Morgan Mackenzie savored the sensation of the valley winds against her skin. The trip back to her valley had taken almost two weeks, and would have taken much longer without the Titan to help clear the path for the wagons and Dana’s mobile workshop. One disadvantage to her father’s current form, she now understood to be similar to her own reliance on food: he had to eat a lot, and frequently. Fortunately, Maxwell Mackenzie had been an extreme example of pragmatism even on Earth, and he was not picky about the origin of his nutrition.
The Titan’s eating habits had been disturbing, at first, for the travellers with the Expedition to see. The vines that trailed down his back writhed and roiled as he lumbered along. Trunks that he uprooted and cast aside to clear the path caused hordes of smaller wildlife to flee, and his vines danced a remorseless rhythm. They speared outwards as if they had minds of their own, lancing into [Tyrannorabbits], [Murdersquirrels], and dozens of other species Morgan hadn’t yet learned the name for.
The Titan had fed as he walked, Morgan riding on one shoulder. She’d stood tall, balancing herself against a massive spike of crystal, reminding her of the times she’d perched on her father as a child, laughing gaily. Time had changed them both -- him more than her -- so the nostalgia was short-lived, but welcome. Their trek had not gone uncontested, either. Even with the massive form of the Titan leading the way, smaller creatures fled and larger creatures were drawn to his hulking form.
Such larger creatures had suffered the same fate as their smaller brethren, finding their way into that impossible ogrish maw with the same ease with which he consumed everything else. Morgan now understood all too well why so many hordes of beasts fled from his wake to cause what the others had told her was known as a “migration year.”
Letting the Expedition into her valley had been a bit of an ordeal: the Titan’s prodigious caloric needs had faded upon crossing the threshold of her magical barriers, once she had convinced him not to just walk through and wreck her enchantments. It seemed he simply needed energy, and the prodigious concentrations of Mana in her valley worked just as well as meat to sustain him. He had stood near the shore of the small lake, looking at her spire for what seemed like hours, vines and roots working their way into the earth. She watched with no small degree of nervousness; if her workings reached down too close to the ley lines, she knew he would tear it down. So it was to her relief that, with a bassy rumble, he had finally declared it good before lumbering down the shore to wallow in the mud.
“Is he using a tree for a back-scratcher?” Dana had asked as she approached, still looking green around the gills from the excess mana in the atmosphere of Morgan’s valley. It had been almost a full day, and most of the Expedition still had not acclimated. Biggles had informed her that it would likely pass in a few more days’ time, especially as the work began on the airship.
“Yeah, he is…” Morgan responded. “Are you sure you want to do this? Build them a flying ship, I mean…”
The metal-clad woman looked back down the valley, where several Dwarves were overseeing the construction of scaffolding from fresh-hewn timber. “I’ve been thinking about it,” she said, unphased by the more serious turn of the conversation. “It changes a lot of things, but I realize now that it was inevitable. There are more Worldwalkers than just you and me, and it was only a matter of time before we started to really shake things up.”
“Why does that make you so sad?”
“It means I can’t go back to Thun’Kadrass,” she explained. “You’re good with magic, and the one they call The General is some kind of military officer, I’m sure of it. There’s no telling what the Twins or the Hammer or The Shadow can do, but sure as shit you can bet the Dreamer is gonna give stuff to the Deskren.”
Morgan thought in silence for several moments. “But you build things, weapons, and now a flying ship. Everyone will want you.” Another thought came unbidden. “And me, too.”
“They’ll want to control us, and if they can’t do that…” Dana frowned. “...They’ll want to kill us. The ship is merely the beginning of an arms race. Magic and science, together? There’ll be no way to just skate by once things get rolling, Morgan.”
“Can you do it? Can you stay ahead of this arms race?”
Dana shook her head. “It’s not about staying ahead. That’s only possible in the short term. Once we fly across the mountains, it’s game on. A few years, maybe a decade. Two decades would be some really long odds.”
“Not following you here,” said Morgan, shaking her hair back to make room for a wurbling Lulu who had just hopped back to her shoulder.
“We don’t have to stay ahead forever. After things trickle out, and the other nations get a hold of it, they’ll start iterating on my work, and it becomes quantity over quality.” The engineer spoke absentmindedly, sketching on a clipboard while she rambled. “The real trick is to stay alive and free until we’re less valuable to the different nations, and that’s gonna be hard until that iteration starts happening. It means becoming powerful enough that nobody can challenge us head on, and doing that fast.”
“And the airship is the first step?” Morgan asked.
