Against the Island Cults

The second phase of Yirith: Age of Low Adventure

Sessions 7-14

SPOILERS for "The Sunbathers" and "Bad Myrmidon." 22,000 words.

Session 7: “Holy Asclepeion!”

The monsoon struck the City of Thieves during the Moon of the Rat-Fish. Suroga was soaked while performing his duties at the Shrine of the Wastes, and decided to return to Barking Dog’s, where he’d last seen the others. Saartu was not healing much at all, and the rot … it was creeping up his neck and arm. He showed the necrosis to Ovid.

“That is what happens when you go to cheap brothels,” the albino counseled.

“There are expensive ones?!”

Suroga was unsurprised when he met the other Inklings that half of them were beset by illness. It seemed their way to be diseased. The Jurka learned of the arrangement that the others had made with the Barber Guild, and believed it was the right thing to have done, since it was good to have friends in the world. The party was on their way to a meeting they had requested, hoping that the Barbers (or maybe Flesh-Tailors) knew of something that might heal Cedric and Saartu’s ailment. They did not want to rot away while living.

A pair of independent guards stood at the entrance of the tavern in the Frog Piazza, certainly in ill-humor for the rainy posting. A pair of muscular bearers lurked in the alley behind. The armed men held out their weapon hafts.

“It’s full. You can’t go in.”

“Full of what?”

“My master.”

“A rather large man, then.”

“Does Barking Dog know you’re turning away clients?”

“Wait a minute! They’re the Ink Knight’s freaks! These are the ones who called a demon in the sewers!”

Both the men moved clear of the door, gesturing to ward off chaos. The party entered the building, pleased that their reputation had paid off.

The tavern was nearly full. A half-dozen sailors drank at the bar, Batros the quack waved to the adventurers, Barking Dog had apparently hired help, and a noble couple and their entourage took up all the tables, the husband looking irritated at the intrusion. A Barber in a mask sat in the far corner. It was probably Sauce. Up close, it was almost certainly Sauce, with the stained armor and wicked jagged sword.

“We would like to request some information … contacts … of a medicinal nature,” Saartu opened.

“I believe that’s your man,” said Sauce, pointing toward Batros.

Saartu remembered the nostrum the man had sold Cedric, but also that he had shared his connection at the Docks. 

“I don’t think he’s the solution; do you know anything else?”

“There’s an island … Fos Imeras, near Iribos. The golden asclepeion there was once a temple of healing … long ago.”

“Asclepewha?” Ovid ejaculated.

“Our Flesh-Tailors might be able to help with that,” Sauce said to Ovid, pointing at his skin.

“I like it that way.” 

“Yeah,” Sticks was suddenly there, out of nowhere, maybe agreeing with the alchemist’s victim.

“That’s a bit unnerving, Sticks.”

“Yeah.”

Saartu noted the semi-accidental release of the ancient mummy, and Sauce responded that the party had told his man earlier. The Barber pointed out that they could offer no guarantees that the Ministry of Hellcraft or Watch would not molest the Company, Ink beyond the Guild’s territory. Saartu asked about safekeeping cash, and Sauce said that the Money-Lender’s Guild would do it for a fee.

“The bankers in Hightown would charge less, but wouldn’t be safe for your kind up there. Of course, you could clear out that mung house for us, take their stash…”

“I don’t wanna lose this,” Saartu said, pulling up his sleeve.

Sauce scooched back, and the party realized Sticks was nowhere to be seen.

“Well, you may lose the job–there are some up-and-comers who might finish it.”

“We’ll come back to it … if we survive. Give Bael Jhoss our regards.”

The party made their way over to Batros, who was grinning. Along the way, snatches of the sailors’ conversation touched their ears. 

“... this buried treas–” “uh-uh, unburied treasure …”

Batros offered wormwood drops before even hearing about Saartu’s symptoms. The warlock asked him how the swindler knew what to prescribe. 

“Only two coin. It was how you were holding your arm. Half the time it works all the time.”

“Is this topical, or do I drink it?”

Batros nodded, paying more attention to his ale. The drops fizzed a little when they hit Saartu’s skin. The medicament did not hurt, but it did not heal either. The nobleman laughed at the simple folk, explaining to his wife how freakish these people were.

“Well, I guess that means we need to go to the asclepeion on the island.”

“Island, what island?” one of the eavesdropping sailors said.

“Wait,” Suroga broke in, with his weird accent, “Didn’t we hear that sailors near Iribos spotted a golden building?”

“Do you need passage?” the sailor asked.

“In fact, we do. What would be the rate?”

“Four hundred coin.”

“Holy asclepeious!”

“Well, it is the monsoon.”

The Rattler would depart in three days. The party just had to bring the money to the Docks. Saartu slid ten coins across the bar to Barking Dog. He shook his head.

“I already get a cut,” he almost didn’t snarl.

“I like you, Barking Dog.”

“Well, I don’t like any of you.”

“That’s okay, I like my relationships asymmetrical.”

“Asawha?”

“I learned a lot of fancy words from my master as he grew me in my vat.”

* * *

Over the next few days, Saartu committed the arcane words found on Mmuglavu’s scroll to memory. He would be able to summon a horribly irritating song to an enemy’s ears, partly disabling them. Suroga drank in a number of taverns, trying to find out anything more about the island they were supposed to go to. Since he spoke of the sea, he heard that the corsairs’ foe, a man named Orsilochus had vanished. Perhaps this had been because the pirates off Iribos had finally sunk the man’s magic craft. Ovid was disappointed to learn that the necklace he’d taken from Mmuglavu’s corpse was just a mundane charm that most of the cultists of the Frog God wore. The monsoon had driven up most prices, so the albino did not purchase the waterproof case that seemed like such a good idea for a sail through a monsoon.

Coin was dropped with an arranged Money-Lender. Coin was paid to the captain of the Rattler. Cedric, in an almost catatonic state, was loaded below decks. The caravel beat through the weather with amazing speed, shocking even the crew with the haste of their arrival at Fos Imeras. The sailors attributed this good luck to Saartu, even though the disfigurement continued to creep up his neck, almost into plain view. Ovid hoped the flooding in Dozdghar had washed the mummy out of the sewer. Suroga vomited a few times in the rough seas, despite his claims to being ready for the big water. 

During the brief lulls in the rain, the party told the sailors of their prior travels, and the crew passed on tales that they had heard. Because the journey was nearing Iribos, talk turned to pirates (and briefly back to Orsilochus), but those of an oddly gentle variety: the corsairs of the Salted Sea. Those sea rovers were not so vicious or murderous, though woe betide if their captives were virgins. The Inklings looked nervously at one another. According to the mariners, caravans were also disappearing in the Endless Dunes lately, but that seemed more a regular feature of desert travel than particularly recent news.

The captain of the Rattler would not risk grounding his ship, so the party took a small boat into the storm to land on Fos Imeras. Luckily, they had a strong rower, because every glimpse of the island through the downpour was that of rocky cliffs where the waves dashed violently against rocks. After a few hours of rowing widdershins, around what seemed like the entire small island, a beach came into view. The drenched and exhausted party pulled their boat and themselves up on the shore.

A collapsed white pavilion tent was still anchored securely to the sand, roped spikes driven into the earth. Beyond the beach was a short grass and a riotous rain forest. A path led along the edge of the trees, back in the direction from which the company had come. 

The soaked tent was draped over cots and tables, some overturned by wind gusts. Huge pots, the sort that could feed dozens, spoons and ladles, and sodden firewood were inside as well. Saartu decided not to cut the cords for extra rope. The Inklings dragged the boat into the jungly undergrowth and set off down the path, their vision limited by the continuous downpour. The trail curved back between the woods and toward the center of the island, and the adventurers left the path and moved up a grassy slope to gain a vantage point (not likely in this rain) or find the sought for temple (often erected in high places). Ironically, they found themselves above the building, looking down from a cliff. The structure consisted of two uneven towers fronting the building and a glass dome in the center of the roof. It looked as though the temple had been built right into the escarpment. 

“This is very unusual.”

“We are accustomed to breaking into places and making off with the wealth of the inhabitants.”

“Yet here we just want to ask for help.”

“Our plans may change.”

The party moved back down the slope to see if they could find a ground entrance along the footpath. The shorter, near tower had no windows, but rather huge shingles as its outer wall. The taller tower was built more traditionally out of stone, with windows only opening into the third floor, about forty feet up. This edifice was coated with gold foil, certainly something that might reflect the setting sun and be seen for miles to the west. Between was an arch supported by columns, leading to a pair of doors more than ten feet tall. In the limited shelter, a hunched form moved about in a soggy grey cloak.

“A hunchback!”

“Could this be a leper colony?”

“Maybe you could communicate with it, Saartu…”

The vat-born and the plainsman approached cautiously. The albino hung back–he could barely make out the form in the deluge. As the two got close, the head came up, craned weirdly forward, and what sounded almost like a birdsong came out. The trill was beautiful, feminine, and Saartu and Suroga wanted to do nothing more than follow this creature to a comfortable … nest? … but they shook off the feeling. The barbarian yanked back his bowstring and put a bodkin in her chest. On seeing this action, Ovid, who could not hear through the shower, loosed his own shaft, somehow piercing the neck of … this woman? 

She fell awkwardly, and the hump under her cloak spasmed with two disparate movements. The party closed to find a woman-like creature, only with feathers instead of hair. As expected the voluminous cloak concealed two wings.

“Harpies have taken over the temple!?”

Saartu rubbed his rotting neck, “Still, it’s the best lead we have.”

“We should probably choose some other entrance.”

The party left the body right outside the entrance and returned to the clifftop. They attached their rope to a tree and rapelled down onto the roof. The shorter tower had a large grate in the center (rain was falling through), the taller tower had windows that would be difficult to reach, and the dome had a closed door in the glass, but no visible means of descent. The Inklings put their faces to the bubble, the water drops hammering all around them.

A huge room could be seen inside, two stories to the floor. An empty balcony overlooked the rest of the room, its only entrance a stair in the wall behind, descending. In the dim light afforded by the weather, a host of activity could be seen. A muscular man wearing a dhoti squatted motionless in a ring of low stones. Three sleepers, attired similarly, lay just outside the circle on the floor. Maybe they were dead. Equipment with bars and handles lay scattered about the room. Several other humans lay on pallets, and they seemed to be tended by three dressed men moving among them. The party leaned back out of sight.

“The temple’s been taken over by nefarious forces.”

“Everyone in there looks to be under duress.”

The company crept toward the shingled tower and its accessible grate. The rains had washed most of the birdshit from the crenelations, but not all. Haunting, enchanting bird calls could be heard coming out of the ten-foot-square grill, which could obviously be lifted open. From the angle that they were looking, a form could be glimpsed taking off from the interior wall. It was either a very large bird or another harpy. 

“So we could go through the grate into the harpy tower …”

“... drop thirty feet to the floor beneath the dome …”

“... or risk climbing slick walls to the gold tower’s window …”

“... maybe there’s another, concealed back entrance … in the woods …”

“... maybe we go in the front door?”

“Oh shit, we left the body out front!”  

Although their luck had held out for some time, the great front doors were opening just as they got to the corpse. A pair of men, simply but cleanly dressed, with truncheons dangling from their cloth belts, were leading by his arm a third, dazed man–clearly a sailor by his tattoos and the remnants of his dress–into the out-of-doors. Saartu began reciting his new incantation, but he did something wrong and blood spurted from his nose with shocking violence. The distraction almost allowed one of the armed men to get back inside, but two arrows again put an end to the threat of discovery, for the moment. 

The sailor was communicative, spoke in Coinish with a mariner’s accent, and seemed unperturbed that two killings had taken place in his presence, or the third corpse. He asked if the newcomers had a ship and confessed that his captors fed him figs, olives, and nectar, and by the way, did the party have anything to drink? He was given a gulp from a waterskin. The bodies were dragged into nearby vegetation, and strips of cloth ripped from their clothes. The mariner allowed himself to be bound and gagged with no fuss, and the party left him concealed near the corpses. They searched the high rainforest for the back door, but the place was obviously untouched by human intervention. A pond was located on the far side. The rain had not let up at all. The front door it was.

Curious scenes carved into the inside of the entry arch: people laying on their backs on sand, men and women, wearing only loincloths or dhotis. The entryway led into another two-story interior, this one dominated by a twenty-foot tall marble statue of a weeping woman. Liquid flowed from beneath her stone hands down the front of her body to collect in a basin at her feet. Horribly sour notes plucked on a poorly-played stringed instrument came from an open passageway. Faded, peeling frescos of scenes of women healing the sick decorated the walls. Several coins glittered in the fountain and three normal wooden doors marked the corners of the room.

