January 11, 708 CR
Lois slowly revived sometime late the next morning. Thankfully, no dream startled him awake as it had done so many times in the recent past. Still, as he awoke, he shifted in his chair so that he could rifle through his pack which sat by the desk. He sighed; the pipe he kept in the pack was conspicuously absent. He glanced at the papers on the desk. If the pipe didn’t turn up over the course of the day, he would have to search for it later. For now, he had other things to do.
The ermine prepared for the day a bit more methodically than usual. While he was usually very informal whenever he walked about the Keep, a tendency aided by his form’s increased resistance to the winter’s chill, he wanted to be a bit more formal for today. If he could make a good impression on the tinsmith that he hoped to enlist for this pet project, he would want to make a good first impression.
It took him some time, but the white-furred assassin finally managed to put together a presentable outfit from the few things that he had decided to have tailored since he had been Cursed. It did actually look quite good if he was any judge. He wore a loose white shirt with long sleeves, the looseness allowing his thick winter fur some space. Overtop he wore a vest whose blue color helped emphasize the deep color of his newly altered eyes. It was trimmed with faux gold thread that, while not particularly expensive in reality, gave him the look of a man of some means at the very least.
Much of the rest of his outfit was function over form. Although the slacks he wore agreed in color and texture with the rest of his clothing, they were also designed to give him freedom of movement in case he had to move quickly. He wore his weapons along with his purse on his belt, a deterrent to any cutpurse who might assume that Lois’ formality suggested affluence. Lois also wore his bracers on each wrist, although their fine craftsmanship helped add to form as well as function. Finally, he belted down the sleeves of his shirt along the forearms to keep their looseness from becoming excessive.
In all, he still looked like a warrior, especially with the scars that still ran through his fur around his eye. Still, it was more formal than he would wear for almost any other purpose. The Duke would be lucky to see better from him on most days. That was, of course, unless the Duke had some chance of helping him create a replacement for Gerard’s leg, and Lois doubted that possibility.
He finally left his room a little later into the morning than he usually did, but his patrol had not yet received a new assignment. With the chaos of the Duke’s wedding still freshly dying down, it did not surprise Lois that no one had yet been assigned to fill in Gerard’s position in their patrol. While she had been training with her for the past few weeks, Lois had taken to thinking of pitching Paula as a potential replacement. Since he had not seen her in quite some time, however, that idea was quickly becoming irrelevant.
He hoped that it would not remain that way for long.
Lois allowed the halls of the Keep to guide him as he sought out the tinsmith that the scout Misha had suggested to him the evening before. It was an interesting phenomenon to him, having to trust his path to the whims of some spirit who inhabited the castle, rather than relying on the directions of his guide, but as long as it worked with reasonable speed he had no trouble with it. Today seemed to be his lucky day, as he nearly ran into a sign as he turned a corner. It was well high enough to be out of the way for most Keepers, but Lois had kept most of his considerable height through his change. It was a fact that both gratified and perturbed him. On the one hand, standing so tall had proven useful in situations where long legs allowed him to make longer jumps and traverse the tightly-packed rooftops of cities. On the other hand, the Curse had shortened his legs while leaving his height generally unaltered, and this was not the first time his head had nearly clipped a low-hanging sign. In this case, however, the encounter simply allowed him to be certain that he had reached his destination. A snowflake stood out over an anvil as the symbol of the smithy, with the words “Snow’s Tinsmithy” etched with care below it. Misha had called the man Edward Snow, so he must have found the place.
Ducking underneath the sign as he continued, he was surprised to find the door ajar. He pushed it gently, finding beyond the door an empty room. Coals still glowed low in the forge, but it looked like someone had lit it and quickly forgotten about it. Lois frowned. It seemed that he would have to come back—
Strange, clicking footsteps were heard a moment later, and Lois found his ears swiveling in the direction of the steps. He identified the odd clicking sound before he saw the man emerging from a door to one side of the smithy; they were hoofbeats. He seemed to be grumbling to himself about something, but he halted one step outside the door, staring at Lois for a moment.
The man was a ram, of a rather average height and build with black fur. He was dressed as a soldier, although he was not dressed for active duty for the moment. Lois quickly appraised him and concluded that he would present an interesting challenge if they were to ever meet in combat. He was clearly strong, perhaps moreso than some others would realize. Lois had seen others like him who hid their strength well.
“And here I thought it was impossible for there to be any more white fur in this smithy,” the ram mused, chuckling to himself at the intended joke that apparently he alone was privy to for the moment. “I’m sorry, where are my manners? My name is Wolfram.”
He held out a hoofhand to Lois, and the ermine shook it without a second thought. He was getting quite good at looking past how his fellow Keepers looked during their greetings. The ram was quite friendly at least, so that made it quite a bit easier.
“My name is Vincent Lois,” the ermine replied. Is Master Snow around?”
Wolfram flicked an ear and raised an eyebrow at this. “Master Snow? Drift is right in there,” he said, gesturing back the way he had come. “Fair warning, though; unless you have an outstanding order, it may be difficult to capture his attention for long.”
“He is occupied, then?” Lois asked.
“You could say that,” the ram mused thoughtfully. “Still, if you were going to talk to him, I’d recommend it. He could use a little bit of contact with humanity, however brief that contact might be.”
