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feywildatheart · 6 years

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Nenîth,

We had such a good time at our lunch! Of course, as soon as everyone started showing up, Elyn started calling it a party, like she knew that word would send a flock of butterflies flitting about in my stomach and she didn't want to use it until our friends had come and I couldn't flee without my absence being noticed. And she probably wasn't wrong. But in any case, it was nothing like the parties we attended on Rugira Prime, and I'm glad for it. Cloudleaper begged off of attending, unfortunately, because she'd come down with a sore throat, but Elyn and I went and there was such good food, and Drime wouldn't let us help with any of it, and as soon as the kids arrived Jesson started running around eagerly saying hello to everyone, and Squirt and I went over to greet him and let him get some scritches in.

While we were doing that, apparently Niko found Elyn and gifted her with the fabric we'd seen on the loom when we'd stopped by her place -- all that talk downplaying it, saying it wasn't much to look at, and it turns out it was a gift all along! Elyn's brother, Tyko, apparently got in contact with her, and between them and some help from one of the scientists Elyn befriended on Honione (my head positively swims thinking about all these friends, spread on separate planets in disparate parts of the galaxy, coming together to do this thing for Elyn, and she looked like her head was swimming at the thought of it, too), Niko wove that cloth to be conductive, so that Elyn could use it to upgrade her gloves. She came over to find me and show it to me after, I think, she'd finished exclaiming over it to Niko, and we spent a few moments just clamoring about how lovely and thoughtful it was, and the children and I listened eagerly while Elyn started telling us about the plans she had for it and the sort of things she could do with it. For as long as we've been traveling together, I'm afraid I still didn't understand half the things she was talking about, and she already looked like her thoughts were spinning off ten steps ahead of her mouth so I didn't want to stop her to ask her to explain anything, but it was nice just to see her so excited and enthusiastic about it all.

We spent some time just catching up with people, at the start, but Elyn noticed Lorraine looking a little haggard as she ran after Jesson, trying to corral him, and so Elyn swooped in and distracted him with a story about tiefling birthday party dances that she learned from Tyko. Jesson wanted her to teach him how to do them, and I chimed in that I'd love to learn too, although apparently they're at least related to the dance she taught me when we got drunk together on Sumula Station, so I had a head start on learning it and was glad for it. (Elyn, when I said as much, tried to protest that I was light on my feet and should be good at it, but I reminded her that no one who'd seen us trip all over ourselves with Daisy would believe so.) Jesson threw himself into it with more enthusiasm than grace, but it was delightful to watch, and it was good just to be dancing with friends and in a place where we didn't have the fate of a child or a city or a king's life hanging on the balance of whether we executed the steps right or not.

Elyn taught us another dance, too, an elven wedding dance called the Funky Griffin that was great fun, and had us all in peals of laughter, and then I encouraged Niko to share some of her people's dances with us. She seemed a little reluctant at first, and said that they really were better suited to her home plane, but she tried to give us a demonstration all the same, and if what we got was the less impressive version then I can't even imagine what the real thing looks like, because it was lovely and graceful and had my jaw on the floor right from the start, as she jumped and leaped about the place.

Elyn and I taught everyone one of the simpler Mashoy dances that we'd learned, too, though she was better at remembering the steps than I was, I had to take my cue from her more than once. And probably anyone at the Fesdi's party would have turned their nose up at what we managed, but everyone seemed to be having fun, and if there'd been balconies to watch from I'd wager that the patterns we all made across the floor of Drime's in would have been just lovely all the same, even if they weren't quite what they were meant to be.

We all wore ourselves out with all the dancing, and worked up an appetite, and so we were all glad to collapse into chairs at the tables and have our lunch, I think. Ren was rather idly plucking out a tune while we all ate, but when they shifted from that into the opening notes of the Ballad of Perrick Starstriker, of course I had to hop up from the table and go over to sit near them and listen. They nudged me with their boot until I joined in, though I daresay their voice is better than mine. But it's a folk song, anyway, and meant to be sung by anyone who cares to, not just those with a clear fine voice and a bard's training. Some of the others joined in, too, or tried their best to on the chorus, when it's clear most of them don't know a word of Halfling. They did their best, though, and it was charming and delightful and made my heart swell so full I thought it might burst right out of my chest. It reminded me of home, of you, of all those times we sat close to one another in the night where there was no work left to be done for the day and we sang it, the three of us together. It made me so glad, even as it made me a little bit homesick. You wouldn't think I would be, when that was the closest to home I've felt in months. You'd think I'd have been more so on Rugira Prime, surrounded by all that heat and sand and not a tree in sight as far as the eye can see. But it was like getting a bite of your favorite food, and remembering all the reasons why it's your favorite, but then only getting that one bite when you want to eat the whole plate. It made me feel closer to home, and to you both, but without the twilight sky above us and your arms wrapped around me, it's only going to remind me how far away you really are.

This probably makes me sound like I'm sad or like I regret what I'm doing and the choices I've made, but I don't. Please don't think that. I had a wonderful time at the party and I was so very glad for all of it, even the singing. Especially the singing. I just wish there was a way to do what I need to and be with you both, all at the same time. Writing these letters to you helps, and I pore over every word you send back to me, but I miss the sound of your voices, and your faces, and the way your hair smells when I hug you tight.

Anyway! Here I tried to make this all less maudlin, and I just made it more so. Please don't worry about me, nenîth, I really am happy. I can be happy and miss you at the same time. I've just had too much time to myself, too much time to think, these past few days while the Seles Emsel has been taking us back to Mir, because Elyn has spent most of it holed up with her new fabric, testing and experimenting so she can figure out how to use it to upgrade her gloves, and I've been loathe to interrupt her at it. And Cloudleaper's fine company, but she's prone to abruptly start yelling at her LICD, so mostly it's just been Squirt and me keeping one another company, and I think that's probably just given me too much time to think and reflect and miss you. We'll be back on Mir within the next day or so, though, and then we'll likely have information from Athan and Kian, and smugglers to hunt down, and I'm sure we'll be so busy that we'll be wondering why we ever left Nosirion-1 and our friends and our little mini-vacation behind.

I love you both, with all my heart.

Maliah

#in character #in character: letters #episode 49

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hamlethouses · 5 years

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Now is the time to take advantage of creditors mistakes. Great article by Kelly Tyko of @usatoday that provides details and links on the process of seeking compensation from creditors. It may be a great time to pull your free yearly credit score and send letters appealing any discrepancies... see previous post on the process of sending letters. Take advantage while things may be in disarray. Best of luck! 🏡🏘🏚🏘🏘🏚 Previous post: Are you thinking about purchasing your next home or investment property and concerned about your credit score? You may not be that far off! Have you checked? Use your free yearly #credit check report. Are you taking control of monitoring and watching your budget with apps such as @creditsesame and or @mintapp . Take control and action now, visit Hamlethouses.com for more tips and tricks towards your next #home purchase. #realestateagent #philadelphia #investor #newyork #newjersey #realtorlife #realestate #realestatelife #staywoke #realtor #invest #cash #northjersey #interiordesign #home #househunting #business #forsale #property #finance #entrepreneur https://www.instagram.com/p/B0i6stbHExB/?igshid=eyfq2q1tlpyr

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biofunmy · 5 years

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Shareholders reject banning software sales

San Francisco supervisors approved a ban on police using facial recognition technology, making it the first city in the U.S. with such a restriction. (May 14) AP, AP

Amazon shareholders will continue selling the company’s facial recognition technology “Rekognition” to governments and law enforcement agencies.

During the e-commerce giant’s annual meeting Wednesday, shareholders rejected all proposals including two related to Rekognition, Amazon confirmed to USA TODAY.

One proposed banning the sales of the technology and the other called for the company to conduct an independent study and issue a report on the risks of governments using the technology.

Amazon did not release shareholder vote totals Wednesday but said information would be filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission later in the week.

Also Wednesday, the House Oversight and Reform Committee held a first hearing on facial recognition technology to “examine the impact on civil rights and liberties.”

What’s up with facial recognition: Here’s what your face may unlock in the future

Tech ban: San Francisco bans police and city use of face recognition technology

A teenager in New York is suing one of the biggest companies in the world for $1 billion. Veuer’s Nick Cardona has that story. Buzz60

The years-long debate over the use – and potential misuse – of facial recognition has been heating up lately.

Last week, San Francisco became the first major municipality in the U.S. to ban use of the technology by local law enforcement.

A group of 78 AI experts and researchers signed an open letter on Medium in March about the “increased public concern over the accuracy and use of new face recognition systems.”

Critics point to false positives, or people being misidentified, particularly among minorities.

Findings from an MIT study claim the Amazon Rekognition system has performed poorly compared to Microsoft and IBM in identifying a female’s gender and faces from darker-skinned people.

Amazon Web Services global vice president for public policy Michael Punke has disputed the findings but also has called for transparency.

“To create the greatest public confidence in responsible law enforcement use of facial recognition, we encourage law enforcement entities to be transparent about their use of the technology and to describe this use in regular transparency reports,” Punke wrote in a February Amazon blog post.

Contributing: Edward C. Baig

Follow USA TODAY reporter Kelly Tyko on Twitter: @KellyTyko

Read or Share this story: http://bit.ly/2M5m0uP

Sahred From Source link Technology

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#IFTTT #WordPress

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blogofcj · 7 years

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eats 🎂 wishes ☄ letters ✉

Eats: Are there foods you like that the host doesn’t?

Sort of maybe? I don’t like brocalli and CJ does but I also love candy even though CJ doesnt really like candy. oh I do like apples and tomatoes! CJ doesnt I dont think

Wishes: if you could have a whole day to front without anyone else needing to do anything, what would you do with it?

have fun! I really really like drawing and playing with puzzels. I also love cartoons and baths. my favorite time is bed time becuse i like playing in the bath and watching blues clues but if I had a whole day to myself I would play puzzels and watch cartoons and paint maybe!

Letter: what’s an important message you have for other people in your system? Or anyone outside it?

uh I want to thank everyone in the system for making me feel welcomed. Thank you Haze for snuggling with me and watching cartoons with me. and thank you Tyko for making jokes and playing games with me and thank you Kaiden for reading me stories and helping me when I have bad dreams and thank you CJ for helping me do stuff that I cant do.

I also want to thank you uncle badger and uncle zach for being nice to me.

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letterstosestrilles · 2 years

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Dear Tyko,

I think we’re only going to be another day or two in the Storm Gardens, but I’ve been busy seeing the sights and doing some other things, so I haven’t really written over the past several days, especially since it’s not like you’re getting these, but I do want to catch you up on everything before our voyage starts. (While we’re traveling and I’m not having to cast Tongues as much, I’ll Send to you to let you know we’re safe, but I know you get frustrated over how few details I can include in those.)

The day after I last wrote, I woke up and decided that worrying over how powerful I’m getting wasn’t really doing me or anyone any good. With that in mind, I proposed that we start at the Lady’s temple here to see which star is closer as something productive to do while we waited to see if Alat Misaahav was going to be able to find any information about Jhasdej for us.

Maliah and Niko were both amenable, and Gaizka was still absent, having happily dived into the library with no apparent desire to resurface as long as they have the excuse to stay in town, so we went off to the temple, where there were two people, a Maelah and an elderly Gnomish woman who seemed absolutely delighted to see me. I didn’t really have any appropriate offerings, but Maliah always has incense, so I asked her for some of that and asked the Lady of Stars which star is closer. And, well—I got an answer, but it felt like it was coming from underwater, which means I could hear the sound of her voice but not the actual word she said. I thought about giving up, frustrated with myself, because it was my fault, I wasn’t focused enough, and nearly left, but Maliah asked if I could Wish my way into something. And I’m sure I could, though I don’t know much about divine magic, but it seemed such a ridiculous waste of legendary magic when the Lady is fond of me and I could just apologize and ask again.

I asked the Gnomish cleric for any blessing she could give, and she screwed up her face and bestowed a Guidance on me that helped, as I settled down again, with more incense and an opal as an offering in apology for needing to be told twice. This time, I heard her, though the whisper still felt far away, as though her attention was elsewhere or I still wasn’t fully centered. Still, it was an answer: Jhasdej is closer to us.

I thanked her, several times, and let Maliah and Niko know the answer, and asked whether we should go for the star we know next to nothing about that’s closer, or the one we know how to approach who’s farther, and we all pondered that as we finally went to the docks to start finding transport out to the star fields. I poked my head in at the dock registry to ask if they have a list of ships offering themselves for charter, but that doesn’t seem to be standard here, so they sent us the address for the dock message boards, and I gave Niko a message to translate to Celestial to post there.

We wandered the city a little, shopping for friends and family (there are some small things that are like orreries only for what I think must be star clusters instead that I thought the children on Nosirion-1 would like, and there’s always jewelry or textiles. Tragically, I haven’t found any Common books, I do like finding romances wherever I can), and by the time we got back to the hotel, Niko had a return message, or rather a few of them.

Someone had chimed in saying that it’s hard to match us with anyone when we weren’t specific about our plans, but that the Sunweaver clan is generally interested in exploratory messages if any of their ships are in port. Someone else said, not long after, that they agree, and they thought the Redtree was in port and would be at least a little longer, so back to the registry office we went to ask their berth address, and by then the person who seems to take the most shifts there was ready for us with a sigh, clearly ready to wash their hands of the strangers who keep on showing up with queries. (Especially when we annoyed Alat’s companion to the extent that I wouldn’t be shocked if they’d complained about us.)

Still, we got the berth address and went that way, to an area with ships somewhat bigger than where Subtle Winds had been docked, though not the huge sailing-like ships or the large cargo freighters. Before I could go for the intercom there, though, we saw that there were two half-elves leaning on Redtree’s side, chatting, and when we came over, they were happy enough to break off and greet us, in Common, no less, introducing themselves as Estolan and Finare.

We said that we were hoping for transport out to the star fields for something of an exploratory mission, and Estolan immediately said that was well above his level, but he’d see if the captain was in, and he went off to do it, telling Finare not to do anything he wouldn’t, which just made her snort. She chatted politely with us about languages, mostly, before Estolan returned to tell us the captain would see us.

Most of the crew that we passed on our way in seemed to resemble each other to greater or lesser degrees, but that wasn’t shocking, since they had been described as a clan, and Brathin and Lasrie are an offshoot from the larger Moonflight clan that tends to live shipside. Nobody seemed much bothered by us as we went through the halls and to a compact office where a crew member was just leaving, having apparently dropped off biscuits and hot coffee.

The captain reminds me of a lot of the better captains I know, the kind of person who on first glance seems both competent and practical, with that little bit of swagger that both of those things grant when you’re secure in them. She introduced herself as Imidris Sunweaver and asked us to sit down and give her some details.

As many times as I explain our quest, I never feel like I do it right. That day, I did significantly worse than usual, because I kept saying less than I should have, or stopping just short of things in ways that sounded awful. In my defense, when I dump the whole thing in people’s laps, it tends to really alarm them, but Imidris wasn’t that sort, apparently, so I said it all in the end, just about as badly as I possibly could have and still have her believe me. Maliah talked about the Khardab’zielach and produced the documentation we used when looking for Avka’s hoard to prove that yes, we’d talked to Mishakal and she told us what would be most likely to restore Reorx.

