Aster Isle Museum

Floodwaters Part 3:

The Call to Arms

Sydney Morrow’s parlor was starting to feel awfully cramped to Lucien and Courvelle. In an unprecedented move, the former noble Morrow had summoned every high-ranking member of the Revenant Blades to his home, to take stock of the increasingly worrying situation in which the continent was finding itself. Looking around, Lucien realized he didn’t know too many of these people--there had been a time when he, Courvelle, Bruir, and Rena were Morrow’s only confidants. But the other two had been dead now for over a year. Lucien recognized Cole, a bluff Fiannan who he was fairly certain would have trounced him in a fight in his prime. And in their respective old ages, could certainly do the same.

 Standing at the front of the room, Morrow looked like he was missing something. Alinya, his assistant and a talented spy in her own right, stalked up behind him with a poorly-hidden smile and handed him a small sheaf of papers. “Ah yes,” Morrow said, sighing as he looked down at the reports. He cleared his throat. “So, my friends and agents, winter was….difficult, to say the least.” Across the room, a number of head bobbed, including Courvelle’s. Lucien remained stoically still. He’d seen worse seasons.

Morrow continued. “While the worst of all possible disasters was averted, we kind of didn’t accomplish as much as we would have liked in Martel. Sure, Adelaide is on the throne and all the traitors--well we assume all the traitors--were flushed out, but the place was burned down by a dragon. So there is that.” He looked over at Lucien and Courvelle. “Not that our agents there did anything less than an excellent job, with the possible exception of my contribution, but the plans there were deeper than we originally expected.” He looked over at Cole. “Cole has told me, repeatedly, that he tried to warn the expedition he was on of a Nerenean menace within their midst, but was repeatedly ignored, even by Fenians. This Aerin Floringras and his new apprentice Aquilinus are, by all rights, people to keep an eye on.” He turned to glance at Alinya. “My assistant here did her best to stop the Hohenshaufers from making the worst decision I’ve ever seen Hohenshaufers make--and I was friends with Bruir!” This got a light chuckle from those assembled, but not from two of his oldest friends. Morrow cleared his throat again, not so certain of the joke now that it had left his mouth. “Sadly, she was only partially effective, even with a back channel to the Imperial Corps worked out through a couple of their agents. From what we’ve seen, there also appears to be a mysterious figure working his way across northern Bayern, assembling a fairly ruthless style of resistance to the Hohenshaufer raids. We will have to keep an eye on THAT in the coming months, to be sure.”

Morrow’s face took on a cast of concern as he glanced at the next report. “Cindir,” he said, calling out to to a cloaked half-elf in the back of the crowd. Courvelle had told Lucien a thing or two about their unlikely spy, a Fiannan who had agreed to help them keep the peace. It seemed she had human family in quite a few places, and believed generally in holding powers accountable--which was as it so happened the ultimate goal of the Revenant Blades. Morrow continued, “Your work in Fianna is highly commendable, and I thank you for, ah, not tipping off some close friends of ours as to your true intent. For those who don’t know, apparently the Fenians have their paws in more things then even we do, and on top of that they supposedly have a long-lost heir of the Martelan royal family on Daoine Island. NOT something I was expecting to hear. Anyway, winter aside, I wanted to bring everyone here to remind you that Spring is on its way and it’s a new opportunity for us to influence people and change things. While the focus is on Bayern and Gora, things are going to get missed, and it would behoove us to spread out and try to find the things that are going on elsewhere while--”

A message bird, previously unnoticed, glided across the room and struck Morrow in the chest, hanging there for a moment while he opened it. “Oh hell,” he said, “It’s from Gora. The invasion has begun.”

Courvelle and Lucien made the mistake of looking at one another and were soon chuckling under their breath.

“I don’t see the humor,” Morrow said, sighing. “I’m literally trying to ignore a war and it hits me in the chest!” 

What followed was a complete loss of control of the room on Morrow’s part. When the laughing stopped and the dust settled, the Blades set down to formulate a plan for surviving the next season.

The Dalma Sea spread out before Lydia, the sun climbing in the Talaran sky. She was alone and finally able to find some peace. The months without her marid, Ahsen, had been difficult. She knew the djinn would return to her someday, but she had just recently been allowed to return to the plane she called home, in the presence of her creator. Knowing how wonderful that must be for her companion, Lydia had tried to give Ahsen a chance to live the life that had been denied to her for so many millennia. 

Just as she was settling down into a trance, Lydia saw a flutter out of the corner of her eye. Pushing back her blue cloak, she snatched it from the air and began to read. It was the note she had been expecting for months, a note that meant Talar was, once again, under siege.

Deep in the grey moor, in the most wondrous city his people had ever created, working in an enchanted forge, the dwarf Darius opened the message that had arrived for him with deep concern, sharing the message with his whisper gnome companion.

In Ankhazir the gnomish illusionist Genly, still out of breath from her mad dash to the throne room, read the message she had received from Queen Halura out loud to the aging ruler, pleading for him to send her east.

