Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 354
Swan Song
Knowing that a confrontation with Octesian cannot wait much longer, Morningstar visits Previa that evening at the temple. They exchange pleasantries for a few minutes, catching up on each other’s’ lives. Previa seems tense, which is not unexpected given the coming dangers.
“I was a rock for a while,” says Morningstar, as she tells her friend as much as she can about the assault on Moirel’s castle.
“You appear to have gotten better,” says Previa, wincing. “Or at least, you’re looking more yourself.” She pauses, then adds, “Your life is very strange.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” says Morningstar. “And I had to do it, for the time stop to work.”
“You can stop time?”
Morningstar laughs. “Aravis and Kibi can . Dranko can too, because of the tentacles in his head.”
Previa doesn’t laugh. Instead she grows intensely pale.
“That’s… interesting,” she says, her voice catching a bit. “And not in a good way. Our investigations into the murders – Octesian’s murders – have included though captures cast both in Dream and the waking world. Every single person who has been killed, died in the same way. In their dreams, they all had… had tentacles jammed down their throats. And you say that… your husband has magical powers he has gained due to tentacles? I don’t mean to offend, but have you been… keeping tabs on him all this time?”
“It may be the same source,” says Morningstar, “but I’m sure it’s not Dranko.”
“All the same,” says Previa, “you may want to make sure he’s not doing anything he can’t remember afterward. I’m not saying that it’s him, of course, but it’s just a strange coincidence that you mention it.”
Dranko, like the rest of the party, is listening to all of this over the mind-link, and comments, “Octesian is mad. Remember, he went looking for the Adversary in the Far Realms.”
Morningstar explains to Previa about Octesian’s powers and motivations. “It’s all part of the enemy’s plot,” she says. “To bring back the Adversary.”
“So he went to the… the Far Realms, and acquired some tentacles, and now he’s using them to suffocate people?”
“Looks that way.”
“But there’s still no connection that we can see among all the people he’s murdered. What’s his motivation?”
“We don’t know,” says Morningstar, “but it’s possibly he’s just trying to get my attention.”
“Then what will you do?” Previa asks. “How will you find him?”
Grey Wolf makes a suggestion over the mind-link. “We could send Dranko out to scout. After all, he and Octesian have something in common.”
“You mean like a Dream Goat?” says Ernie. They can hear his smirk. “Or Dream Chum?”
“I do not approve!” Dranko protests. But there’s actually something to the idea after all, and after Morningstar finishes her debriefing with Previa (learning that the Dream Team grows stronger and more proficient every night), the Company gathers back at the Greenhouse. Morningstar casts dream anchor and brings the entire party into Ava Dormo, directly outside the Greenhouse door.
Everyone looks at Dranko, expectantly and little nervously. He himself is not entirely sure what he’s supposed to do, but he takes a deep breath and focuses his will inward, on the black source of his tentacular nature. He prods the soft, juicy core of madness that was placed there by the creature from the Far Realms, and it’s like touching the skin above a deep bruise. Deep inside his mind is that unspeakable, unknowable horror that he dares not dwell upon.
Wincing, he lets loose the madness that surrounds that place of horrors in his brain, casting it outward, a nascent insanity loosed upon the Dream. The others, watching, think that maybe, just maybe, they detect something squirming beneath the skin of his face.
“It’s just a dream,” Grey Wolf mutters to himself. “It’s just a dream.”
He and the rest feel waves of utter wrongness rolling out from Dranko, as the half-orc extends his mad senses into Ava Dormo. He need not extend them far.
“He has been here!” Dranko exclaims. “Right here, or somewhere very nearby. And recently! Octesian has been trying to gain access to the Greenhouse.”
“Perhaps as Morningstar says,” says Aravis, “he has been trying to attract our attention.”
Dranko’s voice is slow, wavering, layered with irrational overtones. “His very presence distorts the nature of the dream. The dream is a heavy sheet, and Octesian was like a heavy weight, that distorts the fabric even after he’s gone.”
But Dranko, even casting his turbulent mental net farther afield, cannot sense where Octesian is now. And Morningstar doesn’t want a confrontation here anyway, not without her dream warriors.
“Come back, Dranko,” she says.
With an effort, Dranko reels in his violated psyche and regains his senses. When he sees the others regarding him with revulsion, he assures them, “All the squirmy bits have been pushed behind the door, and the door has been closed.”
