#location: reorx's plane

[feywildatheart]

Nenîth,

By the time we’ve returned to town and I can send this to you, I’m sure I’ll have much more to say. But we’ve reached a lovely little isthmus where we can see water glimmering on either side of us, and we’ve stopped for a bit to eat and to wet our toes in the shore, and it seemed a good time to pull out my LICD and write to you about what we’ve seen so far.

We’ve been three days out here so far and I think I’m going to have to have a chat with Loraine when we get back to town, because I specifically asked her what sorts of threats we might face while we were out here collecting her sensors and was told there were no records of anything particularly dangerous or deadly on the planet, but I have to think she must never have set foot outside of her lab, because we hadn’t been traveling half a day before an enormous constrictor snake decided we looked like a tasty lunch.

Or maybe it’s just that she’s so tall, she doesn’t have to worry about the local wildlife deciding to make a meal of her. Still, it seemed intent upon dining upon all of us, and I daresay if it could have fit the three of us in its gullet, it could have swallowed one lone tiefling without thinking twice.

I worry about Pika, nenîth. She’s very brave, always rushing headlong into whatever threat we face. But she seems to take the brunt of the damage, since she’s always getting up in front of things and punching them in the face, and she won’t even wear armor to protect herself. The snake managed to grab her in its coils and squeeze all the air out of her, and I’m sure that would have been the end of her if I hadn’t been so angry and so afraid that I threw myself up on its back and hacked at it until it had let her go, and had bigger problems to worry about than lunch.

There were weasels, too, a nest of them, and none so sweet nor so small as the ones we befriended on the Hammer of Antas. They’re not half as cute when they’re twice your size and hissing in your face. I took two of the three down with a single arrow apiece, I’m glad to say, and we made short work of the third. It was near evening by the time we reached the location of the first sensor that Hallbjörn placed, and with a little hunting around I was able to find where he’d put it, hidden away a bit to keep it protected from anyone or anything that might have wandered by.

It’s a lovely thing, dark as the night sky with sparks like stars swirling through it, and they seemed to gravitate toward my touch when I lifted it up. I couldn’t say how it works, or what the purpose of those sparks are, but I could have played about with it all evening if I’d let myself.

Instead, we decided it was a fine enough place to make camp, and now that we were out of doors with a fire to sit around, and there was a decent breeze blowing through the trees, I made good on my promise to demonstrate my aedlira to Elyn. She seemed duly impressed, and took some recordings with those gloves of hers. And once I started playing, Pika pulled out a complicated set of pipes and joined in. It was a lovely evening. I haven’t had the opportunity to sit around a fire and make music with people in too long — there isn’t near so much opportunity for it out here as we had in the Feywild, and I miss it almost as much as I miss you two.

The next day, we set out toward the second sensor, and our path took us across a bit of a mountain range and through some grasslands on the other side. Drime had given me a bit of Hallbjörn’s possessions that he’d left behind for Squirt to get his scent from, and it was in these grasslands that Squirt seemed to pick up his trail, though there was something unusual about it that seemed to distress him.

Still, he’s game even when things are strange around him, and between him and a friendly little vole that Pika had a conversation with (I swear, she’s practically chatty with animals, and meanwhile Elyn and I can scarce get a nod out of her at the best of times. I’d think it was something particular to the two of us that she’d taken a dislike to, except I haven’t heard her speak to anyone more than is necessary, saving the beasts) we were able to follow the trail enough to get us to some tracks. The tracks were strange — we were told Hallbjörn was a dwarf, and a stocky one at that, but these tracks were too lightfooted for what I’d have expected of a dwarf. Neither Elyn nor Pika seemed to know of any sort of spell that could have made him so, not on a long-term basis, and the tracks we found went back a month or more, so after some deliberation, Squirt and I snuck on ahead of the others to see if we could follow the tracks to their source without scaring their maker away. Pika meant to accompany us, but we’d scarcely started out when she somehow managed to walk straight into the only tree in the whole of the grasslands. She puts on a brave face, but I think she must still have been recovering from the bout with that constrictor, so Elyn and I convinced her to stay behind and rest while Squirt and I continued on to try to find the person who had made the tracks, without scaring them away.

We were, perhaps, a little too good at that, for we’d nearly stumbled into her by the time she realized we were there, and startled her rather badly, and Squirt and I only barely avoided ending up with her glaive buried in our heads for it.

It was not the best of introductions, and I think I’ll be forgiven for being rather cross with her to start with. Seeing a polearm aimed at one’s dog’s head can have that effect. I liked her even less once I learned that she’s the reason Hallbjörn went missing a month back — it seems he startled her in much the same way we did, and she responded in the same fashion, only he was not so lucky as Squirt and I.

I had so been hoping that we would be able to find Hallbjörn alive all this time, perhaps only lost or injured and in need of assistance. I will admit that I snapped at her, in my disappointment, but honestly that’s thrice now that she’s killed, or nearly so,  an ally by too quickly assuming them a threat. She might have been off this planet and on her way a month ago, if she’d been just a little more cautious before swinging that glaive about. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

She seemed contrite about what had happened to Hallbjörn and what had nearly happened to us, and sincere enough about it, I suppose. The others heard us conversing and came to join us, and we learned that she’s not from the prime material plane at all, but from the elemental plane of air, and had traveled through a series of wormholes that had spat her and her ship out too close to Nosirion-1 to avoid crashing into it. I’ll have to remember to ask Loraine, or perhaps Hiuda since Mir would have had a better vantage over the planet itself and the space around it, if anyone heard or saw anything, it seems like a wormhole opening up and a ship crashing down ought to have drawn some sort of notice, but no one’s mentioned anything strange to us, beyond Hallbjörn’s disappearance.

