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The cliffs that separate the lowland stormheaths and tropical rainforests from the more arid highlands loomed up ahead. The River Torrent was more of a trickle. What’s more, there was a constant thrump-thrump sound of drums that grew louder the further we marched.
Laval war parties were present at the mouth of the Torrent’s great canyon. All three had gathered, cooperating, even sharing a great bonfire.
Others, too, were present: bird-herders, lacking combat experience but armed with war clubs all the same; the coastal confederation, out of their element but with a few bladed foreign weapons; smaller clans from the delta, fielding no more than five of-age males.
And then there was us. Hector introduced us as “the football jocks, a warrior band from beyond the far river bend.” This worked, despite nobody knowing what football was. Even our local allies didn’t know how to translate that.
In normal times every clan here wouldn’t (and due to dozens of unrelated language families, couldn’t) speak to each other. They were here out of desperation, united against the highland clan who had constructed a massive dam, dozens of meters high.
The dam was made of the largest whitewood logs we’d ever seen. Would’ve taken a hundred man-hours to prepare even one. And this dam had multiple layers of interlocked trunks.
While the dam had been constructed from the ground-up, it was being maintained from the canyon-down. Stairwells, ramps, and an elaborate system of pulleys allowed a force on the high plains to reinforce the top of the dam. The canyon became its own natural wall, with whoever was up there at once permanently besieged by the lowlands and perfectly invulnerable.
Now, this was the first time any of us ever heard of a canyon, an effort to dam the Torrent, or anyone living up on the highlands. All this was news to us.
The mass meeting of stormlanders did allow us to properly introduce our newly-formed clan (such that it was) to the neighbors.
Laval chased us off with rocks. Delta clans ignored us even when we tried speaking with them. Bird-herders liked us, in the way you gawk at a novelty act.
Whitewoods are fireproof. Nothing was breaking the blockade down here, not with the level of technology the stormlanders had displayed thus far. There were talks of using a fleet of battering rams – break the whitewoods apart with other whitewoods. Even if this were viable, they’d have to bombard the dam multiple times while defenders high above threw rocks and arrows and jars of smoldering oil down at them.
A half-dozen enterprising bird-herders wanted to check the cliffs for potential paths upward. This seemed like a better idea than sitting around at the dam beating on drums. By a vote, our outland-clan agreed to help the search.
“You guys go do that,” Richard said when the verdict was announced. “I’m headed back to the cave to pick up one of our chemistry textbooks.”
“What for?” Hector asked.
Richard shrugged in the direction of the dam. “That’s not getting dislodged with any firepower the locals are capable of wielding. I’m going to find a faster solution.”
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Using our rapidly evolving hybrid language, we were able to negotiate our way into the search party. Elvan eyes are far superior to humans, be they from Earth or this realm. This made it even more surprising when Hector, with his weathered, barely functional set of athletic-compatible glasses, spotted the ancient, zig-zag path upward.
“I know a goat path when I see it,” Hector said. “Well, probably some sort of bird-lizard path, but same difference.”
The bird-herders knew their fowl and could confirm that this was a path from some now-extinct land-walking pack bird, preserved only in this single clan’s oral history. If any pass through the highlands would be unguarded, it would be this long-forgotten footpath.
Yes, this was the very same footpath we’ve used in the event of emergency ever since. Rita used it as a shortcut frequently on her trips from the highlands down to the stormheaths. The youth of Secondhome used it to escape the open warfare of the stormheaths as well. Good job, by the way; I never got to mention how proud I was of you.
So now most fighting-age football players were working alongside a mixed group of random refugee subaltern and a clan devoted to avian husbandry. Richard ran back to camp alone and even at a lightning-fast pace it would be days before he caught up, or even returned to the dam.
Society up on the mesa was not unlike that in the adjacent highlands; a handful of vaguely aristocratic clans based in their own compounds, desperately trying to maintain a standard of living the land itself would no longer support.
The clans up here were more united, mostly out of desperation and fear of a loss of status. Looking out over the sun-blasted expanse and the dried-up riverbeds, it didn’t take much imagination to surmise why they wanted to turn the Torrent’s deep channel into a reservoir.
