Dippy wants to at least see us to our current destination. That’s fair. He says the quest he pledged was to stop what’s affecting the Dawn friend. More or less. Even still, if we can’t find a solid lead towards helping Dawn in Victo, we’ll be parting ways. I’m honestly not too scared for him to be traveling alone with Zippy. I’m sure Zippy can take naps while riding along on Dippy, and then stay up at night as a guard. Dippy is incredibly capable of taking care of himself.
Trekking along the northeasterly path from the cult hideout leads to a river as I expected. We should be able to head up it a few miles before needing to camp, even with my sluggish pace. I feel so bad for holding Teuila and Dawn back. Te and I are both a bit too scared for her to try to go Valkyrie again after her bout of basically radiation sickness. Same with mine. Even if King is dead, a hundred percent, fully, I don’t know if I’d survive the transformation with so much more sickening radiance tainting the mana beneath my skin.
Oh no, Dawn. Not again. She stumbled, and she’s weeping, begging for any sense. I quickly draw forth the staff again, and re-apply the spell to her. She hugs herself tightly while sobbing. This isn’t fair. She begs nearness once more, how could we refuse? She’s hugging Dippy so tightly that I hear his scales grating inside his armor, oof. I. I can’t allow myself to wallow in despair in sympathy for Dawn. Her senses came back, but I think the sensory loss lasted a few more minutes than last time.
We make it a good long ways upriver before it happens again, about where I figure we should camp at anyway. We just passed through the big copse of trees, and the greater forest is up ahead to the North. I renew the spell for Dawn immediately when I realize her senses are failing her again. She whispers nearly-silent thanks, and she gloms on to “Boss.”
Teuila is wearing the saddest, most tender expression I’ve seen on her face in an incredibly long time. We’ve had some similar moments. I think Teuila was beginning to fancy Dawn in some fashion, at least as the kind of friend she could drag along on adventures. Now we’re all worried whether she’ll have her senses permanently ripped from her, or disappear from existence entirely. The priest said she might even be scrubbed from our memories. Can magic do that? Can it change memo- Ow my head. Oh holy hell that hurts. Wait a minute.
You have got to be kidding me. Magic!? Are you messing with my head!? My headache suddenly lets up. How incredibly curious. Oof, I feel a tad disoriented after the sudden headache and its quick departure. Oh, Dawn is asking to be Teuila’s big spoon. She’s scared of losing her senses if she tries to stay up for watch. Dippy and Zippy and I will take turns then. About halfway through my watch, I can hear Dawn whimpering fearfully and weeping. Thankfully I’m awake to cast the spell on her once more. It seems to calm her down.
It’s nearing the end of my watch, but ugh, I feel sick to my stomach. Why’d I volunteer for first watch? I guess I can eat some hardtack, and jerky, and drink a lot of water to try to calm my stomach.
Hm, quadrupeds nearby, skirting my danger wrap sensory range. Dawn is probably sensing them in their radius as well. Sliding my double-barreled crossbow onto my wrist, I stand very slowly. I’m an obvious, glowing target, so hopefully they don’t leap at my sleeping companions if they’re hostile. Dippy awakens, and I can sense immediately that he’s enhancing himself with the spell. Dippy glances towards me, and signals me the one moment gesture.
Dippy somehow whistles. I have no idea how a reptile whistles, but he does. There are several growls, but Dippy makes a few more noises, and suddenly the quadrupeds step into the light. Dogs, wolves, canines and lupines, step into the light. There are a lot more than I had thought. One approaches Dippy, and I notice an immediate difference. All the other canine and lupine individuals are sightless with smoky, clouded over eyes. They don’t seem to do anything other than follow this one that has its sight still. In a way, they’re like the Aasimovian Ancestors.
What happened to Eights? Someone stole the light from his eyes? Long before things started getting really bad in the Imperium? Did, did the Emperor start by experimenting on dog and wolf souls? Eights would just stand in one spot, wait for food, eat, do his business and repeat, right? That’s, that’s a lot like the Aasimovian Ancestors who do ‘guard duty’ they just walk some route, maybe a single block, maybe a portion of a city. They wear armor, and are probably a bit hard to put down, but I think their presence is deterrent enough against most crimes. The Aasimovians to a last don’t want to disgrace themselves in front of their Ancestors, since they assume they’ll be returning some day.
I’m getting sidetracked. Dippy seems fairly upset, but I’m incredibly sleepy. Hopefully you didn’t need anything from me to handle this situation Dippy buddy. You seem to have it well in-hand, err, claw. Oh, do I have to sleep in Dippy’s shield? This is awkward. I guess I’ll just try to sleep in the mud. No wonder Daffodil said not even a fool mudcamps without covering. I regret letting Teuila throw out that leaf-leather stuff.
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Laying on my side, I immediately regret it, as the constant drizzle splashes the tiniest bit of a standing muddy puddle into my eyes. Agh! Agony. Just mild agony, but still. Hell in a handbasket that hurt. Koff, ugh, the air is thick with moisture, the kind that sticks to your lungs no matter how much you cough. Exhaustion takes me though, so at least I’ve some small solace in that I can sleep, despite the discomfort.