In the end, she assessed us for a moment, with the kind of look captains and parents learn fast when they want to scare the truth out of you, and finally said that she’d have to bring at least the sketch of what we want to her crew, since it’s not the kind of mission she could or would order them into, and that we should talk payment so she could bring that to them too.

Since we don’t know exactly how long this will be, and since we aren’t experts in the dangers of the star fields, we were reluctant to name a price that could be insultingly low, and Imidris said anyone else would fleece us if we started like that, but we eventually settled on what I think is a reasonable price for a journey of what will likely be at least a month (even if I Teleport us back to the Storm Gardens and leave them to their own business, but we aren’t anywhere close to making that decision yet), and shook on it, and she sent us off so she could collect her crew.

While we waited, we got a communication from Alat, who said that nobody could really find much, and that we’d hear more if there was more to hear, but that in the meantime, there was one brief mention of a “Jhasdej the Fierce” somewhere, which wasn’t comforting. (Which is worse, fierce or dire?) Still, it was something, and this time on purpose, I Wished myself a Legend Lore again.

Knowing less, I got less, which wasn’t shocking, but I did get something useful. Instead of a cacophony of voices with a hundred songs about a particular sun, I got one voice reciting a stanza of the poem that “Jhasdej the Fierce” must have come from, in what was recognizably Elvish, praising Jhasdej, fierce and keen, bright guardian and protector. It felt ancient, like nobody has written about them for centuries on centuries and this fragment only survives by chance, which could mean that their name has been forgotten by those in orbit, or could mean that nobody still lives around the planet.

(I mean, thinking of long-dead Elvish societies did make me wonder about Cerunwe and the Honorien Dominion, but there’s really no way of answering that question properly until we talk to Jhasdej.)

“Fierce” had made us nervous, but a bright protector seems perhaps more approachable than a patient watcher, so after we talked it all out, we decided to try Jhasdej first, since they’re both closer and the Legend Lore was more comforting about them than the starlore that allowed me to get that much would have implied.

And as thought it was a reward for making the decision, we soon got a message from Imidris telling us that Redtree will take our job on, and that we would leave in six days, so she had time to collect her crew from shore leave and get all the supplies we need for what could be a very long run out to the star fields depending on where the Khardab’zielach takes us.

With those responsibilities taken care of, we’ve spent the last few days seeing the sights, taking advantage of the chance to be on the Astral Sea and see some of what it offers. On our first day, we went on an architectural tour, since I’d been curious what exactly the buildings here are made of, since it’s stone but not really stone, as seamless as it is. The answer turned out to be more incredible than I could have imagined: it’s stardust and debris, and people sing it into shape, the music acting like a nebula of some sort, condensing the debris into the desired shapes over the course of months and years to make a whole city.

That, as you might imagine, sent me off to find people who could do that, and there are some sculptors who make very small sculptures using the technique, and Maliah and I both got one (normally I don’t like to spoil your gifts but I do think you’ll love this one), and I got a few samples, which are gorgeous even if I can’t reproduce the technique after so little study. And I don’t know if it would even work on the prime material plane. But even so, I was tempted to abandon all my responsibilities to learn, because singing something into being sounds so properly bardly, a conjuration I couldn’t imagine doing—I have my Mansion, but that’s not real or permanent in the way these sculptures and buildings are.

When next I write, I’ll probably be writing about the scenery as we travel through the Astral Sea, and maybe we’ll even get close to Jhasdej, depending on where the Khardab’zielach leads us. It’s going to be an odd journey, I think—I’ve obviously traveled through space before, but this is space and not, in that if I climbed on the roof of the ship and strapped myself on so I wouldn’t get blown away, I could still breathe without a suit, and I think that’s going to change the nature of the journey more than I would have thought it would before I came here.

(For the record, I am not planning on trying the strap-myself-to-the-roof plan, I think that would be uncomfortable, I’m just saying I could.)

I wonder what you’re reading in book group next, you should have had a meeting sometime in the last few nights to assign you the next one. Is it almost your turn to pick again? I know you were saying that you were thinking about that new murder mystery from that author Tiriel likes, will you give that a shot?

Love,

Elyn

#in character #in character: letter #letter to: tyko #episode 197 #location: the astral sea #location: the storm gardens of amsiel #person: maliah #person: mehrnikorsa(niko)#person: imidris sunweaver

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theladyragnell · 5 years

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Gift, Tyko/Lindanas

(For those of you who don’t know, this is another D&D ship, from the @letterstosestrilles campaign rather than Five Dragons, my PC’s foster brother and the librarian he asks reference questions of when my PC’s letters are not illuminating. I wrote a fic about it but have not yet managed to format it properly to post anywhere.)

Lindanas has always had a fondness for snooping in other people’s private spaces, when he’s there for the first time. He thinks everyone does, so Tyko won’t blame him for looking at all the shelves and walls and cabinets while he goes to pick ingredients for their dinner up at the market, after being late at work.

Tyko’s bookshelves are a disorganized mess, stacked with tech specs and references thrown in next to fiction, taken off and put back on again without a system he can find, but every spine showing, so it can’t be hard for Tyko to find something when he wants it. The rest of the apartment, while small, is neat, well-organized. Tyko apologized for the size when Lindanas arrived, saying that he’s saving his gold to buy the shop from his boss when she retires, but Lindanas doesn’t mind it. It’s just exactly as big as it needs to be.

There’s one shelf by the kitchen window that’s mostly empty, just a few odd objects on it. The one that draws Lindanas’s eye is a brightly-painted model of a monster he doesn’t recognize, with the word “Mashoy” on the base in big letters. Gifts from Elyn, then, and most likely jokes, but of course Tyko, who cares about her more than he cares about anyone else, puts them in pride of place.

Tyko comes back when he’s still inspecting them, and groans when he sees what’s absorbed Lindanas’s attention, putting his bags on the table. “Elyn thinks sending me the worst possible souvenirs from her trip is funny.”

“You keep them,” Lindanas points out.

Tyko’s exasperation softens into a smile. “Of course I do. She’s probably going to send another from Hangi Syr. You’re going to have to help me come up with the worst possible gift for her the next time she visits, something that won’t take up too much space in her pack.”

“Reference question or person-you’re-dating question?”

“The person I’m dating is a reference librarian,” Tyko points out. “But this is more fun at Elyn’s expense and less research, so probably a boyfriend thing.” He looks at Lindanas sidelong. “Is calling you that okay? It’s not really a discussion we’ve--”

“It’s fine,” Lindanas says hastily. “More than fine. All my friends have been calling you that for weeks now. Before we ever went on a date, in fact.”

Tyko laughs. “Well, I’m more interested in what you have to say about it than what your friend does, but okay. As long as we’re on the same page.” He goes to his bags, starts unpacking ingredients, and he’s not looking at Lindanas when he says “Maybe not yet, but--sometime I’d like to introduce you to Elyn on a video call or something. She’s pretty curious about you.”

Elyn seems more like a legend than a person, even with Tyko’s exasperated fondness for her--sister or no, she’s personally killed two dragons and fought a balhannoth--but more than that, she’s the most important person in Tyko’s life, and meeting her seems intimidating, given that. “I’ll look forward to meeting her,” he says anyway. Eventually it will be true.

Tyko takes a load of vegetables to the counter to chop, and gives Lindanas a look that says he’s seen through him completely. “Whenever you’re ready,” he says, and Lindanas goes over to help him with dinner.

#ponds have uses #samyazaz #answered asks

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letterstosestrilles · 2 years

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Dear Tyko,

Well, you know that I’m out of range on my IICD now, and I’m conserving magic, knowing I could lose the ability at any minute and maybe foolishly feeling that not casting much will make it stretch out longer, so you won’t hear much from me by Sending unless something very big is going on, until I’m back somewhere with either more reception or more magic.

It’s been several days since I wrote, but days of walking and walking tend not to be the most interesting to write about, so I thought I would save it all up until something actually happened. So now I can tell you about the scenery and about the first steps of this quest all at once.

To start, before we even started out, while Cerunwe was still conferring with the Lady of the Ashenwalds, I had a talk with Maliah about the Wild Hunt. Because we’re hunting someone, and Maliah’s been invited to join the hunt, and if it’s the kind of hunt that tracks rather than the kind of hunt that chases, it would be foolish not to at least ask. From the legends she knew, it’s more the kind that chases, which won’t be a help to us in finding Onver but may be a help if things get desperate.

(Though Maliah did say that in the legends people who try to run with the hunt but haven’t actually been invited to join it can go a little odd and run feral off into the woods, so I wouldn’t call that my first option.)

She prayed to Cernunnos, to alert him, to ask if maybe the Wild Hunt could help in the circumstance that bothers me most, where we beat Onver but only by a hair, and there’s a whole night to wait while I recover the magic to get us out with him recovering too. She got a response, though Cernunnos doesn’t seem to respond to prayers in words. She smelled the rich Feywild loam even in the Mansion, and she heard a hunting horn call in the distance, so I’m hopeful that in extremity, anyway, we might see help from that quarter. Though she’s not sure Cernunnos goes to the dark side of the Feywild any more than the archfey might.

When Cerunwe came to finish our bargaining, zie had a very unexpected answer for us: zie is willing to guide us on our journey, though zie stipulated that zie has no desire to fight Onver, and we reassured zir that we have no intention of asking zir to do so. I suspect that the Lady of the Ashenwalds and her endless curiosity has more to do with zir agreement than any desire zie actually has to return to a place that seems to have been a miserable time for zir. I don’t like it, that zie might feel forced, but I’m so grateful for zir help that I decided not to push and make sure it was zir own choice.

We solidified the terms of that bargain: information for information, the swords from Reorx’s plane for zir guidance in more mundane areas, the Plane Shift scroll Gaizka made us for zir guidance in the dark side of the Feywild itself. Zie also reminded us, while we were bargaining, that if our first step was going to be to find a hag (as we’d decided so we can track Onver), we would need something to offer them, so we made note of that and, with the bargain struck and the formalities done, we left.

The realm of the Lady of the Ashenwalds isn’t in the dark, but neither is it very far from it—there’s a hint of twilight on the horizon, and we went toward it all day. The travel was easier than our last trip with Cerunwe. There were roads, settlements, places clearly well-traveled, easy walking.

And, through the days of travel that followed, they got a little less well-traveled piece by piece and bit by bit, until we were on well-trampled deer paths, and then less well-trampled ones, and further on and on. Cerunwe steered us through a fairly duskwards town somewhere in there, where they were glad to sell Niko and I warm coats against the possible chill of the constant darkness, but after that, what settlements we saw were few and small, only a family or two eking out their living as we passed out into the last areas where you can even pretend there’s light to see by.

It was a little cooler by then, but not cold. More like the end of the summer, when the days are still hot and the nights just cool enough that you can throw open the windows to help you sleep. The giant trees of the Feywild’s seemingly-endless forests dwindled bit by bit to saplings, and then to occasional stands of trees, and then we were standing in a field of tall grass, all the color leached from everything by starlight, so the grass seemed silver and Squirt was barely a shadow traveling through it.

Even behind us, when I looked, there was only a little dun on the horizon, like the lightening right before dawn, and over us and ahead of us, stars upon stars upon stars, none of them familiar but all of them comforting, as I thought of the Lady, her promise that where stars shine she can see. There may be places in the Feywild so dark even the stars can’t reach, but we haven’t found those yet, and maybe we won’t. I can only hope we won’t.

But stars or no stars, we’d passed a boundary without ever really seeing a clear delineation. And of course, the way light works here, there’d be no lines that way, but with the fear and hatred of this place, I’d half-expected a wall, sign-posts to warn you back. I’d say maybe that’s what the end of the forest was, but it’s not like every inch of the Feywild is forested. Maybe it’s just that they understand that the boundary is in a different place depending on who you are, and how much your fear weighs against your determination.

Far in the distance, so distant they barely made the horizon jagged, were some blurs that might have been mountains. Scattered in the silvery grasses were patches of shadow that might have been trees. And it was quiet, the only sound crickets, and those mostly behind us.

I made the Mansion there in the middle of the grass, and was relieved that I still could. We all got plenty of rest and plenty of food, and walked out in what felt like the morning into a dark midnight.

It didn’t get any less disorienting, that constant darkness, especially once we lost that little bit of light. Cerunwe steered us towards the mountains, close enough that we could see, remembering Chusya and our lectures on volcano safety, that one of them is a volcano, one that I very much hope isn’t active right now. It would be just our luck. At least we still have those proximity suits, though Cerunwe doesn’t.

The grass was louder that day, full of small creatures Cerunwe didn’t seem concerned about, so I did my best to mirror zir. I also asked how we were planning to find a hag in the first place, if zie knew one or if there was a place they go. Zie explained that beings out in the dark of the Feywild know where the local hags are, which makes sense. Everybody must need things, out here, where hag magic is one of the few kinds that works.

Once she knew we were looking for people, Maliah didn’t take long to spot some, in a small stand of trees we were passing. They were a pair of tree-dwelling fey, not inclined to chat or to get close, not unlike very large bats, in as much as any fey looks like any mortal creature. Cerunwe hailed them in Sylvan, and once it was established that they were willing to make a bargain, I cast Tongues, and it turned out to be one of the easier bargains we’ve made in the Feywild: I offered them a day’s rations each, and asked for the location of the nearest hag likely to be willing to make a bargain, and they took me up on it happily enough.

The hag, they said, was another thirty miles duskwards, up into the foothills of the mountains. We were to follow a string of sycamores up to a spring, and then look for a stand of ash where her hut would be. Those were clear directions, so we thanked them, gave them the requested rations, and went on our way.

We’d already been walking a while, but we decided we wanted to get to the start of the chain of sycamores before we went to sleep, so we walked up into the very smallest of the foothills until Cerunwe and Maliah both pointed out some trees that are apparently sycamores. We started looking out for a campsite, but before we got too far into the process, Maliah pointed out a dark coiled shape in the first of the trees—a huge snake, even larger than the ones we fought when we were getting Mera off Tlere.

She cast Speak With Animals, and apparently at first it was very intent on eating us, but she promised it a lot of meat, and eventually it allowed that jerky it didn’t have to work for was a better deal than a lot of fresh meat that would fight it every step of the way, so we lobbed enough rations at it that I was very glad we overpacked on them and retreated to what we decided was a safe enough distance.

I cast the Mansion again, more relieved about the ability to do it than the day before, and we rested again. None of us are talking much, on this trip. Outside the Mansion, there’s so little sound that it feels like conversation could carry miles upon miles. Inside, I think we’re all thinking hard about what we’re walking into, trying to find a way to step that will keep us all alive.

(Well, except Cerunwe. Zie just likes the quiet, I think.)

We stepped out today into another dark morning—every morning darker than the one before, it seems, and it’s beautiful here, but I don’t think it takes a jump ring to make you lose all sense of time, either. I was glad to have the sycamores to follow, and Cerunwe’s steady pace keeping the time as the day passed. At one point, Niko, bringing up the rear, tripped a little and warned us that the roots of the trees seemed to be moving, causing some kind of mischief. We kept an eye on them, and they did reach the occasional branch down, and the occasional root popped up, but I skirted to the side and Maliah muttered at them in Sylvan, and they didn’t try to do much besides prod us, so we didn’t stop to do anything else on our way to the spring, which we found late in the afternoon.

