[5E] The Age of Worms - Solid Snake's Campaign

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.

***

Journal of Etona 26

We are returning to the wizard’s city-castle as we chat.


“The Worm Crawl Fissure? That sounds bloody miserable,” says Egan.


“May we take avengers and a dozen sun priests with us?” I offer. “It could be a piece of pie.”


“Cake,” says Rey. “Piece of cake, is the expression.”


“That’ll be some time to assemble,” says Treig. “I don’t have those resources. Probably none of you do either? Yeah. Need to take this back to Tenser, see what wants to do. In the meantime, sounds like we’re going to a spoiled prince’s fancy party.”


The invitations to this event are magical in nature: at least part of the celebration will be held in the Fey. These scrolls aid in physically transporting us there. I will rely on Verdre – and My Mistress – to lead us through any trouble navigating through – and out of – wherever this place might be. The Fey is not tiny.


Our new identities will be as follows:

• Trieg – Himself: The Gray Fox, leader of a crack team of mercenaries, there to pay tribute and also offer services to the prince
• Me – Selina, Treig’s toy-of-the-week as he is mine; also Rey’s barker; also the one responsible for drawing out Lashonna
• Rey – Herself: Champion of the Greyhawk Arena, Slayer of the Worm, demigod. Her most difficult assignment will be speaking well of her own deeds.
• Verdre: Rey’s irascible alley cat and our primary spy
• Jodan – Posing as Darius who, it turns out, looks just like him? I guess? I had not noticed, though most human males look approximately alike to me

Our mission is to find out what happened to Balacard. He came here investigating the Ebon Triad but switched the focus of that inquiry to Dragotha once he got here. I believe Treig and Jodan have their own motives as well, but I leave them to their own schemes.


Tenser is able to not only produce the invitations but transport us, via teleportation circle, to the Al Haster, complete with a phantasmal re-creation of Rey slaying the worm in the Arena!


Al-Halster seems a typical human town of this size: walled from the world, cleansed of natural environment so that it is all human in every direction but up, offering many of the same scenes and scents as Greyhawk. What is less typical are the winged devil guards on all the battlements. We were warned the presence from Hell was…ostentatious.


As we march down the central avenue leading to the castle currently occupied by Prince Zeech, we notice a tall, dark, unfinished building rising from the cobblestone in the corner of the city not far from the castle. It resembles in some ways the temple we had just smashed in the jungle thousands of leagues away.


“I am compelled to build it!” Zeech will tell Treig later on in describing his affinity for a being called Hextor.


There are two parties, apparently. One is the celebration for the prince. The other, the one in the Fey, is a trap for the prince’s enemies. Jodan’s face and adopted mannerism – Darious’ – get us to the correct one complete with both my bow and aunt. Our entrance is announced and splashy.


Of all the members of our troop, Zeech is impressed most by Treig and spends time talking to him. I flit about chatting with others among the dozen or so assembled here, drawing attention to myself or occasionally to a scowling Rey who seems content to mainly assume poses of might. Our ‘cat’ trails my conversations listening for gossip. We are awaiting the arrival of Lashonna who was sent to take care of the group of guests: take care to thoroughly lose them in the Fey or possibly even massacre them, it is not clear.


Shag is here! My big orange dragon chess teacher and gentle friend from Diamond Lake’s Emporeum. He has made it out alive and is, of all places, at this event! I cannot allow him to, to, er, ‘blow my cover’, yes, so I direct many hand signals to him pleading that he not notice me. Fortunately Rey, who may be known to all, engages him, asking him to act the part along in our little play.


The festivities begin. First, dinner. Zeech’s kitchens offer us all manner of eel, insects, and slime: dishes that would seem to be more at home in the corner of a dungeon just within reach of an ancient prisoner than gracing the table of the lord. Perhaps this is a royal custom among this tribe of humans? Lower oneself to eating barely-edible foods as a connection to the wretched? Or is it an amusing joke? I find some of it overly seasoned and other plates plain enough to warrant my adding my own spices. The slime dish is the worst and causes me to leave the table and expel it from my body. And I am not the only one. Jodan loves it, though: perhaps it is served as pudding in Gehenna.


Games are next, contests of various sorts where Zeech attempts to beat his guests. The first is target practice with crossbows. I dislike these machines, these bastardizations of a true bow, so I demur. Treig wins handily using a technique to refill his machine that keeps his hands almost a blur of reloading bolts.


Next is an odd game where two players – Zeech and Rey – magically take over a pair of chickens. These are let loose among a gang of cats in a pit and….


How did Verdre get down there?


Goddess! They are cockatrice!


Cockatrice are wizard-created monsters that peck their targets to stone. Given how these dinner-sized, otherwise harmless raptors view the world, they are clearly the product of a human wizard’s sense of humor. How they multiplied to be found in more than one place in the world is beyond telling.


There are two here now. Does Verdre know? Why is she down there? Surely Rey knows that the green-tailed, largest cat is her own?


Surely Zeech knows….


I watch in fascinated horror as one by one the cats are turned to stone. Rey, I see, certainly sees what is happening and is trying some strategy to let Verdre know? My aunt sees it differently down there and attacks Rey’s cockatrice. Cat statue after cat statue are created until there are few left, Verdre leaping again and again at Rey – she must think it is Zeech – until finally….


Thank the Fates.


Afterward, with the prince sulking from his latest loss, Rey yells at “her cat”. Verdre snarls back. I interpose picking up my aunt – she tolerates this sulkily – and placing her in another corner of the room.


I would tell Rey later: “She does not care about other cats as you do. She assumed you were the other one, picking and pecking her targets and ignoring you in order to win and end the game while she takes care of Zeech. Druids in my tribe are not soft-hearted about other animals: they are prey, and the druids are ever the hunters.”


“I though druids were guardians of the forest.”


“They are. We are, all of us. Elves of Emersanine honor our prey for both the chase and the meat knowing it could be us in their jaws, and rightfully so if they are able to hunt us down. It is The Way of Things. So you see why she would have thought that you were Prince Zeech’s animal.”


She relents. She is stubborn, my Rey, but not unreasonable.


I chat with a devil guard, complimenting her and asking her about her wardrobe: do you get undressed for bed and wear a nightie or some sort of pajama or do you sleep in leather and chains? Do you sleep? Do you wear anything underneath your armor? What do you use for the dye? It’s magical, I assume, so do each of you make your own armor? When do you learn that? If so, is every devil able to create magic armor or does it come from a few who do? Do you use money or is it from those who have to those who need? Do you have money? Are the coins hot all the time? Are you hot all the time? So are you born or created or forged from other life?


She leaves in a huff which puzzles me: I thought I was taking an interest.


I finally get to talk to Shag. I pull him aside, hug, and we catch up. He left Diamond Lake after he was unable to do anything about its destruction or save the life of Madame Z.


“How did you end up here?”


He smiles. “I am interesting to people, I guess.” I am sure the money he was able to save also helped. He wouldn’t elaborate, however, and I did not pry.


Lashonna finally arrives.


Hers is an older soul than I or Verdre: an elf of some five centuries or more. I approach her once she is done greeting all of the guests: “making the rounds” is the excellent human expression. I strike up a conversation – this is my assignment – with an air of flighty curiosity.


“You came from an errand in the Fey, did you not?” I open with. “I had thought the party was going to be there. I was surprised when it wasn’t. I haven’t visited the Fey in some time and had hoped to return.”


“I was on an errand for our governor, Zeech, which put me in the Fey for part of the celebration.”


“Where are all the other guests?”


I have to say, Lashonna is very frank.


“Most of them escaped in an unexpected cave-in, but a couple of them were crushed by falling rock and snow. I left the scene. I believe Zeech had intended them to be devoured by angry dire apes, however that did not happen as planned due to the unstable caves that he chose to transport them to.”


Wide-eyed, all feigned innocence, I pursue: “Were any of these people your acquaintances?”


“No, they were political opponents of Zeech. I did not know them.”


I look to her tone, her eyes, her body language, but there seems to be no regret there. She is cool and pleasant, even-tempered, from the southern forests. These and her slightly distracted air remind me of Tamyl, my people’s shaev’e, (this loosely translating to “leader” though more a first among equals, an elder, but Tamyl also leads us when we must fight as a single people). Lashonna’s discussion of the trapping of other humans is matter-of-fact, though she ends each statement with a small smile, one that doesn’t rise to her eyes.


I let her go a while and catch up to her again as she makes her way to the balcony. No one speaks with her long, I see.


“What do you think of the new building the prince is having erected near here?”


“He has grand aspirations of ascending to demigod status by pleasing Hextor with a grand temple and gaining power and influence over the bandit kings. I have no doubt that his attempt will be recognized by his faith, but likely will fall short of his aspirations.”


I lean in conspiratorially: “What do we think of Hextor?” I ask.


She produces a wry smile: “Like many deities, they require humans to fill their cups only to dump them out again. I have no allegiance to Hextor, nor do I support the goals of conquest or dominion that it purports. Consider me a steward to the city. If his temple threatens the livelihood of the people, then I would intervene.”


