Spoiler: Interlude: Summer 1114
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The Gunslinger
Quincy is practicing his marksmanship at a target range cobbled together on the outskirts of Golgotha, in a depopulated region recently inventoried and scorched by The Scourge.
He smells the man’s tobacco before he hears his footsteps, but does not interrupt his shot by looking up from his scope. The target is a full two hundred paces away, but he still curses himself when his shot strikes a finger’s width above the bullseye.
He turns and sees the stranger watching him, a tall and scruffy man in early middle age, with dishwater blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, dark sunglasses, a worn duster, and gleaming revolvers on his hips.
The man tells Quincy that he has talent, but if he can take some advice, he appears to be aiming with his hand instead of his eye. Quincy is confused by this, but is told that he will never reach his full potential while he still thinks about his hands. Quincy says that he has to mind his hands, for they shake, and the stranger asks him where he learned the shake; and is told it was in the service of Balthazar.
The interloper, who identifies himself as Brad Weston, says that he was also involved in that conflict, albeit on the other side, and hopes the two never crossed paths in battle. He was part of the Imperial militia, helping evacuate the region after the Templar Lords who descended from Sir Perceval fell in battle or abandoned their ancestral homes.
Brad asks if he may give Quincy’s rifle a try, and the dragoon hands his gun over. Brad tinkers with the sight a bit, admits he is rather rusty with long guns, and then fires it from the hip, matching Quincy’s carefully aimed shot.
The two get to talking. Quincy asks Brad about his past, and he tells him that he is retired now, working as a freelance bodyguard and private investigator.
When asked about where he learned to shoot like that, Brad says that there was once an order of Templar Gunslingers, but they were always at odds with the more orthodox Templar who believed all ranged combat to be dishonorable and a violation of their oaths, and when the Illuminati who secretly ran the Imperium after the Empress’ death decided to forbid advancements in gunnery, they all but disappeared and had to teach their secrets to promising commoners to avoid dying out entirely.
Quincy asks if Brad can teach him, and Brad nods. When asked about payment, Brad says the training won’t be easy, and will be a price in and of itself.
After a brief lesson, they arrange to meet up again when Quincy’s team returns from its next mission. He then goes back to his target practice, and sees that the adjustment to his scope, though minor, allows him to place his shots just a hair lower than his previous attempts, making for a bullseye every time.
The Black Armory
While Krystal is once again replacing The Black Flame Blade’s corroded metal blade, the sword speaks to her, telling her that she needs to find some nice Plutonian Steel so that it need not get used to a new face every few months.
The blade speaks little, but when it does so it is in the gruff voice of an old campaigner. She comes to learn that it was created by a bastard son of Hephaestus in a place called the Black Armory. It was a realm made by Lucifer in secret to supply his forces during The Reckoning. When the war ended and the fallen angels were cast into Hell, the Black Armory was locked away and forgotten, but the mad demigod who dwells within has never stopped working at his craft, and by now it must surely contain weapons that could end the world.
At one point, the sword says that it notices she tries to stay silent in battle, and cloven hooves on cobblestones aren’t always the best for that. It knows a guy who might be willing to buy the sound of her footsteps from her. Krystal doesn’t understand, and the sword sarcastically tells her that she can trade her “clippity-clop” for some “ching-ching”. But she is still uncertain.
The sword goes on to say that she will need to make a human sacrifice to grease the wheels enough to arrange such a meeting, and wants to know if there is anyone she hates.
Krystal only gives it a condescending look.
The blade clarifies that it needs to be someone whom she hates enough to murder in cold blood.
Krystal continues to stare at the sword.
Exasperated, the blade asks whom she wants to murder most of all?
Krystal summons Valentine, and the two begin to work out a plot for assassinating Trade-Prince Valen.
The Rambling Prophet
Anani sits by herself in a quiet roadhouse along the old highway running through the desert outside of Golgotha.
She is approached by a tall man with a broad handsome face and the dust-caked clothes of a working man. He asks if he can join her, and she responds by asking if he is paying; he tells the barkeep to put her meal on his tab, and to buy a round for the house while he is at it.
The stranger introduces himself as Russel Faraday, and Anani responds, seemingly ashamed that she has no second name. Her visitor laughs and says there is nothing wrong with being from common stock, he himself is scarcely better, owning little more than a grazing patch outside Gantry’s Ferry in what is now the Sundered Lands.