Suroga gritted his teeth and moved toward the “musician,” as a few more awkward chords sounded out. Three catatonic people in grey robes gazed at a fourth, a bearded man with a mandore strummed at it desultorily and then plucked at his own head. The saz-player could bear no more of the travesty, and moved away. Ovid pulled a silver from his pouch and lofted it into the font for Saartu’s luck. The warlock listened at a door and heard giggles and grunts.

The chamber beyond was a play-room of sorts, with a window high up,  littered with clay dolls (some shattered), wheeled wooden horses, and a large purple stuffed lamb. A body lay on the floor, unmoving and badly bruised. Two men, laughing, battered one another with short clubs. They moved toward the door and Saartu closed it. The loonies thumped at the door, but did not open it.

The party chose the quiet door on the far right to go through. No outside light penetrated here, but burning oil lamps revealed benches, piles of robes and soiled clothing, and towels. The party robed themselves, makeshift disguises that didn’t conceal their weapons, but might pass a very cursory inspection. Three additional wooden doors exited this changing room. One sounded of a soft lullaby that made the hackles rise on Ovid’s neck; one produced irregular grunts and thumps and a steady drumming sound; the last smelled piney, felt warm, and faintly gurgled. Mmuglavu’s dying utterances came to mind. The last door was opened and a pleasant-smelling steam roiled out.

The sunken baths were lit by candles. Four possibly nude men lounged, eyes closed, in this sauna–their privities were concealed by brown, bubbling water (probably water). Not sewage again, thought the Inklings, as one. Saartu noticed a couple of other things. The nearest bather had a tremendous mane of black curls and a large hole had been broken open in the wall just above the waterline. The warlock stepped into the heat and … smelled a faint undertone of rotted meat and … shit. He dipped his hand in the liquid, anyway, finding it hot and thick.

“I hate public baths.”

The luxuriously-tressed man opened his eyes and they focused on the odd-looking man.

“Do you have a ship?” he asked, in the sailors’ lingo.

Saartu deferred answering.

“I … had a ship,” the man said, his eyes far away. “Well … not really a ship. … but it could be. … Hard to explain. They took it away,” he finished, with a surprising amount of venom for someone seemingly so relaxed.

“Who took it away?”

“The orderlies … who else? … Or maybe it was the nannies … I don’t remember.”

No one else would dare enter the bath, so the party retreated and tried the door with the grunts behind. They realized immediately that this was the domed room they’d looked on from above, although a couple things had changed in the intervening time. First, a few of the patients were now exercising on devices. (The bodies on the floor had not moved.) Second, an older woman with white hair and piercing blue eyes (they could be seen from across the room) stood on the balcony observing.

One of the orderlies shouted, “You need to get to bed!” then saw that the grey cloaks were festooned with weapons. He reached for his truncheon. “Get to the nursery, right now!” another shouted, and the party started backing up.

The orderlies engaged the party in the towel room, and a fruitless scrum broke out, the adventurers’ weapons getting tangled in their disguises, but being pulled free in time to block the swing of the men’s batons. The tranquil atmosphere of the grounds made Suroga not want to enrage himself. Finally, Saartu cut one down, but the other two fought on.

The woman, out of sight now, stated firmly, “You must be getting to bed!”

Ovid thought of the lullaby and yelled, “I AM NOT GOING TO BED!”

Another orderly dropped and the last screamed, “NANNIES! TO THE CHANGING ROOM NOW!”

The Inklings ran. Nothing stopped them as they shoved their way back outdoors through the massive doors into the monsoon. They could see about as clearly as they could tell their future, the begloomed golden asclepeion looming over them in the falling dusk.

Session 8: “Fuck It. We (Meat)Ball!”

A figure was moving through the rain toward the party. Cedric! Yet Suroga kept fleeing, into the forest where they’d hidden the bodies of those they’d killed, and the sailor.

“You’ve arrived just in time, Cedric!”

“We’re being chased … we’ve killed two … out of seven or eight.”

Cedric did not like those odds. 

“Why again are we here? Do you hope to find a cure for the mummy’s rot?”

“Yes, that’s it, but we should move!”

The adventurers climbed the embankment to hide in the jungle above the temple. They expected any engagement to begin at close quarters, considering the darkness and weather. Cedric told the others he, too, had taken a boat from the Rattler, but had discovered and landed on the nearside beach. There were olive trees along that path. As they talked, Saartu pulled an arrow from Ovid’s quiver, chanted briefly, and put the point in his mouth.

“It is poisoned now … but it does not work quickly, keep that in mind.”

“What’s inside?”

“It’s an asylum … run by the inmates.” Cedric might have shuddered, having heard about the madhouse of Ilcar.

After being undiscovered for some time, and seeing or hearing no evidence of chase, the company tied a rope to a tree and lowered themselves onto the roof again. From that vantage point, it seemed that only the very muscular man remained in the exercise room beneath the glass dome.

“Open that door, and I could take him out with the poison arrow.”

“Do we really want to just kill him?”

“Asking questions is not part of our repertoire, if you haven’t noticed, Cedric.”

“You didn’t make friends here, did you, Saartu?”

Ovid’s arrow struck the strongman in the shoulder. He fled the ring, climbed up the balcony and disappeared down the stairs. It was moments later that a searching party of orderlies found the rope tied above. Ovid loosed an arrow, and Cedric ran to the front of the building, pulled a grapnel from his pack, and secured it on a crenellation, dropping the rope to the front entrance.

The orderlies scrambled down the cliff rope, and Saartu moved to engage, knocking one’s truncheon from his hand with a shield. The other on the roof was killed, but then a nanny appeared at the clifftop, singing. Cedric and Ovid’s faces went slack, but Saartu knocked her from the air with his enchantment, and she plummeted from the sky, landing hard on the glass dome, breaking her fragile bones. The orderlies on the clifftop fled, and the one survivor, while kneeling to recover his club, began begging for mercy. Cedric and Ovid had snapped out of their reverie, and Saartu began quizzing the man on the “nectar” he was offering.

“You, too, can be purified, if you just drink the nectar,” the physician claimed.

“But will it cure this?” Saartu pointed at his neck.

“Oblivion will save you.”

The party huddled together for a moment, only the one orderly watching them in the downpour. The allegedly curative liquid came from the god statue’s tears. Saartu wondered if they could seize some, carry it back to some sage in Dozdghar, and have its efficacy evaluated–before they drank it.

This conversation was interrupted by the grapnel shifting and the grate to the harpy tower slamming open. Cedric moved to find the muscular man, not dead yet, free climbing his rope from the ground. When the poisoned man was halfway up, the ink knight kicked the grapnel free, and was rewarded with a solid grunt of pain. The man jumped up and ran into the rain. More dangerously, two harpies had taken wing, and within moments their duet had pacified the trio of adventurers, who began following the orders to “go to bed.” When the brawny man arrived to slam into Saartu, the warlock put up his hands in self-defense, and his attacker crumpled and died.

“Why did you kill Kleostraos?! He was a beautiful strong man?!” a harpy shrieked.

“He fell in weakness, probably natural causes.”

The name was familiar to Saartu and Ovid. Back in the City of Thieves they had heard of wagering on the man, one who had dominated the fighting pits of the unarmed variety. But those conversations had been in the past tense, describing events just before the foreigners had arrived in the city.

Under the influence of the charm, the party was led out of the rain and back into the temple. The headmistress asked why they had come to the island.

“We arrived here peacefully, we were seeking peace.”

“If you were seeking peace, why did you bring the habiliments of war?”

The party was stripped of their gear for violence. Ovid sobbed when he was relieved of his bones. Each was forced to drink the nectar, and Cedric just kept chugging one after the other, feeling no ill effects, but not better from his rot, either. Saartu felt stupider. Ovid felt naked without his skulls.

The captives were led to the tall tower, which held three stories of bunks, with ladders running up to the open levels. A nanny sat guard on a platform in the center, singing her lullaby. A dozen patients snoozed. The party soon drowsed, and before they knew it, it was morning, the grey light of the overcast day coming through the high windows of the tower. A steady rain could be heard.

Ovid, depressed, barely noticed that he felt refreshed. Saartu, with the exception of not being able to put thoughts together like he used to, felt more whole; the necrosis in his skin had retreated. Cedric felt like shit, despite all the nectar he had consumed.

The patients were all led to the beach in the morning rain. They were told that they must bathe in the tears to reach oblivion, but that they were not yet ready to take that step.

“I feel ready,” argued Saartu, but his answer was met with a softly shaken head.

“I can’t live without my bones!” Ovid wailed.

“More olives and nectar, please,” Cedric asked.

The ink knight realized that the boat he had dragged onto the beach was gone, and was told that it had been dismantled and sunk. The physicians seemed to be resentful of the party for Kleostratos’ death, but they continued serving them in the rain. Eventually, the patients were led from the beach to the exercise room, with more grumbling about the loss of the wrestler. Still, the party received massages from the orderlies and lifted weights for a bit.

“Do you have a storage place, where you look at the cool things you took from patients?” Cedric asked, looking down at the simple shift and loincloth that he now wore.

“No, not at all,” the orderly answered quickly, and hustled the party to the walking track.  

The walls were covered with sickeningly twisty black and white patterns. A few patients shuffled past, faces blank. A groove had been worn into the oval’s floor. Ovid and Saartu set off down the path and began to feel woozy. Saartu tried to walk against the “current,” but suddenly he was trudging along like the others, widdershins. Ovid, at least, had forgotten about his bones. Cedric closed his eyes and felt along the outside wall, going clockwise, bumping into other patients. When he reached a door, the knight stopped. Behind the portal was a deep darkness, where weirdly light did not intrude.

Cedric closed his eyes again, made it to an oil lamp, and pried it from the wall. Saartu and Ovid lurched past. Once back at the door, Cedric found that the lamp provided no illumination beyond the track. He set the lamp down and walked along the wall–until he fell into a pit, crashing to a sand floor, hard, dropping his oil lamp. In the pitch blackness he heard a squawk and movement, not too distant, scrambling toward him. He grabbed the rough stone walls and clambered back onto the platform, knuckles scraped, and knees banged. He crawled back toward the entrance. 

Saartu was there, having snapped out of his fugue. Soon Ovid was back, too, no longer in a stupor. The orderlies didn’t seem to be watching from the gymnasium. They all crawled, very slowly across a path that turned and juked several times. Ovid felt better in this utter blackness–no one could see his lack of skulls. The party could hear the thing below rustling, snapping and crunching bones in its jaws. Finally, a door could be felt ahead.

It opened into a different space, one that stank of dust and echoed. Ovid smiled in the deep darkness. A faint sound, like the slapping of flesh could be heard somewhere within, and something squelched, distantly. Cedric cursed and crawled back to get another lamp from the fascination track. Many long minutes later, his hunch was proven correct: a crypt lay in front of them and the light shone on its contents.

The dust on the floor bore footprints, which looked like bare feet, but without toes. Not booted feet, for sure. Burial urns stood along the walls and several niches held the remains of humans long dead. Ovid dug his hands into a vessel and smeared the grave dust all over his body. A necklace had hooked onto his hand, which he gave to Cedric in exchange for the femur that the knight had found. Squelches and flapping noises reminded them they weren’t alone, and perhaps should hurry. 

“You have your fancy skin, and a weapon, and you’re the best fighter, so you can lead.”

No one had ever called Ovid’s flesh “fancy” before. He gripped a bone club. He was practically all smiles as he rooted around in another bier, extracting a silver choker. Saartu thought about his demons and his sorcery. Cedric carried the lamp, and salvaged a brick from the debris.

A nimbus of light revealed a door in one of the ossuary’s passages. Nothing could be heard on the other side, so it was opened. A lion lay on the floor of the lamp-lit room. Movement was heard beyond the great cat. Saartu fumbled his words to put the feline to sleep. Cedric slammed the door shut. 

Unfortunately, that noise–somehow–brought the sound of flapping feet. The lamplight suddenly showed fleshy forms rushing foward–figures with no features on their heads, and only a hint of fingers and toes, even.

Trapped between a two-pronged assault, the barely-dressed fought desparately with brick and bone, against the barely-formed who seemed to be trying to squeeze the adventurers to death. When Cedric finally smashed in the head of the last, the company was battered and breathing hard, but alive. The lion’s door had not yet opened. They moved away and toward the squelching. 

Eventually, the light of the lantern revealed the horror behind the disgusting noise. Inside a vaulted mausoleum a twelve-foot ball of compressed, wet skin quivered. A smoothed limb could be seen jutting from the surface here and there, and a number of the unjoined featureless beings were trying to mush themselves into the sphere. 

The party crossed the threshold and were rewarded with headaches and a wave of attackers, who had peeled themselves from the ball. The Inklings retreated into defensive formation just outside the chamber, and Cedric kept pulling the others clear of a mauling as they fought. The knight also managed to brain two more with his lucky brick. Ovid was in his element, bone beating flesh. Saartu turned to see a glow coming from behind them. All heard the lion growl. The sorcerer saw the dour woman with the piercing eyes, carrying a lantern.