“Champion Rey told me about her trials in a jungle somewhere where she and some other heroes fought slimy things? Of some kind? In a temple that she says looked like this new one. As I mentioned before, I would like to spend some of Treig's money and potentially acquire a site here – visit it on occasion – and do not want some evil god perched over my new land.”


“Mm, then I would consider a different town, unless Gray Fox has financial interest in the place. Leaders here are shallow in most instances and choose faiths that serve their selfish needs. Someone has to help preserve the lifeblood of the town, and it isn’t the aristocracy.”


“So why you, if you do not mind me asking? What is your bond with this human town?”


“My ties are, historically, as matron. I raised this village from the swamp, and I intend to live long in its history or not, but while I am here I am a benevolent clock maker.”


“Oh, these humans and their busy, busy plans. They carve their initials into the world and then die not even knowing whether their ideas are any good, what the ramifications are, thinking only in mere years.”


She agrees, and I turn my questions to Balacard. She freely tells me that pages of his journal along with a map of Nyr Div are all he left behind. Definitely a sign post for us, a beckoning to keep following. These documents are carefully tucked away in her human-built home among the other manors of the Al-Halster respected. Asked if we could go to her home and retrieve these, she assented with a shrug.


The party winds down. I leave believing I’ve made at least a couple new friends. Everyone was most guarded there, so it is difficult to say for certain. Prince Zeech struck me me not as the vain, arrogant imbecile I had assumed I would find, but more a vain, arrogant, lost little boy. He will not leave a mark so much as a small stain on the world – indeed, he is being manipulated by Hextor even now – but perhaps Lashonna can influence him after all.


We all meet, after the festivities are over, at Lashonna’s house. She takes us right to Balacard’s map and journal and seems tolerant of my little white lie enabling me to look through her other rooms, which we do. We discover nothing of interest, though I think Jodan found an aura he didn’t like somewhere near a basement.


The map directs us to Tillagos where still stands a library on an island on a lake under a tremendous ever-raging storm. It was set there by the First Watch, my same distant cousins who erected the wall around the ziggurat. It is possible the island itself, from their magiks, even moves around.


In the library is apparently information about Dragotha’s phylactery, her secret-of-secrets life force kept in an unknown receptacle.


We must thus not only outfit ourselves appropriately but also find a ship and crew willing to brave the journey. Treig attends to it. Useful, that human.


A man named Matthias is owner of such a craft, called Eye of the Storm. He and his trio of daughters, all of them strong and friendly, do business on this huge lake – more like an inland sea but for the fresh water – and they are ready and able to take us in.


I strike up quick friendships with each of them – Myra, Cleo and Lachle – though particularly with Myra, the pilot. She gives me lessons.


I know how to pilot a boat already thanks to my upbringing on the Mirror, but those are elven craft. This heavy human one requires different skills, though I feel like I pick them up readily enough.



It is a beautiful, cloudless day when we set out. I will reflect, later on, that there are so many reasons I am glad my aunt is here, but among them, certainly, is her druidcraft.


The storm, when we come to it, is vast and impenetrable. She assesses our situation and enacts two plans, one for heading in and one for getting out again.


For the first, she summons the largest shark I have ever seen to pull us. It simply tows the boat as I steer us across shifting currents through rocks that seem designed to rip ships, and everyone else but greening Jodan – not a lot of water in Hell, I guess – row their hearts out. In this fashion we work through the maelstrom to the island, navigating thirty-foot waves, a hungry-lookingwhirlpool and boat-chewing shoals.


Verdre has assumed the boat would not make it all the way, either anchoring or foundering, so she meditated half a day to beseech Our Mistress of Gifts With Strings Attached for an alternate way out. An enormous silver feather floated down from the heavens to land her arms.


“We may run on the wind itself,” is all she says, smiling. That sounds exhilarating – I almost hope we will have to use it.


We pass vast numbers of shipwrecks and skeletons to get to the eye of the hurricane under which sits the island. An entire city’s ruins stretch to the horizon.


We have neighbors sharing the shoreline with us: orcs, by the look of them, washed up on shore and wringing their clawed hands about the condition of their broken vessel. Verdre hops to her feet to remind Rey that orcish annihilation is not our mission today. Anyway, it seems clear they not interested in us and in fact might not even know we’re here.


We leave the ship and daughters with Verdre to protect them from any incursion by the local fauna. The rest of us head inland to seek this fabled library….

Journal of Etona 27

Jodan looks conflicted as we all hop out of the boat. He steps out and stops, some internal struggle taking turns controlling his face. Rey takes off scouting the shoreline, so I dash after her, the two of us scramble across uncountable rocks that seem to be left over from a whole other island torn up, sharpened and cast here as weapons against visitors of any sort.

Our attention is called back: a commotion back at the boat. Jodan still isn’t moving, but heat is roiling around him making the air shimmer. The rail from boat behind him browns, its paint bubbling. His chains are writhing.

“What is that?” screams Cleo, one of the sisters.

Jodan is bellowing in Infernal now, I think, and, yes, there is his sword, the devil-in-steel, Beherit.

One last change in his features, his aura, his body language. The Hell Knight has wholly arrived, utterly present like I haven’t seen before. This is not Jodan: this is the devil prince, Beherit.

But the island is not having it: stone shoots out of the ground and envelopes his feet. I start running back to him.

“We can’t take him anywhere,” I call over my shoulder to Rey.

Beherit is slashing at the stone which crumbles and breaks. New stone emerges but it is too slow.

“Beherit!” says Treig, calmly. “This will not get you what you want. We will. We are doing what needs to be done, and so we cannot block your own interests here even if we wanted to. Return Jodan to us. You know this is the smart move.”

The words work a transformation and Jodan, in short order, is returned to us. It takes somewhat longer for me calm down the sisters, but Verdre will stay with them and that seems to help.

We move into the island.


I lay my eyes for the first time on a creature – a whole knot of them, in fact – called a roper. I’ve heard stories of them, these underground menaces that contribute to making life so very difficult for Drow and dwarf. I am amazed to see several of them now, right here, live: dense, incredibly hostile foliage armed with spiked tentacles and frighteningly huge mouths. Fortunately, they are essentially immobile.

They were the first creatures we met in navigating what can only be described as an actual maze of manipulated stones that make up the region of the island we are on now. They are clustered on slabs of stalactites. On their tough hides are carved runes that I recognize. I cannot read them – they are druidic – but I know someone who can. She is just a short stroll back to the water.

Verdre is surprised to see me as I stumble out of the maze towards her. Each rock seemed to be identical to every other; it took me ages to find the ocean again. In fact, had it not been the pounding surf I was seeking I may not have found it. I have only been lost a handful of times before, and at least two of them had been magical fields designed to beguile. Here, I kept returning to the ropers from different directions, though I also crept by a nasty-looking tree that seemed to be the patriarch of all ill-tempered flora in the world.

I tell my aunt of the runes and she comes with me to take a quick peek. Together we find the grotto with the ropers readily enough.

She stares at the creatures, writing down what she sees into her Infinite Book. Eventually she has enough to translate. It is a sort of druidic treatise on nature, not words of power at all, more like, “We were here” from the First Watch. Interesting though not useful. She returns to the boat, looking thoughtfully at her surroundings. She will start a new map, I know, as soon as she has time.

The rest of us proceed to the base of a cliff a ways off. There, in front of a shallow cave is a courtyard in the maze that was probably a lovely spot once, a place for a … pik’nik, I think the humans call it. Now it is broken stone benches and white statuary and strewn crystals. Something recently – perhaps a couple days ago – blew them all to rubble. There is some blood, and we manage to piece together the scene: these were stone golems, and they were in a fight with at least two people, probably more. A quick scouting of the area reveals nothing nearby, but there is another party of adventurers on the island.

Blue crystals are scattered about, evidently from inside the statues. Treig scoops a few of them up and we continue into the shallow cave a couple hundred yards past.

An obsidian disk is in here. Seven eyes are carved into the stone circle, three of them are filled, and four more serve as depressions for fist-sized crystals.

…such as those we just got from the golems.
…such as those stuck to the base of the ropers.

“Return my eyes to me and I shall gaze through the storm,” it reads in Orrin, translated by Treig… courtesy of the circlet? I guess? I honestly have no idea how it performs these miracles of communication, particularly written language. Has he now an air elemental residing in that noggin? Or does the circlet actually whisper the translation? Or does it just look like Common to him? He won’t say, just shrugs.

He places a blue crystal in a depression. It fits perfectly, sparkles a little.

And so we have our assignment: we need the three other colors.

Treig believes he can excavate the ropers’ green jewels from their “feet”, a mass of arboreal foot-roots, if Rey will confer a traceless passage spell to him. I think Verdre or myself are the better choices, but he does have that magic cloak. Since he is reluctant to give it to one of us temporarily, this becomes his task to carry out.

He is successful, though: he returns with crystals plucked, the ropers none the wiser.

He repeats his thievery in the opaque tide pool of the monstrous tree I passed to retrieve red crystals.

That leaves the violet ones. It doesn’t take us long to find them.

We spot a place in the maze that has collapsed in an odd way: the walls’ rocks are piled twenty feet high in a ramp up against two other walls forming a corner. As we approach, a river of lightning pours out of the loose shale, striking Rey who shrugs it off. She wields her spear and charges. A moment later I can see her target: something called a behir, a large, multi-legged, snake-like creature that hates dragons, according to Treig. He isn’t going to like Rey.

