by C. M. Carney
“What we are about to do violates millennia old tradition and sworn oath,” Myrthendir said. “If you asked the common folk of Sylvan Aenor why the Thalmiir sunk their city below the earth, they would tell tales of the greed and jealousy of the dwarves. That they refused to share their wealth and their power even as the world burned around us all.”
“But that is not the truth?” Gryph asked.
“No. We allowed that fiction, that slur upon dwarven kind, to spread because it was a useful shield to protect the truth. Many of the Thalmiir refugees in Sylvan Aenor paid for that lie with generations of slander and mistreatment.”
The Prince Regent's concern with the inequities of race relations surprised Gryph. The Realms were dangerous, filled with far more diverse peoples and cultures than Earth, and he expected racial hatreds and stereotypes to be rampant. Perhaps the El’Edryn truly are different. The Realms grow more surprising every day.
“Why did they sink the city?” Gryph asked.
“The war against the arboleth was going badly. Each battle the Alliance lost gave the Dark Ascendancy more troops. They would take our people and enslave them or worse.”
“The Fallen,” Ovyrm said. “And the illurryth.” He gave a pointed glance at Gryph and the player stroked the back of his neck before realizing what he was doing.
Myrthendir nodded. “The Thalmiir worked in secret on a weapon, a weapon they lost control of. To prevent it from getting to the outside world they sealed their city. Several hundred of their number escaped in boats. The rest, nobody knows.”
“The survivors didn’t know what the weapon was?” Gryph said.
“The Stone King had become erratic and secretive. It was said only he and his Master Artificer knew the true nature of the weapon, but there were rumors.”
“What rumors?” Ovyrm asked.
“Some say they were building an army of constructs. Others that they had built a super weapon capable of turning the arboleth’s potent psionic abilities against them. Still others claimed they’d created a mystical plague that mutated beyond their ability to control.”
“What do you believe?” Gryph asked.
“I believe that some secrets should stay buried.”
The fear that sat behind Myrthendir’s eyes sent an icy chill though Gryph. He pulled his cowl a bit tighter around his face to shield himself from the suddenly potent wind.
“If the weapon is so dangerous why did the dwarves make the seal? Seems a little odd to make a key that could unlock the city?” Wick asked.
“Most of the Thalmiir refugees that escaped the city left with the Exodus fleet under the leadership of the First Hammer of Dar Thoriim, a kind of warrior version of our Steward. He was cousin to the Stone King, and told the first Regent, my great grandfather, the seal was left with the city’s Master Artificer. Together, these men ... prevented the Stone King from unleashing the weapon.”
“They killed him?” Killed me, if those memories are true.
“Yes, they say his need to protect his people drove him mad.” Myrthendir paused, and the elf lord’s eyes grew dark. Was his desire to avenge his father’s murder rushing through his mind? The darkness was only there for a moment before he grinned and a lightness returned to his eyes. “The artificer stayed behind, locking the city from the inside. The seal hasn't been seen since.
Nobody spoke for long moments as the wind whipped at hair and clothing. Myrthendir squinted into the distance and raised his arm and pointed. “There.”
Gryph squinted as well and shielded his eyes from the wind-swept spray with one of his bracer laden forearms. In the distance the Deep Water narrowed to an almost knife-like point. A tall mountain, whose peak lay shrouded in clouds, met the earth at the sharp tip of the lake. The metallic glint of brass and copper shimmered in the midmorning sun and Gryph realized it came from a large round tower embedded into the side of the mountain. What looked to be a large pair of doors split the tower in half and those doors were opening.
“We are too late,” Myrthendir said in a hushed tone that sent pulses of alarm through the others.
Cold dread grasped at Gryph’s heart as he remembered the thoughts that Sillendriel had pushed into his mind. If they open the city, death will follow. Gryph closed his eyes and turned his mind inwards once again remembering his father’s insistence he learn to control his fears. His breathing calmed as his mind travelled down familiar pathways and he found ease.
That’s when the sledgehammer of psychic energy smashed into his skull.
Gryph screamed and held his head, falling to one knee on the deck of the boat. Ovyrm quickly rushed to his side, but Gryph could not hear the words that came from the xydai’s mouth. Something was assaulting him, something Other.
His mind became clouded by a fog of black and then he was elsewhere. Had he not been a man of Earth, Gryph would not have been able to understand what he was seeing, but he knew space when he saw it.
Gryph was moving through space past a large barren moon. Around him hundreds of rounded diamond shapes were flying through the airlessness of the void. These are ships, Gryph thought in shock. He passed by one as a fringe of tentacle like appendages unfurled from the underside of the closest ship. The ship emerged from the umbra of the dark side of the moon, the scales of a king cobra glistening in the light. They are alive.
