Chapter 66 part 3

"This is the one that we built for you, my lady," the young woman said to Jenn, bowing her head when they reached another house that was just on the other side of the bridge.

"Uh, thanks," Jenn said, unsure how else to respond before she started climbing the ladder that led up into the structure.

Jenn couldn't say she could figure out how they built these up here, but she wasn't going to complain with how spacious this one was. Though, she suspected that the others probably weren't so spacious themselves.

While she still had reservations about the treatment she received from those who knew that she was the Blue Rose, she had to admit that she kind of liked it. Even though she looked forward to the day that she could figure out how to get out of this situation altogether.

She also noticed that there were several piles of straw in the 'house' which she assumed were supposed to be for mattresses. The sight of which made her become aware of the fact that she had been starting to feel tired when she'd been alerted to the fact that the elevators were finished.

So, as she lay down on the mattress, she couldn't help but smile, looking forward to a short nap. Vaguely aware of the part of her mind that recalled how soft the mattress on her bed in her room back on Earth was and how this had become comparable to that somehow. Despite the fact that she knew it wasn't comparable with how comfortable it was.

However, moments after she lay down, she was asleep, resting peacefully, oblivious to everything going on around her.

_

Ralph sighed as Amelia went to check on the woman. He couldn't think of what it was that she was doing there in the first place, nor why she had so many iron rods that they fell from where she had them stored.

"I think she just got knocked out or fainted from having someone knock on her door," Amelia reported moments after she knelt by the woman's body.

Ralph wasn't that concerned about if he accidentally knocked her out by knocking or not. Though, he suspected that he definitely surprised her by knocking on her door, but that she then probably accidentally knocked the iron rods down, which knocked her out.

That's what he suspected happened from viewing the scene before him.

However, as he looked past the woman and the iron rods, he could see that the cabin wasn't nearly as small as it looked outside. He could at least see that the outside of the cabin was the first part of the structure, with it being more utilitarian than anything else, while it then extended further into a cave. Unless it had been carved out of the rock, which he wouldn't be surprised at. Especially with all the things he saw in the 'cave' portion of the cabin.

The woman groaned as Amelia did her work. Ralph didn't need to know exactly what Amelia was doing to know that she was using her magic to heal whatever damage had been done to her and to make her conscious again.

"Oh, what happened?" she asked, as she moved a hand to her head, as if recalling the pain that probably had been there before Amelia had healed her. A moment later when she opened her eyes, she had a very visceral reaction when she saw Ralph and his friends. "Who are you? Who sent you?"

The woman had graying brown hair, and her eyes are an electric pink, she was unshaven, and looked like she'd spent every day of her life working hard at something.

Ralph couldn't help but feel surprised himself now in response to her demanding question. Technically the Marquis had sent them, but he wasn't going to explain how they came to have gotten the Marquis' permission to climb the mountain. Instead, he figured that they should-

"We were climbing to the summit to check on a rumor we found in a book about another land that could be seen from up there," Tim said, breaking Ralph's train of thought. "What're you doing here?"

The woman glared at Tim. "I'll never tell you. Do what you want to me, steal my inventions, but I'll never tell you what I'm doing."

"Maybe you're going about this all wrong, Tim," Ralph said. "Besides, it doesn't matter what she's doing up here since we only need to know about that land so we can know if it's actually there or not. If it is, we'll just have to look at getting to it and if it isn't, at least we'll know this was a waste of time coming up here."

The woman looked at Ralph oddly, like she couldn't quite figure him out, but when Hannah poked something nearby that made a hissing sound, like pressurized air finding an escape at last, the woman's head snapped in that direction as she leapt to her feet and pushed Hannah away from whatever that was.

"I don't care who sent you, but unless you're going to tie me up, you're not going to be able to look at my inventions," she declared, glaring at Hannah.

"Sorry," Hannah replied. "I was just wondering if you had anything like a steam engine around."

The woman blinked, clearly caught off guard for a moment. Then her glare returned. "And what is a steam engine?" she demanded, making Ralph wonder if what Amelia heard was in fact a steam engine rather than a figment of her imagination.

"It's a device that uses steam to power things," Hannah explained, as she brought up an image of a train moving along its tracks with smoke coming out of the smokestack as it sped along. "Like this, it uses steam to move at incredible speeds and can pull a lot."

Ralph was certain Hannah could have explained that better, but based on the woman's reaction, it was more than enough to convince her that they weren't whatever she had originally thought they were.

"H-how do you know about this?" she asked, her voice more of wonder than hostility this time. "I never even spoke about this before I came here."