I suggested we make for the headwaters. Wasn’t sure what we’d find there, but there was at least one ally with preternatural resources that could provide aid. None of the islanders possessed any knowledge of actual, manifesting river spirits and apparently took the old-timey practice of river worship to be more of a metaphor. Couldn’t tell anyone about my strange visions; locals would assume I was ranting about a strange outlander concept and my teammates would assume I was insane.
Still, checking out the headwaters was our best bet with several cliffside mottes protecting the dam from above. The highlands have always been sparsely populated relative to the more fertile stormheaths, and darting between and around the territories of the various clans was easy on the flat, treeless terrain.
Halfway to the headwaters, we noticed a massive plume of smoke wafting over where the dam should be. From here we held another vote, and this time I was outnumbered. We were to double back towards the canyon and see what the commotion was about.
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Explosives. The basic components were available in the lowlands here and there. Key to the concoction was excrement. And wouldn’t you know it, the primary “cattle” species of the realm happened to be man-sized birds whose droppings seemed to fit the bill.
It would take years of trial and error to make a proper bomb. But Richard managed to combine a literal ton of bird guano (thank you, bird-herders) and some carbon from ground-up whitewood bark to make a hell of a spark. More fireworks than anything else, but all those sparks at the foot of the dam scared the hell out of the defenders long enough for the Laval to make some headway with hooks and ladders. So panicked were the defenders that they fled before they could destroy their ramps, pulleys, and stairs. Suddenly, our largest force had a foothold on the high plains, and the confederation of cliffside clans was only beginning to marshal a response.
This was (per Laval oral historians, who are prone to self-serving exaggeration) the largest battle in the entire history of the island, at eighty stormlanders against a combined force of over one hundred twenty. Standard isle doctrine is high on maiming, low on casualties, but you generally would prefer being a casualty to being captured.
What was not planned was for surprise reinforcements flanking the superior force. That was us – an unorganized but highly motivated rabble of people in bird costumes and weather-beaten football pads. At once, the more numerically superior force was surrounded, and isle warfare took on a brawling dynamic the locals were unaccustomed to.
To call it a massacre would be a bit of an understatement. But our foes were taken wholly unprepared and routed.
A foothold secured, the Laval spent a week roaming about the plains, toppling towers looking out over the cliff. By the end of that week some of their cousins had arrived and climbed the dam. Clans from all over the lowlands smelled blood at this point, so there were now hundreds of people down at the foot of the dam, pulling on it with ropes, climbing it to try and find a weakness.
On the eve of the next big push further inland, I ventured down the precarious mixture of stairs, ladders, and ropes back to the stormheaths. Richard was there, having set up a lab with a few enterprising volunteers from the team, including young Rita.
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The young girl was mincing some sort of concoction into a flask carved out of wood.
“Last explosion wasn’t as big as I was hoping,” Richard said. “Going to need multiple charges to clear the blockage.”
“How did you develop explosives so fast?” I asked.
“We didn’t,” Rita said.
Rick rolled his eyes and looked down at Rita with the kind of mild annoyance without anger that you get when kids blab about things they’re not supposed to.
“I’ve been developing low-yield explosives for the past four and a half months.” Richard didn’t look up from the beginnings of a woodwork cannister.
“Without telling anyone?”
“It was a side project. A way to get a leg up on the neighbors. If need be.”
It certainly paid dividends, so I chose to ignore the fact that Richard was building Earth-viable weapons in our new world.
Richard would, again, stay at the dam, having enlisted curious members of some of the smaller clans to serve as manual labor.
We kept a token force to represent our fledgling group among the six-dozen clans that now gathered at the cliff’s edge. The rest of us returned to the mesa and joined a selection of war bands fanning out across the mesa. Organization was… loose, as nobody could truly communicate with each other. Bird-herders went off to the west and from what we heard later they were repelled thoroughly.
I led our merry band along the cliffside, in search of the headwaters. We shadowed the largest Laval contingent on the opposite side of the canyon; the strongest settlements were built into the cliffside, after all.
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The headwaters shrine was much as you see it now. It was surrounded by several rings of defensive lines. The plainslanders didn’t want anyone cutting them off from the river’s headwaters the same way they were trying to cut off everyone else.
