priory with all possible rapidity. With the knowledge I’ve amassed, I have incalculable hours of subsequent research to attend to. Alchemy, I could start in more than a dozen different places, with my study taking me in at least 38 different—”

Her rambling was exactly the annoyance Penny needed to jumpstart her system. “You’ve waited this long,” she interrupted. “You’ll survive another minute.”

“As for you,” Penny snapped her attention to Jinkke, who inspected her with increasingly sad and curious eyes. “You don’t want it? Fine. Neither do I. I don’t need that bag for anything, and I sure as Torment don’t want the damned toys.”

Jinkke’s eyes narrowed at the last remark, and Penny wished instantly she hadn’t said it. Gods, she could almost see the thoughts rushing through the asura’s oversized head. She was as dogged as her brother, and too much quicker.

“It was a sibling who gave them to you,” Jinkke posited. The theory seemed to come out just as quickly as it coalesced in her head. “My brother temporarily played the surrogate, tying him in your imagination to positive memories of that sibling, but the loss of Minkus has doubled the pain of the original loss, causing you to reject further attachment. Is that it?”

“Oh gods.” Penny pinched the bridge of her nose, her head suddenly filled with horrific images of what the next days of travel could entail if she didn’t get the asura off this inquiry trail. “No, Inspector. I don’t have any siblings.”

Jinkke screwed up her face, formulating something new. “Your mother, then. The connection between maternal figure and friend seems unusual, but then, psychology is not my specialty. It’s a strange field with often illogical connections.”

Penny rolled her eyes and felt her temper abating. She had no idea why, but these crapshoot theories were extinguishing her. “Not your specialty is right.”

Her father would clearly be Jinkke’s next target, so she waited. To Penny’s surprise, though, Jinkke said nothing more. The crusader turned and disappeared beyond the edge of the dilapidated wall, with Yissa all but bounding on her heels, and Jinkke turned to follow them just a few steps later. She shot a quick glance back at Penny and then at her brother’s bag, but she said nothing, leaving Penny alone in the makeshift workstation.

Life seemed to leave the room with the two asura, and Penny became suddenly and unavoidably aware of the sound of jungle birds, chattering technicians, and a rustling of windblown leaves all outside the grotto. Inside there was only the sharp awareness of hot, stuffy nothing all around her.

She tottered a step toward the outside world but stopped, unable to bring herself to leave yet.

“Shit!” She barked, stomping back to the table and grabbing Minkus’ backpack off the ground. She contorted her face in frustration at her own weakness, but that didn’t stop the sense of relief she felt deep in her gut.

Nearly reaching the mouth of the grotto, Penny stepped aside to snatch up her now filthy, tangerine bag as well and slide it in with the figures in Minkus’ pack. She could hate herself later—and she had every intention of doing that—but now she had everything. Now she could go.

——————————————————————————————————

They left the camp, finally bidding farewell to the chill, gray sylvari Lieutenant and the guards at the gate. Neither Ventyr nor Captain Gelwin appeared for their departure, and that was fine with Penny. She was perfectly happy not seeing either of them again.

The days passed as they rolled and bumped down the road in the back of a marmox-drawn wagon, every turn presenting the same weathered paths and generally verdant landscapes Penny had seen before—at least when she was looking at them. The trip took less time than Penny had spent on nearly anything in the last season, with no numbing cold, no Inquest agents, no armed combat, no financial devastations, no murder, and no fear of imminent death. Maybe it was that utter lack of adrenaline that made it feel so damned long.

The tropical treelines, butte walls, and winding rises and descents through eastern Maguuma had once held something of a foreign mystique. Now they just felt like old pants: worn, forgettable, and full of holes Penny didn’t want to remember the cause of. She did remember, though. She remembered every step of their terrible ordeal, and she always would. Remembering was part of what she owed Minkus.

There was more that she owed him, though. So much more. She’d come to that conclusion during their excessive time with the Vigil. Repaying Minkus wasn’t just a matter of doing better, or even being better—gods knew she wouldn’t do a good job at that however she tried. Her friend had been all about honesty and self-giving and other things that Penny had often found more costly than they were worth. He’d been about his friends, and his family, and pretty much anyone else who crossed his path.