Across town from Genly, in a sun-drenched apartment at the College of Forms, Sufir aside the message bird he had received to take the hands of his husband, Ahrin. “I’ll write my letter of leave to the dean today,” he said, embracing the younger man.

Ahrin gave him a serious look. “I’m sure they’ll join us for this. We have to do what we can for the gnomes, after everything that’s happened, and they’ll feel…”

Sufir laughed as Ahrin continued. “I know they will. Let’s call them now.”

The two Elementalists cast a conjuration in tandem. A few moments later two majestic djinn floated in the air before them. The stronger of the two, Ali-Afira, looked down at Sufir as the other, Garoc, clasped hands with his master.

“It’s been a long time, Ali-Afira,” Sufir said. “It’s been a hard road without your guidance.”

The djinn shook his head, smiling. “You have done well, and you are aware that you have. For most things, you do not need me anymore. I have been dwelling in the palace of the Most High again, yet for THIS task I have asked his leave.”

The younger djinn, Garoc, placed a hand on the vaporous shoulder of his master. “Ali-Afira, I believe these humans doubted us.”

Sufir nodded sheepishly. “Given where you were, after so long…”

Ali-Afira placed his hand under Sufir’s chin, tilting it upward to look him in the eyes. “Some debts should not be forgotten, no matter the cost. We will fight for those who fought for us.” 

Magus Amisa, head of the Protector Corps stood, her mouth agape, as she looked out at the pocket plane which had once been called “New Neren” and which would soon, apparently, be the new site of the Imperial Academy of Magic. She turned to look at Magus Aerth, the head of the Academy and theoretically her equal in the hierarchy of the Empire. “You have GOT to be kidding me,” she said. “You’re putting the Academy HERE?”

Aerth looked vaguely sheepish, but before he could respond an intricately-folded message bird flew around his head. He snatched it from the air casually, trying to keep a neutral face as he stashed it in one of his robe’s many pockets.

“And who is THAT from?” Amisa asked, growing even more agitated.

Aerth shrugged, going for nonchalant and landing on “small child in serious trouble.”

“No one important, I’m sure.”

In the palace in Pezane, amid preparations to turn an unused suite into a laboratory for the city’s new Archmage, Rolan Benedeit, Doge Francesca’s centaur assistant Gracca approached her with a letter. “I’m afraid war has come to Talar,” he said solemnly. 

Francesca sighed, exchanging a troubled glance with Rolan as he took her hand. “I hate to say it,” she said to the centaur, “but I think I’d better send you home to see how many of your people you can muster.”

From the shadows of the room, a lizardfolk woman, her face stained red with tattoos, flashed a toothy grin, and an equally toothy dagger, at Francesca. “I hope you have not forgotten us. I don’t like the idea of a desert, but I WILL kill demons for you, my doge.”

In the reconstructed civic district of Nalcira, Magus Toreg awoke from his nest within an unruly pile of papers to find that another document had joined his list of worries. This one had been delicately arranged into the shape of a bird of the high desert. Toreg recognized the craftsmanship immediately. Halura Ironheart, before she had accepted her role as Queen of Gora, had lived in his city for over a year, after all. Unfortunately, there was only one reason that she would reach out to him. On the bird’s delicate wing were the words “it has begun.”

Rubbing his eyes, Toreg jumped to his feet. It was time to pay the queen and Silvershaper back for saving his city. 

In Olwen Grove, in Fianna, a tear of joy dripped off the end of the druid Alera’s face, rolling down into the newly furling blossom of the delicate purple primrose he cupped between his hands. Spring had come, and with it had come this one, tiny blossom--the first flower to bloom in a free Fianna.

In a tiny village named Eisendorf, a young blacksmith worked her father’s forge, missing her friends, but cherishing the longer light of Spring.

“Erinn,” the druidess Dierdre said quietly to the young elf before her.

Erinn nodded. “I know Dierdre. You and Gianna are headed to the south, aren’t you? I believe the demons have finally chosen to breach Talar. It is, after all, marching season.”

Dierdre looked down at her young charge anxiously. “It’s been good to spend the winter with you, Erinn. I know you’ll be all right here, but do take care of yourself.” She gestured out toward the commons of the small island, a verdant field between the ancient seat of all of Fianna and the churning ocean beyond it. A young man, his hair a shocking red, stood contemplating something no one else had any inkling of. A small squirrel, the young sorceror’s  familiar, scrambled across his shoulders, speaking in their own private language. “And, uh,” Dierdre said, “do try and watch out for THAT one while I’m gone…”

In a well-to-do district of Eracia city, Aerin Floringras smiled smugly to himself as he pulled piece after piece of bespoke furniture from his bag of holding, setting them down thoughtfully in his new law office.

On another plane, cast in a sullen red light, the half-elf Marillessar looked down on the tortured lands, dreaming of the moment when he could return to the Eracian Empire, where the webs he had constructed lay in wait. He could be patient, but he would have his revenge.

And in a ruin, deep under the perpetually frozen mountains of the far north, a door that had been shut for thousand of years cracked open. A pair of violet eyes, set into a face blacker than the most desolate gallery of that ancient dwarven city, peered out in cruel amusement on a brand new world.