Part 8: Chapter Seven: A Warm Place

Chapter Seven: A Warm Place



I hasten to Larapool's inn and return to check with Leila. "Master Brian," she says, "the wind is blowing again. I owe you my hearty thanks. You're indeed a special person." I smile, trying to stay humble. Praise is good for the soul. "In addition to being the protector of this town, I am also a messenger for Epona of Crystal Valley." I've never heard of the place. "Epona is a mysterious person. She can see through anything, and there's nothing she doesn't know. She told me there is something she wishes to tell you. Outside the hotel is the room of the Crystal Well. When you are ready, proceed to the well. I will guide you to Epona."



I follow Leila's directions. Outside the hotel is a small outcropping leading to the stone edifice beneath town square.



I don't recognize this door from wandering around the town. Was it always here, or is it a magical construct?



The cool blue of the room does not take away from the disturbing cold. It feels familiar somehow. Leila has beaten me here; I don't doubt she's been to this room before. Previous attendance in where one wants to go is a necessity of teleportation, its greatest weakness.

"I've been expecting you," Leila said. "Release the protective water and open the road to the sacred Water Crystal Valley. The cavern entrance will appear after the water has subsided. The cavern is very long and the demons numerous, but you must take this route. I have to make sure you are a genuine magician. Epona is waiting in the valley."

"Genuine magician" is a... trade term, you might say. My talents are readily apparent, but my worth as a magician has not yet been proven. I would be no greater than Zelse if I enacted this quest for fame and glory. The path of magic is not just of power, but of enlightenment. A genuine magician, then, is a spirit tamer who has not simply learned spells, but taken their lessons to heart. I wonder how a journey through a cave would test my morality, though...

"All right, please hurry. The water will subside for only a short time. May the spirits watch over you on your way." I thank Leila and hastily leave the room of the well.



The waters that lap against Larapool indeed draw back as I near. The ground is difficult to walk on; I sink near to my knees in the thick mud. I keep up my speed to try and avoid sinking.



Along the way I discover a pair of stray spirits. I take them. They have a strange feel to them, one of a looming dread.



I approach the cavern. The stone here is familiar, and the style is that used by the civilization that lived here during the Coming of Man, the civilization modern Larapool modeled its architecture after. But that feeling pressing against me in the room of the well comes back, and stronger than ever.

It is not until I am through the threshold that I begin to remember.

It is not until I take my first steps in those unnatural caverns and the way behind me closes like a wound do I realize it.

It is a familiar feeling. The same I felt gazing into the hell of water in Glencoe forest.

Epona is testing my worth by sending me to hell.



There are directions. Simple arrows in stone glyphs pointing the way. In hell, I might add--Jahannam, the hell of those who waste life.

I decide to ignore the sign, at first. I took the other path.

Jahannam is empty... save for monsters.



I nickname them "multi-optics." They are assembled from frostbitten flesh and frozen eyes, projecting bolts of cold that burn at a touch. They are not overly threatening, but...



These I call "mimics;" plump slugs that make their homes in old chests. They spray torrents of water from their underbellies, a clammy and polluted mess that burns through me when it hits.



I reach the end of the tangent soon enough.

It is quite familiar.

From this side of the wound I can barely see Glencoe's trees in the still and eternal darkness. There is a stray spirit here.

Must I take it? Deciding it worth the risk, I draw it into my phylactery. I hear a whisper at my ear: "I'll never come back for you."



Obeying the signs brings me to the next fork, and another set of signs. I take the opposite, and find scattered treasures--left by who, I wonder? Perhaps whoever accompanied the thief of the Water Crystal.



The frost-spells of the creatures here can freeze me, leaving me vulnerable to their attacks. Fortunately, my third-rank Wind Cutter is mighty enough to kill anything in range, even creatures behind me.



The crawlers have a weak ice-bolt attack, but the threat of freezing is a worrisome one. I make quick work of them, standing the bite of their high-pressure-water-assisted jaws.



How long have I been walking? The change in scenery, even as slight as an obelisk blocking the path, is enough to fill me with a vague burst of hope that I have not set upon a fool's errand into a hell with no escape. Even the damned may earn their way back to earth as the living dead. Would I be offered such a choice?



Light ahead. Strong. Dare I dream I have escaped Jahannam already?



Of course not.



There is no sound here. Nothing the creatures don't make. Nothing but the echoes of my spells down the vacant walls.

Jahannam is empty.



The halls go on forever. They must. How long has it been since I started walking? I lose sensation in my legs after a while. I must have been walking all day. I... need to rest. In the middle of another featureless hallway, one devoid of monsters, I tie together a simple heating-spell and curl in a corner, marking on the back of a map where I should head when I rest.