"And how long have you been here?" Wes asked, looking around even as he kept his hands to himself. "I mean, I'd have thought some of this would take years to make, if not decades."

"I don't have to tell you my secrets, even if you already know some that you shouldn't," the woman retorted, clearly not yet seeing them as friends.

"Don't worry about that," Ralph said. "We're not here to pry. We were just told that no one was supposed to be up here, so we were surprised to see your cabin up here. We also weren't sure if you were by yourself or if you were part of a community up here."

The woman looked at Ralph appraisingly. Ralph wasn't sure what to make of it himself, but he didn't say anything about it. He figured that if he let her do whatever it was that she did that it would help speed things along and keep from getting everyone worked up over something that really wasn't an issue.

After what felt like an hour to Ralph, the woman looked away, shaking her head. "You're a piece of work yourself, I see," she said, bending down to start picking up the iron rods. "I can see that you are as much of a troublemaker as I've been."

Ralph wasn't sure what to make of that comment, but he couldn't say that it was a bad thing. Or at least not from this person. Besides, he couldn't say that he'd completely given up pulling pranks, just that he wanted to not be seen as the prankster of the group, even though he worried that the dye might have become permanent on that point.

"Anyway, I take I that you invent things up here?" Amelia asked gently. "Is there anything you'd like some help with?"

The woman looked at Amelia like she was offering to steal her designs or something. Ralph knew Amelia didn't mean it like that, but it certainly was how the woman was taking it.

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" was all she asked in response.

"Uh, what's your name?" Ralph asked before Amelia could react to the question. He doubted things would go over very well once the implications of the woman's question sunk in for Amelia. "I'm Ralph."

"Oh yeah, we didn't introduce ourselves," Hannah said, as if she should have thought of that herself before Ralph. "I'm Hannah."

"I'm Tim," Tim added, then smacked Wes upside the head when he didn't say anything with his attention on something outside of Ralph's field of vision.

"Huh? Oh, I'm Wes," Wes quickly said, showing that he had been listening, even if only in part.

"And I'm Amelia," Amelia said grinning.

"And what's that supposed to mean to me?" the woman asked pausing in her restacking the iron bars, looking at them like she didn't care if they had introduced themselves as the three musketeers or the three amigos.

"We were just hoping you'd at least share your name with us," Ralph answered. "Though, if you'd like, we could come up with something else to call you."

"Maybe Baba Yaga?" Wes offered, amusement in his eyes.

"Uh, lets go with something other than that," Tim suggested, looking like he was hoping the woman wouldn't ask for a reason.

Ralph wasn't sure what the reference was, or why Tim vetoed the suggestion immediately, but he wasn't going to argue. Mostly because he didn't really care about it.

"Whatever," the woman said as she finished putting the iron bars back up and instead taking one with her and carrying it over to where an anvil was with a fire going strong.

"What're you making here?" Wes asked, looking rather interested rather than pushing the matter.

The woman looked at Wes out of the corner of her eyes as she put the end of the iron rod into the fire. "You really don't get it do you, twig?" she asked, her voice flat.

"What?" Wes asked as if he didn't remember how she'd been accusing them of trying to steal her inventions.

"Whatever you're working on, would you like some help?" Tim asked, looking at everyone to let him know that he was volunteering them as well if she accepted the offer.

Ralph merely rolled his eyes. He wasn't that worried about whatever the woman was working on. It couldn't be worse than anything that he'd had to do for school that was a pain to do.

The woman merely shook her head. "I'm not letting you near what I'm working on," she stated. "You'd have to know what it's supposed to be before you could be of any help on it and as I've said before, there's no way I'm letting you thieves know what I'm working on."

"Well, are you making nails or something?" Hannah asked, looking around at the materials the woman had by the anvil and fire.

"What if I am?" she asked, still not giving anything away. "What business is it of yours if I'm making nails?"

"Well, if you are, I could at least do that," Hannah said, which made Ralph look at her, shock going through his body.

Since when did Hannah know how to make nails? Ralph couldn't help but wonder.

"Would you like me to demonstrate?" Hannah offered after a minute when the woman didn't say anything.

The woman looked over at Hannah and sighed. "Fine. Might as well, since I can't do anything while any of you are still here."

Hannah nodded before walking over to the iron rod and pulling it out of the fire. The woman looked like she was about to protest, but shut her mouth almost as quickly as she'd opened it. She took on a smug look, like she knew that Hannah was going to do and knew that it wasn't going to work.

