PBEM Game: Yarnspinners 2 (Running)

[djo]

Vanheim turn 60...



In which we conclude.


Vethru


We're finally there. Our scouts say Ulm tore itself apart trying to storm the citadel last month. Even better, before they were defeated, they took down about 90% of the defenders, too. I love it when two enemies beat each other up.

Now we're on the field, and Belletennares is leading an army of dead toward the Ulmites. They're a rag-tag bunch, some infantry, some religious fanatics, a couple templars, a priest. That's it.

You've got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em. Ulm waited too long. So did Marignon. I never make that mistake. I always get out right when I have what I want. Around here, that could be just a few more days. Then I'll go *poof*, and probably that'll make them worship me even more. Distant gods are the best gods, in a practical sense.

"Hey, boss," says Quellian Ji. "Is that who I think it is?"

And great googly-moogly, it is. Pherios is over on the far side of the battlefield. There's a dead thing acting as his bodyguard. And he's fighting Ulm.

"What in Hel could he be up to?" I wonder. I don't think he's here to help me, but I doubt he'd try to tip the battle the other way, not with his uncle here, and an undefended path to Vanheim behind us.

It doesn't matter. I can feel the power of this place. We're almost there.

I lose sight of Pherios in the battle. All I can see are great blasts of dark energy coming from his position. So I send great blasts of fire into Ulm's ranks, because I don't want to be a copycat, and when Pherios calls up the wailing winds, the armored Ulmite fools run in terror. Vanheim wouldn't have. We're comfortable with the dead.

Crap. Have to watch that. I'm starting to identify with them. That's bad policy.

So we're advancing down the center, chasing down the stragglers, and suddenly Ji says, "Look out!"

I'm almost blindsided by a horrific angelic being with a big-*** sword. She tried to poke me with it and almost succeeds. The sword wants to eat my soul. Big surprise for it, nothing there to eat.

But the damned thing is sharp nonetheless. I jump back a pace and Kestumaia interposes herself, stabbing at the lammashta. Lorakeia is already dead behind her. Hood's breath, what's going on? Where's my security detail?

They're gone. Belletennares is gone. And I know where the demon ladies came from. Pherios, the second most powerful necromancer on the battlefield. House Alteion's betrayed me. Titania's tits, what did I do to deserve this?

What did I ever do to them? I made one of them my prophet, and I put most of the family in positions of power. Sure, Galameteia got killed, but that wasn't my fault. And I tried to bring her back, I really did. It's a tricky thing. I've taught courses, written textbooks on the matter. I did my best. But Pherios wouldn't let her go. So instead of killing him, I almost-kill him--a great gift, right? No, he doesn't like that either. Frelling ungrateful worshippers.

And then he goes and takes it personally. Doesn't he see what I can do for his nation? What does he think would happen without me? Dinner parties with the two red dragons? Tea with the mad angel of Marignon? No, they'd get steamrolled by that psycho enchantress ***** Selena. See if they think that would be any better than me. I think not.

Cripes, my old man's mind is wandering, and then Kestumaia screams and dies, and the she-devil slashes her sword through my neck. I guess I deserve that for not paying attention.

She gets Ji, too.


Pherios

I stay near the edge of the battle. I've got one wight guarding me. It claims it's an ancestor of mine, and it fends off the Ulmish infantry so I can work.

We're winning, but I need to make sure we'll win by a lot, because the balance is going to change dramatically in a few minutes. I throw some shadow blasts into the enemy, and they dissolve under the dark energy. I see the fear in their eyes, and I decide to take advantage of it. I call the voices of our forebears to cry through the curtain of night and wail in the minds of the Ulmites.

They can't take much of this, I know. Their lines start to break. I look over to my uncle and meet his eyes. He nods. I nod back. It's done. He and his forces quietly start their retreat behind Vethru. They will escape and leave us behind.

My uncle Belletennares is a wise man, and a kind one. When I told him my plan, he did not try to talk me out of it. He treated me as an equal, and he accepted that I knew what must be done. He trusted my judgement and accepted the sacrifice I was planning to make.

There are a few more gems in my pouch, enough for the last spell. My hand shakes. After all this, after all that I've seen and been through, my fears still grip me. And my regrets. There are mortal beings on the field of battle, and they too will pay my price. Sgt. Rock, our faithful cave drake, and Vethru's Valkyries, Kestumaia and Lorakeia. I fear they will not survive.