When I wake the mark is gone, as if carefully erased.

How long...

must I...

...quiet...

...echoing...

...long...

...empty.

No life here. Only crawling monsters, slithering demons. Not even the voices of the dead for company.

Is this the hell of water? For wasting life, one is denied the presence of life?

I walk, I lose my sense of direction after pitched battles, waste hours going back when I should go forward. After a while I run out of food. I sleep. Again and again and again. I walk until I can't. What year is it?

I speak to myself. My voice is dry, cracked. At times I speak too loudly. At others I can barely hear myself, even in the deafening silence.

Starving, thirsting--I daren't cast a simple-water spell, fearing my reserves of magic tainted by this place--I reach the peak of a crystal hill and realize I don't remember if I climbed up it or am about to descend.

I can't last much longer.

I decide I have climbed it.



I live.



How long ago did I walk that path? How many days--weeks--years? Couldn't be years. Unless time flows strangely in this place, and when I return I will find the world laid to waste under a tyrant-thief.



There is no light at the tunnel's end.



So many paths. But they are easy to navigate, of this I feel blessed; I can see the flickering of stray spirits along the road like matches set in place as torches.



Each spirit is a burst of life in this place. I have left behind the crawlers and the multi-optics and the crystal scorpions--

were there really or was I dreaming in fear?

--and face only the memories of the skull-bats of Cull Hazard.



I am near the end. I must be. Nothing that lives should live with such a thirst.



The final walk is always the longest. I feel my strength waver, bend, and march on in spite of myself. Impossible. But I am, aren't I?

Continuing.

Hell can't be forever. Not if one can repent. Have I been tested? on what? Survival? Stamina? Restraint? I have shown no restraint in collecting the spirits. Have I damned myself from stupid animal need to be stronger?

No. Can't waver. Strength of the earth. I cannot let my legs drop beneath me. Strength of fire. I must carry on, be free of this place. Strength of wind.

I want to live. Strength of water.



and i am through[



everything is blue in this world



walking is strange now; automatic. the spirit calls and i answer.



i ...



strange. feel more together. not whole. whole is a long way away. like i can... converse. i believe.

"So you are Brian? Your reputation grows with every victory. My name is Epona."

i know her name. i let zelse live. but perhaps life is as much a trophy as death. she spies the gem embedded in my stave, hidden by the curl of its head.

"You have the magic jewel, do you not? But only a true magician will be able to use it."

have i passed? was i tested? have i been dreaming? is nothing wrong, and am i dreaming of princesses and great destiny at home?

"It's true, the Eltale Book has been stolen."

of course it's real. hell has left its toothmarks on my soul. for want of finding i am lost. ha!

"A thousand years ago, a great war broke out over possession of the book. But no one knew the truth behind the book's power. No one must ever open the Eltale Book. If its power is released, it will be the end of all we know. That is why the Eltale Book must be recovered and returned to its safekeeping in the monastery."

the day of grief. the new day of grief. what must i...

"Starting from the Stone Circle in the innermost room, go to the Isle of Skye in Loch Kilderey. There you will find the precious stone of the Water Spirit. Ask the sorceress Colleen to let you borrow it."

easy as...

she sends me along my way. i have been stray too long. i must be owned--



nothing here for me. nothing now. though i am asleep, i dream; i dream of blonde hair, a soft face, a warm smile with shark's teeth.



the deepest shade of...



...Ugggh.

I'm more tired than I've ever been in my life. And I have been tired more now than ever in my life.

"Hey, where did you blow in from?" the captain says as I stumble over to him. "It takes a plucky devil to sneak aboard my pirate ship--"

...I wake up some time later, sipping grog. I've not had much alcohol in my life--a little wine at feasts, nothing more--and the low-quality brew mixed with water begun to stagnate is... after Jahannam, it is the nectar of Elysium.

I explain to my savior... or at least whoever Epona delivered me to... that I have been lost underground for days, and only an old and malfunctioning enchantment let me escape. I tell him I'm lucky to be delivered into such fine hands. That last is no lie. I have time to be picky about his profession later, when I'm fed. I ask him the date. It is the same day as I set foot in Jahannam.

"A magician, huh?" Killiac says. "These days the seas are strange. Waves as tall as the mast tossing ships around like corks. How are we pirates going to make a living? We heard there's a sorceress who performs water magic over on the Isle of Skye. Since you are a magician, maybe you can help us get her to calm the sea. Welcome aboard, you can rest in a cabin until we make port."

I take his offer and rest until we make port a day or so later.



There's a spirit in the storage room. Nobody seems to object to me taking it; there is not a single spirit tamer on the ship.



The Isle of Skye awaits me.

