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Stories from the Verse
A Dozen Verses
Chapter 133: Slade 294
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Kondor 301
Sitting up, he saw Shella a short distance from him, camp set up and dinner ready.
“I wondered when you might arrive, m’lord,” she said.
Stretching to loosen his muscles, and realizing just how hungry he was, Slade decided not to be overly dramatic. “How long have you been waiting?” he asked.
“Seven hours and fifty-five minutes, roughly,” she said.
It had been days--how many days? He didn’t even want to remember. Well, he was here now.
“I trust you didn’t hold dinner for me.”
“Oh, no--I ate earlier, and was just about to eat again and get some sleep. Magic seems to be working a bit better in this world, which is a good thing, because from what I’ve seen it looks to be a dead world.”
He looked around at the wasteland, steam rising from vents in the rocks, no plants, no soil to support plants. “Or perhaps it is a world yet unborn.”
“Unborn, m’lord?”
“It seems that some worlds begin as balls of molten rock and then cool until they have a crust on the outside, and the rains come and help cool the world more and break down the rocks to become sand, and then somehow in all this life begins and evolves and grows and takes over the world. At least, that’s the theory, and I suppose it must be true somewhere.”
“So, what do we do?”
He pondered for a moment while she waited, ever patient. “I would think the first step is to use whatever scrying techniques we have to explore outward from where we are. This might be a unique patch of the world, and there might be a more habitable area somewhere else we could reach.”
“Yes, m’lord, I thought of that. I’ve searched around for quite a distance, but so far it all looks the same.”
Yes, it would, he thought. Training for frost giants, and now training for fire giants. At least their magic would provide food and drink for the present, and shelter from some of this oppressive heat.
He stood and walked over to his wife, passing through the invisible wall into the more comfortable interior of the bubble.
“Well, I’ve been traveling through the snow and ice for days,” he finally said, “and I’m hungry and exhausted, so if you’ve got some food for me I think I’ll eat, and drink, and go to sleep.”
Which is what he did.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