It dies a violent death. It attacked Rey ferociously, never taking its eyes off her, and she is gravely hurt in battling it. But she is made of discarded deities, my Rey, and shrugs off horrific wounds that would kill many and cripple the rest. While I am tending to her, Treig harvests the violet crystals.

We return to the black disc and insert our collected chromatic bounty. The tempest seems to hush. There is a … drawing back, something anticipatory.

Treig and I step on the disc.

Immediately, the scent of grass in summer. Warmth, and peace.
A forest is to our south where there was none before. Snowy mountains to the north.

We are not in the Fade anymore. This is the Fey.

Rey and Jodan appear a few seconds later.

The Hell-Knight begins to age quickly and in short order looks almost skeletal! He starts chanting something and, with a fiercely determined look directly at me, he disappears. Gone, as if he had taken the Ethereal Plane drought.

While we’re putting together the words to express our surprise, he reappears, youthful again. But his arm is now encased in raw, uncut red crystals. Also, something about his aura has changed. Normally he exudes tyranny and power, and considerable heat. When he comes back, these are gone, replaced – for a handful of heartbeats – with Jodan-as-human. He wears, for that moment, the same expression as when he was with Natasha. And then Hell takes over again. But not completely. There is something else now in his eyes.

“Where did you go?” I ask.

He grunts. He doesn’t seem to want to look directly at me.

“Jodan?” I repeat and step towards him. “Where did you go?”

He is saved from answering me by the arrival of four hoary beings from some Fae duke’s court. Draped in mossy Fae armaments, banners of the elements flapping, butterflies and other insects hovering around them, and shouldering the weariness of millennia, they have stepped out of the ground, the wind, and the trees.

“I am Tilthranos,” announces one of them. “We are the Last Resort.”

The Common words are heavily inflected. ‘Last resort’ is obviously an inaccurate translation.

“We protect the secrets of this island,” he continues.

Treig steps forward.

“We seek something called the phylactery of Dragotha,” he says.

“Mm, you seek the Fountain of Dreams, but know that should you drink of it all secrets of what you seek shall be revealed to the world; the order of the Rite of the First Watch will be undone; and great creatures of legend will be set loose upon your world.”

“What creatures, exactly?” I ask.

“They roam this place. They will roam yours.”

“And which secrets?”

“Your books which were emptied of the words for what you seek will fill again. Stories lost will be known once more; journals and drawings rediscovered: all will go back into the Fade from which they were taken.”

“How do we start this off?” Treig asks.

“Should we start this off?” I ask. I pull us aside. “What if what we will unleash is worse than Dragotha?”

“I can’t really imagine that,” says Treig. “Dragotha is a plague spreading unlife everywhere, a head that bites two heads who bite four heads, and so on. It just keep growing like a disease loose in a city, except the city is our whole world.”

“We are not guaranteed to succeed in slaying Dragotha. But moving forward here will definitely add more destruction to the world. We could end up making things worse.”

Treig spreads his hands. “What do you recommend?”

“We should try,” says Rey. “We should always try, Etona. That is what you have said to me many times, and you were always right.”

I give her a mock-withering look that communicates what I think of her quoting me back to me, but I step back from the Watchers.

“So again,” says Treig to them, “how do we begin?”

“The Fountain will know you from your deeds. You must accomplish four tasks. The first trial: claim the golden belt of Krathenos, in his keep far to the south.”

Another watcher finally speaks.

“I am Baescoaen. Silence the Doom Shroud’s mournful song.”

A third one says, “I am Thoddamar. Seek the nightmare in the Thorn Vale to the furthest west.”

And the fourth: “I am Saeran Lai. Harvest the living feather of the Roc King in the mountains to the north.”

“These sound like feats of strength,” I interject, “and not trials of wisdom or virtue. Is the library for any who wield power?”

“The trials bespeak their own natures,” Tilthranos replies, “and will each, in turn, challenge your heroic aspect.”

“Have other attempted these tests?” says Rey.

“Yes, but none have succeeded.”

“What happened to them?”

“Some perished. Some merely left. A few are still here.”

“What are the creatures that will be freed to run amok in our world?” I ask Tilthranos.

“You see them here. Creatures of legend, beings from stories.”

“Are any of them world-shaking in their influence? Are any, for example, the actual island we are on, or the island is just barely big enough to contain a titan or something like that? Are there any who can affect thousands or the minds of thousands?”

“They are powerful; they are beings of legend. But no, none could shatter a nation.”

I look to Treig.

"Then we accept,” he says. “Should we do then in a particular order? Does that matter?”

“The trials may be completed as pleases you. It is for you to decide.”

“OK. Can you tell us anything about any of them?”

“We have said all we must.” And with that, they each withdraw, one into the trees, one into the ground, and the last two simply fading away leaving behind a puff of steam and a curl of smoke, each quickly lost to the wind.

“If we are to set out on these quests,” I say to the group, “then we must go back to the boat for Verdre.”

“Why do we need her again, necessarily?” To head off my incredulous reply, he quickly adds, “Just sayin’, it takes time and crystals, and we don’t have much of the latter. In fact,” he pulls out the collection, “we can go back and forth only one more time.”

“Then we have enough. Anyway, we must warn the sisters. What with the time difference between here and the Fade, we could be days or weeks before we return. Much could happen.”

He sighs. “OK. We go back to the boats.”

“Treig?” He turns back to me. “This wasn’t really a request.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m just, trying to keep everything together.”

“And you are doing a magnificent job.”

Poor man: it is so important that there be plans and control, as if the world could be mastered.


Getting back is uneventful as Rey and I are beginning to understand the lay of the land. Verdre reports nothing amiss back at the boat. I look over her charts: she has captured the hazards of our journey in sketches within little side-boxes that point back to where they are on the map. How she memorized the details and the course we took and so truly reproduced it all whilst gripped in the storm’s jaws is beyond me.

We explain to the sisters what we are about to do and what the consequences may be in terms of not seeing them for some time. We beg them to leave, for their own good, assuring them we had another way off of the island, and they finally assent.

I press a gold into each of their palms. “To spend.” I press a silver into each of their other palms. “To remember us by.” They all know Verdre and I are sent by Her Night-Shaded Majesty, and the coin resembles a full moon. “Spend that one after we come back. I want to see all of you again.” I hug each one in turn making unhappy noises at the journey that circumstance has forced them to make, but Myra assures me it will be an easier thing to return than to come.

“This place hates visitors like a hermit watching an approaching troupe of joke-telling jugglers. It will be all too glad to watch us leave,” she says. She then presses a medallion inscribed with a single eye into my hand. “For good luck, to you, Etona, and to all of you.”

“I will see you again,” I promise.

One more long look at the orcs. They are dressed and armed like pirates, that is, sailors as opposed to a war party waiting to get to a destination. I shouldn’t think a band of orcs would have any interest in plundering a dangerous island for some books.

Verdre remembers she saw a cloaked figure step out of the rocks near their ship, spy on the orcs for a moment, and then vanish back into the maze.

None of us can say what is going on here.

“I am surprised you do not want to saunter over and ask them to tea,” Verdre teases.

“I might, but keeping Rey from jumping at them is taking all my energy. With Eye of the Storm safely off, and they have given us no trouble at all, I am for simply returning to the disk and making the crossing back to the Fey side.”

“Sensible,” she returns with arched eyebrow.

“I can be sensible, too.”

“Of course.”


Our first task after we complete the journey back, we decide, is to go and retrieve the golden belt. It is presumably on the mythical creature that lives in a fortress at the southernmost tip of the forest. Our choices to get there are around the woods or through.

It is the first forest I think I have ever seen Verdre blanch on the notion of entering. I do not blame her. Called the Doom Shroud, that name might be too lively for it. Black trees drip with ichor, smell of disease, as inviting as an exploration of Greyhawk’s sewers. Apparently there are also monsters within. How fun! We leave it to the last: perhaps we’ll be dead by then.

So, walking around grasslands where different packs of carnivorous animals are busy hunting. We see their signs: ripped up or flattened reeds; broken bones with impressive teeth marks; pieces of hide; all on a larger-than-us scale. Battles between big combatants. Rey and Verdre confer: there are packs of at least three different animals out here of any size besides the hyenas and – what did Verdre call them? – gazelles: fast, hopping, plains deer with unmatched grace that can turn almost in mid-air at great speed. Verdre spent some time following a herd of them, studying.

We sighted a bulette, a “land shark”, in the distance. It surfaced with a spray of dirt. Its prey, a couple of dogs separated from their pack, vanished.

Not long after that we moved into an area where for miles we saw no sign at all of the bulette. Verdre was commenting on how odd it was that they seemed to have a surprisingly small roam when several things happened at once.

A hissing sound but not from an animal, more like a river of insects.
Movement all around us, suddenly there as if we had stepped out of a quiet lake into a forest fire.
A sound like that of what humans call a cougar.
Purple flags flapping, no, black and purple, no, tentacles not flags, on hides, on big cats with tentacles and fuzzy outlines that hurt the backs of my eyes.

