Alexander Bryant1
Villager
Journal of Etona 25
It was decidedly not interesting talking to ‘Winston’. ‘He’ has very much become an ‘it’, with little left of what was a person. We will end its torment and destroy the husk that ties that little bit of spirit left to it before we leave.
“We should leave,” says Rey.
“Do we now possess enough information for Tenser to return to him?” I ask.
“Yes,” say Rey and Treig simultaneously.
“But we can do more,” says Jodan.
To wide-eyed astonishment, Jodan describes a plan, laden with unlikely assumptions, that involves strolling into a sea of worms that formed the foundation of this temple. True, we have an undead servant under our control who could pose as our porter and guide, but other details – what is still here waiting for us? what is the wisdom of staking our lives to a recently-acquired ring whose boundaries are unknown and that works when Jodan is conscious and also wishing it? why not return later with ten times the force including sun priests to blast this place? – seem reckless.
So we are leaving. But Jodan is staying. His stubbornness is impressive. Perhaps Hell will not allow him to die. Perhaps we should kill him now to save him from fighting us later as a worm-infested version of himself, or perhaps he will succeed and redeem himself. Humans. They are always in such a hurry! It would be a trivial matter to return here, later, with exactly the group that is called for. But Jodan must do this now.
I wish him well.
As we turn to depart there is movement atop a section of the wall. Something large has hopped over it and landed in the courtyard.
It is a chicken.
“Verdre–.”
“I see it, too, Etona.”
“Thank the Goddess. But do they usually–?”
“No.”
“And the bits–?”
“No.”
I had noticed these small domesticated raptors on human farms. They resemble birds but are grown for consumption and cannot fly, laying edible eggs and are delicious themselves as well. It is hard to say what it tastes like. Chicken, I suppose. But I do not remember any of this size nor wearing what seem to be pieces of houses and spouting black smoke from a stovepipe atop the head.
It trots over to us and opens a wing…door. Out comes a pretty, apparently unarmed, human woman wearing lovely and thoroughly impractical clothes battling malice in the jungle.
Her effect on Jodan is immediate.
“Natasha!”
He pulls off his helm, banishes his armor, but that is only the beginning. His true transformation is deeper inside: the tension that seems to make up his support beams melts away, and his very skin seems to soften.
She, too, seems affected by seeing him. Joyful for an instant, saddened a moment more as she gazes on what he has become, but then rallying with happiness and affection.
“Jodan, who is this woman?” Rey asks.
“She, Natasha, is my betrothed.”
“The one from centuries ago?”
But he doesn’t answer. He is focused only on her, talking to her in an old Common tongue I do not understand very well.
“Isn’t she dead?” Rey asks Treig.
“Yup. She died from something a little like our worm friends here, I think.”
Elsewhere, I can hear Egan say to someone else, excitedly: “And it is the finest mobile chicken habitation I ever did see, m’lady. May I know yer name?”
“Why, Baba Yaga, m’dear. Who else?” comes the reply.
Eager is looking up at the little fold-out porch under the wing at a dark-skinned woman who looked like a Rehnee matriarch.
All humans know of Baba Yaga as have most elves, maybe even dwarves and gnomes, perhaps the Drow themselves: her name is legend. Was this being really she?
I needed to talk to Jodan the Infernal, the Devil’s Rook, and not Jodan the lovesick cub. I motion him to follow me. He is reluctant but I insist.
“Jodan, this is not Baba Yaga bringing your lost love. This is the ruse of the grisly lake below us sending horror after horror.” I do not have his undivided attention, but I press on. “Do you remember? You were trying to convince us to finish off this temple somehow when lo and behold she is delivered, brought by perhaps the only person who could accomplish this and who might bother: a powerful storybook character from hundreds of years ago.”
“It is amazing and wondrous, is it not?” His smile is drenched in happiness. He leaves me to return to the facsimile of his old love.
My Mistress has a reputation for tricks of this sort. But she allows us, her children, to see through illusion and live in the world as it is. I thus send Her arrow of revealing light to Baba Yaga. It splashes around her to her distracted amusement. Verdre is of my same mind. She sheathes Glitter, begins a quiet chant while wrapping her arms around her head, turning in on herself, bending over and then blossoming up and outward, eyes fixed on Our Mistress, half moon pendent raised aloft.
“Your Unerring Light, Mistress,” she calls, and he voice echoes off stairs and building, off the tower, off the black walls.
Over the course of a moment, Her face brightens. As the divination passes over us, it shifts each person into light and then to shadow again. The witch, we plainly see, is as substantial as the rest of us as is Natasha who even glows a little more brightly as we return to darkness.