Blerf, urgh. Hm? Could swear I just went to sleep, but I’m being roused. Dawn is helping me out of the mud. Why does she look so embarrassed? Dawn starts to apologize, “Rej, I, I’m sorry, I forgot, I didn’t even think.”
I raise my eyebrows, still a tad groggy. What’s Dawn apologizing for? Dawn continues, “I just, Boss kinda makes me feel safe, and I forgot that, since I don’t sleep, there wasn’t like, an extra bed. Sorry Rej.”
Oh I get it. I respond, “Hey, friends sometimes have needs that are easy to satisfy, and other times have needs that are inconvenient or difficult to meet. This one wasn’t bad, all told. Dawn, I’m worried for you. We don’t know how long you have, and, and. Glp. I’m okay with you needing some sort of close sensation to remind you you’re still with us, and not trapped. I want you to remain with us, and not get trapped without senses, without the ability to act. That sounds like a horrid nightmare.”
Hm, oh, right, I’ve sort of been in that position myself. I took a mental vacation, locked myself away in my psyche, scared of and broken by reality. Yeah, it’s definitely frightening, and unpleasant to imagine being unable to return from that. All the more reason to hustle towards anywhere that might have any sort of clue. We should be able to get approximately halfway from here to Victo in a day’s journey.
Dippy and Zippy are looking more and more sad. I wonder what happened with the wolves. He doesn’t seem to want to talk about it, or be able to express himself in a way that I could understand at least. I won’t press him on the issue, since I’m pretty sure it helped confirm some things for me. Ideas that have been festering since we got to this world.
A body without a soul can still do, -things-, though it’s nebulous how well they can do those things, or even respond to outside stimuli. Someone stole the soul of Eights, Aces’ dog, a very, very long time ago. Quite likely the only person or entity we know going around stealing souls. Canine and lupine souls might have been their first experiments. Aasimovians have had rumors circulating for a long time that the Imperium has soulless people, or souls going missing. They likely figured that the descriptions from travelers more or less matched their own ancestors. There’s more pieces to this puzzle, some I don’t have, but some I -should- have, that are somewhere in my head, but it hurts to dig around for them.
I’m making a lot of leaps and jumping to conclusions, but genre savviness is starting to kick in. And for some reason, it feels like memories had been being clouded from me. That cloud is beginning to lift, but I’m not entirely sure which memories were hidden, or why. I’ll probably need some sort of mnemonic device or trigger to recall specific ones. I hope that whatever this puzzle finally reveals, that it’s in time to help Dawn, and can do something for her.
A fairly somber day’s worth of journey behind us, with several short breaks as Dawn’s senses leave her on occasion. We’re in the same situation as last night. Dawn’s terrified to be up, alone, senseless for hours. I entirely empathize with that. Still, we’re only about a day out of Victo, I can handle another night of crappy sleep in the mud. I try to reapply the density sense spell on Dawn as soon as it wears off, whenever it does.
Alright, it’ll be pretty late when we hit Victo, a normal day’s trek from here would put us a mile or two or so out of town. We can press on a little bit longer and hopefully stay at the Castle Inn. Huff. Huff. Okay, long day. A strange light is passing over Victo, visible from the distance as we finally near it. Ugh, I’m so looking forward to a bed at an inn, instead of sleeping alone in the mud. Guess I’ll have to get a room by myself. That sort of sucks, but, it’s for a friend. I don’t know if people in the Celestial Imperium have any prejudices against scalekind, or if there’s even room at the inn. We should have Dippy wait down here while we at least figure things out.
Dawn follows along more slowly as we enter town. It’s eerie. The Aasimovians were right, it seems like the Imperium has taken up the preservation of ancestors, but they haven’t. I’m almost positive these are bodies wandering around without souls, because their souls were stolen, not from naturally passing on to an afterlife. Dawn seems awestruck at the phenomenon.
Actually, I think I should be too. The blank-eyed individuals standing about or bumbling around outnumber the regularly-living people so much, that I don’t see a single person who appears as if they could hold a conversation. No one seems to be alive.
Stopping by a leatherworks as I head towards the Castle Inn, the door is unlocked, but the attendant is standing sightlessly in the dark. I frown and drop some gold on the counter as I pick up a spare sleeping bag. Hopefully the same type of anti-wear material enchantments have been applied. I don’t think you’d get many repeat customers if your bag melted underneath someone in their sleep, while someone else’s held up against the elements.
Teuila stops at a provisions store and does much the same. I follow after her and renew some of my own supplies. Thankfully there are some long-lasting things still around, despite the unlikelihood that anyone will be restocking, ever. I’m left wondering and worrying, are we too late to do anything on Rayileklia? If the Celestial Emperor can take an entire town, leaving them all like this, what’s stopping him from just taking everyone else? Seriously. What’s stopping such an evil entity?