(April 7)
All Are Welcome
Cliffs of Easvolin & Shepherd’s End
Autumn 26 – 38
Xalati goes alone to the shipwreck of the Nightflower to brace the Deeplurker and asks questions. She discovers that their kind eats minds, and that they came a long time ago to try and free their master, but now “they have come for your world” and it wants to flee, and “they have stolen your angels.”
Xalati doesn’t really understand any of it, but knows that they took someone important from it and it took someone important from her, so they’re probably even. It did, however, take memories of Ixtalan, which are all she has left, so she asks if it would give them back. It agrees, if they open the Door for it. There’s a moment of frustration between them as the Deeplurker tries to get Xalati to promise that her friends will open the Door and Xalati is too literal to be able to promise something that she doesn’t know for sure they can deliver. Eventually, she promises to do all she can, and it delivers a torrent of images of purple-skinned bipedal creatures with tentacles for mouths swarming over fields and towns, the tower in the north with a strong sense of it being a lodestone, and strange creatures in the deep thousands of years ago enduring a thousand years of torment and captivity.
Esmund confronts Gwin again about the information she kept from him, and she tells him they were afraid for him.
Kaisi and Salinger train Poppy to spit acid.
Esmund asks how Kibeth stopped being afraid of fire, and she admits she didn’t, but there’s not really much choice since they need things forged, and besides she has healing magic and it feels satisfying to make something with her hands. He calls her amazing, and they start looking at plans together. She tells him they’re all here to help, he doesn’t have to carry the burden alone.
Aureya and Kaisi look through the portal in the Temple of the Maiden Thrice. Aureya has a crisis of faith, in the strength of theirs versus hers. Kaisi signals again, on her request, and they get back, “Come all are welcome,” “come home all are here,” and eventually, “Albina” in response to the question of who it is. When he tosses a rock through the portal, though, the sand erupts as a giant worm leaps at it.
Kibeth’s forge lights up spontaneously and breathes at her.
Salinger gives Esmund a leadership quiche made from the blue laurel chicken eggs, and Esmund forces him to have some bites as well.
Autumn 38
They all meet and share what’s happened to them. Esmund tells them the Door Jamb needs more time but has a high probability of exploding on itself.
At the forge, the egg hatches. Out falls a young woman with a reptilian head, slitted golden eyes and pink-and-teal multicolored feathers. Kibeth, Aureya and Sal are quick to cover and reassure her that she’s among friends, and she falls asleep.
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