As the sun sank down to the horizon, Madison slipped off of the horse. It was strange to have flat land stretching out in all directions with no mountains or forest in sight. She imagined it was what being on the ocean would feel like. For someone raised in the mountains around Trailsend, it was more than a little unsettling. At least the horse was easy to handle.
Are we setting up camp? Ulysses asked, idly pacing along the edge of the cliff.
“Yep, and I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know how to do this. So if you want to drive, I’d be grateful.” Madison felt a lot more comfortable talking out loud to Ulysses given that they were now in the middle of nowhere.
While I would appreciate the opportunity to stretch my legs, as it were, I was actually wondering if I could try something. Ulysses and Madison had passed most of the trip that day in silence. He did not know what she had been thinking about, careful as he was to avoid the thoughts and memories that swirled around him, but he had been formulating the start of an idea.
“Depends on what it is. If it’s jumping off that brain-cliff into whatever that dark ocean is, then I’m gonna veto that idea.”
Absolutely not. I have no idea what that ocean signifies and I have no real desire to find out. Ulysses could see the golden thread descending towards him once again. He grasped it, but did not move his way up into sight and sound. No, I was more thinking about what you said happened when you first woke up in the crater.
“Where your memories kept bleeding into mine? Yeah, it was awful and made me throw up a bunch.”
Well, hopefully if you know it’s coming it won’t be as bad.
Madison took a stake out of the horse’s pack and started hammering it into the ground like Dayviyan had told them to. “You want to… what, send me some of your memories? You think that’s gonna help?”
The principle is sound. If I may make an unsavory comparison, it will be… well, a more voluntary version of what was being done to you previously.
Madison’s grip on the stake slipped. Her hammer-swing went wild and she struck her thumb. She cursed, shaking her hand. “Suck eighty dicks, absolutely not.”
I’m not going to be going anywhere in your mind! If anything, you’ll be the one coming into my head. But hopefully it won’t come to that. I’ll just be sending knowledge and experience up the line and it should give you the skills without you actually having to learn them.
She took a deep breath. “I want to make this clear- I have no desire to get into your brain. Even if I did feel welcome to your twisted mind, I don’t want any part of what that fucker did to me.” Madison righted the stake and began hammering again, slower now. “But if you’re just sending information up, then you can try. Once.”
I understand.
“Do you? Do you actually understand, Ulysses?” Madison gave the stake one more thwack with the hammer. She tugged on it until she was satisfied it would hold, then took Shas’ lead and began hitching it around the stake. “Because when you had people in your head, it was by your choice. You invited them in. I don’t think you have any idea what it’s like to have that happen to you by force.”
Ulysses frowned. No, you’re right. I don’t. I am sorry.
“Not looking for another apology, just stating facts.” Madison finished her knots and stood back to look at them with a critical eye. “You’ve got a lot to answer for, and not just to me. But if we get out of here and back to Trailsend, I’ll call it square between us.” She brushed her hands off on her sturdy riding-pants. “Let me get Shas’ tack off and get her brushed down, then we’ll get started.”
If she was being honest with herself, Madison took her time with the horse. The repetitive motions of the brush helped to take her mind off of Ulysses’ offer. Helped, but didn’t ensure it. Having him in her mind was almost tolerable at the moment. At least now they had a better system for interacting and his mind wasn’t bleeding into hers anymore. But what would happen if she invited that overlap? Would it leave her dizzy and unconscious again? Would he bleed too far into her? What if she couldn’t get him out afterwards?
She steadied her hands on Shas’ wiry coat. Now was not the time to spin hypotheticals. If he could get her knowledge, make them stronger, make her more of a wizard, then that was useful. That was important. They were going to need everything they had at their disposal if they were going to get back to Trailsend and then go back to snap the Stranger in half. Madison took a deep breath and set down the brush. “Okay, Ulysses. Do whatever you’re going to do.”
We should probably sit down first. I’m going to send up something relatively minor, but I don’t know what it’ll do to us vis a vis consciousness.
“Fair.” Madison sat criss-cross and leaned against the pile of discarded saddlebags. “Alright. I’m ready.”