I have been halfway down that path myself. I prepare myself to go all the way. I crush the gems and call forth the lammashtas.

There is a dark rip in the air, and they step out. The first cuts down my wight and turns its empty eyes to me. The other flies across the field in an instant and silently impales Lorakeia. She is drawn to Vethru's power, just as her sister is drawn to mine.

In that instant of distraction, when I look to see Vethru's fate, I am slain.

I awaken some moments later, I don't know how many, in a dense grey mist. There are myriad bright sparks swirling through it. One of them whispers to me.

Vethru is there. He looks pretty much the same. He sees me and laughs. "Interesting tactic. But you've got to know I can find my way back from here in no time. It's the first trick I learned when I died."

He's happy. I don't understand why. He answers my unasked question. "Ermor has fallen. I'll have my prize. You helped, too. There's no reason for us to be fighting. I'll have what I want, and I'll leave Vanheim. I'll even help you get back to your home and family. How about it?"

He hasn't figured it out. I don't intend to go back. I'm not going to let this monster back into my world, or let him have any power that may be hidden there. I'm going to stop him.

I reach out to them. The sparks swirling in the mist around us. Vethru hasn't noticed, or maybe he doesn't care, but there are more and more of them building up. They are collecting around us in a bright cyclone. I know them, and they know me. They know me like they know my Aunt Tilneia. They are the souls of the dead of Vanheim, from all of our history. And they are on my side.

Vethru is a powerful necromancer, and powerful in many other ways of sorcery and wizardry. But he has only been in Vanheim for five years. We were born here. We are part of this world, and we know it far better than he does. What's more, our world likes us. It does not like him.

We push at him, and turn him around, and he pushes back. There are more of us. We nudge him from a million directions out, out, out of our world. He tries to strike, but we swirl away.

He slips toward the living world again, and I feel my Aunt Tilneia holding fast from the other side.

Vethru is angry now. We don't give him any time to react. Another wave of spirits joins us, and another, and another. We weave ourselves into the fabric of our world, our afterlife, and we eject Vethru from it.

Although we watch for hours, a day, he doesn't try to come back. He knows the limits of his power, and ours. We have the advantage here. It's over. He's gone.

After it's been quiet for some time, the sparks begin to swirl around me again. They are agitated. They are worried. They are afraid that I will go back to the land of the living and leave them alone again.

I reassure them. I am not a lich, nor a vampire, nor do I desire to be any other dead thing that walks among the living, even if I knew how. I tell them I will stay with them.

They scatter to the wind, and I believe the mist brightens. It is a new day in a new place. I wonder what I will find here.

I turn toward an interesting gray shape on the horizon and begin to walk, wondering, hoping that I may possibly, just possibly, come across the spirit of the lost Valkyrie that I love.


Belletennares

Some would say my power has left me, with the death of god, and it is true: I am his vessel no longer. But within me still lies the experiences of my 846 years. I am still a Vanjarl. I am still of house Alteion. My magic is with me again. I do not want for power. I still lead Vanheim's armies, now scattered and tattered across our northern frontiers. It is still my responsibility to defend my nation in this new world.

There was no trace of their bodies in Ermor. I do not retreat from battle easily; not once in all the years of this war did I turn from my enemies. At the behest of my nephew Pherios, who suffered greatly on his own path through the time of ascension, though, I did, and gladly, to exile the pretender Vethru from this world. For my small part of Alteion's gift of prophesy never showed me a path until I walked it. I gladly followed Pherios, and Galameteia, and Molly, all of whom saw our future paths more clearly than I.

There were no bodies in Ermor, not my nephew's, not Vethru's, nor any of the dead we brought to the fray. Their bodies had dissolved. It was as if nature had reclaimed its land, and curious, I traced the hints of green grass in the dead soil through the shattered weapons and empty armor, until I entered the citadel.

In its terrible yard I found fresh ruins, and a gate limned with skulls lay crumbled on the ground. Underneath I found the skeletons of two humans. One's armbones still bore the chains whose ends, it seems, were once anchored in the maw of the gate.

The smaller skeleton was surrounded by green. The grass was lush around the bones, and it spread, reaching out to swallow the death that permeates the earth here, to smother it with life. I wondered if this were a miracle, and if so, by whose hand. But it is not my place to speak of it. My days of miracles are over. The dead lands were blooming again, and if that miracle could be accomplished by men, not gods, I would be glad, for I saw that the intervention of the gods rarely benefitted us to the degree our prayers entreat. So let it bloom, and hope that Vans, men, and lizards can heal this world.