We made our introductions with the woman, who’s got a name that’s as much of a mouthful as mine but told us to call her Niko for the ease of it, and who it seems is a paladin of Reorx who’s been cast out of her order (for what seems to me to have been a well-intentioned mistake, honestly), and once those had been done with our attention turned to the hawk that we had seen wheeling about in the distance, and that had led us to this woman in the first place, for I’d been hopeful that it might have been Hallbjörn’s hawk companion, Nalira, and that she might lead us to him. I was leery of scaring her off at this point, though, especially with the news that Hallbjörn was dead, but between Pika’s ability to speak with small animals and Elyn’s assistance, they were able to coax her down and talk with her. She was Nalira after all, and had been there keeping watch over Hallbjörn’s grave all this time, which broke my heart right in two. Elyn wanted to send her as a courier of sorts back to the town, which seemed to me a somewhat callous intent for an animal clearly still mourning the loss of its companion. I was more concerned with convincing the poor thing to move on. I don’t know what sort of life a companion without its ranger might want, but it seemed to me that standing watch over a gravesite was a poor way to spend it. In any case, we weren’t able to convince Nalira to move on for either purpose, because she was unwilling to leave Hallbjörn behind in a plain, unmarked grave in the middle of the wilderness. So we asked Niko to show us to where she had buried him, and while she had done a decent job of ensuring that none of the local wildlife might dig him up for an easy supper, there was no gravestone to mark it. None of us were entirely sure what a proper burial for a dwarf might be, and we were limited in what we had at hand for one anyway, but it was an easy enough task to carve his name into a rock and lay it at the grave’s head, and once we’d done so Nalira seemed content enough to join us. I don’t know what will become of her, if she’ll want to return to the rangers of the Silver Tree, or stay with the scientists here on Nosirion-1, or if she’ll prefer to leave civilization behind her and go live out the rest of her life here in the unexplored places of this planet, but at least it won’t be a life spent tethered by grief to the place where her companion was slain.

We decided to set up camp there for the night, and leave in the morning with a full day still ahead of us, but our sleep was disturbed in the night by Elyn’s scream. When I saw what it was that had startled her, though, I’ll admit I gave a little shriek myself, for it was an enormous spider, at least twice the size of any of us. Between the four of us, though, we were able to kill it, and while I can’t say I slept particularly easy after that, at least I did sleep.

You’ll remember that I asked Pika if she could teach me to speak with animals the way she can, and I’ve been practicing what she taught me whenever I find the chance, though it had been somewhat fruitless so far. I wasn’t able to speak with Nalira, and had to direct all my questions through Pika, but I suppose it’s like what you told me once, Cylla, when I grew frustrated with my own lack at weapons practice. Do you remember what you said? It was years and years ago, but it’s stuck with me all this time. You said that practice is good and useful even when it seems I’m accomplishing nothing, that learning what doesn’t work is still an important lesson for the body, to help it figure out what does. And I think it must be the very same in this, too, and I seem to have come around a corner in it, for this morning, to my complete shock and delight, I found myself able to converse with Squirt! I’m sure you can imagine the heights of my joy. It’s strange, though, because when I first learned Pika could speak with animals, back on the Hammer of Antas, I asked her if she could speak with Squirt in my stead but she said no, that he was too large and she could only speak with the smaller animals. Perhaps the reason I’m able to do what she cannot is simply due to the amount of time I’ve spent with him?

In any case, whatever the reason, I couldn’t be more glad for it. I’m afraid I neglected my companions entirely for him while we sought ought the second sensor. Elyn found this one, and pocketed it, and as we continued on toward the third we encountered a pack of hyenas that gave us a nasty fight. Pika nearly went down this time, too, and Elyn took a nasty bite, but it turns out that Niko is a boon to have at our side, now that she’s swinging her glaive at enemies and not the heads of those unfortunate enough to startle her, and I, for one, was glad to have her fighting at our side. And Squirt, who usually blinks away from any threat (and honestly, who can blame him after that displacer beast!), this time ran right into the fray and bit one of the hyenas right back. It made my heart so glad to see him coming into his own and becoming the fierce hunting dog the fey bred him to be. I wish the Queen of Air and Darkness could have seen him, she’d have taken back everything she said about him being small and wounded and too weak for her service, and you can tell her I said that the next time you see her.

On second thought, maybe don’t. I think I’d bite her myself, if she tried to take him from me.

We’re packing up from our lunch now and getting ready to continue on our way to the last of the sensors, so I must end this here. I’ll send this as soon as we’re back in range of the signal, I promise. I hope you’re both well, and I’ll write again as soon as I have the chance to.

All my love,

Maliah

[letterstosestrilles]

Dear Tyko,

As promised, a more detailed letter than the one I sent you when we first arrived in the Feywild, so you can reassure yourself that I’m safe right now, even if, as you point out, I’m about to go into some very bad danger indeed when the danger to the force of creativity and thus possibly the universe seems to be past. I will defend myself, though, by pointing out that what Onver did once he could certainly do again, and I’m not interested in leaving that up to chance.

And I will defend myself by saying that Niko would be doing this whether we went with her or not, and you like Niko. There’s no way you want her alone in what’s coming. So you’re just going to have to suffer through a few more weeks of me doing extremely dangerous things, and then I will do my best to only take on threats that don’t make me want to hide under my blankets for a week for a good long time. With a good long period of as few threats of any size as possible to start with.

We did, you’ll probably already have guessed from the time stamps and the timing of my Sending, have a few more days of rest and preparation on Reorx’s plane.

In between other things, Maliah and I did have a chance to sit down with Niko. At first, we mostly talked about the dark side of the Feywild, and what preparations we might need to go there. I asked Maliah what she’s heard, but any and every kind of monster that exists (and probably a good few that don’t) have been said to live there, by one parent or another. There are a few things that she can almost certainly eliminate—there are unlikely to be huge crabs that can shoot fire from their claws, for instance—but more where it’s impossible to guess what’s true, what’s exaggeration, and what’s made up of whole cloth.

