So many questions churn in my head—primarily the question of what he thought my purpose was here, but other things too, like what kinds of horrors we would be fighting and if I was going to fight an actual Yama King or merely hundreds of his minions—yet none of these is important next to the fundamental truth of his statement, so I quash the questions and store them for later.
“I agree,” I tell him.
“So, if you are willing, let us begin your advanced training. From now on, you will call me Sifu Sun.”
I bow to him. “I am willing, Sifu Sun.”
once Siodhachan leaves, I get out of the river and dry off me feet, because that water is fecking cold. Colder than the welcome of a night club bouncer on a Friday night—which reminds me, I still owe an arse-kicking to that lad in Kilkenny who threw me out of the pub.
I go sit on the edge of the back porch, feet resting on the turf, and let the elemental know I’m available to help should I be needed anywhere. Starbuck the Boston terrier comes out and sits next to me, his mouth open and tongue lolling out. I connect to his mind so I can hear if he answers me and say, “You’re a good lad, aren’t ye?”
<Yes food,> he says.
“Ah. Still learning your language, then?”
<Yes food. Play?>
“Maybe. That word can mean different things, I’ve learned. What do you consider to be play?”
<Stay,> he says, and disappears through the plastic flap in the side of the house that Siodhachan says is a doggie door. He bursts through it a moment later with a knotted piece of rope. He drops it by my side and looks up at me with his tongue out. <Throw please. Yes food.>
“Throw it, ye say?” It seems like a strange request, but I don’t see the harm in it. Dogs like Starbuck didn’t exist in me own time, so he’s a new creature to me, and I’m interested in what he will do next. I pick up the rope and chuck it a good distance toward the river, taking care not to actually throw it in there. The wee lad springs off the back porch faster than I expect.
<No squirrel!> he practically shouts in me head, and for a moment I worry he’s gone daft, but once he reaches the rope he picks it up and shakes it before galloping back to me with it in his mouth, and then I understand. He’s practicing his squirrel slaying, and that’s play for him.
<Good human,> he says as he drops it by me side again. <Throw please.>
I can’t help but chuckle at that. “Ye know how to train humans already, don’t ye?”
<Yes food. Throw please.>
I oblige him and think while he’s off to fetch that maybe an animal companion wouldn’t be so bad, if the werewolves would be okay with it. Before Starbuck can return for another go, a shudder runs up me leg, as the elemental speaks to me through my contact with the earth.
//Avenging Druid needed / Bavarian Alps / Urgent//
Elementals didn’t used to talk to Druids like this. The earth hadn’t been so fecking cocked up before, so I’d never had occasion to hear what elementals called me until I came forward in time. And I didn’t really like that name, because it referred to an episode in me early years with a dodgy man in a bog and I didn’t want to be reminded of it.
//Harmony// I reply, but then add, //Except for name / Please call me Ancient Druid//
//No / You are Avenging Druid / Hurry / Bavarian Alps//
Bollocks. //I go// I says, and hop to me feet.
I have to go inside and ask the British lad where in the world the Bavarian Alps are. Once he pulls up a map on his computer and shows me, I figure I can shift to something tethered there and then ask what trouble’s brewing in the teakettle.
Sorry I can’t play anymore, I tell the wee Starbuck mind-to-mind. I’ve been called away to serve Gaia. Play later?
<Yes food. Good human.>
I sprint out to the bound tree, shift planes to Tír na nÓg, and then spend a while trying to figure out which tethers lead to the Bavarian Alps. There are about ten of them, I reckon, and right as I settle upon one it disappears, snapping out of existence. Then the one next to it does the same thing. Something horrible must be happening there to disrupt the tethers. I choose the one that’s farthest from the destroyed ones and pull meself along the tether, arriving with a bit of panic in me mind, afraid the tether will snap mid-transit. I don’t rightly know what would happen to me if it did, but I don’t want to find out. I do make it through, though, and soon find out what’s been causing all the ruckus: The earth shakes underneath me, and it’s no mild temblor either. It’s a serious shake-up in progress, and it’s going to ripple out to populated areas soon and disrupt far more than a few tethered trees.