“Yukuma,” Verdre says. “Displacer beasts!”

They are on us from nowhere. Where did they come from?

I immediately tree-step away. Out comes Angivre. Verdre unsheathes Glitter with a frosty whisper that freezes the grass in front of her; Treig reaches for a handful of whatever surprising little weapon-devices he has stashed away. Rey’s beast, after locking eyes with her, simply kneels down, paws forward.

But it is Jodan who takes command of the situation. He barks at them in Infernal, his face contorted, his armor chains wave in mockery and contempt of their own tentacles, burning steel versus mere hide. He seems, as he often does when he puts on this show, like a thing summoned from Gehenna.

It does the trick: the cats are so cowed by him that Verdre and Treig’s mere snarls are enough to drive them off. Neither side so much as scratched the other.

“Will they return?” Rey asks. Verdre shakes her head, no. “How do you know?”

“They are intelligent but malign. They hunt for pleasure. There is no pleasure to be gained with us, they could see that plainly. And one among us,” she nods at Jodan, “may even seem like a master to them. You spoke Infernal?” Jodan nods. “They speak that as well. They understood you. What did you say?”

“Just some sweet nothings.”

Verdre, it turns out, knows a lot more about the yukuma. They are from the Unseelie Court, the dark fae. There is much to say about them but it would, and has at the hands of better chroniclers than I, filled scores of books. Suffice to say, they are bred for war and are now loose upon the world. This little island world, anyway.


We again come upon a trail that had been running straight through the zigzag (what a delicious human word) of our own. Another herd of huge beasts, though these must be slow and ponderous, judging by their wake. I come upon their droppings and tentatively identify them as herbivore. Verdre confirms, and Rey agrees. I had not learned tracking as well as the rest of my people when I was young, but the years in the woods alone before Diamond Lake sharpened my senses, and now my guesses almost always accord with theirs.

We catch up to them. They are olifants.

Massive creatures with enormous tusks, long gray trunks, ears like sails and legs, gray columns: I can see why few would want to attack them.

Rey cautions us to wait. She approaches them carefully. They watch warily but allow her to put down her spear, open her arms, move near. When she is within some yards, a big male begins to look agitated. The herd behind moves off. She drops to her knees in supplication. It will be easy for the bull to trample her.

“Think she’s OK out there?” says Treig.

Verdre frowns. “They doubtless sense the dragon in her. It will make her task more difficult. But your friend is talented,” she says. “Give her time.”

Rey, perhaps sensing that a change in tactic was needed, rises to her feet and roars to the male. It rears, and she bows down her head but remains standing. It probes with its trunk and she swats it away at first then accepts with a nod. She comes to its face, stares into its eye, whispers something. And they accept her.

She is in their midst now, hidden and reappearing as the others come circle them. After some minutes, she emerges.

“Etona, I think you will want see this,” she says. “All of you, come. But Jodan, maybe you in a moment. They are still skittish.”

She has charmed the lot of them, and they do the same to me. Patient eyes and close bonds with one another – and their sheer size – has me breathless in their midst.

“We may ride them,” Rey says to my astonishment. This is a gift! It is practically worth everything simply to arrive at this moment.

They travel back and forth through the plains largely unmolested by the predators here, Rey is saying, so long as they are vigilant. We had been scurrying from stone outcropping to mole hill to tree to rock pile in an attempt to foil the senses of the bulettes, and it was working but taking its toll on some of us. I could do this for many moons, and Rey and Verdre for more, as could Treig, probably, but Jodan was becoming increasingly cranky and more willing to fight the bulettes head-on with each passing hour. He is not a plains-runner.

Now we can move with the olifants, though, who are not bothered by the land sharks so long as they travel in their herd, and in this way we are their companions, and extraordinarily their riders, all the way to the keep.


It is as well we met them: I am constantly distracted by the floral bounty of the island. After perhaps the fourth time I dash off – never far, to gather the treasures I have been spotting ever since we arrived – Verdre approaches me on my return.

“You have found them: goldflower, lucia, maellen,” she says. “It is why you keep running off?”

“Only for a few minutes at a time,” I reply. “Anyway, yes! Aloa-dori, trapantas, waevran root. Verdre, there are herbs here I have only read about in stories.”

“Herbs that I have only associated with fables,” Verdre agrees. “But you must let me know when you go off and forage. This is a dangerous place.”

“I am not a child, Verdre.”

“And I do not want to dampen your adult enthusiasm, but you must speak up or I will worry. And Rey will worry.”

I realized that stamping my foot on the ground would not communicate the grave overtones of maturity that I sought to convey, so I simply nod.

“You are right, of course,” I say. In the background I see Rey – trying not to be noticed – listening carefully. She breathes a sigh of relief.


The keep is worked stone, built from a mountain of stone, guarded by flying stone creatures retrieving flying stones. The olifants size this up and halt. We will need to proceed on foot.

“They will be here when we return,” Rey promises.

The flying statues are animated gargoyles flapping around the fortress. A few tend to a task of fetching boulders arcing from time to time out of the open mouth of the keep, some of them rolling to within a few hundred yards of us. Each one of these projectiles is preceded with a booming noise from inside the keep, a word something like woethraan.

“We walk in, we talk to the owner of this place, probably Krathenos,” says Treig.

I look dubiously at a two hundred pound rock in its own crater not far from us. “Maybe we should creep in carefully, unseen, and assess the situation first,” I reply.

He nods up to the swarms of gargoyles and wide-open gate. “I don’t think unseen is really an option. Besides, if we march in, nothing to hide, then we start from a position of honesty. “

“We don’t know Krathenos or what this belt even is, really.”

“Yeah. Well, that’s why I wanna introduce us, all open and proper.”

“It’s only polite,” pipes up Jodan, but I think he’s making a joke.

“The spider welcomes the polite fly,” says Verdre but tossing her hair in a gesture of unconcern.

We march in through the front gate, through huge, well-lit corridors, to the throne room. A twelve foot man of stone is pacing. He stops when he sees us, sizes us up, smiles broadly.

“Adventurers,” he says with a laugh. Amusement and disdain, but a little curiosity, all contained in the single word. “Have you come to test your mettle against me?”

Treig steps up.

“You are Krathenos?”

He kneels down to look at Treig.

“Yes.” He caresses the word.

“My name is Treig. This is Jodan, Speaker Rey, Etona, and Verdre, uh, over there with the drawing pad. We are here for a golden belt in your possession. We seek to barter for it.”

“Interesting. And what do you offer?”

“What do you need?”

He laughs at this and stands up again. “My freedom. Do you have that in your pack?”

“I may. When we get the belt, and three other items, the beings on this island will be released back into the world. You will be freed.”

We explain the quest, and the quest-givers, and the four items we will be traveling all over the island to retrieve. And we tell him why we are here pursuing all this. He is a remarkably reasonable stone giant. Or perhaps they are all like this and their reputation is marred: I have never met one before Krathenos.

He agrees, but on one condition:

“Finish the other three quests first and you shall have my belt.”

“Agreed.”


It is a long trek back to our next destination, the aerie of the roc king. North back where we came from, past the pestilent forest, to the hills and mountains, to a particular peak.

Once again Treig has decreed we proceed in the open.

“But these are rocs, not flying statues,” I say. “We are food to them, and if they have a king then we are a threat as well.”

Indeed, they swoop past us as we come into their territory long before we have even started the vertical climb. But there is something….

“Do you see?” says Verdre.

“Yes. Necrotic,” I reply.

The great birds are wounded, singed by death magic.

“Rey, can you be our intermediary?” Treig asks.

“It will be difficult,” she says. “They do not come close, and none are here for more than second.”

But I have already started praying.

One roc swoops through a field of healing I have summoned. Then another. A third. They pause in their surprise, and Rey makes contact. She assures them we mean no harm and would only like to speak to their king. This goes on for some time until she eventually announces they will fly us up to the royal aerie.

There are few experiences in the world akin to flying. Some of the druids of our tribe aspire to flight above all else. Verdre is one of them. I look over to her after we are airborn: she is curiosity and inquiry and noting everything, but she is also joy personified. She will fly one day, and we will reel from her happiness.

We are gently dropped off into the cold, ruined nest where lies the dead shell of the king. The rocs bow their heads as we examine him, scorch-frozen to death by necrotic energy. No feathers are present: taken by the invaders, we assume.

We try to piece together what happened, try to assess this other group likely now our foe. The attackers killed this king right here, so either they flew through an army of these things or they materialized here. Then they got away, but there are no bodies to indicate casualties. It is possible, I suppose, that the rocs hurled one or more of their assailants into the valleys below but I don’t think so: anyone willing to take on a flock of giant predatory birds with the intention of killing their leader in his own home is well-prepared.

Since we cannot continue, Rey summons one of the four Watchers. He is aghast with what he sees.

“If you avenge the roc king,” he says, “I will give you my banner.” That is, it will serve as one of the four quests.

He further offers us some details. There are five of in this other party. They vanished from here using magic. They are a Hand of Vecna, probably heading to the shrouded Thorn Veil about two days ahead of us.

“Summon me when they are dead,” he says and then becomes fog in the wind and disappears.


