Chapter 4 – Part 7

Boards unraveled from the deck, tearing and curling around the startled half-orc, even as a blue sky slammed into view. Gravity returned, and a salt spray crashed over the side of a ship that displaced a piece of ocean, midday.

Delegado hesitated for a moment, he senses reeling with the return of the world. A moment was all that was necessary.

The moving ship planks snared the half-orc like a fish in a net. He grappled with the mobile wood, but unsuccessfully. They beat at him, raising bruises, bringing a gash over one eye which nearly blinded him with his own blood. His bow was snatched from his hands. Furiously the half-orc fought, trying to free himself.

The Captain suddenly stood, staring into Delegado’s eyes. The swirling colors captivated the half-orc.

The fiend then reached in, and shoved the boards aside. They balked a moment at the fiend’s touch, they slid back into the deck with a slapping sound, and became inert.

The Captain pulled Delegado free. “Now do you believe me?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

“What the galig just happened?” demanded the half-orc snatching up his bow and whirling about. The ship’s deck was quiet, still, as if it had never attacked him. Blood slid down his face from his scalp wound.

“We were, then we weren’t, now we are again,” the Captain told him, a hoarse urgency in his voice. “I need your help, before he takes control of this section again.”

Delegado didn’t get a chance to ask what the thing meant, because the deck suddenly came to life again. It didn’t peel itself into tentacle-like boards this time, instead it bucked and rolled as if it were the liquid waves that surrounded the ship. Delegado fell, as did the Captain, and the deck jumped and bulged, pushing them to the rails.

The Captain cursed, and managed to flip himself around the moving bulges. He was aided by the fact that the wood that he touched seemed to obey him briefly. He made it to the ship’s wheel, grabbing it with both hands. A nimbus of discordant light began to appear around him.

Delegado let his bow go, hoping he would not lose it. Half-prone on a deck that refused to be flat, he drew his sword and slammed it into the deck point-first, piercing the wood harshly. Desperately the half-orc held on to the hilt as the adamantine blade became his anchor.

Delegado thought for a moment he would be fine, hanging on. Then he heard a horrible sound. Looking up he saw that the light around was a dancing red and black, and that the vessel’s former master was screaming in pain.

Chapter 4 – Part 6

Their minds met. It was a brief encounter, long enough to exchange ideas so clear and articulate that they were almost words.

The Captain showed Thomas that they would perish, unless they worked together.

Thomas showed that he did not care, if he, Thomas, was not to be the master. Thomas made it clear that he was tired of others dictating his fate to him.

The Captain reluctantly agreed to cede control of the Crimson Ship to the half-daelkyr, if only briefly, but Thomas would have to keep the half-orc from firing the great bow.

It was an instant. Technically it wasn’t even that, as there was no way to record the time. But it was all that was necessary for an agreement of necessity.

Their minds joined. The fiend submitted his control to Thomas, but led, like a tiny tugboat pulling a great barge.

The Crimson Ship seized, then rippled, and then became actual.

Chapter 4 – Part 5

Delegado hesitated.

Half-orcs were instinctual creatures, but Bartemain had always taught his son to think ahead. Intelligence was a valued asset to Bartemain, and his children, wholly human or only partially, were taught to think.

Bartemain was dead, his body a bag of skin barely held together by dust, wrapped up tenderly in a saddlebag below decks. By Delegado carried his father’s wisdom with him.

There was a limit to the fiend’s hypnosis, and Delegado should be safely beyond it, at the other end of the ship, taking advantage of range. Further, the fiend had his eyes closed, and was looking down at the deck. Finally, he knew that he had hit the thing, and then right afterwards reality had dropped away.

He might need this thing to get back to – to get away from wherever they were.

“Keep your head down!” barked the half-orc, slowly walking towards the Captain. “You pick your head up or open your eyes then more arrows get into you!” Time was still dancing, for a moment he felt it run backwards, and listened to the reverse sounds go back into his mouth, but then it went normal again. Things were still bad, he could not look at the nothing outside the ship, but they were somewhat better.

“I’m not your enemy!” gasped the fiend. “I am trying to get the ship back!”

“Back to the Demon Wastes?” The half-orc was close now, the arrow sighted at the fiend’s head.

