15th Transmission:

Sharpen a knife so much is cut through your dimensional wall?

Did science in your world go too far?

Did you try a new combination of druid prescribed drug treatments?

However you might find yourself passing through to new realms, our quick 15 point checklist will give you a head start on figuring out the Governing Laws of Existence in your new plane, so you can make the most of it, and make yourself at home!

* Cont’d from the Knights Almanac

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You rested for the night. Another half a day’s travel to get to the city.

A series of cryptic images and scenes play out within the dreams of your fitful sleep.

The passage of eons, the vast multitude of worlds beyond your own.

  Planets are born with life of their own. It slips from them, onto their surfaces in forms of new life. There is but a moment where the planet holds onto enough of its vast consciousness to understand what it has given birth to. A moment to ponder on the canyons and oceans and forests and little critters that result from their wild minds decaying. The liminal space between the single cell and the construct built from many.

  Then the planet rests, exhausted.

  The completion of this cycle occurs when new seeds of planets rise from the dying mass. While these seeds collect what they need to leave and start anew, the grand void is given reign to devour and digest what is not used.

  You see this played out in an infinite loop, every iteration distinct but the same. But in the moments before waking you see the pattern. The orchestrated cosmic movements of all these pieces. Viewing the cosmos in this way you see several pairs of eyes. And mouths. The impression of a dimly lit space sustained on the undone potential of the worlds that comprise them.

  They revel in their deeds, and wear sly grins.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

As you wake, these images drift from your mind and fade as sand through surf. Accretio has begun his march toward the city. Whatever fuel he may have needed in the past, his Hearthspark now seems self sustaining. The dream is quickly forgotten, the concepts ungrasped.

“No.”

What do you mean, “no”?

“It’s too much. How am I supposed to just forget that and move on?”

  I find some dense grain-bearing grasses growing near Accretio’s neck, where sunlight hits and the fires within him do not scorch. It dries quickly and is ready to be milled before I strip the stalks and drop the grains into the stone bowl in Accretio’s shell that’s suited to milling. I’m making bread.

It would come back to you in flashes, occasionally. Foreshadowing the conclusion of your epic quest as you waged on.

“Do you mean to deprive my witness of critical thought or even a half-way keen mind?” Accretio rumbled.

You roam off the main trade path toward Port Orbital. What the denizens of the high up towers may have spied of you, gazing down from their precipices, you can only wonder. But occasional wagons and travelers have not spotted you.

I’ve gotten some spring water from the basin of Accretio’s river, and I’ve mixed a little ball of dough. It’s tightened into a smooth sphere and is rising quite quickly.

“I think I’d remember the dream. And have figured out what it means.”

Your Hoardosphere argues beyond his station. They have no business swaying anybody. But I’ll tell you what. We can help each other out here.

This story needs to get going somehow, so if you give me one goal: one thing you’re working toward that we can spend some time on, then all that dream stuff can stay in your head.

Work towards your goal, and I’ll answer some questions for you.

I crush a few crunchy seeds onto the loaf I’ve formed on the flat of my Baker’s Peel. I take my rapier and piece little points into the loaf so it might have somewhere for the steam to escape as its cooking. I lean over low and dip the peel down and around Accretio’s side, into the Shell Oven. It shouldn’t take long. Soon I will eat.

I say, “I want to get Thremp back.”.

And long while later, emerging onto the cart path from behind a cliff laden bend, Accretio spoke, “I do not argue, but I must parse that which comes to be in ambiguity, Mr. Van Kleek.”

So, Elk, how are we going to do that?

End of Part 1