There were sets of almost-glowing eyes watching us, wondering who the interlopers at their watering hole were, and Maliah tried to reassure them, but they didn’t come out, and we didn’t stay long. She and Cerunwe could both see a stand of ashes nearby, and we didn’t want to put off the hag any longer than we had to, so forward we went.

It’s not that large a stand of trees, but the hag’s hut didn’t show up at first glance. The roof of it is thatched, but the walls are made of ash trees, one or two even with a branch still sticking out. Once you see it, though, you know someone powerful lives there. Maliah requested that I cast Tongues, and I did, but it felt odd, and only caught after a moment where I was sure it wouldn’t work at all.

Maliah asked what I meant when I said it felt odd, and I don’t think I did a good job of explaining. Mostly, it felt like the magic I used to cast it wasn’t mine, not really. I know how my magic feels at this point, the way I coax it out of the notes I play, which are a bridge to the Chords that I sometimes think I can hear a little clearer, now that I’ve heard them so clearly and constantly in Reorx’s realm. This took energy from me, but the magic felt like it came from closer, that the form of the spell came from my gloves but not the actual power that was backing it up. It felt more like it was drawing from the nearest easy source of magic, which must have been the hag.

If it was, though, it didn’t make a difference when we went up to the rough door in the hut’s wall and knocked. A moment later, it swung open, and we found ourselves in a room bigger than the hut should have been able to encompass. At least I’m used to that, these days, so it didn’t take me long to orient myself and look around the room, which was decorated like the worst-organized shop in the world, or like Am’elyn if her taste for trinkets got entirely out of hand. It was dim enough that I couldn’t see most of the strange objects the hag had arrayed around, only a flash of jewels in the window, and on a central table, glows emanating from bottles of all sizes, the contents opalescent, much like the songs Ella recorded in Caystone.

The hag told us to come in, not just stand there, and the rest of the room faded in importance to her. Ella was a fairly powerful hag, but this one seems to be much more so, from her appearance of great age and her confidence and just the depth of her eyes, which were almost dizzying.

She didn’t ask our names, and we didn’t offer them or ask hers. She seems like the kind of person it’s dangerous to give even an alias to. She asked instead what we want, and we told her: a way to find a man we’re hunting, whose name and appearance were probably lies. She told us she could make a map for us, using Niko’s previous battles with him as an anchor, but that it would take a lot of magic in a place where magic is scarce and that it would thus be very expensive.

The negotiations that followed felt dangerous—she outright said that Ella was much softer than she is, when I said I’d paid with song before. (Though in Ella’s defense, we were also asking much less of her than we asked of this hag.) After some talking around memories, which she deemed insufficient if we were just sharing them and not giving them to forget ourselves, Maliah thought to offer some of the water from the Deeping Wellemere we still have available, which caught her interest.

For a while, it seemed like it might be one vial and a memory of something, but the only memory she seemed interested in was when I half-offered the whole story of Maliah’s and my travels, and Cerunwe made zir disapproval of that idea very obvious, so we added a second vial instead, meaning we only have one left.

She wasn’t quite satisfied yet, though. Hags put a lot of weight on prices that cost something personal. If we wouldn’t offer our memories, our skills, our luck, she said, we could offer more physical things: hair, blood, bone. It was Maliah who stepped forward then, while I was frozen, wondering if I could bear to part with Hanai’s earring, knowing I have all the files from it kept safe now. Maliah, though, offered one of her braids, and the hag accepted, bargaining until Maliah said she would pick two and let the hag pick her preferred of those two. That was enough, at last, and we finished the formalities.

The hag unrolled a sheet of vellum on the table and picked up some ink. She asked for a drop of Niko’s blood, as the person who had drawn Onver’s blood and had her own drawn in turn, and Niko obliged, and she integrated it into the ink and then the map started to form. It started with the mountains we’re at the foot of and expanded from there: swirls indicating jump rings, volcanoes and barren spaces, and at the top of the map, a jut of rock in the plain, marked with a dot of red-black ink. And all across the page, crossing in and out of jump rings, crossing much of the map, was a thin gold line.

We rolled it up and paid our price: two vials of water from the Wellemere on the table, the ones from Maliah’s and my packs because we wanted Niko to have hers, and then Maliah’s braid, snipped off with gold shears.

The hag kicked us out happily after that and a few more pleasantries, and as soon as we left and turned our back on the hut, I got the eerie sense that if I turned around, it wouldn’t still be there, or if it was, it wouldn’t be there for me.

We got a little distance away across the hills, not comfortable being so close, and I gathered my courage after the near-failure of Tongues and was relieved to cast the Mansion and even for most of it to feel like it came from my own magic, though there was still a thread of strangeness in it.

In here, tonight, we’ve been looking at the map on and off. There’s no scale, and no way of knowing how long it will take to travel, though Cerunwe estimates perhaps a week, maybe a little less, if we run into fewer delays than we expect. That’s objective time, though, and I didn’t realize until later that I didn’t ask the hag to make us a map that wouldn’t take us through any jump rings that would lose us more than a few days of time. So we’re going to have to ask locals before we go following this route, and find alternate ways if we need to, but at least we know something about the features where he is.

I also had the chance to ask Cerunwe why zie had disapproved of my memory offer, since I need to keep learning about how to make these damn bargains, and zie pointed out, as I should have realized, that all my memories of the last few years contain some memories that people could use in extremely dangerous ways: the way to Avka’s hoard and the defenses there, to name just one, but also the names of stars, too much about Onver’s machine, a thousand other things, small and large, that could put people in danger.

I was crestfallen, but zie pointed out, with one of zir little smiles, that we got out of there without giving up any years of our lives or first-born children, so we should consider ourselves lucky, and that’s the comfort I’m taking with me.

Tomorrow, we start following the hag’s path. I hope we’ll find it easy, but I’m going to do my best to be prepared for whatever the Feywild can throw at me. And to try to keep bargaining with rations instead of blood.

I hope I’ll be seeing you in a week or two, if Cerunwe’s estimates are right.

Love,

Elyn

#in character #in character: letter #letter to: tyko #episode 205 #location: the feywild #person: maliah #person: mehrnikorsa(niko)#person: cerunwe

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letterstosestrilles · 2 years

Text

Dear Tyko,

As promised, a more detailed letter than the one I sent you when we first arrived in the Feywild, so you can reassure yourself that I’m safe right now, even if, as you point out, I’m about to go into some very bad danger indeed when the danger to the force of creativity and thus possibly the universe seems to be past. I will defend myself, though, by pointing out that what Onver did once he could certainly do again, and I’m not interested in leaving that up to chance.

And I will defend myself by saying that Niko would be doing this whether we went with her or not, and you like Niko. There’s no way you want her alone in what’s coming. So you’re just going to have to suffer through a few more weeks of me doing extremely dangerous things, and then I will do my best to only take on threats that don’t make me want to hide under my blankets for a week for a good long time. With a good long period of as few threats of any size as possible to start with.

We did, you’ll probably already have guessed from the time stamps and the timing of my Sending, have a few more days of rest and preparation on Reorx’s plane.

In between other things, Maliah and I did have a chance to sit down with Niko. At first, we mostly talked about the dark side of the Feywild, and what preparations we might need to go there. I asked Maliah what she’s heard, but any and every kind of monster that exists (and probably a good few that don’t) have been said to live there, by one parent or another. There are a few things that she can almost certainly eliminate—there are unlikely to be huge crabs that can shoot fire from their claws, for instance—but more where it’s impossible to guess what’s true, what’s exaggeration, and what’s made up of whole cloth.

We talked about picking up some warm clothes somewhere, since places where there’s no light at all tend to be quite cold, and speculated a little on what magic and what magic objects might or might not work in the dark areas, where everyone seems to agree that magic is at least somewhat curtailed. That terrifies me, when I’ve grown so used to relying on my magic that I don’t think I’ve drawn my sword except to clean it and run a drill or two in a year. When that got to be too much we talked about picking up extra rations both in case I lose the ability to cast my Mansion and because they’re good bargaining material in a place food might be scarce, and what barters to offer Cerunwe, including a set of short swords, the location of Avka’s hoard, and a few other inducements based on what zie is willing to offer us.

After that, Maliah and I sidestepped into asking Niko a few of the questions that have been building up since she got her full memories back. The first questions we had were just how long she’s been Reorx’s companion, and how she came to be one. The answer to the first was staggering, even though I’d come to half-expect it: a century, perhaps more, though she hasn’t tracked it. She’d been a devotee of Reorx for a long time, a paladin for quite some time, and when she made innovations to loom technology, they started speaking to her more often, and eventually offered her a place among their companions.

Since they’re a god more directly connected with mortals than most (Mishakal comes to mind, for instance), they like to have mortal company, and the stretch of lifespan seems to come from enjoying that company too much to want to give it up, not that I blame them. When they’re together, Niko says, doing anything with Reorx or on their plane, it’s a constant feeling of the best and most inspired sorts of collaboration, the kinds where once you’re on track you hardly have to tilt your head or blink to communicate what you want to say, where the project takes on a life of its own. It’s a tempting prospect, really, even if I’d miss all my friends and family too much to actually consider living that life.

I half-joked that I should ask Nuli and Thvara if there are any Crafter ballads about Niko, since that’s their specialty and there’s been much more time than previously assumed for legends about her to circulate. She blanched a little and said she hopes not, or at least that she doesn’t hear them until she has as little more time to reconcile with her memories, so I asked the next most logical question, if any of her companions have such ballads—just before I realized that Dwiona is a dwarvish harpist and there’s definitely a Crafter ballad about that, and amended the question to ask if I’d been in the presence of the Ollamh Harp without knowing.

The answer, it seems, is yes, Dwiona is the subject of Nuli and Thvara’s most-loved and best-known ballad. I’m going to have to track them down and tell them about all of this, though I have no idea if they’ll actually believe me.

There might, Niko says, be ballads about Emulf or the others, but none as widely circulated as Dwiona’s. I’ll have to keep my ears open, and add them to my repertoire if I found them.

That seemed like more than enough of that conversation, so we split off to try some various activities: Maliah to find short swords to offer Cerunwe, with Niko’s help (she found a beautiful matched set with a few useful enchantments on them) and me to badger Dwiona, which she graciously allowed. We spent most of the afternoon with me playing the harp (the Ollamh Harp! It’s beautiful, silvery-pale like driftwood, carved with a raven on the head and abstract designs elsewhere) and intermittently showing her how to work my gloves and the rest of the apparatus. She even let me re-record some harp samples with her harp, which has a gorgeous warm tone like the rooms here seem to bestow but on its own, and which is so responsive you hardly need to pluck a string before it’s sounding.

We also, before dinner, found Emulf in his workshop, where he’s dusting off projects he’d had to leave, and his glasswork is exquisite. We saw a stained glass window that’s as detailed and fluid as a painting, and blown glass flowers and vines that are so perfectly rendered as they climb their way up columns that it’s hard to imagine them being something made instead of grown.

Many things here feel like that, really, so beautiful the place feels like a museum, or would if it weren’t so lived-in and full of Reorx’s power. I had to convince myself to touch things, and it was a relief, as we went around the place, to find the offerings and gifts by people not quite yet masters of their crafts: a quilt in a mind-bogglingly mathematical patterns where some of the corners don’t quite line up, a hammer made from some experimental material that instead of being extremely resilient turned out rather floppy, something that looks rather like the yarn dog Jesson made for Maliah.

As we wandered, I talked to Niko about another part of this quest that’s worrying me: namely, the end of it. Not, for once, any of my big impossible questions about what comes next, but the practical worry that even with the restraining manacles, if we take Onver prisoner instead of killing him, we’re likely to be so spent that we’ll have no way of doing anything with him immediately. If I can’t reserve a Wish long enough to Plane Shift, if I can’t even Teleport to somewhere we could spend some credit for an overnight guard from someone, we would have a rough night to get through, since I doubt he’ll go down or stay down easy, if he’s wily enough to have run from Niko for twenty years.

Niko promised to think about it and ask Reorx about it, on the last night we planned to stay there, and the next day, she tossed me a gem made into a perfect sphere, which will hold the charge for a fairly powerful spell, if not quite as powerful as Wish would need to be. Still, it would be an extra Teleport, or a Mansion that I could build a cell into, and it could be the saving of us.

And later that day, after goodbyes and blessings from Reorx and their companions, they sent us to the Feywild.

After all my complaints about the discomfort of divine magic, I am pleased to tell you that Reorx’s magic didn’t quite feel like Gaizka’s Plane Shift, but it wasn’t as discomfiting as Mishakal’s. It makes sense, them being so used to mortals, and to transporting them from plane to plane on their journeys to meet various crafters, and I was relieved to land in the Feywild no more disoriented than I had to be, in the middle of a stretch of forest just far enough to the light side of the Feywild to make all of us wince after days of the constant dimness of Reorx’s plane.

Maliah, after a look around, said she had no idea where we were, so I made sure my messages to you and to Cerunwe sent and then whisked us away to Troihari, since we’d agreed to start off with rations shopping, which we knew we would need. We ended up buying roughly two months of rations, making a pessimistic guess about how long it will take to find Onver and then doubling that so we have emergency rations and plenty to trade with, since we assumed that people in the dark side of the Feywild might be interested in foods they wouldn’t usually have access to as a bargaining tool.

We spent the night in an inn and woke to a message from Cerunwe inquiring why I hadn’t mentioned the bolthole zie gave me access to among our possible meeting locations (the answer is that I’d thought of it so exclusively as a bolthole that it hadn’t occurred to me that it might be useful for other purposes) but indicating zir willingness to meet. So, after breakfast and a bit of twiddling our thumbs so we wouldn’t show up early, I took out the token zie’d given me and Teleported us over.

It was another stretch of woods we didn’t recognize, though the trees were different from the ones near Troihari, much thinner and paler, and there were mountains nearby. If we aren’t (because we’re still here) in the actual domain of the Lady of the Ashenwalds, I suspect we’re very close, from what I remember of descriptions of her lands. After a moment where I wondered where this supposed bolthole might be, a curtain of foliage was pushed to the side, and then there were Cerunwe’s usual red hair ornaments and the rest of Cerunwe with them, gesturing us into a bolthole I hadn’t seen.

It’s a bare bones spot, not much more than a fairly comfortable cot, a few shelves of rations and useful items, but it was enough (and I can make a Mansion for more comfortable lodgings for us tonight), and we sat down to discuss the dark side of the Feywild.

To start, we laid out terms: information about Avka’s hoard for information, the beautiful short swords for more material help like maps and such things, and for actual guidance into the dark, pretty much whatever zie asks for. It was obvious from the start, though, that zie has less than no desire to go back there. It’s possible that the Lady of the Ashenwalds might urge zir into it, or we’ll hit on a temptation big enough to convince zir, but for the moment, I’m not counting on their guidance as we try to track Onver down.

Information, though, zie was more than willing to give us, and we asked for heaps of it.

Environment, to start—whether I was right in assuming cold, whether there are trends to what sort of spaces we might find, all that kind of thing. The Feywild, of course, isn’t given to easy answers. Cerunwe allowed that a thick jacket or cloak would be appreciated in many areas, and that it’s overall cool, but not the ice fields I was unhappily imagining, at least not until you get very deep in. It’s not the environment, zie explained with exasperated patience, that is so impassable and dangerous that it’s made nearly a third of the Feywild taboo. It’s the places where magic is hard or impossible to use, the beasts, the other things. The environment is merely the environment.