Anani says that her homeland isn’t far from there, on the Aitos Plateau. Faraday looks pleased, and asks if Old Layke is still alive. Anani responds that she has no idea who he is talking about, and
Russel says he isn’t surprised, he was pushing ninety when he taught Faraday his letters once upon a time.
The barkeep offers them his best wine, and Anani takes some, while Faraday declines, says he never drinks wine, and asks for whiskey instead.
When the meal is over and the patrons are well into their drink, a quiet falls over their table. Russel says that one of his men told him about her, and he was surprised, he didn’t know that their master had any agents operating out of Badlands, at least not since the Golgotha Ripper was brought to justice last year.
Anani is confused for a moment, and asks who he means, and he confides that he serves the lord of lords, the King of all Pangaea.
“The Black King?” she asks.
“Some may call him so,” Russel smiles coyly.
He goes on to explain that The Scourge has marked Pompur for judgment; for the university town teaches people things that their betters would rather they didn’t know.
While there, he wishes to make a statement by slaying their Warlord, but true Warlords are tricky beasts, nearly immortal, and Naraka is slipperier than most, she will simply fall back and feign subservience to one of her compatriots, all the while plotting betrayal and revenge.
He knows that Anani is one of the few beings who has the power to put a final end to Naraka. Faraday’s proposal is simple; when The Scourge’s attack on Pompur comes, and it’s still a few months off, logistics being what they are, he will hire a team of mercenaries to get her into the Warlords chambers and protect her while she puts the thin-lady down for good.
Anani asks what is in it for her, and Faraday tells her whatever she likes, money, power, magic, knowledge, love, drugs, heck, even her own pet dinosaur if she so fancies.
Anani nods in agreement, all the while her shadow laughs at the fool before her.
Nighttime in the Park
The rainy season is here again. Summer storms always hit Golgotha hard, threatening to flood the lake, and with so much damage having been done to the city, every room in town is full. For our heroes, it is cramped and uncomfortable, with eight people living out of a single vehicle.
One evening, when everyone is longing for open space, it is suggested that they check out the stories about the park being haunted. Anani recounts the tale, of how every night that it rains, a hulking figure is seen dragging a sack through the park, and how any who approach are never seen again.
They go, although some are skeptical and unhappy about the wetting. The park is beautiful, overgrown with trees, its canals near overflowing with rainwater, its tiled walkways and wrought iron fence posts slick. Gas lights provide dim light, contrasted with blinding bursts of lightning. Most cling to benches or seek shelter under trees. Kim and Feur enthusiastically search, while Quincy keeps watch from an old wooden footbridge over a rushing stream.
Shortly after midnight, Feur becomes aware of heavy footsteps and shouts to his companions, the legends are true. The being is wholly material, with nothing ghostly about him, and stands about eight feet tall, wearing overalls and bare feet, with short dark hair and greenish skin. He has a bundle thrown over his shoulder, wrapped in white linens, and is trudging onward with a determined look on his misshapen face.
Feur calls out, and Quincy immediately opens fire upon him, hitting the hulking man in the left shoulder opposite his burden, but he doesn’t fall and keeps marching. A moment later, he is brought to his knees, and blood spurts from his calf, as if attacked by an unseen assailant.
Feur steadies his mind and looks into the unseen world, and sees that the stranger is being assaulted by a pack of what he knows to be the Hounds of Tindalos, doglike creatures from alien dimensions who police the timelines. But before he can call out a warning, Quincy’s second shot takes the being in the chest, and then Krystal is there, stabbing with her black flame blade.
The hounds grab his package and pull it from the timeline, and Feur warns his companions to give chase, and though Anani is able to catalog the hound’s ren, it is not long before they are lost to the past. When they return to the scene of the battle, they find copious blood but no body.
Feur tells his companions what happened, and they decide to try again, after all, the legend says that this has been happening every night since before the Cataclysm.
It doesn’t rain again for a few nights, but when it does they are ready. Valentine has procured an herbal mixture that will allow them to see into the spirit world once smoked, and Anani has blessed all of their weapons in the name of her dark and terrible god.
This time they set up an ambush, but are surprised to find their visitor coming from a different direction, still carrying his mysterious bundle.