We talked about picking up some warm clothes somewhere, since places where there’s no light at all tend to be quite cold, and speculated a little on what magic and what magic objects might or might not work in the dark areas, where everyone seems to agree that magic is at least somewhat curtailed. That terrifies me, when I’ve grown so used to relying on my magic that I don’t think I’ve drawn my sword except to clean it and run a drill or two in a year. When that got to be too much we talked about picking up extra rations both in case I lose the ability to cast my Mansion and because they’re good bargaining material in a place food might be scarce, and what barters to offer Cerunwe, including a set of short swords, the location of Avka’s hoard, and a few other inducements based on what zie is willing to offer us.

After that, Maliah and I sidestepped into asking Niko a few of the questions that have been building up since she got her full memories back. The first questions we had were just how long she’s been Reorx’s companion, and how she came to be one. The answer to the first was staggering, even though I’d come to half-expect it: a century, perhaps more, though she hasn’t tracked it. She’d been a devotee of Reorx for a long time, a paladin for quite some time, and when she made innovations to loom technology, they started speaking to her more often, and eventually offered her a place among their companions.

Since they’re a god more directly connected with mortals than most (Mishakal comes to mind, for instance), they like to have mortal company, and the stretch of lifespan seems to come from enjoying that company too much to want to give it up, not that I blame them. When they’re together, Niko says, doing anything with Reorx or on their plane, it’s a constant feeling of the best and most inspired sorts of collaboration, the kinds where once you’re on track you hardly have to tilt your head or blink to communicate what you want to say, where the project takes on a life of its own. It’s a tempting prospect, really, even if I’d miss all my friends and family too much to actually consider living that life.

I half-joked that I should ask Nuli and Thvara if there are any Crafter ballads about Niko, since that’s their specialty and there’s been much more time than previously assumed for legends about her to circulate. She blanched a little and said she hopes not, or at least that she doesn’t hear them until she has as little more time to reconcile with her memories, so I asked the next most logical question, if any of her companions have such ballads—just before I realized that Dwiona is a dwarvish harpist and there’s definitely a Crafter ballad about that, and amended the question to ask if I’d been in the presence of the Ollamh Harp without knowing.

The answer, it seems, is yes, Dwiona is the subject of Nuli and Thvara’s most-loved and best-known ballad. I’m going to have to track them down and tell them about all of this, though I have no idea if they’ll actually believe me.

There might, Niko says, be ballads about Emulf or the others, but none as widely circulated as Dwiona’s. I’ll have to keep my ears open, and add them to my repertoire if I found them.

That seemed like more than enough of that conversation, so we split off to try some various activities: Maliah to find short swords to offer Cerunwe, with Niko’s help (she found a beautiful matched set with a few useful enchantments on them) and me to badger Dwiona, which she graciously allowed. We spent most of the afternoon with me playing the harp (the Ollamh Harp! It’s beautiful, silvery-pale like driftwood, carved with a raven on the head and abstract designs elsewhere) and intermittently showing her how to work my gloves and the rest of the apparatus. She even let me re-record some harp samples with her harp, which has a gorgeous warm tone like the rooms here seem to bestow but on its own, and which is so responsive you hardly need to pluck a string before it’s sounding.

We also, before dinner, found Emulf in his workshop, where he’s dusting off projects he’d had to leave, and his glasswork is exquisite. We saw a stained glass window that’s as detailed and fluid as a painting, and blown glass flowers and vines that are so perfectly rendered as they climb their way up columns that it’s hard to imagine them being something made instead of grown.

Many things here feel like that, really, so beautiful the place feels like a museum, or would if it weren’t so lived-in and full of Reorx’s power. I had to convince myself to touch things, and it was a relief, as we went around the place, to find the offerings and gifts by people not quite yet masters of their crafts: a quilt in a mind-bogglingly mathematical patterns where some of the corners don’t quite line up, a hammer made from some experimental material that instead of being extremely resilient turned out rather floppy, something that looks rather like the yarn dog Jesson made for Maliah.

As we wandered, I talked to Niko about another part of this quest that’s worrying me: namely, the end of it. Not, for once, any of my big impossible questions about what comes next, but the practical worry that even with the restraining manacles, if we take Onver prisoner instead of killing him, we’re likely to be so spent that we’ll have no way of doing anything with him immediately. If I can’t reserve a Wish long enough to Plane Shift, if I can’t even Teleport to somewhere we could spend some credit for an overnight guard from someone, we would have a rough night to get through, since I doubt he’ll go down or stay down easy, if he’s wily enough to have run from Niko for twenty years.

Niko promised to think about it and ask Reorx about it, on the last night we planned to stay there, and the next day, she tossed me a gem made into a perfect sphere, which will hold the charge for a fairly powerful spell, if not quite as powerful as Wish would need to be. Still, it would be an extra Teleport, or a Mansion that I could build a cell into, and it could be the saving of us.

And later that day, after goodbyes and blessings from Reorx and their companions, they sent us to the Feywild.

After all my complaints about the discomfort of divine magic, I am pleased to tell you that Reorx’s magic didn’t quite feel like Gaizka’s Plane Shift, but it wasn’t as discomfiting as Mishakal’s. It makes sense, them being so used to mortals, and to transporting them from plane to plane on their journeys to meet various crafters, and I was relieved to land in the Feywild no more disoriented than I had to be, in the middle of a stretch of forest just far enough to the light side of the Feywild to make all of us wince after days of the constant dimness of Reorx’s plane.

Maliah, after a look around, said she had no idea where we were, so I made sure my messages to you and to Cerunwe sent and then whisked us away to Troihari, since we’d agreed to start off with rations shopping, which we knew we would need. We ended up buying roughly two months of rations, making a pessimistic guess about how long it will take to find Onver and then doubling that so we have emergency rations and plenty to trade with, since we assumed that people in the dark side of the Feywild might be interested in foods they wouldn’t usually have access to as a bargaining tool.

