"You really don't remember any of this?" I asked Bekkit, not without skepticism. Just because I had my own extreme case of amnesia didn't mean I was just going to take him at his word.
"Hmm... no, but I think it's coming back to me. Sprite... Core... Grimrock... oh! Oh no!"
He started flitting around, clearly in some distress.
"My beloved miniature dragons! My precious kobolds! I remember. I remember! Forgive my rudeness, but I require a moment to process all this."
He zipped up through the ceiling hole and out of sight. Ket followed close behind him.
"Oh no you don't! Get back here, backstabber!"
Her shouts gradually faded.
Benin stepped forward. "Look, before we get interrupted again—"
"Corey!"
The mage threw up his hands. "I give up."
Ket made a beeline for my gem. "There's a huge storm up in the mountains. It looks bad."
"So?"
She buzzed in frustration. "So, where do you think our stream comes from?"
"The mountains? Oh. Oh no."
"It's going to flood the Grotto. We have to focus all our efforts on the barriers. If we—"
"No." Bekkit seemed to already have recovered from his shock; he sounded authoritative but calm as he followed Ket down toward me. "That won't be enough. You're already one small shower away from being underwater. And this is not a small shower."
Ket rounded on him. "Well, we can't just give up!"
"I am not suggesting you give up." His words were grave as he looked directly into my gem. "I am suggesting you leave."
Eighteen
A Holy Box
Corey
"But where would we go?"
It felt like the hundredth time I'd asked. Neither Ket nor Bekkit answered.
We'd spent the night debating the best course of action, and I was yet to be truly convinced of any. Hours spent poring over human maps—which supposedly promised clues as to the location of some old gnomish civilization—had taught us nothing except that the area Tiri had circled was simply too large to treat as a feasible destination.
Now, the cold gray light of dawn was spreading through the Grotto, lengthening what shadows it didn’t banish, and the exhausted night-shift gnomes set down their sandbags and stumbled to their beds. When Gneil emerged along with Hoppit, a moment's Divine Inspiration had him jogging off to relieve Longshank, who'd been tirelessly overseeing the placement of the flood defenses throughout the night.
The scouts had returned shortly before sunrise. All were weighed down beneath yet more sheep's wool, which the armorer and clothiers were now boiling in water, beginning the process of extracting the lanolin.
Though I'm starting to think that waterproofing our homes right now will prove about as useful as building a spiderweb to keep the sun out. I glanced up at Binky. And we both know how futile that is.
Benin's head appeared in the hole, silhouetted against the reddening sky. The two humans had gone back up to the surface a few hours ago to make camp and snatch some sleep, though the mage looked as though the latter had eluded him; his mousy hair was tousled, and the dark bags beneath his eyes stood out starkly against the pale skin of his face.
As soon as his eyes adjusted, he caught sight of Binky right below him and flinched away. "Damn spider."
"His name is Binky, and he's like a son to me," I told him. "I'm offended you don't like him. And so is he."
"Binky?"
"Actually, he has something for you."
Receiving my mental nudge, Binky scuttered over to a nearby crevice and retrieved something round and shiny. Benin lurched backward out of sight as the spider obediently deposited the chemsphere on the ground before retreating back into his hole.
"Thanks," came the mage's voice, somewhat grudgingly.
"Our pleasure. You can stop being grumpy now."
I heard him huff. "Where did you find it?"
"Oh, it was over in a corner. It must have rolled down the hill and extinguished itself," I lied.
In fact, I'd found it in the possession of Swift and Cheer, who'd taken advantage of our distraction by wrapping the alchemical globe in sackcloth and spiriting it away like nimble-fingered ninjas. Its disappearance would have remained a mystery had I not caught them trying—unsuccessfully—to squeeze their prize through the doorway of their gnomehome. Still they’d refused to let go of it, until Ris'kin lifted them both up by the scruffs of their necks and gave them a stern shake.
The pair were still casting sulky glances at my avatar.
"You're supposed to be scavengers, not thieves," I told them. "What would you even have used it for? You can see in the dark, and you have illumishrooms for whenever you do need light."
Though the gnomes could see in the dark, they gravitated toward light like daisies toward the sun. My acolytes had all developed excellent tans, which had become a source of envy among the rest of the populace. I'd long ago come to terms with the fact that the latter's infrequent bouts of prayer were driven more by my shrine's location beneath the sunlight than by any particular desire to worship me.
On cloudy days, though, or at night, they would sometimes light the illumishrooms. Unlike the humid cavern from which the scouts first gathered them, the Grotto’s surfaces weren’t layered with condensation. Since the illumishrooms only glowed when in contact with water, this meant dipping them in the stream, flicking them with the contents of a waterskin, or, on one occasion, licking them.
I didn't need illumishrooms or even the brightening sunlight to notice the stream's swollen water levels and crumbling banks, or the increasing damage to the bridges from the debris caught by the current. I felt like a piece of flotsam myself, pushed in a direction over which I had no control. Just a few days ago we'd been thriving, rebuilding, even expanding. Now we were in danger of being washed away—if this 'Guildmaster' didn't get to us first.
Running away didn't sit right with me, partly because it did sit right with me. Stubbornness aside, all my natural instincts were screaming at me to flee. And I didn't trust those instincts.
Though most of my memories of my