The great birds take us to the Thorn Veil, swooping over it until Verdre spies their passage: a twenty-foot-wide withered path through the iron-hard, blade-like thorns.

Evidently, it took them some time to make it here and get through as far as they have into the Veil, because we catch up to them.

They are not aware of us as we creep up from behind.

Will we make new enemies today?

Will we be alive this time tomorrow?



I wish I knew….

We attack.

No, that’s not right. Treig attacks. Just Treig. It is a profoundly Jodan thing to do – I don’t know what he was thinking. I was told later that he dashed into the middle of the entire group, throwing cigars and firing his efficient little repeating crossbow, until everyone was dead.

Well, not everyone. Just one, really: a kenku on a ledge was also firing his crossbow but missed where Treig did not.

Let me back up a bit.

Rey and Verdre had scouted ahead and came upon the scene of a whirling, dark cloud moving towards the group in front of us who, with magic, managed to blow the cloud away and reveal a flying bird-horse-rhy’nos’ferous (?) underneath which Rey immediately took a liking to. There was a djinn flying something on fire, a shield put up by the mage, two underling tieflings positioning a sort of trap underneath it which began pulling the bird-horse-rhy’nos’ferous in. Rey, seeing the lone creature beset and not winning, jumped onto its back to help it. Of course. I wonder if perhaps she feels a sort of kinship with hybrid monsters because … but she is no monster, save to those who oppose her. Verdre also leaped, but onto the flying beast of the djinn, and sought to squeeze some sense into him in the form of a boa constrictor. He and she both tumbled off as Rey and her new best beast friend performed an aerial charge that dissipated his steed. And Treig was being turned to stone.

All of the above is what I pieced together through talking to Rey and Verdre later. I first saw Verdre in connection to the fight gliding back to earth as a flying squirrel.

You see, I had not been paying attention to any of this. I was, the entire time, some distance away down the burned passage through the thorns trying to see if I could pick my way through the living mass to follow a sprite who had appeared and darted away. I could not, and anyway Verdre landed and let me know there was a battle, something Jodan had already picked up on and had trotted in to lash our opponents.

I sized up the situation, fired some rounds into the fray from a good vantage point, and decided we had had enough. We could probably down the mage’s followers but not the silver-masked one himself who could not seem to be hurt permanently: even the gaping wounds caused by Angivre’s fury were almost instantly healed. More of us were going to be transmuted into stone like Treig (a striking figure in granite but like all statues, not useful) or captured or killed. Though, not killed, not here. More accurately: before our material forms ended to become other, fae forms, a fate that had happened to one of their party, the unhappy, darting sprite who was then slain again by a restored Treig as he observed it listening in on us while we were talking about the non-aggression pact. Its body was absorbed by the plants and then a raccoon-man stepped out of a huge, swelling bulb a moment later.


“Why are we fighting one another?” I call out. “If you are here to seek the library, then our goals might not be in conflict. We will step back if you will.”

The silver-masked one offered one of the roc king’s feathers. We accepted. We had an accord.

Their mouth was the fire djinn, a surprisingly cheerful being named Malhazar the Exiled Flame, who knew many details about each one of us.

“You have a reputation,” he exclaims. “And it tells us that you are far more suited to facing what is here than we. In fact, if you handle the, ah, situation correctly, I don’t doubt you will complete two of the quests at the same time! Ha ha!”

“With the feather,” I venture, “that you took through unnecessary violence, that leaves only the belt. There is also no need to attack him: we have a pact with him already.”

“Ah, the stone giant. Yes,” he says, laughing. “It is how we found out about the dying here. Kufastios was a mighty minotaur, but that stone giant was too much for him even as we backed his, ah, bull-rush attack. Very impressive, but so was the strength of our opponent! And now our dauntless armored warrior is but a tiny, toothless sprite. This change has not been good for him, I will tell you. No, no. But if you have a pact with the giant already, yes, then you should be the ones to claim his belt. Yes, we work together!”

“No, we work and you try not to gratuitously set upon anything. Honestly, is killing all you know? And if so,” I remember a phrase Treig likes to use, “how is that working out for you?” The tieflings and silver-masked Vecna mage were probably lost causes, but the djinn I felt could be reasoned with, a task for later.

I leave them and our party huddles in a circle some ways away. No one is happy with the direction I am leading us.

“They killed the roc lord,” says Rey, “and using necrotic energy.”

“What of it?” says Verdre.

“What she means, I think, is that rocs are not good creatures, Rey. They aren’t gentle beings of light. And yes, I understand those people are not our friends, but we weren’t getting anywhere battling them.”

“I am not happy, Etona.”

Maybe she sees herself in the great birds, or perhaps she developed a bond with them in communicating with them. I don’t understand, and neither does Verdre: they are carnivorous foes only allied with us because there is mutual advantage.

“I thought these agents of Vecna were –,” adds Treig. He also wants to continue the fight, I sense, because he fires off his crossbow mid-sentence and plants a bolt through the minotaur-turned-sprite’s head. “…long-time foes of yours?”

We watch as the dead sprite is pulled into the thorns and spat out again from an enormous bulb as the raccoon man. He scurries away with a glare at Treig.

“Yes, they are. But … all right. We should remember what we are here for. If we are all turned into cute Fey creatures or stone, how will that further our own goals? They seem content to let us both use the library, and I doubt their purpose is more nefarious than the drowning of all the world’s life in undead worms which is what we came here to solve.”

This earns grudging acceptance.

“I will still kill them,” says Rey with an approving nod from Treig.

“Fine,” I say.

We return to the group.

“We know your name, Malhazar, and the name of this being here. Who is your master?” I nod, indicating the silver masked-mage.

“Ah,” says the djinn. “He is The Faceless One. Yes, that name again. As his has been surrounding your travels, so yours have been orbiting ours.”

“He was in the mines in Diamond Lake?”

“I believe his name was.”

What an odd answer. “Where is the next part of this task?” I ask.

“There is a cave not far from here through these odious plants.” He points to the green-grey wall in front of us, the direction they would have kept going had we not intervened.

“What is there?”

“Madness. But it is a madness you will probably handle,” he says and laughs. “Better than we, at any rate. So we are allies now?”

I take him aside and lower my voice.

“We are in cease fire. When this is all done, I must meditate on the crimes wrought here in your needlessly destructive path, and I must know what your Faceless One master means to My Mistress. But you, fire djinn, I should like to talk to again, if you are amenable, one day. Away from these others, I sense you are not entirely without light.”

He grins and bows, and their group gathers up their dead, their equipment and their capture-box, and forms their own circle some distance away.

Verdre, from her perch above, calls down to us. “I believe I can pick out a trail through this, but only Rey is likely to be able to follow. No, Etona: your chain mail will get hopelessly caught on thorns, and even if you strip and follow, Treig will not manage it, nor will Jodan.”

“I will call one of my friends,” says Rey, emphasizing the last word for my benefit.

We exchange looks. “Very well. Let me heighten your voice so that it carries.”

We move to the entrance of the Thorn Vale. I place my palm against her throat. She shrieks a terrible cry that causes me to step back. “Goodness! Er, sorry, Rey. I was unprepared.” I once more place my hand to her and she repeats the roc’s call again and again. Eventually, one flutters down to us and we clamber onto its back, Jodan submitting again to being carried in the great beast’s claws.

***

It drops us not far from where we fought, a limestone entrance steaming like a fumarole, a word Rey taught me when we visited her own mistress, Seraph.

Verde sniffs and recoils, then moves closer and peers inside.

“Two gasses make the poison,” says Rey from behind her.

"One from each vent,” Verdre says to Rey’s nod. “A wind tunnel then. Easily arranged,” says Verdre.

"Yes. But may I do it?” Rey replies.

Verdre crooks a faint smile and takes a step back, teacher studying her pupil. Rey’s long, strong arms sweep; her eyes are slits in a face contorted with concentration. She forms a corridor of wind, neatly outlined by the white malefic vapors, across both crevasses. We may now pass.

Jumping across them through Rey’s breezeway – Jodan moving past on his Hell-steel tentacles – leads us to a cavern.

And what a cavern! Its every surface is overgrown with beautiful, iridescent plants.

But my eyes are riveted down at the bottom of barely-visible steps to an altar. Behind it is a life-sized carving – black stone that does not match the rest of the rock here – of a Nightmare, an actual Hell-steed. I saw my first one almost a season ago in the arena: it carried off the death-knight form of the arena’s master of ceremonies.

On the altar lies a sleeping or dead Drow woman.

***

A Drow. My cruel but misunderstood cousins. The lost ones. Elves forced to live under the earth will go mad, and collectively they have, following their queen, Llolth – once-beautiful, once mischievous Llolth, cousin to Sehanine – also insane with the grief of separation and being buried alive. I never thought them irredeemable – as most of my kin do – but this notion was cemented when I met Lilliam.

She was a terribly shy, easily-frightened, young, lonely castaway from her own people: a Drow forced to live on the surface. She was adept at being invisible and a master of disguise besides: I had thought her a small, gray-skinned elf, the like of which I had never seen before until I realized, through patience and all-but-forcing my friendship on her, that she was Drow.