“Fuck it. We ball!”

The company ran into the room with the writhing ball of meat, hoping that whatever hurt their brains would disable the lion. It shook its head and mane as it crossed into the room, but the woman urged it on, and the beast did not flee. Cedric caught the cat’s maw with a brick right before its paw smacked him to the ground, his head thumping ominously on the stone floor, his lamp’s flame extinguishing. Saartu called a demon.

she is not afraid of death or pain the severe whisper came to the warlock’s ears she fears the destruction of the sphere

Saartu hissed this knowledge at Ovid, who pushed his way past the lion and smacked the woman in the face with the legbone.

“Why do you do this?” she asked, calmly, through bloodied teeth, “You’re not helping yourself reach oblivion.”

“I’ll show you oblivion!” the albino yelled.

Saartu tried to magick the lamp away from the woman, to throw the oil onto the flesh sac, but her power overrode his sorcerous energies. Ovid struck the woman in the ribs with the femur, but then he couldn’t see.

Saartu summoned up the song he had learned, trying to madden the lion. It shook its bleeding muzzle and then bit the vat-born, who collapsed to the floor.

“You must have sought oblivion if you came here,” the woman recited.

Sightless, Ovid swung his club wildly, connecting with nothing but the crypt wall.

The lion raked him down his back. Ovid did not bleed like other men.

“Is this truly the kind of oblivion you seek?” he heard.

The lion’s jaws clamped on Ovid’s thigh. An ordinary man would be dead by now. He fell to his knee.

“Accept, and be cleansed, be purified,” the woman said, softly.

Ovid wept and begged for forgiveness.

The lion roared.

Session 9: “Out of the Soaking Pot and onto the Cutting Board”

“We came on a chartered ship,” Suroga said, “we have means to signal them, but only the knight knows what it is. He’s the one with his robe flapping open.” The plainsman was speaking to a jangalman, one of the short, dark Lukari who were said to live on the upper reaches of the Python. Both of them had been hiding in the thick forests on the island of the asclepeion for at least a week, surviving on figs and olives, plus a fish, here and there. Suroga actually knew where the rowboat he had arrived on was hidden in the undergrowth, but he didn’t want this Molimo to take it and leave the Inklings stranded, on the unlikelihood that the little man could pull the craft into the ocean by himself. 

Cedric lay on the beach near the lady Eil Bet, one of the few “patients” of Oblivion who tried to drink as little nectar as possible. She was from Hightown, and recognized her fellow aristocrat by his manners, the nudity nothwithstanding, and confided in him. The knight fiddled with the globs of wax he had stolen from the candles in the bath, where the patients and sometimes lions relaxed indoors. He looked at the “nanny,” the harpy near the beach. Another perched in the olive trees, not too far away. Three harried orderlies distributed nectar and tree fruits, truncheons tied at their belts.

Ovid was blistering here under the sun, and the daily scratches the harpies had clawed into his belly were festering in his pale skin. He surreptitiously pushed his fingers of one hand under the sand, while the other ostentatiously popped olives into his mouth. Beneath the dort, the albino could feel a buried stick, one end a point. The shit-smeared “nectar” cup the captured had quietly left behind a few days ago had been deliberately moved and left upside down on this spot. Suroga had apparently made good use of his time fashioning weapons and hiding them. Ovid looked over at Saartu, who barked something and … what was he looking at again, the waves? 

Saartu stood up and walked across the sand. No one reacted: not the harpies, nor the orderlies, nor his comrades, nor the other patients, though they were so addled that that was expected. He wouldn’t be able to pry the tent spikes out with any speed, so he walked to the edge of the beach to locate a hefty rock, near the cliffs. Finding a suitable one as a weapon, he walked quietly up behind the nanny on the beach.

“Ah, he’s vanished, that must be the signal,” Suroga said.

“You truck with sorcerers?” Molimo asked, darkly.

“Not when I can help it,” Suroga replied, and nocked an arrow, squinting at the harpy on the olive branches. Now that the monsoon had finally lifted, the fugitives had to be more careful, and were at some distance. Suddenly the bird-woman on the beach staggered forward and squawked. Suroga released his missile, burying the shaft in feathers. The creature still pulled herself aloft with her wings, confused as to what was happening.

The grounded nanny began singing, and the orderlies dropped their serving devices and grabbed their batons. Cedric and Ovid scrambled to jam the wax in their ears, then began digging in the sand for the hidden spears. Saartu, not the most skilled of fighters, shoved a passing physician into a tent, and the man sprawled. The flying harpy swooped toward the visible rebellion, and the nearby harpy screeched as an arrow hit it right in the wing.

Ovid used his spear to fend off the orderlies’ clubs, Cedric using his spear to knock the albino’s into the path of a swing he’d misjudged. When the crude spear was buried in one of the guards, and the flying harpy fell from the sky, the two surviving men ran, while the wounded harpy attempted to hobble away. Suroga, now clear of cover, swung his aim from target to target, keeping word from getting back to the Temple. Even Molimo rushed out of the orchard to intercept one runner, if somewhat ineffectively. The deafened Inklings closed in on the wounded harpy and finished her off.

Eil Bet praised Cedric for his skill at arms, though admittedly even Saartu (who no one even wondered about at the moment) had (unwitnessed) outshone him in the fight. The rest of the patients continued to sit in their daze, despite the five corpses on the beach, and the potential of freedom. A debate arose: should the company rally the people to storm the temple? Or would hiding outside and picking off search parties be more sensible? The Lukari little man just wanted to get off the island. Did they need Cedric’s inked family armor, the Danarosa sword, and Ovid’s bones, presumably stashed inside? Was it worth the risk? The group decided they had had enough of the temple’s charms.

Eil Bet and Molimo would be coming along to the rowboat, which left two additional seats. “Curly” (who was very dazed) and a thief from Dozdghar, who didn’t remember his name, were dragged along. The former objected, “My name’s … not … Curly,” but could not supply his true appellation. Cedric saw useful hands on the latter, while Ovid regarded the fellow as an emergency meal. They dragged the craft into the water, Molimo giving Suroga the stink-eye, and seven were aboard. The boat tipped a little as their eighth, unnoticed passenger got in. They rowed north, away from Fos Imeras, away from the gilded temple of Oblivion.

* * *

A few hours later, Saartu was in the boat with them, had been all along. The now-no-longer patients accepted this with aplomb, but Molimo was obviously disturbed. The crew didn’t talk much during the passage, being exhausted, lightly armed, drugged, and without bones. Eventually, a thin line grew across the northern horizon as another island came into view. 

The boat was beached beneath cliffs, at high tide, and pulled in as high as it would come. Amazingly, a second boat, hundreds of yards away, was landing at the same time. At this distance, the party could just make out that the passengers all wore hooded robes.

“Should we wave?” Cedric raised his hand.

“I’ve had enough of cultists for the moment,” replied Saartu.

The party climbed the cliff in the setting sun. Ahead of them lay a broad stretch of grassland, with higher hills and even peaks ahead to the left, and with lower, grassy rises to the right. The escarped shore extended out of sight to the left, while a tiny tendril of smoke was the backdrop for the pilgrims off in the distance to the right. Both debarked parties began traveling forward, in parallel.

As dusk fell, the company came to a stream, with a stone bridge erected across. The construction was old, but it was infrastructure. An armored figure could be seen approaching from the far side in the dim light.

“Hello, friend!”

“I am nay friend, but the great warrior, Kelippes. Certes, thou hast heard o’ me!” His Alashan was odd, stilted, and his armor strangely exaggerated in shape. The man kept coming over the bridge, and the party backed into a defensive semi-circle.

“One o’ thou shalt fight me unto death!”

“Why? That is dangerous…”

“‘Tis what true warriors do!” The party could see the spittle flying from Kelippes’ mouth at this range. “Which o’ thou shalt it be?!” he yelled.

“I will take you on, just like I took on the rats in the sewers!” Cedric tried to hint to his comrades as they continued to back away. He was, in this instance, not wearing armor, however, and the man was, however odd its appearance. The two combatants moved at the same pace, as short sword met stick spear. Suroga moved to stab the man in his flank with his skinning dagger. It went right through the paper armor, with scarcely any resistance.

“How savage!” Kelippes exclaimed.

“Exactly,” Suroga retorted, in Coinish, for he understood the intent, and cut the man again.

The madman was given one chance to surrender, refused, and died. Cedric belted the scabbard and sword around his robe. The appearance of rot had almost entirely vanished.

With Molimo and Suroga’s expertise, a small dam was formed in the creek, and a repast of roast fish filled the refugees’ bellies, a delicious change of pace from olives and figs. The night’s insects were restless, but nothing truly dangerous infringed upon the camp. The remnant clouds of the monsoon hid most of the stars.

As dawn broke in the east, the far pilgrims could be seen continuing to travel in parallel. The party set off north again, and the very faint path almost became a road. Hills loomed over them to the right, and the land beneath the track they were on began to undulate. Suroga went up onto the rises to scout. He lost track of the hooded people because of the landscape, but he saw and heard something far more fearsome: a great worm had burst from the ground and was locked in struggle with a winged reptile, which had its jaws clamped on gigantic grub. The barbarian immediately alerted the others.

Playing it as safely as possible, the company marched east, perpendicular to their original path. Eventually they reached a similar trail. They might have set off in pursuit of the presumed cultists, but were intrigued by the several arranged megaliths atop a nearby hill. Curiosity pulled them to these monuments, which were stained with brown spatters and scratched with symbols unknown to any here (although Suroga was not unfamiliar with petroglyphs in general). Some of the large rocks had fresh chips in them, and many small stones–like the one Saartu had used on the harpy–lay scattered inside the circle. 

From their vantage point, the party could see into the nearby dales, where a half-dozen nearly nude people of a variety of complexions seemed to be approaching. Two held what looked like stone knives, and all wore filigreed jewelry about their necks and arms. As they got closer, the scarification that marked their bodies became quite evident. The party backed out of the stone ring and did not interfere with the arrival of the locals, who began dancing sinuously.

Then the two with the knives started cutting the others, who held their arms or abdomens close to the standing stones that they might mark them with their lifeblood. The people spoke in a language entirely unintelligible, but their gestures seemed inviting (if one ignored the slicing going on). The dancers seemed especially enamored of Ovid’s appearance. Eventually, the albino, the knight, the Lukari, and the barbarian offered up their own limbs to this ritual. Eil Bet looked on with distaste, and Saartu declared that he’d had enough of cults lately, and forwent a fresh injury. The tribals began kissing one another, mixing blood and saliva in a phase that all of the party abstained from. When they had completed this grotesque custom, three of them bestowed their adornments on Ovid. It was not bones, but at least these ornaments were crafted from gold.

When the ritualists retreated to their caves, the Inklings resumed their journey north. They figured the the trail would ultimately lead to somewhere worthwhile. When they spotted a half-dozen armored men walking toward them, the party withdrew from the road, but the squadron followed.

  

In an archaic dialect of Alashan, the men asked if the party had encountered a man dressed in ostentatious armor, their missing brother. Saartu opened his mouth, but Ovid stepped on his foot. Cedric turned that his recently-claimed shortsword was obscured by his body, for these soldiers carried weapons of the same make. 

“What is your brother’s name?”

“He is called Kelippes.”

“Well … we have seen no man … such as that. But we will keep a lookout. Where does this road lead, please?”

“To the town of Achellis. Since thou art strangers in this land, I must warn you: the prince of the city shall desire to partake of your flesh, especially his.”

“But I like my flesh!” Ovid protested.

“Ah, but so would he.”

“One last question … the pilgrims visiting this land, where are they headed?”

“To the shrine of the Momentary God. Proceedeth left at the trail’s fork, shouldst thou intend to worship. Achellis standeth along the right branch.”

The men had not lied. The road’s split lay atop a vantage point, and there, at the sea’s edge, stood a town with red-slated roofs crowded behind a wall. Watchmen patrolled atop the ramparts. A dock extended into the water, but no ships were anchored there.

Session 10: “Cannibal’s Dinner”

Even though no ships were parked in the harbor, the Inklings and their four charges–Eil Bet, “Curly,” Molimo, and the unnamed, unremembering thief–started down the path toward the walled town with no ships in its tiny harbor. “Ditch that sword,” Suroga hissed to Cedric, and the knight complied, putting the sharpened stick back into his fighting hand. Ovid wished aloud for a robe, as his skin was blistering and the golden jewelry was heating up, and Saartu began looking for clothes hung out for drying. 

Ovid, at least, was comforted mentally, for a large necropolis spread across two hills to their left, in the shadow of the settlement’s walls. To the right of the road, dozens toiled in flax and grain fields, most with fewer garments than the members of the company. These men and women (who were about one-third of the workforce) paused to observe the passage of the strangers. Men with batons or switches yelled–in the archaic Alashan already heard on the island, so Saartu and Cedric could understand–for the watchers to get back to work. In the distance, goats and sheep roamed the slopes. On the walls looming above, men with javelins stared down at the newcomers.

