Chapter 1

Some Enchanted Evening

Novembre 29, 5599

 

After Shorn had sailed away on the ship, L’ssilla suggested to Alizabet that the rest of the party stay in the city of Gröll Tower for the night. She mentioned that she had a surprise for them and that she would reveal what it was after supper. Although Alizabet wanted to get started on their journey to Mt. Forsaken. She had recently heard from Theleisium that the Amber Helm was once given to the Blackbeard Dwarves to protect. She knew that they had a long way to travel and she was anxious to get started, but she realized that a good night’s sleep in a comfortable bed would be beneficial to all. Well, except for Braunk. He didn’t require a bed since he slept standing up.

That evening, they all gathered at a nearby outdoor restaurant named The Furry Paws. They sat down as the suns began to set over the Lmiryon Sea and the streetlights blinked on all over the city. The glow of the lights lit the streets, making everything visible in the darkening evening.

“I don’t understand.” Zift looked around in confusion. “How can this be? What are those things lighting up the night?”

N’kkitta laughed as she reached for a breadstick from the basket in the middle of the table. “It isn’t fire and it certainly isn’t magic. These lights were created by scientists working in laboratories. We use science here, just like the people did who arrived on this planet a few millennia ago.”

“Uh, well, that doesn’t really explain anything.  What exactly is science? It seems so vague. You throw that word around like we should know what it means.”

“You aren’t going to like the answer.”

“I think most of us would like to understand, or at least try to understand what it is.” Zift sat there on his haunches staring at the young bloclab.

“Okay, Mr. Zift. Perk up your ears and listen to this.”

Zift snorted and almost laughed when N’kkitta called his Mr. Zift.

“Science is a way of gaining knowledge about our planet by seeing something we don’t understand, asking questions about the mysterious thing, and then testing our ideas to see if we now understand whatever it is. If we use a process to test our ideas about something and gather evidence of what we’ve learned, we build knowledge about whatever it is we are studying. Does what we have learned about the item match the knowledge we have gained? With the evidence we gather with our experiments, we can make that determination. So, we use the acronym OEE for observation, experimentation, and evidence. With this information, we can form an idea about something, which we call a hypothesis. We test the hypothesis and develop theories. And, there you go. Science! ”

“Huh?”

N’kkitta sighed, taking a bite of the breadstick in her hand. She chewed for a couple of seconds and then swallowed. She looked down and noticed the metal items on Zift’s front pawhands. “What are those things on your hands for?”

Zift raised his left pawhand and the four claws shot out of metal housing. “This is Ripper. My father gave it to me. It’s bound to me magically by blood and uses my thoughts to make the blades extend and retract.”

“To a degree, I accept your answer. But, tell me this, who made this weapon? How was it made? What metals were used? How did the builder know how to shape them? Where did that knowledge come from?”

“I don’t know. My father had them. They belonged to my grandfather.”

“But someone had to make them, to form them into what they are. For that, even though they probably didn’t know it, science was involved. Someone came up with the design, melted whatever rocks they used to turn it into a metallic liquid. They formed the cooling metal into those claws, which probably took a while to do. All of that is science, to a degree. Anytime you make something, like a boat or ship to sail on the open seas, someone had to come up with the idea and design it. Maybe their first idea didn’t work out and the boat sank. Maybe they tried again with a different design, but it sank too. Let’s say that they kept at it, altering their ideas and redesigning what they thought might work. Eventually, they built a boat that didn’t sink. Now, how do you make it go forward? Someone had an idea for a paddle and then someone designed and built it. Someone else had an idea for a sail and figured out how to have the wind push their boat forward. All of that is science.”

“My head hurts,” Zift said, lowering his ears. “It’s too much to take in.”

“You asked.”

“I just wanted a simple answer.”

“Science is not simple.”

“So it seems. Hey, that breadstick looks delicious.” Zift grabbed one breadsticks and shoved the whole thing in his mouth. He hummed a little tune as he chewed, looking at the lights overhead, refusing to look N’kkitta in the eyes.

Thorfrn laughed. “Don’t let your wee brain explode, young welcorg. ‘Tis a bit confusin’, it is.”

“I think it’s full, unlike my belly.”

