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Sagiro's Story Hour Returns (new thread started on 5/18/08)
- Thread starter Sagiro
- Start date
MavrickWeirdo
First Post
KidCthulhu said:
Do you suppose that she wears red armor?
Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
It won't be too long now -- maybe another 2-4 days, give or take n days for unexpected family/work issues. No promises of course, except for this: it will be an extra-long post, probably 2-3 times longer than most, and with some juicy long-term-plot-related revelations.Redwald said:
No, nothing about Darkeye. Sorry!
-Sagiro
LightPhoenix
First Post
One big piece of evidence that could support Moirel = someone in party is that the stones recognized Ernie in the group's past, but just met him at whatever time now is. My pet theory is that it's Yoba, based on the belt.
I'm not convinced Darkeye and Moirel are the same person. My current theory is that Darkeye is whomever has the Crosser's Maze right now, since IIRC Aravis has starfields for eyes.
I'm not convinced Darkeye and Moirel are the same person. My current theory is that Darkeye is whomever has the Crosser's Maze right now, since IIRC Aravis has starfields for eyes.
Lord Pendragon
First Post
Given the rainbow coalition of Eyes of Moirel, I'd always thought that perhaps Darkeye was the host to a black Eye of Moirel, or perhaps an anti-Eye, if that makes sense.
Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 262
Full Circle
Aravis doesn’t waste any sympathy on the fallen Sharshun. His first comment upon Inivane’s death is:
“Oh, I so want those books. Condor’s books.”
To his credit, he doesn’t drool.
“Kibi,” says Dranko, patting the dwarf on the back. “You just saved... everyone. You stopped people from being thrown in ovens. You stopped them from being enslaved. You stopped every bad thing from happening that was going to happen.”
Kibi smiles with satisfaction. He’s traditionally had poor luck with mind-affecting spells; his charm monster spells in particular seem never to overcome his victims’ resistances. But this time, a single-target mass suggestion had done the trick marvelously well.
Ernie wipes his sword on a rag, the grass being too sparse here for cleaning the blade. “Given what Inivane told us, maybe we should find the Spire and warn them that they really need to stay strong, and stay the course.”
“I’m not sure I understand everything,” says Flicker, “but at this point aren’t we risking screwing everything up just by being here?”
“Maybe we should just kill ourselves,” says Dranko. Flicker can’t tell if he’s kidding or not.
“Dranko, no!” exclaims Ernie. “We just need to figure out how to get home.”
“Maybe by killing him, we actually did screw up the past,” muses Kibi. That earns him some worried glances, but it’s hard to imagine that letting Inivane warn the Emperor Naloric would have been the right thing to do.
“Here’s the problem,” says Dranko. “We have something big – maybe a town – on fire. I saw it while I was up on the Mirror. We should go investigate. Buuuuuuut, by definition, if we do anything, that might be messing up history.”
The Company mulls that one over for a minute. Dare they act? Dare they NOT act? Morningstar momentarily gives them something else to think about, nudging the body of Inivane with her foot.
“Can we make sure he stays dead?”
“I guess we can make it more difficult to raise him,” says Dranko.
“But can’t they use the miracle of true resurrection?” asks Yoba.
Dranko frowns at that.
“Does anyone even know he’s here?” asks Flicker. “I mean, who would know to even try raising him.”
“And in the future,” says Dranko, “he’ll have been dead for too long.”
Ernie picks back up the thread about meddling with the past.
“We know there’s a big battle sometime, right? Where the Spire defeats the Emperor? Maybe we need to stick around for that.”
“But don’t we know that that battle was won without us?” asks Flicker.
“No, we don’t!” says Ernie. “Because of the stupid Masking, we don’t know the details. For all we know, we might have tipped the balance in the Spire’s favor!”
Flicker throws up his hands. “But... but Dranko’s saying that we might screw up history by doing stuff. And now you’re saying we might screw up history by NOT doing stuff? Which is it?!”
“If Inivane’s date is correct,” says Aravis, “the long war against the Emperor doesn’t happen for centuries to come.”
“Maybe we’re the ones who start the Spire!” says Morningstar.
“Nah,” says Dranko. “If it was, I’d have made sure we used the symbol I picked for the Oracle.”
“No you wouldn’t!” says Flicker. “We know what the symbol is; we’ve seen it. We would have told them to use the symbol we already know they picked! Er... wouldn’t we?”
“I refused to be paralyzed by indecision!” Dranko barks.
There’s a bit more of this, which ends with the Company reaching a general agreement that history as they know it will take their actions into account, and that they shouldn’t just sit on their hands until they die of old age. Morningstar intends to cast of commune to try to clear some things up.
Aravis disintegrates Inivane’s body, and they bury the ashes in a short service. Inivane was at least an upstanding villain who fought for a cause he believed in.
After Inivane’s dusty remains have been interred (some distance out from the Mirrors, just to be sure), Morningstar turns to her fiancée and says, “you know, we’re not going to get married for centuries, now.”
“I will NOT wait that long!” says Dranko vehemently. “In a thousand years I’ll be old and wrinkly, and you won’t want me.”
“I could marry the two of you right now,” says Ernie.
Kibi laughs. “Then you’ll be able to say: ‘we’ve been married for a thousand years!’”
But the betrothed couple don’t ask for an impromptu ceremony just now. Instead, Morningstar closes her eyes and enters the trance of a commune.
In her trance, an Avatar of Ell stands before her. This one is not ragged and impoverished as was the last one, from a commune cast in a future where worship of Ell had all but vanished.
The Avatar looks curiously at Morningstar. Customarily, the servants of the Goddess simply wait for the questions and provide what answers they can. This time, it’s the Avatar who starts the questioning.
WHO ARE YOU?
“I am Morningstar. I am from the future, and I was sent by Ell.”
FROM THE FUTURE? HOW IS SUCH A THING POSSIBLE?
“We used the Eyes of Moirel and the Mirrors of Semek.”
The Avatar pauses and cocks her head, as if listening to another speak in her mind.
THERE IS NO BETTER EXPLANATION FOR YOUR PRESENCE – SOMEONE SO POWERFUL IN THE MIND OF ELL, WHO HAS NOT EXISTED BEFORE NOW. YOU DO NOT APPEAR TO BE A TRICK OR RUSE. YOUR QUESTIONS WILL BE ANSWERED.
“I come from a future where the Emperor was banished. There was one who sought to change the world, by traveling back in time. I am here to stop him from changing history.”
YOU ARE A PLEASANT SIGHT IN THESE DIFFICULT TIMES. ASK YOUR QUESTIONS
“We just killed a Sharshun by the name of Inivane. Have we done what we needed to do to restore time to its proper course?”
I BELIEVE SO
“Is there anything more that we can do to keep Inivane from being resurrected?”
UNLIKELY
“Will interacting with the people of this time cause our future to become damaged?”
ONLY DRASTIC MEASURES WILL HAVE DRASTIC RESULTS
“Should we contact the Spire and tell them what we know?”
NO
“Is there a way for us to return to our proper time?”
YES
“Do we currently have the means to return?”
PARTIALLY
“I was told by one such as you that Ell was dying. Is that no longer the case?”
SHE IS WEAK, BUT NOT DYING
“Is there anything else I can do to aid her?”
YOUR PRESENCE HELPS
“Should we return Ernie’s Ring to Dingman’s Ferry, for Ernie to find in the future?”
I DON’T KNOW
“Do you know where the additional things we need to return to the future might be?”
YES
“Is what we need to return, in Kivia?”
NO
“On Harkran?”
NO
“On Nahalm?”
YES
“Thank you, dark lady.”
I HOPE YOU FIND YOUR WAY HOME. YOU DO NOT BELONG HERE.
The first conversation engendered by Morningstar’s divine query is: ‘what exactly defines “drastic.”’ The consensus is that the term means potentially world-changing actions, like seeking out the Emperor, or telling the Spire about how the future unfolds. Everyone agrees that their long-term goal should be finding the way to return to their own time. As for the short-term, there’s a fire that wants investigating.
* *
The Company wind walks low to the ground, to reduce the chance of being observed. Dranko occasionally zooms up a couple hundred feet to get a good look around, and so is able to report via an increasingly accurate series of visual snapshots, spaced about thirty seconds apart.
The first snapshot: a large force of distant bipedal creatures – perhaps two hundred, it’s hard to tell – marching toward the fire from the north.
Second: The fire is coming from a large (burning) village, and the force of humanoids is just arriving there. They’re riding mounts that don’t move like horses.
