by Bill Ricardi
I smirked and said, “Nothing like broadcasting your thoughts and feelings to someone who was just handing you a mug of water.”
Assistant Donnelly smiled sadly. “Exactly. In my youth I had an incident with one of my friends. Let’s just say they had no interest in men, and my thoughts about them were less than pure. It was weird after that.”
I tilted my head. I said, “You know… and I hope you don’t mind this observation. But your communication skills have improved vastly in the last couple of years. No more meek and shy murmuring, no more looking away when you’re speaking. Well, for the most part. You’re like a different person.”
The human flushed a little bit as he replied, “You can thank your son for that. His confidence and his encouragement rubbed off on me. Not to mention, I never had someone who I interacted with day in and day out. Conversation is a practiced skill, as it turns out. So I made an effort to pry myself away from the archives more often. Benno is the one who told me not to find excuses to avoid people all of the time.”
I knew there was a hint of pride in my voice as I said, “Yeah. My kiddo is something else.”
A couple of minutes later, Hemitath emerged. Although I will admit that I had some rather racy thoughts about her brother Jarotath in the past, it wasn’t until now that I experienced similar thoughts about my former Headmaster. She had chosen a mode of dress similar to my own, with the addition of a silk chest wrapping. For a woman in her 370’s, Hemitath was strikingly beautiful. In that moment I understood how the attraction that Shaman had for her went beyond the mental and encompassed the physical.
I traded Bill Donnelly for Hemitath, allowing the human to go get ready himself. The older elf squeezed my hand as we looked over the rail at the vast ocean. She said, “You look nervous.”
I wasn’t aware of that, and frowned a little bit. “I was really hoping to project confidence.”
The elf laughed softly, a somewhat musical sound. “Your jaw sets in a certain tense way when you’re nervous. Shaman is the same way.”
I snorted and said, “Well I learned just about everything from him, so I’m not surprised we share a ‘tell’.”
Hemitath murmured, “Nor am I. He calls you ‘son’ you know. He often asks how ‘his boy’ is doing when he knows I’ve run into you.”
A swell of pride rose in my chest. I said, “He’s the only father I ever knew. I was raised in bits and pieces by the entire tribe, but he was the constant. He was my example.”
The smaller elf looked up at me and smiled. She said, “You learned well. Though I think he’s still waiting for you to finish learning all this silly magic so that he can teach you the true path of Kenvunk’s druidic ways.”
That made me laugh out loud.
Assistant Donnelly emerged from below deck. We turned to regard him.
I made the obvious observation. “You are a complete mess.”
And he was. The human had attempted to create a bandoleer of pouches from shoulder to chest to hip, but it was already sliding down his arm. For modesty’s sake, he opted for the same kind of desert pants that Leeson wore recently, but they were slightly too big for his waist and were starting to come off.
Hemitath ended up agreeing with my assessment. She said, “You’re going to swim for twenty seconds and lose everything. This is no different from any other dive. How do you normally swim?”
He admitted, “Fully Polymorphed. I don’t actually retain any human traits on a deep dive, when I go by myself. This hybrid transformation is a rarity for me. I only learned the Minor Polymorph so that I could learn the full Polymorph spell.”
She replied, “Well we may need your spells in addition to your powers, so I’m afraid that’s out. Come here, we’ll fix you up.”
Hemitath whipped Assistant Donnelly into shape, patterning his attire and gear after my own. Minus the Amulet of Enhanced Enchanting of course. Soon he was down to his breeches, and his belt of pouches was secured tightly around his waist.
I said, “Much better.” Then I raised my voice and called to Rick and Will, “We’re ready when you are!”
Rick, with Dutch coiled lightly around his torso and shoulders, went about preparing the anchor for lowering even as he directed Invisible Servants to retract the sails. As he worked, the human mentioned, “We’re above what we think is the deepest part of the Great Trench. Just South of the cliffs outside of Braxen.”
