Exhausted by Usefulness

At dawn the next day, the fragile quiet broke when the room fell into a different kind of silence. Every gaze was drawn to Alastra as she shifted in her cot: a blackish-red, softly furred tail hung out from the covers, swaying gently in the early light. It ended in a very devilish-looking spade-shaped tip. She felt the stillness, turned, saw their faces, and then saw it herself. Her horror was immediate and absolute. The tail seemed to diminish into itself and then disappeared back under the covers. Alastra struck her head against the wall. “No,” she said, then again, “No,” then, “No, no, no,” before collapsing into herself, rocking back and forth as she whispered, “I can’t... I can’t... I can’t...” Faint sparks of uncontrolled magic flickered in her hands. No one moved. No one knew what to do. Then Tharad stepped forward, calling her name again and again until she finally looked at him, eyes hollow, her face a rictus of despair. Without another word, he began removing his gear slowly, then his tunic, revealing bindings wrapped tight across the flattened breasts on his chest. The room went still. Alastra stared. They all stared. Then Veric said, “Huh. That looks like that hurts,” and the tension broke. Alastra rose, crossed the room, and embraced Tharad, who bent and lifted her into a hug, holding her there for a long while as everyone else looked on.

Late that morning, the second answer came. Held Crossing had been named by two different people who should not have known one another and had described the same wrongness in different words: a ford that felt too practiced, water that moved by habit, and a crossing no one remembered choosing until they were already across. They reached Held Crossing as dusk began to settle, the day thinning into a pale wash that made the ford stones look older than they should. Each one had been worn smooth by weather, wheel, and foot until the crossing seemed to remember more travelers than the road itself could have carried. The river moved quietly around them, shallow water sliding over stone and gravel with none of the violence they had found at Blackroot Ford, none of the wrong silence of Silent Patch, none of Ashwater’s held breath. Held Crossing looked, at first, like a place doing exactly what it had always done: letting people pass from one bank to the other.

That was the wrongness. Zhale felt it first and stopped at the edge of the water. The river did not resist her. The ford did not recoil. It was not screaming, not bleeding, not hollowed out. It simply kept offering itself. The current touched each stepping stone, parted, joined again, and seemed to hesitate at the midpoint before remembering how to continue downstream. Ripples reached the crossing and lingered too long. A leaf drifted between two stones, spun once, twice, then moved on as if released from an instruction it had nearly obeyed. “This place isn’t hurt,” Zhale said. Then, after listening a little longer to what the land was not quite saying, “It’s tired.” XiuQing studied the stones, the water, the road meeting the river on both banks. “It has been asked to do something again and again.” Alastra’s gaze moved over the ford and narrowed as she felt for an arcane shape beneath the ordinary one. “Not forced,” she said. “Used.”

Held Crossing had not been wounded by violence. It had been exhausted by usefulness. Something had taken the nature of the place, the old compact of road and river and stone that said here, you may pass, and leaned on it until the crossing had begun to hold itself open. Even with the anchor gone, the ford had not remembered how to stop being available. It was not a gate, not truly. Not yet. But the habit of passage had been stretched thin enough that something else had learned to press against it. Zhale knelt at the water’s edge, her hand hovering just above the surface, not touching, listening with the attention she gave to frightened animals and old trees. “It would accept release,” she said quietly, “but it won’t ask for it.” Tharad looked across the stones one more time. “How do we...” “No idea,” Zhale interrupted.

Once again they went through their repertoire, trying everything. Unfortunately, they went through the routines backward, and it was not until the last effort, the thing learned at Blackroot Ford, that anything took hold: healing and Spare the Dying. The magic coursed through the land, breaking up the ingrained patterns and freeing it. Gaia was invoked again. The Wardens stood a moment longer as the last light faded and the river slipped back toward a more natural sound, and though nothing announced it, each of them felt the same small certainty that somewhere, something would notice that a convenience had been removed.

They returned to Mama Laran’s cottage after dark and brought the new pieces inside with them: Echoing Rift, Held Crossing, the altered habit of the place, the anchor that had spoken through thought. Mama Laran listened through the whole account without interrupting, which made the silences inside the telling feel even more exact. When the report was finished, the Wardens sat with the unease of people who had solved several small things and thereby proved that the larger thing still waited beyond them. Alastra said it first. “We need answers.” Tharad nodded. “We’re missing something.” XiuQing folded his hands. “What we encountered today does not resemble any creature or system I know.” Alastra added, quieter, “And it didn’t feel like a normal extraplanar creature either.” Zhale leaned back, already arranging the next step in her mind. “Which means we need information.” Tharad pointed toward Veric. “And we need to pick up his chainmail in Waterdeep.” Veric scratched his head, still adjusting to the idea that the road had reclassified him without asking permission. “I guess I’m becoming a fighter.” “Yeah,” Tharad said. “You are.” The decision followed with almost no ceremony. They would leave in the morning and travel three days to Waterdeep.