“Thank you,” Lois said with a nod.
The ram waved him off and continued out the door, wishing the ermine luck as he left. Lois shrugged and shook his head. He pushed open the side door of the smithy, and found inside a rather interesting sight.
The room was entirely filled with tools and models of various sorts, stacked or stored in various places around the room in mostly haphazard ways. In the center of the room, however, on a workbench that took up the better part of the room, was a strange bit of craftsmanship. At a quick glance, it looked like a set of gigantic bat wings. A closer inspection, however, revealed that they were crafted from a variety of different materials, wood, metal, leather, even some sort of canvas which made up the membrane of the wings.
Leaning close over the strange contraption, one eye closed as he tried to paste a portion of the canvas in a straight line, was a canine Keeper, his own fur as white as Lois’ own. The assassin realized what Wolfram had been talking about now in regards to the amount of white fur in the area, but before he could chuckle at the thought himself, the Keeper acknowledged his presence quietly, clearly trying to concentrate.
“I’ll be with you in a moment,” he said in the voice and tone of a man who was doing his best to focus on minute details. Lois nodded, keeping silent as the dog Keeper carefully pressed the material to the frame, holding it for a few moments while the paste bound the two things together. After a few moments, he raised his hands from the canvas and took a step back, acting like he expected the thing to unravel at any moment.
Heaving a sigh, he finally turned and gave Lois a somewhat weary, but genuine, smile. “Sorry for keeping you waiting,” he said after a moment. “I’ve been working on this for a while now, and everything just seems to be going wrong.”
“I hope I’m not interrupting,” Lois offered.
“No, don’t worry, I think I’ve finally finished this step. I cannot do much else with it until after all of the glue has set, so this is as good a time as any.”
Lois nodded. “My name is Vincent Lois,” he said by way of introduction, stepping forward and offering a paw.
“Drift,” the other Keeper replied, stepped up to meet Lois halfway. Lois flinched to the side just as Drift reached to shake his hand. At first Drift was startled, but then he saw Lois rapidly trying to break the fall of the strange, winglike contraption. The samoyed had not noticed that, as he stepped forward, his tail had managed to dip itself partially in the glue he was using, and it had caught ahold of his invention as it went by.
Lois was partially successful in preventing the device from dropping to the floor, although both men winced at the sound of creaking that indicated that parts of the frame were being strained. “Don’t move,” Lois cautioned. “It’s caught on your tail.” He huffed for a moment, trying to catch his breath after having to unexpectedly deal with the full weight of the device. “All right, walk backwards towards the work bench…”
After a few moments of maneuvering, the two had managed to replace the contraption on the workbench and detach Drift’s tail fur from the side of the frame. The samoyed sighed as he looked over the damage. “It isn’t as bad as it could have been, but that’s another few hours of work for me to do,” he mused.
“Should I return later?” Lois asked.
“No, no, quite honestly I could use a break from working on this thing. It’s been giving me more trouble…” He stopped, collecting himself before continuing. “I’m quite ready for something different. What can I do for you?”
Lois pulled out the sketches that he had made the night before, handing them to the dog Keeper as the two stepped into the main room of the smithy. As Drift examined the sketches, Lois explained Gerard’s situation. The story was perhaps less dramatic than it might have been if it was told by someone else, but Drift nodded and listened as Lois told it nonetheless.
“…And so I though perhaps someone could create a false leg for someone using similar concepts to what I saw on Madog,” Lois finished. The two had since taken seats on various parts of the mostly-cold forge, and Drift seemed to have finished his analysis of the drawings. He nodded at this last explanation and leaned back a bit.
“It’s an interesting idea,” he mused. He waited a moment, before his eyes fell on the drawings again. “Were you trained in art at all?” he asked quietly.
Lois shook his head with chagrin. “I sketch for my own amusement. I’m sorry if the quality of the drawings is not what you would have liked.”
“The drawings are fine,” Drift responded briefly. He reached for a pocket as though looking for something, only to realize that the stitches on the pocket were long worn out. He sighed and began to search himself over for something, until Lois offered him a simple charcoal pencil he had brought with him. “Thank you,” Drift said with a bit of a lopsided smile. “I’m losing a lot of things recently, pencils the least troublesome of all…
“At any rate, the drawings were quite good,” he continued. “The main fault is that they would never work if we tried to cast any of your suggested pieces in any metal. Tin may be quite a bit lighter than other materials, but it still has its weight. The density of this contraption would be such that it would, at the best, cause your friend to walk with an extremely lopsided limp.” He flipped one of the few sketches that was not drawn on both sides of the paper and began to sketch something slowly.
Lois nodded at Drift’s assessment, while glancing at the slowly-developing sketch in the samoyed’s paws. “You have another idea, then?” Lois asked.
Drift was busy sketching by now, although he took several moments at various points to take some quick, rough measurements with his claws. He stopped several more times, looking at the paper with something close to a scowl. “It should be possible…” He sketched a few lines. “Madog’s design is specific to automatons; it isn’t meant for people,” he mumbled. “He’s built to be able to deal with the weight of the metal, but a man is going to be different. It’s going to need to be strong, but mostly hollow…”
The samoyed scratched through his first drawing as he talked, finding another unused section of paper and beginning to work with it.
“So, you think you can do something with this?” Lois asked.