Verdre traveled with her for a time when they each separately accompanied a group of adventurers to an old, haunted, human-built keep some five days’ swift travel south of The Mirror. It had turned out that it was somehow built on an opening to the Shadowlands, and the men who had manned it had gone insane. The creatures from there moved in to join the ghosts.

Once Verdre’s group understood the nature of the problem, and allied themselves with the powerful spectre of the former paladin who roamed there, they were able to bring in a trio of cleansers: myself, a Dwarven priest of Pelor and a being from the Bright summoned by my tribe’s leader, Tamyl, a creature simply called “Te”. We permanently sealed the opening. This, however, destroyed the keep and nearly killed all of us.

I digress. My point is that my aunt and I do not share most people’s hatred of Drow. I suspect Treig doesn’t either: he is too pragmatic. Jodan? I don’t know. And Rey probably has no opinion, isolated as she has been all her life from cultural prejudice.

***

“I must go down there,” I say and turn to Rey and Verdre. “Please sweep the area for traps for me: I don’t want to get my hair mussed by something launching my head from my body.”

Rey has worn an air of conspicuous distraction since we entered. She keeps sniffing the air. After a moment she begins to examine the floor. Very carefully.

Verdre has, meanwhile, transformed into a small snake and is slowly slithering across the path I must take, back and forth, back and forth. Treig, too, is examining the walls and the floor, rapping things with a carved stick. He notices my look.

“It’s technical,” he says.

“Poison!” exclaims Rey from her hands and knees a third of the way down the stairs. “A hallucinaremic. No, a halluci– … we will start seeing things and dream awake, if I’m right about the plants here and their oils dripping into these cracks.”

All eyes goes to Verdre whose naked serpent skin is caressing those same cracks. She shimmers back to elf form and runs back to us.

“What will happen?” she asks Rey.

“Colors will grow, become like the Bright? And you might see movement where there isn’t any. And wrong shapes.” Verdre nods, unsettled. “You might not recognize anyone,” Rey goes on. “Your vision might narrow like a,” she seemed to remember something, “as like looking through a glass fish-eye lens. It’s in the ground but in the air, too. It’s only a matter of breaths.”

“This I will not permit,” says Verdre. One arm begins the waving that Rey’s had though more confidently and with smaller, easier motions. She calls a wind tunnel and extends it to the end of the cave where the air was fresh. Her other arm sets to summoning another, down the ramp to the Drow.

“Do you see? Smaller motions,” she murmurs to Rey who is watching carefully.

I smile. “Thank you, Verdre.” To the rest: “I will approach her, alone.”

“Of course,” replies Rey. “Except that I will be with you.”

Since grimacing and eye-rolling are not sufficient to dissuade her – they never are – I agree. “All right, but stay a few steps back.”

“Why would you go alone, anyway?” says Trieg. “What can you do that no one else can?”

“Apologize.”

***

“Verdre? What do these runes say?” I call up to her.

Maintaining her concentration, she comes down and looks at them. “Here lies the livery of She Who Crossed the Moon.” Her eyes widen at mine which must be moon-pies.

“Citania,” we exclaim together.

“This cannot be her,” Rey says, frowning. “She was not Drow.”

“Not originally,” says Verdre.

“Cross our Mistress of Imaginative Revenge and you may end up as anything,” I add.

Jodan had trailed after Verdre, come to stare at the Nightmare on the wall. “Who is Citania?” he asks.

I am just staring at the woman, so Verdre tells the tale.

“A fair elf, once, and priestess of Sehanine. A leader of her tribe. She carried two thousand from the failed lands to the West after the fall of the human empire of Suul. She was selected by the Goddess to bear a priestess – unusual back then, unheard of now – but so strong her feelings for life and position and her dryad lover, Meleeta, that she refused to die, somehow, when her daughter came.

“Sehanine allowed the daughter a full and normal life. But for the mother, who chose life over the Goddess’s will, she was banished from the Bright and from the surface world of the Fade. She became Drow.

“These were the days when all the gods were more wild, and My Mistress more a harsh winter than brisk autumn. For it did not end there. When the child grew older and came into her powers, she sought out her mother, very dogged according to the stories. But she could never find her. It was because her daughter was invisible to her whenever the sun or moon were out. There was only one time they could meet one another: dobrun, new moon. Even then, when Citania was near her child, she was reduced to the shape – and mind, say some of the tellings – of a small animal. Nether could ever recognize the other.

I heard the last part only distantly. My eyes closed, my hands on Citania’s, I sought My Merciful Goddess.

“I must go back up to the top to keep this tunnel open,” Verdre says to Rey somewhere. “Watch her.”

It is dark. Black. But there is a pinprick of white light from Her face beaming down to me. She will be with me, my Goddess of the Hunt who willed this centuries-long curse into existence.

Shadows now.

A girl’s face, a woman’s face but not elf

Sehanine! I am here.
Use me.
Let me right this wrong!

Crying, sadness

sounds, screams in the dark

cruel laughter

cries that are

yips
small

fur


fox


TRAPPED.

RUN.




RUN!!!

Etona is on all fours before me, growling and whining, fear from the back of her throat. I don’t know what has happened to her. Another trial from She Who Eternally Tests, I suppose. She has given herself over again, and I can only shake my head in wonder.

She is of the tribe, the Children of the Mirror, no doubt. She is one of us as completely as I or her father or Tamyl are. But she is so unlike us as well, almost human in her steadfast belief that she may change the world for the better. I do not know what to make of it, and neither did anyone else when she was growing up. She had few friends, but those she made would die for her as any would do once they fall under her spell. As I would. As I will without even considering. It is the Goddess in her.

But unlike other priestesses we have known, Sehanine makes use of Etona to show a merciful side, Her empathy and love. Why these qualities now, during a time when the world must fight, must struggle?

My niece will not allow me to approach: I don’t think she recognizes me. But her friend, Rey – the one who can speak to the beasts so effortlessly, better even than I – she has calmed her down. Etona is fortunate to have found someone such as Rey. I see in them two souls who would risk much for one another and I am glad. She is strong, my niece, our priestess, but at her core is that curious vulnerability that both draws people to her yet imperils her at every turn.

We must leave this cavern. I do not know what Etona has done, but the Nightmare is stirring from its place on the wall. Citania, if this is truly she, remains unconscious. And mastering such a tunnel of wind for so long has taken much out of me: it will fail soon.

Treig slings the Drow over his shoulder and makes for the crevasses. Good.

“Jodan!” I call to the cursed human king whose interest in the Hell steed runs too deep. “We must go. Rey, can you take Etona? Will she allow it?”

A nod from her and she gathers up my niece still making sounds of the fox. We are all moving to the cave entrance now. We approach the cracks in the ground and make it safely across them … all but one. I allowed my attention to wander to the Hell steed who is fully here with us now, galloping through the Fade towards us. Hastily I flatten the wind tunnel and tuck it below me to form a wall. This slows me enough to scrabble up the other side of the crevasse. The steed comes. I reach for Glitter….

No. I have another thought: the same wind wall can serve another purpose. I spread it in front of the Nightmare pouring all I have left into it, and the infernal creature cannot pass.

Outside, Rey’s roc is remarkably still there. What is this power? I have seen it in some at the Mirror, such as from Mae’i’lani, but it is not common to sway an animal without threatening it. Perhaps I may take lessons from her, if she will teach me, as she does from me.

Though it may be her nature, an unteachable thing. She is unlike anyone I – or Etona – have ever met.

We mount the great bird once more and it flies us away. I can see the black horse gallop out of the cave below us now that the wind is released. It ascends towards us slowly but comes on. It will follow us relentlessly to the place we must go, the dripping forest of ichor where we will end this sad tale one way or the other; the place, I hope, that will return Etona to us.


The roc isn’t gong to be able to land: the diseased trees’ canopy is too thick. So we start jumping off, each with a way down in more or less safety. Rey and Treig each have a necklace of the floating feather, and Rey carries Etona down with her. I hear, crashing down through like dropped Displacer Cat, the cursed human king, cursing.

With effort, I assume my last form before I must rest: the flying squirrel I tried for the first time earlier today. My body lightens, I release all thoughts save for what I concentrate on. Not all of us keep our selves sheltered during the hrekshasa, the taking-of-form. My own brother frequently lost himself. He became dangerous to our tribe, even hunted down once. Fortunately, I was on that hunt when we caught him. Things were calm for some seasons after, and then he went away. He is still missing. I suspect Etona knows something, and Tamyl, certainly, as well as Dredaella, another of us reluctant to remain in elven form.


As soon as I touch down, I am amazed: She is here, Sehanine. Not in body, but there Her full face shines from overhead. My muscles tingle, my veins run ice-cold with Her power.

Also, the glade has broken the spell, and my niece returns to her body. I take a moment to thank My Mistress sincerely for this.

I want to hug my niece – she is the only one who affects me in this way – but her attention is elsewhere, her mind still not completely her own. She is the cup that Sehanine’s presence is filling. I see it in her eyes – which have turned silver – that she knows what to do. My job, now, as always, is to provide her space for her spirit to roam. To fix this little part of the world in the name of mercy.