When the pack of unearthly hounds approach, Feur tells them to stop. They respond in their odd speech that sounds like barking played backward, and tell the mortals to step aside, for this is a matter of time, and The Tribunal has no authority over it.
Feur laughs and proclaims that it is always time for justice.
The party attacks, but the hounds manipulate time, slowing it for their enemies and speeding it for themselves, giving the combatants the feelings of fighting in storm-tossed surf, with the action slowing and then crashing upon them all at once, too quickly to react.
Quincy and Krystal take down a few of the hounds, but soon find themselves overrun and forced to take shelter in the trees or under a bridge.
Kim does better, protecting her companions with mana shields while using her chain to trip up and stun the hounds of Tindalos before they can get close.
Anani approaches the tall man, who is ignoring the battle and steadily marching toward the park’s iron gate. She sees that his bundle is actually the body of a young girl, wrapped in winter blankets and apparently dead. She summons a shade to hold off the hounds while she makes her escape.
She conjures up an anti-magic shell around them, a mobile tear in reality that separates the spiritual and physical worlds, making it impossible for the extra-dimensional hounds to even come near, and she walks with him out of the park and into the town, to the nearest hospital.
Back in the park, her companions soon drive off the rest of the time spirits, who let them know that Cronus will hear of their betrayal.
At the hospital, the surgeons are able to resuscitate the drowned girl.
The hulking troll tries to tell his story to Anani, although his command of Terran is lacking and he is fighting back tears.
His name is Flit, and he was a servant to a noble family who maintained a summer home in Golgotha before the collapse of the Old Empire. He was tasked with taking their young daughter Katjana to the park, and failed to watch her, for she slipped from a bridge and into the stream, and by the time he found her, she was already drowned. But Flit had sworn an oath, and Flit had always had a few gifts he couldn’t explain.
He couldn’t turn back time, couldn’t undo the event. But he could pull her to him. Not while she was alive, for she would fight him, and his tricks were not that strong. But he knew they had potions that could revive the drowned if only he could get her to a hospital fast enough.
But every time he tried, the dogs would attack, and he never made it in time.
He learned new tricks, learned the fastest route, learned how to avoid the crowds, and learned that his pursuers couldn’t smell as well in the rain.
So, for a thousand nights over a hundred years, he had pulled her body from the past and tried his run. But every time, her salvation was just out of reach. And he couldn’t try every night, for it took time for his magic to replenish, and his wounds to regenerate. And every time the dogs put the girl right back where she was supposed to be, for her parents to find her dead and to curse Flit as an oath breaker.
But now, thanks to their help, he had finally succeeded. He has no gold, but he gives Anani a small jeweled pendant on a fine chain, and tells her that this is the charm that gives him his power, and he doesn’t want it anymore, doesn’t want to attract the hounds and feel their teeth ever again. He doesn’t know what awaits Katjana and him in this new world, but he has to try.
Anani takes the pendant and wonders what catastrophe the Hounds of Tindalos were so eager to undo, what changes to history had already taken place when a noble family’s formerly dead daughter now merely disappeared without a trace, and what repercussions could have followed them over a hundred years.
Krystal long ago made a promise to herself that she would never work for free, and she steals the pendant before Anani can hand it to Feur, intent on selling it to Pops for a few coins. Valentine intercedes though, paying Krystal out of the group’s funds and then explaining to Feur that she will let him keep the potent Talisman of Elemental Control, but as all profits must be split evenly amongst the company, this means he will be deeply indebted to the corps and that she will be garnishing his wages from now on.
Feur, ever naïve and loyal, happily agrees, and does his best to learn to harness his newfound power.
Valentine does not take a cut. For once in her life, she actually feels bad about taking advantage of someone.
The Scoria
Lady Abasinia contacts Kim with an offer to accompany her on a seaside holiday. Valentine told her of the crystal spires on the coast of the Dead Lands, and of Kim’s disappointment in not being able to investigate further, and proposes a joint expedition.
Kim separates from her party, making arrangements to meet them in Price Town on their way south for their next mission. She then once again takes the train to Basewater station. There she waits for her companion to arrive, taking dinner with the locals. She marvels at how the water here is so alkaline, people with stomach ulcers would probably pay a fortune for it, but is only met with disgusted looks by her fellow travelers as they hold their noses and sip their bitter coffee.
