Brief Hiatus

Hello everyone, I'm sorry to announce that I have to take a brief hiatus from posting. I'm happy to announce that it is due to my new baby boy.

I've got the plot lines sketched, but there's gaps in the intermediate bits, especially with the Pienna-Bresbin storyline. I'll get them flushed out, trust me.

The storyline will continue on December 29, with the usual Mon & Thurs updates, plus some bonus postings in early Jan.

Thanks for being such a great audience.

Chapter 5 – Part 1

FALLING MASKS, BROKEN THOUGHTS

Deep within the Eldeen Reaches, shortly after midnight on the twenty-fifth of Aryth, 993 Y.K.

The dolgaunt moved with a grace was that beautiful and sickening at the same time. He felt full, good, and strong. A dolgrim had failed, and allowed the druids to catch a patrol unawares, so the dolgrim had become his food. It had twitched wonderfully as it died.

The dolgaunt stopped, peering about. It waved to the thirty dolgrims that still remained, sending them out in two flanking waves. It could feel, could sense quite far. The druids would no doubt be laying spells to catch his forces, expecting them to come down the middle of the valley that hid the device that the dolgaunt sought to control.

You will find its exact location, the mind flayer had told the dolgaunt, speaking directly to his mind. You will have your servants dig, and then place this Khyber dragonshard in the crook of the fork.

To destroy it then? The dolgaunt’s mental question was answered only with a psionic blast of pain, which had forced the dolgaunt to its knees.

You will follow instructions, or you will suffer beyond imagining, the mind flayer had told him coldly. We seek to make the device our own, not to destroy it!

The dolgaunt had promised feverishly to obey. He feared the mind flayers greatly. They were closest to the Great masters, and they brooked no failure.

Lights and sounds came from over three hundred feet away, ahead and to his right and ahead and to his left. The druids were attacking his two groups of dolgrims, their power spent on the unimportant, while he, the silent and dangerous monastic warrior, crept directly towards them.

The dolgaunt grinned with a toothless, red mouth. He knew everything around him, with perfect sight even in the dark. The scilla on his tentacles, the perfect biological devices grown by his masters, told him everything, let him know of everything.

Which is why the dolgaunt was quite shocked when a goblin that he’d neither seen, smelled, nor heard put three arrows into him. One penetrated the dolgaunt’s neck, one his groin, and one into his eye and then his brain.

The twisted creature fell, dead before it could think of attacking the goblin that had caught it so badly by surprise.

Chapter 4 - Part 14

The young brass dragon was cleaning his pipe. He would have been smoking it, but the old copper who currently led them - which was not the right word, not with a group that was considered proud even for dragons - had expressed displeasure at it. The brass was not about to lessen the slightest impact that his words might have when debating.

"You did well, darling," the young green said, sliding his way to the angry gold female who had been concentrating on the crystal.

"I did nothing!" the gold snapped at him - literally, she swung her teeth near his neck and he barely flinched away in time. "I focused out power, true, but I merely held a window in the timestream. The Captain, or maybe the half-daelkyr, they found it."

The brass frowned, then tucked his pipe away. "So where are they, then?" eh asked patiently.

"More importantly," rumbled the old copper. "When are they?"

"I don't know," the gold said, the admission paining her.

"They're back, and they're within two hundred miles of their departure point," the brass said suddenly. They all turned to him. "The Crimson Ship moves the universe around itself. That means it came back not far from where it left, as it focuses itself as a central point. Giving drift for tides and Eberron's magnetic field, like so..." He summoned his innate powers, and a floating translucent graph of equations apepared above them. "So they would be within this circle."

"And the fiends may still get them," hissed the green, for once his mind off of his mating instinct.

"The Captain's price is conflict," the copper mused. "There is someone in the southeast corner of that circle. A hobgoblin mage who fused himself with certain elements, long ago."

They all were silent for a moment.

"Say it already!" the gold hissed. "It's not like we aren't in deep enough debt to the druid already!"

The copper sighed. "Contact the white druid," he ordered. "See his price for finding the Cold Mage."