We spent the night in an inn and woke to a message from Cerunwe inquiring why I hadn’t mentioned the bolthole zie gave me access to among our possible meeting locations (the answer is that I’d thought of it so exclusively as a bolthole that it hadn’t occurred to me that it might be useful for other purposes) but indicating zir willingness to meet. So, after breakfast and a bit of twiddling our thumbs so we wouldn’t show up early, I took out the token zie’d given me and Teleported us over.

It was another stretch of woods we didn’t recognize, though the trees were different from the ones near Troihari, much thinner and paler, and there were mountains nearby. If we aren’t (because we’re still here) in the actual domain of the Lady of the Ashenwalds, I suspect we’re very close, from what I remember of descriptions of her lands. After a moment where I wondered where this supposed bolthole might be, a curtain of foliage was pushed to the side, and then there were Cerunwe’s usual red hair ornaments and the rest of Cerunwe with them, gesturing us into a bolthole I hadn’t seen.

It’s a bare bones spot, not much more than a fairly comfortable cot, a few shelves of rations and useful items, but it was enough (and I can make a Mansion for more comfortable lodgings for us tonight), and we sat down to discuss the dark side of the Feywild.

To start, we laid out terms: information about Avka’s hoard for information, the beautiful short swords for more material help like maps and such things, and for actual guidance into the dark, pretty much whatever zie asks for. It was obvious from the start, though, that zie has less than no desire to go back there. It’s possible that the Lady of the Ashenwalds might urge zir into it, or we’ll hit on a temptation big enough to convince zir, but for the moment, I’m not counting on their guidance as we try to track Onver down.

Information, though, zie was more than willing to give us, and we asked for heaps of it.

Environment, to start—whether I was right in assuming cold, whether there are trends to what sort of spaces we might find, all that kind of thing. The Feywild, of course, isn’t given to easy answers. Cerunwe allowed that a thick jacket or cloak would be appreciated in many areas, and that it’s overall cool, but not the ice fields I was unhappily imagining, at least not until you get very deep in. It’s not the environment, zie explained with exasperated patience, that is so impassable and dangerous that it’s made nearly a third of the Feywild taboo. It’s the places where magic is hard or impossible to use, the beasts, the other things. The environment is merely the environment.

So we asked about the beasts next, a smaller question to grapple with than the use of magic. There are large dogs and wolves and cats with razor-sharp claws, and sometimes blink dogs and displacer beasts. Plants with wills of their own (which made me think about a story Maliah mentioned off-hand about plant zombies that can control people’s will with despair). Some fey, particularly those whose magics are innate rather than pulled from a well of magic and bent by will. Tree spirits, hags. The rumors of a dragon or two out there somewhere, though zie was scrupulous in saying zie can’t confirm those.

Getting food, zie volunteered, can also be a difficulty. You can hunt most recognizable beasts, or even spiders if circumstances are desperate, but we shouldn’t trust any forage, even if it looks safe—too many poisons and hallucinogens, which makes me very glad about the amount of food we bought, especially considering I can’t count on being able to cast the Mansion for us.

Cerunwe also warned us that while it’s less of an issue for us, we can’t count on healing being available. That’s partly due to magic being chancy (though zie thinks healing potions are likely to keep working, thankfully), and partly because there aren’t many healers we can go to if we’re tapped out. The lack of magic means wounds can stick around longer than we’re used to, be more likely to infection and worse, so we’ll have to be scrupulous about keeping injuries clean and changing bandages often, which makes me glad we’ve picked up a few healing kits lately.

Zie also said, though the list of beasts zie gave us didn’t sound too much worse than what we’ve seen elsewhere, that even with four of us, powerful as we are, there are going to be times when we want to retreat rather than fight, and I plan to take that information to heart as much as I possibly can. (I’d already mentioned, back on Reorx’s plane, that with everyone else able to go much faster than I can, it might be that if we have to retreat I’ll leap on Squirt’s back. Especially if I’m already so much dead weight half the time, swinging a sword instead of doing what I’m good at.) Zie emphasized the importance of covering our tracks, and I am glad, as I always am, that we have Maliah, who knows how to do that kind of thing very well indeed.

From there, we moved on to the more esoteric worries. There unfortunately doesn’t seem to be any way of detecting one of the spaces where magic doesn’t work as well until you’re in it and something doesn’t work, though Maliah’s bow glows in the cold so it’s possible we’ll have early warning if that flickers out while it’s still cold. Time distortion fields, though, are much easier to detect: they’re hiding in jump rings. We should not, zie stressed, go through any jump ring we haven’t had confirmed by a local under honest bargain as safe, with either no or minimal time dilation.

(I’d love to avoid jump rings entirely, with that worry ahead of us, but given the Feywild’s layout, there’s not much hope of that.)

As for magic, it’s anyone’s guess what will work and what won’t. Most of our spells, I’m guessing, will be less powerful or nonexistent for good portions of the journey, but things like Niko’s ability to heal with a touch, or mine to give my friends a little boost of inspiration in a battle or to use that same force of inspiration in other ways, aren’t really spells, and I don’t know if they’re innate enough that we’d get by the same way Squirt will still be able to blink, or hags apparently can still use most of their powers out there.

Then come the questions that Cerunwe can’t really answer, of where Onver is, in all that vast space. We don’t really have anything of his to track him by, though a hag might be able to help us if we did. We don’t know the space well enough to know where boltholes are, though again in such a vast space there could be thousands. Cerunwe volunteered that there are some ruins, but they’re so ruined that it’s more trouble than it’s worth to put them to any use, so there aren’t likely to be landmarks to help us find him either. And he was wily enough to avoid Niko for twenty years, on that first hunt, though Niko didn’t have Maliah with her back then.