That night Kim sleeps on a wooden cot with a straw mattress, which she finds significantly less comfortable than open ground. She tosses and turns well into the night, but when she finally falls asleep she is dead to the world, waking up with a sore shoulder in the midmorning light to find that her companion has already arrived and is ready to depart.
Lady Abasinia is standing before an expensive carriage, built on runners rather than wheels so that it moves across the sand like a sleigh. It is pulled by a team of alpaca, and the drivers are a pair of locals, wrapped head to toe in billowing black cloth, but where their skin shows, Kim sees that it has an almost wooden texture and assumes they are ghouls. One is carrying an antiquated blunderbuss, its broad barrel making for an almost literal hand cannon.
The lady herself is ill-dressed for travel, but wearing oversized sunglasses and a hat with an almost comically wide brim. She waves Kim over. When she sees Kim rubbing her shoulder, Abasinia asks what the matter is. Kim replies that it's okay, its just the bed was rather hard, but she could use the toughening up. Lady Abasinia smiles and tells Kim she looks plenty tough already, and playfully slaps her on a shoulder which is already beginning to sunburn.
The inside of the coach is opulent, the seats significantly more comfortable than most recliners Kim has sat in. It is somewhat cramped, but designed for only two people. A hanging cage of birds provides music, while a swinging tray of burning incense provides some light and also masks the smell of sweat and alpaca, but Kim can’t help but worry about what will happen if they hit a bump and it tips over. The windows contain strange rotating metal blades, turned by the motion of the carriage, which channel cool air into the cabin but also make the shadows dance hypnotically.
Once underway, the ride is surprisingly swift and smooth. Lady Abasinia asks Kim to entertain her with stories of her adventures, but she doesn’t really seem to be paying attention, instead just listening to the sound of the archeologist’s voice as they snack on exotic candies.
At one point, Kim shares the fact that she learned that the language of dragons contains words that literally cannot be spoken by those below a certain size, and that the meanings of some words change with the speaker's age as their voice deepens. Abasinia nods, and says that humans do something similar, forbidding those lower in station from speaking out of place, and insisting that one’s supposed superiors are addressed by titles rather than by their proper names, but dragons have formalized the process. Still, don’t think that it doesn’t go both ways, for the young have a wider range of hearing than the old, and you better believe that wyrmlings speak ill of their elders in words that they would have long since forgotten even if they were still capable of hearing the proper intonations.
Kim comments about how cheeky that must be, and must then define the word for Lady Abasinia. The changeling apologizes, she finds Terran to be an awfully hard language to pick up. It was invented by the Old Empire as a trade language and they stole words from many unrelated cultures and struck down words from the vocabulary that were redundant or confusingly similar to other words, which seemed sensible at the time, but make it impossible to gauge meaning from context or etymology. And all that knowledge will eventually be lost, all for the sake of efficiency, until people don’t even remember having lost it when they need it. She adds that this is a suitable analogy for the Imperium as a whole.
Kim shakes her head and says that she never thought about it that way before, and doing so makes her sad, but she isn’t quite sure why.
When Kim tells of her most recent adventure, Lady Abasinia says that she supposes helping the troll was admirable, but doing so was likely a huge tactical loss for her companions, for each fractured reality the troll created gave endless new opportunities for Fleur to exploit in the branching timelines of possibility.
When they stop for camp, Kim builds a fire and then Lady Abasinia produces several pods made from a material that is like both paper and metal. They expand in the heat, and when they are done, their tops burst, revealing a bowl containing a roast hen floating in herb broth along with chunks of dough and potato. Kim says she has seen similar cooking pots made out of clay, but nothing so sophisticated, and Lady Abasinia shrugs and says that she imagines the entire frontier would be using such things if not for the Cataclysm. They sleep under the stars, and in the morning continue on.
Kim asks Lady Abasinia what her oldest memory is, and she describes pulsing colors that moved with the tide like music, and Kim has trouble following, and asks her to share her first memory of coming to Pangaea. Abasinia thinks for a moment, and then says it was eating monkey brains on the south coast. Kim looks repulsed, but her companion says that it is actually quite good, if a little rustic.
She then recalls a cave in the land that would one day be Marhanna before the coming of the Buddhas, and a cave where each generation would paint the walls with their own dreams and histories, and after a thousand generations, they were all melded together into an impossibly rich tapestry.