“These two,” Verdre says once she has regained her senses, “appearing in such an unlikely place at this unlikely time, are as real as we, Etona,” she says to me.
It is not enough. I do not question the revelatory powers of My Mistress, of course: but what if we are trapped in an illusion that mocks Her light? I must believe. I must know.
“Then you are my friend, lovely Natasha. May I?” She nods, her smile uncertain. So I embrace her.
She is warm to the touch, murmuring that she is happy someone has come to bring joy and light to our sullen Hell-knight. Does she smell right? Yes, enticing in fact. Her skin? Yes, the soft delicate skin of young humans, cared-for hair likewise silky. It is all expected. No worms penetrate me as I hold her.
“How did you come to be here?” I ask, pulling her back to see her face.
“I was, I remember … it was a red corilax. It infected me, and I did not survive.”
“And yet, here you are.”
“Yes. Baba Yaga brought me back. I owe something to her for being here.”
I have more questions – scores, each spawning more, a growing sea of beheaded hydras – but Jodan takes her away again before I can even really get started.
I look to Verdre. “One last test.” I aim directly above me and let fly Her arrow, concentrating, concentrating, higher and higher it leaps, straight up to Her home. It eventually fades, exactly as it should, absolutely everything as expected.
“We may be trapped. Or just I – I may be trapped inside a dream or a trick or a bubble of reality, and I would never know.”
“That is always true,” says Verdre. “What of it? We live in the moment.”
“Don’t be a dream,” I say to her.
“Then don’t get lost in there,” Verdre replies, motioning to my head. “Focus, child.”
As before, we assemble to depart sans Jodan, but this time at least we are leaving him a house…chicken, its ancient witch owner, and an exact replica of his beloved. He could do worse, I suppose.
But no, this wretched place is not done with us.
When I watched the human performances in the animal circus at Greyhawk, spying on them for several days as I prepared to free its animals in my misguided notion of what was a good thing to do, I became aware of a loud and deceptive man. The ringmaster. He was outwardly friendly and self-deprecating but his eyes calculated what they saw and his smile was sarcastic.
It is the very expression of the man appearing in front of us now.
I do not see him at first: I see his portals, twelve wrinkles in the air atop the wall. As I digested this new obstacle – nothing here is ever on our side – I become aware of a maleficent, white-haired man with trimmed beard and oddly pale eyes atop black armor positively woven with buckles and belts. He is somehow in the middle of the court, right in front of us, proclaiming challenges to Treig.
Gloatius. No, that’s not right. Morious? Spurious? At any rate, bodies start falling out of the portals to accompany his sneering words. They are all bound with rope, some awake, some not, and all consigned to be consumed by worms soon if we did not aid them. A single look at Treig is enough: he knows these people, they are important to him, and he is going to do whatever to save them.
Since Jodan, Treig and Rey all darted forward to save the men, I open fire on the man. But each bolt splashes away like water off a shield. Nor can anyone get physically close: when Jodan has saved all he can, he goes for Snarlius as well but is held at bay from a wall we can only faintly see each time it is struck.
A moment later, once Verdre has secured the one bound dwarf she had bolted to, she reclimbs the wall and joins my attack, summoning and focusing Our Lady’s energy. Face taught with concentration, the beam grows ever brighter, the most intense I have ever seen. It is like a god’s finger pressing down on an unyielding egg.
But our prey is unphased and, in fact, turns his attention to the surrounding wall. From his outstretched hand shoots a ruddy, barely-visible bridge of energy that looks like a girl’s braided hair but makes the air feel heavy and constricting. I feel rather than hear a terrible crack some seconds after it is trained on the wall. My ancestors cry out!
Such confidence: not only does he appear in the middle of his enemies but he flaunts his domination by attacking this ancient relic protecting the entire world. His will is strong. But he is overconfident. He has not taken two factors into consideration: Rey, and the Goddess of the Moon, neither of whom are of a mind to let him succeed.
Rey charges Maddius on the back of Robi. She vanishes just as the metal monster version of our beloved owlbear slams into the clear shield. I saw the potion in her hand; I know just where she went. It is a matter of time now before he finds a steel-tipped lightning bolt exploring his throat. I, in the meantime, will make certain she has the time.
“Use me, Mistress, as Your conduit!” I shout and flatten my palms against the wall’s black stone surface. Her awesome power, hot and biting cold and sharp and aching and delicious and terrifying floods through me as I enter into a contest of will over survival. If I may only live, Baddius has no chance to succeed, none at all. I merely have to not wither under Her potent regard.
***
I do not know what happened after. I awoke under two faces: Verdre’s worried one and Her calm, shushing, half-face above. With a start I sit up and see that the wall is whole. I hear or perhaps merely feel the thanks of my ancient kin before I gently fall into a restorative mesmer.