Third: There’s a pitched battle going on in a distinctly halfling town, and many of the outlying farms have been put to the torch. The arriving force is halflings, some mounted on war-dogs. It’s still hard for Dranko to tell whom they’re fighting against, but they’re clearly taller than the halflings. As Dranko flies down for the final time to report to the others, he catches the word “burn” clearly from the melee – spoken in orcish.
“We have to go help,” says Dranko. “Halflings are being attacked, by orcs!”
All of the wind-walkers now fly up high enough to get a decent look. There’s an extremely brief discussion about whether rendering aid will qualify as “drastic,” which is cut off by Dranko complaining. “I want to kill things, dammit!”
“Hey,” says Flicker, pointing. “Are those dwarves down there, fighting with the halflings?”
Sure enough, mixed in with halfling warriors are a handful of dwarves, laying waste to orcs with large axes.
“That would explain the dwarves we found buried near Dingman’s Ferry,” says Morningstar, recalling one of the Company’s earliest adventures.
They quickly form a plan. The halflings and Kibi will join in the fighting. In order to not to call undue attention to themselves, the others will wait in an abandoned and half-burned farmhouse at the edge of town. The two groups are connected by a telepathic bond and the ‘short fightin’ group’ runs to join the fray.
Alas, by the time all of this scouting and organizing and spellcasting gets done, said fray turns out to be in the mopping up stages. Yoba, Flicker and Ernie do get in some satisfying orc-hacking, and Kibi is especially pleased with the results of an unbuckle spell on a trio of orcs mounted on wolf-back, but the orcs are being routed and driven off. Ernie and Yoba meet up at a crossroads near the center of town, sweaty from combat and lightly spattered with orc blood. They grin shyly at one another, but Flicker, standing nearby, is spared any potential mushiness by a formation of halfling warriors that rounds a corner.
There are about twelve of these halflings (along with three dwarves), girded in masterwork chain and marching in formation. Ernie stares at them and blinks. The soldiers likewise slow, peering curiously at Ernie. Yoba opens her mouth in surprise but says nothing, gripping Ernie’s arm. For at the head of this band of warriors is a middle-aged halfling who looks exactly as one might expect Ernie to look, were he about twenty years older. His cloak is of green and gold, and has prominently displayed the holy symbol of Yondalla.
* *
Over the telepathic bond, Ernie whispers urgently to the others.
“I think about to meet Wilburforce!”
“Well, go tell him ‘hi,’” says Dranko.
The halfling leader is staring as intently at Ernie as Ernie is at him. The halflings and dwarves are pointing and whispering. The leader walks his war pony closer and draws his sword, as the other halflings and the dwarves form around him in a protective aspect. Ernie bows low to him.
“Oh, get up, get up,” snaps the halfling impatiently. His voice is strong and commanding – and not Ernie’s voice, which wasn’t likely but still a relief.
Ernie straightens. “Ernest Wilburforce Roundhill at your service.”
“I wasn’t aware that there was any halfling of that name,” says ‘Wilburforce.’
“It’s a very common name where I’m from,” Ernie improvises.
“And where is that?”
“A place called Appleseed. Far, far from here.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
On his rooftop a few blocks away, Dranko hops down and uses his robe to assume the aspect of a tall halfling warrior. Ernie continues.
“My colleagues and I are wanderers, and saw the smoke. We thought you might need help, but it seems like you have it under control.”
“Wanderers?” asks Wilburforce, raising his eyebrows. “Wandering where?” He looks around him, then turns back to Ernie. “We need to have a discussion . There’s something going on here.”
Ernie takes a step back, turns to Yoba and whispers: “We need to get out of here! I think he’s my great great great great great great grandfather, and if he finds out who we really are, we could really... break... things.”
“Oh, I think things will be fine,” Yoba whispers back. “This is fascinating! Who gets the chance to talk with their great great great great great great grandfather?
Ernie looks up to find Wilburforce still staring at him, so he clears his throat.
“This is Yoba Stoutheart, and Kibi Bimson. And this is... uh... Dranko Smoketallow.”
He adds this last introduction as Dranko strides forward, smiling.
“Are you all in disguise?” asks Wilburforce.
“No,” says Ernie.
“Then why do you look just like me?” It’s much more an accusation than question.
“I couldn’t tell you,” says Ernie. “Vagaries of bloodlines? Blessing of Yondalla for especially handsome halflings?
“Or maybe,” adds Dranko, “your mother, your father, and his mother, all got together and...”
Ernie kicks Dranko solidly in the shin.
“You’ll have to pardon him,” says Ernie. “Part of the reason he’s wandering is as penitence. He insulted a high priestess, and now he’s trying to learn some MANNERS!”
“Er. Yes. I am. It’s true,” admits Dranko.
Wilburforce whispers to a halfling next to him. It’s meant to be private, but with his absurdly keen senses Dranko is able to overhear.
“This could be a trick. Spread out and see if the Sable Guard are coming.”
Two halflings immediately break from the group and stride away into the town.
“Any of your men hurt?” asks Dranko. “Or any of the locals?”
“Many, I’m sure. We have healers attending to them now.”
“I’m happy to help out!” says Ernie.
“Me too,” says Dranko. “And hey, since we’re all friends here, what’s your name?”
The halfling commander says nothing for a moment, stroking his chin and staring unnervingly at Ernie.
“Santo,” he says, having decided on trust. “Santo Wilburforce.”
Flashback, to more than two years ago. The Company has returned from a short job, transporting an otyugh from Calnis to Tal Hae. At the Greenhouse they make the awful discovery that their two Eyes of Moirel have burned themselves into Eddings’ eye sockets. The Eyes commence spouting prophecy, mostly about the Ventifact Colossus, but they finish with words about ‘traveling nowhere’:
YOU HAVE THE FOCUS, IN WHOSE VEINS RUNS THE BLOOD OF SANTO. YOU HAVE THE OPENER, WHO BRIDGES THE LIGHT AND THE EARTH. YOU WILL STILL NEED THE TALISMAN TO PRESERVE YOUR SANITY. YOU WILL STILL NEED A SOURCE OF ENERGY, FOR WE WILL BE OTHERWISE OCCUPIED...
Ernie’s eyes grow wide – here indeed stands the prophesied Santo, and his own ancestor of untold generations.
Dranko stays cool. “That’s a nice name.”
Santo ignores him. “Come. We will find a more private place to talk. You will come with me.”
He motions, and his retinue surrounds Dranko, Ernie and Kibi before herding them down the street. Along the way Santo stops briefly several times to coordinate and receive updates on the battle’s aftermath. Dranko and Ernie manage to heal some of the wounded townsfolk as they walk.
Over the telepathic bond Dranko warns Morningstar: “They’re sending out search parties, so now might be a good time for you to come out and join us.”
But Morningstar and Aravis are still unsure of the wisdom of all this meddling in what might be a delicately mended history. Aravis in particular – given his unique physical characteristics – is worried that word of their presence here will make its way back to the Emperor. As a result, those hiding in the barn return to wind walk form and retreat quickly from the town. They hide behind a nearby hill.
“You’ll have to give him the thing before we leave,” whispers Dranko to Ernie has they’re marched through the streets.
“Nuh uh!” protests Ernie.
“But it belongs to him.”
“It’s mine now!”
“But it has to end up on that statue, right?” chimes in Morningstar. “Otherwise, how are you going to find it later?”
“Irrelevant!” says Aravis. “It’s already been found.”
Santo stops the group in front of a tavern that has survived the orcish raid without much damage. One of his guards goes in for a couple of minutes, returns, nods, and Santo motions his guests/prisoners inside. They are made to leave their weapons at the door, which they mostly do, though Dranko uses some sleight of hand to drop his more potent whip into his widemouth pouch before handing over a non-magical one.
The tavern is empty; Santo motions for the three of them to sit down. Some light refreshment is brought in. When all are settled and seated at a long table, Santo asks Ernie: “How many of you are there?”
“Quite a few, but most are hiding outside the village. We didn’t want to cause too big a commotion.”
“We’re professional monster hunters,” Dranko explains. “Say, can I call you Santo?”
“Yes, you may.”
“You can call me Dranko.”
“Yes, yes I can,” says Santo dryly. “Now, Dranko, on whose behalf do you hunt monsters?”
Over the mind-link, Grey Wolf groans. “Why did we send him? Why does he always end up doing the talking?”
“We never send him,” Aravis sighs. “He just goes.”
Ernie sort of answers Santo’s question. “We fight to help people in trouble. We do it on our own behalf.”