Drift didn’t even look up. “I think…” he leaned back, turning his sketch and looking at it from another angle. He suddenly stood up and walked quickly over to the forge. He noted the few still-glowing coals in it and began to work the bellows. “I think we’re going to find out,” he said, flashing a sharp-toothed grin to the ermine as he walked back past him, collection equipment as he went.
“Wait, already?”
“No time like the present!” the samoyed exclaimed. Lois watched him move back and forth for a few moments before shrugging. He had hoped for quick result, but this was unprecedented.
A room sat in the dark in an area of a ruined keep north of Metamor. In times past, this castle had served as one of the early lines of defense against the lutins. It had fallen within the lifetimes of many of the Keepers in Metamor, and had remained unused for just as long. Or, at least, that was what most people thought.
A figure moved through the darkness, holding only a glowing crystal to light his way, walking towards a half-ruined table set at an odd angle in the large room. It may have once been a banquet hall, but everything that had been in the room at one time was broken beyond recognition. Even the table, at which sat another shadowy figure sat silently, had been broken in the overthrow of the keep years ago. A corner had been smashed by a stone launched from a catapult, a leg of the table completely splintered and rendered useless. That corner had been rested on a low stack of rubble, but the table still listed slightly to one side. The man who sat in what might have once been the lord’s own chair didn’t seem to mind, however, even as he looked up to see the man approaching him.
“Sir, our man has recovered something that you might find interesting,” he announced quietly. He gave a military salute to the man at the table, and then placed a small, leather-bound book on the table before his superior. The other man returned the salute stiffly before picking up the book and leafing through it quickly.
“The journal of Vincent Lois,” the man mused. “Interesting. I was not aware that our mark was prone to self-reflection. He is becoming increasingly skilled at hiding things from us.”
“Is this a problem, sir?”
“Perhaps, or perhaps not.” The man flipped back to the first page and began to read down the page quickly, mumbling the words to himself. “Interesting… He seems to have developed some moral objections to his former line of work.”
“Sir, isn’t that impossible?”
“Theoretically, but remember he is the first that we have attempted to sway in this manner. Some imperfections are to be expected.” He continued to examine the book. “I was also unaware that Lois was a calligrapher.”
“We have known for some time that Lois is a capable forger. In his career, I believe he has used that skill to great effect well over a dozen times. Some knowledge of writing is necessary to provide him with the basic skills needed to perform that task.”
“Indeed… His writing is an interesting hybrid of styles. The first letter of every paragraph is stylized like a court scribe’s missives, but his writing has a strange, informal slant to it in most places.” He tapped a finger over a particular letter. “Pronunciation symbols over his vocals are also an odd touch. I have not seen that in modern writing outside of those courts who subscribe to truly ancient traditions. And those guides are not universal… Not ever over those vocal which call for the same inflection…”
“Sir?”
“Quiet. Lois is doing something here; these aberrations are intentional. Here; an s written out of his regular script, orphaned in the middle of a word. Lois is a perfectionist; he would not have left that as it is were it a mistake.”
The man drew a parchment from within his jacket and returned to the beginning of the strange manuscript. He began to write down letters, one at a time, forming them into words as well as he could. Some letters he missed at first but returned to verify, and other letters he added at first and then decided that any aberration was truly by accident.
As he finished, the man leaned back and handed the other man the parchment. “Read this,” he instructed.
It took a moment for the man to read past the corrections that had been made on the page, but he finally began to read, slowly and quietly.
“What you cannot control
Cannot touch
Cannot burn
Cannot harm
What will not bleed
Will not die
Will not sleep
Will not relent
What comes in darkness
Comes in light
Comes in sleep
Comes between blinks of the eye
What you have given me I now refute
My dreams shall be my own.”
The sitting man smiled at the last words. “He knows his dreams are ours. How cute. He feels his grasp on reality slipping, and so he places these messages to himself in his writing. He thinks he can get away. We shall see, Lois. We shall see.”
Lois and Drift sat near the forge again resting from the day’s work. It had been a strange, impromptu day of work that had ended with far more failures than successes. They had been attempting to cast a thin rod of metal that would still provide enough support to handle a man’s weight. Their luck had been mixed at best; most of the rods had some subtle fault that caused them to fail under any sort of pressure. Now, however, Lois turned their final attempt over in his hands, smiling.
“It holds up quite well,” the ermine commented. He had rolled up his wide sleeves and belted them just below the shoulder to keep from ruining them while he assisted Drift. He had not planned to work in a forge for most of the day, but in the end it had been quite a good day, despite its many failures.
“Finally,” Drift griped, mostly to himself. “I know how to forge a solid rod, but for some reason the ones we have been casting all day have found ways to fail. My infernal luck, I’d say.”
Lois shrugged. “Honestly, the fact that you were willing to work on it on such short notice was a surprise.”
The samoyed shrugged. “As I said, I needed something to take my mind off of that contraption in my workshop. That, and I certainly think that the idea has merit. While the original idea has specific application to your friend and his leg structure, I believe that it could be applied to other types of leg. Human, other animals… Perhaps any legged creature who might need something of the sort.”
Lois nodded. “I still intend to help fund this project,” he commented.