When I emerge, Egan narrates events.
While I was channeling, Rey had succeeded in reappearing inside the dome that Blarious had set around himself. She became the dragon for an instant: her landing a thunderstorm, her spear lightning. She wounded him enough to lose one of the force shields, and Kaio was able to direct projectiles that flashed and blinded into the battlefield. Even blind, though, Blovious cut her deep, dropping her to her knees in a puddle of blood. But Treig moved as if a team of frenzied horses was dragging him and smashed through the other force field somehow. They together broke his concentration, and the radiant spire that Verdre had never let up on drove him to his knees.
“But he did not die! He opened a portal and dove through it and closes it again from his side. More than a man, Etona,” says Verde.
“You sound like you almost admire him.”
“I admire his will. Would that my own mind was of such steel.”
I roll my eyes at this: my aunt’s mind is as weak as Obi’s jaws.
“You, however, continue to impress,” she goes on. “I saw your concentration holding the wall together. I saw tears stream out your eyes: they were mother-of-pearl, and glowing, did you know? You were channeling Her for a moment, directing Her. He was not able to crack the wall’s protective barriers, and we force his retreat.”
“And the bound men?”
“All of them safe. Treig is with them now.”
“Can we finally leave?”
“Oh yes,” put in Treig. “Yes, we are leaving now. All of us.”
Kaio spun up the teleportation circle. In a moment we were gone. I never thought I would be more pleased to a see a human castle.
On our way in, a dragonkin named Silli'huus accosted Rey in the tongue of Rey’s mistress. Later, Rey told me the kin had desired an audience with her the next evening, and that we could all attend, or rather, she was not asked to come alone specifically. Silli'huus also uttered something to Jodan but in a brutal-sounding language, Infernal possibly. I did not understand that either, and he didn’t explain.
I want to talk to Jodan some more about Natasha but I am distracted, unable to concentrate. We all part ways for the evening. I return to the wooded court and climb all its trees, spend some time with Glennis, the new mace. It still feels unfamiliar in my hands, so I work with him until I manage to hurt myself enough to force me to cease. Still distracted, almost a buzzing faint and far off, and my skin is cold. Am I ill now? But no, it feels external somehow.
As I spend a moment gazing at t’quean, Her half-moon visage, my favorite face, I suddenly know what is causing the distraction. I bring out the moonstone and set it to orbiting. As it silently moves round and round, and I feel any trace of hunger or want dissipate, I notice a vapor trail misting off of it. Then it stops, right in front of my eyes.
Normally I have to snatch it from the air: the stone has never simply halted before. It is regarding me, a crude little face like one drawn onto a snowball. It also looks like the moon, exactly like the moon, actually. Thus it goes, back and forth, ice and moon.
It moves suddenly and I am on the ground, shivering, steam issuing from my mouth, and a ringing headache where it struck me! I am sitting on ice and there is rime everywhere. I look up and it is still up in the air, above me, hovering where it had been.
I make to stand but it strikes me again.
“Verdre?” I call, but she has discovered the Hall of Maps. There is no one here to help me. And–.
And I do not need help. I know what this is, as a dreamer in a dream knows a hawk is a hacksaw. My Mistress is teaching me, that I am in reality, that I may trust Her, that I have been given another gift – or tool or burden – a new, terrible magik.
So, shivering, I pray. The cold intensifies but it is nothing to me now: I am her vessel. If She wills my freezing into a statue and then shattering into a million shards, then I will give her one million and ten.
The spell, as I take possession of it in my mind, is lovely: a graceful rolling of the fingers, a murmur in an Elven dialect from millennia ago, and a tiny, smoking moon appears. Is it so very cold up there?
I hurl it at a particularly stout tree that looked as if it could withstand a Fifth Season, a years-long winter. Its thinnest branches freeze solid, but the after-effect, I see, is short-lived and it does not harm the larger ones.
How very useful.
***
The next day, Rey pulls me aside as we are on the way to see Lord Tenser.
“I had a dream I need to tell you about,” she says.
I motion her down to the ground and sit cross-legged in front of her. “Of course.”
“It was night. Silli’huus was watching me. She was looking straight at me as your goddess –.”
“Sehanine is goddess of the moon and the night and the elves, so she is our goddess, all of us,” I remind her.
“Yes, yes. As the goddess would peer down at you, us, whenever the moon rises. That is what this dragonkin was doing, staring down at me. She was the entirety of the dream. No other image.”
I think a moment. I am no expert on dream interpretation, though many have come to me asking my advice. Apparently priests of other gods get trained in this art? That is a thing?
One thought does occur to me, though.