Ulysses, also sitting in the golden field, closed his eyes. It would probably be a good idea to start with something simple. He flicked through his memories of the past few months, looking for something small and relatively inoffensive. There wasn’t really anything. A lot of aiding Nikolai. Receiving the book from Granny Bludthist and beginning the ritual to summon the Stranger. Living in a demon-filled mansion, cut off from the rest of the world. Exacting bloody revenge on the people who had wronged him. It was depressing to realize that the past year of his life had been pretty much awful.
There were a few bright spots, though. He found a memory and closed his eyes, pushing it up the golden thread. He was sitting outside in the cool air. There was a book on his lap. He was looking out at a cobblestone square in Trailsend- the sky had just begun to darken, and the magelights set along the sides of the road were coming on one by one. It was the sort of evening that settled down around you like a heavy coat, warm enough to keep people outside but cool enough to discourage mischief. A rare moment of peace in the bustling city. Ulysses heard someone calling his name, and he looked up to see Emiel-
He dropped the golden thread. Ulysses took a deep breath to steady himself. It was only a memory. Nothing to get emotional over. He took the thread back up, and was displeased to feel Madison grinning.
Well, as you can see, the memory transference works both ways. Now if we-
“I think we should watch the rest of that memory to make sure it works right!” Madison responded, standing up from the pile of saddlebags. “It looks like it was pretty important!!”
Ulysses frowned. The content of the memory itself is immaterial. The point is that it was successful.
“I feel like when you’re uncomfortable you somehow get even stuffier and more technical,” Madison said, rummaging in a saddlebag for their tent. “But fine, we don’t have to talk about it right now. You got any memories in there for how to set this thing up?”
I do, actually. Are you ready to receive it?
“It didn’t knock me out last time, so go ahead.”
With camp set up, Madison withdrew the thread. “A girl’s gotta have some privacy,” she said to Shas, who snorted in response. Madison paused, shirt halfway off, to acknowledge that she had started talking to a horse. Well, some things couldn’t be avoided when your only other company was a depressed asshole who lived in your head.
Dayviyan had packed her some more comfortable clothes- a simple linen tunic and pants that felt like heaven after a long day of riding. “Hopefully we’ll find a river or something tomorrow so I can get a bath. We didn’t get a lot of water in our pack.” Madison held up the lone canteen that Dayviyan had given them. It sloshed, half-full. “She knew we were taking a long journey. I wonder why she only gave us this?” Madison looked askance at Shas. “You’re not part camel, are you? Or some sort of magic horse that can detect water?” She sighed. “Well, we both need a drink, and it won’t do us any good to die of dehydration in our sleep.” Madison tipped back the canteen, only taking enough to fill her mouth, and then walked over to Shas. “How do you even water a horse?”
The horse in question looked up at her with what Madison could have sworn was exasperation. Not particularly willing to be condescended to by a horse, Madison tipped the canteen towards her. Shas tilted her head up to receive it- clearly this was something she was used to, and thank the gods for that. Madison let the rest of their water run as a thin stream into the horse’s mouth. It lasted longer than she’d thought it would, long enough for Shas to close her mouth and snort at her. Madison tilted the canteen and shook it next to her ear. Still half-full.
“Ulysses?” she called out, and extended the thread down into her mind.
Hmm. Interesting.
“Do you know what it is? In two sentences or less.” Madison had heard enough men begin to explain boring things to her to know that tone of voice.
Most likely it is a lesser version of a Decanter of Endless Water. Those can be used to create huge amounts of water, potentially even geysers, but they are not common and require knowledge of command words, so this is clearly a simpler and less expensive version, which would make sense as a creation of a nomadic tribe who takes great pains to maximize packing weight and-
“I feel like using a long run-on sentence is violating the spirit of the two-sentence rule.”
A large part of being a wizard is twisting words to suit your needs. Consider that a valuable lesson. Madison could hear the hint of a smile in his tone.
“Was that a joke? Did you do that as a joke, Ulysses?” Madison took a deeper swallow of water and shook the canteen again to check it. Still plenty left. “Are you capable of jokes and humor now?”
I’ve always been capable of jokes and humor. We just have not been interacting in situations where humor has been tonally appropriate.
“Fair. If you’d been cracking jokes in the mansion I definitely would have tried to kill you.” Madison yawned and began setting out her bedroll. “Like, I would have absolutely overcome my severe physical and mental exhaustion and snapped your skinny neck right then and there. The only thing that saved you was that you came at me with that poor-misunderstood-villain thing, which just made me tired instead of incoherently vengeful.”