So we asked about the beasts next, a smaller question to grapple with than the use of magic. There are large dogs and wolves and cats with razor-sharp claws, and sometimes blink dogs and displacer beasts. Plants with wills of their own (which made me think about a story Maliah mentioned off-hand about plant zombies that can control people’s will with despair). Some fey, particularly those whose magics are innate rather than pulled from a well of magic and bent by will. Tree spirits, hags. The rumors of a dragon or two out there somewhere, though zie was scrupulous in saying zie can’t confirm those.

Getting food, zie volunteered, can also be a difficulty. You can hunt most recognizable beasts, or even spiders if circumstances are desperate, but we shouldn’t trust any forage, even if it looks safe—too many poisons and hallucinogens, which makes me very glad about the amount of food we bought, especially considering I can’t count on being able to cast the Mansion for us.

Cerunwe also warned us that while it’s less of an issue for us, we can’t count on healing being available. That’s partly due to magic being chancy (though zie thinks healing potions are likely to keep working, thankfully), and partly because there aren’t many healers we can go to if we’re tapped out. The lack of magic means wounds can stick around longer than we’re used to, be more likely to infection and worse, so we’ll have to be scrupulous about keeping injuries clean and changing bandages often, which makes me glad we’ve picked up a few healing kits lately.

Zie also said, though the list of beasts zie gave us didn’t sound too much worse than what we’ve seen elsewhere, that even with four of us, powerful as we are, there are going to be times when we want to retreat rather than fight, and I plan to take that information to heart as much as I possibly can. (I’d already mentioned, back on Reorx’s plane, that with everyone else able to go much faster than I can, it might be that if we have to retreat I’ll leap on Squirt’s back. Especially if I’m already so much dead weight half the time, swinging a sword instead of doing what I’m good at.) Zie emphasized the importance of covering our tracks, and I am glad, as I always am, that we have Maliah, who knows how to do that kind of thing very well indeed.

From there, we moved on to the more esoteric worries. There unfortunately doesn’t seem to be any way of detecting one of the spaces where magic doesn’t work as well until you’re in it and something doesn’t work, though Maliah’s bow glows in the cold so it’s possible we’ll have early warning if that flickers out while it’s still cold. Time distortion fields, though, are much easier to detect: they’re hiding in jump rings. We should not, zie stressed, go through any jump ring we haven’t had confirmed by a local under honest bargain as safe, with either no or minimal time dilation.

(I’d love to avoid jump rings entirely, with that worry ahead of us, but given the Feywild’s layout, there’s not much hope of that.)

As for magic, it’s anyone’s guess what will work and what won’t. Most of our spells, I’m guessing, will be less powerful or nonexistent for good portions of the journey, but things like Niko’s ability to heal with a touch, or mine to give my friends a little boost of inspiration in a battle or to use that same force of inspiration in other ways, aren’t really spells, and I don’t know if they’re innate enough that we’d get by the same way Squirt will still be able to blink, or hags apparently can still use most of their powers out there.

Then come the questions that Cerunwe can’t really answer, of where Onver is, in all that vast space. We don’t really have anything of his to track him by, though a hag might be able to help us if we did. We don’t know the space well enough to know where boltholes are, though again in such a vast space there could be thousands. Cerunwe volunteered that there are some ruins, but they’re so ruined that it’s more trouble than it’s worth to put them to any use, so there aren’t likely to be landmarks to help us find him either. And he was wily enough to avoid Niko for twenty years, on that first hunt, though Niko didn’t have Maliah with her back then.

It’s possible that if we do meet something as powerful as a dragon, they would have some knowledge of a recently-arrived powerful being, and might be willing to trade for that knowledge, but that’s anyone’s guess. If we get very close, the piece of Reorx’s power that he stole might let Niko lead us, but I’m guessing that would lead us right into his probably-very-defensible position, when I’d rather tempt him out of it to get on more even footing.

I also asked how far into the dark side someone, even someone very powerful, can safely live, especially since Cerunwe had spoken about zir memories of the deepest parts of the darkness as barely coherent, which made me worry time might get odd there. Zie didn’t care to guess, but said it’s really more a matter of the magic problems than time problems (implication was that the time problems might have been because of those time distortion jump rings, or possibly simple delirium, zie was very detailed about the risks of injuries getting infected and rotting. I’m not sure I should ask). As very few beings are prepared to live in the extreme conditions of the very brightest parts of the Feywild, though, very few are adapted for the opposite extremes in the darkness, so at least chances are we might be able to avoid going that far?

We all had to digest that information for a while, so we told Cerunwe part of the information we’d offered zir: the story of what we’ve been up to since we left the Feywild last, Avka’s hoard and the Astral Sea and everything in between.

In the middle of that, I couldn’t contain some curiosity: ever since I found out that Jhasdej’s primary planet was mostly spent and uninhabited, even back when I cast Legend Lore with a Wish and heard a single elvish voice reading out a poem about them, I wondered, in the back of my mind, if maybe they were the star that shone on the Honorien Dominion, and thus on Cerunwe’s earlier years. So I asked zir the name of zir planet of origin, and after a moment, they said it was Aland—the same name Jhasdej gave us, which seems like an incredible coincidence to the point that I wonder if the Lady had some hand in it, knowing who Jhasdej was when she gave us their name.

Not long after that, Cerunwe excused zirself, partly to talk to the Lady of the Ashenwalds about everything, and probably partly to consider whether zie can bring zirself to return to the dark parts of the Feywild (though zie is already kindly offering to bring us up to the edge of it, which is a help and no doubt worthy of the swords), and also probably party to have a chance to think about us telling zir we’d spoken to zir star of origin in person and that Maliah is returning to the planet zie left to restore it and offered to bring zie along if zie would like.

We’ll have plenty of time to ask them more questions on our way to the dark side of the Feywild, though, so I don’t mind giving them the time. I could certainly use some time myself, to try to get my fear under some measure of control.

As long as I have reception, maybe we can find time when you’re off work and I’m in camp to do a short video call so you can reassure yourself of my safety and I can see how you (and PA) are doing? No problem if not, but it seems silly not to at least say hello before I go somewhere inaccessible again.

There’s another rule I’ll make for myself after that long vacation I promised you at the start of this letter: I’ll try and stay mostly in places with reception for all that time, with the exception of some visits to Kirim. But maybe I can try to convince you to visit with me, one of those times? I’ll wear you down one of these days, I promise Teleport isn’t bad, especially when I know precisely where I’m going.

Love,

Elyn

#in character #in character: letter #letter to: tyko #episode 204 #location: reorx's plane #location: the feywild #person: maliah #person: mehrnikorsa(niko)#deity: reorx #person: dwiona #person: emulf #person: cerunwe #looking ahead #information gathering

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letterstosestrilles · 2 years

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Dear Tyko,

It’s been a few days since I Sent to you, and maybe you’re wondering why I’m not back somewhere you can get my letters again yet. Obviously this letter won’t explain until I’ve already left, but I don’t know whether I’ll actually be somewhere with reception in between now and … everything else. I hope I am, I want you to know what I’m up to in far more words than I can do in Sending, but I think we’ll be figuring that out tomorrow or the next day.

Before I talk about what’s next, though, there’s a lot to catch you up on, as you might imagine, having read my last letter. Questions I’ve asked and had answered, and the next steps, because there are next steps. Maybe you, like me, had a moment’s desperate hope (and fear, in my case—I can’t deny that I would have had trouble letting go, even if I would have for your sake and those of others who love me, if there were other people who had any faith they could complete this quest) that Emulf and Dwiona would take this task on with Niko, but they have other business to attend to, and I can’t blame them. So yes, there are next steps, but I do need to tell you about how we got to them.

When I last wrote, I was groggy and unprepared to face the world, but writing it down helped, as it always does, so I went off and found Maliah, who was also groggy. We drank some tea from the jug and chatted a little, mostly about our exhaustion. Eventually, she heard voices in the distance, and when we poked our heads out, Niko was also poking hers out, hair mussed and eyes squinted in the scant light. She asked if we wanted breakfast, and when we agreed, led us to the kitchen, pausing sometimes at a crossroads as she reminded herself what direction something was in.

Dwiona and Emulf were up when we got there, for a given value of it. Emulf had pitched himself so far to the side in his seat that he was leaning in the wall, coffee perilously close to spilling it whenever he drank. Dwiona was determinedly upright, not letting herself lean on anything including the back of her seat. They greeted us and offered desperately-needed coffee, and we all tried to find the rhythm of a conversation while we drank it.

Maliah and I did our best to catch them up on major events in the Prime Material Plane over the past two and a half years, though it’s shameful how little we know about what’s actually in the news, other than being fairly certain that Kirim was a major story, at least. I asked if either of them had home planets or stations they wanted to hear about specifically, but they waved me off to ask about generalities, which makes sense with some things I surmised later, but we’ll get there.

We did a little better over breakfast, where Dwiona brought out some things from a pantry that I suspect works much like the one in my Mansion and gave us all plenty of protein and bread to get our energy back up. Maliah and I talked a little more about our backgrounds, and what adventures we’ve been on with Niko that don’t fully involve the path she led us down, asked a few hesitant questions about whether they’ve had time to do much eating or resting since Reorx was attacked (the answer is “very little,” especially with their companions leaving a year ago to seek more help, Niko not having returned), and generally tried to make a very strange situation as normal as we could.

Eventually, though, it was obvious that not much else could get started without speaking to our host, so we all set our dishes aside and let Dwiona and Emulf go ask Reorx where they’d like to meet us while Niko started fussing with her hair and Maliah and I frantically straightened ourselves out. When we were all settled, though, we went out to something like a veranda, a place with a view of the sky (the only thing that still shifts moment by moment instead of holding steady as long as one is in the room) and no true greenery but crafted greenery: wrought metal flowers, silk vines, materials I can’t pretend to recognize.

Reorx, in orcish form, looked much more collected than they had the day before, and much more rested too. They asked, to begin, for more details on how we’d come to be there, and Niko obliged, to my everlasting gratitude. She knew the details that would most interest them, and the most about how she first realized something strange was going on in the first place. I only tossed in occasional commentary—things we saw before we started traveling with her full-time, personal confirmations of people I know who have been on the constant-inspiration side of things, and the occasional comment when Niko was being too modest about her own contributions. Maliah did much the same, and all told, we condensed the tale of our travels down to an hour or so, with a little extra when Reorx asked some clarifying questions.

When it was done, it was our turn to ask questions, and I started with the one I answered for you at the start of this letter: whether Reorx’s companions (it’s the best word I’ve got for them, when they aren’t all paladins and there’s clearly too much fondness and knowledge on both sides for “followers” to feel right) wanted to take over the quest now that Niko has her memories back. As I said, Dwiona and Emulf demurred, and Reorx has plenty of work to do with a lot of divine delicacy putting their domain back in order.

So the problem of Onver was squarely back in our laps, and we started asking questions as appropriate, starting with what it is that he actually wants. Reorx said, rather wry, that Onver isn’t given to dramatic speeches about his goals, but they expect that what he wants is power. The power of a god, even, but without the responsibilities or obligations of one. Reorx suspects they were a first test, not a final one.

The next question, one that’s been keeping me up nights, is whether the damage to Reorx was from charging or discharging the weapon. We know that it can pull from beings as well as from the ethereal plane, after all, and the kind of charge you can gain from hurting a god is not the kind of charge we want in Onver’s hands. Unfortunately, it seems to have been some measure of both, and Reorx can tell that some portion of their essential nature is in Onver’s hands—it allows them to do at least some general tracking on him, but that he succeeded in even that measure is terrifying.

Another logical question: what can a mortal do, with a piece of a god’s essential nature? With a piece of Reorx’s, given their domain. Pure destruction, certainly, but if all Onver wanted to do was destroy, he could easily have spent that power already. Other options are more nebulous: he could use it like an incredibly powerful version of the inspiration I can give, or infuse it into an object, or hoard it for when he gains more power at the next stage of his plan, whatever that is.

That gave us all plenty to think of, so I went sidewyas to Niko, who had her full and proper memories restored to her so recently and who I’m full of questions about and for. I started with something Reorx had said the day before—that they’d taken Niko’s memories to keep Onver from following her back once she found him. But Onver had also been brought to them once, so I was confused. Reorx cleared it up, starting the story a little back from that, as I’ll relay to you now.

After Onver destroyed his community so brutally, which Niko told us about, Reorx charged her and Achenna, who I haven’t met, to bring Onver to them for a conversation—as they say, punishment isn’t really in their remit, but something clearly had to be done and it was Reorx’s paladin Onver betrayed. They did, which is when Onver attacked and whisked away (some kind of teleportation magic, but whether it was magic in an item, a scroll, intrinsic, or learned, Reorx couldn’t say), but the protection was less about the location, in the end, and more about knowledge.

Niko and these other companions are all very close to Reorx, it seems, in a way most people aren’t to gods (which makes me think about Mishakal and her comment that Reorx’s plane might be more comfortable for us than many divine planes, so I’m guessing it’s not terribly common for gods to take on companions, but that seems rude to ask). They’re privy to secrets of divine knowledge, of universal and creative knowledge, that shouldn’t fall into Onver’s hands. Moreover, when you’re that close to a god, apparently there are means of tracking, so removing Niko’s connection kept her safe until Onver gave up looking for her.

That was a lot to think about, so I sidestepped again and got another blow to my perception of things for my troubles: I asked about the timeline of things, and whether the return of Niko’s memories had given her time back too. She laughed, a little wildly, and said that apparently the time between Onver destroying his community and Niko and Achenna bringing him before Reorx was twenty years. (I don’t know much about genasi lifespans, but you’ve met Niko. She does not look old enough to have been hunting someone for twenty years. Another question I don’t quite have the courage to ask.)

More than that, the memories she shared with us of bringing Onver to a mortal temple to Reorx were modified. She wasn’t a regular paladin called to be a servant and companion to Reorx in this circumstance. She’d been with them for some time, and the perhaps-killed head of the temple was Reorx themselves, twisting things so Niko could know what she needed to without betraying that knowledge if she was found. Apparently these companions go on what they agreed to call pilgrimages sometimes, returning to mortal planes to wander, learn new techniques, inspiring interesting projects, and the like. Niko was on one of those when Onver fell into her lap.

(And fell, it seems, by design. He might not have known exactly who was coming, but as Reorx put it, there are ways people can make themselves attractive in such situations, and if it hadn’t been a servant of Reorx, it might have been, I don’t know, a high-level cleric of an agricultural god interested in the supposed uses of the machine, or even, as they said, Gaizka, powerful enough to draw interest.)

The extra twenty years certainly make parts of what we’ve been surmising make sense. Niko and Reorx agree that she was hunting him fiercely enough that he can’t have been putting too much into place, but Maliah and I remembered Shaan Liadon, and his mother who might possibly be a warlock, which gave us all a sober moment. That’s more of a loose thread, a side problem I already know Athan and Gaizka have their eyes on from different vantage points, but it’s still a reminder that Onver might have done plenty of things even on the run.

