Scenes from Illiara

• Defy the Swamp Its Meal (One Shot)

  89th of Gnielm, 298 EA

  Peyr Myarsa

  “Come come, Vilppu, Tuukka.” Kujal tottered along through the swamp, moving unhurriedly along slowly winding paths. Where he called behind him, the bushes rustled and a low groaning rumble emanated from a source unseen. “Much to do, much to do.”

  He had walked long and far over the length of this swamp. It was a hunched walk by now, at his age, but he didn’t really have anywhere else to go, and so he moved from aetherline to aetherline and back again.

  It was through early morning mist that he heard the call. “H- Hello? Is somebody out there? Please, I need help.”

  The voice had a refined quality to it, lacking any real rasp or wheeze. Kujal approached, and the rustling of bushes followed with him.

  “Oh, by the grace of Old Myarsa! Hello old codger!” The voice was calling out from a rare break in the treeline, and low to the ground. At the center of the glade, sunk down into the muck such that only her head and one of her arms was above the surface was a woman. A pale woman, middle aged, and robust from the look of her shoulders. She bore the robes of a conservator, now all sullied by her splashing about.

  “I seem to have gotten stuck,” She continued, “Until just now, I was quite sure that I was going to be dragged down into the depths. I don’t feel any mud-demons, haven’t seen any around, but oh, I’m sure they’d love to see one such as me in so vulnerable a state. Quite sure, halfway swallowed into their big greedy swamp-mouth already. Quite sure.”

  “No, no, we can’t be having the swamp take you.”  Kujal agreed matter of factly, meandering around the side of the quagmire so as to get a better view of it’s consistency.

  A beat passed without motion between them, Kujal just watching, before the conservator woman cleared her throat awkwardly, “So, would you kindly help a maid out of this boghole?”

  “No, no, I don’t think we’ll be doing that either.” Kujal held that same shuffling tone. From his laden side, he pulled out a heavy moss-covered tome and began to thumb through it.

  “I- I’m sorry, what do you mean?” The woman’s voice fell back into a touch of disquiet.

  Before he thought to answer, Kujal found the page he was looking for. Etched into its paper there were jagged, spiraling symbols, diagrams of muck, vine, and man, and the way that the three might become one.

  “Wiks R’ud”, Kujal called the words of power absentmindedly, and it floated out from the book along a line of mired energy to the soles of his feet.

  “Now, chap, what’s all this about?” The woman began to tense in her hold, flinching fruitlessly against the sucking sludge. Kujal walked his waddling walk towards her, treading impossibly across moss-filled water and the slough that had captured her as though it were the most solid of ground.

  “You’re going to save me, aren’t you?” The woman looked up to him with a desperate hope that only barely masked the terror burgeoning from within her.

  “You’ll have your place, dearie.” Kujal pulled a trembling hand up to his wrinkled lips to give a curt whistle, and from the brush behind two crocodiles emerged. Vilppu and Tuukka were piteous creatures, taken by plant life and fungus, long having passed along their mortal coil. Moss bound their sloughing hide to their bones in place of flesh, everywhere except for their toothed snouts which had been picked to sheer yellowed bone, and from their eye sockets burst the stalks of mottlecapped mushrooms.

  The woman could only scream as they slunk beneath the surface of the pond.

  Kujal continued to circle the woman in slow, deliberate movements. He leafed from page to page, pulling from them pressed spores to sprinkle across her eyelids and jam into her ears. 

  “Cec’brol Mlewsum R’ud Yld’eag”, he chanted over and over and over again.

  “Please, please don- AHGHAG!” He heard her screams go sharper, and knew that his pets had reached her. It would not be long now. In her state of shock, as her entrails were pulled out by fang and claw and swamp water flooded into the cavity, he heard her muttering to herself “Why, why, why, why, why.”

  Kujal paused his chant. “We all must live, here in this place. To survive against the swamp. And for some to live, others must die. Now, die, and live again.”

  The woman’s head was pulled fully below the water, and she was silent.

  Kujal resumed his chant, tome in hand, and at the moment where he felt the slip from life to death beneath his feet he slammed the book shut with a final call, “Jecompterata”!

  When the body reemerged, it crawled and clawed it’s way out of the pit. It was filthy with moss and mud, most of which spilled out of the bloody wound sported in it’s stomach. It stood in a shambling mockery of life, having defied the swamp its meal as any good conservator should.