There was a beat of silence, which Madison used to tie back her hair before laying down. Then came Ulysses’ voice, quieter this time. Oh gods, am I the insufferable tragic antihero?
Madison laughed out loud. “Nah, you’re the secondary antagonist who got used as a patsy by the main villain and turns traitor at the last second to help the heroes. You’re a c-plot at best.”
Thank Mystra for that. I don’t think I could handle the responsibility of a b-plot, let alone a redemption arc.
“Oh, fuck no, absolutely not.” Madison laid down and pulled the blanket over herself. “But maybe you could handle a…. love interest?”
Ulysses could feel her eyebrows wiggling salaciously. He groaned and buried his head in his hands. Can we not.
“Just spinning hypothetical situations! Ooh, and wouldn’t it be dramatic if your love interest was one of the heroes- maybe someone with a highborn upbringing and boots that go up to here-”
This is hell. I died in the explosion at the mansion and got sent to hell for my sins.
“You wish. Hell doesn’t have an exhaustive secondhand knowledge of your relationship history with Emiel.” She smiled. “We don’t have to talk about it right now, but just know that we have a lot of riding ahead of us and your day of reckoning is coming eventually.”
The next time you send down that golden thread, I am going to tie a rock to it and throw it into the ocean.
“Talkin’ a big game for someone without a corporeal form! I will allow the subject to drop for now if you show me how to set wards for sleeping.”
That I can do.
The crash of waves filled his senses. It was dark, but he knew the cave was before him. He could feel the pressure of it. Its presence was a weight that pulled him forward, like gravity had been shifted, and its mouth yawned open, and the sand slipped under his feet and he fell…
Breakfast was simple, light traveling food that Dayviyan had packed in squares of nicely-embroidered cloth. Madison, having woken up in a good mood for the first time in far too long, whistled off-key as she packed up camp and got Shas saddled. “Hey Ulysses, wanna look over the packing?”
Ulysses, flat on his back in the golden field, blinked awake. Um. Sure.
Madison raised an eyebrow. “You okay down there?”
I am… not entirely sure. Strange things have been happening to me when you fall asleep.
She frowned. “Well, that’s definitely not great. Let’s get moving and then we’ll talk about it.”
As they set out, Ulysses explained the cave that he had seen. Your mindscape- or at least the parts of it that I can experience- seems to be representative of your thought processes, or something of that nature. But I am not sure what this cave is, and I am not sure either of us want to find out.
“Yeah, I figured the field and the ocean were metaphors for something.” Madison rolled her eyes. This was the exact reason she’d never tried to develop her magical talent- too much mystic symbolism. “ And you can’t find the cave when I’m awake?”
Not yet, at least. I was planning on spending the day walking along the cliff’s edge to look for a way down to the beach.
“Well don’t slip and break your neck. I don’t want a corpse in my brain.” She tucked a wayward curl behind her ear. “Maybe that’s the place where I put the solstice fiasco.”
Is that a reference you are going to explain to me?
“Absolutely fucking not!” Madison checked the navigation spell that was guiding them. It had been easy enough to cast on their compass, and was currently manifesting as a glowing needle pointing towards Trailsend. Based on what Absar had told them, they only had a few days’ ride before they arrived. “Is there anything else important about my brainscape that you can think of?”
Yes, there’s a building in this field with a large sign on it that says “All My Feelings About Enna” and I’ve been thinking about going inside it. I feel like it could really be the key to our success.
“I haven’t decided yet if you cracking jokes is a good thing.”
Oh, it’s no joke. My goodness, this building is huge! And the double doors are swinging open so invitingly! Perhaps I should go in there and search for clues.
“Alright, fucko, you wanna go there?” Madison rolled up her sleeves for emphasis. “I told you we were gonna talk about Emiel, let’s fucking go. We got all day on a horse and nothing else to do but take meal breaks. The course is set, the horse is moving, I got all the time in the world and you got nowhere to go.”
No, actually, I would like to rescind my previous challenge and stand down like a coward.
“Too late! You brought it up! This is reparations for your dumb demons torturing me for a week. You have to talk with me about your relationship history. It’s equivalent.”