Will tied the wheel down, and then stepped over to the quarterdeck to see us off. “The anchor is only there as a visual guide for you when you return, we’re way too deep to touch anything. There will be a drift, but we’ll try to keep her just about here. I’ll mark the general area with a couple of balls of cork that I’ll cast Light spells on, so that you have some orientation. Oh, and the rope ladders and netting will be down this side, but just give a shout if you need to get in from the other side and we’ll arrange something.”
Once the anchor was deployed, Rick slowly walked over and put a hand on his mate’s shoulder. This was apparently an invitation for Dutch to slither from one human to the other, using the arm as a bridge. The snake made her way over to Will’s false limb and coiled around it, fascinated for some reason.
Rick said, “We’ll be doing some fishing once you’re clear. Don’t steal our bait on the way back up.”
Hemitath, Assistant Donnelly, and myself produced cocoons from our pouches and performed the Minor Polymorph ritual. Soon we were graced with gills, better water vision, and the kind of pressure resistance that would be vital at the depths that we were planning to plunge into. I felt the drain, but having just topped up my intelligence enhancements this morning, it was fairly minor.
We dove over the edge of the wooden railing in relatively graceful fashion. The sensation of breathing water was less disturbing than last time. In half a minute, I was comfortable using my new gills. Hemitath needed about the same amount of time to make the transition. But Bill, having mastered and experienced the effects of full Polymorphs, adapted far more quickly than either of us. We allowed him to lead, making sure that the psychic was within easy reach should we need to communicate via his mind.
The trip was longer, colder, and darker than the last dive that I participated in with my family. We weren’t even bothering with Light spells; for the majority of the journey there would be nothing to illuminate other than each other. Our enhanced aquatic vision would suffice.
I admit to losing track of time, but it took at least a quarter of an hour for the three of us to reach the ocean floor. Or should I say, the first ocean floor. The uniform gray of the seabed seemed to simply give way a few dozen paces ahead of us. The Great Trench was like a crack in the world, reaching depths that I had never imagined before. Suddenly I was glad that Rick and Will weren’t with us. This kind of vastness might trigger their memories of Pandemonium, and dredge up unpleasant experiences with the absurdities of scale that once tormented them.
We were just passing over the lip of the Trench when Bill’s hand grasped my elbow. But he was simply relaying a message from Hemitath on his other side: “Stop. Something has taken an interest in us.”
I peered through the dark depths, in the direction that Hemitath was pointing. After a few moments of straining, a chill went down my spine. The silhouette was massive. I saw illustrations of hammerhead sharks in scientific texts before, and I once got to see a dead one when I lived above the harbor in Limt. But this creature was easily three times as long and at least twice as massive as that beast. An absolute mammoth of a fish.
And it had two friends.
It was said that in the remote places of Panos, remnants of the old world existed. Creatures that were created before the major races. Creatures that would seem so out of scale with the rest of our world that the sanity of a normal man would be brought into question should they be able to relate the tale. Be it in the deepest depths of the ocean, or at the frigid poles of Panos, or hidden in the dark heart of jungles without any name… encountering one of these remnants was ra
rely a positive experience.
Hemitath was already casting. We gathered close so that she could sprinkle finely crushed glass over our bodies. She was careful to avoid the gills, thank goodness. Soon we were nearly transparent, as the archmage’s Mass Camouflage spell deftly obscured our outlines. It meant that we needed to swim more slowly, and stay very close so that we could feel each other and not drift apart. But that was fine. The giant hammerheads soon lost interest in this strange game of hide and seek, and gave up on their tiny snacks in order to seek out some more meaty prey.
We dove for a while longer. I could see that both Hemitath and Bill were straining now. We had been swimming for over twenty minutes without rest. I did some quick mental calculations. Concerned, I touched Assistant Donnelly’s hip and asked him to bring Hemitath into the conversation.
I thought, “We need to consider time spent in the Astral as well as the return journey. I see a little glow down and to our left. If it isn’t too much of a slope, I think we start there.”
