(back to part one)

(reading time: 1 hour, 49 minutes)

The Deal

The entrance to Peako Dagyvr’s workshop, deep in the stony crevasse of Crosstahl, was sealed off in a most unusual manner. The original door was gone, its frame filled by uneven stones that were held together by a bright, almost luminous, blue adhesive. This barrier had a weak spot, an eye drifting in the adhering slime, but it kept on the interior side. That meant it had to watch everything happening within, occasionally dodging a dagger as it was tossed across the chamber.

Even in the relatively short time since Captain Rob had taken the new recruit Alast there to purchase a weapon, Peako’s output had increased significantly. The walls had always had very little empty space, with shields, spears, and war forks hung everywhere, some even modified into braziers to light the place. It was much more cluttered now, the space shrunk by shields overlapping, like the dermal disorder of a scaly beast. Continue reading →

(back to part one)

(reading time: 1 hour, 21 minutes)

Age of Tragedy

The Captain still expected to thwart more would-be assassins, but his next trip to Platone was peaceful. If only the same could be said for the contents of that trip. He embraced Vyra again, and they walked along a new edge as the ekapads came to crackling life. A new ringing tone played, its shattering volume nothing compared to the godly words that used Vyra’s throat as vessel. The Age of Wonder was lost to time, most of its revelations new to Rob, but the time that followed, the Age of Tragedy, contained some tales that were all too familiar.

These were things that could never be denied: acts of destruction so complete that they could only ever be the end or the foundation of something new. The shattering of both the tiles and the Reflecting Path. The mildew plague. The decimation and retreat of the prosites. These all had a common cause. Porce could not be the paradise it once was, and all because of a single wanderer intrigued by the peace of Youbend. Continue reading →

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(reading time: 1 hour, 8 minutes)

Age of Wonder

A concert of Platone lit up the night sky in shocking red and swollen purple. Ekapads stampeded across its face in lightning arcs like blazing stars fired from bows. The din and its associated powers were enough to kill a lightfolk in three different ways, but Vyra was protected by the divine powers of Hesprid, and her prosite stowaway by the same from Qorcneas. There was a bubble around them that the lightning broke up against, sizzling across its surface like fuzzy seeds tumbling down a rock face.

For a while she walked the empowered stone with Captain Rob, who had dutifully returned. With no flesh to burn he too was safe, but his gaze was drawn to her far more than the chaotic lights and sounds all around. Somehow when she spoke he heard, with no need to shout over the concert. He heard because the first gods willed it so, from all the way below the world in their graves. Continue reading →

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(reading time: 1 hour, 21 minutes)

Without Love Waxxon

The Captain deliberately chose to not look back much after leaving Platone with the curator screaming upon his back. He wanted to watch his first concert of dancing ekapads with Vyra, so he kept his sockets aimed forward all the way back to Tonefoot and the Chokechain. He could not shut out the ringing tone itself however.

Never a student of music, the pirate still heard several classical pieces in the simplified melody, realizing for the first time how the borrowed backbone fit into each composition. All of the flourish, all the different instruments, were certainly necessary, for the ringing tone was horrifically grating to him. Worse still, he was no longer capable of effectively covering his ears now that there were no fleshy lobes to squish against the side of his head and no cupping palms to create calmer pockets. Continue reading →

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(reading time: 1 hour, 5 minutes)

He’s Very Depressed Regarding his Death

“It’s no use; he won’t come out,” Bonswario told Teal. He was told to guard the door, but slumped in his duty thanks to Rob only perceiving his family and friends as threats. They were aboard the Chokechain, and while the new recruits kept the ship sailing most of his old crew were bunched up in the rooms and corridors outside the Captain’s quarters. Teal had walked the path from her ship immediately upon hearing the news that he had lost his flesh in battle and been reborn as gravefolk.

He refused to see her or even speak to her, which was fine by her for the first few drops. Attending to him first was mostly an act of loyalty rather than an affectionate one. There was plenty else on his ship to occupy her time until he got over himself, like the briefing with Pearlen that mostly cleared up the surrounding circumstances. Continue reading →

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(reading time: 1 hour 16 minutes)

Turning History’s Page

The Tributaroads were the greatest paths in Porce, but there was one feature that forced them to divert; it sent the road Flatsprung snapping toward the stalls, where it then split into Yellow Trail and widened into the Stain Plain. Such a turn ended the road’s ambition of stretching all the way from Black Gap to the Threewall Wild, perhaps even ending folk efforts to cut trails into that indomitable wood altogether.

Turned away it was by thirty-two plots of land arranged in two rows of sixteen. Each piece was stubborn on its own, but together not even an Oath could’ve moved them without a conflict that could’ve punched a massive hole in the World Floor itself. These thirty-two akers, topographical siblings in an accord spanning back to the shattering, were called the Line in the Sand. They took no travelers, no matter the offering, and never strayed from each other. Continue reading →