“In the dream, was Silli’huus lit by the moon?”
“Yes.”
“From the front or the back?”
“Back.”
A front light is a reveal, a ‘pay attention to me’. It also means ‘free will’. A back light is shadow and concealed motives. But is also means ‘sent’.
“Do you remember your state of mind when you woke up? Were you happy? Sad? Nervous? Angry? Scared?”
“I don’t remember.”
“I will keep watch over you tomorrow night and be there when you wake the next morning, in case it happens again. Neh?”
She nods, and I spring to my feet, lending her a hand to pull her up. I hold her hand whenever I can because a squeeze or a drawing her forearm to mine or a firm clasp can in a heartbeat convey so much more than any amount of words. This time: Do not be alarmed – we will puzzle this out together.
On to our meeting with Lord Tenser.
***
Rather than narrate all of the back and forth here, allow me to simply summarize what our pooled knowledge revealed.
Each of us recounted the events at the temple. This took some time. As always, I was very interested in hearing how each perceived events. One such that I did not even know was happening was Jodan returning with a large force of beings called Avengers to utterly raze the temple: kill the worms, drain the pool which had been fed by a now-annihilated fountain. After that happened, the walls simply crumbled.
I asked: “Might purifying the place summon Dragotha or Kyuss or any being attached to it?”
“Unlikely,” Tenser returned and Treig nodded. “It is completely neutralized now, and though any connected with it will know of its destruction, they would also know that returning would be futile – there is nothing left – and potentially a trap.”
“Did you set wards?”
“We did leave a few presents behind that will eventually melt into the jungle if they are not set off.”
“Was that really Baba Yaga?” I also asked. It was generally agreed that it very likely was she, especially as she has a part of the Rod and knows, somehow, in some way involving her legend, that we also have one, the largest one, the diviner of the rest. Natasha is undoubtedly part of a coming offer.
The conversation turned to Darius, yes, that’s the right name, and Jodan, and some nonsense about how Darius might be a shard of Jodan’s personality, one representing chaos, as if you can break up a spirit into pieces. I have heard such before but always it was metaphor or coming from the mouths of children attributing their impulses to a piece of themselves they claim they cannot control. We are each of us all of our deeds and thoughts. If this is a distinctly human feature, it is one that neither Verdre nor I – nor any among my people – has ever heard of.
Anyway, Darius seems to exist to destroy the world or at least bring as much chaos to it as possible. Completely mad which may explain his tremendous confidence. He incidentally has a tattoo matching one engraved into the assassin who killed Elgios.
A discussion of Baklava was next, Tenser’s loyal scout and researcher. He journeyed next to Al-Halster to investigate something called the Ebon Triad, a cult worshiping the unlikely joining of three mad, evil gods. The prince of the city is called Zeech; his adviser and a city founder called Lashonna. She is Elven. Maybe another stop for us, but hopefully we can do better than to trail this man across the world.
If we do go we will be in disguise, for the most part, obtaining difficult-to-get, Fey-linked invitations for the prince’s celebration of his coming into the world. Rey will pose as Greyhawk’s arena champion, complete with belt. I will be Treig’s … prize? No, that isn’t right. His treat? Arm treat? Candy. Wait, I have it: I will be Treig’s arm candy, there to talk to Lashonna and find out what happened to my friend Bal-Halster. No. Balthazar.
I had better get that name right. Perhaps someone could right it down for me?
Verdre would be a snake or a cat or something appropriate to the scene. She would listen in on conversations as I pass, hear what was not meant for my ears. Jodan will be infernal bodyguard: apparently that’s a thing. Treig plays … himself?
Hopefully it will not come to this.
***
Silli’huus is next. As a representative of the Queen of Dragons, she may offer something better than an evil prince’s birthday party.
We travel to the petitioners’ tents outside the castle walls. Silli’huus' tent is no longer there so we travel on to the meeting place. She is there, just setting colored piles of sand inside an arcane circle for her ritual as we arrive. She is pleased to see Rey and unperturbed by the rest of us.
“Come! Come!” she says to Rey. “Do you want to speak to the queen?”
Rey kneels down in front of the blue sand pile. At Silli’huus' gestures and words, it forms a dragon head which begins to speak. Rey told me later what it said.
“Dragotha has betrayed us. She intimidates and enslaves my children. You have a connection with other individuals who also seek her demise. Find her power and extinguish it. You may kill her as well if you like. For this I will reward you.”
“Dragotha is unliving or I would have snuffed her out myself,” the head adds.
“Where?” says Rey.
“Dragotha is in a place called the Worm Crawl Fissure, a great rift. Seek her doom there. Reconcile the differences between you and others among your friends.”