The other two agreed. As we swam down, the little sea shelf came into full view. Bioluminescent plants dotted the perimeter of this relatively flat outcropping. Below us, the world continued to slope off into what was a seemingly infinite abyss.
The three of us crouched and huddled close. Assistant Donnelly closed his eyes and started to focus on that other realm, and bringing us into it. Hemitath and I waited quietly. Patiently. Then not so patiently. I was about to ask the psychic if he was okay.
Then Panos disappeared.
But what replaced it wasn’t the usual darkness that the Astral plane normally brought with it. Instead there was a strange radiation, a faint background glow. I knew that Bill was to my right and Hemitath to my left. But my perception of them was somehow clouded. Fuzzy.
Although there was no true sensation of up or down, I immediately knew which direction correlated to ‘down’ in the real world. In that direction, the void of the Astral was replaced by something vast and frightening.
It was Hemitath that gave voice to what we were all thinking.
“The Original Engine.”
It was like an overpowering glow at the end of a cavernous tunnel. An impossibly bright square within a fluctuating orb of pure arcane might. Each raw, chaotic lash of power caused tendrils to sweep over the orb’s surface until the end of the streamers snapped off. Sparks of red, blue, white, and brown seemed to scatter whenever this happened, the tiny motes drifting off into the Astral infinity.
Bill asked, “Is it shedding elementals?”
“Yes.” I answered. I knew this was the case. I didn’t know how I knew, however.
Hemitath shivered. The elf asked, “Do you feel that? The waves?”
I certainly did. Waves of arcane pressure seem to wash over us, through us. Undoubtedly, the engine was gathering power through the elemental sacrifices by cultists. Likely more cultists than we were aware of. If every wave represented a sacrifice, there must be dozens, if not hundreds of groups working towards the end of the world.
But we also felt, and eventually saw, faint streams of constant power being fed into this entity at the center of Panos. These light blue umbilical cords intertwined and extended to a point somewhere ‘above’ us. Hemitath stared at the lines of power as I counted them. We came to the same conclusion, and voiced it at nearly the same time.
“The Arcane Syphons.”
I felt a sudden presence. A sense of ‘other’. This time it wasn’t borrowing my voice, it was borrowing my mind. In a horrific moment of clarity, I saw the past, the present, and the future.
Even at this distance, the Original Engine’s power was undeniable. The Syphons were feeding it. They used the schemes of gods and demons, the desires of elf and man and orc. Every time one or more of the Arcane Syphons had done work over the millennia, a fraction of their potential power was fed back to the Original Engine. Like a paladin tithing to their temple, the Arcane Syphons donated a portion of everything that passed through them.
That power had been growing, accumulating. While cities and universities were being built, while mines were being dug, even when insane demon lords had summoned the armies of the dead, the Original Engine fed. And waited.
But now, the accumulated power of this engine of creation was too much. Or maybe, from its perspective, just enough. It was creating elementals, and with them turmoil and backlash. At some point, the engine of creation lost the ability to distinguish between making life and making death. Now it was simply making. Manifesting.
But the raw elements had to come from somewhere. Right now it was using the earth, air, fire, and water that was close by: The stone and gas, the magma and ocean. In time though, it would cannibalize. The future was one of hunger. As the Original Engine grew, it would demand more from the Arcane Syphons, and from Panos itself. Every township, every city, every race and entity would be consumed. The land, the sea, the trees, even the air itself would be converted. It would use the Arcane Syphons to break down everything into its elemental components. Until there was nothing left.
Tiny magic hands would smash the world.
That feeling of possession passed. The entity left behind the kind of dread that went hand in hand with portents of the apocalypse.
Before I could relate the visions to my companions, a far more immediate threat manifested.
The surface of the arcane sphere surrounding the Original Engine seemed to ripple and quake. That disturbance sent a rolling wave of blackness towards us. It started at an impossible distance. Then the speed of the wave registered in my mind as I finally grasped the immensity of the area that it covered.