I turned and left Ermor, taking our forces with me. The lands, whether green or gray, we did not need. I turned homeward, to my wife, my brother, my newly-returned sister. I rode for the hills and shores of Vanheim, to await the next stirring of the universe, and to hope that my life was long, long, long, but no so long to see it.

[djo]

...and turn 61, the epilog:


In which Vethru hits the road, and Molly finds something.


Vethru

Well, things could have gone better.

But they could've gone a lot worse, too. I've spent a dozen years in some worlds and walked away with nothing. This time? Not so bad. I got a distorted version of a nice section of source code. Better than nothing. With a few decades of study, comparing it to the parts I already understand, I'll probably be able to fix some of it. It might add up to as much as a tenth of a percent of the whole. Not bad at all, for five years' work.

And the rest of it's still there, in Inland. Still accessible, somewhere. I make a mental note to come back in a few hundred years. No, make that a few thousand. Those damned Vans live forever. I'd rather not run into anyone who remembers me. That'd be awkward. It's either the whole "God has returned! Rejoice!" thing, which is OK but gets to be a hassle, or else you find you're now the uber-evil in a whole new mythology. Better make it ten thousand years. Maybe Pherios will have wandered off by then, too.

"So where to now, boss?" asks Quellian Ji.

"Someplace comfortable," I say. "There's got to be a dimension near here with silk pillows and five-star restaurants."

"How about a luxury cruise?" he asks.

"How about someplace where I can get a nice seagull-burger?"

"No such place, boss," Ji snickers. "Everybody knows seagulls are good luck."

"It's albatrosses you can't kill. Seagulls, who would notice? There's so damned many of them."

"Boss, as long as it has feathers and flies over the ocean, it's good luck."

"Well, I've had seagull," I tell him. "And albatross, too. The former was not a gourmet experience. You know why the albatross crossed the road?"

"Why?" he asks.

"It was glued to the chicken," I say.

He squawks and giggles and just about falls off my shoulder. For some reason, chicken jokes crack him up. Simple things for simple minds. But there's a reason I keep him around, because then he recites, " 'I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide/Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied.' "

"Shut up, bird," I say, and he just laughs as he bobs along on his perch.

Damn it, but he's right. I turn north-by-kata-by-northwest in the six-dimensional manifold we're walking through, and I start looking for a place, any place, where the salt air stings, the tall ships roll on the waves, the wind sings with the creak of the mast and flap of the sails, and new possibilities lie behind every turning of the tide...


Molly

"Look after my family." That was the last thing Pherios said to me, before he left. Because he knew, no, *we* knew, he wouldn't be around to do it himself.

He never came back from Ermor. Neither did Vethru. The world's all different now. None of the pretenders ascended. We're in a kind of peace now.

So what was I doing down here in the tunnels under Triastellus?

It was his darn birds. I started to hear them, after he died. They twittered and tweeted and clucked in my skull, and they wouldn't leave me alone. Pherios probably did it on purpose, giving me a piece of his gift. Birds! What did I know about birds? Hearing voices is bad enough, but I can understand voices, mostly. At least Pherios could see his birds. I just heard them.

I finally gave in yesterday. I started following them. Uncle Belletennares said that works for him, wandering around. So I did, I started walking toward where they seemed to be.

They took me over to Triastellus, way up toward the top. We stopped near Alteion's tomb. I listened to the ducks and gulls in the fountain, and the sounds I heard in my head were suddenly *right in front of me*. Like what was in my head was just an echo of what I was really hearing and seeing, except I was hearing the echo at the same time, instead of a second later. It was really weird.

I sat listening to them for over an hour. Half of the fountain had been drained. I asked why, and they told me they were putting in a new statue. Of Pherios. I couldn't take it. I broke down crying and ran away.

But the next day, I came back. I guess it was OK with the birds, because they were still there. They led me inside.

They bring me way deep under the earth. For a while I can't stop sneezing, but after a while, a long while, I stop. It's like we're so far underground that the dust can't find us.

Then the birdsong starts to thin out. It's like each bird can only come with me part of the way into the tunnels. There are only a handful left when I reach this one section. It's filled with books and scrolls. Some of the titles I can read, but most of them don't even look like our writing. They must be really old.