• Wherever It Drew (One Shot)

  18th of Nemulum, 316 EA

  Peyr Myarsa

  Irec had never shown much interest in the circumstances of his own life. 

  He lived well, on high in Peyr, he came from a good family. He married at a young age, just as his herbalism practice was rising to the forefront on the upper decks of the city. His wife was named Estrid, and she was not anybody he had known well before pulling her up to be courted but she had an insistent way about her and he had not needed much convincing. They had a baby, and named that baby Mepka. All the while, he followed along the pull of obligation wherever it drew.

  More often than he would have liked, it drew him in the direction of the temple. He was a conservator. Devout, in his own way, though he had not considered with any particular clarity what it would be like to be any other way. His father had urged him into a position as a steward, and so he bore the iron axe when it was required of him.

  It was not so bad a detail for him to take, walking priestly nobles through the muck. The swamp was surely as repulsive to him as any other conservator, there was no doubt to the fact that he preferred his greenhouse, but traipsing through gave him time to muse on his work and the opportunity to scout out new growths from which to harvest for his alchemy. Poultice and potions, elixirs and brews. Herbs to heal and herbs to cure. He would pass the time, cataloguing them in his mind. In those rare moments when the fen would rise up, ambush them, he flailed wildly and prayed that the others would take care of the threat. They always did.

  He’d return home to Peyr in those days, in Mepka’s childhood, and find himself in an entirely new world. Estrid was her usual excitable self, but his daughter seemed to grow in the blink of an eye. She was often surprising to him, not because he held her adolescent mind in any particularly high esteem but rather because the spans between which he took the time to engage her grew long.

  Foraging was the exception. Mepka took to the swamp young, and after the first time he brought her out to collect herbs with him he could not stop her from begging to come with each time he did.

  He was happy to meet her on the ground he felt solid on. She was a font of questions, and so by those excursions he would pour his singular knowledge out into her. Leaves and berries, stems and roots. Herbs to heal and herbs to cure. He never felt closer to her than during those callow days, stomping around the swamp.

  She passed them quickly, though, or at least it seemed so to Irec. First she would just leave his sight momentarily, drawn away by a hook of distraction while he was busy inspecting one specimen or another. Then she was showing intentionality, gone for an hour or so at a time, taking in the surroundings at a pace of curiosity that he could not match. It was not long before she was tracking off for excursions entirely of her own, days where he was in the city and she had her quarterstaff in hand ready to face the swamp unescorted. She could defend herself if need be, she had done it before.

  He didn’t worry. He didn’t feel about it at all, really. She was his daughter, and like his wife and his church and his city and every other comfort in his life he supposed that she would stay as she was forever.

• Make Me Your Sacrifice (One Shot)

  167st of Gnielm, 336 EA

  Peyr Myarsa

  Anzaw sat high on the intricately carved bench, looking down on the procession below.

  “I have done nothing with my life other than work, and even at that I’m not particularly good.” The man at the foot of the pulpit was base, kneeling and soaked through as though he had been left out in the rain. He had an unkempt lankiness to him, size without any real power to it. His name had been announced as Gavril Tumash, at the beginning of the trial. “I have no idea how I know these words, why the swamp listens to me. You call me warlock, and I do not know what that means, but what I do know is that I just want to live my life. I pose no threat to you. Don’t exile me, please, I beg you.”

  Glancing around, Anzaw noted that few of the other devoted conservators were paying attention. Even fewer had brought ceremonial axes such as his, if they had even been granted them.

  “It is a fateful thing, to have been touched by the swamp so.” Najdan presided, elder figure as they were, hunched and slow to speak. “Your existence here is profane in and of itself, a weapon for the enemy, but we cannot allow you to fall out into the muck and land in that same enemy’s hand. It is not ideal, but we have no choice but to allow you to stay.”

  Anzaw shifted to standing, moving at a steady pace down the stairs to the centerline of the communion chambers. His shoulders were pulled back straight, his posture no more rigid than normal. To any others there, he must have seemed to have just been excusing himself.

  Before anyone could realize what was happening, Anzaw was at the prisoner’s level. He could see the vertebra lined down the gaunt man’s back, poking out past skin and threadbare garment. He lifted his axe without breaking his stride, and sunk it straight through Gavril’s flesh down a perfect target of the man’s spine.