Drift nodded, rubbing some dirt from his fur. “I would appreciate that. I don’t think that I will need much for materials, but it will probably take quite a while to get a working prototype, especially if today’s luck continues.” He took the rod from Lois and turned it over a few times. “This is a good start, but I’m going to need more exact measurements from your friend before we can really move forward too much.” He stood, grabbing Lois’ pencil from where he had placed it on a workbench and scrawling a few notes in the margins of one of the nearly-full parchment pages that he had been working with over the course of the day.
“I’ll need at least this much information from your friend,” he said, handing it to Lois. The handwriting was different from what Lois usually saw, but he managed to decipher it easily.
“I think I’ll be able to find a way to get this information. Most of us were already planning to help him come by a wooden leg if nothing else, so getting the measurements should be reasonably inconspicuous.”
Drift frowned slightly. “Why are you keeping it a secret from him?” he asked quietly.
“Insurance,” Lois answered with a sigh. “I cannot guarantee that this will work for him, so I do not want to get his hopes up. He has had enough of his hopes dashed as it is.”
Drift nodded, heaving a bit of a sigh. “Very well. I will certainly do what I can to make this endeavor a success. I will caution you that, even with the measurements this will likely take several weeks, if not a month or two, to complete. This rod,” he gestured with their small success for the evening, “is just enough to show that we can support a great amount of weight without causing an unreasonable burden on the wearer. There are still other issues like… like pivoting and how the hoof reacts to being set on the ground in various types of terrain—“
“Wait, hoof?” Lois asked. “I didn’t know we were going to pay that much attention to details.”
Drift nodded slowly. “I hope to do as much as is reasonably possible to make this feel like an actual leg. No need to skimp on details unless there really isn’t a way to make it happen. That said, working on some sort of joint that will work correctly in most situations…” And like that he had retrieved another piece of parchment, and this time began amending the drawing he had sketched on it before. Lois smiled, but cleared his throat to get the attention of the smith.
“Unfortunately, I must beg your leave at this point,” he announced. “I do have some other business that I wish to attend to before I turn in for the evening.”
The dog nodded. “It was a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” he replied. His hands were too occupied by his work to offer a handshake, but that suited Lois well enough. He stepped quickly towards the door, retrieving his vest from where he had haphazardly draped it sometime before and pulling it on. With a final wave, he exited the samoyed’s tinsmithy.
Unfortunately, as soon as the door closed behind him, Lois ran into something and tripped, causing him to stumble several steps before regaining his balance. Though he was able to regain his balance, however, he was unable to react quickly enough to save his ears from the panicked scream he heard.
He whirled in time to see who it was that he had collided with, and when he had identified her he quickly stepped to her side.
“Paula! What are you doing here?” he asked.
She babbled incoherently for several moments before finally calming herself and speaking. “I’m sorry—so sorry I…” She looked up finally and saw who it was. “Lois! I’ve been looking for you everywhere, but the Keep hasn’t been—oh, you must think I am such a fool I—“
“Paula, calm down,” Lois instructed. He reached a hand towards her, but she flinched back, snapping at him as she did.
“Don’t! Don’t touch—Don’t—I’m fine just—“ She was unable to spit out anything coherent before she took a second to take a few deep breaths.
“What’s wrong, Paula?” he asked quietly. He had only seen someone react like that once before, and that was—
“It’s nothing, I’m fine.” Her voice was level once again, as level as it had ever been, even if there was still a tense edge to it. “You just frightened me. I’ve been walking in these halls alone for a while now. You came out of nowhere.”
“I just came out of—“ Lois stopped, turning to the side as he realized that the door to the smithy was gone. That at least explained why Drift had not reacted to Paula’s screams. He turned back to her and shook his head. “I just stepped through a door. Kyia really wanted to have us meet, I suppose, so she made certain our paths crossed.”
Paula nodded, pulling a few loose hairs behind her ear. She shivered for a moment like she had felt a cold draft, then turned and smiled at Lois. “I’m sorry I’ve been absent at our practices for a while. Some… things came up at home. I wasn’t certain what would happen if I tried to get out for the last few nights, so I played it safe.”
Lois nodded. “You’re very jumpy, are you sure you should be here?”
She laughed uneasily. “Sure? No, I’m not sure. I just know that if I didn’t try now I probably wouldn’t be able to work up the nerve again. So, are you able to train me for a little while tonight?”
Lois considered. He wasn’t dressed for it particularly, but he hadn’t been dressed for smithing either. At the moment, there was little he could do to further harm his clothing, so he nodded and smiled. “I think I could put in a few hours,” he replied.
The two walked in an awkward silence for a few minutes, which was all the time that Kyia needed to redirect them to their usual training area. Lois quickly dropped his vest and started to adjust the belts that held his sleeves up, but he frowned. He had not worn this shirt with training in mind. Sighing, he pulled the laces loose and pulled the shirt over his head. At least he had his fur to keep the winter chill from freezing him.
As he turned back from depositing his shirt to the side, he caught Paula staring off to one side blankly, her eyes unfocussed.
“Paula?” he said quietly.
She turned back to him, eyes slowly focusing. She seemed strangely uncomfortable for a moment, but she managed to quickly regain her composure. “Are you ready?” she asked.
Lois nodded. He was certain that something was wrong, but he didn’t know just what it was. Something was bothering her. She had been uncomfortable since her change, but he had never seen her like this. Hopefully it would pass. For now, they had plenty of time to make up, and there was no time for that like the present.