“Back to TIME,” the Captain insisted. “One of your friends below is trying to manipulate the ship’s magic, but it got away from him! We are close to ceasing existence completely!”

Delegado held his arrow tight, wondering if he could believe the fiend.

Chapter 4 – Part 4

Ois fell, barking her shin. She could not describe what was happening, her mind rebelled. She rolled across the floor, stopping at the wall, feeling the wood rub against her bare skin.

What happened to the world?

She realized in an instant that something was wrong, and that she could not make sense of it. The thief turned holy warrior moaned. Naked and scared, she shut everything out and prayed to the Silver Flame.

Chapter 4 – Part 3

What happened? What happened? You did this! I did not, I could not!

Thomas’ mind was being ripped in two. The daelkyr side gibbered, trying to understand where the flesh was, if only it could manipulate some flesh, it could find the fix. The other half of his mind saw things that even a daelkyr would find insane. Before was after, after was before, never was now, later could never come.

Thomas howled, and the strips of wood that plugged into him danced like a great spider. The half-daelkyr barbarian grabbed reality through the Crimson Ship, grabbed with every bit of strength in his self, his sheer force of personality, grabbed, and demanded reality to stay.

It failed. He was falling, his fingers grabbing for support on a slick wall that laughed at him.

A presence came, and the wall formed a ledge. The presence was above decks, where the loss of reality was worse. It was the Captain, and he was trying to show Thomas how to calm the ship down.

The half-daelkyr laughed, feeling sweat creep painfully into his shaving cuts. A moment ago, lifetimes ago, the Captain had been fighting the half-daelkyr. Now they were working together. Pain hit the Captain, and his mind faded, then came back, insisting that Thomas push the Crimson Ship like so, to calm it down.

Thomas began to understand. Time was gone. The Crimson Ship was outside of time. It carried a little time with it, but the reality was slipping. They had maybe seconds to act, or centuries, it was hard to tell right now. They had to bring the Crimson Ship back.

You can do it without him, Thomas thought to himself, coldly. Don’t trust him, he wants to retake the ship. That was his own mind speaking, he knew that. His daelkyr side seemed to have been reduced into gibbering fear.

“Too much madness even for you, eh?” laughed Thomas. He flexed his mind, and the ship wrenched itself, its material following his commands. Mentally, he forced the Captain’s mind back, and then tried to manipulate the Crimson Ship like so, but by himself, only him.

It didn’t work. The entire ship buckled, and Thomas screamed mentally, without a sound exiting his physical mouth.

Chapter 4 – Part 2

The Captain winced, trying not to feel the arrows that hadn’t hit him yet, or the ones that already did. Time was unraveling, although no doubt worse for the hybrid archer. The passage of time was always relative to the viewer, and the ultraloth was more central to the Crimson Ship than any other.

Except for the intruder belowdecks, trying to take it over.

Another arrow hit, then didn’t, then did again. This one had no energy discharge at least, just an enchantment that allowed it to bypass the Captain’s damage reduction. He gritted his teeth against the pain. The punch from the hybrid’s bow was significant.

Control of the ship slipped, and another veneer of molecules was stripped away as the Captain’s concentration wavered.

He wasn’t sure what happened, even he did not know the Crimson Ship completely, but he knew it had gone awry. The Crimson Ship could function like a regular sailing vessel, but its main mode of locomotion was actually to move reality around it, to make space fold and end up where it was needed.

One of the drawbacks to being an immortal outsider was that you were a slave to your nature. Uncounted millennia ago, the Captain chose travel on the seas as his nature, rather than the domineering, pain-inflicting, evil ways of so many of his kind, or the stalwart, heroic-cause-bearing ways of the coutal and angels who opposed the fiends. He had never regretted his choice, and he had happily bonded with this artifact.

Only now, he had taken on passengers who had attacked him. This had happened before, and he had dealt with it easily. But these passengers had one of their number who could manipulate magical devices in an uncanny fashion. The Captain had had artificers on the Crimson Ship before, but none as skilled as this. And, in a juxtaposition that could only please the Traveler, these passengers had been picked up from the land of his birth.

So, he had been busy finessing the hag sent as an ambassador, and the passenger who manipulated magic had struck. Then, while he had been trying to re-establish control, the half-orc had made it on deck, and had begun shooting the captain with his own arrows.