Morningstar creates a black triangle of stone the size of book, and wills words to appear on its surface. Octesian, I am looking for you. She drops it on the ground outside the Greenhouse door. Dranko wants to chalk some rude graffiti directed toward Octesian on the walls of the Greenhouse, but is voted down.
/*/
Morningstar takes her friends to one more stop while still in Ava Dormo – the temple there in Tal Hae. There are always sisters on watch, and she finds Obsidia there, training with Leona and Raven – three of Morningstar’s thirteen-woman strike team.
“Morningstar!” Obsidia exclaims. “What a surprise!” Raven and Leona say nothing, but are awed to be in Morningstar’s presence.
“We’re here following up on something Previa told me,” Morningstar tells her sisters. “Has she told you that the victims who have been dying in dream, have all perished from tentacles pushed down their throats?”
The three Ellish sisters look stricken. “No!” whispers Obsidia. “We haven’t been part of the investigation. Is it some aquatic monster that’s killing people, then?”
“No,” says Morningstar. “I just told Previa this an hour ago, but it’s my old nemesis, Octesian. The one who you’re all training to fight.”
Obsidia looks grim. “We have been training hard,” she says. “And we’ve beaten him once, so we know we can beat him again… though I hope with fewer casualties. Evenstar’s bodyguard, Scola, has progressed beyond any of us – she’s become one of the best fighters I’ve ever seen, and she’s even better in Dream than in the waking world. With you, and Swan, and Scola and Evenstar on our side, I like our chances.”
Morningstar nods, but says nothing.
“Oh, there was one other thing,” says Obsidia, becoming uncharacteristically shy. “I understand you carry a holy Ellish weapon. Can… may I see it?”
Morningstar draws Ell’s Will and hands it to Obsidia, who holds it reverently.
“To be in its presence,” she breathes, “and in yours. It’s just incredible.”
It’s all Morningstar can do not to roll her eyes.
“Dranko,” she says, turning to her husband. “I hate to ask this of you, but can you see if Octesian has been here as well?”
Dranko once again opens his mind to his inner madness and quests about with some ineffable sense. He deduces that Octesian indeed been lurking about the Ellish temple, though not quite as recently as at the Greenhouse.
“But members of our church are here every hour of every day, keeping watch,” says Obsidia. “I think your husband is mistaken.”
Dranko wheels on her. “I’m mistaken about a lot of things. My attractiveness. How funny I am. How good my cigars smell. But I am not mistaken about this.”
To Obsidia, Raven and Leona, Morningstar delivers a stern warning. “It’s going to be soon. I’m going to press him. Have our team ready to fight tomorrow at midnight.”
She leaves a second message for Octesian. I will be at Gohgan’s basement, tomorrow, midnight. She leaves an identical stone next to the first one, back at the Greenhouse.
/*/
That night, asleep in the physical world, Morningstar has a dream. Octesian is there. She finds herself in a nebulous, frustrating state, aware of having the dream as it unfolds, but being unable to affect it. At its deepest level, it is simply an ordinary dream, and only upon waking does she recall it completely. But in other ways, it is far from ordinary.
Octesian appears in front of her, clad in his red mail. His face is covered by his helmet, but tentacles sprout from beneath it, and indeed protrude out from other parts of his armor like corrupted cilia. The scene around them shifts, from the Greenhouse living room, to the Battle of Semek’s Tower, to the basement beneath Gohgan the rug merchant’s shop where the two of them first met.
He speaks, and his voice is both quiet and frantic. His words come stuttering, punctuated with gasping breaths, as if finishing each sentence is causing him pain.
“I met him you know… I went to the… the… d… to the distant place. Where Ava Dormo borders the Great Far Reaches. He… told… told me… to … bide my time. I c…c… couldn’t free him. Not that way. But it doesn’t matter. He t… he told me, he… to… he told me to bide my time. That he would not be trapped for long. His… his time is almost come! He’ll have… he… he’ll have… vv.. his revenge on… Uthol Inga and the rest. But… but before that happens, he… told me to KILL you!”
With this last utterance, his voice rises to a shocking screech. It takes him a few seconds of wheezing breaths to recover before he continues, and there’s a new feverish pitch to his monologue.
“He… told me that... and so I will. I will… he told me… to kill you but… I don’t see anything wrong with…” Morningstar catches a glimpse of something squirming in his mouth. “…anything wrong with… playing with my food before I eat it.”
