Page 85 of Mountain of Mirrors and Starlight
“Undead!UNDEAD!” someone was screaming.
Aislinn opened her eyes. Half of the dwarves were up, brandishing weapons, the other half just rising. The wargis cocked their heads, surprised by all this commotion.
The dwarves were advancing on Dillon.
Dillon.
Aislinn leapt to her feet, springing between them, Beau tripping over his bedroll as he struggled to follow.
“Stop!” Aislinn called. “He’s fine, he’s safe!”
Minerva held up her axe, holding off the attack. “Are you sure, lass? Because he looks—”
“I know,” Dillon said, “but I’m not going to attack, I promise!”
Luna gasped, lowering her rolling pin. “You can talk!”
“Yes, quite well, thank you.”
“We went through all this last night,” Aislinn explained. “We don’t know why he’s so, um, alive, but he is, and we know him—he’s a knight of Acanthia, and a close friend of our mother’s.”
The dwarves all exchanged glances, and then dropped their weapons to the floor. “Well, if you say so.”
“Fascinating,” said Flora, coming forward. “I’ve never… quite extraordinary. Do you mind if I—”
“I took a few notes last night,” Beau said, untangling himself and coming forward with his notebook. “I didn’t do a full examination—”
“He is standingright there,”Aislinn said, glowering.
“It’s all right,” Dillon said. “An examination might be a good idea, actually. It might give us some answers. I don’t mind.”
Flora and Beau exchanged the look of excited children being offered a barrel full of sweet treats.
“I’ll get my bag,” Flora announced.
“I’ll get my pen!”
They dragged Dillon off into a secluded corner of the tunnel behind a pile of rocks and started tearing off his clothes. They fell in a crumpled heap beside them. Luna crept forward, holding up the knight’s tabard, stained with brown blood and sporting a large hole in the stomach. She swallowed.
“I’m going to fix this before I start on breakfast,” she said. “Unless we’re all famished?”
They all shook their heads. “Need firewood anyway,” Bell said.
“And I fancy something other than snail this morning,” Diana announced. “Let me see if I can find something. Caer? Are you up for a hunt?”
Caer’s eyes were still rooted on the cluster of rocks behind which Dillon stood. He had not yet uttered a single word. “Yeah,” he said. “Sure.”
He climbed gingerly to his feet, testing his weight. Aislinn reached out to steady him, but he shrugged her off. “We probably shouldn’t—” he said. “I can probably… I think I have my powers back now.”
“Right,” she said, stepping backwards and ignoring the pang of disappointment. She ought to begladhe’d recovered.
“We won’t be long,” said Diana. “Or I hope not. Someone rustle up some firewood.”
Aislinn assisted with the finding of fuel to burn and returned to the party after a brief sojourn in the tunnels, finding a small station nearby which had some furniture she could hack up. She came back to the campfire to find Dillon sitting beside it, almost naked as Luna worked on his clothes.
Flora was stitching up the wound in his abdomen.
“We tried magic,” Beau explained, as Aislinn stared at the scene, “but it didn’t work.”