But the trees and these mountains—gods below, they’re gorgeous. I wish I would have visited before there was a fecking earthquake in progress, because it’s a stunningly beautiful place I’ve come to. If I didn’t know better, I’d say the landscape was trying to have some soft hot sex with me eyes, it’s that seductive. Tuya, one of me apprentices, loves trees especially; she’d find this place so magical that the corners of her eyes would leak happy tears. Best be about preserving it, then.
//Druid here to help// I tell the elemental Bavaria. Its reply is less than polite.
//You are not Druid / He is elsewhere / You are Avenging Druid//
I blink a few times. This elemental is in the throes of an earthquake where all its living things are in crisis and it’s quibbling over names?
//Query: Emergency?//
//Creatures disrupt earth / I will create path / Slay them//
That’s straightforward enough. //Query: What creatures?//
//Follow and slay// is all the answer I’m given before a fissure opens before me—not an accident of the earthquake but rather something with a purposeful floor to it, with walls and a ceiling that remain sturdy even if they shift; no matter how violent the earthquake gets, Bavaria won’t let it crush me while I’m on my way to do its bidding. The tunnel delves quickly and I have to cast night vision to see. I also put on me brass knuckles and remember that even though I’ve been given a mission, I can’t use a direct binding to kill anything. It’s the law of Gaia herself: She judges no deaths so long as one never uses her power to accomplish it. Druids have been doing her dirty work for millennia now—or Siodhachan has, anyway. Mostly it was demons from this hell or that, but occasionally something Fae or more sinister would require his attention.
It’s not too long before I can’t see a fecking thing, even with night vision cast. Ye have to have at least a wee bit of light to operate, and underground it’s darker than the inky anus of a sleeping octopus. I let Bavaria know.
//Continue// it says. //There will be light soon//
I stagger on, a hand outstretched to keep track of the wall, and stumble a couple of times since I can’t see the ground shifting and it surprises me. But I don’t want to fail in this, whatever it is.
The light shows up soon enough. A dim orange glow and some heat along with it, and a sulfurous odor punching me lungs: That light source is lava. A bit more dangerous way to light up a space than those fancy twisty light bulbs ye see these days.
And it really shouldn’t be this close to the surface. The Alps aren’t a range of dormant volcanoes; they were formed by the collision of tectonic plates. Which means something nasty is bringing this up on purpose.
I hear it before I see it. Cruel laughter mixed in with throaty chanting in a language I don’t recognize. And it’s pretty clear I’m spotted first, because I have to duck a red glowing rock thrown at me head. It still glances off me left shoulder and sears a groove there, singeing hair and cooking an ear as it passes. I trace back where it must have come from, and there’s a wee shadowy thing standing in a rivulet of lava like it’s nothing but a cool stream. It looks like it’s practically chiseled out of coal or volcanic basalt, all sharp edges even though it has a humanoid form. In the darkness it’s just another slice of shadow until it moves, and it’s moving to scoop up another lava bomb.
It has a face like someone took an angry shite and placed it on top of a neck. Or maybe that’s just me own anger I’m projecting on to it. I know what this thing is now, attaching it to a description Siodhachan gave me: It’s a fecking kobold, but the bloody dangerous kind and not the weak things I’ve seen when Sam and Ty, the leaders of Greta’s pack, are playing this video game they like. In the game, kobolds are weak creatures with a wee knife, easily slain. But that’s not the kind of creature that spawned horror stories from German miners hundreds of years ago. If you’re a brave lad tunneling through a mountain, you’re not going to be terrified of something with a knife when you have a pickaxe. No, those miners had reason to be afraid, because kobolds can move the earth and collapse a mine, or pick up handfuls of magma to hurl at Druids’ heads.