With that, it falls back into a mound of blue sand.
***
It was decidedly not interesting talking to ‘Winston’. ‘He’ has very much become an ‘it’, with little left of what was a person. We will end its torment and destroy the husk that ties that little bit of spirit left to it before we leave.
“We should leave,” says Rey.
“Do we now possess enough information for Tenser to return to him?” I ask.
“Yes,” say Rey and Treig simultaneously.
“But we can do more,” says Jodan.
To wide-eyed astonishment, Jodan describes a plan, laden with unlikely assumptions, that involves strolling into a sea of worms that formed the foundation of this temple. True, we have an undead servant under our control who could pose as our porter and guide, but other details – what is still here waiting for us? what is the wisdom of staking our lives to a recently-acquired ring whose boundaries are unknown and that works when Jodan is conscious and also wishing it? why not return later with ten times the force including sun priests to blast this place? – seem reckless.
So we are leaving. But Jodan is staying. His stubbornness is impressive. Perhaps Hell will not allow him to die. Perhaps we should kill him now to save him from fighting us later as a worm-infested version of himself, or perhaps he will succeed and redeem himself. Humans. They are always in such a hurry! It would be a trivial matter to return here, later, with exactly the group that is called for. But Jodan must do this now.
I wish him well.
As we turn to depart there is movement atop a section of the wall. Something large has hopped over it and landed in the courtyard.
It is a chicken.
“Verdre–.”
“I see it, too, Etona.”
“Thank the Goddess. But do they usually–?”
“No.”
“And the bits–?”
“No.”
I had noticed these small domesticated raptors on human farms. They resemble birds but are grown for consumption and cannot fly, laying edible eggs and are delicious themselves as well. It is hard to say what it tastes like. Chicken, I suppose. But I do not remember any of this size nor wearing what seem to be pieces of houses and spouting black smoke from a stovepipe atop the head.
It trots over to us and opens a wing…door. Out comes a pretty, apparently unarmed, human woman wearing lovely and thoroughly impractical clothes battling malice in the jungle.
Her effect on Jodan is immediate.
“Natasha!”
He pulls off his helm, banishes his armor, but that is only the beginning. His true transformation is deeper inside: the tension that seems to make up his support beams melts away, and his very skin seems to soften.
She, too, seems affected by seeing him. Joyful for an instant, saddened a moment more as she gazes on what he has become, but then rallying with happiness and affection.
“Jodan, who is this woman?” Rey asks.
“She, Natasha, is my betrothed.”
“The one from centuries ago?”
But he doesn’t answer. He is focused only on her, talking to her in an old Common tongue I do not understand very well.
“Isn’t she dead?” Rey asks Treig.
“Yup. She died from something a little like our worm friends here, I think.”
Elsewhere, I can hear Egan say to someone else, excitedly: “And it is the finest mobile chicken habitation I ever did see, m’lady. May I know yer name?”
“Why, Baba Yaga, m’dear. Who else?” comes the reply.
Eager is looking up at the little fold-out porch under the wing at a dark-skinned woman who looked like a Rehnee matriarch.
All humans know of Baba Yaga as have most elves, maybe even dwarves and gnomes, perhaps the Drow themselves: her name is legend. Was this being really she?
I needed to talk to Jodan the Infernal, the Devil’s Rook, and not Jodan the lovesick cub. I motion him to follow me. He is reluctant but I insist.
“Jodan, this is not Baba Yaga bringing your lost love. This is the ruse of the grisly lake below us sending horror after horror.” I do not have his undivided attention, but I press on. “Do you remember? You were trying to convince us to finish off this temple somehow when lo and behold she is delivered, brought by perhaps the only person who could accomplish this and who might bother: a powerful storybook character from hundreds of years ago.”
“It is amazing and wondrous, is it not?” His smile is drenched in happiness. He leaves me to return to the facsimile of his old love.
My Mistress has a reputation for tricks of this sort. But she allows us, her children, to see through illusion and live in the world as it is. I thus send Her arrow of revealing light to Baba Yaga. It splashes around her to her distracted amusement. Verdre is of my same mind. She sheathes Glitter, begins a quiet chant while wrapping her arms around her head, turning in on herself, bending over and then blossoming up and outward, eyes fixed on Our Mistress, half moon pendent raised aloft.
“Your Unerring Light, Mistress,” she calls, and he voice echoes off stairs and building, off the tower, off the black walls.
Over the course of a moment, Her face brightens. As the divination passes over us, it shifts each person into light and then to shadow again. The witch, we plainly see, is as substantial as the rest of us as is Natasha who even glows a little more brightly as we return to darkness.
“These two,” Verdre says once she has regained her senses, “appearing in such an unlikely place at this unlikely time, are as real as we, Etona,” she says to me.