“Do you often find people menaced by... monsters?” asks Santo, taking a sip of water from a mug.
“You’d be surprised!” says Ernie.
“And where do you do the majority of your monster hunting?”
“In and around Dir-Tolia,” says Ernie. “We’ve come a long way since then. It’s across the ocean.”
Santo steeples his fingers. “I’m well versed in the geography of the Islands of Charagan. On which island is Dir-Tolia?”
“It’s kind of far away,” says Ernie, squirming just a bit. He’s not much used to this sort of extemporaneous invention of ‘facts.’
“Stop being evasive!” snaps Santo.
“It’s across the Uncrossable Sea, okay?” says Ernie irritably.
“And stop making up fanciful lies, also,” says Santo, rising to his feet and leaning forward across the table. “Why do you think it is called the ‘Uncrossable Sea?’
Aravis thinks over the mind-link (to the great amusement of the others): “Because the Gods think it’s uncrossable.”
“I’m not lying to you,” says Ernie flatly.
“I’ve never seen this man lie, in the years I’ve known him,” says Dranko. (If anyone in the mindlink notes that, just moments ago, Ernie claimed that they tend to monster-hunt around Dir-Tolia, they wisely keep silent). “Plus,” continues Dranko, “this lady here is a Paladin of Yondalla, and she cannot lie. So, before you go making the claim that my friends are lying, you might just want to take a step back. Treat us with the same respect we’re treating you, okay?”
Santo scoffs. “I have not sensed much respect. I have sensed evasion, and half-truths, and fear. You are all clearly hiding something.”
“The truth of the matter is, we’re on a very secret job,” says Ernie in a calmer voice. “And if I tell you too much, I will jeopardize the most important thing that’s ever happened on this world.”
Santo graces Ernie with a look of pure skepticism.
“On whose behalf are you on this job? I still don’t...”
“Yondalla’s!” shrieks Ernie, fed up both with Santo’s suspicion and his own need to dissemble. “You want to ask her?”
Santo remains unperturbed. “Yes, I think I’ll have that arranged,” he says.
“Please do.”
For a moment the two nearly-identical halflings regard each other, the air between them cold with tension. Santo looks away and nods to one of his retinue, who casts detect evil (negative) and detect magic (whoa!) and whispers the results to Santo.
Dranko, who’s seen detect magic cast enough times to know what’s going on, takes off the ring that prevents the spell from working on him. The halfling caster’s eyes go wide again, and he amends his whispered report.
“They’re not kidding about the Uncrossable Sea,” says Dranko, barely managing not to smirk.
Santo sits up straighter. “So, what brought you from Dir-Tolia to our part of the world?”
Morningstar, already uncomfortable with this whole meeting, essentially dictates Ernie’s response to that one over the mind-link.
“We had a mission,” says Ernie, “and we succeeded, but as a result of that mission we ended up somewhere we didn’t expect. Now we’re trying to get back.”
“There’s a vast gulf we have to cross, and we don’t know how to do it yet,” adds Dranko.
“We’re very far from home,” says Ernie. “I’m sorry if we worry you, and we’ll go if we’re causing any sort of problem.”
Santo sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “No, you’re not causing a problem... yet. You’ve caused me some worry, though, I admit. The Emperor has tried to set traps for me before.”
“I can tell you that we’re no friends of the Emperor,” says Ernie.
“So they’ve heard of him in Dir-Tolia, then?”
“We’ve heard of him,” sighs Ernie, “and done nothing but try to stop his plans and schemes for years.”
Santo leans forward again. “So, Ernest. You really don’t have any idea why we look like identical twins?”
Ernie shifts nervously in his chair, but answers truthfully. “I think we might be distantly related.”
“Given that there is – present company perhaps excluded – no travel between the Isles of Charagan and the lands beyond the Uncrossable Sea, how do you suppose that we are related?”
“I’m not sure,” says Ernie.
Santo stands suddenly. “Right then. I’d like you to come to Greenshire with me. I need to return there, and I’m not done with you yet. It’s just a few hours’ travel from here.”
“Do you want the rest of my companions to come?” asks Ernie.
“I’d be interested in meeting them.. Yes, they may all come. It’s still early and we can be in Greenshire before sundown.”
After the others have left the tavern, and only Santo and Ernie remain, Santo leans in and whispers.
“Ernest, I appreciate that you have secrets to keep. But I know there is a connection between us, more than us being ‘distant relatives.’ I’m not quite prepared to tell you how I know that. I also have secrets. Perhaps we will talk about it back in my home village, in private.”
Ernie nods, and they go out.
* *
The group that marches down the road to Greenshire consists of Kibi, Ernie, Flicker, Dranko, Santo, about twenty mounted halfling soldiers, and a half-dozen dwarves. Dranko glances down at the dwarf nearest the front of the group, and his blood goes cold. He has seen this dwarf before – dead and embalmed in a tomb not far from where they currently walk. He relays this to the others mentally.
“That’s creepy,” says Morningstar.
The dwarf, deep in his own thoughts, doesn’t notice for a few moments that Dranko is staring. When he does, he stares back for a second before grunting, “I’m Hurthin. Hurthin Hammersmith.”
Dranko pauses for a second; will a dwarf recognize an orcish name? Ernie jumps into the gap.
“Ernest Roundhill, at your service.”
He bows, and Hurthin nods.
“Where are you from?” asks Kibi.
“It’s a long story. Karth, originally.”
“Hey!” says Dranko. “I almost got blow up once by Karthian Oil!”
“How’d you get your hands on Karthian Oil?” asks Hurthin.
“I didn’t. Someone was trying to blow me up.”
Hurthin frowns. “You know that stuff has been outlawed for decades.”
He says nothing as they walk a few more paces. Then, sounding solemn, Hurthin tells them, “It’s been twenty-seven years since I’ve been in Karth.”
“Why so long?” asks Dranko.
Hurthin doesn’t answer for a long minute. “To make a long story short, we paid for our rebellious ways, and I’m one of the lucky few who got out alive.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” says Ernie.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” grumbles Hurthin. But under his breath, he adds, “Damned Emperor and his damned air demons.”
Flashback to several years ago. Kay, in her old home in Cyric, becomes aware of the meaning of the elvish poem her mother sang to her as a child. The next to last verse goes as follows:
In the days of our slavery, we slew with the Warlord,
Bound like our spirits were bound, and the Dwarves fell before us.
The Hammer drove us to fight, even as it fell upon the earth-folk;
Though we were weak beneath the earth, the Warlord’s Maul gave us the strength of death.
The verse is about the Yrimpa – air spirits.
Ernie thinks to the others: “The Emperor enslaved the Yrimpa and made them kill the dwarves, remember?”
Everyone does.
* *
By agreement, the remainder of the party meets Santo’s group on a flat stretch of road halfway to Greenshire. Snokas, with his unmistakably half-orcish features, agrees to have his hands tied behind him, as if he were a prisoner. That will avoid awkward questions later.
Snokas is miffed that Dranko (looking like a halfling thanks to his robe of blending) doesn’t require similar treatment. Dranko smirks and offers to hold Snokas’s rope.
“Hey,” he jests. “I can scratch my head. Can you?”
“No, but I can kick you in the junk,” replies Snokas with a snort. “They haven’t tied my feet, you know.”
Dranko takes a few steps back.
After three hours of walking, Ernie starts to recognize some coarse terrain features, and realizes that Greenshire must be built on the same land as Dingman’s Ferry. They crest a final hill, and a large halfling town spreads out before them. It’s easily ten times larger than the Dingman’s Ferry he knows.
Atop the hill, Ernie’s belt of stability – Cranchus’s Gift – starts to tingle and grow warm. Next to him, Santo brings his hands swiftly to his head as if stricken by a sudden pain, but he shakes it off and makes nothing of it.
“My belt’s tingling,” says Ernie over the mind-link.
“So that’s why you’re smiling,” says Dranko.
“Does Yoba know?” asks Flicker.
“For crying out loud, people! It’s my belt, not my shorts!”
“I’m shutting down the telepathic bond in five seconds if this doesn’t stop,” warns Morningstar.
Greenshire has a distinctly militaristic feel to it, with guards and soldiers in particularly high numbers. When Ernie comments, Santo answers simply: “orcs.”
The tingling of Ernie’s golden belt grows stronger as they enter the town, and grows stronger still as they march down a wide cobblestone street. As they draw even with a side-street, Ernie looks down it and into a large plaza past the far end. There’s a statue there, and though he can’t make out any details, he feels a powerful jolt from the belt as he looks at it. He shares this revelation over the mind-link, and Dranko asks:
“Hey! Who’s that statue of down there?”
