Aster Isle Museum

Floodwaters: Part 2

Rivulets

Dario nearly jumped out of his skin when the man with the tortoise-shell clasp slid into the chair next to him. He had been sitting in his favorite bar in downtown Caer every day for a week, waiting for news from his superiors in the Cult of Neren, but he had expected this particular agent to be long gone from the north. The two had met once before, on a voyage across the Dannan Sea to Arawn Island, where they had been dismayed to find that the Libris Immortalis had robbed them of the army of zombies that had been stockpiled there during the last days of the war. After their return to Caer, the man, whose name Dario suspected he would never know, had been reassigned by their mutual superior, Lamiere. Meanwhile Dario had stayed in Caer, the erstwhile capital of Fianna, now a lonely Imperial outpost occupied mostly by immigrant families of Bevinan descent. That and empty, boarded-up houses. 

“Good afternoon,” Dario said, trying to remain nonchalant. “Didn’t think I’d meet you here.” Dario took a drink of his Bevinan ale, hoping the bitter sting of the pale golden drink would calm his nerves.

“And a good afternoon to you, Dario. On the other hand, I knew precisely where to find you. And unfortunately I have news from the west.”

Dario’s mouth went dry. There had been a delicate operation taking place out on the Feymoor, and Dario had been listening in on as many conversations between guards and military personnel as he could, hoping to hear something. “Is the news what I think it is?”

The man with the tortoise shell clasp nodded imperceptibly. “Crimson and Sable failed, and were killed in the process. Fort Spire remains intact. There’s also some interesting news coming out of Eracia City, but Lamiere hasn’t been able to substantiate any of it. It’s a mix of good and bad for us.”

Dario wondered who “us” was in the man’s sentence? The Cult of Neren? He and Dario? Or some other faction to which the mysterious agent belonged. Dario cleared his throat. “You haven’t heard anything about what we saw on Midwinter, have you?”

For the first time the man smiled, a calm but feral grin. “That’s actually why I came here. With Sable and Crimson gone, Lamiere is moving south. We’re abandoning Caer for the moment.”

Dario frowned. “Are we sure that’s a good idea? After all, this is the closest outpost we have to--”

The man cut Dario off. “I’m not about to question Lamiere’s reasoning in this when he’s giving us the chance to make amends for Arawn. Have you heard of the Book War?”

Dario tilted his head, starting to put things together. “Of course I have, but it hasn’t left Emilia, has it?”

“No,” the man responded, “on the contrary every asset either of the major Libris organizations has is pouring into Emilia to fight this out. And I have it on authority that the ones who owe us an apology are in Terescu as we speak. I intend to go extract that apology, and Lamiere has given me permission to bring you to Emilia, let you build a new spider web there.”

Dario looked around at the faded city that had once been such an important waypoint for the Cult, a place he had occupied for years now, watching all his important contacts draining out after the Council to be replaced by hard-eyed druids and Fenian agents. “When do we leave?” he asked, dropping a few coins on the table and leaving his bitter ale behind.

“Encel, what are you doing up so early?” Halura Steelheart, Queen of Gora, asked her consort. Fomorous “Encel” Silvershaper, Master Artificer of the gnomish nation and the most powerful mage in the east, had crept out of their bed, quietly levitating his way from under the covers, and was now sitting at their kitchen table, a crumpled red message bird in his hand. Beyond him, two broad picture windows looked out onto his massive workshop compound and the peaks of the eastern mountains. Beyond, in the haze, Halura could just make out the high plains of Gora, her home and her kingdom. The kingdom where her husband had been killed, that now belonged almost entirely to the orcs and their demonic allies. Behind her, she knew, lay Talar, the land where she had come to accept her destiny and where, with the help of her consort and his allies, she had proven just how intertwined the fates of Talar and Gora really were.

Encel shook himself out of his reverie and looked up at his consort with a sad smile. “The news finally came, I’m afraid.” Queen Halura sank down next to him and threw her arm around his shoulder. “Fort Pinnacle fell this morning,” Encel continued. “I did some scrying, and it looks like it was vrocks. They probably thought they could take out the watchtower without alerting anyone.”

Halura nodded. “I think everyone will agree that it was a good idea to go behind General Salah’s back and give those emergency birds to the fort commanders.”