Dana raised a finger. “Ships, plural. I’ve done some research, and you would think a magical world would have this kinda thing already.” Dana drew more lines on her parchment with broad swift strokes, filling out a design Morgan couldn’t quite make out. “This is just the first one, a working prototype -- big and ugly and slow, but I can get us off the ground. You can make Witchwood really strong with simple enchantments, and I think we can even use the leaves to weave the gas bags.” She paused in her efforts, glancing up at Morgan. “Flight is one of those things, y’know? It’s like the wheel, or electricity; it’s one of the big game changers, when you can point to the timeline of history after the fact and see huge jumps in civilization and progress.”
“And war, too.”
Sighing, Dana went back to her clipboard. “Yep, and war. Sad thing is, war and conflict drives the most progress, and the nations are going to war whether we help out or not. It’s not just the tech we give away that’s going to change things, either. Just by seeing a flying ship, others will work to copy it and learn how to do it. Same with anything. If not the Dwarves or the northern countries, the Deskren will for sure. We have to deal with them, even if it means arming everyone else.”
Morgan shuddered her agreement. “Those collars are sick. Disgusting!”
“So yeah,” Dana said, flipping her clipboard and parchment around. On it was a rough sketch of an ugly, boxy-looking barge of a ship with several globes that resembled hot air balloons nestled in a row down the center like peas in a pod. “It’s big, nearly six hundred feet long to get all of us on board with the necessary supplies and food. It’ll be slow unless we catch a good tailwind, but I can get us out of the Wildlands, and then we need to find a way to not be stuck working in a shop for some king or queen while I work on better designs.”
“I can help you work out the enchantments, and my dad can drag as many trees as you need up here. But I think I’ll be leaving in a week or two, especially after this little chat…”
Dana’s mouth dropped open, and she tapped her clipboard with her pen. “What!? We just got here, and it’ll take a month just to lay the keel and frame out the structure! We need you!”
“Once the magic is worked out, you actually won’t need me, and there’s something I need to do,” answered the Sorceress, her words punctuated by the chill northern winds.
Dana simply stared, at a loss for words, before Morgan continued.
“It’s time for me to get some wings of my own.”
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Over a thousand miles away from one very naked sorceress and her newfound friends, a massive, inky-black shape descended from the evening sky. A giant raven, talons outstretched, flapped its wings with lazy nonchalance as it dropped the last few feet to the flagstones of an ancient courtyard before the feathered shape dwindled, resolving into the form of an old woman leaning on a gnarled wooden cane. Smaller feathered forms flapped and screeched, fighting for space to perch upon the surrounding stone rooftops and the few sparse trees populating the bits of bare earthen gaps in the paving stones. Moghren chuckled, pacing forward with her stick for balance as she approached a stone table nearly thirty feet across.
Shadowy forms darted back and forth above the courtyard, filling the air with their mournful cries. Shards of midnight drifted down like dark snow in their wake to land on the table. “Yes, little ones,” the old crone said, “we know she’s coming back.”
Upon the table lay a framework wrought in sinew and bone, to which Moghren added a small piece pulled from a satchel at her waist. It had been an engaging task, consuming the bulk of her attention over the past summer. The fruits of her efforts lay before her, and she paced a circle around the table, observing it.
“Learn and grow, we told her,” she said to her companions.
From around her, the ravens cawed, and eerie echoes of her words were cast back at her from the shadows. Far from being unsettled, the woman seemed to draw comfort from the sound. From another pouch she produced a tiny bone needle, wickedly sharp, and threaded it with a strand of inky-black hair from her own head. She worked through the last light of the day, and well into the night as the two moons rose in the east casting dappled shadows across the table. One by one, more feathers joined those already stitched to the framework, slowly revealing itself to be a pair of great wings. She stepped back some hours later, looking at the nearly finished appendages.
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“It still needs...something more, I think.”
With a blur and a wave of power, a giant raven stood where the woman had been. A few moments of cold regard through inhuman eyes, looking down at the construct of bone and feathers, and the oversized corvid shook its head before burying its beak in its feathers. A few jerks of its head and a mighty disgruntled caw later, several feathers fell, many times larger than those gifted by its smaller relatives. Another shiver of power rolled through the courtyard, and Moghren once again stood in the same place, stooping down to reverently retrieve the feathers from the ground.
“A gift, a price, and a bargain. Which do you think she shall choose?” she wondered, returning her attention to the wings.
The croaking and caws of the ravens were her only answer, but Moghren thought that was well enough.
===============================================
Belka Torm cast an apprehensive eye towards the clouds far to the northwest, weighing his options as his hired hands readied the wagons and prepared to break camp after another night on the road. They had left Fort Expedition in haste when word of the approaching Deskren had reached the city. They had been on the road for just over two weeks with no sign of Deskren forces, but still, he slept with one eye open. He likely wouldn’t rest well until they crossed the border into Forvale and pulled his wagons in behind solid stone walls, but even that was doubtful.