Penny had thought she’d embraced some of that mindset when she gave Minkus’ belongings to Jinkke, but being rebuffed had forced her to rethink it. No, there was something else she needed to do, something she’d actually tried to do but couldn’t. She didn’t know if she could now. And, gods, why would she? It wasn’t like Jinkke didn’t know they’d all left Minkus’ body behind, that Penny had left him behind. Saying it now didn’t add anything new or helpful to the situation. Minkus would say something pithy about it relieving her of the weight or something, but Penny had the haunting suspicion it would only open up something entirely new, something her gut seized at even the inkling of.

It was those sorts of gods-awful reflections that captivated Penny when her mind was left to wander too far as they rode along. She’d sit at the fore of the wagonbed, her gaze shifting back and forth between the lush landscape and the leather pack lying nearby, caught between one awful thought and another, with no idea what to do.

She wasn’t the only one lost in her own mind, though.

Scholar Yissa spoke far less than Penny had braced herself for. She’d still prattle on for an hour if she spoke for a minute, but more often than not, the asura’s minutes were spent in relative silence, obsessively scribbling across sheets of parchment. Occasionally, when she thought no one was looking, she’d draw out a small, folded kerchief and gaze inside, careful to shelter it from view.

Jinkke too spent sizable time in contemplation. After all their recent time together, Penny could tell when Jinkke’s thoughts turned to Minkus. Or maybe it was more apt to say that she could tell when Jinkke’s thoughts turned away from Minkus, because that most often happened when the two got back into their holo-sight designs.

They threw ideas back and forth for hours as they drew up new plans again and again. Most of what they exchanged amounted to nothing of lasting importance, but simply the act of arguing, sketching, re-sketching, and vehemently taking notes left them with fewer remaining hours to grieve or worry.

But that, like everything else, had a limit.

As they started out their fourth and last day of travel, Penny realized exactly how far they’d come. Rather, she let herself realize it.

They’d spent their final night just outside Brill Alliance labs, that strange facility with all the skritt. She’d of course recognized the place on the spot, but the endless stream of plateaus, forest thickets, rutted roads, and technical problems to solve with Jinkke had left Penny too tired to really consider where it was on the map or what reaching it meant. Now, though, stepping out of her tent and blinking into the morning sun, she could see the distant shape of Rata Sum hovering over the horizon, and there was no avoiding the situation. That day would see them reach their destination, and this limbo between the gods-forsaken past she was trying to escape and the question mark of a future she wanted to ignore would be at an end.

“There it is,” Yissa chirped, suddenly appearing at Penny’s side with a grin as broad as the morning sky. “The thoroughfare back to our lives! I will need to connect with the local Priory representative and requisition a transmat disk to Lornar’s Pass as soon as I get there. Of course barring success in that request, a relayed journey to Lion’s Arch via asura gate and on to the Priory by foot or other practical conveyance will be in order. Either way, though, we are on the threshold of ending this…” Her excited pace slowed as she seemed to reflect on what they’d come out of as much as what she was about to enter. She forced some remaining enthusiasm into her voice. “We are on the threshold of ending this difficult mission, I suppose, progressing us toward something more.”

Penny kept her eyes on the hovering city in the distance. “Yeah, sure. Something more.” She tried to give it a sardonic edge, but even she knew it just sounded sad.

She glanced down to find Yissa eyeing her expectantly. Before she could open her ever-yammering mouth, though, the Vigil driver called at them: “Thirty minutes. Get the tents down and let’s be back on the road.” He and his teammate had been awake longer than either Penny or Yissa. The Vigil pair had been up first every morning, feeding the marmoxes, preparing food for the travelers, and mapping their day’s route.

Penny thanked her luck. A task meant less chatter from the scholar. “You heard the man,” she said, already turning back to the tent.

Before she could take a step, she all but ran into Jinkke, who’d somehow crept up within feet of her. Penny leapt back a pace before catching herself. “Shit. Stop doing that.”

Jinkke stood, unmoved by Penny’s surprise. She gazed up at the human like she was deciding something she’d been working at for some time. Just how long had Minkus’ sister been standing there?

“What?” Penny asked, feeling suddenly exposed. “Is there something in my teeth?”