It is not enough. I do not question the revelatory powers of My Mistress, of course: but what if we are trapped in an illusion that mocks Her light? I must believe. I must know.
“Then you are my friend, lovely Natasha. May I?” She nods, her smile uncertain. So I embrace her.
She is warm to the touch, murmuring that she is happy someone has come to bring joy and light to our sullen Hell-knight. Does she smell right? Yes, enticing in fact. Her skin? Yes, the soft delicate skin of young humans, cared-for hair likewise silky. It is all expected. No worms penetrate me as I hold her.
“How did you come to be here?” I ask, pulling her back to see her face.
“I was, I remember … it was a red corilax. It infected me, and I did not survive.”
“And yet, here you are.”
“Yes. Baba Yaga brought me back. I owe something to her for being here.”
I have more questions – scores, each spawning more, a growing sea of beheaded hydras – but Jodan takes her away again before I can even really get started.
I look to Verdre. “One last test.” I aim directly above me and let fly Her arrow, concentrating, concentrating, higher and higher it leaps, straight up to Her home. It eventually fades, exactly as it should, absolutely everything as expected.
“We may be trapped. Or just I – I may be trapped inside a dream or a trick or a bubble of reality, and I would never know.”
“That is always true,” says Verdre. “What of it? We live in the moment.”
“Don’t be a dream,” I say to her.
“Then don’t get lost in there,” Verdre replies, motioning to my head. “Focus, child.”
As before, we assemble to depart sans Jodan, but this time at least we are leaving him a house…chicken, its ancient witch owner, and an exact replica of his beloved. He could do worse, I suppose.
But no, this wretched place is not done with us.
When I watched the human performances in the animal circus at Greyhawk, spying on them for several days as I prepared to free its animals in my misguided notion of what was a good thing to do, I became aware of a loud and deceptive man. The ringmaster. He was outwardly friendly and self-deprecating but his eyes calculated what they saw and his smile was sarcastic.
It is the very expression of the man appearing in front of us now.
I do not see him at first: I see his portals, twelve wrinkles in the air atop the wall. As I digested this new obstacle – nothing here is ever on our side – I become aware of a maleficent, white-haired man with trimmed beard and oddly pale eyes atop black armor positively woven with buckles and belts. He is somehow in the middle of the court, right in front of us, proclaiming challenges to Treig.
Gloatius. No, that’s not right. Morious? Spurious? At any rate, bodies start falling out of the portals to accompany his sneering words. They are all bound with rope, some awake, some not, and all consigned to be consumed by worms soon if we did not aid them. A single look at Treig is enough: he knows these people, they are important to him, and he is going to do whatever to save them.
Since Jodan, Treig and Rey all darted forward to save the men, I open fire on the man. But each bolt splashes away like water off a shield. Nor can anyone get physically close: when Jodan has saved all he can, he goes for Snarlius as well but is held at bay from a wall we can only faintly see each time it is struck.
A moment later, once Verdre has secured the one bound dwarf she had bolted to, she reclimbs the wall and joins my attack, summoning and focusing Our Lady’s energy. Face taught with concentration, the beam grows ever brighter, the most intense I have ever seen. It is like a god’s finger pressing down on an unyielding egg.
But our prey is unphased and, in fact, turns his attention to the surrounding wall. From his outstretched hand shoots a ruddy, barely-visible bridge of energy that looks like a girl’s braided hair but makes the air feel heavy and constricting. I feel rather than hear a terrible crack some seconds after it is trained on the wall. My ancestors cry out!
Such confidence: not only does he appear in the middle of his enemies but he flaunts his domination by attacking this ancient relic protecting the entire world. His will is strong. But he is overconfident. He has not taken two factors into consideration: Rey, and the Goddess of the Moon, neither of whom are of a mind to let him succeed.
Rey charges Maddius on the back of Robi. She vanishes just as the metal monster version of our beloved owlbear slams into the clear shield. I saw the potion in her hand; I know just where she went. It is a matter of time now before he finds a steel-tipped lightning bolt exploring his throat. I, in the meantime, will make certain she has the time.
“Use me, Mistress, as Your conduit!” I shout and flatten my palms against the wall’s black stone surface. Her awesome power, hot and biting cold and sharp and aching and delicious and terrifying floods through me as I enter into a contest of will over survival. If I may only live, Baddius has no chance to succeed, none at all. I merely have to not wither under Her potent regard.
***
I do not know what happened after. I awoke under two faces: Verdre’s worried one and Her calm, shushing, half-face above. With a start I sit up and see that the wall is whole. I hear or perhaps merely feel the thanks of my ancient kin before I gently fall into a restorative mesmer.