January 12, 708CR
Gerard sat quietly in his bed, resting after a long day. His legs were stretched out on the bed before him, or at least the leg and a half that he still had after his eventful patrol. He sighed whenever his eyes drifted to his stump. It continued to be a problem, even now that he had discovered his taur form.
Amber quietly entered the room, closing the door slowly so that she would not wake the children. She smiled to her husband for a moment before quickly preparing for bed. He only briefly returned her smile before sighing and resuming his contemplation.
“Is your leg bothering you again?” Amber asked as she sat on the bed beside him.
Gerard shook his head before he could reconsider. “Well, yes and no,” he replied quietly. “It isn’t hurting at the moment, thank Eli, but it’s still a problem.”
Amber nodded silently as she laid a hand on his own hooflike hand. “I saw you were frustrated today.”
Gerard nodded. “I tried to do too much, and it showed me just how far I am from finding a real solution to my problem.” He had gone out earlier in the day, silencing protests from his wife to go run some errands for their family. At first it had gone well, even if his newly discovered form felt odd at times, but as the day had worn on, Gerard had worn down. “I tire far too easily. I don’t think it’s just the form; it’s the lack of one of my legs. I finished everything I had to do, but it took me far longer than usual, and I was starving by the end.”
Amber nodded. “I noticed how much you ate this evening.”
Gerard shook his head. “If I had just eaten a lot it wouldn’t be a problem, but I couldn’t stop. I felt like I was completely starved. I certainly couldn’t do that on patrol.”
Amber nodded. “I understand. Don’t worry, honey. We always knew that it would be a difficult task to deal with this, we will simply have to come up with some way to accommodate it. Perhaps you will have to find another occupation.”
Gerard winced. “I don’t want to think like that, but you may be right. I might have to find some place where this form is useful. I don’t know any craft, though. Whatever I found would have to be simple, without much necessary training.”
His wife leaned her head against his chest, and he held her close. “Don’t worry. Eli will see us through. We have friends, I’m certain that one of them knows of something you might be able to do.”
Gerard smiled weakly. “Yes, we’ll find something.”
He wanted to believe it, but he was having difficulty being positive in this situation. What sort of job could use a man with a missing leg when there were hundreds that were healthy and whole? He could not think of any.
February 14, 708 CR
It had taken Lois the better part of a week to recover sufficiently to consider continuing his training with Paula. She was reasonably understanding about the situation, even though she was quite happy to prod him about it in good humor. He would have been more amused if the recovery time didn’t suggest something that he hated to consider. Age was beginning to slow his body. He remained capable for now, but he knew the day would come when his injuries would simply refuse to be healed. He did not like to consider the fact that it might be soon.
Such considerations were kept to himself for now, however, even as he set about another task. It had been just past a month since the ermine had commissioned the mechanical leg that he hoped would help Gerard overcome the loss of his leg on their previous patrol. He had checked on the progress several times since the beginning, but his recovery had prevented him from doing so recently. Now that he was on his feet again, it was the first small matter of importance that he wished to see to.
It was taking longer than usual to find smithy, and Lois was becoming impatient. Kyia was generally quite helpful whenever he wished to get somewhere quickly, but today’s route was circuitous, even compared to those he had taken during his first trip to the Keep years ago. After wander for several minutes, Lois considered that perhaps Kyia knew that Drift was not in. He shook his head; no, even if the samoyed had stepped out, the Keep’s spirit would have directed him, either to the smithy or to the smith’s actual location. She had some other reason for keeping it hidden from him for so long.
Or perhaps it was not supposed to be hidden.
Lois suddenly realized that he had been passing a familiar door repeatedly during the span of his journey. Now that he turned and looked at it, he realized that it was Drift’s door. The ermine had been looking for the sign that announced the presence of the tinsmithy, and without it he had been ignoring the door. The ermine frowned and approached the door. Something seemed wrong with the sudden change.
The former assassin would usually have opened the door without much ceremony, but that seemed wrong for today. Taking a quick breath, he rapped on the door to announce his presence.
“It’s open, come in,” a familiar voice spoke from beyond the door. Lois breathed a sigh of relief. It was Drift, and he sounded well, if somewhat stressed. The ermine gently opened the door, stepping across the threshold to stand in the cool room beyond. He frowned once again; the temperature of the room suggested that the forge had been cold for quite a while.
“Lois! It has been a while.” Drift stepped out of the workshop where the two had met for the first time. He smiled, but Lois was more focused on the smith’s physical appearance otherwise. His fur was pressed down in places and stuck out at odd angles in others, as though the samoyed had just dragged himself from his bed. The dog Keeper was otherwise clearly quite composed, however, so Lois concluded that Drift had simply been too busy to groom his fur that day. For some reason, that bothered him.
“I had to take a leave for a few days,” the ermine explained. “I joined a pugilism tournament and took a few good hits. I wanted to come in now and see if you had made any more progress on our project?”
The samoyed nodded. “One moment, I’ve put it around here… somewhere.” He stepped back into his workshop and began to carefully shuffle through some things in search of the requested item. Lois stepped around the doorframe himself. The room was perhaps even more of a mess than the last time he had been there, although there was thankfully no glue left out for Drift to paste his tail with. The canine craftsman had just moved a stack of design drawings to one side and was now shifting some other things that had been placed on top of the item he was searching for. Finally, he carefully removed the object, turning it over in his hands, prodding it, and then handing it to Lois.