Jinkke’s face tightened thoughtfully, but before discomfort could open Penny’s mouth again, the asura shifted her focus. She leaned to glance around Penny at the massive city flying on the horizon. “Nearly there,” Jinkke said. She flashed one more considering eye at Penny before heading back to their tent. “I’ll collect the bedding.”

Whatever that little, blond schemer was up to, Penny had no time to consider it. The three travelers obeyed their instructions, gathering their belongings before collapsing both tents.

As the driver got the animals hitched up to the wagon, Yissa, Jikke, and finally Penny lined up to toss their bags aboard and climb in. Something struck her as she waited to heave her things in. From where Penny stood, she couldn’t see the bag in Yissa’s arms, not without leaning to a better vantage to see around her shoulder. It was a completely ordinary thought that suddenly had curious ramifications in her mind: what if you could only see a gun’s sight from one, proper angle. It was a simple thought, a potentially elegant thought, and best of all, it was a thought that had absolutely nothing to do with either Penny’s past or future.

“Smalls,” she said, still staring openly at Yissa’s back.

Jinkke turned, traced Penny’s gaze, and rolled her eyes. “If you want her to move, just direct her yourself.”

“No, no, no.” Penny scowled, but only briefly. “Holograms. Can they be made visible from only one direction?”

Jinkke raised a skeptical brow but still answered. “As far as I’m aware, that’s a technical possibility. Although, doing so would in many ways subvert the greatest strengths of the technology. In our proposed application, I’m rather unsure what it would—”

In the asura’s circumspect nomenclature, that was a yes. Penny’s thoughts ran wild now, in a direction that didn’t twist her stomach in knots. “How narrow of a direction could we limit visibility to?”

Jinkke’s dark face soured in thought. “I’d postulate that any limits would simply be a function of the device’s capacity to bend light. Why? What are you conceiving?”

Penny contemplated drawing this out, but she chose otherwise, lining up her fingers in simulation of the rear and forward sights on a traditional gun. “Two points create a targeting line parallel to the shot’s path, right?”

Jinkke nodded, brow arched once more. “That would be the geometric foundation of weapon sights, yes.”

Penny smiled. “But if you could only see the sight from a single, narrowly scoped direction, say the width of the projectile itself, exactly in line with its path…”

“The shooter’s eye would become the second point,” the asura finished. “At least nearly. At farther distances, even a slight variation in vector would prove problematic.” Her eyes danced in her skull, and Penny knew she was tracking unseen diagrams and calculi. “Unless we bent the hologram even more intentionally. We could perhaps keep every view of it in total parallelity with the projectile’s estimated path, moving the sight with any movement of the eye that falls within the permissible field of view.”

Jinkke’s eyes widened at the words coming out of her own mouth, and she grinned in surprise at Penny. “Smoke and sparks, it actually wouldn’t need the second hologram or a physical forward sight at all.”

Penny returned the asura’s grin and shoving her arm in celebration. “Great. Now, what do we need to accomplish that?”

The travelers finished loading up, and Penny and Jinkke continued exchanging thoughts on the matter right up til the moment the driver cracked the reins. The wagon pulled away, the schematics came out, and Penny had something to focus on again.

To her great relief, the two spent almost all of that day theorizing and noting what their new design could look like. Jinkke scribbled notes on parchment as thoughts bubbled out of her mouth. Penny corrected her at several points, mainly matters of application and purpose, and snatched the pencil away multiple times to offer alternate options to preliminary design sketches. The two bickered, muttered insults at halfcocked propositions, and barked cheers at a couple of minor breakthroughs—at least in theory, anyway. Without either realizing it, the road wore on, short meals came and went, and the sun made its course to the opposite end of the sky.

Late in the day, as the sun descended toward the western horizon, the two of them were forced to shift positions simply to see their work around the cast of their own shadows. As they reversed their placement relative to the holo-sight schematics, Penny stretched, the crick in her lower back suddenly telling her just how long she’d been sitting in one place.

Jinkke did likewise. Only, when Penny settled back down and let her mouth start running again, she looked up to find Jinkke not only paying her zero attention, but still standing and staring eastward, into the distance.