Just then, the waitress appeared to take everyone’s orders.

 

After the meal, the group headed back to L’ssilla’s patio, where she served a tasty dessert of caramel-covered popcorn drizzled with melted chocolate.

Maidawn, never having had chocolate before. She couldn’t stop eating the delicious desert. “Mother would love to know how to make this.”

“I’m not sure she could, as you have to grow cocoa trees,” N’kkitta said, tossing a couple of popcorn into her mouth. “We have multiple greenhouses here, all with different environments in them, which determines what we can grow in them. But, I would be happy to give her some of the bean pods for her do with as she may.”

“She would love that. Cooking is her passion.”

“I would too,” Zift pipped in, munching on the popcorn. “She could make some kind of pie out of them. I miss her cooking.”

“And don’t worry, Zift. We have removed the theobromine in our chocolate,” L’ssilla added. “It used to be deadly for our kind.”

“I didn’t know that I should have been worried.” Zift grabbed another pawhandful of the popcorn.

Alizabet wiped her hands on a napkin and turned to L’ssilla. “Thank you for letting us spend the night. Sleeping on the cold, hard ground is necessary, but it’s never someone’s first choice. Beside, this place is so intriguing. When this whole prophesy thing is done, I would love to come back and spend some time reading all of your books.”

“You will always be welcome here.” L’ssilla drank some water to wash the dessert down. She placed her glass back on the table and started to reach for more popcorn, but resisted the urge. “In fact, all of you are welcome here anytime you would like to visit. Yes, I do realize that Gröll Tower is rather far away from where most of you live. For this reason, I have gathered you all here this evening.”

Thorfrn yawned and then he performed a Dwarven After-Supper Belch. This was something that his companions inside Theleisium’s barn had gotten used to, so they were not surprised. It was loud and lasted for a good ten seconds, echoing off the sides of the houses on both sides of the street. He patted his stomach and looked around. “Me belly is full.”

Zift laughed. He tried to match the dwarf’s belch, but he only let out a tiny burp.

“Nice try, brother,” Maidawn said, patting him on the shoulder.

Zift grinned sheepishly.

L’ssilla looked at each member of the party. “What you are doing with Maidawn and Shorn is for the benefit of all of Chelt. I know that you have a long way to travel, heading back the way you just came to reach Mt. Forsaken. But I think we have something that will make this journey a lot easier for you. We call it a Hopper. It’s kind of like Stench’s magic ring. What did her call it?”

“Poof,” Braunk chimed in. “It is a silly name.”

“Ah, yes, Poof. But where Poof uses magic, we use science. You see, the world is made up a spatial pockets. To access these pockets, we devised a device that can temporarily merge these pockets. To do this, our scientists discovered that we needed to . . .”

“Mother, please stop,” N’kkitta spoke up. “You’ve already lost them.”

L’ssilla sighed. She had never been good at explaining scientific processes to laymen. She always want to give an many details as she could about anything she was talking about. This was why all of her best friends were also scientists. She had driven all of her old non-scientific friends away.

“What my mother is trying to say, is that you can use the Hopper to basically hop across Chelt in small jumps. It has a range of about eighty-three myles per hop. It can be used to move your entire party, but everyone has to be touching someone that is connected to the Hopper. Holding hands in a circle is the best way to make this connection. There is a fifteen minute recharge time between jumps. So, make sure you set the Hopper to hop exactly where you want to appear.”

Everyone in the party just sat there, or stood there, in Braunk’s case. No one quite knew what to say.

“Is it safe?” Maidawn questioned.

“Perfectly,” N’kkitta answered. “I’ve done it many times and never had an issue.”

Alizabet looked L’ssilla square in the eyes. “Have there ever been issues?”

“Sure there were, in the beginning. But the technology is about twelve years old now. We have worked out most, I mean, all of the kinks. We haven’t had an issue in years.”

The enchantress nodded, not quite sure what to think. “What were some of the early issues.”

L’ssilla squirmed a little on her chair. “There were some deaths the first year or so. The test subjects would appear inside of trees, boulders, cliffs, and things like that. They never suffered, though. They died instantly, as you can imagine. But we’ve worked that all out now. I won’t explain how, but we had to add intricate programming and multiple sensors to the Hopper to detect where exactly the special pockets were located. After all, a special pocket five hundred feet in the air isn’t something you want to hop to.”

