The Wandering Isles: Session 97
As the voyage continued, the mood aboard the ship softened just enough for quieter conversations to rise through the tension. Boreal spoke about what it had been like growing up with Hatsu, describing it with a fondness that sat easily beneath the teasing. He said it had been fun, especially because he so enjoyed pushing Hatsu’s buttons. When Eos tried to learn more about him, his answers were simple and honest. He liked flying, fishing while swooping low through the air, and crafting with his hands. He liked the basics: making tools, building things, framing out what might one day become a house. Eos, thinking ahead to what lay before them, also asked how she might get a proper mask to disguise herself without relying entirely on magic. She wanted something real, something practical, something she could wear when the time came.
They sailed on for another day, the ship largely quiet, the group mostly keeping to themselves and reading while the water carried them onward. Then a new morning began: 27/09/43. Eos took her book up to the crow’s nest and watched the world pass below and beyond, her attention pulled toward Gomgalor, one of the places she longed most to see. Eldrin, meanwhile, had developed some kind of rash and, uncertain what it was, kept his distance from the others. Amaedrianna busied herself with securing the cargo, while Dash grew visibly uneasy as they passed near Rirtez and Palperroth, his mind turning again and again toward his mother and the rest of his family. At the same time, Eos worried about Weslyn, who still remained stubbornly outside the ship proper, clinging to the side rather than returning to the group. The absurdity of it all was only sharpened when Chicken dropped an entire roast chicken onto Weslyn’s head and nearly knocked him from the ladder. That strange little moment turned into one of the lighter exchanges of the journey when Eos asked Dash what “Get Fucked” meant. Dash, trying to preserve what innocence he could, told her it meant “leave me alone, I do not want to interact with people right now,” and then invented an entire language called Tzarkazan to sell the lie. Amaedrianna, unfortunately, corrected the misunderstanding in her own way by explaining the word “fuck” rather more directly and then telling Eos to call Dash a “fucking idiot.” Eos obediently did so. Amaedrianna immediately regretted it, adding that she should never say that to someone she respected, and seemed genuinely sorry that Dash had been the one to receive the lesson.
Sensing the strain still hanging over everything, Dash went to check on Amaedrianna and asked whether she wanted to spar. She did. What followed was sharp, fast, and full of the kind of wordless understanding only combat sometimes reveals. Amaedrianna struck first, but Dash turned her attack aside with his jacket and scored the opening point in their best-of-three. She answered immediately, ducking low, rising cleanly, and bopping him squarely on the nose to even the score. Dash then used the sway of the ship itself, along with the rain and thunder around them, to reposition and bring his blade in behind her, taking the match. The energy from that exchange carried outward. Amaedrianna turned to Eos and told her she should be practicing too, then called Boreal over and ordered the two of them to spar. Boreal made the first strike with startling speed, making contact not to hurt her but simply to prove that he could. Everyone seemed surprised by how fast he moved. Eos answered with speed of her own. Smoke appeared around her, and for a moment it seemed as though she slipped half one direction and half another, dodging by instinct or magic and nearly landing a hit. Boreal panicked, lost his footing more than once, and missed several follow-up strikes. In the confusion, Eos finally caught him as he fell. Watching it all, Dash dryly noted that Eos always seemed to aim for the more painful, slower death areas.
Another day passed. Then 28/09/43 began, and with it came something none of them expected. A beautiful sound rose from beneath the ship, wrapping around the vessel with an almost unnatural warmth. Huge shadows moved under the water, far too large to identify at first, and the sense of scale alone was enough to unsettle them. Dash, seeing their enormity when he dove in, felt the beginnings of true thalassophobia for the first time. Then something broke the surface, and for one impossible instant it looked less like a creature than an island rising from the sea. Water burst from its back in great spouts. Weslyn, using magic, somehow communicated with these beings, and in response they lifted the ship and sped it forward. The entire vessel ended up tilted awkwardly, half-sideways on the back of a whale, racing in a way it never could have managed on its own. It was absurd, majestic, and deeply unnerving all at once. But it worked. At last, they arrived at the Bastion, the Pearl. One journey had ended. Another was already waiting.
Once ashore, the group scattered into their own immediate concerns. Using the HALO harness, Amaedrianna flew Eos over while she sat astride Duckie. Dash went straight to Lysa, and the moment he reached her she pulled him into a hug. She told him she had not been able to get his mother out of Palperroth, but made it equally clear that she would not let him go back there alone. Someone would have to stay with the children, but she intended to help him go home and find his mother. Amaedrianna, unable to resist stirring trouble even now, joked that Lysa should ask Dash about “The woman,” which led to Lysa pressing him until he explained the matter of Mirelle Vaudrelle from Session 95. After that, Amaedrianna told everyone to meet in the bastion in an hour. In the meantime, Eos began surveying the area and offering suggestions about schools and the watching of tides. Amaedrianna moved through the island looking for problems such as traps while beginning the work of mapping it. Weslyn, for his part, noticed something immediately encouraging and unsettling in equal measure: the island was full of life. There was wildlife everywhere, along with vegetation, mushrooms, and all manner of growing things.