  There was no lack of attention then, gasps going up as a warlock of the swamp fell to the ground gasping vacantly in wretched righteous pain.

  “Make me your sacrifice, I give my honor for the honor of all Conservatorship.” Anzaw declared out to the adjudicator in iron confidence, throwing his axe to the ground and feeling the weight of the entire room on him, “Cast me out to penance. I will serve, for what I have done here, and do so willingly. This man was stained, his blood mired by filth. By killing him I have sullied myself, I do not deny it, but this was a necessary act for the maintenance of order here. No less.”

• Aetherdrawn (VIII)

  ?th of ?????, ??? EA

  The Aether

  Mepka floated in blissful rest for one long eternity. Around her, the limitless fog danced and swirled in beautiful arrhythmia. The aether had enveloped her, fully, and at moments she had become it. It now allowed her to be truly and wonderfully empty, light for the first time in her life. It held no judgement, no expectation as she allowed herself to slip in and out of material being. Through it all, her word reverberated through her.

  “Ahtr’ul”

  It echoed, spoken on her unreal lips and those of countless unseen others.

  “Ahtr’ul”

  She felt herself being unmade, fading away as she was washed further out between the tides of corporeality. Her heart slowed, and the moment before it ceased to be she felt that word of power whisper around her once more.

  “Ahtr’ul”

  A wide seam of verdant black split across her vision, pulling her gravitationally. Out from it a slender hand of sheening aureate metal suddenly appeared, as though reaching through a hole in a wall. Real existence radiated out from that hand. She registered the wonder of something else existing here, the first coherent and singular thought she had had in as long as she could remember.

  She reached for the hand in kind, her forearm becoming tangible only as it moved to grasp. She clasped it firmly, felt the rest of her body galvanize into definite existence, and then fell into exhausted unconsciousness…

  Mepka woke to cool, dry air. Those first breaths were like nothing she had ever had before, fresh and clear in a way that had never been made available to her. She was laying in a bed, on sheets of clean linen. She shifted, fluttered her eyes open to find walls of stacked stone brick, her quarterstaff leaned up next to a window that shone onto a glorious blue sky.

  “H- Hello?” An unfamiliar voice, low and lilting in it’s accent, sprang from the corner. “You’ve awoken!”

  Mepka spun, jolted from her reverie, to see who was in the room with her. She settled on a tall, excited figure. His skin was dark and delicate, his features high and angular, with long thin ears coming to impossible points behind his curled tresses. He was dressed strangely, in tight-fitting clothes as though for labor but immaculately clean, decorated with bangles and brocade of a heavy amber-colored metal Mepka had never seen before. He had shot up from a chair propped into the corner of the room, strewn around by hardbound books.

  “It’s okay,” He seemed to read Mepka’s bewilderment, putting hands out in front of him in a reassuring posture, “You’re okay. You were out in the Aether for a long time, it seems like, but you pulled through, by some miracle.”

  “What- How-” Mepka felt herself scrambled, and as she moved to sit up she felt as though her muscles were soaked in molasses. “Where am I?”

  “You’re in Athal.” He said, as though that would explain anything.

  “I’ve never heard of that. Is Athal what’s on the other side of the fog?” She rubbed at her side, feeling bandages and bruises.

  “Um,” The figure seemed puzzled by the question, wheels that she could not interpret turning in his head. “In a way, yes, we are on the other side of the fog.”

  They both just stared at each other for a moment, unsure of what to say next.

  “My name is Sylber, by the way. I was the one that found you, pulled you out of the fog, as you called it. It’s called the Aether, by the way.”

  “I know what it’s called.” Mepka winced trying to stand. Sylber strode over to help steady her, gentle in his touch. “I’m Mepka.”

  “Right, of course you do.” Sylber smiled apologetically. “Mepka, there are some things you need to know. You’re not at the place where you are from, anymore. You’re actually quite far from there.”

  Tears of relief began to well up in Mepka’s eyes, tears which set Sylber into a look of concern.

  “Hey, no no, it’s okay,” He tried to reassure, “We can try to get you back there, don’t worry-”

  “No!” Mepka pulled away from him, “I’ll be damned if I’m going back. I don’t know where we are, where this Athell is, or how I got here, or that there was even anywhere out there other than Peyr Myarsa, but I’m not going to go back there. Never, not ever.”