Santo looks embarrassed as he answers, “That’s me. I couldn’t stop them. There was a battle many years ago, and we won, and they insisted on building that statue. Funny, now that I think of it, it looks a lot like Ernie here.”
As they pass the side-street, the feeling in the belt start to fade a bit.
“Don’t you see?” thinks Dranko excitedly. “The belt starts and stops here! It never actually gets created. It came back with us, and now it goes on the statue so we can find it in the future.”
“Then how can it be “Cranchus’s Gift” if it never actually got created?” asks Morningstar.
“We don’t have to leave it,” insists Aravis. “Ernie already has it. We’re an anomaly here!”
Santo leaves the Company outside under the guard of his soldiers, while he goes into Greenshire’s large town hall. Twenty minutes later he comes back out.
“I have a place we can go and talk.”
To Ernie alone, in a quiet voice, he adds: “Is there anything I might tell you that you wouldn’t want your friends to hear?”
Ernie shakes his head.
The group heads back toward the plaza with the statue, and Ernie’s belt start to grow warmer again. This time their route takes them along the edge of the plaza itself, and Ernie feels an actual physical pull on the belt, as if it were a lodestone attracted to an iron block. Santo looks at him quizzically, then stumbles and almost drops to his knees. Just as quickly he stands straight, and stares at Ernie for a second before walking on.
“I wonder if the statue is magical,” thinks Kibi.
“Cranchus could still be alive here,” thinks Ernie. “He could have given the belt to Santo.”
Kibi perks up at the thought of meeting Cranchus. Yes, they’re a long way in the past, but Abernathy lived to be 900, and dwarves as a rule live longer than humans.
Dranko wonders what would happen if he were to carve something on the statue, right underneath where they found the gold circlet back in the future. They know that when they found it, there was no such carving. He speculates that he’ll suddenly remember things differently. Aravis disagrees; he thinks Dranko will be unable to carve anything, even if he tries.
Ernie resists the pull of the belt, and once again its warmth grows less as they move away from the statue. A few minutes later they arrive at a large non-descript building. Santo knocks, gives a password, and they are admitted into a stone edifice whose interior seems mostly to be one large meeting room. Only three halflings and Hurthin accompany Santo; the rest of his entourage wait outside. The halflings and dwarves sit in chairs, while the large folk sit on the floor. More food and drink is brought in.
“So,” says Santo, when everyone is comfortable. “Am I going to get anywhere trying to get more information out of you?”
“No,” says Aravis simply.
“Are you withholding information because you don’t trust me? Or because you promised someone you wouldn’t tell?”
“No,” says Dranko.
For a few minutes Santo grills the Company about the Emperor, but on that subject they really don’t have much to divulge. Finally Dranko says, “Listen, are you ok with most of your friends leaving, so it’s just you and the dwarf?”
“Ernie said that there was nothing I could tell him that he wouldn’t mind the rest of you hearing. He and you are very close, yes? I feel the same way about those in this room. These four are my loyal and close friends. What you can tell me, you can tell them. If you swear them to secrecy, they will keep your secrets.”
Morningstar doesn’t like that, and reminds the others that the Sharshun can read minds. But Ernie opts for trust.
“The Emperor’s actions do not just concern the here and now. He has used his sorcerous minions, the Sharshun, and powerful magics to try to affect other places and other times. If we tell you too much, that might cause the Emperor to win.”
“You’re saying that Naloric has a plan, but the simple act of telling me what that plan is may cause him to succeed? Is that right?”
“Yep,” says Ernie. “That’s what I’m saying.”
Santo rubs his temples, and takes a long drink of water.
“Fine. It’s clear that there are things you are highly reluctant to say, but not because you don’t trust me. Rather, you fear some greater evil that will befall if you talk. Fine. I’ll ask questions, then, and you answer as much as you can.
“Do you know about the Black Mirrors?”
“The ones that flash?” asks Ernie.
“Yes, those. What do you feel you can tell me about them?”
Ernie glances at Aravis before answering. “They’re a magical convergence of some kind. Powered by Earth Magic. We don’t know how they work.”
“What is Earth Magic?” asks Santo.
“Wild Magic,” says Dranko. “Dwarf Magic.”
Hurthin clears his throat. “Santo, it’s a crock. Dwarves don’t do magic. You know that.”
Kibi opens his mouth to protest, but Santo saves him the trouble.
“Hurthin, I don’t think the normal rules of things apply to these people. Speaking of which...” and he turns back to the Company. “... are you really from across the Uncrossable Sea?”
“We come from a very different place,” says Aravis. “We came through the Black Mirrors. They’re a portal.”
“You can cross the Sea using the Black Mirrors?”
“No, not really.”
“Then where does it go?”
“Nowhere,” says Aravis, straight-faced.
“Have you had anyone come through the Black Mirrors yet?”
“Like a woman named Moirel?” adds Ernie. “Please tell my friends she wasn’t eaten.”
Santo fixes Ernie with an intense stare.
“Why do you ask about a woman?”
“Because....um... we’ve heard of a woman having traveled through them.”
“You’ve seen her, haven’t you?” says Dranko. “How long ago was it?”
“About twenty years,” says Santo.
“She came through then!” exclaims Ernie. “With the Eyes!”
“Eyes?” asks Santo. “Would you be talking about seven colored gems, rotating around her head?”
“That would be them,” says Grey Wolf.
“I’ll tell you,” says Santo. “It was twenty-one years ago. The Mirrors flash once a year, as I’m sure you know. It is somewhat a tradition among the young and impetuous among our people...”
“... to run out into them when they flash,” finishes Ernie.
Santo nods, smiling. “I had been running the Mirrors for several years. The year I saw her, I was the only one who ran. I thought I saw a ghost, which had never before happened. I saw a woman inside the bright lights. She had seven small colored gems around her head, in an orbit. I was young, and impetuous, and... well, I thought I’d try to take one. I reached out and tried to touch the orange one. I woke some hours later with a pounding headache. The halflings who were watching had seen nothing. Ever since then, I have... felt... something.”
“Did she ever show up?” asks Dranko.
“No. I thought I must have dreamed her. But that feeling has been in the back of my mind ever since. The very nature of my being had been changed, though I didn’t know how.”
Santo’s voice has been rising through the story, and he looks straight at Ernie as he finishes.
“Over the years the feeling has subsided but has never gone away completely. But today I feel it as strongly as I did the day I reached out for those gemstones. That feeling is coming from you, Ernest. I felt it when you first looked down on Greenshire. I felt it when you stood near my statue. And here you are, a relative I’ve never seen or heard of, unable to tell me anything specific, and you look exactly like me. Why. Is. That?!
Ernie looks imploringly at Aravis and Morningstar.
“In for a penny,” sighs Aravis. But he holds up his hand to stop Ernie from answering, and says to Santo, “We fear word of our visit will get back to the Emperor.”
“I doubt that will happen,” says Santo. “We are beneath his notice. To him, we are just playthings for his orcs.”
“What kind of creature is the Emperor, anyway?” asks Dranko.
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen him. But I’ve heard the story of his father, Hagdan – King Hagdan the Just. A couple hundred years ago, I’ve read, King Hagdan of Harkran was seemingly overnight transformed. He was a good man, running the kingdom wisely. The next morning he was a monster, larger, changed in some way. From that moment on, he sought to wage war. And while he was killed by Queen Daynell Kalkas, his son Naloric took up his reign. Naloric was like his father, I hear, and his armies have since conquered all of the Charagan Islands.”
“Why didn’t anyone overthrow him?” asks Dranko.
“Not for lack of trying.,” says Santo.
Hurthin speaks up. “The dwarves tried. Not long after they conquered Karth, we rebelled, and had our independence for about twenty more years. Then... the air demons came. Don’t know where they came from or what they were, but I’ve never seen anything so horrible in my life.”
Ernie hands the belt of stability to Santo. “Have you ever seen this before?”
Santo’s reaction is unusual. Instead of taking the belt from Ernie, he flinches back. “So strong,” he says. He leans forward and takes the golden circlet with a trembling hand. As he grips it, as both he and Ernie hold Cranchus’s gift, his eyes grow wide with wonder.
“It goes on the statue, doesn’t it,” he says. “It’s what I’ve been feeling all these years. It goes on the statue.”
And as Santo speaks these words, Ernie hears in his mind the sound of waves crashing upon the shore, and the scent of brine fills his nostrils. His heart is at peace, his promise to Brechen fulfilled at last.