Kim thinks for a moment and then says it sounds beautiful, and maybe they could visit it on their next trip. Abasinia sighs and asks if Kim has ever heard of Aquaria.
Kim shakes her head, and is told that it is supposedly a silver city rising from the southern ocean. It was built long ago by the Triamantes, and it was said that the three-eyed ones’ philosopher-kings knew of many secret concepts that were entirely unknown to the outside world. But then, when they lost the favor of The Prince of Tides, they decided to hide the city from their own heirs, lest they see their culture desecrated by their cyclops children.
Kim asks if The Prince of Tides is a child of Poseidon, and the tall woman sitting across from her says that the two entities are in fact one and the same. When Kim asks why the three-eyed ones would have such a harsh reaction to their children, Lady Abasinia says that humans are not so different, for do they not always scorn their own offspring for talking or dressing differently or listening to the wrong music or reading the wrong books? Many even forbid them from marrying outsiders or immigrating to new lands in a vain attempt to keep their culture pure.
She shakes her head and chides herself for referring to humans like an outsider. She needs to stop building dams and recognize that she is part of the world rather than an outside observer.
Two days later, they reach the crystalline spires.
They are a sort of mineral that Kim has never seen before, and which emits a strange song that she can hear on both a physical and spiritual level. Even stranger, she can feel magical energy flowing between them, changing slightly at each turn.
Lady Abasinia seems to be uninterested in the spires, but rather enjoys watching Kim interact with them.
Kim tries to talk to the stones, but gets only strange music in turn. It takes her a full day to realize that the music is a language, and puts her mind to work learning it.
Kim discovers that the spires, called The Scoria, were sang into existence by an ancient avian race that are the ancestors of the coatls of Masaria. They are structures, although inaccessible from the ground, and the upper levels contain hollowed areas to be used as nests. They are also repositories of information, and serve to channel ley lines and manipulate the mystical energies of the Earth itself.
Kim learns of their history, and about how they were abandoned eons ago when the manargus, to whom the avians could apparently speak to, blamed The Scoria for creating the Dead Lands; for the once verdant jungle was turning into desert. The coatl explained that they were instead bleeding corruptive energy away from Mount Krackenrock in the south, but the manargus didn’t believe it, and the coatl abandoned The Scoria rather than risking battle, for if the Scoria were destroyed, it could have torn Pangaea open and let something horrible in.
The full purpose of the Scoria is beyond her, but they seem to have something to do with redirecting and subtly influencing the resonance of Ley Lines.
Kim finishes her study with loads of new knowledge about the history, language, and culture of the Avians and their Coatl descendants. She has also learned many of the secrets of their stone singing, and in time hopes she can figure out how to apply it to her own crafts.
They spend their last night before heading back to Basewater lying on a bluff above a beach under the night sky. Kim doesn’t go near the water, for she imagines it to be full of monsters.
She is in the midst of telling Lady Abasinia about one of her early adventures when the blue-haired changeling interrupts, asking her for the name of the woman whom Kim never mentions but is still at the heart of all of her stories.
After a moment of silence, Kim replies, “Sara. It means princess in Atlantean.”
After a long pause, Kim asks, “Why do you say you need to stop building dams?”
“Lie back and tell me what you see?” Abasinia responds.
“The burning remnants of 10,000 noble souls,” Kim answers while staring up at the glittering night sky.
“I see only pain and loss. Understand that, and I mean this quite literally, the stars are not right. I have wandered the Pangea so long, that even the constellations have changed. And it is terrifying. There is nothing left of the world I knew, and I find myself ever a stranger, an alien in a world that has moved on.”
Kim responds with sympathy, but Lady Abasinia responds only with advice.
“You need to learn to free your mind. Your search for knowledge, for truth, only binds you to a single existence. It is far better to understand that the world is made from limitless possibilities and subjective realities. Not only does this give you more avenues for achieving your own goals, but it also makes you more resilient and better able to weather assaults on your own foundations.”
“That’s good advice.”
The ride back to Base Water is faster and less eventful, mostly in dreamlike silence.
It is late when they arrive. After saying their goodbyes, Kim staggers into the barracks and falls asleep almost immediately on a bunk that doesn’t seem nearly as hard as on her previous visit. In the morning, she buys the next ticket out of there, eager to meet the rest of her team at Price Town for their next adventure.
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