“Strangers! Have ye seen a man who claimeth to be the great Leukes? His attire was ridiculous.”

Saartu, Cedric, and Eil Bet were confused for a moment. Leukes was the hero responsible for the conquest of Iribos centuries ago. Oh, that Kelippes fellow that they had killed when he wouldn’t back down.

“Um, no, but we have seen his … brothers searching for him,” Cedric answered. (Saartu would hold his tongue for a long stretch, so that the islanders would not know his advantage in understanding their words. In fact, Saartu would be uncharacteristically quiet for the next couple days.)

“I see from your adornments that thou hast tangled with the Blood-Fuckers, white man.”

Cedric nudged Ovid, who didn’t know the guards were speaking to him. 

“Didst thou slay any to gain these prizes? Did they throw rocks?”

“Ah, yes, we … uh, slew several,” Cedric lied, “They had stone knives. He does not understand your language, by the way.”

The guards spoke in low tones atop the wall. 

“It is against the Basileus’ dictum that the Blood-Fuckers be killed, so ye have transgressed. But ye wert savages killing savages, as ye barely know what a blade is. Ye would need please Canthilles to overlook your sin. The white man and the black pygmy, and maybe thine flesh,” he said, pointing at Saartu, who kept looking at the ground, “He might should liketh to sample ye. And who is this woman that walketh among ye, is she your slave?”

“That is my mother,” Cedric fibbed.

“Thou travelst with thy mother?!” The guardsman was incredulous.

Eventually the party was informed that they would be allowed to enter Achellis if they would leave their rude armaments outside the gate, and if one of the unusual ones would promise to submit a taste of his flesh to the city leader, whether a slice from an ample buttock or thigh, or perhaps the smallest finger. It was agreed that at least the sample wouldn’t come from a circumcision. The adventurers drew straws and Suroga lost. Cedric had wanted to volunteer his own tissue, but his was deemed uninteresting by the sentries.

The town’s buildings were old, with many in good repair, although several neighborhoods were long-crumbled ruins. The architecture resembled a few small sections of Dozdghar that were generally overwhelmed by more recent structures, although this place’s decorations were quite unlike anything in the city of thieves. Many, many surfaces were marked with frescoes and carvings of swords and plenty of walls depicted hybrid creatures: bull-men and bird-women, boar-hawks and lion-fish, goat-snakes and hippo-toads. A third, less-common motif was the cocoon and chrysalis. Saartu poisoned a sharp rock, and gave it to Suroga.

The party was conducted by armed guards to meet Canthilles, who had his own small retinue of soldiers (wearing weighty bronze armor, and carrying fine smallswords) and servants. The meeting took place in an open courtyard amongst heavily decorated buildings. The escorts warned their leader that Cedric was a liar. The knight’s commentary on the artwork was at first taken as disparagement, but he just noted it was unusual compared to where he came from. 

“And what place dost thou hail from?”

“The City of Th–, the city of Dozdghar. It’s, um, on the mainland.”

“And this is how ye come to be in such a degraded state?”

Although the conversation with Basileus and the Achellisans kept growing more and more tendentious, there came a turning point when Cedric explained the Inklings’ more recent circumstances, most specifically when he spoke of killing the harpies to escape enslavement. Suroga pointed out that, technically, he had not escaped slavery, having never been captured, but these islanders did not seem to speak Coinish. As the description of the escape grew in telling, so did the number of bird-women put down, and Canthilles suddenly invited them to dinner, in more ways than one, of course. Eil Bet was not included and ate separately, alone. The leader explained that recently harpies had begun raiding the villages on the southern end of the island. Cedric recommended wax for the ears of any defender.

During a dinner of roast goat, flaxen gruel, and olives, the party sipped wine and learned of the inhabitants of this Island of Leukelles. The feast was held in the temple of the Lord of Swords, a location surrounded by the eight statues of Leukes’ myrmidons, all of which Saartu remembered: Akakios, Balides, Giannis, Damaskinos, Efstathios, Zissis, Thiresides, Iasonas. (Cedric’s recent brain issues had robbed him of most of this recall.) The current inhabitants’ ancestors could be traced back to these heroes of old, they claimed, who had arrived after the conquest of Iribos to the north. They had been protecting this place from the Hamazakaron ever since, the warrior women who had been Leukes’ main foe, especially since Iribos had fallen to deviltry, savagery, and corsairs in the last century. 

The Inklings learned that years ago, under the reign of Basileus Yorgos, a local expedition slew hundreds of the “Blood-Fuckers.” But then an avalanche destroyed the original settlement of Achellis, and since then, the native peoples had been protected, despite their lack of civilization. There was not much trade with the outside world, according to the other diners. It seemed that the Achellisans traded swords for pilgrims, almost, because the Shrine of the Momentary God had been erected near the center of the island. Boats did not come by often, although the last had passed on news that demon sorcerers in the Corsettic Strait, just north of Iribos, had seized a ship from “civilization,” and some city of the Inner Sea would surely retaliate soon. Someone remarked that Leukes’ golden sword had been lost in the middle of the island, but another diner disputed him, saying it was the weapon of a most vicious woman the hero had slain. The party was warned that wandering too broadly might bring them into contact with a horned zebra in the forest, a creature that devoured genitals.

“Uh, is this truly goat we’re eating?”

“I have tasted genitals and they are inferior as far as meats go. I would never serve that to my guests.”

Talk naturally turned to cannibalism at this point, considering Canthilles predilections. Ovid made sure to emphasize how unpalatable his scaly skin was, despite its intriguing color. Suroga insisted the practice was taboo among his own people. The Basileus was agog. 

“Are you saying you do not eat the flesh of those who you’ve defeated? That you don’t eat your kin after they pass, to keep a piece of them inside you?”

“We mummify ours.”

“But didn’t you say earlier that it was indeed a mummified dead that attacked you? I mean, if we were not meant to eat people, why did the gods make us out of meat?”

The company began feeling out how they might earn passage away from this place. They learned that service for six moons in Leukes’ fortress, defending against the depredations of the foul Hamazakarons, would earn them reprieve.

“That sounds better than a slice of my ass.”

“That’s a really long time, maybe give the flesh if it’s not too crippling?”

“I suppose it’s up to you guys, who have the delicious flesh,” said Cedric, who was unwanted for the menu.

Molimo was indecisive. Finally, Suroga submitted. A serrated knife was brought, and a hunk was removed from the berserker’s buttock. He was used to pain. Canthilles complimented the barbarian on his flavor, and asked if other people of the Iron Horde tasted quite so fine. 

In celebration, the Basileus ordered that a history be performed. All the players in the drama were men, though many wore costumes of grotesquely exaggerated breasts and hips. The first mummer on stage was a large “woman” dragging a long abdomen prop behind her, dropping eggs across the stage. Actors in chrysalis costumes crawled on stage to take the places of the ova. Snake-women slithered among the cocoons, and then there was a great “hatching” which devolved into a pantomimed orgy between “woman” and “animal.”

“What do you think so far?” Canthilles asked, leaning over.

“Interesting.”

A ship’s prow “landed” on the stage, and Leukes and his eight Myrmidons disembarked, dressed in the same costume armor that Kelippes had worn, only to be seduced and raped by the women and animals. Stage hands ran to put candles on stage, which were then blown out, and the resulting “darkness” stunned all the players. 

“That is the Momentary God!” 

Several crude hollow clay statues of women were hustled on stage, and the Myrmidons drew their very real swords, and cut these “women” to bits. The actor playing Leukes lifted a stone high above his head, declaring that he would build civilization here. All the actors retreated from the stage, leaving a single, lit candle. An actor in a hybrid snake-woman costume writhed across the stage and ate the candle to bring back the darkness. The eight Myrmidons charged back on stage, formed a circle with their backs to one another, and bowed deeply.

“What did you think?!”

“I feel so much more cultured.”

“Does your City of Doss-Garh have such performances?”

“We do, but not nearly on this level.”

The party, save the noblewoman, were offered pallets in the visitors’ dormitory. Eil Bet had to sleep in a separate women’s quarter, so that she might not betray the town. As the party settled into their very uncomfortable beds, they spoke of escaping the place.

“I don’t trust that they’ll let us go, no matter what we do.”

“Military service for six months is off the table–”

“Oh, now that my ass has been chunked, military service is off the table?!”

“We could claim we were serving, and then just abandon the place.”

“Could we treat with the Blood-Fuckers, foment a rebellion?”

“They were so poorly armed…”

“The pilgrims didn’t interact with the town. Maybe they are decent people.”

“We should look for them on the road to the shrine.”

The Inklings and their charges went to sleep uneasily, not knowing what the future held, or even what moon it was. Maybe the Capricon, the goat-fish, the ultimate month in the year of the Fish. 

The next morning the party were served dolmades for breakfast, sour grain wrapped in oily grape leaves. They told their watchers that they wanted to leave Achellis, and were granted the privilege, although the town kept Cedric’s “mother,” leaving the knight feeling pretty guilty. The adventurers collected their crude weapons outside the gates.

Not far from Achellis a single form could be seen approaching down the road that allegedly led to the Shrine of the Momentary God. This traveler was an older woman who wore a substantial backpack that rattled with cash. She asked the group if they enjoyed wagering.

“The losses may be devastating,” the crone warned.

Cedric, who we may again remind you, had been knocked in the head hard more than once on this journey, borrowed almost to his limit (the 214 coins in Suroga’s purse), and then rolled the bones. The woman sighed at the result, and parceled out two centuries of silver, which the knight immediately returned to the barbarian. Ovid put his new bracelets in the pot, and emerged twenty coin richer. The woman stared straight into Saartu’s eyes. 

“A demon for a demon … or coin. Your choice, vat-born.”

Without much hesitation, Saartu offered up one of his hellspawn, and in a few tosses of dice became the master of Ulshedra, a being of unrepentant Sloth. 

“It was nice meeting you,” Cedric said, cheerily.

“It was not so nice meeting you,” she grumped back.

“What was your name?” Saartu asked.

“You will not get me that easily, vat-born. But they call me ‘Theanna’. Or ‘Witch’.”

“Who?”

“The villagers who gamble with me.”

“Why do they do that? The town seems very afraid of women.”

“Let’s just say that the villagemen sleep with their wives, unlike the citizens.”

The Inklings moved on, the wagering “witch” headed toward Achellis, or more probably, its subsidiary settlements. Their path intersected with the initial trail they had walked on the island, and some very rugged hills dressed with palms rose up on their left. The savanna stretched to the right, a line of forest in the distance, and a less-traveled fork that headed there. The company chose the well-traveled path. Because of this, they happened upon a detachment of five soldiers, apparently returning from the shrine, or perhaps Leukes’ fortress beyond.

“If we fight and lose we might get eaten. If we win, with our sticks, we could have armor and weapons.”

“If we kill them, we should take a chunk out of their asses!”

Suroga insisted on a non-cannibalistic resolution. 

“We are seven with sticks and one knife; they have five swords and a number of javelins.”

The Inklings deferred, moving off the path to allow the warriors to pass, but the men stopped and challenged them. 

“Why do ye traverse the sacred road?”

“We are guests of Canthilles; let us pass. We were going to the shrine, to learn about and honor it.”

“How wouldst thou honor the shrine?”

“That is why I said ‘learn’.”

“And who art thou, ‘guest of Canthilles’?”

“I am Cedric, slayer of many harpies.”

Saartu finally spoke the tongue he had heretofore concealed, “We will honor it the same way we honor the memories of Akakios, Balides, Giannis, Damaskinos, Efstathios, Zissis, Thiresides, and Iasonas.”

“Well, why didst thou not say so?!”

The Inklings described the bit of theater they had seen performed, and the sergeant asked what was their favorite part of the performance. One Inkling admitted to liking the eggs (he had been an egg-man for as long as we have known him), and another claimed he found the rape scenes moving. A third spit on the ground at the naming of a woman. This bit of camaraderie convinced the commander to demand that Balides (who had been obviously named after the ancient hero) pass over a pair of his javelins to the adventurers, since he was “a shit thrower, anyway.”

“Are there any dangers on this journey we should be especially wary of?”

“Ah … there is a witch afoot that wagereth.”

“We will be sure to avoid her, then.”

“And a creature, inked with whorls and mazes. It is treacherous. Now, enjoy the shrine’s austerities … the rewards are immeasurable.”

As dusk fell, the party’s luck continued to rot. Yet their preternatural senses kept them safe. Dark forms could be seen ahead, scuttling onto the road. Coinish could be heard whispered, and a candle lit up a couple hundred yards away, one voice noting that they had discovered a road. The three figures then moved away from the company, in what soon became clear was the vicinity of the lighted temple. The Inklings moved hastily now, to get close. In the bonfires in front of the shrine they could see their three predecessors, almost certainly shipwrecked sailors.