Gryph rolled and spun as he emerged from behind the shadow of the moon over a spinning blue world. This is Korynn. He did not know how he knew this to be true, but knew it was. He flew over another, much larger ship and the dark scales cast a distorted reflection back at him. I am one of these ships.
The armada surged towards the planet below and began to air brake as it entered the atmosphere. Gryph’s vision became a torrent of crimson light and orange flames as the atmosphere tore at his body. Around him were hundreds of similar fireballs, and the part of Gryph’s mind that was separate, human, knew the fear the ancient natives of Korynn felt as their world was invaded.
There was something else, an alien sensation that might have been purpose, or elation. All of his human instincts told him to flee, but he could not. An Other mind, akin to the one that had attacked Gryph in the lake in the Barrow, sent tendrils into his limited alien consciousness and he banked and slowed. We are Prime, a mind that was his and not his thought. Then a shudder and a violent tearing sound pummeled him and with it came a horrible pain. It was not his own pain, but the ship’s.
An explosion tore at the side of the ship and it spun and tumbled. Gryph felt his alien consciousness reach out in terror and agony to the Prime mind and felt the same terror in that greater mind. The ship plummeted downwards and the delta shape of its body, the part Gryph thought of as a wing, slammed into the peak of a mountain. The ship that was and was not him spun out of control and slammed into the surface of a deep blue lake.
Agony surged through the ship’s semi sentient mind as its Prime died. Then it was alone, sinking into the lightless depths of the deep black. It sent out frantic waves of thought seeking aid, but it touched nothing but simple creatures of scale and fin. Most were small and swam in large schools, but a few were large, slithering and hungry.
The ship landed on the bottom of the lake, disturbing silt that had lain undisturbed for millennia. The cloud drifted around the downed creature and then settled. After an unknowable time of frantic psychic distress signals the ship slept and healed. It would wait until the Prime returned.
YOU ARE PRIME? The thoughts punched Gryph’s mind like a rampaging elephant and he screamed. His mind, his very being was being consumed by the powerful, primal thoughts of the ship, the Other, the Prime.
No, Gryph yelled through the psychic link. I am not Prime. I have killed Prime.
Rage surged through the link and Gryph screamed again. Time stretched and Gryph could no longer tell where his mind ended and the Other’s began. Then, like the distant cry of a friend waking one from a nightmare, Gryph heard a voice.
Gryph, focus. Come to me.
> The pain made it nearly impossible to focus, but then the Other's mind receded and a warmth flowed through him. He grasped towards the sound and hands tugged him upwards.
As Gryph surged through the darkness towards reality, he heard a howl of rage in his mind. The ship was angry, alone and afraid as Gryph abandoned it to become fully Gryph again.
Gryph’s eyes snapped open, and his stomach emptied onto the bottom of the boat. Ovyrm was there holding him, and Tifala rushed to his side, the golden glow of life magic enveloping her hands as she staunched a flow of blood that dripped from his nose. Even Wick’s eyes showed concern, his anger at Gryph temporarily shelved. The pain left Gryph’s mind and his eyes moved in and out of focus. Myrthendir knelt near him, concern turning to surprise as a small trickle of blood flowed from his nose. The elf swiped a finger and looked at the blood in surprise.
“You’re bleeding,” Gryph said to Myrthendir.
“You kicked out when you seized. A boot to the nose.” The elf grinned as if to say ‘no harm no foul.’
Tifala wiped the blood from Gryph’s face with a small cloth and cast another healing spell. The pain faded, and the blood stopped flowing and the small amount of health he’d lost pulsed back. Ovyrm helped Gryph to his feet.
“Are you all right?” the yellow eyed adjudicator asked.
Gryph nodded, his mind still weighed down. “I felt something, deep in the lake. It was Prime. One of the ships the Dark Ascendancy used to invade Korynn. It crashed long ago and was critically damaged, but it is a living creature, enslaved … no … it adored the arboleth that piloted it. It crashed on entry and its pilot, its Prime, was killed. It has been trapped at the bottom, afraid and alone ever since. It thought I was Prime.”
“Why would it think that?” Myrthendir said, his voice a coil of icy anger ready to strike. The Prince Regent’s hand gripped the hilt of the sword at his belt.
“Because I almost was,” Gryph said.
15
Deep in the lake the ancient ship raged. Joy had turned to fear and then to despair as the mind touched by, but somehow not Prime fled from its embrace. The semi sentient neural structure that twined its way through the body of the ship did not understand what had happened. It had been alone in the dark for so long that it had lost all concept of time.
It wanted to fly once more, to bond with a Prime. The pressure of the liquid black pressed down on it with a fiercer and more malevolent touch now that the ship had tasted the tease of integration, only to have it torn away.
Vast pulses of raw psychic anger erupted from the ship, scattering the scaled and finned creatures that called the endless black home. The psychic power panicked the aquatic beasts and as the waves flowed ever outward, they woke something large and ancient. Something that had swum these waters long before the ship had crashed. The ship only felt the beast for a moment before its limited attention once again sought the Other.