When they gathered again inside the bastion, they found themselves alone, with no one else around to soften what was coming. Dash appeared openly agitated and, instead of easing into conversation, came at the group with the force of a challenge. He said the winds had changed, that unseen forces were moving, manipulating, and corrupting from the shadows, and that the stiffest tree in the forest is the first to break. If they were going to survive the road ahead, he said, they would have to learn to bend. Then he asked the question that cut straight to the heart of everything: "Why am I here?" He gave them until dawn to answer. Eos looked first to Amaedrianna, but Amaedrianna made it clear there was no simple answer. Palperroth would be incredibly dangerous for Eos, for Boreal, and even for Hatsu. Carrying a blade was one thing. Being hunted by the greatest city in the Isles for what they were was another. She also asked Dash the practical question beneath all the idealism: would he be taking her children with him? Eos, though reluctant, answered in the clearest way she could. She did not want to go, but for Dash’s mother she would. She knew Dash would do the same for her own mother. She would get a mask, and she would join them. Boreal, when asked whether he knew anyone among the people of Saigo no Toshi who could move quickly across continents, said he did not. Then Eos gave her own answer to Dash’s question. Without this group, she said, she would have hidden herself away beneath Roshi’s Bookshelf, burying herself in her bloodline, perhaps in the idea of a partner, in a smaller and safer life. But she did not want safety anymore. She wanted to face her demons, even the ones she had not fully named yet, though she spoke the name Drel Morrix aloud. She said that together they had a boat, their own adventures, their own book. She still wanted to see Khaakird someday, but she was here because of them.
As that conversation continued, Boreal handed Dash paper and offered to help send a message to his mother. Dash wrote only what mattered most: “where are you? are you safe? you can reply”. Amaedrianna then pressed for clarity on the Palperroth plan itself. Was this truly about saving Dash’s mother, or something larger? Dash answered that Palperroth was calling to all of them for different reasons. Slate. Weslyn. The Sun King. The Archon. Many roads, he said, led there, including the path toward finding his long-lost father. Amaedrianna responded by saying she might instead go to Vurduar while the others went to Palperroth. She needed to know whether the Archon still possessed the stone. If he did, she needed to move it. She believed he was trying to gain access to a fortress, and though she had once been there herself, even she had been unable to enter it. Whatever was inside, she was deeply afraid of what he might do with it. She also revealed that the acquaintance who found her in Anbudon, Threadknife, had been asking her to return. Dash told her he would miss her, but that he knew they would meet again. Amaedrianna answered that she would likely be back before they returned. Then Dash finally answered his own question. Why was he here? Because he believed all of them, together, had the potential to change the world through the strange alignment of their paths. He wanted a better world, and he believed this group might be part of making it. Eos, in one of her sudden swerves, then asked whether Dash intended to wear the crown. If he did not, she said, she would. Dash answered that by the time it was done, the crown would be in shards.
Not long after, Boreal received a reply from Dash’s mother. She said she did not understand how they were speaking like this, not knowing magic, but that she was safe. Then came the words “they came and...” and the message cut off. Boreal, trying not to throw Dash into immediate panic, only repeated the first part and told him not to worry. The rest of the day unfolded in a patchwork of duties and private burdens. Hatsu spent time with family. Eldrin helped tend to the sick. Amaedrianna took to the air to map more of The Crescent Pearl and visited the shrine to Tempestas that Eldrin had built earlier. From that higher vantage point she studied the island and thought about the future, about the people living there, and about the danger the group had brought with them simply by existing in this place together. Their presence was now a threat in itself. Boreal set about creating a makeshift storage area for the supplies brought back from Anbudon and marked out a rough forge space where he might eventually craft useful things, including perhaps a mask for Eos. Dash spent time with Lysa and their twins, but he did not sleep that night. The risk he had placed his mother in gnawed at him too deeply. Instead he stood alone by the shore, waiting, watching, hoping someone or something might answer the question he had put to the others. Eos, after helping with the communal area, went to the forest, offered it an arrow, soaked and washed her clothes in a small lake, and then groomed Duckie. Weslyn handed the use of his quarters to Delphini, who declined because she intended to return to her grove and make a formal offering to the woods instead. Then he turned his attention to the forest itself. He made sure no one on the island had been harmed by these unnaturally grown woods, and for the moment at least everything seemed stable. Even so, he could not let go of the feeling that growth like this must have carried a cost. Nothing comes for free. He wanted to pay that debt, even if he did not yet know how. So he bled for it, offering a significant portion of his blood to the forest in payment. He also found the graves of some of the elderly who had died since they left, people lost not to battle but to stress, hardship, and the strain of difficult times. Nearby, he saw that the magical plant had grown into a twisting rise of vines around six feet tall. He checked his table, now overgrown but still standing. Then he used magic to search for the temple atop the mountain, only to confirm what he feared: it was still missing. Nothing remained there but an empty plateau. With that, he settled into his grove beside Chicken, carrying yet another unanswered cost in his mind.