A voice rang out from the shrine, speaking in archaic Alashan: “Ye are just in time for the Momentary God!”

Session 11: “The Sleeping and the Despondent”

“I think this might be a moment for waiting and seeing,” Cedric whispered.

“Engage once it’s too late?” Ovid retorted.

“That is our way,” Saartu acknowledged.

One of the sailors responded loudly to the priest, “Rather ‘ave a god thet lests a bit longa.” 

The Inklings could now see the holy men. The roof of the shrine, supported by twenty-foot pillars, overhung at least the three visible sides. The front of the temple seemed to be an open pavilion, where the clergy stood in the shadow of a very tall statue. They were visible, in part, because they had strange, candle-holding apparatus strapped to their faces. Their robes were short-sleeved.

“Maybe we should try a flanking maneuver?”

“Maybe we should try and keep the sailors alive, if necessary.”

The sailors had now climbed the steps up to the shelter, between the statues of Akakios and Balides, and the bonfires at the front of the building illuminated the backs of the mariners. One was drawing a blade from the back of his trousers as he got close to a candle-faced priest. The sailors coughed and went out of sight behind the pillars.

“That seems evil,” Cedric remarked.

“Shall we wait until a sailor kills someone, then jump in, but on the side that seems to be winning?” Ovid queried.

“If we protect the holymen, we might get in Canthilles’ good graces, and be more likely to get off the island,” Saartu suggested.

No sounds of violence issued from the pavilion. The parties inside were now at an angle where the company could not see them directly. The priests could be heard asking, “Any more of ye?”

“Not living,” one replied.

“Well that doesn’t bode well for us leaving,” Saartu complained.

“What are they saying?” Ovid asked, “Saartu, translate!”

By the time the party had come up the steps, and gotten underneath the roof, the pavilion was empty. Along the outside, under the eaves, were torches running the length of the shrine. Beneath the sconces were rows and rows of stacked firewood. The place where the priests and sailors had been was hazy, with glowing coals in braziers in each of the corners. The smell was strong, herby, and gentling. The statue, a dozen feet tall, was Leukes. Behind it, darkness.

The Inklings moved inside the walls. Cedric immediately felt at peace. He sheathed his javelin. The other two retained their generally antsy dispositions. The torch they’d lit revealed a reinforced double door.

“How you feeling, Ced? You look a bit dazed…”

“It’s nice here. Peaceful.”

Ovid shoved the doors open. The next room was fogged, lots of candles smokily burned in wall sconces and beside the large stone state of a faceless, sitting man. It smelled inviting. The three priests with their candle contraptions stood inside, one sort of holding up a sailor who was sinking to the ground. Another was already asleep on the floor. The third stood with a sappy smile on her face.

“Welcome, we welcome ye, do come in.”

Cedric entered, “What’s making me feel so … so …”

“Thou feelst the presence of the Momentary God, happening now.”

The slumped seaman passed out. Cedric fell heavily to the floor.

“Not again!” (in Coinish)

“What have you done to him!” (in Alashan)

“God’s rest. He sleepeth.” (in archaic Alashan)

“What did he say, Saartu!?” (Coinish)

“How long will he sleep!?” (Alashan)

“The antithesis of a moment.” (archaic Alashan)

When the last sailor, the woman, dropped, Saartu and Ovid grabbed Cedric’s legs and dragged him roughly out of the sanctum and back into the rain. The patter of water on his face did not wake the Ink Knight.

“Thou willst miss the pleasures of the moment, strange one,” a priest intoned.

“Are they talking about bringing out the milk, Saartu?! I’m not drinking any more milk!”

The warlock only answered the priest, “No thank you, I’ve had my fill of creepy religious environments!”

“The temple is dry and pleasant, please return.”

“What’s he saying, Saartu?!”

They dragged Cedric a long way into the grass, finding Molimo. The short man asked what happened and told them that Suroga, Curly, and the thief had retreated even further into the savanna, into darkness. Slapping Cedric did not wake him up, either.

Those unsleeping kept their eyes on the temple, and in a few minutes, saw two candle-faced men exit between the bonfires. These fellows were armored and armed, with the fine short swords common to their kind. Once they stepped in front of the pyres, the conscious Inklings could see the men pinch out the candle flames in front of their faces. The duo began following the grass flattened by Cedric’s dragged body. 

Ovid slung his javelin but could not even see where it landed, certainly not within either body of the incoming threat. Saartu thought that turn-about was fair play, but his sleeping enchantment only gave him a headache, and did not bother the targeted guardsman. And so, with this inauspicious beginning, a battle that seemed interminable was joined, even though it lasted just over a minute.

The two men were apparently greatly disturbed by Molimo’s appearance, calling him a devil child, and both went for the little man. He almost escaped being unharmed, and rammed his crude spear into one of the men’s thighs. A confusing dance of positions followed, Molimo maneuvering behind and Ovid trying to protect Saartu, although his attempted shove did not knock the opponent down. One of the vat-born’s curses finally worked, the man grabbing his ears and becoming a second-rate combatant. It was mostly a back-and-forth of feints, that, and Molimo proving the sturdiness of the warriors’ bronze armor. 

“The Momentary God protecteth us, brother!”

“Doth He shield them, too?”

“What did they say, Saartu!?”

Saartu stole one of the men’s fine smallswords from twenty paces, grinned wickedly, and then proceeded to lose grasp on the weapon when he swung it at the other. Despite this display of incompetence, both attackers decided that the sorcerer was more dangerous than small, dark Molimo. Ovid then drove his crude spear home, putting the bothered man down. The other bolted.

The warlock, who had awkwardly scooped up his “borrowed” sword, managed to scrape the fleeing man with the fine blade, but then spilled in the wet grass. Molimo and Ovid sprinted after but could not bring the runner down before he got to the door, especially since Molimo dropped his stick-weapon once he had entered the temple. Saartu decided to risk another greedy hand with the door’s handle, to pin the man outside. This was a fateful choice.

Ovid heard Saartu scream behind him, though he was concentrating on trying not to breathe in the fumes. What the albino did not see was the black blood that jetted from Saartu’s nose, or the sorcerer’s collapse onto the rainy steps watched silently by stone Akakios, Balides, and Leukes. Maybe the gods were watching, too, maybe the vat-born was treading too close to their territory with his magicks here at this shrine. It seemed that the forces beyond desired Saartu’s doom.

The fleeing guard slammed into the door to the right in the sanctum, colliding with boxes and knocking over amphorae beyond in his hurry. Ovid, alone in the chase by this point, surrounded by sorcerous mists, and perhaps about to come face-to-face with reinforcements, not to mention rather inaccurate with his jabs, broke off his pursuit. He grabbed Molimo’s and Saartu’s hands during his retreat, and led them, pacified and dejected, respectively, to where Cedric continued to snooze on the turf.

In the warm, steady rain, the Inklings rested, drugged and undrugged alike. The active stripped the dead soldier of his armor, weapons, and curious book, and watched the dwindling bonfires from a distance. When a figure (no burning candle visible) emerged from the shrine, and crept past the torches on the north side toward the back, Ovid and Molimo followed. Saartu stayed behind, despondent, keeping an eye on Cedric’s prone form. 

It took the albino and the pygmy about an hour to catch the figure in the dark, but he was easy to follow once he had lighted a candle in front of his face. They were traveling on a rough path into the mountains. Ovid sprinted up and grabbed the servant.

In Coinish: “CAN. YOU. UNDERSTAND. ME.” 

The man turtled and whimpered. His face had already been tear-stained when the two had nabbed him. He muttered in a language neither Molimo nor Ovid could parse. They motioned that he must come back with them, but he just lay limp. A search of his body found a small piece of flaxen paper with markings in an unfamiliar script. Ovid was irritated.

“Maybe we just leave him.”

“Maybe we leave his body?” replied Molimo, who was operating under the rules of the jangal. 

In the end, the two just left the slave cowering in the dark, and began their long walk through the rainy dark back to their compatriots near the temple. By the time they arrived, the bonfires had exhausted their fuel, but Cedric had awakened. Saartu was still disconsolate. The knight put himself to use by creeping to one of the few remaining lit outdoor torches to read the note in the Alashan script.

“3 attackers, 1 lost, send many, 8 willing.”

Back at the “camp,” the warm mushiness of the situation, not to mention the howls of distant animals, reminded Saartu of his birth-vats. Maybe he was snapping out of it. Someone began singing an old folk ditty where rural trails took the singer home.

“What is this eight willing? Souls?”

“Sacrifices? Or a slave donation?”

“Slave donation?!”

“Into the mountains. Why not the town? The fortress we could’ve worked at. They’re asking for reinforcements.”

“So we have a few choices. Invade the temple, which doesn’t seem to have many armed people. Head into the mountains, toward the fortress, and whatever that brings. Return to the town. Hang around the villages until harpies come, and killing them may help get us off this island.”

Each thought back to the City of Thieves, the Street of Saints, to try and recall any mention of the Momentary God, just in case that would provide them with some advantage, no matter how slight. There were plenty of faceless gods and cults with candles, so nothing stuck out. The shrine must have been at the bottom of the street, below even the Frog God.

“I’m fine invading the temple.”

“I cannot provide any real help. I feel so stupid now. I am doomed by the gods.” Saartu remained melancholic.

“You can translate for Ovid.”

“I know you feel worthless, but you could wear the candle apparatus. It seemed to protect them against the fumes.”

“We should hope to avoid bloodshed.”

As Cedric strapped on the very heavy armor, the suggestion was made that he might pose as reinforcements. Reinforcement. Ah, it was a dumb idea. The braziers continued to burn in the pavilion, but maybe they had gotten used to the herby smoke, because no man relinquished his weapon. Saartu, who’d lighted the candle strapped to his head with the little sparking mechanism, couldn’t smell anything but the pungent tallow melting under his nose. The front door, they discovered, was barred.

Cedric looked at the cords of firewood stored along the outer wall. A quick check of the perimeter for a second entrance found the remainder of the Myrmidon statues (Giannis, Damaskinos, Efstathios, Zissis, Thiresides, and Iasonas), two handcarts on the rear porch (with leaves and broken branches, plus probably bloodstains inside), and tiny vents high on the left and backside walls. A smidgen of light could be seen reflected in those holes, and low muttering voices could be heard, speaking of waiting for the fortress.

“What are they saying, Saartu?”

“There’s no back entrance. What if we use the firewood to burn that door open?”

The party did just that, kicked open the smoking ruin, and rushed through the white, smoky shrine to the storage hall. Boxes of grain, amphorae, jars of olives, and other containers lined the passage. Three candle contraptions sat on a shelf just inside the shrine door. Another door sat at the end.

Cedric listened and then cracked this door, his senses realizing a man waited just beyond, so he dodged the falling blow. “Thief of the dead,” the guardsmen hissed, remarking on the knight’s stolen armor. In moments, thank goodness, Ovid’s javelin had killed the already-wounded man. 

The company stood in a large, comfortable room, with a fine table and chairs, upholstered furniture, and lovely large tapestries designed with whorls and mazes. Seemingly standard candles lit the room dimly. A shelf covered only in ashes sat above a shelf holding stacks of small blank squares of linen paper, the same as which had been marked for the note to the fortress. Several bottles of ink and quills were stored there as well. Intermittent muttering in low voices came from behind the door on the other side, a space parallel to the hall they had entered this chamber from.

There was noise from back in the main chamber, and Cedric responded quickly enough to see a servant fleeing out the ruin of the front door. He let him go. There were no priests or sailors anywhere in sight. 

Cedric busied himself snuffing the candles in the central room, while wearing his own candle apparatus. Ovid searched the servants’ quarters, finding little of value except maybe for the woodaxes, but then the dead guardsman, finding more heavy armor, another fine shortsword, and a tiny bottle of perfume. Saartu read the tome that had been carried by the first man they had killed, which turned out to be a demonomicon. Although the former owner had destroyed some of the writing due to its heretic and dangerous nature, the warlock realized he might be able to control a fiend of gluttony, should he commit to studying this text.

“There has to be a secret chamber here … and here!” Cedric insisted, pointing at the inner walls, and he found a curious scorch mark next to the central sconce on the left. Pulling on the candelabrum slid open a stone entrance. On the other side, Ovid twisted its counterpart, and was rewarded with the reveal of a second secret passage. Two stairways led down into the dark.

Session 12: “Scoop and Loop”

Before venturing beneath the Shrine of the Momentary God, the Inklings wanted to make sure that they were at full strength. Unfortunately, this quest to secure Suroga for the delve left Saartu and Ovid out on the savanna. Cedric was able to corrall “Curly,” the unnamed thief, and Molimo for the challenge. The latter was stationed down the road to alert the temple burglary and rescue crew if anyone approached, as he was the only refugee from Imeras Fos who was “with it” in any fashion.