Penny hadn’t recognized the rhythmic rattle of wagon wheels over a stonework bridge, but as she scooted around to see what the hell Jinkke was so taken with, she couldn’t miss the waterway snaking away beneath their crossing. It collected in some deeper body of water a couple miles east of them. Rocky shores and rushes led down either bank of the wandering river, making it as familiar to Penny as any of the other half-dozen she’d seen since leaving the moors.

The moment Jinkke saw this one, though, she could name it. All the life left her as she muttered, “Loch Jezt.” 

They ricketed over the bridge, and Jinkke only stared emptily out at the distant lake. Several minutes passed, and only as Jezt drifted out of sight did she lower herself to a seat and settle back against the wall of the wagon.

It surprised Penny, but she actually knew that name too: Loch Jezt. She’d heard Minkus say it enough times that it had stuck. It was the local lake near where he and his sister had grown up—he’d connected it to some game involving skelks and ooze. The loch was just north of Soren Draa, where Penny, Jinkke, Minkus, and Wepp had picked up their northbound wagon not too many days earlier and where they were headed now. Penny realized her distraction of work had served so well that she’d missed the whole day’s travel. Now here they were, almost back, almost done, and almost on their way to their individual lives. The moment that happened, Penny’s life would be restarted at a dead stop, but her mind, picking up its anxious pace, didn’t stop with that terrible outcome. Unless she did something now, reaching the end of the journey would mean she’d miss her last chance to do what she knew she had to.

Just that fast, Penny was blinded by guilt. Maybe she didn’t owe this to Minkus—maybe—but she sure as hell owed it to Jinkke. Her mouth was open and she was talking before she knew it.

“Look, I’m sorry,” Penny blurted at Jinkke. Her eyes darted in every direction but the asura’s, but she knew she had Jinkke’s attention. “I’m sorry. I mean, I’m sorry that he’s not here— your brother. Or— his body, that is. He isn’t here, wasn’t there in the camp, because I left him at that nightmare of a facility. That’s on me. It’s on me.” She paused, only half aware of her own blathering words because her mind was consumed with the image of Minkus’ body sprawled behind them as they fled Thaumacore.

“I tried,” Penny went on, pounding a fist into her thigh. “I swear, but without the norn, I just couldn’t— I couldn’t think of a way to move him. I didn’t want to leave him there, but I— we had to go, to get out, and I just couldn’t come up with a way. Please, I’m so sorry.”

She only saw Jinkke in her periphery as her eyes fluttered between the wagon’s baseboards, the asuran settlement on the southeastern horizon, and her own trembling hands. Penny even caught sight of Yissa, who had set aside her little fabric-wrapped treasure to listen with embarrassing intent. Penny wasn’t trying to avoid Jinkke’s eyes; her attention just gravitated anywhere and everywhere else, fearing what she might find in her friend’s expression.

The silence between them went on, moment by terrifying moment, and Penny’s circuitous gaze drew more tightly toward Jinkke’s face until curiosity got the better of her. She finally found Jinkke’s lilac eyes—gods, why, of all traits, did the siblings have to share that? Shame and grief burned in Penny’s throat.

Jinkke, however, only shook her head. “Of course you found no solution. None of us did. Not you, not me, not her.” She pointed from Penny to herself and then to Yissa. “Did you honestly conclude that I hadn’t performed every one of the calculations you did, and more? He was my brother. You weren’t the only person who left him there. We didn’t have a choice.”

Embarrassed, Penny let her eyes wander again. She’d been so razor-focused on what she hadn’t done, that it hadn’t even occurred to her that anyone else felt the same. Of course, the thought didn’t get very far now, either: cut off almost instantly by an even sharper guilt—maybe the truer guilt she’d hidden below the surface. Penny had barely considered it when the words burst out of her. “Yeah, fine, OK, but you didn’t need to do it. I did. Gods, I needed to get him out, to repay him at least that much. Because— gods, I’m the reason he died!”