The storm worried him. The cool winds of autumn were no trouble, but the approaching winter meant that pleasant breeze could turn bitingly cold at the drop of a hat with no warning. If it weren’t for the invading slavers, he would have turned his wagons off the road to wait out the storm. As it was, fear drove him to continue another few days at least, hoping to reach a settlement in the eastern reaches of Forvale where he could hunker down and wait.
Sudden shouting from the covered wagon where his wife still slept drew his attention. The morning was early yet, and it would have been another hour before they were ready to actually move. He had let her sleep, as dreams of ill omen had been troubling his spouse since before they left Fort Expedition. It was there, in the dream, that her nascent talent at divination manifested best, which had been what spurred him to abandon his profit and flee the city.
“Get everyone off the road!” Laren Torm was panicked, suddenly screaming at everyone. “Belka! Get the wagons off the road! We have to get out of the way!”
“We’re just about ready to get moving, what are you on about now!?”
“Get. Off. The. Road!” she screamed in his face. “They won’t stop for us! We’ll all be trampled!”
Belka Torm was many things, but a fool was, he hoped, not one of them. His wife’s dreams had led him to many a profitable venture, but more often had helped him dodge disasters. He wasted no more time, joining his workers in leading horses and their wagons off the road into the grassy fields to one side. They had barely cleared the road when the winds picked up, stormclouds suddenly darkening the skies. Thunder rumbled in the distance, strongly enough he could feel it through the soles of his boots more than he could hear it in the air.
“That’s not thunder,” said Laren, standing nervously beside him. “Or at least, it’s not just thunder. They’re coming.”
“Who?”
Laren shook her head helplessly. “Red eyes and one arm, thunder under the banner; the dream wasn’t any more clear than that, except that we’d have been crushed if we stayed on the road.”
Belka didn’t argue with her. His wife didn’t have true dreams often, but when she did, he knew better than to invite tragedy by protesting. They didn’t have to wait long; the low scudding clouds drew closer, shadows deepening in the hills to the northwest as the thunder he could feel under his feet finally grew loud enough for him to hear.
“It’s not thunder. Drumbeats. And hooves.” The clouds above flashed, lit from within by grim lightning, and the shadows on the road gave way to reveal a banner in the distance. Underneath it, he could just make out the shape of a wagon. As it bore down, he saw the face of a grizzled, bearded old man at the reins of a pair of mules. The grass in the fields swayed and bent before the frenzied wind, and the sound of thunder and drumbeat grew louder. The darkness deepened almost to midnight, the morning sun hiding its face from that awesome banner, and the soldiers who marched under it.
As above, so below; the lightning dancing through the clouds was mirrored by sparks of electricity leaping from the hoofstrike of every horse in the caravan, as wagons continued to melt out of the darkness. Soldiers marched alongside and among the wagons, their hobnail boots hitting the ground in near unison. Their gaze was fixed straight ahead, and their pace never faltered, as if by their stride they demanded the earth itself surrender to their will. They marched, the wind howled, but their banner remained immobile. A rough black stripe split the fabric in half, and collars dangled beneath it, tassels weighing it down.
Lightning finally did crash then, a burst of light that drove the shadows back to reveal a towering armored form on an even larger horse, his lance couched and held upright. He came to the side of the road as the caravan continued rolling past, and his stallion stamped and pawed the ground as if eager to return to its head. Two hulking wolf-men, small next to the horse, slunk out of the shadows to flank him.
“What do you carry?” rasped a voice as dry and cold as the autumn winds that had preceded him.
Belka stood there a moment, finding his voice. “Stamina potions, healing tonics, and a wagonload of Mana crystals bound for Forvale from Fort Expedition. We got out ahead of the siege, and…” Belka’s voice trailed off as the apparition tugged a pouch from his belt, tossing it at his feet. The renowned symbol of the City of Prophets, an eye in a white circle, decorated the bag in embossed stitching. Belka retrieved it, and his hands shook as he tipped several rectangular chits of silvery metal into his palm.. “This...is this mithril?”
“We’re buying your wagons.”
“But this is too much--” Belka protested, before Laren dug her elbow into his ribs. “Wait, what do you mean the wagons?”
“Your goods, your wagons, your men...all of it.”
“But we just left Fort Expedition barely two weeks ago!”
“Yes, and? Now you’re going back.” Thunder crashed again as the man spoke, the last soldiers in the column marching past. “Fall in, and keep up.”
===================================================
Everything was red. Red light -- red like heat, red like fire -- burned through her being. Even the scent in her nostrils felt red. She was inundated by the light, subsumed by it. Eventually, she became the light, the all-consuming hue defining her existence, until it slowly faded into blessed darkness.