“The note about ‘eight willing’ was ominous, so perhaps we should get to it, even without Ovid and Saartu.”

The party returned through the burned out door and entered the formerly secret entrance on the right. The slightly smokey lower level was not dusty at all, and had torches burning in the large hall that the stairs landed at. Pillars carved like caterpillars supported the temple above. The four cautiously explored the central room.

Very solid double doors marked the near end of the hall, and the far end opened into a wider chamber, supported by smooth pillars. A small, wooden door marked either side of the central hall, next to burning sconces. The wide end included similar doors on each side, as well, but more notably held a flat, featureless altar completely covered in melted candles, with dried, dusty fountains on its flanks, which hadn’t held water for decades. One corner held rubble that appeared to be the remnants of a stone statue that had once depicted a human. A middle door was chosen, and inside what appeared to be a bunkroom, a torch illuminated one of the temple’s priests.

“What a beautiful temple you have here,” Cedric said in Alashan, somewhat incongruously, and quickly translated for Suroga.

“Is that why thou settest it afire?”

“Um … the becaons out front had gone out…”

“That is what happens when violence scareth off the servants.”

“Ask him where the sailors are!”

“Apotheosis is what proceedeth here.”

“I mean we’re looking for the eight.”

“As I spoke, they have achieved apotheosis.”

“So they are gone.”

The man smiled, “Please, ye may achieve it thineself.”

Rapidly, in Coinish, “I have no issue running down the hall and stabbing him.”

“Well, he hasn’t called for help.”

In Alashan, “Why would we want this apotheosis.” Cedric was pretty sure it meant death.

“Ye will no longer be trapped by thine unpleasant, deformed worldy vessels.”

“What about your worldly body, why haven’t you apotheosisized?”

“Mine time cometh. Mayhap soon.”

Cedric raised his eyebrows.

“What of the guards?”

“I presume thou hast slain both.”

“So they’ve already found apotheosis?”

“Thou understandest not at all.”

In Coinish, “Is this guy a witch?!” Hopefully not a ‘witch’ like the one with the perfumes beneath the Frog Piazza. No, no, this guy is definitely evil.

The Inklings charged and put the unarmed man down. Suroga ironically muttered about backwards island dwellers as they searched the room, finding little of use beyond torches. 

The door across the hall produced a very different experience. This was a crypt rather than a bedroom, but its most salient feature were the heaps of coins piled on the floor. Close inspection revealed the currency was from a variety of places around the Inner Sea, some with unfamiliar faces and scripts. In addition, several fine garments were strewn about, a couple of heavy-duty crates sat by the treasure, and a few spools of wrapped in what appeared to be golden thread sat on the floor next to a seaman’s knife. The dusty sarcophagi on either end of the room were ignored for the moment.

“Curly, thief, get in here and start scooping!” Cedric said, before he realized that no one but Suroga carried a backpack. Crude sacks were made out of the blankets on the pallets where they had killed the priest. Suroga, meanwhile, dumped as much silver as he could atop the supplies in his rucksack. Cedric ran upstairs to get the woodaxes to pry open the crates. Each box held heavy ingots of metal of two different grey-hued varieties.

“Curly” and the thief were ordered to carry the cartons of metal to the “base” out in the grassland, while Cedric and Suroga dealt with the rest of the cellar. 

“Do you want to open the coffins?”

“Remember the mummy incident that set off this whole chain of events?”

Cedric listened at the heavy double doors. When he pressed his ear to the surface, could faintly hear yelling, and smell an herby odor. He and Suroga strapped on their candle contraptions and ignited them, the heavy fumes blocking out any other scents. The door opened into an antechamber, but the following door set opened into a holding cell. 

Five pilgrims in hooded robes were manacled to the wall, as were the three sailors seen being abducted. Cedric hadn’t realized that the woman sailor was pregnant, but then again he had been doped by the white smoke at the time. The Inklings declared that this was a rescue, and one of the women complained in Coinish, “But we have no met Momentary God.”

“That’s death,” Cedric replied, “They lied to you.”

She began to cry. A male pilgrim chained in the corner glared at Suroga. The Jurka signaled with a rude gesture familiar only to the plainsmen. The man did not react, so the berserker moved close.

“Do you fear me?”

The man spat on the ground. “No!”

“So you just have poor manners.”

“As if a Jurka could even conceive of manners.”

“Let’s leave this one to rot,” Suroga said.

“He is freeing you so that he can eat you!” the angry pilgrim said.

“You will be killed or put into slavery!” Cedric countered.

“My people do not eat people, it is I who have been cannibalized!” Mercifully, Suroga did not pull down his trousers.

The manacles required keys, or perhaps a lot of noise and bashing. A search began, and the first door opened on a single local priest who had somehow managed to fall asleep. Suroga and Cedric looked at each other, and then opened the man’s throat. The last priest tried to present a challenge, but when his sorcery failed him, he, too, became a victim of the Company. Fortunately, he held the manacle key. There were now two more (bloody) blankets that could be fashioned into sacks. Three mariners and three pilgrims agreed to be freed. The Inklings decided not to kill the two who refused to be unshackled. 

“With all these people, we should take the temple’s food stores.”

“It’s going to be difficult carrying all that.”

“What about the handcarts out back?”

“There were handcarts all along?! How do we break this news to Curly and the thief?”

This awkward moment was avoided, in part, because one of the sailors recognized “Curly.” He was the missing Orsilochus, the corsair’s foe, and alleged owner of a magic boat. The amnesiac did remember his name, barely, but could not recall where the boat had been misplaced. Surely it was back on the island of the Golden Aesclepeion. 

The sun had come up, but it was still raining. The rag-tag band counted their assets. The Inklings were four, and they had three sets of accompanying refugees: three additional escapees from Fos Imeras; three sailors; three pilgrims disabused of the Momentary God’s beneficence. Eil Bet, held back in Achellis, would have made an even ten. There were two handcarts full of food and ingots, five blankets (two blood-soaked), a handful of weapons and a couple bronze cuirasses, Suroga’s backpack full of silver, and some other treasures that the Inklings kept concealed from the others, in case they were pirates or bandits in disguise. There were also two ship-boats with oars at the far end of the island.

The sailors’ ship had been dashed on the rocks–these three had been lucky to survive that, if mostly unlucky in stumbling onto the Shrine. The mariners had also been fortunate during the journey through the island’s jangal, for the screams and shouts from among the trees indicated that something had eaten their crewmates, “starting with the asshole.” The sailors had some knowledge of the surrounding islands, Fos Imeras which had no port but the golden temple. Nimos was just north of this island, with a port, but with a monarch unfriendly to vagabonds.

With the possibility of recovering Orsilochus’ ship, the choice was made to march back to the cached boats and head back to the temple of Oblivion. The first day was a slog, with wounded people and loaded pushcarts, but the road held no dangers. Nothing molested the ragged caravan overnight, and the next day the rain finally had stopped, although a heavy mist lay across the land.

Only Cedric (divested of his purloined armor for the moment) and Orsilochus digressed to the walls of Achellis to reclaim Eil Bet and check to see if a ship was in the harbor. No one was working in the foggy fields and the docks were empty. The guards above the gate asked after the visit to the Shrine and Cedric stated that they had only seen the statues of the eight myrmidons, hadn’t really gone inside. His request for his “mother” was rebuffed, as she was now the property of Canthilles, and Cedric refused to exchange another slave for her release. The knight lied that a hag on the road had proclaimed she would be freed, and that put an end to the parley.

Back at the cart train, Suroga played his saz to keep the mood light after all the killings a couple days earlier. It turned out that Demitar of one of the Northern Principalities (who might have been prejudiced against the Iron Horde) did not care at all for “The Donkey and the Ogre.” Cedric arrived in a wretched mood, mentioning that he might recover Eil Bet when they came back “to burn that town to the ground … maybe with the lady pirates recruited to help.”

The next two days of the soggy transit were marked by a weird encounter with an old foreign male on the road who urged them to stay away, so they did. Another oddity was that Elneah seemed to be even more pregnant than when they started. When asked if she was all right, the woman noted that she’d barfed with the best of them. The Inklings whispered to one another about all the horrifying possibilities of an unnatural father, from the harpies in the play they’d seen, to monstrous spiders, to whatever had eaten her surviving crewmates. The male sailors were increasingly grumpy, reminding Cedric he’d abandoned his mother in cowardice when told to be patient. The pilgrims were of no use in finding their hidden boat, for the arrogant Timores left back in the temple had done all the wayfinding for their party.

The mists had returned the morning of departure, and as the new refugees were searching the cliffs for their hidden craft, three capricorns boiled up out of the ocean, looking for blood. The fight might have been easy versus the goat-fish, had their deranged eyes not entranced Orsilochus to heave sand into his comrades’ eyes, or the failure of Suroga’s first true test of his Gift, the barbarian unable to ward off madness. No humans were lost, at least, and finally the two boats were found.

The sailor Gausurza would pilot the boat with the pilgrims, Molimo, and the unnamed thief. Famban and Elneah would guide the craft with Cedric, Suroga, Ovid, and Saartu, which incidentally contained most of the treasure. Once at sea, the boats got disconnected in the fog. Eventually, the yells from the other vessel could no longer be heard. They would never learn the name of the thief; perhaps one no-name was the party’s limit. The Company Ink, however, made it to the island they had fled just eight days prior in major disarray.   

Yet another waterlogged night was spent in the jangal of Fos Imeras. The next morning, the murk remained in the air, and Saartu and Ovid begged off for being useless, exhausted from rowing. Orsilochus still couldn’t remember where his ship was, though it certainly hadn’t been anywhere visible outside during Suroga’s week of hiding out on the island. 

“The thief had said there was another entrance to the temple, through a cave near the figs … guarded by a bear?”

“Lion. I remember fighting a lion.”

Under the cover of the mist, moving to the cavemouth was easy enough. Bones lay outside and the stink of offal hung in the air. When the party got close, an animal’s warning growl sounded, and then another’s.

“Are we going in to wipe the cult out, or reclaim our treasure?”

“A little of both?”

The fight against the two lions went about as well as such a thing could. Maybe Suroga was made to slay such beasts. The dead felines’ lair contained many chewed bones and shredded entrails, but also the gear of a deceased burglar: a fancy purple plumed hat, a pouch with a handful of sapphires, lockpicks, and a bottle. The cave led to the steam baths, where three catatonic patients soaked in the basin. 

“Hey, Orsilochus, is this your boat?” Cedric said, flipping the tricorn into the water.

“No,” the curly-headed man said, then unsure. “... Maybe?”

The adventurers waded through the water to the tiles covered with candles. The sailors wanted to soothe their injuries in the steam. Cedric retrieved the hat and put it on his head. He’d been so sodden during the last week that it made no difference. Bursting into the towel room surprised the orderly within; he didn’t even have time to remove his truncheon from its belt thong before he was dead.

“Where do these doors lead? I was on the ship during the first ‘raid’.”

“Harpy singing lullaby, to the main entrance, I think, and to some exercise place where that lady was, maybe.”

The adventurers stuffed candlewax in their ears and went into the tower nursery. A harpy sang from the top of a very high chair. Two levels of billets ringed the room, a ladder to these on the far end of the room. Many “patients” were in their beds. 

Suroga missed with his first shot while Cedric went to block the other entrance. When the berserker finally tagged the bird-woman she flew for cover, shrieking something at the sleepers, who began to stir. Cedric ran for the ladder and one of the invalids hurled himself right onto the knight, killing himself in the process. Suroga, too, was nearly crushed by a plummeting patient. Cedric repeated the victim’s trajectory, plunging two stories after getting kicked in the face by the monster. But he climbed right back up again, and this time struck the beast as he slipped onto his stomach in the effort. The rather sturdy “nanny” cackled and swooped toward the exit, turning back to have one last look and laugh at the soon-to-be-overwhelmed intruders. Suroga’s arrow entered her eye and she sprawled across the floor and skidded to a stop.

They maybe had moments to escape before reinforcements arrived. Cedric grabbed the harpy and dragged her out the door. She was surprisingly light. Suroga followed and scooped up the physician they had murdered. Maybe the incident would be explained away by something going awry–if they got rid of these weapon-damaged bodies. The two corpse-carriers splashed through the bath, convincing the sailors and Orsilochus to move into the cave before they were found out. 

The Inklings dropped the corpses under the fig trees. There was not much cover if the mist burned away. Cedric in his almost-jaunty purple hat looked at Suroga, How could they have come all the way back to this horrid place?   

Session 13: “The Lion, the Witch, and the Meat-Globe: The Death of the Ink Knight” 

“Do we obviously drag these bodies to the near beach and into the water, then go hide in the forest? Or take the arrow out of the harpy’s eye and stage a battle with the lions in the cave?” Cedric asked from amongst the fig trees, which would be an exposed spot once the mist burned away.