I close my eyes and let the salt-scented breeze wash over me; I let the sun beat at my back, hear the pounding of the waves, feel steady, soft, yielding earth beneath my feet.

The world is beautiful.

Next: The queen of lonely spaces.




Chapter Seven Point Five: From a Tavern in Larapool

My Lady of Mercy,

The currents of intelligence are calm for the moment, if the seas rage ever-harder. Whatever Fargo plans for the Fire Ruby, we have yet to see its effects. Perhaps he has refrained from bonding with the Ruby, or perhaps he has incorrectly performed the ritual. We've certainly poisoned the well enough; with foresight as our shield, we may have deflected the disaster the dimming of the fire element may have brought.

In regards to the Water Crystal: its effects are blooming outward at a steady rate, and we are rather hopeless to control it. We can only patch the wounds where we may. Nepty has controlled her gem the longest of the remaining holders and she is in the best possible place to bond with it. The brief spike in demonic possession seems to have been a fluke, some cosmic accident near Larapool; it presently returned to our projected figures and continues to rise. The Merrow are our greatest failure in the campaign. The women they once were are forever gone, as sure as death. Further, being forced to channel untamed spirit magic has damaged their bodies a great deal; their kneeling posture and obsessive chanting are side-effects of casting, and even purging of the possessing spirit does not remove the physical debilitations. The only good news is that only young women are being possessed; if older women, men, and animals are encompassed, we may be witnessing the death of all souls on the earth. Of any eschaton that may be immanentized, the damnation of the Water Crystal must surely be the worst.

We believe that is why the Crystal, alone of the gems, was sealed in a hell and far from normal mortal contact. Further investigation into the matter has revealed our initial suspicions to be true: codename Nepty is the genuine article, the lock of hair recovered from the skirmish confirmed through psychometry to be Nepty's own. We have constructed a fairly complete picture of Nepty's activities in Jahannam from the hair, and they are dire indeed. The record goes back to her participation in the lost expedition to the hell of water. Time passes in a different fashion there; the first few hours roughly correspond to around a month of perceived time, and the longer one is in the hell the longer span of apparent time one is subject to. By the end of Nepty's first hour in Jahannam, she was alone, the rest having fallen to monsters or possession. It seems that any weakness in spirit results in a drawn-out and bitter punishment enacted by the demons dwelling in Jahannam. Only Nepty was of sound moral and mental ability, and survived where the rest fell to increasingly-terrible and often self-inflicted deaths.

From our perspective, Nepty has been missing for roughly twenty-three years. The psychometrist confessed he began to skip over large periods of apparent-time in Nepty's perception after examining only four hours of her actual-time in Jahannam; by then one hour on the earth was equivalent to a century in Jahannam. Twenty-three years alone would drive any man insane; Nepty existed in Jahannam for longer than our universe has existed, far, far longer. Other aspects of her time spent--living despite impossible thirst and hunger, the nurturing of her memories that she never truly grow jaded of her existence, among others--were tailored, of course, to make her experience as terrible as possible. (It is for this reason and others that I request Richard be allowed one month's leave to be with his family; he has experienced Nepty's pain second-hand, and it is a terrible one.)

When she found the Water Crystal somewhere in the labyrinth's depths, she seems to have gained new purpose, and sought an exit. After wandering for cosmic ages, she finally found her way out, and burst through two-and-a-half weeks ago, two days before Fargo and the Lady made their move, three before Solvaring made his, and four before Master Brian set out on his quest. Again, this seems either an enormous and unpleasant coincidence or the result of cosmic tampering, and we cannot be sure which is true.

It must be frustrating to see your eye blinded, my Lady. My heart goes out to you; we are fallible creatures investigating the immortal spheres, not the simple plots of our neighbors, and horribly out of our element. We have made considerable progress in metaphysical studies, though, and we have a little guardian angel who seems deadset on helping us solve our problems. If anyone can subdue Nepty and Fargo, I am certain it will be Master Brian.

In this, I wish to make two proposals: One, that in our retaliation against Beigis, that we find and enlist Brian Bartholomoy to add his strength to ours; and second, that I may be transferred from my duties in Larapool to make a proposal to Dondoran and Melrode for their participation in our strike on the Iron Kingdom. Dondoran is a belligerent nation ruled by an intelligent warrior and his--unique--daughter; I have no doubt they will join us. Melrode, though, has always been neutral, and so convincing them will take longer. If I sway Scottfort first, though, and regale them with tales of their master apprentice's success, they may find it beneficial to send a number of war-magicians to bolster their king's men and show their neighbors the might of their spirit taming.

I pray for the water, for Brian of Melrode, and, as always, for your prosperity and the guiding light of your wisdom.

Yours always,
Leonardo Twice-Forged