You are charged to look to your own safety, to let wisdom always guide you through the dangers life will set at your feet. For in your veins, and no other’s, runs the true blood of a Wilburforce, and thus a link to the past is forged. Do not let that life-blood be spilt without reason! For before all is done, you must wear the circle, and you will come full circle, and only then can the Circle be broken. Promise to do your utmost to keep this appointment, as your part in bringing back the life of Isabel Horn.
“I thought I’d always have that promise,” says Ernie. “But now I’ve come full circle.”
...to be continued...
Full Circle
Aravis doesn’t waste any sympathy on the fallen Sharshun. His first comment upon Inivane’s death is:
“Oh, I so want those books. Condor’s books.”
To his credit, he doesn’t drool.
“Kibi,” says Dranko, patting the dwarf on the back. “You just saved... everyone. You stopped people from being thrown in ovens. You stopped them from being enslaved. You stopped every bad thing from happening that was going to happen.”
Kibi smiles with satisfaction. He’s traditionally had poor luck with mind-affecting spells; his charm monster spells in particular seem never to overcome his victims’ resistances. But this time, a single-target mass suggestion had done the trick marvelously well.
Ernie wipes his sword on a rag, the grass being too sparse here for cleaning the blade. “Given what Inivane told us, maybe we should find the Spire and warn them that they really need to stay strong, and stay the course.”
“I’m not sure I understand everything,” says Flicker, “but at this point aren’t we risking screwing everything up just by being here?”
“Maybe we should just kill ourselves,” says Dranko. Flicker can’t tell if he’s kidding or not.
“Dranko, no!” exclaims Ernie. “We just need to figure out how to get home.”
“Maybe by killing him, we actually did screw up the past,” muses Kibi. That earns him some worried glances, but it’s hard to imagine that letting Inivane warn the Emperor Naloric would have been the right thing to do.
“Here’s the problem,” says Dranko. “We have something big – maybe a town – on fire. I saw it while I was up on the Mirror. We should go investigate. Buuuuuuut, by definition, if we do anything, that might be messing up history.”
The Company mulls that one over for a minute. Dare they act? Dare they NOT act? Morningstar momentarily gives them something else to think about, nudging the body of Inivane with her foot.
“Can we make sure he stays dead?”
“I guess we can make it more difficult to raise him,” says Dranko.
“But can’t they use the miracle of true resurrection?” asks Yoba.
Dranko frowns at that.
“Does anyone even know he’s here?” asks Flicker. “I mean, who would know to even try raising him.”
“And in the future,” says Dranko, “he’ll have been dead for too long.”
Ernie picks back up the thread about meddling with the past.
“We know there’s a big battle sometime, right? Where the Spire defeats the Emperor? Maybe we need to stick around for that.”
“But don’t we know that that battle was won without us?” asks Flicker.
“No, we don’t!” says Ernie. “Because of the stupid Masking, we don’t know the details. For all we know, we might have tipped the balance in the Spire’s favor!”
Flicker throws up his hands. “But... but Dranko’s saying that we might screw up history by doing stuff. And now you’re saying we might screw up history by NOT doing stuff? Which is it?!”
“If Inivane’s date is correct,” says Aravis, “the long war against the Emperor doesn’t happen for centuries to come.”
“Maybe we’re the ones who start the Spire!” says Morningstar.
“Nah,” says Dranko. “If it was, I’d have made sure we used the symbol I picked for the Oracle.”
“No you wouldn’t!” says Flicker. “We know what the symbol is; we’ve seen it. We would have told them to use the symbol we already know they picked! Er... wouldn’t we?”
“I refused to be paralyzed by indecision!” Dranko barks.
There’s a bit more of this, which ends with the Company reaching a general agreement that history as they know it will take their actions into account, and that they shouldn’t just sit on their hands until they die of old age. Morningstar intends to cast of commune to try to clear some things up.
Aravis disintegrates Inivane’s body, and they bury the ashes in a short service. Inivane was at least an upstanding villain who fought for a cause he believed in.
After Inivane’s dusty remains have been interred (some distance out from the Mirrors, just to be sure), Morningstar turns to her fiancée and says, “you know, we’re not going to get married for centuries, now.”
“I will NOT wait that long!” says Dranko vehemently. “In a thousand years I’ll be old and wrinkly, and you won’t want me.”
“I could marry the two of you right now,” says Ernie.
Kibi laughs. “Then you’ll be able to say: ‘we’ve been married for a thousand years!’”
But the betrothed couple don’t ask for an impromptu ceremony just now. Instead, Morningstar closes her eyes and enters the trance of a commune.
In her trance, an Avatar of Ell stands before her. This one is not ragged and impoverished as was the last one, from a commune cast in a future where worship of Ell had all but vanished.
The Avatar looks curiously at Morningstar. Customarily, the servants of the Goddess simply wait for the questions and provide what answers they can. This time, it’s the Avatar who starts the questioning.
WHO ARE YOU?
“I am Morningstar. I am from the future, and I was sent by Ell.”
FROM THE FUTURE? HOW IS SUCH A THING POSSIBLE?
“We used the Eyes of Moirel and the Mirrors of Semek.”
The Avatar pauses and cocks her head, as if listening to another speak in her mind.
THERE IS NO BETTER EXPLANATION FOR YOUR PRESENCE – SOMEONE SO POWERFUL IN THE MIND OF ELL, WHO HAS NOT EXISTED BEFORE NOW. YOU DO NOT APPEAR TO BE A TRICK OR RUSE. YOUR QUESTIONS WILL BE ANSWERED.
“I come from a future where the Emperor was banished. There was one who sought to change the world, by traveling back in time. I am here to stop him from changing history.”
YOU ARE A PLEASANT SIGHT IN THESE DIFFICULT TIMES. ASK YOUR QUESTIONS
“We just killed a Sharshun by the name of Inivane. Have we done what we needed to do to restore time to its proper course?”
I BELIEVE SO
“Is there anything more that we can do to keep Inivane from being resurrected?”
UNLIKELY
“Will interacting with the people of this time cause our future to become damaged?”
ONLY DRASTIC MEASURES WILL HAVE DRASTIC RESULTS
“Should we contact the Spire and tell them what we know?”
NO
“Is there a way for us to return to our proper time?”
YES
“Do we currently have the means to return?”
PARTIALLY
“I was told by one such as you that Ell was dying. Is that no longer the case?”
SHE IS WEAK, BUT NOT DYING
“Is there anything else I can do to aid her?”
YOUR PRESENCE HELPS
“Should we return Ernie’s Ring to Dingman’s Ferry, for Ernie to find in the future?”
I DON’T KNOW
“Do you know where the additional things we need to return to the future might be?”
YES
“Is what we need to return, in Kivia?”
NO
“On Harkran?”
NO
“On Nahalm?”
YES
“Thank you, dark lady.”
I HOPE YOU FIND YOUR WAY HOME. YOU DO NOT BELONG HERE.
The first conversation engendered by Morningstar’s divine query is: ‘what exactly defines “drastic.”’ The consensus is that the term means potentially world-changing actions, like seeking out the Emperor, or telling the Spire about how the future unfolds. Everyone agrees that their long-term goal should be finding the way to return to their own time. As for the short-term, there’s a fire that wants investigating.
* *
The Company wind walks low to the ground, to reduce the chance of being observed. Dranko occasionally zooms up a couple hundred feet to get a good look around, and so is able to report via an increasingly accurate series of visual snapshots, spaced about thirty seconds apart.
The first snapshot: a large force of distant bipedal creatures – perhaps two hundred, it’s hard to tell – marching toward the fire from the north.
Second: The fire is coming from a large (burning) village, and the force of humanoids is just arriving there. They’re riding mounts that don’t move like horses.
Third: There’s a pitched battle going on in a distinctly halfling town, and many of the outlying farms have been put to the torch. The arriving force is halflings, some mounted on war-dogs. It’s still hard for Dranko to tell whom they’re fighting against, but they’re clearly taller than the halflings. As Dranko flies down for the final time to report to the others, he catches the word “burn” clearly from the melee – spoken in orcish.
“We have to go help,” says Dranko. “Halflings are being attacked, by orcs!”
All of the wind-walkers now fly up high enough to get a decent look. There’s an extremely brief discussion about whether rendering aid will qualify as “drastic,” which is cut off by Dranko complaining. “I want to kill things, dammit!”
“Hey,” says Flicker, pointing. “Are those dwarves down there, fighting with the halflings?”