“I don’t think any in the temple will buy that, though the patients can’t relate what happened, they are insensate,” responded Suroga, “I’m really hoping their songs can’t control ‘Curly’.” Orsilochus, staring dazedly, and the sailor Famban, looking anxious, stood with the two Inklings at this moment of decision.

After a surprisingly long debate about the possibilties, considering the tenuousness of their situation, they settled on putting Cedric’s first plan into effect. The beach was empty of sunbathers, orderlies, and nannies, which was unusual: when Cedric had been a patient they had come out every morning, even in heavy rain. Maybe the violence through which the Inklings engineered their initial successful escape of the island had disrupted the pattern. With the bird-woman’s body disposed of, the four returned to the jangal encampment, where the exhausted Saartu and Ovid remained with the now very pregnant Elneah. Cedric shuddered to think of all the spiders that were definitely going to come pouring out of her belly. They all waited anxiously, hidden among the lush foliage.

After a brief respite, human voices were heard yelling in the vicinity of the temple. With Suroga leading the way, Cedric, Orsilochus, and Famban crept through the fog toward the aesclepeion, staying inside the cover of the undergrowth. Out of the mist, up the path, came two of the “physicians” staggering under the weight of a frame of a rowboat. As the orderlies passed slowly by on their way to the north beach, a whispered discussion took place, on whether to ambush the men, or let them go. The Inklings slunk alongside their quarry, hewing to the forest, covered by the sound of the surf.

“If we kill them, the others will soon know.”

“What if we squish them, and then drag the boat parts to the other beach?”

“What if we capture them, and get information?”

When the two men had finished depositing their load above high tide on the shore, and came back down the trail toward the temple, the two Inklings and two auxiliaries stepped out of the trees before and after the orderlies. “Yell and you’re dead!” The captives knelt to the ground in supplication, not even reaching for the truncheons at their belts.

The interrogation that followed revealed that they were reassembling a boat to depart the island for good. Only two other men remained as part of this plan, and they were all leaving because their life’s project was no longer tenable with the most recent assault by the party. A half-dozen harpies remained inside, and they were not happy either, but the men were not sure if they would be hunting the party, as their half-beastial nature made the bird-women hard to parse. The Oracle and harpies had split the party’s seized belongings between them, according to the questioned.

Hoping to dissuade the orderlies from contemplating a surprise attack, Cedric made a mistake, “We have three more at our boat.”

“You have a ready boat on the island?”

“It was damaged on landing,” the ink knight hastily lied, “you will probably finish assembling yours before we get our repairs done.”

“That’s awfully odd armor you’re wearing…”

“Yeah, well I got it–”

Suroga interrupted: “Aren’t we supposed to be interrogating them?”

“Perhaps you are a sign that the Goddess of Oblivion is punishing us for an error of our ways,” the priest-physician muttered.

“We have been told that by others,” Cedric admitted.

“Only terrible cults, like on the island north of here,” Suroga explained.

“Yes, and we have helped the Frog God out,” Cedric offered.

“Do you serve Chaos?!” Spittle flew from the man’s mouth.

“That’s where we find beauty–”

“That’s where we found balance–”

“That makes no sense at all!? Balance in Chaos?! We serve Balance in Oblivion–”

“Does apotheois mean anything to you?” Suroga interrupted. 

“Of course, achieving the Orb is our perfect oblivion. We help … had helped others achieve that.”

“Maybe the Master of Crabs has been using us to punish people … or the Idiot God,” Cedric pontificated. 

“Sounds like moronic sailors’ deities, minions of Chaos,” said the man, seemingly unfamiliar.

“I serve the Lord of the Wastes, on the side of Balance.”

“Obviously the Goddess of Oblivion is paramount to your godlet. It is obvious that your misguided ways are why all your savage tribes war unceasingly with one another–”

“Doesn’t self-destruction mean even more oblivion in the world?” Suroga countered.

“I will not debate theology with a barbarian.”

“We must get on with our work, brother,” the other one said, “finish our craft, that we may reach the other island, hopefully not already destroyed by these …”

The two men began moving up the road. As they reached the edge of the mists, two more fellows, carrying more boat parts, arrived on the path. A low, tense conversation could be seen being conducted, and the two newcomers dropped their burdens and disappeared into the mist. The two interrogated followed, at a swift pace, but not running.

“Should we be gentlemanly and move the new boat pieces to the beach?”

“No.”

The party moved back into the treeline and waited. They debated whether the panic they had triggered meant that the temple workforce was coming to hunt them down, or something else. After some time, the need for action was declared, and a roof scouting plan concocted. Rope was retrieved from the hidden boat, and Cedric observed that there were probably about three days’ of food left in the craft. Maybe four if Elneah didn’t need to be fed after her parturition. Unless the spiders ate some of the food, which meant less supply, or unless the spiders ate people, which meant more supply. Or if anyone else perished in another fashion, there would be more to eat for the survivors.

As the company was moving up the slope to gain the heights above the temple, the grate atop the harpy nesting tower banged open. With the mist as their confederate, the four men hustled into the trees’ cover. One, two, three of the bird-women emerged from the aperture, circled, and flew off in a direction almost opposite the party, disappearing into the fog.

“Are they raiding the other island? Are they patrolling here for us?”

“That would leave three inside … if the orderly was telling the truth. If only we had an incendiary device, we could drop it into the nests, get rid of them.”

“Remember, there was treasure in the nests, and that might burn up.”

Suroga put wax in his ears and the others held the rope as he repelled down the cliff. The sunlight through the fog still vaguely lit the floor twenty five feet beneath the glass dome. The Jurka could see two people lying on pallets, unmoving, no interior lamps lit, amidst the heavy weights. If those could be gotten up here, they could pin down the harpy grate.

Suroga hurried across the roof to the bird tower. He could only hear one inside chirruping softly to itself, and see an empty nest opposite from the angle he was at. It looked to be constructed mostly of mud and straw. The barbarian blackened his face with the soot and pitch on the end of a torch, and put his head over the opening and was blasted with the stink of birdshit and blood. The lighting wasn’t great, but it truly seemed there was only one harpy present. Ten more empty nests. A passage led out of the tower toward the back of the temple, which Suroga suspected was the secret entrance Molimo had spoken of. 

Suroga climbed back up the rope to the others and they discussed putting a boulder (not evident) or fallen log (not nearby) atop the hatch. Nervous about the gone harpies bringing back reinforcements, and hoping the cave would be unguarded, the party moved toward the fig orchard. 

“Did the nests look comfortable, Suroga? We sure could use a nice rest.”

“How many have we killed? Was it four … or five?”

The cave was guarded, a harpy silhouetted by the candle glow from the baths. It squawked and scrambled away when it saw Suroga’s torch. The Jurka dropped his light, pulled his bow from his shoulder, and promptly dropped the arrow. He took this as a sign that cowardice was the best option at the moment, so the Inklings aborted their incursion. When they returned again to the boat encampment, Ovid and Saartu had fashioned themselves bedding out of leaves, but hadn’t made anything for anyone else. Elneah was groaning constantly.

“Maybe the temple milk will help soothe her?”

“I wonder if the harpies have any eggs. That would be a nice variation on figs and olives.”

A second attempt on the aesclepeion was undertaken after dusk. Famban’s rigging-climbing skills came in handy due to the limited rope supplies. When the harpy tower seemed to be empty, Suroga braved being lowered down in the dark. His candle-lighter sparked and no attack came. He seized the silvered javelin from a lower nest, eschewed the few coins that had collected there. The others came down the rope, Famban grabbing a second javelin from a high roost, though the nest gave a little when he put his weight there. 

Two pushbar doors exited the room, one appearing to be secret on the other side. The party took the other one, which led into the crypts where Cedric, Saartu, and Ovid had almost been killed before, the location of the meat ball. The stink went from recent slaughter to long ago death. Squishy sounds could be heard in the distance. In the crypt, they found a painting of the Charnel God with his sightless eyes and ghoulish mouth, swallowing souls, as well as a trapdoor that held a writhing pit of Purified, which was quickly latched back shut. A few more Purified were trying to meld with the flesh sphere, and the party decided to avoid that issue for the moment. They noted the disturbances in the dust, where the Purified they had killed in the prior crypt raid had been removed. Cedric was pretty sure he saw his lucky brick. A fateful decision was made to challenge the Oracle and her lion.

Suroga handed Famban (who had a patch over one eye) his bow, which may have been a poor choice, and opened the door. The slumbering albino lion was there again, and the woman was in a spare bed across the room, a solitary candle glowing beside her. The party attempted to ravage their unconscious foes. The lion went after Cedric, who wore the bronze armor, despite which the cat began to gain the upper hand, even as the Ink Knight cut at it with his fine gladius. The cat left itself open to battering by Orsilochus, while Famban wasted arrows. Suroga felt it hard to maintain rage against a sleeping target, even if she was a witch, though he still slashed her sleeping form with his blade. Fortunately, her magic would not work against the barbarian. As she attempted to scramble from her thin cover, the Jurka’s blade got tangled, and he stumbled against her, putting out a hand for support that landed on her flat breast. This momentary embarrassment allowed her to run and lay hands on her pet, just before Suroga buried his dagger in her back. Her pale eyes closed forever. The lion roared berserkly, lashed out, knocking Cedric to the floor. “Put me … in the meat … ball,” the knight whispered. “Curly” then ran the beast through. 

Suroga knelt down beside Cedric. He didn’t appear to be moving, but his face looked weirdly at peace. The men tried to lift the Ink Knight, but it felt as though they were lifting dead weight, in addition to the heavy armor. This wasn’t like the first time Cedric had gone still. 

“What are we gonna tell his mother?!”

Cedric Granderson, born the bastard of a baron and common girl in an alcove inside a minor castle, died to the cuffs of a white lion in the unadorned bedroom of a cult leader. He had survived an ape-man shaman’s curse and a frog priest’s hex, capricorns and a crocodile, throat leeches and boiling ink, mummy rot and harpy song, a duel with mad Kelippes and a scuffle with the Splinter, the thing in the Dark, the Milk of Oblivion and the Incense of the Moment, and even the first clash with the white lion. But his heart was now still. Would that Basileo will compose a requiem for the Ink Knight’s passing. 

Orsilochus struck the Oracle’s head from her body and set it afire. He stripped the bronze armor from the man who had dubbed him “Curly.” He undid the belt and scabbard and strapped it to his own waist. The Terror of the Corsairs wanted to survive this night, and find his ship, maybe now finally within reach. Suroga took the purple hat and placed it on his own head.

Suroga opened the stone coffer to find a crystalline sphere the same color as the Oracle’s eyes. It felt as though the old woman was still watching him; “No-One-At-All” wanted to smash the thing into a million pieces. But he relented–maybe Saartu could turn the device to good use. He wrapped the glass ball in the thin, bloodied blanket, so that it was blinded inside his pack.

“Would ya look at oll thet silveh, mate?” Famban asked, and helped to shovel it into Suroga’s bag. There was a rolled up parchment there, too, and fine, old ceramics. None of Saartu’s, Ovid’s, or Cedric’s seized treasures were here, though, not the Danarosa sword, not the bones, not the inked cuirass. No one wanted to look at the library of Oblivion; none were really readers, anyway.

“We will have to return for our leader’s body, but let us extract this treasure first.” 

While exiting, the company chose to clamber up the cord through the grate, rather than affirm that the secret door led to the entry hall. Orsilochus was still on the rope when the harpies burst into their nest tower through that hidden entrance. Famban and Suroga were able to pull the former patient onto the roof, but the song of the bird-women bewitched the old hero. They stood on the grate, wedged it with one of the silver javelins, and even jabbed one of the “nannies” through the bars. She and the others flew out of the room, certainly planning to circle around.

“Godsdammit, Curly!”

Suroga and Famban threw the rope over the front of the temple, and rappelled to the ground. They plunged through the small jangal, homing in on the wails of Elneah.

“Did you bring …nnng … the medicine?!” she asked, desperate, writhing, sweating.

Suroga and Famban looked at one another.

“Wait … unh… where’s Cedric?”

“He reached apotheosis.”

Session 14: “Magic Ship”

Ovid heard it first, a noise in the undergrowth, and suddenly another figure was standing there in the foliage. The clouds had broken above and the Moon of the Saints just illuminated an escaped patient, long of black hair and seemingly comfortable moving through the undergrowth. The smell of cucumbers filled the air and a few clucks came from his vicinity. He held an orderly’s truncheon in his hand and there was a small jangal fowl in his pocket.

“You guys getting off this island?” came in an accented Coinish, with Lukari vowels.

“Yeah, that’s the plan,” Suroga replied.

“Marasmius. You have a slot in this boat?” the newcomer said.

The boat held eight, with Saartu, Elneah (pending her survival), Famban, Suroga, and Ovid present. Whether they could rescue “Curly” was still an unknown. Whether they might bring along Cedric’s body also remained to be seen. The math was right for Marasmius.