Chapter 4 – Part 13

The wood attacked the monk as he cleared the last step. He tumbled, rolling into a somersault, and easily escaped the curled planks that reached like fingers. As he left them, they fell flat again.

The deck was rippling as if it was water, not wood. There was sun, and sky. And plenty of sea. A quick look in all directions showed that they were nowhere near land.

A fined lay unconscious near a ship’s wheel. Delegado lay prone on the deck, gripping the hilt of his sword, which was embedded into the deck. The rippling was keeping the half-orc from getting to his feet. Orphan could see the great composite longbow further on down the deck, very close to the railing.

He wanted to call out to Delegado, but a loud explosion near the front of the ship distracted him. Seconds later the ship began to list.

“Delegado!” he called out. “What’s going on?”

“Damn you’re a sight for sore eyes!” the half-orc called out. “Cast me a rope, I have to get up!”

Instinct took over, as the Orphan felt a drop in pressure behind him. The warforged ducked, and something, a spinning ball of liquid so frozen he could not credit it, blew over him.

The freezing liquid ball hit the mast, and blew apart a yardarm. Ropes once taut now whipped about, and splinters mixed with tiny shards of ice. The Crimson Ship, already listing with damage near the waterline, began to spin lazily to starboard.

The warforged turned, ready to fight, his last two shiruken in his hands.

A figure sat atop a column of moving water, some twenty feet aaway fromt eh ship and fifteen feet above it. The top of the column had fashioned itself into a shimmering, throne-like chair. The figure sitting in the chair was humanoid. In fact it was the spitting image of a hobgoblin. Unlike a hobgoblin it had blue skin, a deep dark blue that seemed partially translucent. Orphan could also make out gills on the water-hobgoblin’s neck, and frills of fins. It seemed naked, but at the same time clothed in sheets of water.

“What a prize,” the water-hobgoblin burbled. It spoke in Aquan, and the warforged’s ring translated. “The Crimson Ship itself. And it was thought gone and disintegrated weeks agone.”

The warforged threw his shiruken, but the water-hobgoblin waved his hand lazily, not even stirring from his throne, and a wave of water rose up to knock the spinning blades aside.

Orphan jumped, grabbing a loose rope from the shattered yardarm, and swinging over to Delegado’s bow. “Can you stand?” he yelled to his half-orc companion.

“Trying!” the half-orc snarled. But his boots could not get purchase.

“Feed this ship to the Devourer I shall,” chortled the water-hobgoblin in Aquan. “And a pretty price for the corpses shall the rakshasa pay.”

The water-hobgoblin reached a hand into the column of water that held it aloft, and drew out another frozen ball of liquid. Still laughing, it threw the missile again, this time at the trapped half-orc.

Chapter 4 – Part 12

Thomas staggered forward, his head swimming, visions of magical force floating in his eyes, his mind. He had to walk, to find food, to prevail in the hunt. His senses were overloaded now, and he relied on instinct.

With the vestiges of his rational mind he set up a pattern of movement on the deck. It would move in a series of concentric circles, to keep everyone off their feet, and certain spots were set like traps, ready to grab with great wooden fingers.

The ones above would therefore stay above, and he would peruse the below at his leisure. To find succor.

A door stood in his way. His door. They’re all my doors! The whole ship is mine!

He wanted to go. He would go. He willed it, so it would be.

The door exploded outwards, smoking splinters flying in all directions, peppering the hallway and open door across from him.

His stormstalk lay dead on the floor before him. A bloody shiruken still stuck in the thing’s body.

The stalk is dead. Orphan did it. Which betrayed me first?

He looked out, into the other room, Delegado’s room. He felt the boards wriggling from his neck and shoulder twitch.

The changeling was there, lying facedown, unmoving. Electrical burns were on her skin.

She was naked.

Mine.

She was paralyzed, her nerves damaged by the stormstalk.

Succor.

He’d seen it before. His loyal stormstalk.

Want.

He was barely cognizant of shedding the last of his clothes as he crouched behind her. Suddenly, viciously, enjoying the pure physicality of it, he flipped her over.

He was rewarded with awe in her eyes. Awe or terror.

“Thomas,” she gasped, barely able to speak. “You-your face.”