She hadn’t meant to say it. She didn’t want to say it. But Torment, there it was just poured out of her, leaving her somewhere dark and wretched, between rage and tears. Penny jammed an accusatory finger to her own chest. “You didn’t see it. Why would you? I’d gotten my own dumb ass staring down a gun barrel at the same time he picked a fight with that golem, and when the gun went off, I didn’t die—didn’t even feel the round! That magic should have been around Biggie, but it stopped the shot aimed at me instead, and he got blasted for it.”

She paused, finding herself panting. “Don’t you get it, Smalls? I’m the gods-damned reason he’s dead.”

Jinkke’s eyes narrowed, the corners of her delicate nose creasing into hard lines that stood out even against her dark face. Against the sway of the wagon, she stood up again and crossing the creaking wagon bed, her voice audible despite how low her tone got. “How dare you?”

Penny felt a stab of relief. She deserved whatever came next, and she would pay it.

Jinkke reached out and gripped Penny by the collar, pulling the woman’s face close enough for Penny to feel her hot breath. Jinkke’s eyes darted back and forth between Penny’s with a ferocity that made her want to pull away. “Don’t you dare claim responsibility for what he did, Arkayd,” she spat. “You didn’t make him do anything. I didn’t make him do anything. Everything Minkus accomplished for us, he did of his own free will. You and I have no active role in any of it but to be grateful, so shut your theory hole and be grateful!”

Penny gaped, blinking stupidly at the fire that had just erupted from Jinkke’s mouth. It wasn’t at all the rage that she’d expected. Yissa appeared to be in a similar state, and the soldier beside the wagon driver had turned back, a hand in readiness on the hilt of his sword.

Jinkke let go, settling back and slowing her breath, but there were a dozen things in her words that echoed violently in Penny’s mind. Amid them, though, there was one logic puzzle she couldn’t suss out, so that was where she went.

“What do you mean, you didn’t make him do anything? No one said you did. You’re the one person in all that mess who wasn’t at fault for anything that happened. What the hell would you possibly have been responsible for?”

As she awaited an answer, Penny recognized the discomfort in Jinkke’s pinched shoulders. The asura’s indignance had buckled under the weight of something that looked strangely like guilt. That didn’t make any sense.

“You might have been too self-consumed to notice,” Jinkke said with a remaining hint of critique in her tone, “but you weren’t the only recipient of his magical defenses.” She faltered, letting her attention fall to the floor of the wagon. “He shielded us both instead of himself.”

Jinkke vigorously rubbed her eyes before regaining the accusatory quality to her words. She cast a finger at Penny. “But, Alchemy, Penny, that wasn’t our choice. It was his. And as someone who commandeered far too many of his choices in life, I will not do it again. And neither will you. Neither one of us is robbing him of his agency.” Her gaze fell to the boards beneath her feet again. “Minkus intervened to save us, at his own expense. He did that.”

As Jinkke deflated into her own thoughts, Penny’s mind went back to the scene, to the image of Minkus, bloodied and broken in his sister’s arms as she sobbed over him. With this short conversation, that whole experience had just been rewritten, and though Penny couldn’t shake the burning shame in her chest, she knew Jinkke was right. For all his tenderness, Biggie had developed a stubborn streak, and gods, it was just as good and generous as the rest of him. Though some twisted voice in Penny’s head still wanted to bear the weight of his death, that would be a worse insult than damn near anything else she could do.

No, in the moment he’d died, Minkus had made his own choice to save both her and his sister, whatever it cost him. Gods, she thought soberly, he gave me the same gift he gave his own sister.

Penny sat silently with that understanding until Jinkke issued a final thought, returning to a more reasoned and thoughtful tone. “My big brother put a valuation on your life and mine, and in his estimate, we were both worth more to him than he was. It’s what Minkus did, what he always did, and no amount of self-flagellating guilt will ever recompense that. So… just be grateful, alright?”

Penny didn’t know how many minutes, hours, feet, or miles passed beyond that statement, and she had no idea how many of them she’d spent nodding stupidly to the rhythmic echo of Jinkke’s words in her head. The road kept bumping past beneath them, the wagon rocked this way and that across increasing ruts, and other travelers appeared with increasing frequency. The other traffic, coming on wagons, beasts of burden, and on foot, was composed mostly of asura, but occasionally sylvari or humans as well. The road was busier than it had been on their way out of the settlement, but that thought or almost any other could hardly hold Penny’s attention. Her friend had stuck his neck out to save her, and she hadn’t, couldn’t have, done a damned thing to affect it.