Octesian pauses here, and cocks his head to one side.
“Excuse me,” he says. He reaches a tentacle into the air and pushes it through a rift in space, as though he’s just parted the fabric of dream like a curtain of opaque silk. The tentacle vanishes into the rift, up to Octesian’s armored shoulder. “I… have to… have to… even the odds a bit.” His voice grows strained, even more gasping, as his tentacle works its unseen business beyond the rift. “I know… know what you are doing, but…but your friends can’t help you. Nnnnngggh! Epsecially not… not… this one! Aaaaaaagggnnn!”
Octesian pulls the tentacle back from the rift, and it’s entirely coated in fresh, steaming blood. Morningstar seethes in frustration. She is there, in some sense, but not one that matters.
“That.. took some doing,” Octesian says, his voice taking on a gleeful, frantic edge. “I didn’t know if it would work from here. It did. It worked. But d… don’t worry. I’ll save killing the rest for when you’re all together, because I want you to see them.. .when it happens to them. They’re not ready. You’re not really ready either… but… they’re not like us.”
He takes a couple of deep, spastic breaths before continuing.
“I’ve seen Him, you know… He told me to kill you. He talked to me. I c… couldn’t… couldn’t breathe. But it doesn’t matter. He’ll be out soon anyway.” He splutters and retches, as though it pains him to recall these memories. “It’s been too long Morningstar, too long since we’ve met in person. But that will happen soon now. You want it, and I want it. It will happen soon.”
He licks the end of the bloody tentacle.
“You’ll just have to do with one fewer. I have to be going now… lots of p… preparations to make. Is it tomorrow at midnight, you said? Down below, in that basement? Did you think of that yourself? You have such a sense of… st… story… and oh, it’ll be a story I’ll be telling for a long time. I’ll tell Him when I see Him again. Goo… goo. Good bye. Oh, and tell your husband…"
And here his voice drops an octave and sounds like it comes from a dozen throats at once.
“…that we all say hello.”
/*/
Morningstar wakes up at that moment, soaked in sweat, recalling her dream in full. A sending has woken her, from Sable, one of her team.
“Morningstar, please come to Kallor. There’s been an incident. Something has happened to Swan.”
…to be continued…
Swan Song
Knowing that a confrontation with Octesian cannot wait much longer, Morningstar visits Previa that evening at the temple. They exchange pleasantries for a few minutes, catching up on each other’s’ lives. Previa seems tense, which is not unexpected given the coming dangers.
“I was a rock for a while,” says Morningstar, as she tells her friend as much as she can about the assault on Moirel’s castle.
“You appear to have gotten better,” says Previa, wincing. “Or at least, you’re looking more yourself.” She pauses, then adds, “Your life is very strange.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” says Morningstar. “And I had to do it, for the time stop to work.”
“You can stop time?”
Morningstar laughs. “Aravis and Kibi can . Dranko can too, because of the tentacles in his head.”
Previa doesn’t laugh. Instead she grows intensely pale.
“That’s… interesting,” she says, her voice catching a bit. “And not in a good way. Our investigations into the murders – Octesian’s murders – have included though captures cast both in Dream and the waking world. Every single person who has been killed, died in the same way. In their dreams, they all had… had tentacles jammed down their throats. And you say that… your husband has magical powers he has gained due to tentacles? I don’t mean to offend, but have you been… keeping tabs on him all this time?”
“It may be the same source,” says Morningstar, “but I’m sure it’s not Dranko.”
“All the same,” says Previa, “you may want to make sure he’s not doing anything he can’t remember afterward. I’m not saying that it’s him, of course, but it’s just a strange coincidence that you mention it.”
Dranko, like the rest of the party, is listening to all of this over the mind-link, and comments, “Octesian is mad. Remember, he went looking for the Adversary in the Far Realms.”
Morningstar explains to Previa about Octesian’s powers and motivations. “It’s all part of the enemy’s plot,” she says. “To bring back the Adversary.”
“So he went to the… the Far Realms, and acquired some tentacles, and now he’s using them to suffocate people?”
“Looks that way.”
“But there’s still no connection that we can see among all the people he’s murdered. What’s his motivation?”
“We don’t know,” says Morningstar, “but it’s possibly he’s just trying to get my attention.”
“Then what will you do?” Previa asks. “How will you find him?”
Grey Wolf makes a suggestion over the mind-link. “We could send Dranko out to scout. After all, he and Octesian have something in common.”
