Quoted By:
You realize Damien's real game with the talking sticks about halfway towards the bridge. Oh, it accomplished several things for him, to be sure. Appealing to the cultural customs of the giant-blooded fjallbarn may indeed help with your wish to keep things from escalating to violence. Creating them let him show off some esoteric magic of his <span class="mu-i">and</span> tell you what he thought of the men-at-arms you chose to bring with you. He also got a chance to give you a gentle ribbing about being a mother hen and snub Glen in a single stroke.
His true intentions stared you right in the face the entire time. At least, from the moment that Alex sheathed his swordlance and began hobbling along with his talking stick for support.
"You know, I didn't take you for a softie, Sir Damien," you tell him, keeping your voice low. It wouldn't do if Alex heard your conversation, Damien's whole point was to help him without saying it aloud. Without wounding the boy's pride. Getting thrown about by the Arbiter did enough to deflate any ego he might have had.
"I have absolutely <span class="mu-i">no</span> idea what you're talking about, Dame Louise," Damien says with more formality than usually. How often has he acted familiar and dropped the Dame that he should have kept? Well, you suppose that a man who can address the King by his first name has earned the right to be a little fast and loose with how he uses titles.
"I'm sure you don't," you say with a roll of your eyes.
The bridge that crosses the Nymphae spans a gap of twenty feet with the graceful stonework of the Gardeners. Like all of the remnants of that lost civilization, the engineering is so precise that it almost seems like the eboncrete structure was grown like a plant rather than poured or laid like bricks. A construction technique modern khemists still have yet to rediscover. Like all surviving gardener structures, lumps of goldenlime speckle the surface in erratic patterns of shining constellations.
These irregular lumps serve two purposes. On one end, their glitter in the sunlight against the darkened backdrop breaks up the monotone of the spunstone vines that form the primary structure of the bridge. Speckles of gold that glimmer like stars in the night, from which spread shining roots that lend to the organic aesthetic. Those spiderweb veins of color are the result of the goldenlime's other purpose: to heal the wear of ages and repair the cracks and gaps that form with erosion. The structure repairs itself. Having stood for three thousand years, it will stand for three thousand more.
Even if, from time to time, its remote location leads it to become a nest of highwaymen and bandits. Though today, you sorely hope to find men of reason who have simply made their camp.