It’s possible that if we do meet something as powerful as a dragon, they would have some knowledge of a recently-arrived powerful being, and might be willing to trade for that knowledge, but that’s anyone’s guess. If we get very close, the piece of Reorx’s power that he stole might let Niko lead us, but I’m guessing that would lead us right into his probably-very-defensible position, when I’d rather tempt him out of it to get on more even footing.

I also asked how far into the dark side someone, even someone very powerful, can safely live, especially since Cerunwe had spoken about zir memories of the deepest parts of the darkness as barely coherent, which made me worry time might get odd there. Zie didn’t care to guess, but said it’s really more a matter of the magic problems than time problems (implication was that the time problems might have been because of those time distortion jump rings, or possibly simple delirium, zie was very detailed about the risks of injuries getting infected and rotting. I’m not sure I should ask). As very few beings are prepared to live in the extreme conditions of the very brightest parts of the Feywild, though, very few are adapted for the opposite extremes in the darkness, so at least chances are we might be able to avoid going that far?

We all had to digest that information for a while, so we told Cerunwe part of the information we’d offered zir: the story of what we’ve been up to since we left the Feywild last, Avka’s hoard and the Astral Sea and everything in between.

In the middle of that, I couldn’t contain some curiosity: ever since I found out that Jhasdej’s primary planet was mostly spent and uninhabited, even back when I cast Legend Lore with a Wish and heard a single elvish voice reading out a poem about them, I wondered, in the back of my mind, if maybe they were the star that shone on the Honorien Dominion, and thus on Cerunwe’s earlier years. So I asked zir the name of zir planet of origin, and after a moment, they said it was Aland—the same name Jhasdej gave us, which seems like an incredible coincidence to the point that I wonder if the Lady had some hand in it, knowing who Jhasdej was when she gave us their name.

Not long after that, Cerunwe excused zirself, partly to talk to the Lady of the Ashenwalds about everything, and probably partly to consider whether zie can bring zirself to return to the dark parts of the Feywild (though zie is already kindly offering to bring us up to the edge of it, which is a help and no doubt worthy of the swords), and also probably party to have a chance to think about us telling zir we’d spoken to zir star of origin in person and that Maliah is returning to the planet zie left to restore it and offered to bring zie along if zie would like.

We’ll have plenty of time to ask them more questions on our way to the dark side of the Feywild, though, so I don’t mind giving them the time. I could certainly use some time myself, to try to get my fear under some measure of control.

As long as I have reception, maybe we can find time when you’re off work and I’m in camp to do a short video call so you can reassure yourself of my safety and I can see how you (and PA) are doing? No problem if not, but it seems silly not to at least say hello before I go somewhere inaccessible again.

There’s another rule I’ll make for myself after that long vacation I promised you at the start of this letter: I’ll try and stay mostly in places with reception for all that time, with the exception of some visits to Kirim. But maybe I can try to convince you to visit with me, one of those times? I’ll wear you down one of these days, I promise Teleport isn’t bad, especially when I know precisely where I’m going.

Love,

Elyn

[letterstosestrilles]

Dear Cerunwe,

By the time you get this, odds are we’ll be in the Feywild. I say “odds are” because there’s a god involved, which means this message could send sooner than expected, or later than expected, or be precisely on time but us in the wrong place. So I will be sending another message, or a Sending, when we are in the Feywild proper, but I wanted to reach out in advance.

(And yes, I’m being as intriguing as possible, because I’m about to ask about making one hell of a bargain and it can’t hurt to pique both your interest and that of the Lady of the Ashenwalds. I hope you’ll convey her my respect, if you choose to speak to her about this.)

We told you, when we met you, about at least some of what our larger quest was, the reason we had to go to the Deeping Wellemere. Reorx, the Crafter, was sorely hurt and we wanted to do our best to heal them. Maybe we even told you a little about a man, Aturav Onver, who Niko had been seeking and who was the most likely person to have done the hurting.

We have a few adventures to catch you up on for certain, but I’ll skip to the current point of them: Reorx is restored, and setting their domain to rights. They, and others, have confirmed that Aturav Onver is the one who did the deed, and with Reorx having delicate work to do and gods having some trouble traveling anonymously on mortal planes, Maliah and I have agreed to accompany Niko to truly see this quest through.

Reorx knows the general, if not the specific, location of this man, and I suspect you’re understanding it now if you haven’t already: Onver is in the Feywild. And, more specifically, he’s in the full dark of the Feywild, hiding his plans and hiding from those hunting him in areas that magic has trouble penetrating.

We only know one person who’s been there and survived, one person we might be able to offer a few things to.

Advice and frank speech we’d appreciate, and whatever maps and charts you might have made even if the areas may since have changed would be welcome. If you were willing, for of course a significantly higher price, your personal guidance as far as you cared to go would be a blessing.

Obviously I can’t offer fair terms until I know the limits of your willingness, but aside from the story of what we’ve done since we left you, I know I can offer a specific location of a hoard that might interest your lady and a description of at least a few of the defenses (with the caveat that because of the protections and the way it’s set up I can’t tell you precisely what’s in it, nor can I make any promises about your ultimate ability to access those things). I am also, as I’ve implied, sitting on a sofa in the personal domain of the Crafter right now. I’m sure we can find a few things that may tempt you, if you choose to guide us.

Is there a place it would be easy for you to meet in person to discuss details and work out terms? Some places we’ll have to journey to on foot, since I don’t know how exact gods are with their Plane Shifting, but I could easily meet you in Troihari, or another place I remember well enough to return to with Teleport.

Let us know if you’re interested—or even if you’d just like to meet for tea, but I very much hope you’re interested. Even if I could find another guide, I always prefer to rely on people I’ve trusted to watch my back before.

Best,

Elyn

[letterstosestrilles]

Dear Tyko,

It’s been a few days since I Sent to you, and maybe you’re wondering why I’m not back somewhere you can get my letters again yet. Obviously this letter won’t explain until I’ve already left, but I don’t know whether I’ll actually be somewhere with reception in between now and … everything else. I hope I am, I want you to know what I’m up to in far more words than I can do in Sending, but I think we’ll be figuring that out tomorrow or the next day.