“You mean like a Dream Goat?” says Ernie. They can hear his smirk. “Or Dream Chum?”
“I do not approve!” Dranko protests. But there’s actually something to the idea after all, and after Morningstar finishes her debriefing with Previa (learning that the Dream Team grows stronger and more proficient every night), the Company gathers back at the Greenhouse. Morningstar casts dream anchor and brings the entire party into Ava Dormo, directly outside the Greenhouse door.
Everyone looks at Dranko, expectantly and little nervously. He himself is not entirely sure what he’s supposed to do, but he takes a deep breath and focuses his will inward, on the black source of his tentacular nature. He prods the soft, juicy core of madness that was placed there by the creature from the Far Realms, and it’s like touching the skin above a deep bruise. Deep inside his mind is that unspeakable, unknowable horror that he dares not dwell upon.
Wincing, he lets loose the madness that surrounds that place of horrors in his brain, casting it outward, a nascent insanity loosed upon the Dream. The others, watching, think that maybe, just maybe, they detect something squirming beneath the skin of his face.
“It’s just a dream,” Grey Wolf mutters to himself. “It’s just a dream.”
He and the rest feel waves of utter wrongness rolling out from Dranko, as the half-orc extends his mad senses into Ava Dormo. He need not extend them far.
“He has been here!” Dranko exclaims. “Right here, or somewhere very nearby. And recently! Octesian has been trying to gain access to the Greenhouse.”
“Perhaps as Morningstar says,” says Aravis, “he has been trying to attract our attention.”
Dranko’s voice is slow, wavering, layered with irrational overtones. “His very presence distorts the nature of the dream. The dream is a heavy sheet, and Octesian was like a heavy weight, that distorts the fabric even after he’s gone.”
But Dranko, even casting his turbulent mental net farther afield, cannot sense where Octesian is now. And Morningstar doesn’t want a confrontation here anyway, not without her dream warriors.
“Come back, Dranko,” she says.
With an effort, Dranko reels in his violated psyche and regains his senses. When he sees the others regarding him with revulsion, he assures them, “All the squirmy bits have been pushed behind the door, and the door has been closed.”
Morningstar creates a black triangle of stone the size of book, and wills words to appear on its surface. Octesian, I am looking for you. She drops it on the ground outside the Greenhouse door. Dranko wants to chalk some rude graffiti directed toward Octesian on the walls of the Greenhouse, but is voted down.
/*/
Morningstar takes her friends to one more stop while still in Ava Dormo – the temple there in Tal Hae. There are always sisters on watch, and she finds Obsidia there, training with Leona and Raven – three of Morningstar’s thirteen-woman strike team.
“Morningstar!” Obsidia exclaims. “What a surprise!” Raven and Leona say nothing, but are awed to be in Morningstar’s presence.
“We’re here following up on something Previa told me,” Morningstar tells her sisters. “Has she told you that the victims who have been dying in dream, have all perished from tentacles pushed down their throats?”
The three Ellish sisters look stricken. “No!” whispers Obsidia. “We haven’t been part of the investigation. Is it some aquatic monster that’s killing people, then?”
“No,” says Morningstar. “I just told Previa this an hour ago, but it’s my old nemesis, Octesian. The one who you’re all training to fight.”
Obsidia looks grim. “We have been training hard,” she says. “And we’ve beaten him once, so we know we can beat him again… though I hope with fewer casualties. Evenstar’s bodyguard, Scola, has progressed beyond any of us – she’s become one of the best fighters I’ve ever seen, and she’s even better in Dream than in the waking world. With you, and Swan, and Scola and Evenstar on our side, I like our chances.”
Morningstar nods, but says nothing.
“Oh, there was one other thing,” says Obsidia, becoming uncharacteristically shy. “I understand you carry a holy Ellish weapon. Can… may I see it?”
Morningstar draws Ell’s Will and hands it to Obsidia, who holds it reverently.
“To be in its presence,” she breathes, “and in yours. It’s just incredible.”
It’s all Morningstar can do not to roll her eyes.
“Dranko,” she says, turning to her husband. “I hate to ask this of you, but can you see if Octesian has been here as well?”
Dranko once again opens his mind to his inner madness and quests about with some ineffable sense. He deduces that Octesian indeed been lurking about the Ellish temple, though not quite as recently as at the Greenhouse.