Sure enough, mixed in with halfling warriors are a handful of dwarves, laying waste to orcs with large axes.
“That would explain the dwarves we found buried near Dingman’s Ferry,” says Morningstar, recalling one of the Company’s earliest adventures.
They quickly form a plan. The halflings and Kibi will join in the fighting. In order to not to call undue attention to themselves, the others will wait in an abandoned and half-burned farmhouse at the edge of town. The two groups are connected by a telepathic bond and the ‘short fightin’ group’ runs to join the fray.
Alas, by the time all of this scouting and organizing and spellcasting gets done, said fray turns out to be in the mopping up stages. Yoba, Flicker and Ernie do get in some satisfying orc-hacking, and Kibi is especially pleased with the results of an unbuckle spell on a trio of orcs mounted on wolf-back, but the orcs are being routed and driven off. Ernie and Yoba meet up at a crossroads near the center of town, sweaty from combat and lightly spattered with orc blood. They grin shyly at one another, but Flicker, standing nearby, is spared any potential mushiness by a formation of halfling warriors that rounds a corner.
There are about twelve of these halflings (along with three dwarves), girded in masterwork chain and marching in formation. Ernie stares at them and blinks. The soldiers likewise slow, peering curiously at Ernie. Yoba opens her mouth in surprise but says nothing, gripping Ernie’s arm. For at the head of this band of warriors is a middle-aged halfling who looks exactly as one might expect Ernie to look, were he about twenty years older. His cloak is of green and gold, and has prominently displayed the holy symbol of Yondalla.
* *
Over the telepathic bond, Ernie whispers urgently to the others.
“I think about to meet Wilburforce!”
“Well, go tell him ‘hi,’” says Dranko.
The halfling leader is staring as intently at Ernie as Ernie is at him. The halflings and dwarves are pointing and whispering. The leader walks his war pony closer and draws his sword, as the other halflings and the dwarves form around him in a protective aspect. Ernie bows low to him.
“Oh, get up, get up,” snaps the halfling impatiently. His voice is strong and commanding – and not Ernie’s voice, which wasn’t likely but still a relief.
Ernie straightens. “Ernest Wilburforce Roundhill at your service.”
“I wasn’t aware that there was any halfling of that name,” says ‘Wilburforce.’
“It’s a very common name where I’m from,” Ernie improvises.
“And where is that?”
“A place called Appleseed. Far, far from here.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
On his rooftop a few blocks away, Dranko hops down and uses his robe to assume the aspect of a tall halfling warrior. Ernie continues.
“My colleagues and I are wanderers, and saw the smoke. We thought you might need help, but it seems like you have it under control.”
“Wanderers?” asks Wilburforce, raising his eyebrows. “Wandering where?” He looks around him, then turns back to Ernie. “We need to have a discussion . There’s something going on here.”
Ernie takes a step back, turns to Yoba and whispers: “We need to get out of here! I think he’s my great great great great great great grandfather, and if he finds out who we really are, we could really... break... things.”
“Oh, I think things will be fine,” Yoba whispers back. “This is fascinating! Who gets the chance to talk with their great great great great great great grandfather?
Ernie looks up to find Wilburforce still staring at him, so he clears his throat.
“This is Yoba Stoutheart, and Kibi Bimson. And this is... uh... Dranko Smoketallow.”
He adds this last introduction as Dranko strides forward, smiling.
“Are you all in disguise?” asks Wilburforce.
“No,” says Ernie.
“Then why do you look just like me?” It’s much more an accusation than question.
“I couldn’t tell you,” says Ernie. “Vagaries of bloodlines? Blessing of Yondalla for especially handsome halflings?
“Or maybe,” adds Dranko, “your mother, your father, and his mother, all got together and...”
Ernie kicks Dranko solidly in the shin.
“You’ll have to pardon him,” says Ernie. “Part of the reason he’s wandering is as penitence. He insulted a high priestess, and now he’s trying to learn some MANNERS!”
“Er. Yes. I am. It’s true,” admits Dranko.
Wilburforce whispers to a halfling next to him. It’s meant to be private, but with his absurdly keen senses Dranko is able to overhear.
“This could be a trick. Spread out and see if the Sable Guard are coming.”
Two halflings immediately break from the group and stride away into the town.
“Any of your men hurt?” asks Dranko. “Or any of the locals?”
“Many, I’m sure. We have healers attending to them now.”
“I’m happy to help out!” says Ernie.
“Me too,” says Dranko. “And hey, since we’re all friends here, what’s your name?”
The halfling commander says nothing for a moment, stroking his chin and staring unnervingly at Ernie.
“Santo,” he says, having decided on trust. “Santo Wilburforce.”
Flashback, to more than two years ago. The Company has returned from a short job, transporting an otyugh from Calnis to Tal Hae. At the Greenhouse they make the awful discovery that their two Eyes of Moirel have burned themselves into Eddings’ eye sockets. The Eyes commence spouting prophecy, mostly about the Ventifact Colossus, but they finish with words about ‘traveling nowhere’:
YOU HAVE THE FOCUS, IN WHOSE VEINS RUNS THE BLOOD OF SANTO. YOU HAVE THE OPENER, WHO BRIDGES THE LIGHT AND THE EARTH. YOU WILL STILL NEED THE TALISMAN TO PRESERVE YOUR SANITY. YOU WILL STILL NEED A SOURCE OF ENERGY, FOR WE WILL BE OTHERWISE OCCUPIED...
Ernie’s eyes grow wide – here indeed stands the prophesied Santo, and his own ancestor of untold generations.
Dranko stays cool. “That’s a nice name.”
Santo ignores him. “Come. We will find a more private place to talk. You will come with me.”
He motions, and his retinue surrounds Dranko, Ernie and Kibi before herding them down the street. Along the way Santo stops briefly several times to coordinate and receive updates on the battle’s aftermath. Dranko and Ernie manage to heal some of the wounded townsfolk as they walk.
Over the telepathic bond Dranko warns Morningstar: “They’re sending out search parties, so now might be a good time for you to come out and join us.”
But Morningstar and Aravis are still unsure of the wisdom of all this meddling in what might be a delicately mended history. Aravis in particular – given his unique physical characteristics – is worried that word of their presence here will make its way back to the Emperor. As a result, those hiding in the barn return to wind walk form and retreat quickly from the town. They hide behind a nearby hill.
“You’ll have to give him the thing before we leave,” whispers Dranko to Ernie has they’re marched through the streets.
“Nuh uh!” protests Ernie.
“But it belongs to him.”
“It’s mine now!”
“But it has to end up on that statue, right?” chimes in Morningstar. “Otherwise, how are you going to find it later?”
“Irrelevant!” says Aravis. “It’s already been found.”
Santo stops the group in front of a tavern that has survived the orcish raid without much damage. One of his guards goes in for a couple of minutes, returns, nods, and Santo motions his guests/prisoners inside. They are made to leave their weapons at the door, which they mostly do, though Dranko uses some sleight of hand to drop his more potent whip into his widemouth pouch before handing over a non-magical one.
The tavern is empty; Santo motions for the three of them to sit down. Some light refreshment is brought in. When all are settled and seated at a long table, Santo asks Ernie: “How many of you are there?”
“Quite a few, but most are hiding outside the village. We didn’t want to cause too big a commotion.”
“We’re professional monster hunters,” Dranko explains. “Say, can I call you Santo?”
“Yes, you may.”
“You can call me Dranko.”
“Yes, yes I can,” says Santo dryly. “Now, Dranko, on whose behalf do you hunt monsters?”
Over the mind-link, Grey Wolf groans. “Why did we send him? Why does he always end up doing the talking?”
“We never send him,” Aravis sighs. “He just goes.”
Ernie sort of answers Santo’s question. “We fight to help people in trouble. We do it on our own behalf.”
“Do you often find people menaced by... monsters?” asks Santo, taking a sip of water from a mug.
“You’d be surprised!” says Ernie.
“And where do you do the majority of your monster hunting?”
“In and around Dir-Tolia,” says Ernie. “We’ve come a long way since then. It’s across the ocean.”
Santo steeples his fingers. “I’m well versed in the geography of the Islands of Charagan. On which island is Dir-Tolia?”
“It’s kind of far away,” says Ernie, squirming just a bit. He’s not much used to this sort of extemporaneous invention of ‘facts.’
“Stop being evasive!” snaps Santo.
“It’s across the Uncrossable Sea, okay?” says Ernie irritably.
“And stop making up fanciful lies, also,” says Santo, rising to his feet and leaning forward across the table. “Why do you think it is called the ‘Uncrossable Sea?’