Laval charged first and we came to back them up when it became apparent the clan had no clue how to attack fortifications.
This is how I wound up fighting side by side with the third son of the clan-chief of the Laval. My baseball bat and his war club both bonked the same targets. Before long we were back-to-back on top of a rampart. The whole fortification was swarming on us. Would’ve ended badly (though the Laval would’ve gotten a nice heroic song out of his demise) were it not for the sudden, freak arrival of a rogue wave coming out of the headwater pool. In an instant the primary defensive bulwark of the plains dwellers was routed, and we had a wall of water at our backs. Hector led the boys in a charge that broke the enemy’s ranks and sent the less experienced among them diving into the drink rather than face the tortures that would await them in a Laval prisoner pit.
Laval warriors fell to their feet in the river once the last of our foes ran off. They babbled out some prayers to a river god that existed somewhere in the clan lore. This is how I first heard the word “Aminia.”
The waters maintained their ferocious flood levels. Over the course of mere minutes, the water wrapped around the headwater shrine like a bubble.
“Does anyone know what is happening?” I asked Hector, who shrugged.
“Some of the subaltern say it’s a miracle,” he said.
I looked over the scene, wondering what else it could possibly be.
“Pull everyone back from the water. We don’t know if this, uh, waterspout is going to get larger or change direction or what.”
The Laval were still in the water, but they could fend for themselves.
A channel through the water barrier opened just as swiftly and suddenly as the barrier itself. It was wide enough for one above average-sized human to walk comfortably through. Stormlanders would’ve needed to crouch.
“I’m going in there,” I told the group.
“Hey, boss, you insane?” Hector asked.
“Just head back to the camp if I’m not back within five hours. Rick’s in charge if I don’t make it back.”
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Eerie calm reigned within the maelstrom. The headwater temple – more of a stone circle than an elaborate temple complex like the other ruins – awaited, unchanged from how you see it now. Been that way for eons – the one element of this entire world that I’d believe truly lasted from time immemorial.
Within the temple there was a lone figure wading in the warm natural spring – the very one we’ve gathered around tonight. He had a human’s ears and a rather lithe figure hidden behind flowing robes.
“Thank you,” the figure said.
“Aminia, right?” I took a step closer to the spring. “The locals were chanting it.”
“That’s a very old name.”
“You’re a river god.” I said immediately.
Aminia turned to me, displaying a cocky smirk.
“What? Act like you’ve never seen a god before?”
“Not so directly.”
This kind of thing doesn’t happen back home. Our world is round. Rivers don’t have patron deities, certainly none you can have a conversation with.
“Ah, is that not how it works in your world?” Aminia asked. “Been meaning to ask about that before recent events diminished my power downstream. First thing’s first: clearing that blockage at the mouth of the canyon.”
Aminia confirmed most of what we could already surmise: the plainswalkers were trying to dam up a reservoir to compensate for the fact that all other waters on this half of the island were drying up. Doing so would preserve the handful of extended-family compounds on the plains while dooming the more populous stormheaths.
“So, introducing technology to the natural flow of the river diluted its holy power?” I asked.
“What?” Aminia cocked his eyebrow. “Every fish pen the stormlanders put out is a form of technology. Spears used for spear fishing? Technology. The temples that allow me to manifest physically downstream? Technology. Oh, it’s nothing so drastic as a full dam, but without technology none of the downstream clans would’ve lived long enough to ever start worshiping me, let alone survive long enough to forget about me. Oh, they often call their techniques sacred and ancestral magic. But they are bending the natural world to their will. I’m quite proud of them.”
Aminia let out a bemused giggle. “It’s funny, is all. Is this, what is the word, primitive luddism, common in your world? If so, your kind ought to still be naked and living in caves.”
The river god looked me down from to toe.
“Which clearly is not the case,” he concluded. “And judging by that chariot that fell into my river, you don’t live in caves in your world.”
“That is true,” I said.
A god in the flesh. Now, I certainly knew nothing about comparable forms of paganism in our home world. But gods can pull off miracles. And if anything was going to send us home, it would most certainly be miraculous.
“Can you… get us home?”