Caught by surprise twice, the Captain had lost control of the Crimson Ship, and below, whoever was trying to manipulate the Crimson Ship’s magic, had generated an incredible mishap, a surge in the reality-adjuster.

“Please stop shooting,” gasped the Captain. He grasped the ship’s wheel in one hand, trying to calm the magical surge. The mishap below had thrown the Crimson Ship forward, and too hard. They were out of the timestream, riding above it almost, and if they did not fall back in correctly, they would be scattered to nothingness.

The fiend closed his eyes, and focused, feeling the pull of the magics. Below, the one who had caused all the trouble was now working with him, trying to save the ship from disintegration. The Captain reached out with his mind, trying to show the other how to calm the surge.

But if another arrow hit, he would not be able to guide the other, and they would all be lost.

Chapter 4 – Part 1

TIME IS BUT A STREAM I GO A-FISHING IN

In a place where time has no meaning, at a time that never existed.

The world ran riot in Delegado’s ears, his mind, through his pores. He saw sound, heard vision, felt change, sweated seconds, breathed minutes, fell forever, and never moved.

Get control of yourself, you are one with the natural world, the half-orc told himself. You can feel, see, you can –

“Trust your senses, son,” Bartemain told him. Delegado was barely nine years of age, hunting in the Shadow Marches.

“It makes no difference now,” the woman said. She looked a lot like her aunt, Pienna, even with blood running down her face from her ruined eyes. Artificer’s tools fell from her hands as she begged Delegado to find what she needed. But Delegado was an old man, with white hair, and racked with a withering cough that came with advanced age.

Time ran unfettered. It was a river that had overrun its banks, falling where it might, be it forward, backwards, or both.

“I’m in Xoriat,” Delegado said aloud. The Gatekeepers told the children that if they were bad they would end up there, a place of eternal mental pain, where nature would never give succor.

“No you aren’t, not yet, anyway,” came a voice. The voice belonged to a fiend, with glowing eyes, the one who had tricked him, tried to –

Teeth bared, he fired the arrow. It traveled years, miles, forever, then hit even before he fired it, scorching the fiend who called itself Captain.

“Don’t do it!” the fiend said. “If you shoot I won’t be able to –” The fiend died, peppered with arrows. The fiend stood over the hypnotized half-orc, and brought its sword down viciously. The fiend threw Delegado off of the boat, and they both fell to shreds of nothingness.

NO, Delegado thought. I. WILL. BE. He closed his eyes, and then opened them. Whatever he saw, had to be sight. If he saw sound, he would ignore it.

The ship came into view. He saw the wooden planks beneath his feet, but he could feel no waves. He looked up, and then regretted it. There was no sky, no ocean, there was nothing. Seeing nothing was…disturbing to the mind. He forced his gaze downward, to what was real.

“For now,” called the fiend. Raising his eyes just slightly, Delegado could see the Captain slumped on the deck. The fiend had skin like iron, but the magical arrows had gotten through somewhat, and several of them had cast forth flame, lightning, or other energy when they hit. “We barely exist, we are elsewhere, in a non-space that is shrinking. You have to put your bow down, not shoot, let me rescue us with the Crimson Ship’s power! But you have to not shoot!”

Delegado regarded the thing. A fiend. One of the ones who had tortured his father, Bartemain. Who had nearly killed Ois and Orphan. Who could change its appearance.

Who could do mind-tricks with its eyes.

The half-orc raised the bow and drew.

Chapter 3 – Part 7

Carl wiped his brow as he threw the last shovelful of earth on the last makeshift grave. Some commanding officers wouldn’t do the physical work. As far as Carl was concerned, it was the least he could do.

And I may be the commanding officer, but I’m only a corporal, Carl reminded himself. Just a corporal.

Carl stepped back, and Henry came up behind him to quietly take the shovel. “You need to speak,” Henry whispered.

This Carl did not want to do, but he had known that he would have to do so, so he made no protest. He turned away from the almost two dozen graves to face the ten remaining men in blue who waited for him to give them an order, to make some sense of everything.

As Carl hesitated, Henry coughed behind him. Carl saw unease in the eyes of the Brelish soldiers. No doubt they wished Henry was their commanding officer.