Aravis thinks over the mind-link (to the great amusement of the others): “Because the Gods think it’s uncrossable.”
“I’m not lying to you,” says Ernie flatly.
“I’ve never seen this man lie, in the years I’ve known him,” says Dranko. (If anyone in the mindlink notes that, just moments ago, Ernie claimed that they tend to monster-hunt around Dir-Tolia, they wisely keep silent). “Plus,” continues Dranko, “this lady here is a Paladin of Yondalla, and she cannot lie. So, before you go making the claim that my friends are lying, you might just want to take a step back. Treat us with the same respect we’re treating you, okay?”
Santo scoffs. “I have not sensed much respect. I have sensed evasion, and half-truths, and fear. You are all clearly hiding something.”
“The truth of the matter is, we’re on a very secret job,” says Ernie in a calmer voice. “And if I tell you too much, I will jeopardize the most important thing that’s ever happened on this world.”
Santo graces Ernie with a look of pure skepticism.
“On whose behalf are you on this job? I still don’t...”
“Yondalla’s!” shrieks Ernie, fed up both with Santo’s suspicion and his own need to dissemble. “You want to ask her?”
Santo remains unperturbed. “Yes, I think I’ll have that arranged,” he says.
“Please do.”
For a moment the two nearly-identical halflings regard each other, the air between them cold with tension. Santo looks away and nods to one of his retinue, who casts detect evil (negative) and detect magic (whoa!) and whispers the results to Santo.
Dranko, who’s seen detect magic cast enough times to know what’s going on, takes off the ring that prevents the spell from working on him. The halfling caster’s eyes go wide again, and he amends his whispered report.
“They’re not kidding about the Uncrossable Sea,” says Dranko, barely managing not to smirk.
Santo sits up straighter. “So, what brought you from Dir-Tolia to our part of the world?”
Morningstar, already uncomfortable with this whole meeting, essentially dictates Ernie’s response to that one over the mind-link.
“We had a mission,” says Ernie, “and we succeeded, but as a result of that mission we ended up somewhere we didn’t expect. Now we’re trying to get back.”
“There’s a vast gulf we have to cross, and we don’t know how to do it yet,” adds Dranko.
“We’re very far from home,” says Ernie. “I’m sorry if we worry you, and we’ll go if we’re causing any sort of problem.”
Santo sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “No, you’re not causing a problem... yet. You’ve caused me some worry, though, I admit. The Emperor has tried to set traps for me before.”
“I can tell you that we’re no friends of the Emperor,” says Ernie.
“So they’ve heard of him in Dir-Tolia, then?”
“We’ve heard of him,” sighs Ernie, “and done nothing but try to stop his plans and schemes for years.”
Santo leans forward again. “So, Ernest. You really don’t have any idea why we look like identical twins?”
Ernie shifts nervously in his chair, but answers truthfully. “I think we might be distantly related.”
“Given that there is – present company perhaps excluded – no travel between the Isles of Charagan and the lands beyond the Uncrossable Sea, how do you suppose that we are related?”
“I’m not sure,” says Ernie.
Santo stands suddenly. “Right then. I’d like you to come to Greenshire with me. I need to return there, and I’m not done with you yet. It’s just a few hours’ travel from here.”
“Do you want the rest of my companions to come?” asks Ernie.
“I’d be interested in meeting them.. Yes, they may all come. It’s still early and we can be in Greenshire before sundown.”
After the others have left the tavern, and only Santo and Ernie remain, Santo leans in and whispers.
“Ernest, I appreciate that you have secrets to keep. But I know there is a connection between us, more than us being ‘distant relatives.’ I’m not quite prepared to tell you how I know that. I also have secrets. Perhaps we will talk about it back in my home village, in private.”
Ernie nods, and they go out.
* *
The group that marches down the road to Greenshire consists of Kibi, Ernie, Flicker, Dranko, Santo, about twenty mounted halfling soldiers, and a half-dozen dwarves. Dranko glances down at the dwarf nearest the front of the group, and his blood goes cold. He has seen this dwarf before – dead and embalmed in a tomb not far from where they currently walk. He relays this to the others mentally.
“That’s creepy,” says Morningstar.
The dwarf, deep in his own thoughts, doesn’t notice for a few moments that Dranko is staring. When he does, he stares back for a second before grunting, “I’m Hurthin. Hurthin Hammersmith.”
Dranko pauses for a second; will a dwarf recognize an orcish name? Ernie jumps into the gap.
“Ernest Roundhill, at your service.”
He bows, and Hurthin nods.
“Where are you from?” asks Kibi.
“It’s a long story. Karth, originally.”
“Hey!” says Dranko. “I almost got blow up once by Karthian Oil!”
“How’d you get your hands on Karthian Oil?” asks Hurthin.
“I didn’t. Someone was trying to blow me up.”
Hurthin frowns. “You know that stuff has been outlawed for decades.”
He says nothing as they walk a few more paces. Then, sounding solemn, Hurthin tells them, “It’s been twenty-seven years since I’ve been in Karth.”
“Why so long?” asks Dranko.
Hurthin doesn’t answer for a long minute. “To make a long story short, we paid for our rebellious ways, and I’m one of the lucky few who got out alive.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” says Ernie.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” grumbles Hurthin. But under his breath, he adds, “Damned Emperor and his damned air demons.”
Flashback to several years ago. Kay, in her old home in Cyric, becomes aware of the meaning of the elvish poem her mother sang to her as a child. The next to last verse goes as follows:
In the days of our slavery, we slew with the Warlord,
Bound like our spirits were bound, and the Dwarves fell before us.
The Hammer drove us to fight, even as it fell upon the earth-folk;
Though we were weak beneath the earth, the Warlord’s Maul gave us the strength of death.
The verse is about the Yrimpa – air spirits.
Ernie thinks to the others: “The Emperor enslaved the Yrimpa and made them kill the dwarves, remember?”
Everyone does.
* *
By agreement, the remainder of the party meets Santo’s group on a flat stretch of road halfway to Greenshire. Snokas, with his unmistakably half-orcish features, agrees to have his hands tied behind him, as if he were a prisoner. That will avoid awkward questions later.
Snokas is miffed that Dranko (looking like a halfling thanks to his robe of blending) doesn’t require similar treatment. Dranko smirks and offers to hold Snokas’s rope.
“Hey,” he jests. “I can scratch my head. Can you?”
“No, but I can kick you in the junk,” replies Snokas with a snort. “They haven’t tied my feet, you know.”
Dranko takes a few steps back.
After three hours of walking, Ernie starts to recognize some coarse terrain features, and realizes that Greenshire must be built on the same land as Dingman’s Ferry. They crest a final hill, and a large halfling town spreads out before them. It’s easily ten times larger than the Dingman’s Ferry he knows.
Atop the hill, Ernie’s belt of stability – Cranchus’s Gift – starts to tingle and grow warm. Next to him, Santo brings his hands swiftly to his head as if stricken by a sudden pain, but he shakes it off and makes nothing of it.
“My belt’s tingling,” says Ernie over the mind-link.
“So that’s why you’re smiling,” says Dranko.
“Does Yoba know?” asks Flicker.
“For crying out loud, people! It’s my belt, not my shorts!”
“I’m shutting down the telepathic bond in five seconds if this doesn’t stop,” warns Morningstar.
Greenshire has a distinctly militaristic feel to it, with guards and soldiers in particularly high numbers. When Ernie comments, Santo answers simply: “orcs.”
The tingling of Ernie’s golden belt grows stronger as they enter the town, and grows stronger still as they march down a wide cobblestone street. As they draw even with a side-street, Ernie looks down it and into a large plaza past the far end. There’s a statue there, and though he can’t make out any details, he feels a powerful jolt from the belt as he looks at it. He shares this revelation over the mind-link, and Dranko asks:
“Hey! Who’s that statue of down there?”
Santo looks embarrassed as he answers, “That’s me. I couldn’t stop them. There was a battle many years ago, and we won, and they insisted on building that statue. Funny, now that I think of it, it looks a lot like Ernie here.”
As they pass the side-street, the feeling in the belt start to fade a bit.
“Don’t you see?” thinks Dranko excitedly. “The belt starts and stops here! It never actually gets created. It came back with us, and now it goes on the statue so we can find it in the future.”
“Then how can it be “Cranchus’s Gift” if it never actually got created?” asks Morningstar.
“We don’t have to leave it,” insists Aravis. “Ernie already has it. We’re an anomaly here!”