“We don’t have an ocean-going boat,” Suroga said.

“And didn’t much loik the lest close oiland we were et,“ Famban said.

“Nnnnnnhhhhhh,” Elneah interjected. She was very pregnant, Marasmius noted to himself, probably not fit for sea travel.

Suroga then remembered the doubled carts he had seen used to transplant the tremendous yurts of the Horse Lord’s Pavilion Palace, “Maybe we could finish the orderlies’ boat, and lash it to this one … to create a freakish … something with enough stability for the ocean.”

“Moit werk,” Famban said.

“Nnnnngh,” groaned Elneah.

“Maybe we can carry her to the temple, get her to the orderlies and they can help.”

“What about the harpies?” And what if this Marasmius is a harpy spy, thought Ovid.

“If you are going to take out some harpies, I’m in!” the man with the pet bird said, “Thank you all for giving me an opportunity to break free with those disturbances you created. Say, is that a candle you have there in that device on your face?”

The participants in the mission filled their ears with wax. Elneah was lifted by the legs and shoulders. It was hoped aloud that the baby/babies wouldn’t need to be cut out. Marasmius, after looking at her stomach, suspected the “baby” might cut itself out. Famban pulled out his borrowed bow. The new guy held torch and truncheon. 

Emerging from the jangal in front of the temple, the party spotted two things. A pair of harpies patrolled aloft, their silhouettes against the moons and stars. In addition, a dark form hung halfway down the nest-tower. The bird-women started squawking loudly. Those carrying Elneah began scuttling for the front gate. Famban knocked an arrow and put one in the breast of the harpy that was much larger than the rest. After filling the air with her mesmeric music, and realizing it had no effect, she dove at the sailor. The others lay down the expectant mother inside and charged back out. 

“He’s our only sailor left!” Suroga hissed.

“I’m … nnnnhhh … still … a sailor!” Elneah GROANED.

But for how long? everyone else thought.

The hefty harpy misjudged Famban’s position in the dark, and by the less conventional method of direct hand-held insertion, the sailor planted the arrow he had just pulled into the big bird breast. At the end of her dive, the other guardbirdwoman hooked Suroga with her talons.

“That’s my flesh! It’s very precious!” the Jurka growled, instinctively touching the scar tissue on his buttock. A truncheon flashed in front of his face, and Marasmius had staved in the creature’s skull. Ovid sensed something behind him. The albino whirled to find two more sentries approaching out of the darkness, on foot, rather than wing.

The Lukari strode forward and ended the huge harpy with the orderly’s baton, and then ran into the temple to help Ovid, who had skewered one of the attacking birdwomen. This just sent the last monstress into a paroxysm of rage. The gouged Suroga stood clear, as he was wary of the claws. Ovid’s Leukesian armor held up, Marasmius clobbered the last of the nannies, her blood decorating the floor of the aesclepeion.

“I’ve been wanting to do that for a while,” he said, chest heaving from the exertion.

An awful plink came from nearby. The “musician” was again pulling sour notes from his lute. Suroga flinched. The others lifted Elneah again and started toward the orderlies’ bedroom.

“That’s … my … hat!” A voice came from the minstrel’s alcove.

Suroga handed the purple tricorn to the fellow, whose eyes unslackened. Seeing a memento of his previous life, the strummer recalled his name was Chairus. He immediately played a string of more tuneful chords.

“Chairus,” Suroga said, “I’m going to need a song that will obscure me from the gods’ attention,” and the man obliged. The tunes of mankind lifted the Jurka’s spirits. During the performance the shrieks of more harpies could be heard outside, as they had discovered their dead leader, and turned tailfeather, probably to never return to this island again. That lifted everybody’s spirits. Ovid opened the door to the orderlies’ room, and saw one of the physicians standing over a sack of coins, a blackened cuirass, and a silvered sword. He was disappointed not to see any of his bones. 

“You weren’t putting that on your escape boat, were you?” the albino queried.

“Oh, no, … um … we were gathering these for … the patients … after their release,” the man stumbled through his words.

“I think some of that belongs to my new friends here,” Marasmius said, disappointed in not seeing the scimitar, which had been the only thing he had saved from his shipwreck besides his purple swamphen.

“Please. Take it,” the now-jobless man said.

Perhaps because he was exceedingly generous, or perhaps it was the way of sharing among his jangal-folk, but Marasmius wanted to leave a little coin for the orderlies, for their new lives when they escaped. The others were going to protest, but a secret door in the back of the room opened, and another one of the physicians poked his head in … and then ran.

Ovid sprinted after him (the man was carrying a torch, after all, and was easy to follow) into the crypts, and the orderly collided with one of the grave urns and fell to the floor. The albino dragged the man back to the room with lamps, and a quick interrogation revealed a secret room existed in the middle of the “meditation” loop. The men were allowed to take their boat pieces and go, insisting that yes, they would sail during the night, even if it was more dangerous. 

Although they were simple, the orderlies’ beds were the best rest anyone in the party had had since they’d been high on the oblivion milk. (Elneah slept in the pool of the stuff, as it was the only thing that seemed to bring her comfort.)

Some precautions were taken at the mesmerizing track, which was a good thing, because Ovid started shuffling along with the one survivor making his rounds. There were two patients who had expired while circling, now face down corpses with bloody feet. Suroga wasn’t bothered by the mindfucking patterns and began testing for secrets where the lighted lamps ran out. Leaning against the interior wall opened a door into a room where most of the things taken from patients had ended up.

There were weapons (including Marasmius’ scimitar and Cedric’s broadsword), clothing of all sorts, backpacks, what looked like the metal rudder of a ship, and Ovid’s bones. Fresh off his daze, the albino reattached his macabre decorations. At last he did not feel naked.

“This has to be the rudder that Curly talked about that you talked to me about.”

“Do we toss this in the water, and the boat appears?” 

The adventurers carried the encumbering object out to the front room, where the gravid woman still lounged in the fountain. Scratches were felt on the underside where the device was grasped. Turned over, a poem was engraved on the ship’s steering blade:

A villain’s rib, a pound of gold,

Something purple, something old,

By blade or guile, thy trophies won,

Sink them all, then sail anon.

“Collect those ingredients, you think?”

“The Oracle is certainly a villain. And Chairus has a purple hat. There are gold coins in the fountain under Elneah. Lots of old patients here, some already dead.”

“Let’s go get Sebastia.”

There were drag marks in the crypt, leading to the meat ball. Someone … or some things … had deposited the Oracle and Cedric atop the quivering sphere of flesh, and they were partly sunk in. Two Purified Ones were trying to mash themselves in as well. The party loosed two arrows and took them down with one missile apiece. 

Suroga stepped into the vault and then back out when he got a nosebleed. Marasmius got headaches, and when he grabbed at the Oracle’s arm to try to pull her out, a desperate, painful keening erupted in all of their heads. He fled, too.

“I don’t want to go in there any more.”

“The harpies are villains, right? Let’s try their ribs.”

Ovid checked his decorative bones, but his ribs seemed to have only come from good people. 

The company began their collection. They discovered during this process that the rolled-up parchment from the Oracle’s chest was a map of the place. More than one old corpse was located. Several feathers were plucked and ribs were pulled from the harpies. They looked at Chairus’ hat, but then hit upon the idea to use the ripe olives for the purple requirement. About a pound of golden coins was recovered from the fountain, and the gilded molding ripped from the exterior of the temple. 

Outside, it could be seen that Orsilochus’ body was hanged about halfway down the nest tower. “Curly” had probably wrapped the rope around his own neck and stepped off the battlements while charmed. As if that wasn’t enough, the harpies had disemboweled the man where he hung. The party buried the hero under an olive tree, and saved the rope, stained as it was. Food, treasures (from Leukes, as well), and the rowboat were dragged with the rudder to the north beach, where a few pieces of the orderlies’ boat still were, but the men were gone, and had apparently launched successfully. The weather was clear and beautiful.

The rudder was placed in the sea. Feathers, olives, a corpse, a rib, and a sack of coin were dropped in the salt water, and suddenly a full ship floated in the surf before them. Its sails were full, but it didn’t move, just kept its position in the waves, even without an anchor. Famban marveled at the magic.

“We probably need to tell it where to go.”

“But where should we go?”

“I thought we were going back to Dozdghar, where we left our money,” Saartu said, after days of being silent.

“But what if we could go anywhere?”

Famban, a veteran of the Inner Sea circuit, gave them a long list of the major ports on the mainland with which he was familiar: Punjar, from where Marasmius had departed; Kubbat, where the Chalidi chafed under the rule of Yar-Ammon’s Caliph; Zul-Bazzir, whose many splendors were faded (and buried), and also Ovid’s birthplace; Ilcar, the decadent Immortal City where Saartu had been decanted; Sardocia, the not-so-fun Holy City; the impressive and strange metropolises of eastern Yirith, Samatambira and Yajata; the Golden Archipelgo, whose spice harvests made even made dropping anchor outside of villages worth it.

Nearby, in the orbit of the large island of Iribos, Famban knew fewer specifics: the towns were smaller, less often ported at by those who plied the great distances of the inner sea. After all, the center of the island was a long decrepit ruin where apparently no one sane would go, from when the Ilcarian Empire reached this far south. In addition, corsairs sailed from Iribos’ many coves. The tiny isle of Leukes, the party knew, with its cannibal petty king and patriarchy, and now-wrecked shrine to the Momentary God. The Inklings were certainly unwelcome there, but the town of Achellis did hold Cedric’s “mother,” Eil Bet, in servitude. Nimos, like Imeras Fos, was renowned for its medical treatments. It was governed by a petty king unfriendly to sailors, but enamored of heroes. Requia, north of Iribos, was home to a wealthy but mad Duke and Duchess, who harassed passing ships with unholy magic from inside their Obsidian Keep. On the lee side, Akoros was supposed to have a pleasure garden, but also a temple to the Charnel God, and the dead were said to walk its shores. The port of Kryos was always dangerously stormy, home to the Hamazakaron matriarchy and a shrine to the Lady of Brine, and sold gold to ships that managed to dock there. Soros sold expensive wine, had a cult to the Mother of Soil, and was ruled by the petty king Vlakas. Famban swore that he had seen a one-eyed giant stalking through the mountains overlooking the harbor. Finally, Vrachoi, an inlet allegedly sacred to the Unforgiving God, who strangely was said to reward warriors brave enough to land on its shore.

“Maybe we should try the Oracle’s sphere, maybe it can see one of these places.”

Suroga hated the magic eye with all his soul–yet he was drawn to it, couldn’t resist. He unwrapped the crystal ball from its blanket. All he could think about was the hag who had enslaved him, how she must still rage at his escape, and had likely sent her odious minions in his pursuit. The Jurka could suddenly see her, in the sphere. He could hear her speaking, too, in that horrible mewling voice that raised the hackles on his neck.

The hag was nattering at another child drudge, apparently Suroga’s replacement, or another in a long line of servants. She rambled on about an epoch of the golden past, when all of Yirith’s people worshipped the Beast Gods. Once, she claimed, massive herds of animals roamed the continent, as did their namesake deity, and the only humans that thrived were those like the Iron Horde, those who drew sustenance by tapping the milk and blood. Suroga was shocked that she did not seem to be able to detect his scrying. The vision swirled back into mist, the blather faded.

“Are you hunting this witch, Suroga?”

“As a small child, I was her servant, made to perform her foul rituals.”

“And she’s got another like you. Where does she live?”

“On the steppes ruled by the Iron Horde. I had feared that she pursued me yet, to the ends of Yirith … but that was not true.” 

“She felt dangerous.”

“The sphere is dangerous, too.”

No wiser of their immediate destination, the Inklings began a brief debate. Saartu wanted to confront his “father” in the Immortal City, but not just yet. He needed more control of his dark arts before he revisited that alchemist. Suroga felt that the Hamazakarons of Kryos would be helpful allies in the cause of rescuing Eil Bet, considering that they already were at war with Leukes. He was nervous about the port’s perpetual storm, however. Ovid agreed. Having discovered his steady truncheon arm, Marasmius desired to go smash things in the ancient complex at the heart of Iribos. Kryos would be the perfect jumping off point for that mission.

It was late afternoon, in what was surely the last day in the Year of the Fish, as the company, along with Chairus and Famban, stood on the deck of Orsilochus’ ship, Eleftheria. The hold carried food and supplies, and the treasures looted from Fos Imeras and Leukes. Orsilochus lay underneath the dirt in an orchard, never to sail again. Back inside the aesclepeion, Elneah writhed in a pool beneath the crying statue of a god, nearly at the moment of delivery. And Cedric Granderson’s body was slowly being absorbed into a ball of flesh, in the temple’s sepulcher. The Inklings were leaving behind the Ink Knight, their namesake.

“Kryos” was whispered, and Eleftheria cut through the sea, as if pushed by the hand of a god.