Meanwhile...

Meanwhile...

The return from the Sea of Mana was rushed and chaotic. Everyone arrived, through two portals, to the craggy landscape where they started. Scant days earlier, the strangely delicate crystals had been growing out of the rocky ground, forced through by blockages in the ley-lines. A side effect of the plan, masterminded by Asumit, to draw in a creature of the void and create a dark god of undoing, the Unraveler. This was thwarted, at great cost including the lives of two of the members and painful injuries to the rest.

One does not swim the Sea of Mana lightly.

Even hovering over it on disintegrating islands of substantiality can prove dangerous. Of those who returned, Cesran, Seldan, Serene and Griva were the worst off. The participation in the ritual to re-enact the sealing of the void involved capturing and directing tremendous magical energy through their bodies to focus on the ritual. Even with the grace of the divine Eluna, it was painful and overwhelming. Karelin and Aya suffered less, comparatively, focusing on physical attacks on the creature. While also injured, the Unraveller simply destroying Karelin's weapon, these were more of an existential fraying.

Cryosanthia seemed relatively unscathed despite participating in both the ritual and direct attacks on the malestrom of chaos. The full awakening of her draconic heritage, her transformation, and the light of Eluna and the Mantel of Maugrim appeared to protect her. The power raged through her like a river, her fury in the fight was intense and worthy of her Dark Dragonfather.

She crashed hard, the ultimate adrenaline drop combined with a surfeit of magical energy that had no where to expend itself except on her tortured insides. The immense white dragon was laid low, pleading for aid and rest, emitting bright blue Cherenkov radiation from her many highlight scales. She resembled a puzzle, coming apart; she resembled her other-self, blackness leaking from her cracks. Too close to the void whirlpool when it broke apart, she was the first filter straining its pollution from the sea and filling up with it.

Spells were ineffective. Cesran's Dispell Magic and Mage's Disjunction did not return Cryosanthia to her Sith'makar self. Serene's acquire affliction appeared to do nothing. The only result was gasps of pain and surges of semi-consciousness where Cryo struggled to respond. Even a floating disk made her flinch at the contact. Too big to move and in too much pain from the spells, the decision to keep her here was reluctantly made. The survivors were impaired as well, but not so much something couldn't be done. Mage's Magic Mansion was cast, and Cesran stayed the duration. If she hadn't healed enough when it expired, he would gate her to Am'shere and their experts, if she had, a fresh crew with a wagon was coming to pick them up.

Griva and the rest of Guardians of Ea limped back to Alexandria. The next day the gate was necessary.

a guard waits...

A wagon was sent. At least, the request for one was with the highest priority. This traveled through the chain of command, was stamped for immediate action and delivered down to a supply sergeant in the vehicles department. He was career guard who had always strived to get out of the way when leading, following, or doing that was an option. Wagon Master was his official title, but he felt unfairly elevated to that, disliking the responsibility.

The request for a wagon for a dragon reached him. He considered it with distaste. He was a guard, and only wanted to fulfill that role. Guarding wagons was acceptable, signing them out to someone a necessary evil for a position that kept him out of the way. This order would involve risk, leaving the city, interacting with people and things. He was a Guard, dammit, not 'Pest Control', if the dragon was alive nor 'Garbage Collector', if it wasn't. He pondered the order, the location and distance was clear, there was no opportunity for confusion there. A crucial detail was missing.

'How big is the dragon?'

He wrote this on the order and sent it back. He had faith in the system, it would be a long time before he got his answer. In the meantime the problem might take care of itself. The dragon might move away, if it was living, or be parts-out and sold off, if it wasn't. He settled in to wait, and wait, and wait some more while all of Cryosanthia's friends who were concerned about her thought her situation had been handled, that one of the other survivors was on top of it, or perhaps her mate.

No one was aware that her magical supersaturation would cause so many problems for her healers. That it was making spells cast around her more powerful, random. An attempt to drain some of this energy triggered the last spell successfully cast on her, gating her back to where she started.

No one was aware she had managed to drop right through the hole at the centre of all the overlapping concerns.

and a promise is broken.

A promise is a fickle thing. For some, they are given as freely as breaths and just as quickly forgotten. For others, they are miserly squeezed out with great reluctance, maybe only one in a lifetime, but more enduring than the iron spine of the world. Where does a mother's promise to her child fall against these benchmarks? It depends on the mother and the child. Between a mother who has lost one of her own to a child bereft of her parents it might challenge the strong end of the spectrum. Heaven and Earth might blink first against the intensity of that will.

'I will never abandon you. I'm coming back. I promise.'

The lone adventurer stands at the threshold, a little flower lost in a hard place of stone. The call has come. A week of anxiety, those closest mouthing mollifying phrases, don't worry, it will be fine, be patient. She's worried. It isn't fine. She has the impatience of youth. Something has gone wrong. No one is answering.