Mine.

He grabbed her, and she tried to scream, but he did not care.

Take what is mine.

Chapter 4 - Part 11

Delegado grunted as the deck ceased movement. Through the blood running into his eyes he saw the captain slump over, and fall to the deck.

The half-orc pushed himself up on one arm, still gripping his sword handle. He smelled ozone. Trying to ignore what that might mean he wiped his forehead, gritting his teeth against the pain of his scalp wound.

Have to find a bandage, stop the flow so I can see, the half-orc thought. But he also wanted to get to his feet and find his bow. Whatever was attacking the ship, he didn’t want it to get to close. He said ‘he’ would take control of the ship again? Who is he? Delegado wondered. It was likely another fiend, a stowaway, a harpy that he had missed.

The ship boards started rippling again, and he fell on his stomach. Gripping the sword handle even more tightly, he saw that the entire deck was acting like the surface of the ocean.

At least it’s not attacking me, the half-orc thought. Still, he could not get to his feet. The rippling wood kept him from finding purchase.

Then he heard three things, each right after the other. Running feet – warforged feet, followed by ripping wood, which was then followed by a loud booming sound.

Following which the entire ship began to tilt.

Chapter 4 – Part 10

Orphan woke up. It was a nearly novel experience, since he had only lost consciousness a handful of times. A warforged’s handful, as it had only been three times.

It was a warmth in his foot, a sensation of rocking, and then he opened his eyelids (technically semi-organic composite eyesight shaders). He’d been expecting a stone or metal room, a torture chamber back in Ashtakala. He was on a ship. He quickly jumped to his feet, taking in the ambient light – recognizing that it was late afternoon, and that the ship that was adrift in the ocean somewhere.

Ois was sprawled out on the floor, naked. This surprised Orphan, given the little he understood of gender relations. A moment later he took in the electrical burns on her skin – and the stormstalk, wriggling into the room, getting ready to discharge again.

Intuition and instinct flooded through Orphan. In less time than it took for a human’s heart to beat he realized that his senses were sharper than they had been before he passed out. The headband of the Balanced Palm was around his head, no doubt put there by Delegado from the shape of the knot that Orphan could feel. And its power – it boosted him somehow, in a similar way that the monk’s belt that he’d inherited from his sensei did.

His hands were already moving. The shiruken spun through the air. One, two, then three. None were byeshk, but they were sharp enough.

The stormstalk blasted the first shiruken with a bolt, spinning it aside. The next two slashed it to pieces, gouging its eye and slitting the length of its body, releasing a vile mess of orange pus and bright sinewy tubes.

Orphan was ignoring the stormstalk, knowing that it was dead. He crouched next to Ois, checking her breathing and the bloodbeat in her neck.

“Fine,” Ois croaked out. “Just – paralysis.” She coughed, barely able to form words. “Get Delegado.” A swallow. “Hurry.”

The monk nodded, and took off. Delegado could heal, he’d seen the half-orc hold Pienna from the edge of death and bring her back. In a flash he was in the corridor, looking around. To the left, the hallway went to a door that was open a crack, and the warforged made out pots. A galley. Ahead, a cabin door, firmly shut. He could hear Thomas muttering behind it. Thomas was speaking in another language, daelkyr, from the twisted edge to it.

Iron Orphan hesitated. If Thomas was in there, then the warforged should not have killed the stormstalk. The half-daelkyr would die without a symbiont.

Orphan looked back, Ois was lying face down, her back and the backs of her thighs showing blackened, burnt spots. She needed Delegado. What could be done about Thomas, and how the stormstalk had managed to get free, that had to wait.

To the right, a ways down, a cabin door. He was there in a second, door open, and it was empty. It had a knocked-over wash basin, little else.

Farther down the corridor, light, sea sounds.

The warforged bolted. It had been less than seconds since he’d killed the stormstalk. He heard Delegado topside, felt the wood moving strangely.

The deckboards tore upwards, grabbing at him, holding him like a giant wooden fist.

