The Krakos: Book Two of The Legend of the Artificer

Chapter 1

There were a great many things in life that were unanticipated. Tibalt, of course, had always been aware of such things, and knew as well as anyone else that you could not plan for the unanticipated. That was what made it unanticipated, you see. The lack of being able to plan. It made life interesting, of course, but his life up until this point had been nothing but plans, on a day to day basis, at that. Of course, there were always choices he made on a whim, but it had been very structured, with the tower itself as the scaffolding that held it all together. There was a safety in the monotony, even if he had gotten quite bored with it all. He had been fairly aware, on some level, that touch starvation was a thing, and it may take some readjustment to hear more than one voice at a time, for longer than just a few minutes. He had also been aware, on some level, that ambient noise would change from what he was accustomed to. Of course it would.

But he had not, in fact, planned all that much for what it would feel like to have his back pressed to someone's chest. Despite the phrasing, it was the most innocent of touches, even with Grim's arms bumping either side of his torso as he taught him how to move with the horse and 'sit easy', coaxing him through the roll and slouch as he guided the reins with one hand and kept Tibalt balanced with the other.

"Now, you gotta keep your feet to yourself when doubling up like this, because a lot of Cairn's commands are from the heels and how you squeeze his sides," Grim explained as the horse stepped over the fallen log. "Not that I think he could confuse our legs."

"My legs are not that small," Tibalt muttered rebelliously as the frankly massive gray horse stepped through the puddling water. It had been a nightmare even getting up on the thing. From his idle memorization of horse breeds one day when he was sick of pouring molten metal over his flesh while the storm was still raging, he had learned quite a lot about horses and the theory of riding, just not the practice. He was fairly certain Cairn was something known as a Percha war horse, though why Grim needed a war horse was beyond him. It seemed excessive.

"They're a lot smaller than mine," Grim said, like he was amused, and the horse delicately stepped around a large boulder in the way.

Tibalt's gaze trailed down to compare just how massive Grim's thighs were against his, and felt a pang of insecurity at the comparison. He was fairly muscular, he knew he was fairly muscular, and the months of blacksmithing and heavy lifting had really put some shape on the body he'd been given, but he felt like a twig compared to Grim, and it was terrible. Maybe he would get that big if he was regularly riding horses? He hoped so. Grim looked like he'd been born on a horse. Even his hips were wide.

Getting up on the horse itself had been a shitshow. Apparently, horse ears were incredibly sensitive, which was something Tibalt should have considered before he started plastering his actual physical body in enchantments. Enchantments that, to more perceptive species, made a lot of noise. Really, he should have considered the stealth aspect of his enchantments from the get go. There were definitely species out there that could not only hear magic, but also feel it, and Cairn had not liked it, not one bit, until he got the bright idea to quickly sketch a mute charm on his arm, which functioned much in the same way as noise canceling headphones. The horses still hadn't liked it, but it was a lot easier after that to get up on them and start thinking of all of the ways he could fix the enchantment for a more permanent setting. Losing the constant white noise that was his body was jarring, and he didn't like it much, not at all, but concessions had to be made while he adjusted to the lack of noise that actually made it a lot easier to pick out aberrations, and fuck, he needed to figure out---

He was slipping dangerously, and Grim corrected him with a bump of his hand, and embarrassment washed over him.

"Where are we going, anyways?" he asked, rather than continue down that trail of thought when he was supposed to be focused on staying upright, and Angel, somewhere at the front of the line, snorted loudly.