“I was able to finally assemble all of the parts a few nights ago. Sorry for the pile; after I finally finished it I had some other projects I wanted to work on, and…” He ran a paw through the fur on the back of his head. Lois chuckled quietly and took the offered device. It looked very much like a deer’s hind leg, only rendered in metal instead of flesh. The only exception was the hoof, which was made of a rigid, but slightly pliable, substance which would simulate the hoof as accurately as possible. It was also light, Lois noted with some satisfaction. The ermine scanned it quietly for a few moments, examining it closely in silence. He noticed that some of the workings along the back of the leg were exposed, and he began to prod them carefully.
“I wouldn’t try that,” Drift cautioned. “I ran some tests, as many as I could without the man it was designed for present. I noticed that this area,” he indicated the exposed parts, “tends to catch every now and again. Usually it is not a problem; the weight of a man’s body being supported on it should cause it to loosen up without any adjustment. Every now and again, however, it stays caught. The first time I manually loosed it, it bent the rod I used to free it.” He poked around the pile he had moved to find the leg a moment before and withdrew the rod he had mentioned. It was bent at a horrible angle. Lois realized the implication and quickly drew his claws back from the opening.
Drift chuckled. “It’s loose now, so it isn’t a danger, but I just wouldn’t get in the habit of sticking your fingers in to try to release it. I hope that we will be able to figure out whatever is causing the problem in the field. Well, I hope you will be able to find the problem, I should say.” The samoyed cast a distracted glance back into the workshop. His eyes didn’t settle on anything, however; Lois wondered if his thoughts were in the room at all.
“That should be all right; I’m not inventor by any means, but I have a little experience with mechanical devices. If I’m not certain what to do, I suppose I could write a note for you to look at afterwards?”
He realized as he asked that Drift was still distracted. The samoyed only realized he had been asked a question when Lois stopped talking. “Hmm? Oh, yes. I might be able to take a look at it later. If there is something that can be done to improve the design, then I would be very much interested in finding it out.”
Lois nodded slowly, but he could see the distance in the dog’s eyes. “Drift?”
The samoyed looked up at him questioningly.
“I think you need some rest. Not sleep, just some time away. Your mind is somewhere else, and I speak from experience when I say that is dangerous.”
The canine Keeper shook his head. “I’m just distracted,” he replied. “I'm going on patrol in a few days, so I want to get as much done before then as possible.”
It was a reasonable answer, but something in his manner suggested that there was more going on than Drift was telling. Lois considered pressing the matter further, but he realized with some chagrin that he was only complicating Drift’s distraction. Drift was a professional acquaintance and nothing more, yet Lois was trying to do the duty of a friend. Perhaps his years as an assassin had taught him that one lesson too well. He was so used to acting like every man’s friend, even though he admitted to himself that his own blade might slice their throat the next day…
Drift was already back to his work, poring over the contents of the pages he had spread over a workbench in the room. Lois opened his mouth to say something more, but convinced himself otherwise. A simple, “Good day,” was all he gave, and after receiving the samoyed’s like response he stepped back into the halls. For a few moments he stared at the grain of the door’s wood, trying to convince himself to do something more, but he finally turned away with a sigh. It was a problem, but he was more likely to make it worse than he was to help it if he put his muzzle into it.
Gerard was sitting on the side of his bed, looking down at his legs from where he sat. On the right side, his leg ended in a solid hoof, looking much like a deer’s hoof except for the somewhat larger size which allowed him to walk on two legs more easily. On the left side, however, the leg ended abruptly just after his knee, a memento from his earlier patrol. Despite his wife’s assurances that he would find something, the best he had managed to find so far was a single day’s work. Today would be another day for him to try to find a job, he mused, but he barely had any hope left for discovering something he had missed. There were only so many people in the Keep, and he was no craftsman. His best, and likely only, hope depended on him finding work where he could sit and do something that required very little skill or dexterity in his fingers. The Curse had robbed him of that as well.
His wife had done a fantastic job of keeping Gerard’s spirits up during the past few weeks. She had even managed to keep the children in order, which was always a difficult task for her because she looked like one of them. They had been respectful and quiet ever since he had returned home. Gerard hoped that this didn’t mean that they had discovered on their own what sort of straits their family was going through.
Gerard heard a knock on the door and sighed. If someone was awake to come to his door at this point it meant that he should already be out looking for work somewhere. He reached to the wall and took the crutch that he had been given to support himself with. With a quiet grunt, he managed to stand from the bed and make his way to the door with the glorified stick under his arm.
*Clip-thunk* *Clop-thock*
Gerard tried to ignore the sounds of his hoof and the crutch landing in their slow rhythm, but the wooden floor of his house made it difficult to move silently without his left leg to support him. As he reached the doorway of his room, however, he heard his wife’s voice from the door of the house.
“Gerard? It’s one of the men from your patrol. Mr. Lois?”
The deer grunted and managed a small smile. The enigmatic ermine had visited with him briefly while he was being detained by the Healer, but had not come to his door since he had returned home. Perhaps he had come to make up for lost time, and perhaps he knew of somewhere he could find work for a few days.