When I emerge, Egan narrates events.
While I was channeling, Rey had succeeded in reappearing inside the dome that Blarious had set around himself. She became the dragon for an instant: her landing a thunderstorm, her spear lightning. She wounded him enough to lose one of the force shields, and Kaio was able to direct projectiles that flashed and blinded into the battlefield. Even blind, though, Blovious cut her deep, dropping her to her knees in a puddle of blood. But Treig moved as if a team of frenzied horses was dragging him and smashed through the other force field somehow. They together broke his concentration, and the radiant spire that Verdre had never let up on drove him to his knees.
“But he did not die! He opened a portal and dove through it and closes it again from his side. More than a man, Etona,” says Verde.
“You sound like you almost admire him.”
“I admire his will. Would that my own mind was of such steel.”
I roll my eyes at this: my aunt’s mind is as weak as Obi’s jaws.
“You, however, continue to impress,” she goes on. “I saw your concentration holding the wall together. I saw tears stream out your eyes: they were mother-of-pearl, and glowing, did you know? You were channeling Her for a moment, directing Her. He was not able to crack the wall’s protective barriers, and we force his retreat.”
“And the bound men?”
“All of them safe. Treig is with them now.”
“Can we finally leave?”
“Oh yes,” put in Treig. “Yes, we are leaving now. All of us.”
Kaio spun up the teleportation circle. In a moment we were gone. I never thought I would be more pleased to a see a human castle.
On our way in, a dragonkin named Silli'huus accosted Rey in the tongue of Rey’s mistress. Later, Rey told me the kin had desired an audience with her the next evening, and that we could all attend, or rather, she was not asked to come alone specifically. Silli'huus also uttered something to Jodan but in a brutal-sounding language, Infernal possibly. I did not understand that either, and he didn’t explain.
I want to talk to Jodan some more about Natasha but I am distracted, unable to concentrate. We all part ways for the evening. I return to the wooded court and climb all its trees, spend some time with Glennis, the new mace. It still feels unfamiliar in my hands, so I work with him until I manage to hurt myself enough to force me to cease. Still distracted, almost a buzzing faint and far off, and my skin is cold. Am I ill now? But no, it feels external somehow.
As I spend a moment gazing at t’quean, Her half-moon visage, my favorite face, I suddenly know what is causing the distraction. I bring out the moonstone and set it to orbiting. As it silently moves round and round, and I feel any trace of hunger or want dissipate, I notice a vapor trail misting off of it. Then it stops, right in front of my eyes.
Normally I have to snatch it from the air: the stone has never simply halted before. It is regarding me, a crude little face like one drawn onto a snowball. It also looks like the moon, exactly like the moon, actually. Thus it goes, back and forth, ice and moon.
It moves suddenly and I am on the ground, shivering, steam issuing from my mouth, and a ringing headache where it struck me! I am sitting on ice and there is rime everywhere. I look up and it is still up in the air, above me, hovering where it had been.
I make to stand but it strikes me again.
“Verdre?” I call, but she has discovered the Hall of Maps. There is no one here to help me. And–.
And I do not need help. I know what this is, as a dreamer in a dream knows a hawk is a hacksaw. My Mistress is teaching me, that I am in reality, that I may trust Her, that I have been given another gift – or tool or burden – a new, terrible magik.
So, shivering, I pray. The cold intensifies but it is nothing to me now: I am her vessel. If She wills my freezing into a statue and then shattering into a million shards, then I will give her one million and ten.
The spell, as I take possession of it in my mind, is lovely: a graceful rolling of the fingers, a murmur in an Elven dialect from millennia ago, and a tiny, smoking moon appears. Is it so very cold up there?
I hurl it at a particularly stout tree that looked as if it could withstand a Fifth Season, a years-long winter. Its thinnest branches freeze solid, but the after-effect, I see, is short-lived and it does not harm the larger ones.
How very useful.
***
The next day, Rey pulls me aside as we are on the way to see Lord Tenser.
“I had a dream I need to tell you about,” she says.
I motion her down to the ground and sit cross-legged in front of her. “Of course.”
“It was night. Silli’huus was watching me. She was looking straight at me as your goddess –.”
“Sehanine is goddess of the moon and the night and the elves, so she is our goddess, all of us,” I remind her.
“Yes, yes. As the goddess would peer down at you, us, whenever the moon rises. That is what this dragonkin was doing, staring down at me. She was the entirety of the dream. No other image.”
I think a moment. I am no expert on dream interpretation, though many have come to me asking my advice. Apparently priests of other gods get trained in this art? That is a thing?
One thought does occur to me, though.
“In the dream, was Silli’huus lit by the moon?”