They also agree that while Onver might have been presenting himself as a regular denizen of the Plane of Earth when she met him, chances are large that’s a disguise. There’s no guessing what he actually is, when there are so many powerful beings, Reorx included, who can change their guise on a whim, but we should be prepared for him to have resources and powers aside from his weapon, at the very least. He definitely has access to magic, by whatever means, even if his primary offensive capability is the weapon.

Well, let me be precise, so I’m harder to take by surprise: with Reorx, he really only tried to fight or wound with the weapon, and didn’t attack when he was separated from it, just tried to get back and hamper others’ movements. (At least at that point, he had to be next to the weapon to fire it. Point in our favor. When Niko and Achenna brought him in, it was using surprise and ambush tactics. Point less in our favor.) It may be that it’s the most damage he can do so he doesn’t see the point in doing anything else. It may be that it’s the most damage he can do to a god, so he didn’t try lesser measure. And it may be that he stuck to the weapon because he wanted power more than he wanted to win, in which case he definitely wouldn’t care to stick to it with us, since we can’t grant him divine power.

That was all a lot to take in, so I made another sidestep: does Reorx want him alive? Niko had talked about taking Onver alive before, to deliver him to justice, but apparently she’s done that once before. And, from what it seems, Reorx doesn’t care. If we deliver them Onver, they’ll deal with him as they see fit. If he doesn’t make it back but he’s dealt with, they’ll be pleased enough to move on to other things.

Maliah stepped in and asked the wonderfully practical question of what the thing looks like, after all this worry about it. Niko, obviously, has seen some plans for it, so she can tell us more, but it does look superficially like a drill, since it is a planar drill even if it functions as much by magic and metaphor as by its physical components. There are apparently a lot of lenses and lasers, which seem like parts that could be sabotaged, or so I optimistically hope. It’s large, on an industrial or agricultural scale rather than a hand weapon.

Reorx seemed to see all of us listing a little, still tired after healing them, and brought the conversation to a close by saying that they could tell us at least vaguely where he is, and would give us anything they can, but that there are places in the universe where it’s hard for magical sight, even that of a god, to penetrate, and Onver has wisely holed up in one. That, though, they said, was to deal with after a few more days of recovery.

Before they sent us off for that recovery, though, they said that they wanted to thank us for coming and finishing the job their companions have been so faithfully doing. They asked if there’s anything we know we need, and I mentioned something to hold Onver once we have him, and they produced from the air, as though it were nothing, a pair of strong but light manacles with runes carved in that can apparently keep a person from using teleportation magic once you have them restrained, and I thanked them and they turned to other gifts.

Reorx gave each of us a gift and a blessing. Niko they said will have greater rewards when they’ve had time to think of what would be appropriate, but apparently the glaive she’s using has more powers than she knew, or used to have more powers, and they’ve restored it to full function. Her blessing is a blessing of health, and as Reorx said it, I could see her sitting up straighter, a little more vital, even if she still looked exhausted.

Maliah was given a beautiful tooled leather quiver, just the size of her regular one but with space to hold arrows, javelins, even extra longbows, all of which can be drawn even quicker than getting something from the bag of holding. Squirt didn’t receive a gift, but they both received blessings. Maliah’s is a blessing of protection—for one who protects her friends, said Reorx, and I’m pleased they see her so well. Apparently it will protect her, which I’m even more grateful about, a little extra ease in dodging and avoiding harm. Squirt’s blessing, which Maliah nearly wept over, is one of wound closure: he’s going to be a whole lot harder to kill, and easier to heal, which is worth weeping over, I’d say.

I got a puzzle to go with my gift and my blessing. They said (and meant, I since discovered) that they wanted to know more about my gloves, but in the meantime asked Dwiona for a particular harp, and when she handed it to them, a small and beautifully covered object, they strummed it once, and the music seemed to shiver into being as light in the air. They cupped it in their hands, blew it over my gloves, and now, it seems, the gloves have the powers of the harp: they’ll cast Fly, and Wall of Thorns, and several other spells, once a day each, and if I try to use the gloves to charm someone, which I don’t expect I’ll do often, they’ll have a harder time resisting it. They also said that as I look for how they stored the data, I may find it easier to do some of my own, which is the puzzle, and one I look forward to unraveling.

The blessing is one that may amuse you, actually—Reorx, like you, seems to agree that whatever my virtues, I’m not exactly overflowing with wisdom, and gave me a blessing of wisdom to make up for it. I’m used to discovering new reserves of power in myself, but I do have to admit it’s deeply strange to feel a god expand your understanding and powers of observation, and I keep finding myself in spirals wondering if I would have thought something in quite the same way before the blessing. Hopefully it will settle soon.

After that, and a great many thanks, we were given the run of the compound while Reorx took care of business.

Dwiona showed me to some absolutely gorgeous music rooms. They don’t have any overt acoustic material on walls or ceilings, but even just talking in them, you can feel the roundness in the tone, the way it’s almost an echo but doesn’t actually linger or muddy any sounds. I don’t think I’ve heard a concert hall as good. And they’re just there, full of musical instruments, each a perfect example of type, some of them types I’ve never heard of and couldn’t imagine. Others have the wood-and-rosin scent of a luthier’s shop, or sheets of brass to be shaped, wires to be turned into strings for palm-sized harps as much as for guitars twice as long as I am tall.

I spent most of the rest of the day absolutely enchanted, playing first one instrument, now another, each all pure and perfect tone, the smoothest trumpet I’ve ever heard, a drum whose beats could echo across miles, a fiddle Serime would kill to get her hands on.

I had, however, in a fit of wanting to do something for the exhausted people who haven’t had breaks and vacations with friends and family for the last two years, offered to treat everyone to dinner in the Mansion, and that included Reorx, so eventually I tore myself away and very quickly planned a feast and a Mansion that’s a bit less flamboyant than usual, just in time for everyone to come along.

It was a pleasant dinner, thank goodness. Squirt gorged himself on a dozen kinds of meat, everyone else appreciated the strange array of dishes I conjured up, roast hog next to Infernal curry next to that cake I always wanted to try from The Estate of Bidi-Maha in the Time of Industry, which was just as delicious as I always hoped. I kept conversation as light as I could, and Reorx and their companions mostly talked about crafting, and mishaps with trying new ones. When they lapsed, Maliah and I told some stories of the quests not directly related to helping Reorx.

Eventually, we all admitted defeat and left the Mansion behind to rest again.

Yesterday was quiet. I went back to the music rooms, and while I spent a little time looking at the spellwork and wondering how to replicate it, and pulling out Hanai’s old notes to see if the crystalline structure could be a key to it, I also spent some time doing some maintenance on the rest of my kit, since the gloves are the showiest part but not the only part. I redid the wiring in my belt to be more efficient with the larger amounts of data I need to access, recalibrated the sensitivity on my loop sensor, and, while I had such perfect recording acoustics, rerecorded a lot of my vocal samples.

Maliah and Niko had both disappeared, Niko to rooms dedicated to fibercraft and Maliah sometimes with her and sometimes looking at and testing out Reorx’s gorgeous collection of bows, and we were all enthusiastic over dinner, which we had in the kitchen this time and without a god along.

And then today, after a bit more of the same, Reorx called us to that veranda again, to talk to us about our next steps, since Onver doesn’t seem to be moving fast but we all want to be done with him anyway.

As I said, because Onver has a piece of Reorx’s power, they can’t pinpoint him, but they know at least vaguely where he is. And as I said, there aren’t many places that can block magic as thoroughly as the place he’s hiding. Reorx listed a few, each of which sounded inhospitable: pockets of the Shadowfell, certain corners of the Celestial Plane, some of the Outer Planes, where Reorx says Onver does not yet have the power to walk.

But Onver isn’t in any of those places. No, Onver is, it seems, on the dark side of the Feywild. The place they tell ghost and horror stories about, a place where large parts don’t allow any access to magic and where I’ll thus have a hard time being of any use to my friends at all to the point where I’m worried I’ll be dead weight for a decent amount of the journey, unless I can make friends with some unspeakable horrors on the way to Onver’s den. But you can’t make friends with the land, which is also against you, and contains, apparently, pockets where time distorts, where we could lose months or years. Reorx, helpfully, suggests we avoid those. I’ll have to ask what they look like.

Or, most likely, I’ll have to ask Cerunwe what they look like, because we do know one person who’s been to the dark side of the Feywild and come back out, if with more difficulty than ze has yet told us about. We’re going to owe zir a hell of a favor, but the thought of at least zir advice, if not zir guidance, is one of the only things giving me hope, when Maliah blanched as soon as Reorx said where Onver is. Maliah’s not scared of places, not really, not when she could explore them, but this she’s scared of, and that scares me in turn, even if something about it tugged my imagination and my interest when I was there.

Maybe I’ll get to write my song about it after all.

I don’t know if we’ll be back on the Prime Material Plane in between. These messages may send from the Feywild—I doubt the dark side has the reception to send messages, but if we need to find Cerunwe, we won’t be starting there.

I’m scared. Of Onver and of this. But I can almost see the end of it, now, and some hints of what could come after. I’ll just have to keep those in mind, because the nearer things are too terrifying to focus on for long.

Please tell me you’re reading something happy in book club this month.

Love,

Elyn

#in character #in character: letter #letter to: tyko #episode 203 #location: reorx's plane #person: maliah #person: mehrnikorsa(niko)#person: dwiona #person: emulf #deity: reorx #person: aturav onver #looking ahead

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letterstosestrilles · 2 years

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Dear Tyko,

For once, I think one of my letters is going to put you in a good mood, which I’m delighted about, and hope you are too. Especially after the most recent spate, which I know you’re still recovering from.

After all our recent adventures, and knowing what we need strength for coming up, we all decided that we want to see pretty much everyone we care about, at least everyone we can arrange a convenient meeting with. We started, after some deliberation, with Bizza, spending a day catching up with him on Sumula Station and eating so many crepes I felt full to bursting. He’s doing well these days, and the business very well. He even said he’s gone on a date or two, nothing serious, but just testing it out, after how his last relationship ended, and I’m delighted for him.

Next, we went on to Honione. Maliah’s been back a time or two, on the rare occasions we’ve been apart, to say hello and get her bow tuned up, but I’ve always taken the opportunity to visit you on Sestrilles, or deal with some other business. Well, this time we both wanted to go, but I was the major impetus, because I’d been messaging with Sserit and Lian, now that I know Resurrection and have the means to gift such things to my friends. Do you even remember them? Sserit was the ghost who helped us in the adventure in HASAI, and Lian is her girlfriend, and they’ve been sharing a body since then, which they’re mostly fine with but is inconvenient at work, from what I gather.

Anyway, I offered the Resurrection, and after some discussion, they took me up on it, and we went through the bureaucratic process to get Sserit’s body exhumed and then let her move on for a few minutes so I could summon her from the proper place, which I did.

I cast Raise Dead during my service at Mishakal’s temple a few times, and Resurrection once, but I’d been warned in the literature at the temple that the longer someone’s been dead, the harder Resurrection is—not that it will fail, with consent, but Sserit could barely get out of bed for days and I felt, I suspect, not unlike Gaizka felt after they turned a black hole inside out, though thankfully without the dizziness. But I couldn’t so much as cast a Prestidigitation until I’d had a full night’s sleep, and I spent most of the rest of our visit in a hotel room quietly watching movies with a cool cloth pressed to my forehead. Still, though, it’s worth it to have watched the two of them get to hug each other and hold on, and then to see them holding hands several times (and just as many times see them give each other breathing space, especially at work, where they can go back to working on their separate projects more easily).

Once I was feeling better, I did get to tour around HASAI again, much more cheerful full of people and not in the midst of crisis. Fariya was excited to see my gloves, and everyone else was happy to talk about their research, and Maliah got her bow checked and was glad about it.

(I know, I told you this letter would put you in a good mood. Bear with me.)

From there, we moved on to Rugira Prime. First, a visit to Ekresh Veshteth, because I wanted to hear how the aliens in the Twilight of Cinders were getting along and wanted to compare notes on the demiplane Teleport variant Gaizka taught me as opposed to the pocket dimension access spell he cast to get us to the Twilight of Cinders. My variant doesn’t, alas, work to get us there, but he was happy enough to talk about spell particulars and then to tell me that the explorations in the pocket dimension are going slowly but well. All the aliens seem to have been picked up, Aji included, and no new ones have crashed, now that they aren’t being shot out of the sky. They remain something of a mystery, but maybe I’ll go back sometime, climb through that hole in the sky and go meet them properly. It’s nice to dream about, anyway.

Then it was Mashoy, which is at least a little cooler at this time of year than it was the last time I visited. Maliah and I spent a good amount of time visiting our friends at the Court of Flowers (who were all pleased to see her so much more sure of herself and happier than the last time we visited). We had dinner with Pika and her family, and they’re all doing well, taking care of themselves and each other just as we could have wished when she retired. I stopped by Midat’s shop, and we had a lovely long chat about her latest innovations and my gloves, since I didn’t even have Niko’s fabric the last time I came. Not to mention PA! They don’t have its model commonly in Mashoy, and she was delighted with the modifications I’ve made on it, and had some suggestions for interfaces for the arms I want to give it the next time I have time to devote to it.

But more than anyone else, I was in Mashoy to see Brennu, for two reasons.

The first, as I think I’ve told you, was to give him some water from the Deeping Wellemere, when the spell he was under left some remnants that make it hard for him to do what he wants to. He does look a lot better, not least because he doesn’t have a black eye this time, and asked me several questions about the water. I’d written to Ektarika and then when she didn’t have the answers to Cerunwe, asking about whether the water would do anything about mental effects of spellwork. Cerunwe though that anything chronic might be helped, but certainly not reversed.

Brennu also had questions about the longevity I mentioned, though I’m afraid I wasn’t much help there, saying that my best guess is that taking it frequently would be more likely to give him extra years, or taking it when aging was the biggest thing the water could find to fix. He said, wryly, that perhaps I should punch him again so we could see how fast the water would heal something on a regular mortal, and only laughed at me a little when I did a bad job of containing my horror.

In the end, he chose to take it, a sip at a time, and we talked until I was sure there wouldn’t be any immediate aftereffects (Maliah had come along as support and just because it seemed ridiculous that they hadn’t met, and I told him about her quest to keep Squirt, and she did deflect a bit to talk about how wonderful Squirt is, but did let me talk at least some about her heroics), and then I told him to eat a big meal and get some rest to let the water do its work and left him to take my advice with a promise to visit the next day.

And the next day, he said he didn’t have a headache, apparently rare, but that he suspected any effects would be felt more over the next few days as he tried and either succeeded or failed to do things he wanted to. And I, well.

I’d asked Maliah if it was wrong to ask him on a date, when we arrived in Mashoy, because I’d met him under such desperate circumstances and saved him, and since I’d come to help him more, and to act as a healer, no less. And she said that as long as he knew he could say no without anything changing, it was fine, so I plucked up my courage and I did it, I asked him to dinner and he said yes and didn’t even laugh at me when I immediately said he should probably choose the restaurant since I didn’t eat out much when I was in town.

And I’m so glad, Tyko. We’ve been writing ever since, and something about the way we met means that there haven’t ever really been that many things we can’t talk about. He’s always been honest about how he’s feeling, his experiences and what he feels responsibility for and a thousand other things, and so in return I tell him about the harder parts of my journeys in a way that really only you and Maliah hear, and oftentimes in different ways. We talk about books, and the instrument he’s learning, and about resurrection and the trials he had to testify at, and it’s so good to have someone outside of all of this, and outside my family too, who I know so deeply, and am known by so deeply.