Chapter 4 – Part 9

Thomas smirked. He had won. The Captain had attempted to renege, and now the fiend was taken out. The half-daelkyr detached himself from the Crimson Ship, but not completely. Two writhing strips of lumber stayed attached to him.

He focused, sliding and twisting more wood. Now the deck was shut off. Delegado would not get below, not quickly. It would have been better to hurl him over the side, but no matter. The ingrate swamp bully was doubtlessly congratulating himself at surviving, but at the same time the half-orc would dare not draw the blade free. The deck was quiet now, but for all Delegado knew it could erupt at any moment. The half-orc would have to hold on and whimper.

“How dare he attack me, call me names, threaten me,” muttered Thomas. “I plucked them all from oblivion. Me. Thomas.”

His daelkyr half was muttering mentally about rearranging the limbs of his friends. Another voice told him that they weren’t his friends. Another insisted that they were, and that he had damaged his mind with his mental interaction with the Crimson Ship.

He ignored this distraction. His mind was whole. He knew it because he knew. He knew that Delegado was an ingrate, that Ois was a hypocrite, and that the Captain was an enemy.

Thomas sneered, and caressed the Crimson Ship mentally. He slowly wound its magic down, letting it drift as a normal ship in the ocean. In return it seemed to caress his mind as well, or at least partly. There was a spot in his mind that he could not feel. Fatigue, that was it.

Unnoticed by him, a thin stream of blood was issuing from his nostrils, and another from his left eye.

Later, I will learn more of this ship’s secrets, he thought. He was not aware that the left side of his face was sagging, the muscles unresponsive. For now bring it gently down, then find out where and when I am. He knew they had leaped forward through time but he didn’t know by how much.

He was hungry, ravenous in fact.

He inhaled. Succor would be had. But prominence before nourishment. He meant to let everyone know. As soon as the ship was settled. He would make sure that they all knew.

The part of his brain that was filling with his own blood failed to register that his impulse control was fading.

If not gone.

Chapter 4 – Part 8

Ois sat up, her stomach settling, perspiration covering her body and reality came back. The naked changeling staggered to her feet, trying to get her bearings.

She saw the stormstalk a split second before its beam hit her square on.

Electricity sizzled through her nerve endings, burning her skin. She felt staggered, slowed down. She recognized temporary nerve damage as her reflexes slowed.

When you are in a place that you cannot defend, you run, and you attack what evil you can reach, an instructor had told her once. The Silver Flame does not expect its paladins to defend the indefensible, when evil needs to be attacked elsewhere.

Before the start of the Great War, the attitude of the Silver Flame theocracy to paladins retreating had not always been so broad-minded. Necessity adjusted ecclesiastic thinking faster than debate could.

She ran, or more accurately lumbered, towards the creature. She didn’t have time to go hunting for her sword. It was free, which probably meant Thomas was dead, and she had to go next door to tell Delegado. Betting that it had no teeth or stinger to make an opportunistic attack on her as she ran by it, she trundled through the doorway and turned left.

She was right about the lack of physical defenses, but the tiny aberration was able to recharge before she could get into Del’s room. Again her flesh sizzled, and only clenched teeth kept her from howling in agony. Again her limbs gre leaden, the damage to her coordination slowing her tremendously.

Thomas’ cabin was to her right. The wood was buckled, and strange lights flashed from around it. Delegado’s door was ahead and to the left. She hoped he was there.

This is your sin, she told herself hysterically. You wanted him to be your lover, to find you nude, and initiate the love-making. You made yourself a harlot, and the Flame withdrew its protection from you.

She scrabbled at the door, finally getting it open. He wasn’t in. She saw a rumpled bed, some bags, rolled up, and the body of the warforged, lying as if at rest. She tried shutting the door behind her.

She was not fast enough. The next bolt of electricity hit her left leg, just under her buttock. She twisted, the leg giving out, her body no longer responding. Choking out pain, she fell, slamming into the deck, paralyzed with electrical damage to her nervous system.

And as she fell, her hand fell on the warforged’s foot.

Even unmoving, she could summon the Flame. She laid on hands through the merest touch. Though the construct side of Iron Orphan’s body cut her efficiency in half, she sent every scrap of healing that she could into the warforged’s body.