Encel turned, distracted by the sound of a heavy pair of clay feet making their way up the stairs. A few moments later, two figures--one a human woman with a distinctly half-elven cast about her, the other a clay golem with the fine features of a Talaran woman. Feather and Kappa had been invaluable allies to Queen Halura during the dark days last autumn when the city of Nalcira fell under the control of extraplanar beings who intended to use it as a final battleground. Their story was a complex one, but during the troubles that plagued Nalcira, they had shared a body. As thanks for their friendship and help, Encel had built a golem body for Kappa, an earth elementalist, to inhabit. The two women were still very close, and Kappa had decided to stay in the Master Artificer’s little citadel until she was entirely comfortable with her new body. Because Kappa had stayed, Feather had stayed, and as a result, Inari, a man whose past was shrouded in otherworldly mystery, must not be far away either. 

Halura looked incredulously at her consort. “You called them up before waking me?”

Encel smiled slyly up at Halura. “I decided you would probably get here at about the same time. You haven’t been the deepest sleeper lately.”

And how could I sleep well? The queen thought to herself. The orcs’ slow advance toward Talar was both a blessing and a curse for her and for all the gnomish peoples. If they breached the Talaran borders then there was a chance they might be able to convince enough armies to fight for them that they could break the orcish army, send them back into their old ways of raiding and pillaging before they had decided their true purpose in life was to slaughter and dominate. There was also a chance that the demons--who still allowed the orcs to think they were on a leash, as far as anyone could tell--would lay waste to Talar, even to the whole continent, and she would die having never seen her home again. No, sleep had not been easy as of late.

Feather sat down at the table, while Kappa opted to stay standing, remembering all too keenly why there were only five chairs at this table now rather than six. Encel explained to them what he had received, and spread it out along the table’s surface for them to read. “I think this gives us every impetus to call a war council,” he concluded, picking the message bird back up and carefully folding it before placing it in one of his robe’s many pockets. “We’ll need to contact our friends in the Fenians, the Imperial Academy, the Elementalists of Talar, everyone we’ve managed to convince to provide us and Talar the smallest amount of aid before the invasion begins in earnest.” He smiled at his old allies. Feather slumped down onto the table, dreadfully certain of what Silvershaper was about to say.  “In short, I called you up here for one purpose, and one purpose only. You’re going to be helping me write a LOT of message birds.”

To a casual observer, it would seem that a bare hillside, surrounded by the windswept heights of the Grey Moor on every side, had begun to crumble and shift under the sheets of pounding rain that washed across the plateau. Looking a little more closely, they might have seen sandstone eyes peeking out from a bald granite head the size of a mansion, but they might not have known why this was happening, or what it was that they were seeing. The creature approaching it, an immense, legless giant who was crawling on his arms and belly across the moorlands, however, knew exactly what it was. Tethra was a Fomorian, the race of demi-gods brought into this world by their slumbering gods, the Titans. Like all of the Fomorii race, Tethra was cursed with a physical deformity--in his case, he had been born without legs. This generally caused him no serious trouble, but it made overland journeys difficult. 

Tethra would be quick to tell you that his missing legs were not his greatest curse. Ever since his birth some fifteen thousand years ago, he had been able to remember in perfect detail every moment of his life. And so Tethra knew with perfect clarity all that there was to know about this creature’s race. The Galeb Duhr, they called them, and even Tethra did not know if they were as old as the stones, or if the stones were as old as the Galeb Duhr.

“Hail, Tethra,” the creature said in a voice that sounded, for a very good reason, like stones grinding together, the words only a little muffled by the driving rain. “What brings you to my plains?”

Tethra smiled. “Well met, Corroch Dhar, but I am just passing through. A group of little folk, of all things, have alleviated me of my burdens. I go to the sea, to find out if any of my brethren there remember me.”

Several large rocks tumbled off of the Galeb Duhr as it laughed. With each movement it became harder to imagine that it had looked like a hillside. “I am sure that you will be able to remind them everything about yourself, Tethra. It is good to lay down our burdens, but I won’t be giving up this land any time soon.”

The two conversed for a few more days, for Corroch’s speech did not come quickly, and as Tethra heaved his enormous body once more across the Grey Moor, he thought he saw the trees of the Wold darkening the horizon to the east. He hummed a song more ancient than the groves of Fianna to himself as he made his way home.

“So it’s over, huh,” Bartholomew said, setting a mug of dark beer down in front of Kerg Balan. The two of them were alone in Bartholomew’s tavern, a grand but homey establishment that had been erected literally in the middle of nowhere. Bartholomew, once an adventurer, had longed dreamed of owning a tavern, but his travels among men had burnt him out on their company. And thus, a tavern no one could find. 