Of course, as soon as he accepted, I was struck by a fit of terror, because, well. You know how I date—I date strangers, and if it ends, of course it’s sad, because I’d hardly have dated them if I didn’t like them, but I’m not missing a key piece of my life. But if I date Brennu and do something stupid and lose him someday, I don’t know if we’ll be able to be close in quite the same way we have been, and losing that is terrifying. Maliah, who finds first impressions much harder than lasting ones, the reverse of my feelings on the matter, was baffled and tried her best to comfort me, but I was very bad at being comforted until I actually went on the date.

By mutual agreement, we tried to keep that first date light, talk about all the things we skipped to talk about all the deep dark things in our heads. Brennu had picked a fairly nice restaurant (I was very glad I had an outfit I commissioned in the Feywild) and asked for a private room in the back, so we wouldn’t be bothered by press or other people interested in him appearing in public and me returning to town. We talked about his cousins, who he’s close to in the way I am to you, and about you and Alion and Tiriel and the children on Nosirion-1. I told him stories from before I met him that we’d missed out on, and he replied with the same, and we only talked a little bit about stars and what I’m doing next and all the baggage we’re going to have to work out.

I’m leaving Mashoy in just a few days, sending Niko off to a temple retreat and Maliah to visit Marsa and her mothers, going to Kirim and then to see you myself, but we’ve gone on a few more dates and talked more seriously about things again, the kind of things we talk about in our letters and the danger I’m in from what’s coming next. We’ve also made it clear that neither of us is particularly light or casual about this, but that we’re going to take it very slowly indeed, given what I have coming up and all the much easier baggage of living in different places and not quite knowing the shape our lives are going to take.

When I’m done dealing with Onver, though, and reassured everyone I’m still alive and dealt with the very immediate aftermath, we have a plan to meet somewhere quiet and private to talk a lot more, and I’m already looking forward to it.

There. Resurrection aside, isn’t this letter worth it? I’ll look forward to your teasing in a week or so in person, and will take it happily as long as I get to meet Lindanas again, and maybe even this book group you can’t stop talking about.

Love,

Elyn

#in character #in character: letter #letter to: tyko #episode 202 #person: maliah #person: mehrnikorsa(niko)#person: sserit #person: lian #person: bizza #person: ekresh veshteth #person: brennu zahin #location: sumula station #location: honione #location: rugira prime #location: rugira prime: mashoy #elyn and brennu

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letterstosestrilles · 2 years

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Dear Tyko,

I need you to be fine with the contents of this letter. Well, the latter part of it. You’re allowed to (no doubt) continue your annoyance with the void drake, I fully understand that you get mad at me because you’re scared for me, but I need you to not about the end of it. And now I expect you’ve immediately gone down to it, but eventually you’ll come back up here, and I need to write things in order because I need the space to think, so you’ll have the relatively calm part of this letter first.

On our way back from the star fields, the Sunweavers took navigation back over from Maliah. We took the fastest way out to Jhasdej, as close to a straight line as possible, but once we had their location pinpointed, the way back could take better-traveled paths, and safer ones. We had to shake off an elemental like a less powerful solar worm once, and steer around a float of void jellyfish another time, but until we reached the void dragon’s territory, it was a blessedly peaceful voyage, though things were a little awkward with the Sunweavers for a few days. (Which is fair. If one of our temporary passengers or hands on The Promise disappeared for a few days to do something legendary, I would have had trouble making ordinary conversation for a day or two as well.)

I especially appreciated that, because all of us needed to do some thinking, I think. Almost as soon as the initial triumph of our success with Jhasdej faded, I was worrying about Onver again, the fight we have coming up and how little we know about it. We also talked about where we want to go and what we want to do before we go to deal with him. Maliah and I want to see nearly everyone, if we can possibly manage it, and I already know a few stops I might prioritize depending on if I’ve heard from a few people by the time I get back. Obviously you and the rest of the family on Sestrilles are priorities too, and I’m going to try to snatch a bit of time in Kirim, because I need to talk to family there. Maliah wants to stop in the Feywild, and all three of us want to go to Nosirion-1.

(Niko also wants to go to a temple. I can’t blame her at all.)

When we did reach the void dragon’s territory, though, I pulled myself together enough to stop fretting and abandon engineering for a while so I could Send to him and tell him we were back to tell him the story. After an echoing silence, he told me he would find us soon, and I was left to trust that.

I had, when I Sent to him, asked him not to terrify my crewmates too badly, so while the Redtree had to brake very quickly when he appeared out of the surrounding void, at least he didn’t wrap himself around us again. I went up to the bridge, and there, once again, was met by a silvery moon-like eye and his curiosity.

With a creature who can read minds, I didn’t know how much detail to give, so at the beginning, I gave very little, just the bare facts, and when he commented on the brevity, I invited him to get a clearer experience, and had the increasingly-familiar sensation of something powerful rummaging around in my mind, learning enough that he sat back and said, once again, no doubt the greatest compliment he ever gives lowly mortals, that I was interesting. He then reminded me that I’d promised him a song, so a bit self-conscious standing in the middle of the bridge, I sang the “Song for the Spacefarer’s Daughter,” my default these days when I want to impress someone. It was, at least, impressive enough that he deemed me interesting again, and then after a few farewells and an admonishment to be wary, as he’d like to hear the next part of our story if we meet again someday, he disappeared into the void again, maybe by some magic, maybe just by the thoroughness of his camouflage.

That was, I’m pleased to say, the last interesting thing that happened on our voyage. I could return to my circuit boards and did (and I think the ways they compress information gave me a few ideas both for how to find my own way into work like Hanai’s and also, more mundanely, how to reprogram some movement controls for PA so it has an easier time with the drone, which it still has trouble moving up and down as necessary). Maliah went back to tending the ship’s garden, and Niko went back to mending a whole closet full of things that had been awaiting repair, and Squirt mostly stayed with Maliah but also enjoyed some explorations, and probably got a lot more treats than usual, judging by his smug air.

Back in port at the Storm Gardens of Amsiel, we bid everyone farewell. They, after weeks upon weeks of travel in dangerous places, were grateful to be back in port, especially because another branch of the Sunweaver clan was docked too. Hopefully they’ll take a good long leave before setting out again, and dine out on our unlikely stories. We exchanged contact information for if we end up back on the plane and said our goodbyes.

We went back to the Weary Sage, where Gaizka was still staying, to my surprise, since I didn’t think it would take that long to attune tuning forks unless they were making a great many of them. When we let them know we were back, though, and they knocked a few minutes later where we were all collected in Niko’s room (she would have had her knees up around her ears in either of our chairs). We opened the door, and there they were—on crutches, after giving no hint in Sendings that they’d been injured.

They explained, after we all exclaimed over them and they had a chance to sit down, that they’d turned a black hole inside out. When we requested more information, that sentence being difficult to imagine, they explained that some weeks ago, while we were gone, a void creature (I haven’t had a satisfying identification, maybe it was a difficult one to explain) got too close to a city some distance away, and there was magical interference between the two that created an effective if not literal black hole, and the city was in imminent danger of being sucked in.

The city sent out a distress beacon, and Gaizka’s contacts here conveyed the emergency to them, the only magic user powerful enough to both get there in time and maybe do something about the problem, and off they went to handle it. (The city would have been in trouble if an archmage hadn’t been in reach of their call, but I still think Rugira Prime could take some lessons there.) The manner of their handling it involved arcane mathematics and physics that would have taken me three days of scribbling half-remembered equations to even begin to understand, but from what I understand through their modesty, they came up with a novel spell on the spot, shoved all the raw power behind it they could, and reversed the black hole just in time to catch the brunt of an incredibly powerful magic backlash that burned out a lot of their ability to cast magic and made them sick and dizzy on top of it in a way that healing couldn’t handle.

Niko and I both offered to try to deal with the lingering effects, continued vertigo mostly, since they’ve only recently gotten permission from healers here to start casting high-level magic again, but they waved us off. Magical backlash apparently lingers a lot longer than other kinds of injury, and while I can heal someone’s body and restore some other things, I don’t know a single way to fix arcane power. But we all decided that after a few more days to get them properly steady, we would head back to the Prime Material Plane.

With that deadline, though, I knew it was time to do something I’ve been thinking about for a long while. And I want you to know, before I explain it, that I did it as smart as I could. I didn’t go alone, which was my inclination. I told Maliah, and she of course said she would come with me, and we went to the temple of the Lady of Stars here.

Once, when she gave us the names of the stars, she told me that there are very few places the stars don’t shine. And, in the days and months following that, I’ve been thinking. Thinking, specifically, about a specific place the stars might or might not shine: whatever afterlife my parents are in. And then it started to combine with my questions about resurrection, the almost-but-not-quite satisfying answers from Speak With Spirits, and … and surely you know where I’m going with this. I’ve been writing a song in offering for months, and it was as ready as it would ever be, and there we were with a temple to the Lady.

So we went, and the gnomish priestess recognized us and greeted us happily and let us be near the altar, where there were freshly lit candles scenting the air with just a bit of smoke. I settled down and knelt, explained my reasoning, and asked if there was some way she could let me talk to them for even a minute, or pass a message if that was too much or too dangerous, and then I performed my song and waited in the silence that followed.

And then there was a whisper in my mind, and I don’t think she appeared to anyone else, but I saw her clear as day in front of me, offering a hand, and I took it, and I thought, in that moment of silence and stillness, of Hanai, who was the last of my parents to hold me and who I might soon see again, and then I was in motion.

I told you once about how it feels to see things for a second the way she must, the way spaces seem to grow and compress all at once, the way stars seem like the ones I know but also, now that I’ve seen them, like the orbs of light that are the stars’ metaphysical bodies and domains, and also like something else beyond, some dimension to them that’s all hers. This time, I wasn’t just seeing them, but traveling through them, faster and faster until they were streaking like meteors, and then everything blurred into pure white light and then settled into darkness, and I was standing in a field lit only dimly by stars, with a haze like a light mist making them seem more distant than usual.

I couldn’t see the Lady, but I could feel her hand on my heart, protecting me from the nature of where I was. I could, though, see a veiled figure, a god of death I don’t know, though I imagine if I looked in Alion’s books I could find what to call them. Like the Lady of Stars, they held out a hand and then faded to the side, not gone but not my primary point of focus.

Many on the Procyon called out to the Lady, she told me as three figures started weaving themselves out of the darkness. Kadan was one of the most faithful, who spoke to her most often. Hanai didn’t, not usually, but in the end, they cried out louder than everyone else on the ship, all of whom must have been praying for mercy and protection, asking for those for me, that I might live.

And then there they were, in front of me—all three of them, but Hanai stepping forward first. None of them were substantial, like outlines of people, just solid enough to touch, not solid enough to hold, eyes reflecting the starlight in the darkness as Hanai spoke to me, putting their hand on my cheek and saying my name.

I’ve thought a thousand times about what I would say to them if I could. I have since long before I knew their names. Or my name, my full name. Since before I even remember those late-night daydreams. I couldn’t remember any of it right then. I don’t even remember what I blurted out—that we didn’t have long, that I’m okay, that Hanai succeeded, that I had a question for them. I don’t even remember if I told them I loved them.

Hanai was calmer, behind the veil of death. They said they were proud of me, and commented on how much I’ve grown. They’re taller than me, and that was strange to know, but it felt right and wrong all at once—of course they should be taller, but they should be so much taller than they were.

I dragged my mind off that and on to what was so important I’d asked such a reckless favor of the Lady, and asked if they would want to come back, if I can find a way for them.

With a kiss to my forehead, Hanai answered first: that they’ll wait if I need them to wait, and that if I ask them to come they’ll come. It’s a complicated answer, but by now, I wasn’t expecting simplicity, a yes or a no. Perhaps especially not from them, of all people.

Kadan came forward to take my hands then, and he was more my height, and his dark hair was just a shadow in the dark field. “Your life is yours,” I know he said that in the middle of what else he said, which was much the same as Hanai’s words: that we’ll see each other again someday, and he’ll be glad if it’s soon, and glad to wait if that’s what makes me safer and happier.

By then, I was feeling like I was fraying at the edges despite the Lady’s protection, almost falling back into the streaking stars, but I planted my feet and waited, and there was Ezenki, his hair just like mine, down to the exact shade, but a little shorter than I am, the shortest of the three of them. He said he loved me—I’m almost sure I remembered to say it back then, I hope I did—and that they’re proud, and that they’ll see me again, as Kadan said, but by then it was too much, and even though I wasn’t in my body I thought I could feel the tell-tale nosebleed beginning, and Ezenki just had the chance to touch my cheek one last time before I was wrenched back, farther and farther and faster and faster through the stars and into the darkness of unconsciousness.

I woke up sprawled over Maliah’s lap, blood all down my face and neck, with a splitting headache and a feeling like I’d been beaten black and blue from the inside out. Maliah, clearly a little wild with concern, told me that I’d been sitting there, had held out a hand and then dropped it into my lap, that my nose had started bleeding, and that I’d then proceeded to collapse, giving her only just enough time to lunge and keep me from braining myself on the altar.

I asked for a hug, gave her what I suspect was an incoherent explanation and reassurance, and let her help me to my feet so I could give slightly more coherent reassurance and a lot less explanation to the priestess, who had a wide-eyed look for me but didn’t comment aside from a brief blessing.

Using Maliah and Squirt as supports on and off, I went back to the Weary Sage, casting a few healing spells on myself as I went to try to mitigate some of the damage. Niko did a lot more good, alarmed at the state of me, and I collapsed into my bed for at least half a night’s sleep worth of a nap before appearing at Maliah’s door again and asking if we could go on an errand she’s been talking about, finding a plant native to the plane for herself and for Cernunnos.

By then, I was still weary and aching and overwhelmed, but it did me good to follow her around the city until we found a shop that sold some ornamental plants. I cast Tongues on her but didn’t bother with myself, and mostly looked around at plants as they went around. She found a gorgeous plant for Cernunnos, a shade-loving sort of bush with a single blossom, which seems to react to sustained sounds and found my gloves interesting. For herself, she found something a good deal smaller and easier to care for, a hardy one that, while it also prefers shade, doesn’t mind a little neglecting.

On our way back, we tried stopping at the Temple of All Gods to see if they would be able to send Maliah’s offering on, but they seemed wholly baffled by the prospect, so Maliah asked if I could do it, and with a ridiculously frivolous Wish, I very much hope I sent it where I meant to, a temple to Cernunnos in a part of the Feywild with an appropriate amount of shade for the plant.

I was exhausted and I had a lot of thinking to do, so I decided it was time to eat something and get some rest, so here I am, writing to you, though I don’t think you’ll find the reading of this letter as comforting as I’ve found the writing. I am fine. I wouldn’t have risked myself like that if I didn’t trust the Lady to know what would be too much and Maliah to make sure I was safe and upright at the end of it. And I know you don’t like this desire of mine, that it scares you that I might get tugged down this path (and maybe, though I expect this observation will earn me at least one day of silent treatment, you worry that I’ll love you less with my birth family around me. I won’t, you know. You’re my brother, and that’s been the steadiest and realest relationship in my life since the day I met you. That’s never going to change).

