The Autobiography of Gayle Hunter

One Thing I've Missed

Time passed.  Days blended to weeks, a whirl of events—a murderer in Kairos threatening the temples, and I helped Kari take them down, only to learn someone else was pulling the strings, someone still out there; and Mourn nearly died—Mourn nearly died, gods above, the heart I didn't have flipped upon itself when I heard and it was all I could do not to—and the mind flayers who killed Solstice's family when he was a boy, the ones he escaped from, the ones he destroyed—somehow they'd returned, and might well have still had his sister, and it took all our effort to keep him from spiraling into hopelessness; and...and all the while, the seed rested in the bottom of my coin pouch.  Waiting.  Waiting for...I don't know.  Didn't I want to return?  But every time I thought of it, my thoughts shied away again, and I couldn't bring myself to do anything with it.  It wasn't quite right.  I wasn't quite ready.  Will I ever be?  I thought about other things.

I'd added a lever to my crossbow, based on my mother's design, but integrated into the weapon itself, such that it set itself as soon as the bolt was loosed.  It was a delicate mechanism, at least compared to the rest of the weapon, and I had to be careful not to overwork it, but it served my purposes well.  The bolts, though...  I'd wrapped them with wire before, to better target them with enchantments, but it had always been a rough system, and it was high time I polished it.

Solstice continued researching flayers.  Others assisted him, honed their own skills, worked out strategies...  Restlessness pulled me away from my work, and I took a job—Kairos again, a missing tunneling crew somewhere beneath the city.  We found them trapped in cursed ruins, and...

I didn't know who constructed them, or what purpose they first served.  But now...  Their enchantments were ancient, too alien by half to be affected by modern magics, and...they tried to keep us there.  First with—I saw their tents.  As though we'd set up in a forest glade, all of us, even Caius, but no one was about, and then—my father's cloak was there, hanging on a tree branch, as though he came with us, and something urged me forward, to wait for their return, but it wasn't right at all, they were all dead and gone—the forest darkened, the ground turning to mud beneath my feet, and I was sinking, and I ran but I was sinking and I couldn't reach the trees, further and further until the ground closed over my head and—everything was close around me.  Dark.  Quiet.  Senseless.

Slowly, I counted to ten.

The ones I came with.  The rescue party.  They were out there.  They knew.  They were coming.

Slowly, I counted to ten.

This was temporary.  This was illusory.  This was nothing.

Slowly, slowly.

All would be well.

I'd done this before.  I could do it again.

"NOW!"

And I was free—and we rescued the tunnellers, and we all went our separate ways, and my work awaited me.  My thoughts spun.  I paid them little heed.  I sat with my work, and carved spiraled channels along the bolts in which to lay wire, and cast my enchantments and watched the Weave, and then one of the arrowheads caught within the Weave and I found myself commissioning countless custom arrowheads because if I could repeat that on purpose, find the pattern, perhaps the metal itself could catch the enchantment, hold it, enhance it...

He found me in the courtyard, crossbow bolts in various modified states spread across the table as I set the head of another, and it took me a moment to even notice him standing there.

"Oh!"  I relaxed in a moment, shaking my head.  "I'm glad to see you."

Mourn smiled, settling into a chair.  "It's good to see you as well."  We hadn't had the chance for much conversation the last while, and it...it was nice to see his smile.  "Made any progress?" he asked, motioning to the bolts.