Everyone’s face paled a little at the thought of plummeting to their death, especially Thorfrn’s, whose intense fear of heights was well known.

“Don’t worry,” N’kkitta said soothingly. “We’ve fixed all the problems we once had with the sensors. It won’t hop you to a dangerous special pocket. You cannot end up inside something anymore. You will appear at, or very near, ground level. The only true danger is maybe appearing beside someone, like a slime troll or goblin, that doesn’t want you there. So, it’s always best to be prepared of any danger whenever you hop.”

“This all sounds a little scary.” Maidawn wrung her hands nervously. Cyereth placed a comforting arm around her shoulders and squeezed.

“It really isn’t anymore. It’s perfectly safe. All of us do it all the time. No one has been hurt or killed by the Hopper in over a decade. We have perfected the science of hopping.”

“Bah!” Thorfrn voiced. “Sounds like I don’t like science as much as I don’t like magic.” He crossed his arms over his chest and glared at everyone.

“I am willing to give it a try,” Braunk said. “But I am sad to say that I do have a request. I would like to be hopped to somewhere in the Cayuse Plains. Centaurs are not built for being inside a mountain. To be surrounded by rock walls . . . closing in . . .” The centaur shivered, sending ripples all down his body. “If I return to Yärum, I can deliver an update of all that has happened to our leader, Elliwhey. It is time for me to return home.”

Maidawn stood up and walked over to Braunk. She held her arms out to him. He bent over and picked her up, her feet dangling two feet over the ground. “Thank you for helping us,” Maidawn said, a little short of breath, as his tight squeeze was holding her up.

“It was my privilege to help you out on your quest, anyway I could. I just cannot go underground again. Being a captive in Yelve was upsetting enough. But to have an entire mountain over my head, I cannot even image it. This is something centaurs just cannot do.”

“Ye are gonna miss all the good stuff.” Thorfrn smiled ear to ear thinking about things he was going to learn about the missing dwarves. “Blackbeard Dwarves be the first dwarves, my hairy rump!”

Zift spit up the water he was drinking.

Alizabet shook her head. She knew the truth. The Blackbeard Dwarves were the first dwarves. Thorfrn just refused to believe it.

Braunk lowered Maidawn to the ground, where she rested a hand on his front hip. “I would love to go, but I would freeze and not be able to move inside the mountain. It is just as well, as I am needed at home. I have obligations there.”

“You will be missed,” Cyereth said, approaching Braunk. She also received a hug.

Braunk looked at the dwarf.

Thorfrn frowned and shook his head. Dwarves did not do hugs.

“We appreciate all you have done for us, Braunk.” Alizabet rose out her chair and gave him a small bow. “Please give my regards to Elliwhey. Tell him I will visit as soon as I can.”

“That I will.”

Alizabet turned back to L’ssilla. “I’m warry about using this device. Will someone be able to train us how to use it? It sounds pretty complicated. I know that you say that it’s safe, but none of us are familiar with how to use it. I don’t want to break it or do something that will accidentally kill all of us.”

“Not to worry,” N’kkitta piped in. “I’m going with you.”

“You are?” Maidawn asked. “That would be wonderful!” She ran over to the young bloclab and gave her a big hug.

“That be a relief.” Thorfrn uncrossed his arms and grinned.

N’kkitta just laughed, happy to be accepted into the group.

“I feel better now.” Alizabet smiled at L’ssilla.

“This is news to me, but I am happy for my daughter,” L’ssilla stated. “She has been longing for an adventure lately.”

“Plus, I know how to repair the Hopper if something should happen to it. In fact, I may even bring a backup, or at least spare parts, in case the first one gets damaged.”

“Good idea, N’kkitta,” L’ssilla added, smiling proudly at her only daughter.

After that, the fun part of the evening started. N’kkitta turned on something called a stereo and a strange music flowed over the people on the patio. More bloclabs from nearby houses suddenly appeared, joined the impromptu party. Loud voices, music, and laughed filled the night.