Aminia looked down into the depths of the pool. His eyes narrowed contemplatively.
“That is a tall order. I am no god of boundaries, portals, or borderlands.”
My heart dropped. I let out an involuntary sob of disappointment. It must have tugged at the god’s heartstrings – or whatever he has.
“While summoning a portal back to, well, some other realm is not part of my skillset here, there is a bit of information stored by the river that ought to help.”
I was barely listening. How much longer were we going to be stuck here?
“This is not the first time this strange summoning ritual has occurred within a stone’s throw of the Torrent.”
All at once my spirits raised.
“Huh? It’s happened before?”
“In the ancient past, yes. Drastically different circumstances, though.” Aminia shrugged, his robes settling into place further down his shoulders. “The people of the plains practiced it in the ancient past. They won’t know anything more than rumors today though.”
“More of a lead than anything else the past couple months,” I said.
“I hope that can help you. Maybe we can converse more at the shrines when this blockage downriver is dealt with.” Aminia focused on something to the south. “Your friend will have charges ready later tonight. It won’t quite be enough. Which is why I’m building power here for a grand crescendo. In the meantime, why don’t you tell me all about this strange world you came from?”
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We got to talking about Texas. First time I’d spoken about it in-depth with someone who didn’t come here on a bus. Didn’t realize how much I missed it all – from plumbing to my family to the damn mosquitos, even. And Trevor, most of all. I looked up after some unknown amount of time to realize that night had fallen. Hector and the boys would be heading back to the dam, under the assumption I was dead.
“This world sounds absolutely magical,” Aminia said. “So many strange and miraculous environments. And your stars are hydrogen? Not the dead corpses of the progenitors? Only one moon? Positively fascinating.”
“It’s all just mundane to us. Nothing we would call magic. Just boring quotidian reality.”
“Huh. So, the passage to this world must have come as quite the shock.”
I nodded. “Took weeks for it to truly dawn on us. Not sure what alternative there was, but everything about this place was so out there our brains just couldn’t handle the implications.”
Aminia rose to his feet, which were still in the tidal pool.
“It’s almost time.” Again, he looked to the south. “Might want to head off after your friends before they report you as dead. Should be just enough time for me to send a wave down to finish off that blockade.”
“Uh, it’s been nice talking to you?” I offered.
“And you, Mister Martinez.”
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I exited the water barrier to find Laval warriors still collapsing over themselves in fervent prayer.
One of them pointed at me as soon as I emerged from the mist.
“Chetak!” the cry, which means ‘Chosen One’ in Lavalese.
I tried to wave off the throngs of new worshipers. Really, I did. Only their war-chief paid me anything less than reverence.
“Your clan assumed you dead,” he said.
“It’s more a team than a clan,” I said in our still-developing English-Lavalse-Bird-Herder hybrid language.
If he understood anything I said, the be-sashed commander showed no signs. He merely pointed off towards where my little hunting band would’ve tried making for the dam.
It was a long trip back to the cliffs through land that had once been rife with wells and towers by the canyonside. The Laval really went to town.
Before midnight, two things of note happened: firstly, a roar of rushing water rushed down the canyon, quadruple its normal height. My best estimates of its speed clocked it at twenty miles an hour. Didn’t have a clue how long the canyon was, but the wave couldn’t be more than three hours out.
Second, a great plume of smoke rose from where the dam should’ve been on the horizon. Multiple echoing blasts sounded from that direction on a considerable delay.
I walked alone for a day and a half, reaching the cliff long after the action had already ended. Hector would explain it to me later: Richard’s recruits rigged explosives at strategic locations around the dam. This did a number on the dam’s structure and dislodged a couple logs while leaving the rest more of a log jam than an organized blockade. Still, the Torrent was only a trickle, and the remains of the dam could leak for a decade and not restore the river.
That freak floodwater struck the log jam within an hour of the explosives going off. The force was enough to clear the weakened dam and leave the resulting whitewood logs spread out over a hundred miles of the Torrent as the river quickly regained control of its path to the sea. It would be half a year before the Torrent would recede from its bloated maxima. Still, better an overabundance of water than a total dearth.
In the end, it could be said that a combination of chemistry and divinity freed the River Torrent.
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