Each of the arches that connect the rooms in this area has a bird carved in stone above it. Now that I can only hear a few birds left, I can tell that each one stops singing as I pass through its arch. Like they're leading me on a particular path. I pass through the petrel arch, and I stop hearing the petrel. Then I stop hearing that little bird that runs along the shore when I pass its arch, then the plover stops, and then the funny black and white bird you sometimes see way off in the gorge in winter. The puffyn, that's it.

That leaves just one. It's a squawk I know well. It *hurts*, because I know it's him. It's a blue heron. That's what Pherios was, in his visions, just like his dad. I slowly walk through the heron arch, my heart aching because I miss him so much. And I'm so relieved, because the heron doesn't stop speaking after I pass under the arch. Because that would be like him leaving me again. But I'm still sniffling, and I can barely see through my tears as my hands reach for a small wooden chest. It sounds like a fledgling is pecking at it from the inside. It opens easily.

I unroll the scroll on a table, and *wow*.

It's a glowy runic thing, and it radiates power. It's what Pherios wanted me to find. I can feel it. He's watching, and he's happy. I've done what he wanted me to do. I found it. And the heron's voice fades, and it's quiet and peaceful in the chamber. And I feel peaceful, too. I can let him go now.

And then I wonder what to do. This thing I've found, it's so old, and it's powerful, and I'm just a young girl. It doesn't belong in my world. It's like the opposite of what I am, at least what I was before all this war started. It belongs to the world of svartalfs or Vanjarls or whatever. But I guess it doesn't matter. That's life here. Young, old? Past, future? Humans and Vans...war, and now peace? Me sewing dresses, and me hearing the future? It's all here. Two sides to everything. That's how we do things here. That's the way it is. This is my life. This is where I live. This is my home. This is Vanheim.

[Sedna]

Thou didst create the night, but I made the lamp.

Thou didst create the clay, but I made the cup.

Thou didst create the deserts, mountains and forests,

I produced the orchards, gardens and groves.

It is I who made glass out of stone,

And it is I who turn poison into antidote.


- Saint Iqbal Muhammad

Esclave

There is nothing like the sun at sea, soaking into the rough wooden boards. I trail my fingers in the bright blue water and dream:

Wic is having dinner with the corruptor, lord of hell. They have a lengthy contract between them, and in between bites of kitten, they point with bloody fingers at various subsections and sub-subsections. Wic's thrust is that his death in battle represents a failure of his life-long protection, rendering the contract void, while the devil argues that the contract only guarantees life-long protection, and so Wic's death was automatically coincident with with fulfillment of said contract. The two seem to be enjoying themselves.

Such strange dreams come less frequently now, as those horrors drift away. Life of the sea agrees with me. I have much time to think and to write down the events of the past five years. We'll bring this story along with the rest of the scripture to the new lands across the sea, along with various relics from Marignon. But the most important thing in this boat is what is not here: a single member of the inquisition. What would have been the point escaping from that land of madness and thence across the ocean if we were just going to spread the old fears and hatreds? Besides, not one inquisitor survived the final desperate months of fighting. We go to the new world, not as conquerors of the sea, but as humble pilgrims. We have much to learn, and much to share with those who will listen. I'm sure everything will work out this time.

We last saw the sun set on Inland months ago. Our navigator points to the high-flying gulls and tells us once again that new lands are just a few more days off. I am patient and calm. I can wait a little longer to see the sun rise over new horizons and to see the moon reflected in unknown coves.

[Sedna]

I was debating whether to post an epilogue, but when I saw that space had been created for it on the wiki I had no choice.

Well, Esclave needed an ending.

Great finish djo. For internal cross-consistancy, I should not that Foen is actually a woman, though I probably only mention that explicitly once or twice. I appreciate you giving her and Marignon and final send off.

[djo]

Um, er, well, of course I knew Foen was a women. It's just that, Belletennares must have, um, misidentified the skeleton. (thanks for the note, fixed)

[djo]

And for a final comment, I can do no better than quote John Masefield's "Sea Fever", the poem the Ji recites in turn 5 and the epilog:

"And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over."

[puffyn]

Hey djo,

Thanks for the fine ending; I've enjoyed your yarns immensely over the last year and was glad to see the ending was just as powerful as the beginning had been. Good luck with your move, and hopefully when you're settled in Dom3 will be out and we might all want to think about writing another book. No rush though...

-puffyn

PS. Oh, yes, and a special thanks to the non-writers like Pasha and Griffin, for continuing through the end with us blabbermouths. Hope you enjoyed the game as much as I did.