(Sep 6)
Truth of the Maiden
The Temple & the Between
Winter 33
The Prime
Ixtalan finds vials of inky liquid with a golden mote floating within; there are five in total. They get distributed among everyone, one each to Ava, Ixtalan, Kibeth, Kaisi, and Esmund.
Ava reads Salouis’ journal and shares its contents.
Salouis' Journal
Salouis was alive during the Cataclysm, over 1000 years ago, and went into the invading demons’ dimension and came across the main invader: the Prince of Secrets and Lies. She stole a crystal imbued with a fragment of his soul, which he’d used to create a doorway to the Prime, and kept it safe on the Prime. Over time, it started to break down, and she was afraid of the evil it might release, so did a ritual to hopefully bind the power of it into something in this world.
That ritual made Aureya, the Princess of the Abyss.
Salouis decided to raise her, keeping an eye out for signs of evil. The spear was made of the fragments of the crystal that remained after Aureya was born.
They decide to drill some air holes and rest overnight.
Kibeth tells Esmund about the blood-pact she forged with her awakened forge, then asks if he thinks Aureya’s bad, which he answers strongly in the negative.
Samsel shows Kaisi her magic items, and he encourages her to find the magic in herself, not just her items, then brags about his feats.
Ava tells Ixtalan that she’s pretty sure Xalati would not be happy if Ixtalan ran away from them to find her by herself, and (to Ixtalan’s perception) needles her until Ixtalan calls her a cunt in a cold rage. Ava warns her that she’ll stop her if Ixtalan tries to run, which Ixtalan scoffs at.
The Between
The three on the version of the Tide’s Song talk, looking at a tear in the world over the water. They explain the Door Jamb to Sylas, and ask why he won’t cross. He says it’s a bad idea and that there shouldn’t be another one of him there anyway. Anyway it would probably attract the presence of the Angel of Doors, even though it’s never gone through (that Sylas has seen). He doesn’t know what it wants from the Doors, aside from maybe closing them or find the source of their opening.
He drops that there is technically another Sylas, a dumber, sweeter one called Bax, and explains a little bit of his backstory and the oddities around the Pale Lands and the disappearance of souls. He clarifies that he’s not a person in the traditional sense, and his manifestation came with an unknown charge to hunt down and annihilate aberrations, which he is drawn to; Salinger is tainted by those shadows.
He also says since Tala was properly dead, it should have been impossible for her to cross over when she took Kaisi’s hand, but there it is. He also says all new souls vanish, and no new souls have passed through, and tell Peach and Salinger that Xalati’s soul was taken by the Angel of Doors and taken to the White Tower.
At that point, shadowy creatures rise, coming for them.
The Prime
An hour before the group is ready to rise and go, BRIGGS BRAMBLEHORN horn sound breaks down the door to the office and announces their survival. Gwin, Yev, and Jorn and Bog are also all there.
They all pile out and lend a hand to the fighting wherever they can. After Fayne, surrounded by foes, prays, Aureya bursts up from a door below and flies out blasting, with a golden dragon’s tail and spectral wings. They fall back to the portal room to defend it.
The tear is now enormous, floor to ceiling, leading to a red world and showing a 100 ft centipede. Esmund starts the charge to reorient the portal, and Ixtalan starts running. Ava hits Ixtalan and several other bugs with a Banishment, and Ixtalan (and the bugs) pop out of existence as the tear flickers and shifts, changing to the Between.
The Between
Peach, Sylas and Sal all see the Tear flicker and change to show the Temple, and she tells them to come on. Sylas yells at her to run, and Poppy slams the other two into the Temple as Sylas turns to face waves of shadow creatures.
The Prime
Esmund, remembering that Door Jamb needs to be recharged before it can be used again, starts to try and use sheer force and will to seal it shut. All the dials on the Door Jamb cranked high, the portal shifts and flickers wildly. It suddenly cracks, slicing through the mountain, light flaring until it fills all the room and all the beings and all the world and leaves nothing.
Elsewhere, As the White Spreads
Bax fights against a four-armed red monster, leading villagers to trap it; as it fights its way free, he turns into a yeti to beat it.
Carter, seated in one of the former Baroness’ residences in Galoring, admits a courier into the room and flips through his messages.
Roux is in a dirty tavern, bruised, battered and coughing; one of his captors cuts off his ponytail, while he continues to sing a song to Tyr Isendel lamenting her fall. Pip, his captor, breaks his instrument across Roux’s head and gives him three days to give money.
Athelia is on the Tide’s Song, fending off attacking lizardfolk with Avarian at her side.
Mosrael moves through the streets of Galoring, wearing the cloak of the Church of the Kindled Flame, and knocks on the door; she gives a potion to ease the suffering of the woman she’s there to see; she gives a basket of food to the family, taking only enough to help herself a little.
Warbler is in a tavern (Editrix note: I mostly missed this bit), and kneels down, talking to a flower; he says that everything turned out okay, with overgrown vines angling toward him; he tells more of those stories, and then walks out of the tavern, and says, “I want to go home.”
Sav flies through the outer edge of the Veil and ends up finding a broken Nurie’te on the ground; she sets up a little mobile workstation and looks up to see a bright flash, overwhelming and racing toward them.
Roland, married to Vivian, works a day clearing the fields and goes back to a family dinner, with Ellie and Victoria and even Ethan. After dinner, everyone filters out until it’s just Ethan and Roland, and Ethan says he ought to go. Roland says he doesn’t have to, and Ethan disagrees.
This isn’t how it goes; he’s done too much. He wasn’t a liar, a cheat or a thief when they accused him, but that is how he ended up. He tells of all the things he’s done along the way.
This includes when he, Garth and Taren went to find supplies for the Tide’s Song while the others were the mountain; they found a healthy, happy village with a bountiful harvest that welcomed them, but turned out to be home to an anti-Suffering monster, a creature that fed on the blissful feelings it induced in its adults-only surprise orgy feasts. When he started to think that he didn’t need to pursue and help Danica, he could in fact stay, he snapped out of it, saw the creature for what it was, and stabbed it before it could drag him under its sway again. Its pain and death caused everyone to go unstoppably berserk, including the children left in town, and the three of them killed everyone there; Ethan killed the children, as well, which Garth and Taren refused to.
He concludes that he has to pay for everything he’s done, and until he does he can’t stay in a place like this, the one he’s made for his dead family.
Even More Elsewhere
A boy in his best robes ascends the steps to a priest and a great white cathedral behind. The old priest tells him of angels, winged, beautiful, terrible things, and those who look upon them are blessed with madness. It is from the angels that their souls come, and their life. Here in the North, in the Garden of Aseraphal, there is wonder, plenty, and life; if he travels further south, in the Autumn Lands where the sun hangs low, there live the blasphemers and those who refuse the love of the Angels.
Each star, he says, is an angel who defends it from what is beyond, a beast that lives in Yesterday who seeks to devour everything that is there. So when he is called to serve the Angel of War, to defend their home, he will live on forever in the White Tower to be born again, a soul that never dies.
Elsewhenest
Esmund has had nothing but time to think. Again, and again, and again. All of the calculations were perfect - what happened? It was impossible.
Then, in this place that is nothing but light, he is not alone. A woman in black armor with long golden hair, pointed ears, and scarlet eyes walks toward him.
“I tried to kill you once. I would have killed all of you, every one, every when, to stop what you did. But I don’t have the luxury of hatred or pity. I have searched for you for a long time.”
She extends a hand to him. “Come with me. I will help you find your friends and save them from what you’ve done.”
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