Before I talk about what’s next, though, there’s a lot to catch you up on, as you might imagine, having read my last letter. Questions I’ve asked and had answered, and the next steps, because there are next steps. Maybe you, like me, had a moment’s desperate hope (and fear, in my case—I can’t deny that I would have had trouble letting go, even if I would have for your sake and those of others who love me, if there were other people who had any faith they could complete this quest) that Emulf and Dwiona would take this task on with Niko, but they have other business to attend to, and I can’t blame them. So yes, there are next steps, but I do need to tell you about how we got to them.

When I last wrote, I was groggy and unprepared to face the world, but writing it down helped, as it always does, so I went off and found Maliah, who was also groggy. We drank some tea from the jug and chatted a little, mostly about our exhaustion. Eventually, she heard voices in the distance, and when we poked our heads out, Niko was also poking hers out, hair mussed and eyes squinted in the scant light. She asked if we wanted breakfast, and when we agreed, led us to the kitchen, pausing sometimes at a crossroads as she reminded herself what direction something was in.

Dwiona and Emulf were up when we got there, for a given value of it. Emulf had pitched himself so far to the side in his seat that he was leaning in the wall, coffee perilously close to spilling it whenever he drank. Dwiona was determinedly upright, not letting herself lean on anything including the back of her seat. They greeted us and offered desperately-needed coffee, and we all tried to find the rhythm of a conversation while we drank it.

Maliah and I did our best to catch them up on major events in the Prime Material Plane over the past two and a half years, though it’s shameful how little we know about what’s actually in the news, other than being fairly certain that Kirim was a major story, at least. I asked if either of them had home planets or stations they wanted to hear about specifically, but they waved me off to ask about generalities, which makes sense with some things I surmised later, but we’ll get there.

We did a little better over breakfast, where Dwiona brought out some things from a pantry that I suspect works much like the one in my Mansion and gave us all plenty of protein and bread to get our energy back up. Maliah and I talked a little more about our backgrounds, and what adventures we’ve been on with Niko that don’t fully involve the path she led us down, asked a few hesitant questions about whether they’ve had time to do much eating or resting since Reorx was attacked (the answer is “very little,” especially with their companions leaving a year ago to seek more help, Niko not having returned), and generally tried to make a very strange situation as normal as we could.

Eventually, though, it was obvious that not much else could get started without speaking to our host, so we all set our dishes aside and let Dwiona and Emulf go ask Reorx where they’d like to meet us while Niko started fussing with her hair and Maliah and I frantically straightened ourselves out. When we were all settled, though, we went out to something like a veranda, a place with a view of the sky (the only thing that still shifts moment by moment instead of holding steady as long as one is in the room) and no true greenery but crafted greenery: wrought metal flowers, silk vines, materials I can’t pretend to recognize.

Reorx, in orcish form, looked much more collected than they had the day before, and much more rested too. They asked, to begin, for more details on how we’d come to be there, and Niko obliged, to my everlasting gratitude. She knew the details that would most interest them, and the most about how she first realized something strange was going on in the first place. I only tossed in occasional commentary—things we saw before we started traveling with her full-time, personal confirmations of people I know who have been on the constant-inspiration side of things, and the occasional comment when Niko was being too modest about her own contributions. Maliah did much the same, and all told, we condensed the tale of our travels down to an hour or so, with a little extra when Reorx asked some clarifying questions.

When it was done, it was our turn to ask questions, and I started with the one I answered for you at the start of this letter: whether Reorx’s companions (it’s the best word I’ve got for them, when they aren’t all paladins and there’s clearly too much fondness and knowledge on both sides for “followers” to feel right) wanted to take over the quest now that Niko has her memories back. As I said, Dwiona and Emulf demurred, and Reorx has plenty of work to do with a lot of divine delicacy putting their domain back in order.

So the problem of Onver was squarely back in our laps, and we started asking questions as appropriate, starting with what it is that he actually wants. Reorx said, rather wry, that Onver isn’t given to dramatic speeches about his goals, but they expect that what he wants is power. The power of a god, even, but without the responsibilities or obligations of one. Reorx suspects they were a first test, not a final one.

The next question, one that’s been keeping me up nights, is whether the damage to Reorx was from charging or discharging the weapon. We know that it can pull from beings as well as from the ethereal plane, after all, and the kind of charge you can gain from hurting a god is not the kind of charge we want in Onver’s hands. Unfortunately, it seems to have been some measure of both, and Reorx can tell that some portion of their essential nature is in Onver’s hands—it allows them to do at least some general tracking on him, but that he succeeded in even that measure is terrifying.

Another logical question: what can a mortal do, with a piece of a god’s essential nature? With a piece of Reorx’s, given their domain. Pure destruction, certainly, but if all Onver wanted to do was destroy, he could easily have spent that power already. Other options are more nebulous: he could use it like an incredibly powerful version of the inspiration I can give, or infuse it into an object, or hoard it for when he gains more power at the next stage of his plan, whatever that is.

That gave us all plenty to think of, so I went sidewyas to Niko, who had her full and proper memories restored to her so recently and who I’m full of questions about and for. I started with something Reorx had said the day before—that they’d taken Niko’s memories to keep Onver from following her back once she found him. But Onver had also been brought to them once, so I was confused. Reorx cleared it up, starting the story a little back from that, as I’ll relay to you now.

After Onver destroyed his community so brutally, which Niko told us about, Reorx charged her and Achenna, who I haven’t met, to bring Onver to them for a conversation—as they say, punishment isn’t really in their remit, but something clearly had to be done and it was Reorx’s paladin Onver betrayed. They did, which is when Onver attacked and whisked away (some kind of teleportation magic, but whether it was magic in an item, a scroll, intrinsic, or learned, Reorx couldn’t say), but the protection was less about the location, in the end, and more about knowledge.