But the beast had woken, and its powerful muscles pushed it towards the light of the above world.
*****
Myrthendir half pulled his sword from the sheath at his waist before Ovyrm placed a hand on the man’s wrist. The high elf’s eyes snapped from Gryph to the xydai and Gryph wondered if the ancient racial hatreds had bubbled to the surface, but then Myrthendir's veneer of acceptance returned and his eyes snapped back to Gryph.
How much of that acceptance is real and how much is false? Gryph wondered.
“Explain,” Myrthendir said in a low voice that demanded obedience. Gryph felt the raw power of the Prince Regent’s will and knew that he was accustomed to being obeyed. With a sigh, Gryph told his story. It was not one he liked reliving, but he suspected that if he hoped to go on living, wanted his friends to go on living, he had to tell the whole truth.
Gryph recapped his battle with the arboleth and his taking of the eggs. Ovyrm interjected his own bits to the tale, culminating with the larva’s assault on Gryph, Ovyrm’s fear that Gryph had become illurryth and his decision to kill Gryph. Myrthendir nodded in approval at the adjudicator’s decision and then his eyes met Gryph’s.
“Not the best way to start a friendship.” Gryph said, shaking his head with a grin, that brought another surge of pain to his head.
“I disagree,” Myrthendir said. “There is no better proof of fellowship than ending another’s life before that kind of vile corruption can take ahold.” He turned to Ovyrm. “Perhaps I was wrong about you.”
Ovrym nodded and Myrthendir snapped his partially drawn sword back into its sheath. The high elf stared towards the approaching shoreline and sighed heavily. “An arboleth hidden in dark places. A Prime ship in our waters. The return of the seal. You are a harbinger of ill omens Gryph.”
“Omens are but warnings of great danger,” Tifala said. “Would you rather we face that danger without them?”
“No mistress, I’d just prefer that we could deal with them one at a time,” Myrthendir said.
Wick squeezed Tifala’s hand lightly and then gazed into the distance, his eyes going blank as he stared. He was pulled back by the sound of bubbles breaking the surface. The burbling grew fiercer and his eyes went wide. “Uh, guys.” The others turned to Wick just as a green tentacle so dark it was nearly black erupted from the maelstrom of bubbles and flung itself towards the chthonic summoner.
Wick stumbled back, a less than manly squeal erupting from his mouth as he plopped onto his ass on the bottom of the boat. The tentacle flailed towards the gnome and wrapped itself around his right leg. Wick’s hand flew up, and he sent a chthonic bolt flying in the general direction of the creature. The bolt missed, but whatever beast the tentacle belonged to took notice and the tip of the rubbery appendage split in two revealing several rows of needle-like teeth. A sound like the desperate shriek of car brakes poured forth from the horrific mouth and Wick screamed.
Wick’s eyes widened in terror and he kicked at the tentacle head with his free boot. The blow did minimal damage, but it got the beast’s attention and a dozen other razor mouthed tentacles appeared on all sides of the boat. One wrapped itself around the boatman’s neck, dragging him from the boat. Myrthendir grabbed the man’s arm, but the cord of rubbery muscle was far too strong and the poor man disappeared into the black of the water.
Tifala slashed down with her life imbued daggers. The tentacle parted under the green energy of the blades, exposing white flesh that reminded Gryph of calamari. The other tentacles howled in an unearthly chorus of pain. They all whipped back below the water and an odd silence hung over the lake as the boat, no longer possessing its boatman, bounced lightly to a stop.
“Is it gone?” Wick demanded, unfurling the severed appendage from his leg. He scowled in disgust and tossed the tentacle overboard.
“I very much doubt it.” Ovyrm said. “Gryph, I think that breathing spell of yours is about to come in very handy.”
Gryph’s eyes flashed to Ovyrm, and he nodded. “Myrthendir, give me leadership of the Adventure Party. I have a spell that will help all of us.” The Prince Regent eyed Gryph suspiciously then something large and strong buffeted the bottom of the idle boat, knocking everyone to their knees. Myrthendir’s eyes flashed back to Gryph and after a short pause he nodded.
Myrthendir has given Gryph temporary command of the Adventure Party.
This command will last until the current crisis has passed or Myrthendir removes Gryph as Adventure Party leader.
As the Adventure Party did not originate with Gryph his Boon Telepathic Bond will not be gifted to all members of the Adventure Party.
The original Boon Lore Boost will remain in effect.
The waters calmed, but nobody was foolish enough to think they'd stay that way. They prepared their weapons and Gryph started casting Halo of Air for the entire group. Normally the spell required a few simple gestures of the hand and a rush or air swirled around his head. This time the motions were much more complex, requiring him to point at each member of the Adventure Party.