We can talk about anything else! I can give you magic lessons, I can tell you what I know of Shar’s plans, I can tell you about the Doomlords that were recently unleashed upon the world-
“Oh, I know about those. Reynald lives in Enna’s apartment and he’s a real asshole.”
What.
“Yeah, he never picks up any of his laundry. Real pain in the ass to live with.”
They have a Doomlord in their guildhall??
“Actually, he lives in the living quarters behind the bar that Enna runs now. Which she picked up after the thanes cleared the Brotherhood of Purity out of it along with the beholder who was bankrolling them. Did I mention that the Battered Scabbard all got named thanes of Trailsend for saving the city from the Brotherhood on the night you killed the baron? Also they burned the guildhall down. The Brotherhood, not the thanes.”
Ulysses sat down, holding his head in his hands. What did I miss in these past few months.
“A lot! Did the Stranger not tell you anything? I got the sense that he was doing the whole omniscient evil villain thing where he was in their business all the time.”
There was a beat before Ulysses responded. I have… not exactly been keeping up with the Stranger’s actions.
“You summoned an ancient evil into your body and then let him run loose without caring about what he was doing? No, don’t answer that, that was rhetorical for the sake of exasperation.”
I did care what he was doing. Ulysses gave up on his attempt to remain vertical. The grass prickled his skin as it moved in the wind. I had originally planned on keeping an eye out for the Battered Scabbard. If not out of obligation for my actions, then to acknowledge the friendship that some of them once held for me. He made an active effort not to send up the memory of him tied to a chair being interrogated by an especially angry pixie. But I… I found that my research was more pressing.
“Or you found out that checking up on old friends hurts sometimes. You knew they wanted to talk to you, but you couldn’t face that, so you hid behind the Stranger and stayed in the mansion. Gods dammit, Ulysses, did you do anything with all the power you got from that guy?”
I got my revenge. He rested his forearm across his forehead and watched the thread glimmer out of the corner of his eye. The people who hurt me- I became a monster to destroy their lives, to ruin them as they ruined me. The pain that I brought to them could never equal the suffering that they caused, but I didn’t care. I blackened my soul to make them suffer. And when I die, I will bear that sin into the afterlife without regret.
Madison frowned. “Are you going to elaborate?”
Ulysses rolled over and pressed his face into the grass. Does it matter?
“Yeah, obviously it does.” Madison exhaled and shifted her grip on Shas’ reins. “Look. We’re stuck together. We have to understand each other at least a little bit, or this is going to be completely unbearable. You and me- we’ve been talking at and around each other. Most of that is because- and I know this will not come as a surprise to you, so I know you’re not going to take it as anything other than a statement of fact- I do not like you, because you were an accessory to the murder of one of my best friends and because you let me get kidnapped and tortured by some demons you summoned. Am I being unfair here?”
No.
“Correct. And I want to be out of this situation as soon as possible, as I’m sure you do. But it’s going to feel way longer if we keep doing this thing where you get self-pitying and close yourself off, and then I get pissed off and yell at you for being a coward.”
Why not simply ignore each other. I have a task to complete in here, and you can presumably handle the rest of the journey yourself.
“Because I will go completely insane if I have nobody to talk to except for a horse for the whole journey. I just got out of being imprisoned and tortured by demons, and the only thing keeping my tenuous grasp on reality is the tiny bits of normalcy that I am managing to scrounge together.” Her speech was clipped, her jaw was set. “This is for both of our benefits, since if I go insane neither of us are ever going to get to Trailsend!”
So what? Do you want me to pretend like nothing has ever happened, and chat inanely about the weather?
“There is a middle fucking ground between small talk and full melodrama!” Madison was yelling now, her fists balled on the reins. “Has nobody ever told you how to talk to people? Who goddamn raised you?”
Ulysses didn’t respond. Madison rolled her eyes. “Fine. Go throw a tantrum. You let me know when you’re willing to be an adult about this.” She withdrew the thread and leaned forward over Shas’ neck. “God, I can’t wait until this is over.”