Niko and these other companions are all very close to Reorx, it seems, in a way most people aren’t to gods (which makes me think about Mishakal and her comment that Reorx’s plane might be more comfortable for us than many divine planes, so I’m guessing it’s not terribly common for gods to take on companions, but that seems rude to ask). They’re privy to secrets of divine knowledge, of universal and creative knowledge, that shouldn’t fall into Onver’s hands. Moreover, when you’re that close to a god, apparently there are means of tracking, so removing Niko’s connection kept her safe until Onver gave up looking for her.

That was a lot to think about, so I sidestepped again and got another blow to my perception of things for my troubles: I asked about the timeline of things, and whether the return of Niko’s memories had given her time back too. She laughed, a little wildly, and said that apparently the time between Onver destroying his community and Niko and Achenna bringing him before Reorx was twenty years. (I don’t know much about genasi lifespans, but you’ve met Niko. She does not look old enough to have been hunting someone for twenty years. Another question I don’t quite have the courage to ask.)

More than that, the memories she shared with us of bringing Onver to a mortal temple to Reorx were modified. She wasn’t a regular paladin called to be a servant and companion to Reorx in this circumstance. She’d been with them for some time, and the perhaps-killed head of the temple was Reorx themselves, twisting things so Niko could know what she needed to without betraying that knowledge if she was found. Apparently these companions go on what they agreed to call pilgrimages sometimes, returning to mortal planes to wander, learn new techniques, inspiring interesting projects, and the like. Niko was on one of those when Onver fell into her lap.

(And fell, it seems, by design. He might not have known exactly who was coming, but as Reorx put it, there are ways people can make themselves attractive in such situations, and if it hadn’t been a servant of Reorx, it might have been, I don’t know, a high-level cleric of an agricultural god interested in the supposed uses of the machine, or even, as they said, Gaizka, powerful enough to draw interest.)

The extra twenty years certainly make parts of what we’ve been surmising make sense. Niko and Reorx agree that she was hunting him fiercely enough that he can’t have been putting too much into place, but Maliah and I remembered Shaan Liadon, and his mother who might possibly be a warlock, which gave us all a sober moment. That’s more of a loose thread, a side problem I already know Athan and Gaizka have their eyes on from different vantage points, but it’s still a reminder that Onver might have done plenty of things even on the run.

They also agree that while Onver might have been presenting himself as a regular denizen of the Plane of Earth when she met him, chances are large that’s a disguise. There’s no guessing what he actually is, when there are so many powerful beings, Reorx included, who can change their guise on a whim, but we should be prepared for him to have resources and powers aside from his weapon, at the very least. He definitely has access to magic, by whatever means, even if his primary offensive capability is the weapon.

Well, let me be precise, so I’m harder to take by surprise: with Reorx, he really only tried to fight or wound with the weapon, and didn’t attack when he was separated from it, just tried to get back and hamper others’ movements. (At least at that point, he had to be next to the weapon to fire it. Point in our favor. When Niko and Achenna brought him in, it was using surprise and ambush tactics. Point less in our favor.) It may be that it’s the most damage he can do so he doesn’t see the point in doing anything else. It may be that it’s the most damage he can do to a god, so he didn’t try lesser measure. And it may be that he stuck to the weapon because he wanted power more than he wanted to win, in which case he definitely wouldn’t care to stick to it with us, since we can’t grant him divine power.

That was all a lot to take in, so I made another sidestep: does Reorx want him alive? Niko had talked about taking Onver alive before, to deliver him to justice, but apparently she’s done that once before. And, from what it seems, Reorx doesn’t care. If we deliver them Onver, they’ll deal with him as they see fit. If he doesn’t make it back but he’s dealt with, they’ll be pleased enough to move on to other things.

Maliah stepped in and asked the wonderfully practical question of what the thing looks like, after all this worry about it. Niko, obviously, has seen some plans for it, so she can tell us more, but it does look superficially like a drill, since it is a planar drill even if it functions as much by magic and metaphor as by its physical components. There are apparently a lot of lenses and lasers, which seem like parts that could be sabotaged, or so I optimistically hope. It’s large, on an industrial or agricultural scale rather than a hand weapon.

Reorx seemed to see all of us listing a little, still tired after healing them, and brought the conversation to a close by saying that they could tell us at least vaguely where he is, and would give us anything they can, but that there are places in the universe where it’s hard for magical sight, even that of a god, to penetrate, and Onver has wisely holed up in one. That, though, they said, was to deal with after a few more days of recovery.

Before they sent us off for that recovery, though, they said that they wanted to thank us for coming and finishing the job their companions have been so faithfully doing. They asked if there’s anything we know we need, and I mentioned something to hold Onver once we have him, and they produced from the air, as though it were nothing, a pair of strong but light manacles with runes carved in that can apparently keep a person from using teleportation magic once you have them restrained, and I thanked them and they turned to other gifts.

Reorx gave each of us a gift and a blessing. Niko they said will have greater rewards when they’ve had time to think of what would be appropriate, but apparently the glaive she’s using has more powers than she knew, or used to have more powers, and they’ve restored it to full function. Her blessing is a blessing of health, and as Reorx said it, I could see her sitting up straighter, a little more vital, even if she still looked exhausted.

Maliah was given a beautiful tooled leather quiver, just the size of her regular one but with space to hold arrows, javelins, even extra longbows, all of which can be drawn even quicker than getting something from the bag of holding. Squirt didn’t receive a gift, but they both received blessings. Maliah’s is a blessing of protection—for one who protects her friends, said Reorx, and I’m pleased they see her so well. Apparently it will protect her, which I’m even more grateful about, a little extra ease in dodging and avoiding harm. Squirt’s blessing, which Maliah nearly wept over, is one of wound closure: he’s going to be a whole lot harder to kill, and easier to heal, which is worth weeping over, I’d say.