Journal of Etona 29

I wake, drifting down, in Rey’s arms. I smile at her.

“Hello,” I say.

“Thank the, your, goddess!” she replies. “You’re back.”

“Where did I go?”

“That is good question. I was going to fence a yard and carve a bowl for what of you remained behind.”

We touch down and she falls silent.

We are under the canopy of the nightmare forest. Black, slimy, quivering things: these are no one’s definition of tree. They crowd us in, covered in sticky, ebon sap, if that is what it is. It feels as if they are bending over to examine us, inching towards us step-by-step somehow, not exactly with menace but a sort of desperate hunger. They are frozen banshees wailing in silence.

I don’t have any recollection of getting here, but it cannot be important now: I see what these monstrous creatures of bark are doing to my companions. One by one they are succumbing to centuries of despair heaped on them in seconds.

Incongruously, Her full face shines on the scene. She stands at mirren, quenae sehan, full moon at midnight, and I sense She is here in some manner.

She wants this suffering to end.

My Lady of The Root You Trip Over Because She Shadowed It Just So is wrathful, petulant, and scheming. But She is also ever a goddess of love, and She never intends punishment to be forever. In the end She craves, as I do, a good story with a happy ending. Even in the face of – or perhaps because of – rebellion against Her edicts. Yes, She is cold white radiance, but She is our guiding light as well.

I know what to do.

***

There is a single tree here that stands out from all the other sad ones. It is larger than the others by far, and it creaks with misery. This is the dryad, Meleeta. Her hopelessness is infecting everyone except the naen’amo Emersanine, Verdre and me, the Children of the Mirror. I see it in their motions, hear it in their voices.

Meleeta stands in brackish water that, Jodan discovers when he splashes into it for some reason, is infested with schools of tiny, sharp-toothed fish. He runs out out of the deadly water but then turns around again, enchantment plain in his eyes. Verdre catches this despondence and summons something barely visible, an air being of some kind, perhaps an elemental? Can she do this now? It is astonishing to me to watch my aunt grow into an arch-druid.

The elemental keeps Jodan down so that he does not wade through the carnivorous brine to a sentient tree of pain.

I look for Treig and Rey. My dragon protector has walked right up to the dryad’s trunk and splayed herself on it! The tree has opened a maw and is just … swallowing her up. This must be what Jodan reacted to. I race to her but I cannot pull her free. Verdre doesn’t see this: she is on the far side with Treig and Citiana who is waking up and looking around.

We must end all this.

I press my own hands to the bark.

“I am here to free you, Meleena. I am here to end this curse.”

Immediately branches groan and limbs shift. A woody face emerges among the boughs.

“Are you a daughter of the moon?” it says.

“I am. And I have brought Citiana.”

“Bring her to me.”

“Treig, over here. Treig? Treig!”

He had fought off the spell of this place longer than the others but was rapidly succumbing now. My cries spur him to action: he guides the priestess across the water to stand next to me. Then he just stops. The calm, faintly amused soul that is our Gray Fox leaves his eyes which become as dull glass.

How am I to do this? I feel charged with potential but have not skill nor wit to start much less complete this unknown ritual. Everyone is waiting. And She is watching.

She has led me here to end their suffering. I can only say the words I hope are true.

“Meleena and Citiana,” I call out. “In Sehanine’s name I free you both from your punishment.”

It catches me in the small of the back, a feeling like lightning and ice. It is fast, numbing my body in an instant save for my fingertips which feel like fire. I see everything truly now, and I know my eyes have gone silver again. I see the dryad and the elf as they were, young and longing for one another; I see the glade as a beautiful, peaceful place, night birds chirping under clear skies and Her full face. I see what should be.

The tree twists and the lovely dryad emerges standing in front of her lover who now stands tall before her. They are grasping one another’s hands. Citiana looks at me, and I think I know what she is asking.

“Yes,” I answer. “She lived a long life, your daughter, untouched by your past deed.”

She returns her gaze to Meleena, and they begin to age, centuries in seconds. But they are not alarmed; they are at peace, resigned. They eventually fall together, content, and lean until they are but dust in the cool night breeze.

A movement against the moon: the Nightmare is coming, but then it is not. It dissolves and rains, too, as dust on the scene.

Her Lunar Majesty’s face flares: I feel more than see it in the sky. And now another is here, a silver woman, translucent, walking among us. I am not on my knees, weeping or blind or any other of the states I would be were I standing before the Goddess, so it is not She. Verdre mouths, “The daughter,” and yes, I see the resemblance.

The woman moves to where her mother dissolved. We are the ghosts in this scene, ancient statues in a park, none of us moving, none of us even daring to breathe.

She scoops up a handful of her ash and smears it across her eyes and cheeks, then she blows the remainder across the glade. It lands on all of us, and where it touches the others I see the glowing traces of where she smoothed the soot across her own face. I imagine I bear the same mark.

As the ash scatters, her very body unravels to join it, and she is gone.

The ooze draws back into what remains of the tree trunk and hardens there.

Dawn.

I do not know what else awaits me in the world, but if I have lived for this moment – to bring Sehanine’s forgiveness to these two storied lovers – then it is enough.

Rey and Jodan and Treig have all risen to their feet, their old selves back. I begin a song, an old human ballad that I was taught by some Roma I used to know.

Time from me passes on, and I'm growing old,
A lifetime nearly gone. I cannot unfold
Nights dark and cold.
But warm is your hand in mine,
Feeble with ageless time,
The light of love still shine,
After All These Years…

We make for our final charge: an uneventful trip to the stone giant’s castle. He gives us his belt, free at last to be loosed on an unsuspecting world. He is no worse than a local tornado, I suppose.

It is done. We have succeeded in our quests. The library is open to us.

But it is not the place we imagined. We are not led into a building or a chamber, Tiligast at our shoulders tut-tutting us to silence. Instead, to bring the missing knowledge back into the world, we are summoned into history.

He motions us to step into a silvery circle that has faint scenes of somewhere else, somewhere not here, swirling like – what did that desert druid friend of Verdre’s call them? – dust devils within the circle, each a barely-glimpsed face or place.

We step in, the silver outline on the ground swirls up around and over us. I see – or taste? or hear? or susse? – metallic-brown-voice-chant-colors.

Traveling to another era past is akin to being frozen. Is there insight in seeing one’s life pass before you while your heart slows and your blood cools? When their sap runs cold, do arctic trees re-live all the time before that moment? Does reverse time move forward to us? How can I make memories if I am passing backwards through events? Am I in a bubble? Am I in the universe?

Thankfully, I do not have to ponder these questions for the rest of eternity: eventually I feel solid ground under my feet and can trust my other senses again. I susse we are once more firmly in one place. I am freezing, even slightly blue as are the others, save for Verdre who does not seem discomfited at all. Shivers of ice encrust our equipment. Angivre’s slim body sparkles, and Verdre’s Glitter is faintly smoking.

We have been laid in front of a singular sight.

In the background, a quin’e distant, a mile, two sides are clashing in a mighty war: a human-populated stone city built into a cliff face is attempting to stand against swarms of gray climbing creatures – ghasts or ghouls of some kind – scrabbling straight up the rock walls from a thousand feet below, and dragons – many, many chromatic dragons – diving and swooping and generally bringing the mayhem as would attend a veritable swarm of them.

Verdre turns to me. “Do you feel it?”

“Feel what?”

“A storm. But more than that.” Her body, the look in her eyes: she is yssar’e, a druidic word meaning all senses alert, assessing something in her surroundings. She looks, bigger, somehow, or more solid.

“Yes,” Jodan says. “There is power here.”

I also note a change in Rey’s stance. She is uncomfortable, physically irritated as if her back hurt. I ignore it now. I will not, later. Treig seems merely interested, his default facade.

In the foreground, we are staring at robed men and women staring at us. I wave. One of them waves back, instinctively, and then looks at his own hand, mystified.

The leader among this group of druids, Tylanthros, is coming forward.

“The heroes we have summoned to save us are here!” he proclaims. “Welcome, legends.”

I look around. He seems to referring to us, which is flattering to be sure, but….

I no longer focus on him as Jodan has caught my eye. He is changed. That is, he is now normal: no sword, no stone sheath on arm, no chains and no … Hell, for want of a better word. He looks to me, smells to me, not unlike Treig. Utterly human.

I glance again at Treig whose own eyes are now resting on a palanquin carrying a great, gold lantern. Jodan also stares at it.

“We may now move the phylactery,” says Tylanthros, “Our chance to save the world, dearly purchased, is here.”

“Indeed.” Here it is, the trouble in the world, the quests, everything we have been needing. It is right in front of us. “So what do you want us to do?” Treig continues.

“Defend us until we can set this into the vault.”

“This is the reliquary of Dragotha,” Rey asks.

“Yes.”

“Then we should destroy it!” Her spear is out. The phylactery probably has only moments in one piece.

“No.”

“Why not?” Rey and I ask together. I continue. “Would it not deprive Dragotha of escape should we be able to destroy its material form? Would it not kill that abomination once and for all?”

“Yes. But do so and he will fight knowing there is nothing to lose. Damned already, he would be unstoppable in his fury and could annihilate all. Keep the phylactery secured away, however, and he tempers his fury; he calculates. His aim turns from destruction to recovery, and the world is spared.”