Ralph wasn't sure what Hannah had in mind. All he knew was that he didn't know what Hannah was going to do. Aside from use her magic, that is. He wasn't sure in what way she was going to use her magic to turn the rod into nails, but he figured that it had to involve her magic somehow. Otherwise he would have liked to know when she'd learned any kind of metal working.

Moments later, the metal rod was crumbling. Only, the 'crumbs' were nails that fell to the floor at Hannah's feet. "See?" she asked as if she'd done something truly impressive. "We can help, even if it's not in the traditional way."

The woman looked truly stunned. Her expression hadn't changed from when she'd started watching what Hannah did to turn the iron rod into nails, but even as Hannah bent down to pick the nails up, the woman's gaze didn't change.

"Uh, Hannah?" Ralph said. "I think you broke her."

Whether she'd have gotten over her surprise or if it was Ralph's statement that pulled her out of her own thoughts, it didn't matter. She was again back doing what she'd been doing. "So, that's all you got?" she asked, as if she'd seen that a million times already.

Ralph wasn't sure whether to groan at her attempt to play it cool or just groan. He certainly wasn't interested in playing any games here. Instead he was getting more and more interested in leaving and climbing back up the switchback. Although, he would at least like someone to watch him in case he did fall. Climbing down it with such a narrow ledge was more nerve wracking than he'd expected.

"By the way," the woman said, looking like she just realized something. "How'd you get past all my traps?"

"Traps?" Tim asked, looking at everyone, looking confused. Ralph merely shook his head, not sure how to respond to the statement. He certainly hadn't seen any traps on their way up.

"We didn't see any traps as we climbed the mountain," Amelia said, looking thoughtful, like she was trying to recall where they might have missed any traps.

"But you made it to my door," the woman said, sounding rather confused. "Unless you followed the path I set, you'd have had to have run into at least one!"

"Not sure how to tell you this, but we don't know what you're talking about," Amelia said, sounding rather apologetic.

"Maybe it's because we came down the switchbacks?" Wes offered. "If we went through the trees, maybe we'd have come across them that way."

"Wait, you didn't come through the trees?" the woman sounded almost aghast. "What other way is there than through the trees?"

"Well, we climbed down the switchback that's by the cliff," Tim answered, looking like he was thinking that it might give them some leverage to dealing with this woman. Ralph merely hoped that it'd get her to be less prickly with them.

The woman looked at each of them, like she was revaluating them. Like she had decided something about them without having said anything. Like she might be warming up to them.

"If you show me what you're talking about, maybe I'll let you in on what I've been working on and what others have been trying to steal ever since I came up here."

"Hold on, how did you get this iron in the first place?" Hannah asked, looking like she just realized something important. "I can understand your cabin and how it was made to work with the cave, but that doesn't explain how you got so many other things that would have probably taken you just as long to acquire on your own, assuming this mountain has all the materials you needed, at least."

The woman looked at Hannah, almost as if they were having a standoff. Ralph couldn't but sure, but that's at least what it felt like to him. After a moment, the woman sighed.

"You're not as dense as you first appear," she said, sounding like she'd made a decision and wasn't going to look back on it. "My name is Heanith. I came up here because I got tired of the nobles continually taking my inventions and claiming them for their own. So, I moved here to get away from them, but I kept a few contacts so they bring up materials and I offer them a few throwaway inventions that don't do anything useful for them to sell to the nobles who're seeking out what I've been working on."

"So, what are you working on?" Ralph asked, wondering if they'd finally get an actual answer about this subject now. Although, part of his was also waiting to hear that she wasn't going to say.

"You mentioned that you want to go to the summit of the mountain to see about a rumor that you can see another land from up there, right?" Heanith asked instead of answering. "You'll be able to see if tomorrow if you look then. Once you find it, let me know. I'll then let you know what I've been working on and how it ties into what you're looking for."

Heanith took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She then looked at each of them individually for a few minutes before she finished, "I'm sorry I thought you were with the bandits that help supply my work up here. Maybe I've been living alone too long, but I'm not sure who I can trust anymore."

"Well, we'll help in any way we can," Tim said, Amelia and Wes nodding in agreement.

Heanith shook her head. "Yeah, I'm still not sure I can trust you. Though, him I feel better about," she said, pointing at Ralph, surprising everyone, especially Ralph. He couldn't recall a time when anyone said that they thought that he was the most trustworthy person in the room. Especially when his friends were present.

"Uh, why me?" Ralph asked, the first to recover from the shock of what she'd said.

"Because you look like you'd be up to something and you're not trying to hide it. Which means you're more likely to be honest when I make demands of you."