He had made it to the main hall that led to the bedrooms before Lois met him halfway. The former assassin held a wrapped package under one arm, and he gave a large smile to the stag when he saw him standing in the hall.
“It’s good to see you again,” he said earnestly. The deer managed to respond with a smile of his own.
“Well, I’m not quite at my best, but I am happy to see you as well,” he replied. “What brings you here? Run out of other adventures to have in this Keep?”
Lois scoffed. “Hardly, I think if I’d found them all I’d be either dead, imprisoned, under torture, or some combination of all three.” He turned his head to the side and cleared his throat, staring off for a moment as though considering what such a situation would involve. He shook his head and turned back to his friend. “I’ve come to see how you were doing, and to give you a gift.” He lifted the wrapped package.
Gerard looked at the package briefly, and then back at Lois. “I think I’ve mentioned that I’m trying to avoid falling back on charity,” he noted.
Lois laughed. “Well, if you don’t get some use out of this gift I am going to have to find someone else who just happens to be in your exact same situation.” When Gerard gave him a confused look, the ermine waved him to follow into the dining room. “You’ll need to take a seat for this,” he explained.
The stag complied, if a bit more slowly than either of them would like. Finally, however, he had managed to find his seat beside the table, although the chair was turned to face towards the main area of the house, looking at Lois where he was standing. “What is this about, Lois? You seem quite pleased with yourself and I am not certain that that is a good thing.”
Lois set the package on the table and carefully pulled the knots out of the strings that were keeping it closed. He began to unwrap it, talking as he went. “I saw the most peculiar sort of creature wandering the Keep close to a month ago now. He was made of metal, and fashioned to look and act like a fox.”
Gerard nodded. “He belongs to Misha Brightleaf. The man discovered the thing in a ruin outside of the Keep, and took it upon himself to rebuild it. I believe that it took him several years, but now that he’s finished it the creature has taken on a life of his own. Harmless enough, I am sure, though not everyone would agree with me. I’ve heard that Father Hough has been quite taken with him.”
The ermine was taking his time opening the package, and he nodded at the deer’s description. “The creature was called Madog,” he explained. “Regardless, after I saw him I was sort of inspired. I am not exactly a smith, mind you, but I was able to find a man who was.” Gerard was about to ask him what he meant when he realized that the package was now open. He glanced at it, and saw something curiously similar to what he had seen a few minutes before, the difference between his left and his right legs. It was a surprisingly lifelike rendering of a deer’s left hind leg, specifically the portion that his left leg was missing, except for the fact that it was fashioned from metal.
He stared at it for several moments, uncertain of what the object before him was meant to be despite its clear visual representation. He had seen some rather intricate workings of metal created by the smiths and artisans of the Keep, but this was something entirely different. Where the many ornate and complicated workings of metal he had seen before were often stationary, and those that were not lacked any complexity, this mechanism was visibly complicated, many finer parts visible through an uncovered portion of the back. He could not guess at their function simply by looking at them, but the form in which it had been cast gave him a reasonable idea of its purpose.
“Lois? You found a smith who could make… Is this what I think it is?”
Lois nodded. “It is your new left leg,” he replied. “I realize that you are generally against charity but as I mentioned, I will have to find someone else who perfectly matches the design of this device for it to see any use. You are literally the only person who would be able to use it effectively, so I suppose it’s not so much charity as it is expedience, if you understand my meaning.”
Gerard glanced from Lois to the metal limb and back, muzzle agape as he realized what Lois was offering him. After the past several weeks of trying to live on one leg, he was being given the opportunity to discover once again what it was like to walk on two.
Amber had just returned to the room after warning their children to be careful as they played outside of the house. She could not see the strange contraption that Lois had delivered, but she could see the effect that it had on her husband. A few tears were rolling down the fur on his muzzle, and she quickly moved towards Gerard to comfort him. It was something that she had done with disturbing frequency in recent days, so it was reflex to approach him as soon as she saw the tears.
Halfway there, she spotted the strange object on the table, and it brought her up short. Although the materials were certainly different, she could certainly recognize the form of a deer’s leg, made especially clear by the cloven hoof that occupied the far end of the limb. Lois managed to turn and make brief eye contact with her a moment before he found himself in a sudden embrace that caught him completely off guard. Gerard gave a halting chuckle at his wife’s reaction, and smiled to the ermine gratefully.
“Lois, we have been trying to fathom how we were going to live after I lost my leg. I have been looking for work everywhere, but there is nowhere that a one-legged man can find work where a two-legged man could not do it better. I am no craftsman…” He stopped as his voice gave away, and it took him a few moments to recover. “Lois, this might be the tool Eli uses to save us from losing our home.”
Lois smiled and nodded as Amber stepped back from him and joined her husband by the table, hands on his shoulders. While the ermine did not share the stag’s convictions, he was well aware of the meaning behind Gerard’s words. “I am happy to help. I may not have known you for long, Gerard, but I know you well enough to realize that you have what makes, not just a warrior, but a man great. Your commitment both to your companions and to your family will take you far, and I would not have the loss of a leg holding you back.”
Gerard managed a soft chuckle, but any further conversation was cut short by a quick rap on the door. Lois smiled.