The road north gave them crisp air, clear light, and more conversation than they might have managed even a tenday earlier. They were not yet easy with one another in every way, but familiarity had begun to accumulate in the spaces between tasks, and Zhale, who seemed to take the world as a series of practical revelations, kept finding places to ask the sort of questions other people were too trained to avoid. Veric had a similar but different knack: overt curiosity. Later that day, they came upon a wagon stopped beside the road, a worried family standing beside it while a broken axle held the whole contraption tilted and useless. The driver, defeated by wood, weight, and bad luck, said, “I don’t know how we’re going to fix this.” Tharad examined the wagon with thoughtful intent, already looking for leverage, but Veric simply walked over, set one massive hand under the frame, and lifted until the broken side leveled while the mother, two children, and cargo remained inside staring down at him. XiuQing stepped beneath, looked from the broken axle to the wheel to Veric, and asked, “Could you put that... thread that through this opening here?” Holding the wagon with one hand, Veric reached with the other, took wheel and axle together, and slid them through. XiuQing aligned the wood carefully and cast Mending, then cast it again, patient and precise, until the break sealed and the wagon stood as though it had merely paused to consider falling apart and changed its mind. The family stared. Tharad blinked. Alastra tilted her head. “Huh.” XiuQing stepped out from beneath the wagon and said calmly, “Well. That worked.” Veric lowered the wagon gently back onto the road, looking pleased in the quiet way of someone who had discovered that being useful did not always require battle.

The next roadside interruption proved less deserving of gratitude. Bandits stepped out of the brush ahead, poor in equipment and poorer in judgment, and Veric reacted first by charging forward with a roar of barbarian fury, though distance and timing meant he could not yet reach anyone. Alastra stepped past him, invoked Thaumaturgy, and let her voice fill the road with command large enough to make the trees seem to listen. “Drop your weapons and LEAVE.” She was very convincing; the bandits’ weapons clattered down almost as one, and the men vanished into the brush with the speed of people who had just discovered religion in the form of a tiefling’s patience running out. Tharad watched them go and shrugged. “Well. That was efficient.” He winked at Alastra, acknowledging why she had done what she did. Veric looked very pleased with himself yet again. “Did you see them run away from me?” The Wardens gathered the abandoned weapons, broke what they could, and buried the rest farther down the road because they had already learned that mercy should not include restocking the next ambush.

That evening they made camp where the forest opened into a low field, the sky pale above the darkening treeline and the cold settling in with the tidy persistence of winter. XiuQing tended a small fire. Tharad sat on a fallen log with a book from his pack, though whether he was reading or merely keeping the book between himself and conversation was less clear. Zhale sharpened her sickle with steady motions, and Alastra sat with the map spread across her knees. Veric watched them for a while before saying, “You people get along really well.” No one answered immediately. Alastra glanced up. “That surprises you?” Veric shrugged. “I used to travel with mercenaries. They mostly yelled at each other.” Zhale snorted. “That sounds about right.” He took that in, then asked how they had met, and Tharad tapped the map without looking up. “Yawning Portal. None of us knew each other.” Veric blinked. “You’re kidding.” “Nope,” Alastra said. “We were literally four strangers sitting at a table. Someone mentioned the Vale. And we all said yes at the same time.” Zhale gave a small shrug. “The land needed help.” XiuQing nodded quietly. That did not satisfy Veric enough; he opened the next doors. He asked XiuQing about Kara-Tur, about how far it was and why he had come, and XiuQing answered with the calm simplicity that made enormous distances sound like acceptable weather. “I wanted to see how the world changes as one walks across it.” Veric nodded slowly. “That makes sense.” Zhale answered for the Vale, Mama Laran, home, and helping. Alastra admitted to noble tutors, etiquette lessons, fancy dinners, and the thing that negated all that: a predilection for magic. Tharad gave him only “Waterdeep,” and when Veric waited for more, added nothing. “Gotcha,” Veric said.

After another stretch of firelit silence, Veric said again, quieter, “You really do get along well.” Zhale looked around the fire as if noticing the fact in the same moment he named it. “I guess we do.” Tharad folded the map, poked the fire with a stick, and said, “Yeah. Turns out saving the world is easier when nobody hates each other.” Alastra smiled slightly. “That should probably be written down somewhere.” XiuQing nodded with full seriousness. “It probably is.” Veric looked at them all, the fire catching on his face, and said, “I’m glad I found you people.” No one quite knew how to answer that. They only sat together while night gathered in, which was sometimes answer enough.

The next day the road carried them beneath a sky holding the quiet promise of snow, their formation loose but familiar: XiuQing leading at an easy pace, Zhale and Veric a few steps behind, Alastra and Tharad bringing up the rear. For a long stretch only boots on packed earth and the soft creak of leather accompanied them, until Veric observed that they did not do much talking. Zhale glanced at him with mild curiosity. “We don’t?” He nodded as if the matter were obvious. “The mercenaries I used to travel with mostly talked about money, and sex,” he said, then after a beat, “and stabbing things.” Alastra laughed softly. “Well, we also talk about stabbing things. Just not exclusively.” Veric seemed to turn that over with the solemnity of a man updating a personal taxonomy, then looked ahead and asked XiuQing, “What happens when you reach enlightenment?” The monk did not break stride. “I don’t know.” “You’re walking all the way across the world and you don’t know?” “That is correct.” Veric studied him for several steps. “That’s kind of brave.” XiuQing glanced back with an expression too faint to name. “Or foolish.” Veric nodded. “Sometimes they are the same.”