Kerg looked at the beer with delight and took a swig of it before answering the other dwarf’s question. “Ah, Bartholomew, don’t tell her I said this but your beer is better than your aunt’s! But yes, it’s over. I’m no Warleader anymore. Just a humble Clan leader.” The mischievous look on Kerg’s face spoke volumes, but the younger dwarf was having none of it.

A little over a year ago, at an emergency meeting of the dwarven clans, Kerg Balan had been named Warleader, a title not given to any dwarf for centuries. With a majority vote from the dwarven clans, a Warleader could lead without question for a single year. When the clans had been called together, some of the dwarves who lived far to the west among the elves had not been able to attend, and many of them had resented the Balan clan’s ascension ever since. Still, despite the opposition, Kerg had achieved more than any Warleader in memory--by helping Archdruidess Erinn of Fianna, he had ended the Elven War, salvaged the Empire’s arm, provided the military might necessary to intimidate the Eracians into accepting the terms of a miserable treaty with Fianna and its own provinces, and planned and executed two expeditions which had uncovered the deep past of the dwarven people.

Not that he was about to make his findings available to just anyone, even if the information was already getting out. The expedition he had sent to the far north had found an underground citadel that was five millennia old, a settlement that had been the dwarves’ first in this world. A portal from another world had been unearthed, along with ample evidence that Kerg’s ancestors had fled here after facing certain destruction from an implacable foe. And then they had been forced to flee again, their human allies turned against them by a spiteful fomorii named the Scathach and those who were left behind becoming twisted mockeries of dwarves who now called themselves the derro. Before settling into their loose federation of clans, the dwarves had created another amazing city, out on the Grey Moor, and while they had clearly abandoned it as well, he and his clan’s scholars were still trying to figure out exactly what had befallen their second, and greatest, city. Not that the other clans could stay away from what he had found. He might not be warleader any more, but he did still command respect.

Among other things.

“So,” Bartholomew began slowly, “Without your title, how do you honestly think the other clans will treat yours? You know you have my uncle’s oath, but…”

Kerg was used to Bartholomew, the son of his second cousin Galina, being a dwarf of few words and even fewer smiles. And so he was practiced in teasing out the meaning behind the younger dwarf’s words. “You think they’re going to attack us,” he said.

Bartholomew shrugged. “Or undermine you. Or refuse to marry any of you.”

Kerg sighed and took another swig of his beer. “Don’t think I haven’t thought of all that, Bart.” He looked off into the distance, his brows knitting. “Even if Clan Balan dies out, even if we’re wiped off the face of the mountains, even if everyone forgets us, we’ll still have accomplished more than all the Clans have managed together over the last handful of centuries.” He drained his mug and pushed it across the gleaming countertop toward Bartholomew for the barkeep to refill. “So for now, I’m going to celebrate, dammit!” 

Bartholomew couldn’t help but smile at Kerg’s ebullience, and the two sat and drank, telling stories of their travels well into the night.

There were roughly two kinds of days in Rorstad, the capital of Bevin--rainy days, and snowy days. And finally, after months of unrelenting snow, the rain had finally returned. To the dismay of many, however, it had returned with a vengeance. The Illithir was rising fast, and there were reports from the farmlands that the levies were not as high or as secure as they had seemed last year.

In a nondescript stone building near the river, Jacob Van Nuys, spymaster of the Imperial Corps, was suffering under a different sort of deluge. This one was made up entirely of paperwork. Thumbing through his notes, he could see that things were moving. His plans for the Feymoor had worked out, the rookie agents he had recruited for that task handily saving the illegal settlers who had been tricked into building a village on elven lands, stopping the Nereneans who had lured them there with false promises, and protecting Fort Spire from an undead army. He was still waiting on the reports from what was left of the province of Nordest, but it seemed as if his agents there had met just as much success. All in all, without the Corps, the Empire would never survive. But Van Nuys was no longer someone who looked for the spotlight.

Setting the Corps reports aside, Jacob picked up a much less appealing stack of reports, these coming from army outposts in northern Bayern. Hohenshau had, despite all the warnings they’d been given, decided to start raiding again. “Sorry Ganymede, sorry Rico,” Jacob muttered, “I think I’m going to need your expertise up north again.” That, however, left him with a need here in Bevin. With murmurings of eldritch things in the ruins of Sunken Jerecht to the south and in the Haglight Fen, and with the blackscale lizardfolk looking to expand their territory again….well, there were plenty of things to worry about here at home.

“I suppose,” he said to himself, “I’ll just have to find some more willing souls.” He immediately began drafting up a letter to send to certain contacts within the churches, the army, the colleges and academies. He would make do with whomever was willing to heed his call.