  Sylber looked momentarily taken aback, “Oh wow, no of course, if you don’t want to you don’t have to. I’m sorry if I brought up a sore subject. It must really be isolated, your home demiplane, how many others are in your subcluster?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Mepka kept her distance, eyeing her staff.

  “Right, sorry.” He apologized again, speaking with a bounce from one thought to the next, “I’m sure it’s a lot for you to take in. Just know, there are worlds beyond the one you grew up in. A lot, a lot of worlds. Demiplanes, is the technical term. They’re not really in the same place, any of the planes. You couldn’t walk from one to another, if that makes sense. That’s why the Aether is there, it holds each plane together. Like a cup holds water, kind of. Gods, I should be better at explaining this. You were in the Aether, which is crazy, but you were. And now, you’re somewhere else. Somewhere good, if I do say so myself. Athal. The Citadel of the Athalial Explorers League, to be exact”

  Through all of it, Mepka’s eyes wiped appraisingly across the space, taking in this new paradigm without resistance but without traction either. “Can I see it?”

  “See it?” Sylber cocked his head.

  “This other world.” Mepka took a shaky step towards the window, taking up her old stave as a crutch.

  “Oh, sure. Of course.” Sylber let her move of her own accord. “It’s alright, the view out of the Third Seat isn’t the best but, you’re welcome to it.”

  Mepka approached the window, pane glass so clear that she might not have known that there was anything between her and the sky in that moment, and what she saw filled her with awe.

  Rolling greens, hillocks ringed in neat curving lines by paved walkways. People, many myriad people rendered tiny for the distance, standing out under the open sun of a sky dotted by puffy white clouds. They bustled across lawns, hung in doorways, sat in the shade. They gathered, they greeted each other. They came from stone buildings with shingled roofs standing whole and tall, built higher than the last of old Myarsa could ever dream of. It was a place that was decorated grandly, in its facades and columns and statues. Where the buildings grew sparse a forest wended it’s way through in bright autumnal oranges, yellows, reds, and purples.

  Mepka’s heart drew her gaze up, and out to the middle distance. There the aether stood, a billowing wall of blur bounding the whole of this new world her heart had drawn her into.

  “Can I stay?”

• Beneath the Swamp (One Shot)

  29th of Gnielm, 334 EA

  Peyr Myarsa, Illiara

  Daakar moved beneath the swamp, and in their wake the earth swallowed up the petty humans above.

  It was retributive, really, sating hunger to overlay their loss. The one who had learned the Aether’s word had gotten away, fled and abjured them as though they were not god here. The rest of these, the conservators, they were nothing. Fodder that had grown too proud, and so would be dragged out of the air they so preciously craved.

  Daakar retreated in turn, deeper and deeper still beneath the heaving ground, leaving the parts of themselves that were the mephits to cavalcade over the stragglers. They would drown them, pull them down, break their bodies and promise to tear their profane city apart.

  And still, that they had let that one slip through their fingers, it vexed them greatly. That creature was theirs to hold, theirs to drown. It was foul to them, to have lost even one.

  They descended to an bygone place, a place that had once been their prison and had now become their domain, Old Myarsa. It was all sunken beneath Daakar now, save for an old wreck of a temple and the peaking facade of a few towers. The buildings were packed with clay, the streets lined with the bones of many generations of humans from the surface. Daakar was the only one who could feel this place anymore, the only one who truly knew what it contained. It was all theirs.

  They remembered when the aether came to this world, the war and the panic of the Evenfall leading up to it. They remembered the feeling of tearing filling every fiber of their being as they writhed on the floor of the crystalline cell the Myarsan’s had relegated them to. They remembered waves and waves of indefinite madness, of reality itself rending.

  Just as they were to fall into their fervent memories, they reached their destination. Coming from the center of Daakar’s lair, in a darkness so pure that it can only be achieved by moving through the packed sediment layer without disturbing it, radiated out a feeling of warmth. From there they felt their tendrils reaching, forming, spreading out into glorious voracity. They commanded such forces as the ground and the water and the trees which were life itself.

  They wrapped their body, their true dao body, jealously around the source of this power. A scroll, buried by time and poor circumstance, on which was written the lost name of a god. And it was theirs, it was only theirs.