“I believe that would be the man I asked Coe to send down. I may be the adventurous sort, but attempting to help you adjust to a new leg would be a bit beyond my depth, and I’d rather have this leg make your situation better rather than worse.”
Amber followed him to the door, and he deferred to her to answer the knocking. The man at the door indeed introduced himself as a healer’s apprentice with Master Coe.
“I was told that someone in this residence required assistance with a wooden leg?” he said after his introduction.
“Well, something similar to a wooden leg,” Amber replied with a sheepish smile. When the man raised an eyebrow, she simply waved him inside. Lois nodded to the man, noting that he was likely just a few years past the Curse, almost certainly affected by the transgender effect of the same. He walked with a good bit of confidence however, so it seemed that he had not been too attached to a female form.
His reaction to the metal contraption was quite comical at first, but he quickly overcame his confusion and began to examine the straps. Drift had thankfully made the socket similar to what would be seen on most peg legs, and the healer’s apprentice was able to fit it with only a few minor adjustments. He stepped back to take a look at the result, and gave a shake of his head.
“I’ve never seen a thing like it,” he mused. “I’ve helped a few unfortunate men to fit their new legs, but never anything like this.”
Lois nodded in agreement. As often as he dealt with fighting men, he had seen many others who had lost a leg and had adopted a wooden substitute. Some were fortunate enough to belong to a cavalry unit, and could fight almost as well as before as long as they were in the saddle. Many had retired, never adjusting fully to the new limb that they had been given. Some had given up on the peg leg and fell back on the use of a crutch instead. None of them, however, had used a tool even remotely similar to the device that was strapped to Gerard’s stump.
“It will be some time before you will be able to heal enough to walk on that leg,” the healer warned. “You won’t be back in the field for a while longer, but I have been given authority to make decisions regarding your therapy.” He gave an encouraging smile. “If you make good progress in our first few meetings, I will be glad to inform George that he can expect you back soon. It may not be much, but I know that Metamor has its share of wounded warriors. I am reasonably certain that they would be willing to provide you with a modest stipend, especially if they know you will return.”
Gerard chuckled. “It certainly couldn’t hurt.” The stag looked down at his legs, noting how the mechanism that had replaced his left leg bent in almost the exact same places as his own natural leg. While he was still struck by how foreign his legs appeared after the Curse at times, the shape of the metal looked surprisingly familiar to him. “I know you say that I will not be able to walk for some time, but… would it be possible to try to stand?”
The healer shifted uncertainly, his expression conflicted. “The injury has healed enough to where standing should not damage your leg any further, but it is still a fresh wound. The pain will be considerable should you attempt it.”
The deer looked up at his wife, something he did not often have to opportunity to do because of her short stature. Keeping his eyes fixed on her, he spoke slowly to the healer. “I think I would like to try. It may not be much, but I want to have a starting point that I can work forward from.”
Amber nodded to him supportively, and stood back as her husband braced himself against the table, trying to lift himself to his feet. The healer moved to stand behind him, but he did not move to assist him yet. The young man realized that Gerard wanted to try to stand under his own power, so he stood close enough to catch him should he fall, but did not otherwise interfere.
Lois came a little closer, but he still stood a few paces away. The ermine winced as his patrol companion’s face contorted with pain, but he had seen the man do something similar before. The determination that overcame the pain was the same thing he had seem in Gerard’s eyes when the stubborn buck had forced the Curse to shift him from his feral shape to his bipedal form in Coe’s office. As Gerard managed to come, trembling, to his hooves, Lois began to wonder if there was anything that the stag couldn’t do if he was determined to do it.
As it turned out, Gerard found something he could not do when he attempted to stand without the help of the table. He wobbled for a moment, only to buckle under the pain from his stump. The healer caught him before he could completely collapse, showing that his small frame hid a considerable reserve of strength. He still gasped from the effort before he managed to help Gerard to the chair that the stag had been sitting in a few moments before.
“That is far more than I expected from you today,” he said through heavy breaths a moment later. “I think we’ll keep you off your hooves for a little while more. We have a few things to deal with before we get to standing on your new leg, anyway. Your muscles need to recover, you need to get used to the weight of the… thing, and you need to be able to deal with the pain of your stump…” He took a moment to recover from the exertion. “Still, I’d say you have given yourself quite a good place to start from.”
Gerard gave Lois a smirk, but was back to panting after a brief moment. The long process of recovery was not something he could hurry, so taking the time to appreciate small victories was a luxury he could afford. His wife was beaming at him, and he returned her smile as soon as he could do so without panting heavily a moment later.
Lois was smiling as well, but he was more subdued. Somehow, the idea of Gerard returning to the battlefield after his injury seemed wrong. He had already lost a leg in this war. How much more could the Keep ask from him?
And yet he realized that the Keep had been in a state of constant war for ages. He wondered if the Åelves had even seen a time of peace for the Keep in their extended lives. If he lost a leg at some point, he was certain that the Keep would hope to have continued use of his services as well.
After he allowed Gerard to recover for a few minutes, the healer began to work with him on the first basic exercises of the long road to recovery. Lois stayed to help for a few more moments, but he left shortly after they started their work. Gerard thanked him again, and Amber echoed her husband’s words with even more eagerness. Lois left quietly thereafter. He wanted to prepare some things before training with Paula later in the evening. He would be back, though. Someone had to keep an eye on that stubborn stag.