“But members of our church are here every hour of every day, keeping watch,” says Obsidia. “I think your husband is mistaken.”
Dranko wheels on her. “I’m mistaken about a lot of things. My attractiveness. How funny I am. How good my cigars smell. But I am not mistaken about this.”
To Obsidia, Raven and Leona, Morningstar delivers a stern warning. “It’s going to be soon. I’m going to press him. Have our team ready to fight tomorrow at midnight.”
She leaves a second message for Octesian. I will be at Gohgan’s basement, tomorrow, midnight. She leaves an identical stone next to the first one, back at the Greenhouse.
/*/
That night, asleep in the physical world, Morningstar has a dream. Octesian is there. She finds herself in a nebulous, frustrating state, aware of having the dream as it unfolds, but being unable to affect it. At its deepest level, it is simply an ordinary dream, and only upon waking does she recall it completely. But in other ways, it is far from ordinary.
Octesian appears in front of her, clad in his red mail. His face is covered by his helmet, but tentacles sprout from beneath it, and indeed protrude out from other parts of his armor like corrupted cilia. The scene around them shifts, from the Greenhouse living room, to the Battle of Semek’s Tower, to the basement beneath Gohgan the rug merchant’s shop where the two of them first met.
He speaks, and his voice is both quiet and frantic. His words come stuttering, punctuated with gasping breaths, as if finishing each sentence is causing him pain.
“I met him you know… I went to the… the… d… to the distant place. Where Ava Dormo borders the Great Far Reaches. He… told… told me… to … bide my time. I c…c… couldn’t free him. Not that way. But it doesn’t matter. He t… he told me, he… to… he told me to bide my time. That he would not be trapped for long. His… his time is almost come! He’ll have… he… he’ll have… vv.. his revenge on… Uthol Inga and the rest. But… but before that happens, he… told me to KILL you!”
With this last utterance, his voice rises to a shocking screech. It takes him a few seconds of wheezing breaths to recover before he continues, and there’s a new feverish pitch to his monologue.
“He… told me that... and so I will. I will… he told me… to kill you but… I don’t see anything wrong with…” Morningstar catches a glimpse of something squirming in his mouth. “…anything wrong with… playing with my food before I eat it.”
Octesian pauses here, and cocks his head to one side.
“Excuse me,” he says. He reaches a tentacle into the air and pushes it through a rift in space, as though he’s just parted the fabric of dream like a curtain of opaque silk. The tentacle vanishes into the rift, up to Octesian’s armored shoulder. “I… have to… have to… even the odds a bit.” His voice grows strained, even more gasping, as his tentacle works its unseen business beyond the rift. “I know… know what you are doing, but…but your friends can’t help you. Nnnnngggh! Epsecially not… not… this one! Aaaaaaagggnnn!”
Octesian pulls the tentacle back from the rift, and it’s entirely coated in fresh, steaming blood. Morningstar seethes in frustration. She is there, in some sense, but not one that matters.
“That.. took some doing,” Octesian says, his voice taking on a gleeful, frantic edge. “I didn’t know if it would work from here. It did. It worked. But d… don’t worry. I’ll save killing the rest for when you’re all together, because I want you to see them.. .when it happens to them. They’re not ready. You’re not really ready either… but… they’re not like us.”
He takes a couple of deep, spastic breaths before continuing.
“I’ve seen Him, you know… He told me to kill you. He talked to me. I c… couldn’t… couldn’t breathe. But it doesn’t matter. He’ll be out soon anyway.” He splutters and retches, as though it pains him to recall these memories. “It’s been too long Morningstar, too long since we’ve met in person. But that will happen soon now. You want it, and I want it. It will happen soon.”
He licks the end of the bloody tentacle.
“You’ll just have to do with one fewer. I have to be going now… lots of p… preparations to make. Is it tomorrow at midnight, you said? Down below, in that basement? Did you think of that yourself? You have such a sense of… st… story… and oh, it’ll be a story I’ll be telling for a long time. I’ll tell Him when I see Him again. Goo… goo. Good bye. Oh, and tell your husband…"
And here his voice drops an octave and sounds like it comes from a dozen throats at once.
“…that we all say hello.”
/*/
Morningstar wakes up at that moment, soaked in sweat, recalling her dream in full. A sending has woken her, from Sable, one of her team.
“Morningstar, please come to Kallor. There’s been an incident. Something has happened to Swan.”
…to be continued…