“But what if we could destroy him?” Rey pursues.

“It is too great a risk.”

“Very well,” I say, though this topic will be revisited, Rey’s eyes add. “Where do you need us to be?”

He points to the cliff city. “We must move through there.”

I nod at Rey. “We shall clear the way. The others … oh.” I look around. While we have been conversing, Treig, Jodan and Verdre have each moved off, the two up onto an overhanging hill above us and Verdre peering over the edge down into the valley. “They will, I think, escort you up the road when they finish scouting.” My aunt is actually on her knees now, looking down, slowly waving out Glitter in a wide circle above her head. She stands and continues the spell she has started, turning to me in the midst of it, nodding and waving us on. I cannot help but notice she is grinning wickedly.

Jodan and Treig are likewise occupied with opening furrows in the ground and dropping some of Treig’s little explosive toys within. Verdre interrupts her spell, and with a wave of her hand cracks open a fissure across the road to help them before returning to her incantation. I have seen these movements before: she is summoning the cold.

When we are a few hundred paces up the road, I hear wind and rain and sleet behind us. There is a sharp crack, as of a frozen lake thawing under sun. The curve in the road allows us now to see that the entire cliff face is misty with cold and caked in ice. A hundred of the scrabbling ghasts seeking to make their way to the top, finding no purchase and being pummeled with fist-sized hail and swirling gusts, are torn off the wall to splat messily below.

Further back, Jodan is ushering the group of druids and their golden charge up the path to us. Behind him, on the wide, circular outcropping where we had arrived in this era, Treig has sunk a final object into the ground and now runs toward us.

Behind him: POP POP POP POP POP POP.

One by one, little smoke puffs appear in a curving line around the outcropping, and then all of it – a small mountain of stone – crashes down to the valley floor below, burying the rest of the climbers that escaped Verdre’s hazard.


The town, we see, is well-fortified to repel an attack of the sort being visited on it, though not one of this magnitude. There are simply too many dragons! And the main force of the attacking army is still on its way: these are but scouts.

I take up supporting positions in different towers firing on the swooping beasts, and with Jodan and Rey also in the air somehow, we manage to drive them from the druids scurrying as best they can with their charge towards the stone spire.

Jodan has forged some kind of bond with air elementals: he summons them now, flies, and can attack with force even pushing off from nothing more than atmosphere. Rey, too, has acquired flight, though more fledgling than Jodan: she is still unsteady but fierce as she lunges about, cries of rage and frustration with every crumpled landing. And I have never seen Verdre summon such a fierce storm of this size nor coat so much area with ice, effortlessly interrupting that effort with opening a crack in the ground. What is happening? Has being in this time brought with it abilities?

We make it to the stone bridge leading to the spire. From my position in the final protective tower, I watch Jodan and Rey land in front of me, Treig and Verdre catching up on foot. We greet what the enemy sends next: a massive worm like that from the temple, and a bone dragon right below my position. They are not diplomats sent here to parley.

Jodan and Treig engage the worm. It is astonishing how such small creatures as those two humans can so swiftly kill so massive a monster, but this is what they do. In about two minutes, the thing has writhed its last.

For our part, we three elves – well, two elves and whatever Rey can now be called – dispatch the demon, hurling it down to its death below. We have won the entrance to the spire.

I am about to climb down from my perch to sprint across the bridge when the world turns silver and cold and quiet.

She is here.

She is floating in the air in front of me. All of senses, and my heart, assure me it is Sehanine.

“You are here,” She says with faint amusement. “I am delighted, child. You have lent your efforts, as is usual for you, for none who will thank you or even know.”

“What may I do for my Lady?”

“I am here to give you a choice in how you aid these people. Stumble on as you have always done, struggling and anonymous. Or wait until my full face is upon this wretched swarm and reveal your full flower.”

“Mistress, if I wait, more will die. This is true, isn’t it?” I ask.

“Stand fast and help your friends and the city, and some will be saved, perhaps, that would perish otherwise. Or wait for the moon and become legend.”

“My Lady, I am here now. I will help now. I will not endanger people to fuel my vanity unless, of course, you order me.”

She smiles – I cannot read if it is approval or the opposite – and fades away. All the noise and mayhem of the present circumstance drops once more on my senses like an ocean wave.


I join Verdre and Rey. The latter is grinning having just raised a spear and cried victory to the heavens. Verdre merely looks satisfied. But then she sees my expression, or perhaps something else.

“Our Mistress?” she ventures. I must have some of the glow still about me.

“She is here, and if we survive into night, promises mighty action through us.”

“I have already felt this. Haven’t you?”

I reflect on that. “Have I? Nothing like the powers you seem to be wielding.”

“Yes, something is happening to me, certainly. I do not know if it is Our Lady of Uncertain Gifts.”

A groan of pain escapes Rey. She arches her back, her hands moving to her shoulder blades.

“Rey!” I step to her but she wards me off. Something is hurting her, and in a moment it is clear what that is.

Two great dragon wings of four, five, no, seven colors erupt from her back! Red, blue and green – known ill-tempered chromatic dragon colors – but there are yellow, orange, purple and indigo as well, dragon hues I had not heard of, though I am no scholar.

I peer into her eyes.

“Rey?”

“Yes.”

“Is it still you?”

She looks annoyed. “Yes! But….” I wait for her. “Yes. It is me. But you are right to ask: I have been hearing her in my head.”

“Seraph?”

“Tiamat.”

“Queen of the Chromatics?” Verdre clarifies, and Rey nods. “What does she say?”

She hesitates. Verdre asked as a master to a student, and Rey, I see, is weighing this budding relationship.

“Please,” I add.

“She wishes me to slay as many undead dragons here as possible, and to use any means to hurt or even kill Dragotha.”

Verdre grunts an approval. I take Rey’s hand.

“If she is in your thoughts, she can influence them. I have had some experience with that myself. Rey, will you tell us, only us if you are uncomfortable with the others, if you think she is pushing you to action or moods you do not feel are your own? I may be able to … I don’t know what, actually. But please tell me anyway?”

“All right, Etona.”

I hug her until she says, “Etona?”

“Yes?”

“We need to save the world.”

“Oh. That. Yeah.


The mighty stone door to what will be the resting chamber of the phylactery is ornate. Five unhappy-looking dragon heads are inscribed along its top arch.

“To pass through, you must be attuned,” says Tylanthros.

This turns out to be a process wherein each of us places a hand on a glyph in the door while the druid caretakers chant. Their faces are calm though even this short journey – through the town to this door – has cost them. I think back to my own shivering, dizzy days when I had to concentrate from dusk to dawn, but the fate of the world wasn’t in my hands, and I wasn’t relying on people I had never met.

We all enter the chamber.

Once inside, Treig wonders aloud whether we should open the phylactery. Tylanthros is troubled by this but is willing to discuss it. I know I should be on the side of these wise guardians of the world, but I am also very curious about the lantern’s contents and take up Treig’s side as to whether we should take Dragotha’s essence with us back to our time.

While we converse, Treig has Rey unfurl her new, magnificent wings. He attempts to use them to shine light in different ways off of them, her colors exactly matching those of, what did Rey call it? the reliquary, or lantern. But there doesn’t seem to be a way to shine all the lights we need in all the places simultaneously, at least not here right now.

After failing to open it, and more discussion, we are all persuaded that our purpose here is not to meddle with this relic but rather to bring the knowledge of it and its location – inside this spire – back to our time.

The druids place the phylactery inside the final chamber. Straining to complete this last work of heavy concentration after all they have been through already, the ritual of sealing begins around a ring of water in the middle of which sits the phylactery and around the outside all of the druids.

They pass around the Seal of Chaos, each pausing and raising a voice higher while handling it, until it ends in the druid leader’s grasp. He completes some arcane step and a fine white web descends on Dragotha’s soul’s receptacle.

They continue chanting.

One druid, exhausted from the ordeal, keels over, unconscious. Verdre takes his place and starts muttering something, I cannot quite hear.

Another druid passes out, and Treig has caught something out of an eye corner. His eye. Out of the corner of his eye – yes, that is the expression. He nods to Jodan and me at the water but I do not detect anything, I examine the second fallen druid. A tiny, almost invisible pair of puncture wounds bleed tiny filaments of blood at his ankle. Something is biting them, an airy presence moving around the circle.

A wet, blurbing sound raises my eyes: Jodan has created a sphere of water – another new trick from our no-longer-cursed noble – and captures the ‘wee beastie’, as Egan would say. He drops it onto dry stone and it vanishes in a way that seems to suggest it was banished or dispelled.

I believe I can counteract the toxin: it appears to be a common tranquilizer. I throw together a couple of ingredients and whip up a poultice. It works surprisingly quickly, and the druid wakes up immediately. It is possible that one of these ritualists is working against the rest of us, so I ask him in a low voice if he could point out any he doesn’t know or believes to be acting oddly or has acted oddly before. Hesitantly, he points to a robed woman, and I unveil her.

“Oh, dis ritual, is a thing you want, too, is it? Ah ha ha ha ha!”

Baba Yaga.