The sky was gray, and stayed that way for hours as Madison rode along over the plains. There wasn’t a lot to break up the monotony of swaying grass and flat land. Madison didn’t know too much about the area, but she’d heard legends about how it came to be. The kingdom that had once been there, the war that had ended it, the dark magics that had blasted the place into a wasteland where good people feared to tread. She’d heard a lot about the demons that still roamed its ruins and the lawless barbarians that claimed its land as their own. Madison turned her head to look at a glacier rock that they were passing. There was lichen covering its crags, and there was a small nest of woven grass in a niche on the side. Underneath her, the swaying motion of Shas’ gait was almost soothing. The grass came up to her ankles in places. Moving through it in her thick riding boots felt like walking through a creek, the grasses providing enough resistance to be noticeable. Shas didn’t seem to mind. The horse would bend down to graze every so often, and Madison remembered what Absar had told her about the horse’s stamina. She could see how valuable horses like her would be to people who spent their lives on the move.
She closed her eyes and leaned back to turn her face to the sky. She needed to take stock of things. If they made good time, and the bottom didn’t fall out of those clouds, they could be in Trailsend within three days. Two days’ ride to the nearest town, a decent rest for once- gods, she’d chop her own leg off to sleep in an inn- and then one more day of travel. And then she’d be home.
She didn’t want to think too hard about what she’d do after that. For one thing, she didn’t want to jinx it. She’d always been a little superstitious about planning too far ahead for things she couldn’t control. Especially given her most recent week from hell. She just had to get to the next step and she could plan from there. She had some ideas, but nothing concrete yet. She had to survive the next few days first.
“I know the first thing I’m gonna do, though,” she said to Shas as she nibbled on some salted meat from her pack. “I’m going to kick the door down at Roth’s and get a whole table full of hot food. And I’m gonna bring half of it back home for Mom.” She smiled as she put the packet of jerky away. “And then I’m going to play the I-got-kidnapped sympathy card to get free pastries from Gretchen.” It was a flawless plan.
The hours stretched on. Madison took a couple of breaks to water Shas and shake out her saddle-sore legs. The compass needle glowed steadily ahead of them, only shifting slightly when they had to ride around some obstacle or another. Madison hummed to pass the time, old songs her mother had taught her and new ones she’d learned from the bards that frequented Roth’s. The sky grew darker around them. It was the only way for her to keep track of the time. That, and the increasing numbness in her ass.
Eventually the stars came out. Madison wanted to press on, but it wouldn't have done her any good to exhaust herself or her horse. She knew something about her own limits. While she felt stronger than she had in a while, she still had to be sensible about it. And speaking of being sensible…
Madison sighed as she stowed Shas' tack and began brushing her down. Logically she knew she'd have to reconcile with Ulysses. They needed each other to get back home. At the very least, she needed him to re-cast the navigation spell in the morning, or else teach her how to do it herself. Logically, she also knew that she was the only one who could initiate the conversation, because of how their connection was working. All of this was eminently reasonable. But also. Ugh.
She dragged her hands down her face. “Uuuuuuughhhhhhhh.” The real upside of being alone in an empty landscape was that now she could do all the dumb noises that she usually only did in private. Okay. Time to be the bigger person again.
Madison sat down and collected herself. Ulysses? she thought, and sent down the golden thread.
Madison had been prepared for a certain level of pettiness on Ulysses' part. With him living in her head, it had become a lot clearer what drew Emiel to him- both of them were equally melodramatic. She had also been prepared to be the bigger person in this argument, because that was how talking to men worked. But she hadn't expected him to be petty enough to ignore her for hours. She'd watered Shas, set up camp, eaten dinner, set wards, changed clothes, blah blah blah, all while dangling that stupid golden thread in the metaphor-space of her consciousness. She'd asked where he was, asked him boring magic questions, threatened him with Emiel-related gossip- nothing! What a dick.
The fire she'd set was burning low by the time she gave up and withdrew the thread. Shas was standing nearby, sleeping upright, snuffling softly while she dreamed her horse dreams. Probably about softer grass, or having longer legs. Enna would probably know.
Madison sighed and threw some dirt on the fire. She stirred the embers to extinguish them and glared at the fading sparks. Fine. If he wasn't gonna come to her, she was going to him. She settled down into her bedroll. She'd always been pretty good at self-reflection, which meant there was no way Ulysses was gonna be able to hide from her in her own brain. Madison took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and reached inwards.
Author's Notes:
Uploaded to docs on Sept 19, 2020. I think for all of these I was typing them up into one big google doc and only started separating them out when the doc started crashing. Anyway, drama!