“You want words from me to take away your pain,” he said, finding inspiration in bluntness. “I can’t. You probably want words to bring our comrades back, or some part of them. I can’t do that either.” He gestured to the pile of enemy dead. They still smoldered, having been tossed into a large pyre instead of being buried with markers as were the Brelish. “Maybe some of you want me to tell you that the shifters and irregular infantry who came at our south flank while we engaged the Aundairian light foot were really Aundairian soldiers, and not opportunistic Reachers who hate us as much as they hate their former masters.” Carl gritted his teeth. “I can’t do that either. We all know that there are plenty of Reachers who don’t want to be our ally, who don’t want to listen to their own leaders.”

Carl swallowed, and ran his hand through his hair, being careful not to touch the bandage on the side of his head. A shifter’s fangs had come very close to piercing his skull. “I can tell you this, though. Lieutenant Fromlay didn’t get a chance to tell me everything about our purpose here, but he told me enough. Yes, we were part of the larger alliance, but we also had a delivery to make, a special mission.”

“Something for the druidess?” one of the men asked. He was their best archer, and his eyes had gone very hollow since the battle. Physically he was untouched, but the man looked like he might crack with grief and fear at any moment.

“Possibly,” Carl said. “I don’t know for certain, and if I knew I couldn’t tell you.” He swallowed. “I do know that from the way Lieutenant Fromlay described it, it has the potential to –” He hesitated, not wanting to lie. “It may end this war.”

The men looked at each other, some skeptically, some hopefully.

“Forgive me, sir,” Henry said suddenly. “I actually know a bit more than you, Lieutenant Fromlay told me in case something happened to you.” Henry cleared his throat. “It’s true,” he told the men. “We’re not just another squadron.”

“So we have to keep moving, and join up with other Brelish forces,” Carl said, confidence sneaking into him. “But before we go,” he had to pause as he got choked up. “A moment of silence for the departed.”

The men bowed their heads. All were quiet, thinking of their lost comrades.

Carl was thinking of the spoiled rations that Bresbin Delavane had stolen, and apparently used to make a trail for a carrion-eating monstrosity. It did not make him feel better to know that the three who died were Aundairian.

After a moment’s time, the men picked their heads up again.

“Company fall out!” Henry called.

“Weapons ready at all times,” Carl said loudly.

He turned and began to walk northeast through the forest, heading to Riverweep.

Chapter 3 – Part 6

Bresbin tried to keep his dumb face on at the same time as he strained to listen to the conversation. The druids considered their language secret, but the Dark Lanterns had long been slowly compiling lists of words.

Two years ago that list had grown considerably. Coincidentally at or around that time the Dark Lanterns had captured one of the Children of Winter druids who had been attempting to infect a Brelish peace delegation sent to Oalian with some truly disgusting disease. The official report said that the druid in question had been dispatched quickly. Unofficially, over drinks, a senior agent had told Bresbin that he’d heard through someone who had heard through someone that they’d tortured the Child of Winter for days, getting him to give up a nice chunk of Druidic before he’d finally died.

Bresbin wasn’t sure if he believed the story. The higher-ups in the Dark Lanterns liked to let their agents believe such things in order to keep everyone in line and focused. However a half-elf named Parnain d’Medani had been involved in preventing the attack on the Brelish delegation, and if there ever was anyone stone cold enough to torture a man for vocabulary’s sake, it was Parnain.

And the Child of Winter in question had been a changeling, a race that Parnain was known to be obsessed with hunting.

Whatever the source, the amount of Druidic that Bresbin had been able to absorb was letting him know that Pienna was getting heat for fighting in the war, and that some elf named Aruunis was pretty ticked off about it.

Bresbin knew the name Aruunis, but he couldn’t remember how he knew. He’d read so many files before going deep-cover that he hadn’t hoped to retain even half of it. But if Aruunis’ name had been in a file it must have been important.

So he followed, trying to listen to the raspy-voiced orc discuss how many dolgrims he’d seen, trying to figure out the words he didn’t know from the context of their use.

And trying to figure out if it would be worth it to put an arrow through the withered old tusk-face’s kneecaps if the druid kept calling him a sneak.