The conversation wandered as easily as their steps after that, and Veric’s questions, strange in their directness, drew from each of them answers that might not have come under cleverer questioning. He asked Zhale what happened when she became the druid of the Vale, and she said she would take care of the land, then, after a moment, added, “for the rest of my life.” He regarded her with quiet respect. “That’s a long job.” “Yes,” Zhale said. “That’s why you start early.” He asked Alastra what happened when she got what she wanted, and when she turned the question back on him, he reminded her she had once said something about a big family. Her answer was soft and certain. “Yes.” Then he turned to Tharad. “What happens when you win?” Tharad raised an eyebrow. “Win what?” “The whole thing.” Tharad took a few steps before answering, as if the thought needed room. “I build the biggest library in Waterdeep.” Veric blinked. “That’s it?” “That’s it,” Tharad said, then added almost as an afterthought, “and maybe a couple of really nice orphanages.” Veric accepted this with visible satisfaction. “That’s a good goal.” They walked a little farther before he spoke again, softer now. “You know what’s weird?” Zhale asked, “What?” “You’re all trying to do things that take a really long time.” He let that settle, then added, “I like that.” No one replied. The road dipped gently ahead, and Waterdeep waited beyond it.

They reached Waterdeep on the night of 5 Hammer and slipped through the city’s evening bustle to Tharad’s old Flat Four in Southern Ward, where a single lantern cast warm light over a table soon crowded with maps, notes, and the worried geometry of the Vale. Alastra leaned forward with steady urgency. “We need answers.” Zhale nodded. “The disturbances feel wrong. Not natural. Not planar the way I understand it.” “You know what’s been bothering me?” Alastra asked. “The tokens, in particular the one Harlon got from the abbey. There was no disturbance there.” “Well, it was an Old Place,” Zhale added. “We said the tokens seemed like they were keeping memories of gathered information, like tests. Maybe the abbey was the standard. Sometimes you need that for experiments.” Tharad leaned back in his chair, considering the shape of ignorance as if it were another locked room. “Then tomorrow we start at the biggest library in the city.” Veric thought that over and gave a firm nod. “That sounds like a good place for answers.”

The Font of Knowledge proved vast beyond Veric’s expectation and, by the end of the first day, somewhat beyond everyone’s patience. Its vaulted ceilings and endless shelves held more accumulated thought than any one mind could master, and the Wardens spent two full days moving through it from morning light to lamplight and back again, chasing anything that might resemble the marks they had found. XiuQing traced the edges of planar theory and cosmology. Zhale searched for accounts of wounded land, ancient imbalance, and places changed by old magic. Alastra worked through arcane texts on anchors, ley lines, transitive catastrophes, and breaches that bridged worlds. Tharad combed histories, civic records, and older fragments for echoes of circular depressions, strange crossings, silent ground, and impossible anchor-pendulums. They moved from priest to librarian to scholar and back again, describing the humming earth, the missing anchors, the way the ford had learned to be used, and the anchor that fit no category. Every answer returned them to absence. One elderly priest, after listening with grave care, finally said, “I’ve never heard of anything like that.” Late on the first day, Alastra left to consult an old acquaintance from the Arcane Corps of Force Grey, and when she returned, Tharad looked up from a stack of books and asked, “Well?” Her frustration had gone quiet by then. “If something like that existed, Force Grey would know about it.” Zhale pressed, “And?” Alastra exhaled. “And they don’t.”

Veric lasted only a short while among dense tomes before restlessness overtook him, but when Zhale handed him a children’s book, he settled at once. Soon a small stack of them had grown around him. While the Wardens exhausted every serious avenue the city possessed, Veric sat amid the great machinery of scholarship with Goodnight Selûne open before him, sounding out each line as though learning the world from the beginning might be a serious contribution to the investigation. He traced the words with one finger. “In the great blue room... there was a sending stone... and a red crystal ball... and a painting of a cow jumping over Selûne...” Then he looked up at Tharad across the table. “You wanna build a bigger library than this?” Tharad slowly surveyed the towering shelves, the balconies, the ladders, the priests and readers moving through all that bound thought, and answered only with a nod. Veric returned the nod with quiet satisfaction. “Good.” By late afternoon, Tharad had drifted into the history stacks and lost himself in a volume on the founding of Waterdeep until Alastra passed by and struck the back of his head. “We are supposed to be researching.” He blinked, startled. “Oh. Right.” He closed the book, but not long after leaned back with a sigh. “You know what? I think I need to go make us money.” Thus the first day of exhaustive effort ended with the unsettling certainty that they had learned nothing, and with the worse possibility that nothing available to ordinary expertise was waiting to be found.