She woke with a gasp, jerking upright from the cold stone upon which she lay. She rose to her feet, and looked at the space she was in. Tall gothic arches surrounded an atrium, and in the center was what looked like…
“Is this an altar? Or a crypt?”
“Six of one, half a dozen of the other,” came a voice to her left. She spun to look, but limbs rendered unfamiliar by the redness betrayed her, and she fell back to the floor.
“Now, now, no need to panic,” said a second voice, and the woman pushed herself up from the floor with weary arms that only reluctantly obeyed. Her eyes met three pairs of feet, one in armored boots, one with comfortable looking sandals, and another pair bare on the floor. Three women stood before her, looking down on her, on hands and knees, clothed in a plain white shift.
“Where are--? What--?”
Her eyes traced up the women in front of her. The one on her left was dressed in scuffed, battleworn armor. She looked to the side, towards the other two, and clucked her tongue disapprovingly. “She’s forgotten so much, Ruga. Are you sure we should be bothering with this instead of letting her pass back into the cycle?”
“Hush, Koma. You know she’s earned the chance to make this Choice,” said the center woman, her figure and bearing much softer and more open than the harsh, closed-off Koma, with her hard eyes. She had been afraid of the armored Koma instantly, but this Ruga was a kinder presence. The third had yet to speak, but even in her silence she was confusing, her clothes flickering from one outfit to another every few heartbeats.
“What choice do you mean?” she choked out. Her lungs ached, as if breathing were a burden, and she found she couldn’t remember her name, or how she got here. That made not knowing what was happening even worse.
“So sad,” said the third woman with the shifting clothes, with a sad shake of her head. “She always wanted to enter the Temple, and now that she’s finally here? She doesn’t even remember.”
Temple? The thought was familiar, and mournful.
“Don’t taunt her, Ingra,” admonished the middle woman before turning back to kneel before her. A small basin of water and a washcloth appeared in Ruga’s hands, the latter of which she offered with a comforting smile. “She’s sacrificed enough.”
“Sacrifice? What did I do? Who am--? Who are--??” she sputtered uselessly, confusion rising once again.
“Shhhh,” said Ruga, helping her wash her face. "Yours was a long and twisting story, and there will be time enough to help you remember."
Koma snorted with amusement. “I’ll say, you don’t see one such as her sacrifice themselves. Ever.”
“So that brings us to here. You did an impossible thing,” said Ruga gently. “And the reward for a job well done has ever been more work to do.”
“If you’ll take the job,” said the last woman, her clothes shifting from blouse and breeches to a scandalously sheer silk gown that covered little and hid less. “You’ve earned the Choice, to pass on and forget and start again.”
“Or you can stick around, with a new job, maybe help some more people,” said the woman in armor.
“Maybe help lots of people,” said Ruga, helping her to her feet.
“How can I help people? I don’t know who I am!” she complained, finally finding her feet.
“You’ll get those memories back if you choose to take the job. You won’t need them if you choose to pass on,” replied Ruga.
“That’s not--”
“Fair?” Ruga supplied. “You’re right, it’s not. Nothing in life, or in death, ever is. But the Choice is before you: you can choose to keep doing good, or you can choose to pass on. None will fault you, whichever you choose. You’ve already died, girl.” Ruga pulled her close suddenly, a gentle hug that soothed her mind, small comforts against the confusion. “Most only do it once, but you’ve managed to go and do it twice.” Ruga stepped back, holding her at arm’s length while looking in her eyes. “If you could remember, it would sway your choice. That’s why you’re held apart from your memories. You have to decide from down here in the dream, the person you are, not the person you were.”
“Everything was red…” the woman said softly.
“We can’t tell you any more than we have,” said Koma gently. “But if you choose to stay, I promise you, it will be worth it, if you want to help people. Not easy, but worthy.”
“You’ll have to travel a long way, from this island temple all the way to the middle of the mainland.” Ingra’s clothes still shifted, now luxurious robes of purple with oversized golden loops hanging from her ears.
“...How will I get there?” she asked, looking from one woman to the next.
Koma suddenly smiled. “I think she’s choosing to stay, if she’s worried about that,” she laughed.
“I’ll tell you, if that’s your choice,” Ruga replied with a smile.
“I think I’d like to help people, if I can.” She nodded at the women, strength slowly returning to her limbs.
“In that case, you’ll get to the mainland with these,” whispered Ruga, this time stepping close and reaching behind her. She could feel a strange sensation in her back as the other woman’s arm pulled something out to the side, holding a wing draped in feathers of brilliant white. Its mate twitched behind her.
“Regain your strength and recover your memories...Zizael, Herald of Redemption.” Zizael gasped and shuddered, strength suddenly flooding her body as her memory began to trickle back to her.
“You’ve got a job to do, and people to save.”