“Yes.”
“From the front or the back?”
“Back.”
A front light is a reveal, a ‘pay attention to me’. It also means ‘free will’. A back light is shadow and concealed motives. But is also means ‘sent’.
“Do you remember your state of mind when you woke up? Were you happy? Sad? Nervous? Angry? Scared?”
“I don’t remember.”
“I will keep watch over you tomorrow night and be there when you wake the next morning, in case it happens again. Neh?”
She nods, and I spring to my feet, lending her a hand to pull her up. I hold her hand whenever I can because a squeeze or a drawing her forearm to mine or a firm clasp can in a heartbeat convey so much more than any amount of words. This time: Do not be alarmed – we will puzzle this out together.
On to our meeting with Lord Tenser.
***
Rather than narrate all of the back and forth here, allow me to simply summarize what our pooled knowledge revealed.
Each of us recounted the events at the temple. This took some time. As always, I was very interested in hearing how each perceived events. One such that I did not even know was happening was Jodan returning with a large force of beings called Avengers to utterly raze the temple: kill the worms, drain the pool which had been fed by a now-annihilated fountain. After that happened, the walls simply crumbled.
I asked: “Might purifying the place summon Dragotha or Kyuss or any being attached to it?”
“Unlikely,” Tenser returned and Treig nodded. “It is completely neutralized now, and though any connected with it will know of its destruction, they would also know that returning would be futile – there is nothing left – and potentially a trap.”
“Did you set wards?”
“We did leave a few presents behind that will eventually melt into the jungle if they are not set off.”
“Was that really Baba Yaga?” I also asked. It was generally agreed that it very likely was she, especially as she has a part of the Rod and knows, somehow, in some way involving her legend, that we also have one, the largest one, the diviner of the rest. Natasha is undoubtedly part of a coming offer.
The conversation turned to Darius, yes, that’s the right name, and Jodan, and some nonsense about how Darius might be a shard of Jodan’s personality, one representing chaos, as if you can break up a spirit into pieces. I have heard such before but always it was metaphor or coming from the mouths of children attributing their impulses to a piece of themselves they claim they cannot control. We are each of us all of our deeds and thoughts. If this is a distinctly human feature, it is one that neither Verdre nor I – nor any among my people – has ever heard of.
Anyway, Darius seems to exist to destroy the world or at least bring as much chaos to it as possible. Completely mad which may explain his tremendous confidence. He incidentally has a tattoo matching one engraved into the assassin who killed Elgios.
A discussion of Baklava was next, Tenser’s loyal scout and researcher. He journeyed next to Al-Halster to investigate something called the Ebon Triad, a cult worshiping the unlikely joining of three mad, evil gods. The prince of the city is called Zeech; his adviser and a city founder called Lashonna. She is Elven. Maybe another stop for us, but hopefully we can do better than to trail this man across the world.
If we do go we will be in disguise, for the most part, obtaining difficult-to-get, Fey-linked invitations for the prince’s celebration of his coming into the world. Rey will pose as Greyhawk’s arena champion, complete with belt. I will be Treig’s … prize? No, that isn’t right. His treat? Arm treat? Candy. Wait, I have it: I will be Treig’s arm candy, there to talk to Lashonna and find out what happened to my friend Bal-Halster. No. Balthazar.
I had better get that name right. Perhaps someone could right it down for me?
Verdre would be a snake or a cat or something appropriate to the scene. She would listen in on conversations as I pass, hear what was not meant for my ears. Jodan will be infernal bodyguard: apparently that’s a thing. Treig plays … himself?
Hopefully it will not come to this.
***
Silli’huus is next. As a representative of the Queen of Dragons, she may offer something better than an evil prince’s birthday party.
We travel to the petitioners’ tents outside the castle walls. Silli’huus' tent is no longer there so we travel on to the meeting place. She is there, just setting colored piles of sand inside an arcane circle for her ritual as we arrive. She is pleased to see Rey and unperturbed by the rest of us.
“Come! Come!” she says to Rey. “Do you want to speak to the queen?”
Rey kneels down in front of the blue sand pile. At Silli’huus' gestures and words, it forms a dragon head which begins to speak. Rey told me later what it said.
“Dragotha has betrayed us. She intimidates and enslaves my children. You have a connection with other individuals who also seek her demise. Find her power and extinguish it. You may kill her as well if you like. For this I will reward you.”
“Dragotha is unliving or I would have snuffed her out myself,” the head adds.
“Where?” says Rey.
“Dragotha is in a place called the Worm Crawl Fissure, a great rift. Seek her doom there. Reconcile the differences between you and others among your friends.”
With that, it falls back into a mound of blue sand.
***