I got a puzzle to go with my gift and my blessing. They said (and meant, I since discovered) that they wanted to know more about my gloves, but in the meantime asked Dwiona for a particular harp, and when she handed it to them, a small and beautifully covered object, they strummed it once, and the music seemed to shiver into being as light in the air. They cupped it in their hands, blew it over my gloves, and now, it seems, the gloves have the powers of the harp: they’ll cast Fly, and Wall of Thorns, and several other spells, once a day each, and if I try to use the gloves to charm someone, which I don’t expect I’ll do often, they’ll have a harder time resisting it. They also said that as I look for how they stored the data, I may find it easier to do some of my own, which is the puzzle, and one I look forward to unraveling.

The blessing is one that may amuse you, actually—Reorx, like you, seems to agree that whatever my virtues, I’m not exactly overflowing with wisdom, and gave me a blessing of wisdom to make up for it. I’m used to discovering new reserves of power in myself, but I do have to admit it’s deeply strange to feel a god expand your understanding and powers of observation, and I keep finding myself in spirals wondering if I would have thought something in quite the same way before the blessing. Hopefully it will settle soon.

After that, and a great many thanks, we were given the run of the compound while Reorx took care of business.

Dwiona showed me to some absolutely gorgeous music rooms. They don’t have any overt acoustic material on walls or ceilings, but even just talking in them, you can feel the roundness in the tone, the way it’s almost an echo but doesn’t actually linger or muddy any sounds. I don’t think I’ve heard a concert hall as good. And they’re just there, full of musical instruments, each a perfect example of type, some of them types I’ve never heard of and couldn’t imagine. Others have the wood-and-rosin scent of a luthier’s shop, or sheets of brass to be shaped, wires to be turned into strings for palm-sized harps as much as for guitars twice as long as I am tall.

I spent most of the rest of the day absolutely enchanted, playing first one instrument, now another, each all pure and perfect tone, the smoothest trumpet I’ve ever heard, a drum whose beats could echo across miles, a fiddle Serime would kill to get her hands on.

I had, however, in a fit of wanting to do something for the exhausted people who haven’t had breaks and vacations with friends and family for the last two years, offered to treat everyone to dinner in the Mansion, and that included Reorx, so eventually I tore myself away and very quickly planned a feast and a Mansion that’s a bit less flamboyant than usual, just in time for everyone to come along.

It was a pleasant dinner, thank goodness. Squirt gorged himself on a dozen kinds of meat, everyone else appreciated the strange array of dishes I conjured up, roast hog next to Infernal curry next to that cake I always wanted to try from The Estate of Bidi-Maha in the Time of Industry, which was just as delicious as I always hoped. I kept conversation as light as I could, and Reorx and their companions mostly talked about crafting, and mishaps with trying new ones. When they lapsed, Maliah and I told some stories of the quests not directly related to helping Reorx.

Eventually, we all admitted defeat and left the Mansion behind to rest again.

Yesterday was quiet. I went back to the music rooms, and while I spent a little time looking at the spellwork and wondering how to replicate it, and pulling out Hanai’s old notes to see if the crystalline structure could be a key to it, I also spent some time doing some maintenance on the rest of my kit, since the gloves are the showiest part but not the only part. I redid the wiring in my belt to be more efficient with the larger amounts of data I need to access, recalibrated the sensitivity on my loop sensor, and, while I had such perfect recording acoustics, rerecorded a lot of my vocal samples.

Maliah and Niko had both disappeared, Niko to rooms dedicated to fibercraft and Maliah sometimes with her and sometimes looking at and testing out Reorx’s gorgeous collection of bows, and we were all enthusiastic over dinner, which we had in the kitchen this time and without a god along.

And then today, after a bit more of the same, Reorx called us to that veranda again, to talk to us about our next steps, since Onver doesn’t seem to be moving fast but we all want to be done with him anyway.

As I said, because Onver has a piece of Reorx’s power, they can’t pinpoint him, but they know at least vaguely where he is. And as I said, there aren’t many places that can block magic as thoroughly as the place he’s hiding. Reorx listed a few, each of which sounded inhospitable: pockets of the Shadowfell, certain corners of the Celestial Plane, some of the Outer Planes, where Reorx says Onver does not yet have the power to walk.

But Onver isn’t in any of those places. No, Onver is, it seems, on the dark side of the Feywild. The place they tell ghost and horror stories about, a place where large parts don’t allow any access to magic and where I’ll thus have a hard time being of any use to my friends at all to the point where I’m worried I’ll be dead weight for a decent amount of the journey, unless I can make friends with some unspeakable horrors on the way to Onver’s den. But you can’t make friends with the land, which is also against you, and contains, apparently, pockets where time distorts, where we could lose months or years. Reorx, helpfully, suggests we avoid those. I’ll have to ask what they look like.

Or, most likely, I’ll have to ask Cerunwe what they look like, because we do know one person who’s been to the dark side of the Feywild and come back out, if with more difficulty than ze has yet told us about. We’re going to owe zir a hell of a favor, but the thought of at least zir advice, if not zir guidance, is one of the only things giving me hope, when Maliah blanched as soon as Reorx said where Onver is. Maliah’s not scared of places, not really, not when she could explore them, but this she’s scared of, and that scares me in turn, even if something about it tugged my imagination and my interest when I was there.

Maybe I’ll get to write my song about it after all.

I don’t know if we’ll be back on the Prime Material Plane in between. These messages may send from the Feywild—I doubt the dark side has the reception to send messages, but if we need to find Cerunwe, we won’t be starting there.

I’m scared. Of Onver and of this. But I can almost see the end of it, now, and some hints of what could come after. I’ll just have to keep those in mind, because the nearer things are too terrifying to focus on for long.

Please tell me you’re reading something happy in book club this month.

Love,

Elyn