151st of Gnielm, 336 EA
Peyr Myarsa
Thousands on thousands of raindrops rocketed into the swamp, the sounds of their stormed impacts overlaid in Gavril’s ears by the fatal creaking of the wood undergirding of Peyr.
“There!” Mellema screamed down the sluiceway, pointing to water pilling on acute water as they were nearly swept away by the rush, “Clog!”
Gavril wiped away the soaked and matted hair that had turned against him in obscuring his vision, to see that the massive drainage had seen a tumble of lodged wood and leaves, mud and muck and moss.
Mellema set their wide form as a rock against the spray, a wake forming around them as they held to the ridge of the gutter with all their might. They struggled to reach a hand in, to pull at the edges of the mass, but any bit they were able to move by manual force was inconsequential to the pressure of the whole. “There’s too much! It’s gonna burst, we have to turn back!”
Gavril’s eyes turned down to see the silhouette of the sloped city below, and in the rain-hazed tableau he swore he could see the shapes of it’s people flowing across it’s platforms to ward against the storm. “We can’t let it!”
In that moment of desperation, Gavril reached outside of himself to a place he had not dared to acknowledge in the many years since he had ingratiated himself into Peyr. He felt the swamp, and he felt it’s monarch in their sick satisfaction, and finally he felt himself facing down this threat.
The skin of his arm began to slough away as it turned to wet clay under the rain, reforming and reforming itself as he pointed to the tangle of unnatural nature blocking the sluiceway.
“P’iur R’ud” He spoke these words of power only to the rain, and at his command the dam burst outwards in shards of spiteful wood.
The water roared down it’s intended flow, a great wave gathered just to the point before it could devastate.
Gavril breathed heavy, suddenly feeling the weight of his body as earth reformed into flesh.
Mellema looked to him with eyes held wide and punctuated by rain or disbelieving tears, he could not tell which.
And by his swamp-birthed hand, the city was saved from flood.
The Etra Anthology 