I’m not going to do it until we beat Onver. I couldn’t do that to them, raise them from the dead and then leave them to maybe get killed. And even when we do, there are roads to decide between. These days, I could afford True Resurrection, with some indulgence from my friends, but even Wish can’t cast that, so I’d have to see if Ektarika can, or someone else. And I could do Resurrection so easily it frightens me, but that depends on Damaris Nimate. So it’s going to take time, and you and I can sit down and reconcile ourselves to each other’s views and reassure each other.

I need you to be with me on this. I can’t do it without you, and I know it’s selfish, but it’s still true. If you need time, have time, ask for a month or two of me writing other people like you did after Gletta-86 if you need to. But I hope maybe you understand that I’ve grown a lot since then, that I know a lot more, and that I’m a lot more sure of my path. I’m not torturing myself with the hope now. I’m saying that I’m probably about to save the damn universe and all its planes, and that I deserve this joy when I’m done.

And—be as worried as you like, and tell Lindanas if you need to, but I’m going to ask you to let me tell Alion and Tiriel this. They deserve to hear it from me.

Love,

Elyn

#in character #in character: letter #letter to: tyko #episode 201 #location: the astral sea #person: maliah #person: mehrnikorsa(niko)#person: gaizka zebari #deity: the lady of stars #person: hanai'fe ni huilin sul-saani #person: kadan'riv ni huilin far-ehsan #person: ezenki'maah ni huilin ken-asisan #feelings #the search for the procyon

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letterstosestrilles · 2 years

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Dear Tyko,

I’ve been procrastinating on writing to you since you won’t get my letters yet, and now I’m repaid by having to write you about two things at once even though they happened days apart. Now’s a good time, though, because I’ve just finished some wine and have retired, exhausted, to my bunk, whereas after the first incident I kept myself busy working in engineering here on the Redtree and got distracted doing so—but that’s not telling you anything in a sensible order, so I’ll start again.

I was only in the Storm Gardens of Amsiel for another day or so after I wrote you. Long enough to get a second meal from a restaurant I’d enjoyed, listen to another architect bard working her craft, learn how to ask how much something costs in Celestial (if not how to understand the answer), and check in on Gaizka to make sure they were still well. Which they were! I suspect they’re enjoying having the tuning fork attunement as an excuse to sit around without much to do but read for a while.

But then it was time to get on the Redtree and leave port. It’s very much a clan ship, I think all the crew are Sunweavers (though a few may be by marriage), and it’s much like the Promise in that it doesn’t seem to take passengers very often, which means we got stashed in extra crew bunks (everything a bit big, which I’m used to, but less annoying than usual because here I can float if I can’t reach a shelf). While we were flying out of dock, Finare, who we met on our way to meet Captain Imidris and who’s sort of our unofficial crew liaison, toured us around the ship. Some parts of it looked comfortingly familiar, though I’ve had a peek at their wiring panels, which are things of beauty, and have had to modify a lot of my knowledge to deal with them.

Unlike the usual hydroponic green spaces on ships I know, though, there’s what I can only describe as a park at the center of the ship, a truly green space with vines climbing the walls, plant life everywhere, and a large tree at the center of the room with broad red leaves. I keep forgetting to ask if the tree is in honor of the name or if the name is in honor of the tree. Maliah was immediately enamored and volunteered to help tend to the plants in there as soon as she realized we’d be welcome (and encouraged) to pitch in on the ship.

I was just as pleased to head over to engineering and get a course in their set-up. They’ve got some really clever buffering strategies, and I really like the way their propulsion is built and accessed, I’ll have to draw some sketches for you, because I bet you’d enjoy it as well, and you never know what you’ll get called on to do at the shop.

As the days passed after leaving port, I spent my waking time in engineering or out at the various windows. I’ve spent plenty of time looking out over void and stars since I signed on The Promise, but something about the quality of light here is still different, as well as the knowledge that if I stepped out a door I’d be able to breathe, makes it endlessly fascinating to look at.

After the first few days, we rarely saw a ship. After the first week (and we’re nearly into our third now), I think we can’t have seen more than two, and those were in the first couple of days of that week. No settlements, either, and sure, on the Promise there were long hauls on the ship, but by now this is the longest I’ve gone without at least passing another ship, if not a settlement, even if we didn’t stop.

It was a few days into the second week, and we were just butting up against the proper start of the star fields, when the ship jolted to a sudden stop in a way that meant nothing good at all. I had the luck to be in engineering, and we all spent a wild few minutes checking wiring, and listened to the sound of the propulsion system try desperately to accelerate but eventually back off, stuck like a ground vehicle in mud. Maliah arrived right about then, and said she thought she’d seen out one of the viewports that things might be darker than they should be, when the stars provide such a constant light out here.

I went with her to see for myself, and we were caught by another crew member who said we were wanted urgently on the bridge, and we went up to find the bridge crew wide-eyed and frightened, and Captain Imidris barely holding on to her captain’s calm. She said she hoped we could help, and gestured at the front window, where we saw, well—my first thought was an unexpected moon that had come out of nowhere. My next was a godsfall or other portal, similarly catching the navigation crew by surprise. It was nearly perfectly round, shifting and silver, with a long black slit across it. That gave me my first hint, and then beyond, in darkness darker than there should be, were the suggestions of the contour of an eye socket, of a snout. In short, I was looking at an eye, and it was very much looking back, and Captain Imidris explained in an admirably steady voice that we were in the presence of a void drake, and that he was curious as to why we were out so far, and that she thought that since we were the reason, we were the best choice to answer.

So I introduced myself and the others, and Maliah greeted him with her usual cheer, but since I’d spoken first and most, he focused the considerable weight of his attention on me. His voice wasn’t really a voice, more ideas pushed into my head with a little less grace than gods do it (but, to his credit, without the nosebleeds), and he was huge both physically and in my head when, with the amusement of the old, powerful, and utterly unthreatened, he said that we and our ship looked tasty, but that our thoughts were also interesting.

I encouraged that line of thought by very promptly telling him why we were there, because there’s no use in lying to something that can read your mind. (I also horrified Maliah by saying that our thoughts would be tastier than our bodies, and she gave me a lecture afterwards about being careful what I offer to powerful beings, which is fair.) He considered that, and then sort of pushed into my mind, seeking more information without the intermediary of words, and I once again decided that not fighting it was the wiser choice, so I let him turn over my thoughts considering their truth even though it felt like getting slapped with a sudden wave at the beach, and eventually he said that yes, we were interesting, and he was interested to hear the end of the story, if we survived.

(I suspect it might be a little boring, being a void drake.)

Captain Imidris looked like she would prefer to plot several parsecs around the spot on our return voyage, but when I asked if we could come through at least the region on our return journey, she acquiesced, so I told the drake that, and told him that even if Maliah and Niko and Squirt and I don’t survive, we’ll at least try to send a message back with the captain. I also offered, tentatively, thinking of the boredom again, to sing him a song on our return, which seemed to intrigue him.

That bargain made, he released our ship, which he’d been holding about as easily as a child might hold a block (seriously, he was huge, he wasn’t right up against the window but his eye alone was nearly twice my height at ten or so feet of distance), and then he was off into the dark, disappearing or just camouflaging so well we’d never know he was there.

All of us heaved a sigh of relief, and the following hours had an air of celebratory panic. Captain Imidris ordered the good alcohol out, which Maliah supplemented with wine from our Alchemy Jug, and we sat and drank and I collared a crew member (I think he’s Estolan’s brother? Some closer cousin, at the least. They all resemble each other so much and I haven’t got the kinship all worked out yet) and asked if there are any other legendary beasts we might be likely, or not likely, to meet.

The void drake, he assured us with a glazed expression, was about as legendary as they get, other than the spirits of stars and planets. Other than that, the biggest things we’re likely to find are what seem to be jellyfish (he’d never heard of them as water creatures, we’d never heard of them as void creatures, there were definitely a few minutes of confusion there), and they’re not really intelligent and are easy to avoid besides, since they are much more visible than void drakes are.

That was comforting, and we did indeed see one of the jellyfish a few days later, as we were heading into the real star fields, where there are lights everywhere that seem both so close you could reach out and cup one in your palm and farther away than the end of the universe and receding faster every moment. Sometimes they seem to be right in front of you, but part out of the way like the ship has a hand out in front sweeping them away. Once you’ve been in them for a few days, you start seeing tiny variations in color between them, just the slightest shades you couldn’t describe to someone who wasn’t acclimated, like I can tell when a guitar string is ever so slightly out of tune but you can’t.

Maliah, as the days have passed, is visiting the bridge a few times a day, where the navigators have chalked out a protractor on the floor so she can use her attunement to the Khardab’zielach to change our course. I think they’re at least only a little more annoyed than intrigued by the challenge, and Maliah seems to be enjoying having such a concrete way of improving her sense of orientation here, on top of getting to learn about wholly new varieties of plant.

Yesterday morning, when I had breakfast and went to engineering, a few of the hands were talking about one of the lights, which hadn’t swept itself out of our way, and that we were probably a day or two from running into it but that they weren’t sure what to do. I went and found Maliah, and the two of us went to the bridge, where Captain Imidris was pleased to see us and show us the light right ahead (one of the slightly greener ones, but again, I think that’s going to make you imagine more green than was really there) and ask if we had any insight.

I didn’t have anything except the worry that we were playing chicken with a star, but Maliah was more useful. First of all, she confirmed that if we were closer to Jhasdej, we would have to be doing a lot more small course corrections as we get closer, and we’re not near that point yet. Next, she pointed out that all the lights flicker and shimmer and change moment to moment, but this particular light’s flickers were quicker, almost frantic.

That, to both of us, suggested that the being ahead of us was either in distress or very angry, and Maliah and I came to the conclusion at the same time that it couldn’t hurt for me to try Sending, which I did, identifying us as peaceful travelers and asking if it needed help, not even sure it would be able to answer. For a moment, I was sure it wouldn’t, since I didn’t know it, and then I got an answer in a tone that raised the hair on my arms, like a trapped cat about to lash out, telling me to leave it alone, not to come near, that it will stop us if it has to.

That was alarming to say the least, but it didn’t sound angry, or not only angry—more the kind of scared that has to loop back into anger lest the person feeling it all freeze entirely. I suggested a course correction, which was difficult but not impossible according to the piloting team, and Sent again, advising it that we would steer away, and that if there was any way to help or reassure it, we’d like to know.

All I really got was satisfaction that we were steering away and a reiteration of its desire that we stay away. With all the telepathy I’ve been doing, between Sending and praying and the void drake, I’m starting to be able to recognize the character of voices in my head, and this one came with a sense of earth, of magma like Avka’s lair, of soil, and Maliah and I agreed, when I relayed that, that probably I was conversing with a planetar.

One that, it was becoming increasingly clear, was in distress and pain but who couldn’t or wouldn’t move away, which made neither of us inclined to listen to it telling us to leave it be. (Though I think the Sunweavers would have been glad enough to skirt around it and call themselves lucky.) I thought it most likely that it was protecting something, and the question was whether it was protecting itself in the wake of injury or other harm, something else too helpless to move from its spot, or, most intimidatingly, us, from something it was holding that might hurt us if we got close.

I Sent once more then, saying that we have healing magics and potions available, and it gave a quick denial and grudging thanks that made me think it was more one of the first two options.

Pressing it just then seemed like it would do more harm than good, so I left off the conversation and said maybe we should set up a watch to see if the flashing got slower or faster at all as we replotted our course. Maliah agreed and offered to take the first shift, so I talked with her a little while and went off, and found myself aware, as the hours went by, of attention. Like the void drake’s, but more distant, distant enough that the person paying such close attention probably couldn’t get much more than impressions. (From what Maliah and Niko both said after, I think its attention was roaming all over the ship in that time, but like with the void drake, since I’d spoken first and most, I was the largest focus of attention.)

Not knowing what else to do, I did … well, much what I did with Devon and Loren in those first few desperate hours. I tried to stay outwardly calm and cheerful without being effusive, I had pleasant conversations with people around me, did a pleasant shift in engineering, went back to my bunk and sang a few songs that weren’t sugary-sweet or annoyingly cheerful but also weren’t tragic ballads about glorious battles or anything like that. I don’t know if it did much good, but it also didn’t hurt.

We got close, and I went back to the bridge to find Maliah there again, looking out through a very neatly designed spyglass (we should buy her one of the ones calibrated for here before we go back, I don’t know how much they’d do on our own stars but she’d probably like it anyway), where she said she could see the being I’d been talking to. She described it, as I later confirmed for myself, as not dissimilar to an elemental, if not in as literal a sense. Whereas the earth elementals we’ve met are literally made of stone, the planetar was made of a suggestion of stone and earth, if that makes sense as a distinction.

It was also, she said in more than a little distress, very badly wounded, with long gashes and bad scarring all across its side, and it looked like it might have taken a Blight to the face. It was watching us, mistrustful and upset, and neither of us could bear the thought of that, so I tried Sending again.

I offered our help. It countered that it couldn’t trust us. I asked if there was a possible way we could earn its trust, at least enough that we could send it a healing potion and it would be willing to take it. There was a pause, and a scoff, and it said that maybe if the gods themselves stood for us, and that we’d be welcome to send the potion but it didn’t promise it would take it. I said that we were there with the Lady of Stars’s let, and prayed for her to vouch for us, but I was so concentrated on holding the thread of the Sending waiting for an answer that I don’t think she heard me this time.

Maliah, though, folded her hands together and bowed her head and called on Cernunnos, hoping that perhaps there’s enough earth magic in his domain that he could make a connection to a planetar, and it worked. I didn’t catch it, but she opened her eyes and looked through the spyglass in time to see a flash of the green of the Feywild wrap itself briefly around the planetar and let go.

Whatever Cernunnos said, it helped, because just when I thought we wouldn’t get an answer, I received three words: “You. Alone. Unarmed.”

Nobody liked it, precisely, but by that point we were invested in giving the planetar what help we could, so I said I would Teleport over and made sure I didn’t have any daggers or anything else with a sharp edge on me. I debated my gloves, but they make my magic more powerful and focused, so I couldn’t really afford to leave them behind.

Maliah threatened to come floating after me if I didn’t come back, and did not seem impressed when I told her that someone’s got to make it to the star, but she sent me off with her blessing anyway, and I Teleported not far from the planetar, whose wounds up close looked even more painful.

It greeted me with an upraised and clawed hand in defense, and I stayed where I was to introduce myself and ask for something to call it. After a moment, it gave the name Ejyl, which obviously wasn’t its whole or true name, but was at least something to call it while I tried desperately for a rapport. I asked what I could do to increase its comfort, and it told me to cast a cantrip first, so I cast a Minor Illusion of the tree in the heart of our ship, letting it look its fill before it told me I could dismiss it and cast healing magic.

I offered options, since after all the Sending with no sleep and two Teleports (one for the potion and then one for me), I was perilously low on magic. I told Ejyl that I could cast Mass Cure Wounds up to three times, or I could Wish for a Heal, which would be more healing all at once but which would mean I’d be stuck there until my magic replenished enough to Teleport. After a moment’s consideration, it asked for the former.