Her sword is strapped to her side, a gift from her aunt. A family heirloom, the weapon of her great-uncle, a well worn blade, with a smooth handle that fits the palm and an oaken heart. It will not break, generations protect generations. She holds a crossbow almost as large as she is, a gift from the God of War and her mother. It is a strange brass device, with an uncharacteristic reddish hue and a trigger more complicated than it needs to be, but marginally better from the excess. She has one bolt, scrounged from another aunt. It will do, she will have no time to reload. She has a choice, to smear the tip with poison that will kill or merely paralyze.

Not yet past the threshold and already she is weighing the weight of life. The abstract becomes more real. She has never faced this question before. One might save her, the other annoy, and the monsters here are large. There is a ball of compassion at her core. She could pop it like a soap bubble, but would it ever reform? A stranger or me, my body or my soul. She finds she's unwilling to inflict the feelings on another that she's feeling now. A paralytic then, and hope to be clever.

She wears a tan leather dress, fashioned by hand by her mother and augmented with sections of her armour. Her legs are bare, as are her arms. Her head also, but she knows it's hard. She'd like a shield but has too many things to carry. Too much to juggle in combat. A crossbow and sword will be enough. In her small pack she has lunch, apples grabbed from the fruit bowl. She has her toolkit, her harmonica, and the strange toy from her magic uncle elf. A toy is a frivolous thing, she knows, but it's comforting to squeeze. She also realizes on some level that a trade will be required, she must give something to get something back. So, a toy for her mother.

It will actually be her innocence.

She steps alone through the doorway, surrounded by her family. She descends into the valley. With each step the wild is left behind and the tamed is entered. Walls spring up, impossibly high, shaped with unnatural, euclidean geometry and sharp, precise angles. She creeps along the sprawling roads, blinding sun reflecting off blinding cobblestones, crouched in the corner against a surface as sooth as a knife cut. She moves doorway to doorway, each towering three times her height above her. She can't linger, to do so would provoke an angry explosion of monsters. One does not linger on thresholds.

Shelter to shelter, building to building, the familiar sounds of bug and birds, leaves on trees, fade and are replaced with a murmur of voices and the rattle of industry. Louder it grows, overwhelming, coming from all sides and masking footfalls. This is when they pounce. Her eyes can't be everywhere, but she tries, squinting into the sunshine. Figures loom, unsettlingly tall, hazy, sun-frayed silhouettes with voices too high and too fast. Most ignore her, how often does one stop to have a meaningful conversation with a worm. A few give a startled cry, a sound of alarm, prompting her to scuttle as fast as her feet will carry her. There are many holes around and under their massive constructs and she fits easily through them.

Finally her destination is in sight. A sprawling emptiness filled with edifices that could each be their own mountain. They stretch up to the sky, casting long shadows that reach towards her. Indistinct shapes move between them, occupied with unknowable tasks. There are screams, the clink of metal, the jingle of coins, the closing of locks. There are no door-stoops to hide beside, no corners, nothing living. This is not a place for flowers, and even the weeds that squeeze between the cracks are stunted and crushed. She will be exposed, completely. She stands in the last shreds of her comfort and steels herself, hands tightening on her crossbow.

Like a bolt, she shoots across the petrified plaza, head down and running full out. Her breathing is heavy, the eerie grid of gashes rolls towards her as she dashes towards the greatest of the cyclopaedian complexes. Blurry figures pass by her vision in her flight, and she darts up the impossibly wide steps to the twisted temple.

It is to a god she knows, but one warped beyond her recognition. Stretched tall, limbs bend to awkward angles, pieces missing and a face so flat it must have been chipped away, this familiar deity has been warped into the image of monsters, into the image of the indistinct pillars that occupy this eternal structure. Here and there, unaltered imagery remains, unnervingly familiar in this place of terror.

A shining mass of entity stands prominent and stationary. She approaches with great reluctance. She holds forth her mystical butterfly, the time to sacrifice for her desire has come. She waves it, begs for her bounty, shouting so her words will reach lofty ears.

The response is a low grumbling, a nerve-wracking pat on the head. She understands completely, she must stand and stay. The mass of reflections vanishes, flashing into the distance. She waits, as indistinct shapes flow past her like she's a rock in a river. The reflections return.

With it comes a mass of cerulean, one known to her, familiar in form, the image of the great god she follows, garbed in white. She hugs herself around a cold, unfeeling gem that is one of his limbs, clutching at the crystal. She looks all the way up, filling in what she can't see in the blinding light with her memory. She has reached safety, the lowest point, the dragon in the cave. Pressing tight, holding on, she makes her plea.

"Wheresss Ssassa?"

!

Cherenkov radiation
https://tinyurl.com/bas36wyd