Santo leaves the Company outside under the guard of his soldiers, while he goes into Greenshire’s large town hall. Twenty minutes later he comes back out.
“I have a place we can go and talk.”
To Ernie alone, in a quiet voice, he adds: “Is there anything I might tell you that you wouldn’t want your friends to hear?”
Ernie shakes his head.
The group heads back toward the plaza with the statue, and Ernie’s belt start to grow warmer again. This time their route takes them along the edge of the plaza itself, and Ernie feels an actual physical pull on the belt, as if it were a lodestone attracted to an iron block. Santo looks at him quizzically, then stumbles and almost drops to his knees. Just as quickly he stands straight, and stares at Ernie for a second before walking on.
“I wonder if the statue is magical,” thinks Kibi.
“Cranchus could still be alive here,” thinks Ernie. “He could have given the belt to Santo.”
Kibi perks up at the thought of meeting Cranchus. Yes, they’re a long way in the past, but Abernathy lived to be 900, and dwarves as a rule live longer than humans.
Dranko wonders what would happen if he were to carve something on the statue, right underneath where they found the gold circlet back in the future. They know that when they found it, there was no such carving. He speculates that he’ll suddenly remember things differently. Aravis disagrees; he thinks Dranko will be unable to carve anything, even if he tries.
Ernie resists the pull of the belt, and once again its warmth grows less as they move away from the statue. A few minutes later they arrive at a large non-descript building. Santo knocks, gives a password, and they are admitted into a stone edifice whose interior seems mostly to be one large meeting room. Only three halflings and Hurthin accompany Santo; the rest of his entourage wait outside. The halflings and dwarves sit in chairs, while the large folk sit on the floor. More food and drink is brought in.
“So,” says Santo, when everyone is comfortable. “Am I going to get anywhere trying to get more information out of you?”
“No,” says Aravis simply.
“Are you withholding information because you don’t trust me? Or because you promised someone you wouldn’t tell?”
“No,” says Dranko.
For a few minutes Santo grills the Company about the Emperor, but on that subject they really don’t have much to divulge. Finally Dranko says, “Listen, are you ok with most of your friends leaving, so it’s just you and the dwarf?”
“Ernie said that there was nothing I could tell him that he wouldn’t mind the rest of you hearing. He and you are very close, yes? I feel the same way about those in this room. These four are my loyal and close friends. What you can tell me, you can tell them. If you swear them to secrecy, they will keep your secrets.”
Morningstar doesn’t like that, and reminds the others that the Sharshun can read minds. But Ernie opts for trust.
“The Emperor’s actions do not just concern the here and now. He has used his sorcerous minions, the Sharshun, and powerful magics to try to affect other places and other times. If we tell you too much, that might cause the Emperor to win.”
“You’re saying that Naloric has a plan, but the simple act of telling me what that plan is may cause him to succeed? Is that right?”
“Yep,” says Ernie. “That’s what I’m saying.”
Santo rubs his temples, and takes a long drink of water.
“Fine. It’s clear that there are things you are highly reluctant to say, but not because you don’t trust me. Rather, you fear some greater evil that will befall if you talk. Fine. I’ll ask questions, then, and you answer as much as you can.
“Do you know about the Black Mirrors?”
“The ones that flash?” asks Ernie.
“Yes, those. What do you feel you can tell me about them?”
Ernie glances at Aravis before answering. “They’re a magical convergence of some kind. Powered by Earth Magic. We don’t know how they work.”
“What is Earth Magic?” asks Santo.
“Wild Magic,” says Dranko. “Dwarf Magic.”
Hurthin clears his throat. “Santo, it’s a crock. Dwarves don’t do magic. You know that.”
Kibi opens his mouth to protest, but Santo saves him the trouble.
“Hurthin, I don’t think the normal rules of things apply to these people. Speaking of which...” and he turns back to the Company. “... are you really from across the Uncrossable Sea?”
“We come from a very different place,” says Aravis. “We came through the Black Mirrors. They’re a portal.”
“You can cross the Sea using the Black Mirrors?”
“No, not really.”
“Then where does it go?”
“Nowhere,” says Aravis, straight-faced.
“Have you had anyone come through the Black Mirrors yet?”
“Like a woman named Moirel?” adds Ernie. “Please tell my friends she wasn’t eaten.”
Santo fixes Ernie with an intense stare.
“Why do you ask about a woman?”
“Because....um... we’ve heard of a woman having traveled through them.”
“You’ve seen her, haven’t you?” says Dranko. “How long ago was it?”
“About twenty years,” says Santo.
“She came through then!” exclaims Ernie. “With the Eyes!”
“Eyes?” asks Santo. “Would you be talking about seven colored gems, rotating around her head?”
“That would be them,” says Grey Wolf.
“I’ll tell you,” says Santo. “It was twenty-one years ago. The Mirrors flash once a year, as I’m sure you know. It is somewhat a tradition among the young and impetuous among our people...”
“... to run out into them when they flash,” finishes Ernie.
Santo nods, smiling. “I had been running the Mirrors for several years. The year I saw her, I was the only one who ran. I thought I saw a ghost, which had never before happened. I saw a woman inside the bright lights. She had seven small colored gems around her head, in an orbit. I was young, and impetuous, and... well, I thought I’d try to take one. I reached out and tried to touch the orange one. I woke some hours later with a pounding headache. The halflings who were watching had seen nothing. Ever since then, I have... felt... something.”
“Did she ever show up?” asks Dranko.
“No. I thought I must have dreamed her. But that feeling has been in the back of my mind ever since. The very nature of my being had been changed, though I didn’t know how.”
Santo’s voice has been rising through the story, and he looks straight at Ernie as he finishes.
“Over the years the feeling has subsided but has never gone away completely. But today I feel it as strongly as I did the day I reached out for those gemstones. That feeling is coming from you, Ernest. I felt it when you first looked down on Greenshire. I felt it when you stood near my statue. And here you are, a relative I’ve never seen or heard of, unable to tell me anything specific, and you look exactly like me. Why. Is. That?!
Ernie looks imploringly at Aravis and Morningstar.
“In for a penny,” sighs Aravis. But he holds up his hand to stop Ernie from answering, and says to Santo, “We fear word of our visit will get back to the Emperor.”
“I doubt that will happen,” says Santo. “We are beneath his notice. To him, we are just playthings for his orcs.”
“What kind of creature is the Emperor, anyway?” asks Dranko.
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen him. But I’ve heard the story of his father, Hagdan – King Hagdan the Just. A couple hundred years ago, I’ve read, King Hagdan of Harkran was seemingly overnight transformed. He was a good man, running the kingdom wisely. The next morning he was a monster, larger, changed in some way. From that moment on, he sought to wage war. And while he was killed by Queen Daynell Kalkas, his son Naloric took up his reign. Naloric was like his father, I hear, and his armies have since conquered all of the Charagan Islands.”
“Why didn’t anyone overthrow him?” asks Dranko.
“Not for lack of trying.,” says Santo.
Hurthin speaks up. “The dwarves tried. Not long after they conquered Karth, we rebelled, and had our independence for about twenty more years. Then... the air demons came. Don’t know where they came from or what they were, but I’ve never seen anything so horrible in my life.”
Ernie hands the belt of stability to Santo. “Have you ever seen this before?”
Santo’s reaction is unusual. Instead of taking the belt from Ernie, he flinches back. “So strong,” he says. He leans forward and takes the golden circlet with a trembling hand. As he grips it, as both he and Ernie hold Cranchus’s gift, his eyes grow wide with wonder.
“It goes on the statue, doesn’t it,” he says. “It’s what I’ve been feeling all these years. It goes on the statue.”
And as Santo speaks these words, Ernie hears in his mind the sound of waves crashing upon the shore, and the scent of brine fills his nostrils. His heart is at peace, his promise to Brechen fulfilled at last.
You are charged to look to your own safety, to let wisdom always guide you through the dangers life will set at your feet. For in your veins, and no other’s, runs the true blood of a Wilburforce, and thus a link to the past is forged. Do not let that life-blood be spilt without reason! For before all is done, you must wear the circle, and you will come full circle, and only then can the Circle be broken. Promise to do your utmost to keep this appointment, as your part in bringing back the life of Isabel Horn.
“I thought I’d always have that promise,” says Ernie. “But now I’ve come full circle.”
...to be continued...
Last edited:
Ashrum the Black
Explorer
Sagiro, just wanted to say thanks for all the hard work on this wonderful story hour, and to let you know you forgot to update the threads title with the new date.
-Ashrum
-Ashrum
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