I warned it, as honest as I could be, that I didn’t know what effect its metaphysical form would have on the healing magic, that it might not do as much as I hoped (secretly wondering if I was healing the equivalent of great chasms in the earth, I’m not clear on if the planet Ejyl is connected to would have been suffering as well, I know it’s not a one-to-one kind of thing but surely wounds as bad as those Ejyl had would have to be reflected elsewhere), but that at the very least I would try. Like the void drake, Ejyl prodded my mind, checking for honesty, and finding it, told me it understood and to try.

I did, and the greatest wound started knitting itself closed, everything looking a little less fresh and painful than before. I asked again, and cast again, and its shoulders sagged like a weight had been removed. One more time, and while there were scars, and maybe hairline cuts, Ejyl was clearly in less pain, and met my eyes with less panic before, and pinched its claws around some part of itself and offered me—a stone, or a light, or something that was both, some part of itself, a light for someone not meant for the darkness of the Astral Sea, as it described it. A token, it said, for my help.

I thanked it, and, plucking up my courage, asked what had happened, either so we could report the wrongdoers to someone or so we could be prepared for future threats. It said, voice darkening, that there are mortals who think they can collar a planet to do as they wish, and there were some who had almost succeeded, but there was no need to report them, because they were dead, and it would not let such a thing happen to it again.

Maybe there was more to say then, but I was reminded too much of my own errand here, and the Redtree was getting farther away and would be waiting for me, so I thanked Ejyl one more time and used the last of my most powerful magic for the day to cast one last Teleport back to the ship. Everyone greeted me with relief, and Maliah offered me some wine, so I sat down and drank some with her and told her how it went before I came back here to rest, but I can’t really rest, so I’m writing you instead.

Are we really any better than those poachers who so hurt Ejyl, who have clearly hurt it so much it may never trust a stranger again? If Jhasdej turns us down, even if Kireul turns us down too and we’re forced to find a new plan, we’ll do it. We won’t harm someone who hasn’t consented no matter our desperation to help Reorx. But even in asking, are we in the wrong? I’ve wondered this ever since we chose this quest, but I’ve been so excited to see the Astral Sea, to meet a star, that even when taking a class on blood transfusion I shied away from the knowledge of what we’re going to do. Would we have been better off seeking those flowers on a broken planet?

I don’t know. This felt like the right course, it did, right until I met Ejyl’s eyes and was forcibly reminded of the true cost of what we’re asking. The Lady of Stars wouldn’t send us to someone who would take the request as an insult or a threat, surely? But selfishly, I don’t want to be thought of as a treasure-hunter either.

Maybe after some sleep I’ll be able to remember all the reasons we chose this path, and Maliah will reassure me that we’re not like the monsters who hurt Ejyl, that we never would be. I know it’s true, but things always feel more true once she reminds me of them.

But, at the very least, this has been a reminder that I’m going to need a better explanation than the one I’ve been using if I’m going to convince a star to help. Jhasdej deserves better than stumbling, for the precious gift I’m planning to ask them for. The void drake said our story would be interesting. I think that, at the very least, it’s time to learn to tell it better.

I am a bard, after all.

Love,

Elyn

#in character #in character: letter #letter to: tyko #episode 198 #location: the astral sea #person: maliah #person: imidris sunweaver #person: ejyl #suspenseful situations

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letterstosestrilles · 2 years

Text

Dear Tyko,

Well, it’s been a reasonably eventful day since I last wrote you, somewhat frustrated, from our lunch table on our way to the ship registry office.

Not long after I finished writing, we finished our journey there, and when I recast Tongues on myself, Niko cast it on Maliah, which made me feel like an idiot for not thinking to do that before, because I always think of it as a talking thing when Maliah generally doesn’t like to talk to strangers when I’m there to do it, but of course it’s just as much a spell of understanding, and she doesn’t speak any of the languages here any more than I do. So I’ve promised to trade off casting it for Maliah with Niko as long as we need to while we’re here, and it doesn’t make up for being a bit thoughtless, but at least I can be better in the future.

Anyway, armed with understanding for all of us (except Squirt, who as far as I know does not have the hitherto unknown ability to understand Celestial like happened with Aquan, but at this point if Maliah told me he did I would just take it with weary acceptance, there’s only so much a body can handle in a day), we went into the dock registry office, where a very weary bureaucrat heard that we’d been sent in search of Alat Misaahav by Divination and visibly decided that it was not worth asking more questions or trying to get us to fill out a form. Forms tend to not have neat boxes for things like “quests out of myth and legend.”

They gave us a berth number and told us to look for The Subtle Winds, and off we went to search, with Niko in charge, as the only person who could actually read the berth numbers, since Tongues doesn’t do a thing for written comprehension. We had to go to a different area of the port, where the berths are a bit smaller, meant for family crafts down to single-person ones, and eventually arrived at The Subtle Winds, and hailed them on their intercom.

We were, after a moment, answered by a baffled voice that got suspicious when we said we wanted to speak to Alat Misaahav, and even more suspicious when I explained that we had a question about star lore. There was a long wait, and I half-expected to be told to go away, but after almost a quarter of an hour, the hatch opened, and two people awaited us in the doorway.

In front was a woman who I think is mostly Maelah, a little older, in a hoverchair of a very nice design I was not nosy enough to ask about (but you would have liked it, looked like a way more complex version of that chair control mechanism you were saying you’d been reading about in your professional magazine a while back). She was Alat Misaahav, and was very intrigued to know what we were there for and how we’d known to come in the first place. Behind her was a companion who chose to give themselves no introduction, who clearly wished us flung out into the void to float our way back and would probably happily have wished the same on the god who gave us Alat’s name.

Alat, though, with the startled delight of anyone with a deep interest in a subject most people don’t care much about, was glad to talk about what she could tell us, though she warned us, as everyone seems to, that not a lot of star lore is out there attached to the stars’ actual names. We asked about Kireul, though, and she produced, after some searching, a few fragments of an invocation that comes from a planet that orbits them, describing the planet (Ikhel, she said, once she puzzled her way to pronouncing it, since it’s not a natural sound for someone used to Celestial) as a jewel in Kireul’s crown, and referring to them as “a lonely and distant watcher” and then, unnervingly, as “calm and dire.” (Calm is fine, a star with a temper sounds like a dangerous person to ask a favor of, but I can’t say I like the sound of “dire.”) She regretfully but firmly declined to guess if any of the unnamed stars in other lore might also be Kireul, and had nothing at all when we asked about Jhasdej, but offered to reach out to other enthusiasts, so we’ve asked her to but aren’t optimistic about the chances.

She also asked how we came to her, and seemed baffled and a little alarmed to have been called by name by a god, and there at least I could sympathize with her wholeheartedly, remembering how Altas contacted me. Then, of course, I ruined the feeling of kinship by explaining perhaps a bit too much about our mission, in hopes that maybe legends about a star crafting had circulated. They hadn’t, and she was blinking in that way people do when we tell them what we’re up to, so Maliah hastily changed the subject to ask about the star fields, and any information she could provide about those.

It seems like the star fields are mysterious to most of the mortal beings of the Astral Sea the same way, well, the city at the bottom of the ocean on Sestrilles is a mystery to most people who live there—they’re doing better than we were until very recently to even know there were stars out there! That’s not surprising, with a bit of logic, but it’s still disappointing.

And the disappointment remained as we thanked her and left, going off to find a store selling technology to get us adapters to allow us to at least access the Astral Sea’s internet, if not our own. That wasn’t too difficult, and we got set up, and Niko got a message account set up, since she’s the only one of us who can actually read Celestial. (Though I’ve asked her for some lessons as we travel here, both for practicality and because it’s a lovely language. Do you want to learn as well? Or maybe I should ask Alion, though it sounds from the last I talked to them like the Dwarvish future tense is giving them headaches right now.)

While we were getting set up, we stopped at one of the storm gardens between the tech store and The Weary Sage, looking out over the patterns of lightning, and I admit I was sulking a little, feeling stuck. Niko did her best to be encouraging, making the very reasonable point that if the Lady of Stars gave us two names, probably both are equally likely to help us (which I do know, but if one is likely to respond well to an emotional plea and the other prefers pure logic, I’d like to know that going in). We talked a little about our need to go to the port temple to the Lady of Stars and ask her about which star is closer, but I feel stupidly nervous about that even knowing, as Maliah gently pointed out, that she likes me. In part it’s that I don’t relish the nosebleeds and the dizziness from my interactions with deities aside from Aluarashi (oh, Aluarashi would love the storm gardens and probably this whole plane, it’s a pity one can’t really send a god a postcard). In part it’s that, after a while, I start feeling like I might be annoying her, or worse, failing her, by not just taking the information she sees fit to give me.

Maliah, again gently, told me that’s not really reasonable, and that if the Lady says no, that leaves us no worse off than we are now, except I still worry about annoying her, because this isn’t the last favor I’m going to ask of her, and the other one is a good deal more important—but I’m not asking it yet.

Still, I know doing it is the smart choice, and maybe the only way we can really make a decision, so we’ll go over tomorrow.

Out of curiosity, I went looking on the Astral Sea’s network for information about the planet Ikhel, wishing I could connect to ours, which must have much more. (I’m very tempted to Send to you and ask you to research it, except you’d only have a few words to tell me what you could find.) There was a little, which was actually more than I was expecting to find, part of some decade-old mapping project that gave me some relative coordinates, and after puzzling, I figured out that it’s pretty far out from the centers I mostly traveled through on The Promise, and only a few major trade routes go even close to it, so I wouldn’t have visited it. There wasn’t any information about the denizens, and from one two-syllable words I couldn’t figure out the language at least the first settlers must have spoken, though Maliah and I could eliminate a few between us (probably not Gnomish or Halfling, my guess is not Elvish unless it’s a drow colony independent of the Underdark, but Infernal, Dwarvish, and Primordial are all possible, and I couldn’t eliminate several others either).

Even that much, though, was enough to remind me how high the stakes are on this quest. If there’s a catastrophic failure and we hurt a star too badly to fix, there’s a chance of a star that people orbit dying, a whole planet of lives in danger because of us. But, as Maliah pointed out, if Jhasdej happens not to have living inhabitants around their more literal form, they might not understand or care much about the loss of creativity, so we’re once again left with spinning the wheel and picking one or the other.

Only—only I was sitting there, and I was disappointed in myself and in the lack of information, feeling like I’d been asking the wrong questions, and Niko was saying it might be worth asking Gaizka to cast Legend Lore even though they don’t know much about the relevant situation, and I said “I wish I could cast Legend Lore to find out more about Kireul” and I did.

One moment I was looking at the lightning dancing across the storm and then it’s like I was hearing a hundred songs at once in a hundred voices, in words I shouldn’t understand but did. I was hearing a child singing a skipping rhyme about the days of the week, and a poet reading quietly as though checking their meter the full version of the poem Alat had showed us, and then song after song about a sun.

Not our sun on Sestrilles, where I remember teachers smiling and saying “the sun helps the crops grow, the sun brings the summer, the sun is always facing some part of the planet” like the star is a doting aunt inclined to show up on holidays with gifts. This sun, Kireul, is—oh, it’s so stupid to say that they’re not as warm, because they’re a star. But the people of Ikhel, while they seem to perhaps worship Kireul as one of their pantheon, while they sing of them with reverence and respect and the love you’d give to a distant and famous grandparent, don’t think of them as friendly.

What they speak of, over and over, is Kireul as a witness. A person who has immense knowledge not through study of what people long-dead discovered and then chooses to elaborate on it, but through constant and careful observation. A person who has seen the birth of their society and will see its death, and who notes everything, large or small. Intimidating and remote, perhaps, but it’s a little hopeful, because I don’t think you can know that much about people without loving them at least a little, and people you love are people you want to save.

And then it was over, and Maliah was frowning at me, and I blurted out that I’d somehow cast Legend Lore, which didn’t seem possible, but I so obviously had. It wasn’t the Lady of Stars hearing my doubts and helping me, because I know her voice now. This was the voices of legends and myths, of a living story, and while it was disorienting, it didn’t fill my skull like bursting, and it didn’t feel like tripping over something I’d always known that got shunted to the front of my thoughts like when Aluarashi wants me to know something. It felt like I was learning it, just impossibly quickly. I described it to Maliah and Niko, and will describe it to you, like my mind was a crowded room and I rapidly had to shove a few bits of furniture out of the way to make space for a new box arriving.

Maliah and Niko were both confused and a little alarmed, maybe because I was both confused and alarmed, and I said that I didn’t know how I’d done it, I just wished that I could and it happened, and Niko realized a beat before I did that it wasn’t just a wish, it was a Wish. As in the spell.

And I’d known, after Avka’s lair, that I’d grown more powerful. I understand better how and when that happens these days, and after a little experimentation, I can usually figure out what’s different, but this time, there’d been a spell I’d been thinking of, hoping it might help us sometimes, and I’d felt the tune for that click into place the day after we got out of the volcano, and that didn’t quite feel like all, but I thought maybe I hadn’t unlocked everything about that spell yet. I hadn’t thought for a second that there was a whole new spell, and that it was Wish, of all things.

I hardly even know the rules of Wish, other than that I can cast nearly any spell now, if only once a day, by using it. Even the shows about high-level adventurers don’t bother with Wish, because it’s an unbelievable spell. Who’s powerful enough to cast it these days? An audience can believe almost any spell over a Wish, anything except maybe a True Resurrection, so all I know about it, I know from fairy tales.

It’s not comfortable, finding myself playing the role of The Prince Who Held The Tide or the maiden in your grandfather’s old story about the dragon’s impossible wishes. I don’t want to be a myth or a fairy tale, grateful as I am for the help of anything that will get us to the end of this quest. Part of me is absolutely dying of glee, remembering being a kid and imagining myself casting Wish for reasons silly and serious, imagining Wishing my way into riding a bird through the clouds or, of course, bring my parents back.

The other part of me can’t stop thinking about the way people have been looking at me all day, and ever since I arrived here. The librarians disbelieving that anyone seems to seriously be looking into stars as anything but distant figures of legend and study. The clerics at the storm god’s temple being unnerved by our requests. The dock registry officer wanting us gone, Alat’s overwhelmed expression when I told her about our quest, her companion mistrustful of us.

Maliah and Niko seemed to understand that I’ve had quite enough for the day, and after they’d made sure it was nothing worse than shock, I told them what I’d learned, told them I desperately wanted to eat something greasy followed by something sweet, and let them lead me off to do that before shutting myself in my room to write you.

It’s stupid to be upset over something so amazing, and Gaizka at least hardly blinked (or only blinked out of my sight) and asked me a lot of interested questions about how it worked, not that I really knew, so I’m trying to remember the good, and there’s a lot of it. Tomorrow, I should be able to see what I can learn about Jhasdej, though I might also wait another day or two to see if Atal can find us an anchor point to work from, since I think I was only able to learn as much as I did about Kireul because I knew the name of the planet that orbits them.

Tonight, I’m going to read that romance you recommended me when I was home, which I’ve been saving for when I needed it. And I’m going to take comfort in the fact that you, at least, are unlikely to ever look at me like I’m a legend, or if you do, it’s only a legend of how one person can wear so many holes in socks.

Love,

Elyn

#in character #in character: letter #letter to: tyko #episode 196 #location: the astral sea #location: the storm gardens of amsiel #person: maliah #person: mehrnikorsa(niko)#person: alat misaahav #person: gaizka zebari #information gathering

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