Without thinking, Penny took up Minkus’ pack again, reaching in to run a hand over pieces of her childhood and the dirty, orange bag that had held them for so many years prior. More than once, she found her hand simply caressing the travel-worn leather of Minkus’ backpack itself. The tactile sensations grounded every other thought and feeling rattling through her.

Without warning, Jinkke’s sentiment, still resounding in Penny’s mind, found its mirror in something her brother had said the night before Thaumacore: “I’m sure they were grateful.”

She and Minkus had sat in the mouth of their slapdash workshop, and he’d finally wrestled the story of her old man out of her. Instead of hating the man like Penny did, though, Minkus had of course asked if he’d succeeded at saving the people of Ascalon Settlement from the centaur raids he’d gone to end. Penny told Minkus he had, and that was when Minkus had said it: maybe her father wasn’t as dumb as Penny had insisted, but “Maybe he just wanted to help those people.” Minkus was “...sure they were grateful” for it.

Penny looked up and once again saw Minkus the Large in his sister’s lilac eyes. Be grateful, they seemed to say again, just like the settlers were.

Maybe he was right. Maybe, at least to those settlers, her old man had been just what Minkus was to her.

There was silence for some time, and before Penny knew it, the vehicle slowed to a stop. Her attention expanded beyond her own thoughts, suddenly bringing the surrounding world into focus. They’d stopped to allow an adult asura and her gaggle of progeny to cross the road amid rows of diamond-shaped buildings on either side of them. They were in Soren Draa.

Sunset hadn’t quite come yet, but the inhabitants of the large town milled in and out of long shadows cast by the fire-orange sky, leaving their work and returning home, or whatever asura did at the end of a day. Lights had come on in some of the building windows, and it looked like vendors at the open-air market were tearing down their stalls. It was hard to make it all out, as the heart of the settlement, a little farther on, was built on a rise, shaded even more deeply by the half-circle cliffside that surrounded it.

The wagon came to a stop as it pulled into one of a dozen elevated loading docks lined up on the outskirts of the town. A few other transporters were still at work unloading wares, and Penny realized they were in roughly the same place where they’d boarded the wagon that had taken them out of this place so many days earlier. In fact, Penny thought she saw the same golem-drawn cart that they’d ridden them, parked in a similar fashion nearby.

“We’re here,” the driver said, looking back at the three in the bed of the wagon. With a pragmatic brevity that screamed soldier, he recommended they collect their things and either head for the Rata Sum asura gate before it closed or follow him and his associate to a nearby inn.

Hoisting her bag to her shoulder, Penny rolled up the holo-sight designs that were still strewn around the bed between her and Jinkke and slid them cautiously into the open mouth of Minkus’ pack. Jinkke collected her remaining things, and the two sat quietly as Yissa hopped down from the now opened wagon bed.

The verbose scholar was already issuing some kind of lengthy farewell to the driver and his companion when her feet hit the ground. She stumbled, barely catching herself, and before she could stop it, a small something popped free of her pocket, hit the ground, and flowered open. It was that kerchief she’d been ogling for days, and right at its center, light glinted off a small, shiny…

“Good gods,” Penny exclaimed, recognizing the thing immediately. It was a jagged scrap of depowered jade.

Her outburst instantly garnered Jinkke’s attention. “Why in the Alchemy do you have that?” she barked, pointing.

Before either vigilman had a chance to look, Yissa ducked to snatch up the scrap of fabric and its contents, wrapping the jade shard from view again in the very process of stuffing it back in her pocket. Though her movements were guiltily secretive, the proud smirk on her face was anything but.

“Ease your repulsors,” the scholar chirruped. “It’s fully discharged. There is no longer any inherent threat to it, though there are still pages and pages of analysis to document. Even in this inert state, the number of observations I’ve already made, coupled with our firsthand experience of its magically imbued state, will utterly change what we know of—” she lowered her voice, clandestinely whispering the name, “the mursaat.”

Penny opened her mouth, rebuke already on her lips, but the wiry, little woman kept right on. There was no stopping her now.