Bill murmured, “Anti-magic.”
Hemitath’s eyes widened. She said, “Out, now! Magic is what’s keeping us breathing.”
The psychic quickly grabbed our shoulders. The landscape shifted.
Sensations of cold and wet briefly overrode the panic that we were all feeling. Hemitath gathered us close and started to cast. I looked down with morbid curiosity at the approaching anti-magic force that threatened to suffocate us and crush us under tons of water. In the real world it was a foaming, pinkish purple bubble that rode up the walls of the abyssal trench at an alarming pace.
The leading air bubbles, dislodged by the pressure of the Original Engine’s energetic blast, started to float past my ears. I considered sending some encouraging last words to my friends through the psychic link.
But then, we were elsewhere.
Three mages were laying in the darkness. We were on a wooden floor, hacking and retching large quantities of seawater through mouths and gills alike. The painfully abrupt transition was all that I could focus on for a few seconds.
When I was able to utilize real air again, I drew a breath to compliment Hemitath. It’s nearly impossible to Teleport inside of a wooden ship. In fact, to my knowledge, it had never been done before. I only realized that we weren’t back on the R. M. N. ‘Taboo’ when the cinnamon taste in the air filled my mouth and lungs.
In that brief silence between adaptation and realization, I heard a low hissing sound. We all started coughing again, a sound that became weaker by the second. Unconsciousness quickly ensued.
Chapter 14
I awoke from my slumber slowly. The sun of a perfect summer morning warmed me from ears to ankles. I was dressed for the weather of course: Rugged overalls covered my soft cotton undershirt and breeches. I sat up and stretched, flexing my soft green fingers and my adventurously bare toes.
I knew this hillside. The cave that used to belong to the Silverfish was over my right shoulder. But there was no danger, not anymore. Trees provided ample shade, as well as whatever nuts and fruits one might require. The hill sloped gently down to the river, where the broken stone wall awaited me. Water washed gently into a little orcmade tide pool, swirled in a placid circle, and then drained back out through the gap in the retaining wall. It was cool and clean, perfect for drinking.
“Sorch! They’re starting to bite, bring your
gear.”
The sound of that powerful voice brought a grin to my face. My soft hand reached down to grab the fishing tackle, before I splashed through the shallow water and around the bend.
I followed the absent whistling until I spotted my companion. The other orc was a head and a half taller than I was, but I wasn’t afraid. He was dressed just like me, but with the addition of a floppy straw hat. His calm demeanor and quiet confidence made me feel safe in his presence.
Kenvunk said, “There’s a deep spot around nine paces out. I already got a nibble.”
I cast my line, sending the copper lure into the river some distance out. Like my companion, I slowly reeled in the slack before raising my pole again, making the fishing spoon wriggle in the water. It didn’t matter if I caught a fish on the first try. We had all day.
After enjoying the sound of Kenvunk’s whistling for a few minutes, the huge orc asked me, “How are you feeling this morning, Sorch?”
It was a curious question. I was perfect, as always, of course. “I’m fine, thanks for asking. How are you Kenvunk?”
The god admitted, “I’ve been a little down as of late. My girlfriend and I are fighting.”
I snorted. “What else is new.”
Kenvunk shot me a mildly hurt expression.
I murmured, “Sorry. What is it about this time?”
“A stupid bet. Did you ever wish that you could take something back, Sorch? Just erase what happened and start over?”
I had to admit, “No, not really. If I changed something, things could get worse. And maybe I wouldn’t ever meet my friends. Maybe I wouldn’t have my amazing family. I wouldn’t start over. I’ve lived a brave life.”
There was a measure of pride in Kenvunk’s voice when he said, “I know you have.” Then he paused. When the god continued, he sounded more melancholy. “But in my case, maybe I was a bit too brave. Too sure of myself. Sometimes you have to let someone else be wrong instead of proclaiming that you’re right. It isn’t the bravest thing to do, but sometimes it’s the kindest thing to do.”