Leaks
They'd been just about to leave the dank, musty underground chamber when Louie mused aloud that the useless red stone seemed remarkably like bait. Let's not take it, then, thought Rix to herself, but she followed the tall harengon's cautious steps anyway.
Rix stuck close behind Louie's muscly right bicep, eyes alert. The room was just as cold as before, its only distinguishing feature the chunks of the chest she'd blasted apart earlier.
She was still following Louie when a caustic zip of dread whipped up through Rix's spine. Goosebumps formed up and down her limbs, and her neck prickled with a static charge. Run, her body told her.
Rix wouldn't let Louie go in alone. She ignored the feeling in her gut screaming for her to turn around. Her hands were shaking and her breaths came shallower, but she fought against the invisible barrier of fear. Fear had not stopped her from sealing her pact, from leaving everything she'd known. From fighting that first day in the Coliseum. From standing at the top of Korzo's tower, feeling the icy wind whip her hair as she looked down, a thousand feet above the ground. Her body had begged then, please, you must go back, just as now, her whole being shrieked with primal terror. The urge to turn, and run, and cry out, was thick in her ears, her teeth, her fingernails. Voices she'd never heard wove together in her mind to say, run, escape, live.
Defiant, Rix took another step
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Three Days Later
The moment the dagger pierced her shoulder, Rix knew something was wrong. She'd expected the crackling yellow energy to burn, but the wound pulsed with an empty cold instead. It wasn't even pain. Just the sensation of ice, and the pressure of a tiny leak, a crack in glass allowing a thin trickle of her to escape and evaporate into the air. As soon as Aurelius was glassy eyed on the ground, she pulled the dagger from her flesh, wincing. The glowing light was gone.
By the time they'd returned to Wiltspar and given Aurifer the opportunity to take a look, the wound had sealed completely, and some brand or mark was beginning to form on Rix's skin. "Divine corruption," Aurifer called it. When she prayed, it was if she'd been shut at the bottom of a well. No light, no escape, no one listening. It was the opposite of everything the last two weeks had been: teamwork, friendship, warmth, trust. Her brain knew that it was all still there, just blocked from her. She couldn't fall into despair. Louie was already on the verge of a breakdown.
Rix knew that was partially her fault, for whatever had happened in the underground chamber beneath Fayble's Brio temple. She couldn't remember, and they couldn't tell her about it, beyond the most basic assertion: Rix was lost, Rix was gone. Rix had leaked out of a wound in the world, fully, and evaporated into nothing.
And was anything really lost? No, thoughts like that had to be set aside. This problem wouldn't be solved by self-deprecation.
The specter in the ruins below gave similarly murky advice. As Rix returned to the cool desert evening above, she brainstormed. My deepest connection to Korzo, materialized, the unhelpful spirit had said. How to materialize the still-budding trust beginning to grow between herself and the other Moonlighters? No object could capture Louie's stubborn insistence on shadowing Theo's every move to keep him safe. Or Boatswain's admirable (if ill-advised) loyalty to Morgan's dubious role as ship captain. Morgan's sincere quest to build Theo a mobile library in their bag of holding. The way they'd all jumped in to save Zara's raccoon from possession. Ford's methodical reporting purely for the sake of sharing the truth with as many people as possible.
And then there were the Blessed who rarely left Wiltspar. Rix didn't have the best sense of what went on here. Maybe it was time for that to change.
Rix found Ziri on the wall, ostensibly patrolling. His demeanor didn't quite read as alert. But he was looking out over the vast desert outside of Wiltspar, putting his darkvision to good use.
"Ziri?" Rix asked tentatively, though she knew him. She knew him too well, frankly. Short gasps of his thoughts and memories would show up in her head unannounced. When that happened, she would visualize wiping the ink from trays of type in her head. An eccentric attempt to clean up her jumbled mind.
"Good to see you, Rix! How's life out and about in Fynali treating you?" It had taken Rix a minute to adjust to thinking of Ziri as a partner. He radiated a detachment that Rix had originally read as indifference. But then she remembered his reaction when Selena had died—a child he'd met only a day or two before. His anguished grief and self loathing in that moment had assured her that he actually cared quite a lot.
"To be perfectly honest, it's not great," Rix started, relaying a quick and dirty account of the Archon's dimwitted son and the wound that still seeped a slow chill into her shoulder. Ziri's pierced eyebrows shot up and then together as she described the loss of her connection to Korzo, and all the other gods.
"But I didn't find you just to complain, Ziri. I come bearing gifts!" Rix untied a large bag that had been attached to her belt, containing a gently used set of leather armor and several daggers she'd confiscated from Artie. "And some money, too, for anything else you need. I think I have to stay here while I figure out how to deal with my predicament. I don't want to be a liability to the team." She fiddled with her ring, worrying about sending the Moonlighters off without her healing magic. Fitting, that the ring only activates when she heals another.
"Are you all right taking my place on the road for a while?" she asked.
Ziri nodded in between switching out pieces of armor and strapping his new weapons to his belt. "Absolutely. It will be fun, to see some more of the world. I do like it here—it's similar to the Tarzur. And the town is almost like a tribe. We all help each other. You'll need the take over for me, too. Sometimes, Chauncey gives me guard duty, or sends a group of us out to scout the area around the desert. Other times I help Glompo at the farm. For a while we were rebuilding the library, but that's finished. There's always something to be done around here."
It occurred to Rix for the first time that she and Ziri, despite vastly different upbringings, both came from communities built on collectivism, more so than the other Moonlighters. "I'll absolutely help out in any way I can while I'm here," she assured him. "Should I check in on Chauncey every day, too, while you're gone?" Rix couldn't help herself—she smirked a little.
The sun had set completely, but Rix's magically augmented vision picked up a faint redness at the tips of Ziri's pointed ears, and his momentarily goofy smile. "Who you spend time with while you're here is your business. Just as who I spend time with is mine." There was neither anger nor shyness in his tone. Rix admired his confidence. She couldn't imagine ever feeling so self-assured, in romance or otherwise.
For a minute, they were silent, both staring out into the darkness. Ziri spoke first. "You should rest."
The moment felt vacant, and Rix knew a different person, one who made friends easily and trusted others implicitly, would be able to fill it with sincerity and warmth. That person would walk away knowing Ziri better, and being better known in return. What would that person say?
"Thank you. For everything you've been doing here, and for being willing to step in while I deal with my issues," Rix said before scurrying away. It wasn't much. But maybe, it could be a start.