“Why, with the Priory’s array of equipment and analytical experts, we may very well be able to uncover the crystalline structure of this substance that made it the prime conveyor of—” Once again she whispered the name, “mursaat magic.” Clearly some deeply buried part of the little woman did understand the idea of quiet. She just never listened to it.

The scholar kept yanmering for several minutes, until Penny slapped a hand over her mouth. Of all the things Penny cared about right then, the buzzing asura and her absurd prize were least on the list.

“Keep it,” Penny muttered at the scholar, maintaining an eye on the two soldiers attending to the marmoxes. “I don’t care. Get it back to your fortress of deep-thinking bookworms, study it from here to the Mists—hell, make a damn necklace out of it. I don’t care. Just put it away so those guys don’t see it and I never have to think about it again. Got it?” Scholar Yissa nodded, her braids bouncing excitedly, and Penny cautiously pulled her hand away.

The moment passed, with the two gray-clad vigilmen doing nothing. They were clearly tired of the trio, offering one more warning about the gate closing for the night and giving robotic farewells before leading the marmoxes to a stable. Penny and the two asura snatched up their things and made a beeline for the asura gate at the other end of the settlement.

It didn’t take long, and when they arrived, there was only one asura ahead of them in line. The operator kindly assured them that she would grant passage to them and another traveler just behind them before shutting down for the night. A pair of travelers exited the circular gate, coming down from Rata Sum, and the female standing in front of Yissa and Jinkke paid the operator before entering in the other direction.

Yissa and Jinkke stepped forward to the front of the queue, and Penny slowly followed, feeling a bolt of trepidation surge through her. As much as she hated asura-gate travel, she’d intended to go through the thing as soon as she got there, being immediately on her way back into Rata Sum and then to— well, wherever she was going next. Lion’s Arch, maybe? As much as Penny had talked about it, she still didn’t know—she had nogods-damned idea. Recognizing that sent her stomach spinning as though she’d already gone through the gate. Passing through that was the very last step Penny actually had any kind of a plan for. The other side of the gate? That was a total void, the blackness that engulfed her in every one of her nightmares, leaving her totally alone.

“Penny, are you coming?”

She blinked, coming to herself again. Jinkke stood before her, eyes questioning. Someone new had exited the gate, and Yissa was now on the ramp, waiting for the other two to catch up and enter on her heels.

The operator grew visibly impatient at her console, gesturing them toward the gate. “If you please?”

“I— no, I can’t,” Penny stammered, stepping out of the line.

Jinkke frowned in confusion but pulled herself together, apologizing to the gate operator and asking for just a moment as she followed.

“They’re on the cusp of closing the gate for the night,” she demanded, eyes meeting Penny’s. “If we don’t travel now—”

“I’m not going through that thing,” Penny interrupted. She threw her arms across her chest. “You two do what you need to, but I’m— I’ll stay somewhere here for the night.”

Yissa came back as the asura who’d been behind them in line paid his fee and walked into the shimmering wall of magitechnical light. “What’s transpiring here?” Yissa asked. “We have no time to squander. They’ll be deactivating the gate in only—”

“No shit,” Penny said, feeling her wits return to her. She didn’t clearly know why she was doing what she was, but she went with the instinct. “You two made it,” she argued waving them on. “You got here, so go. It’s fine. I just want to— I’m just going to stay here, find somewhere to drink. I’ll get on when I’m good and ready.”

Both the asura eyed her incredulously, but they looked like they were puzzling out very different problems.

Jinkke turned back toward the gate, the glow of which stood out more and more against the darkening landscape. She seemed to decide something and turned back to her companions. She looked to Penny. “You have fiscal means for a stay at an inn, correct?”

“Yeah, why?”

Saying nothing more to the human, Jinkke turned to face Yissa. “I’ll remain with the bookah,” she said. “You can depart.”

For a moment, the honey-haired female just glanced between them, making up her mind, but she nodded her acceptance, and sadness suddenly touched her face. She stepped toward the gate, but stopped, coming back. “Despite all our losses—despite all your personal losses,” she said, putting a gentle hand to Jinkke’s shoulder, “I can not convey how grateful I am for your assistance, both of you. Of course I appreciate the contributions to my studies—my ears, the things we learn here could propel our field of study for the next decade. But for rescuing me, that is where the greatest mass of my gratitude lies. I will never—not in a thousand lifetimes returned to the Alchemy—forget that.” The little bookworm fell into silent consideration, bowing her head. “Whatever you do next, may the Eternal Alchemy facilitate it.”

Jinkke rested a hand on Yissa’s shoulder as the scholar exchanged a nod with Penny and repositioned the bag on her shoulder. The gate operator cleared her throat loudly, and Yissa backed toward the gate, waving a final farewell before turning and stepping through. There was a flash of light, and she disappeared, instantly rematerializing far above them in the the flying city of Rata Sum.

For several minutes, Penny and Jinkke stood in silence beside each other, thoughtlessly watching the gate operator run through the steps of deactivating and locking the gate for the night. More lights came on around them as the settlement fell into night, and the two were left alone amid the shuffling traffic of Soren Draa’s inhabitants all going about their evening lives.

Sucking her teeth, Jinkke broke the silence. “Would you care to explain why we’re standing here staring at a deactivated transmaterialization gate?”

She glanced at Jinkke standing beside her and then away again. She hadn’t had much of a plan when she’d stepped away from the gate, but this certainly wasn’t it. Her actions should have left her independent, alone. “Would you like to explain what you’re still doing here?”

The tart expression on Jinkke’s face told Penny her words had had more bite than she’d intended. Gods, she didn’t even know what she intended now.

The asura sighed, contemplating, and came to some kind of decision again. She coughed a few times before collecting herself and taking on that quintessentially self-assured tone. “What do you intend to do next?” Something about it grabbed Penny by the collar and shook.

“What do I intend to do next?” she repeated. What was there to do? She could roll over and die. Part of her thought that wasn’t a half bad plan. But, no, she could never bring herself to simply quit, however much life tried to kill her. And yet, going back to simply carving out her own little slice of the pie wasn’t something she had any interest in either; the living image of Minkus in her head wouldn’t let her do that.

Penny shrugged. “Tonight, I’m getting blasted. Tomorrow, who the hell knows?”

“You should stay in Rata Sun, with me,” Jinkke said.

Penny felt her eyebrows shoot up her head as she turned to look down at the asura. “What?” she almost laughed. “Where? At your asura school?”

“Yes,” Jinkke replied coolly, if a little offended. “Temporary at least. I can arrange housing at Synergetics until you have a strategy for what comes next.”

“What?” Penny piped again. “There’s no way in Torment I’m joining your school.”

Jinkke shook her head. “Smoke and sparks, no.” She snickered. “They would never admit you.”

Penny turned, squaring her shoulders to the little snot and lining up a small battery of cursing rebuttals, but before her mouth could open, she caught eyes with Jinkke. There, in the soft lilac she’d shared with her brother, was a playful kindness more reminiscent of Minkus than any color possibly could be. Penny realized she still held Minkus’ bag in her hands, feeling the broken bits of wood through the leather, and she exhaled a breath that felt like she’d been holding it for years.

Though she scowled in disapproval, Penny nodded. “Fine.” What else was she going to do, and where else would she have someone to do it with? Penny gestured back toward the center of Soren Draa, holding more gently to Minkus’ bag and her father’s figures inside. “But the gate’s still closed, so I’m still getting a drink, or five.”

Jinkke shook her head but smiled, coming up alongside Penny as she strode back through the settlement’s foot traffic.

She noticed her friend flitting curious glances up at her. More specifically, Jinkke cast those glances at Penny’s hands still wrapped around Minkus’ pack.

Penny sighed, glaring up at the heavens. She could fight this further, but what was the point? The truth was, she didn’t really want to.

“My father. They were from my father,” she said. 

Victory ignited in Jinkke’s eyes.

“You’re as bad as your brother. You know that?”

Sadness took much of victory’s place, but Jinkke’s grin also deepened. Penny felt the pang of grief and joy as well, but something told her that would just be how it was for a while.

“Find us a pub, and I’ll tell you about him, OK?” Before too much enthusiasm came out of the little blond woman, Penny threw up a finger. “But you’re buying the first round.”

THE END