The Wandering Isles: Session 98
Hatsu Toshitsugu begins by seeking out his mother, Kokoro Toshitsugu, and is met with clear relief and happiness at seeing him again. She explains that their people are already trying to understand the changing state of the island, tracking the wildlife and strange growth to work out what must be done next. From there, Hatsu turns to the matter of Vathros’s book and the people still held within it. He asks after those who had been stored inside, the sick and the injured taken from the ruins of Saigo no Toshi, and learns they have not yet been released. He places a hand upon the book and speaks to Vathros directly. Vathros answers simply: he is ready. So they open it, and the people trapped within are finally brought back out into the world.
The moment they return, the group moves with purpose. Eldrin Drosk throws himself into healing the sick and injured. Boreal Paleclaw steps forward to keep everyone calm and together, promising that he will explain things shortly. Hatsu addresses them all with the kind of steadiness only hard-earned leadership gives. He thanks them for their trust and for enduring the journey that brought them here. For those who had been kept within the book, time may have passed strangely, perhaps feeling far longer than it truly had, but he tells them that what was done was not meaningless. Supplies were brought back. Trees were regrown. Ground was reclaimed. He urges them to take a few days to settle into the island and adjust, then asks them to work together to make it a place that can hold them until the day they are able to return home, to war-torn Saigo no Toshi. That last truth visibly surprises some of them, but they bow in gratitude all the same, understanding the hardship that lies ahead. Kokoro immediately begins organising the practical side of things, taking a list of the newcomers and their professions so she can work out who can help where.
In the midst of this, Hatsu shares something more personal. He confesses a dream he had of Ayame Fujiwara, one in which she wielded the Toshitsugu clan blade, Onimaru, recalling the significance of Session 72. He also speaks aloud to Slate, wherever he may be, reminding him that he is the chosen one and that there will always be a place for him here. Around them, the rest of the bastion begins to stir into motion. Eos starts sorting people by trade and profession, trying to impose order on chaos. Boreal heads to the forge. Dash Heidmann asks Elandor Thistlenook to watch the children, and Elandor agrees at once, joking that he will serve as their stand-in grandfather even if part of him would have liked to go to Palperroth as well. In the meantime, he keeps the twins occupied by telling them the story of how their parents first met.
Hatsu then asks Boreal to seek out Virelya of the Broken Glade, check on how she is doing, and make sure she knows she is welcome among them. When Boreal finds her, the conversation is strange, warm, and distinctly her own. She is first offended that he is wearing clothes at all, questioning whether he is somehow ashamed. Yet the tension passes quickly into something gentler. She admires his large eyes, offers him food, and compares him kindly to an owl. Then her tone shifts and she warns him never to go to Gomgalor, telling him plainly that they would only use someone like him for evil. Boreal tries to convince her to come down to the beach and meet the others, but she refuses. Even so, he leaves with the promise that he will return, and that next time he will bring a gift.
Back at the forge, Boreal and Eos work together while he begins crafting. First he makes her a ceremonial mask. Then he goes further, shaping a kabuto helmet with an owl-faced mask plate, amused at the thought that no one would ever suspect there was truly an owl beneath an owl mask. He makes two large rings as well, then a wooden bracelet inlaid with the likeness of Chicken the Fox, an owl, and a forest motif. Dash later comes to him with a separate request: a smaller ring, perhaps wooden, perhaps with crushed diamond set into it. Boreal first gives Dash the larger rings for one of his children, then uses magic to create the smaller ring exactly as requested. When he places it into Dash’s hand, it is beautiful. The exchange between them is quiet and respectful. They bow to one another, and then Dash leaves to wait by the shore for the answer to the question he posed back in Session 97: why are they here?
Eldrin is the first to go to him. The two stand together, looking out over the horizon and the water, and Eldrin tells him he has been thinking about that question. He could leave tomorrow if he wished. No chains bind him to this group. And yet he stays. When the fighting starts, he stays. When they fall, he is there to lift them back up. That, he says, is worth more than anything else waiting for him anywhere else. Dash admits that it feels at times as though the group has let him down too often, but Eldrin counters that, from where he stands, Dash has given him a kind of freedom he has never known. To him, the question is not what he gains by staying. The real question is what he loses by leaving. The answer, for Eldrin, is everything. He says that on this path he can finally be himself in the world, and more than that, he wants to be there when Dash changes it. When Dash presses further and asks not just why, but what Eldrin wants to accomplish, Eldrin gives him an image rather than an argument. He imagines a future in which Dash’s daughter can run through the streets with her magical eyes shining openly, beautifully, inspiring people rather than frightening them. He thinks of his own hidden eyes, of his goggles, and admits that what he wants is a future where he can stand in the world without hiding them too.
At that moment Hatsu appears almost as if conjured, slipping into the conversation with the ease of someone who always seems to arrive exactly when needed. He says he swore his sword to protect the chosen one, and from there he lays out his own answer. There is a reason Remington Maleficum brought them together, he says, because Remington saw something in them that they themselves still struggle to see. If they are going to change the world, they must do it one heart at a time. They have to make a difference not simply by strength, but by making the world less afraid of magic and those touched by it. Fear of the unknown is not rational, Hatsu says. People have simply forgotten how to be curious. Even when strange creatures appear in this world without any understanding of where they are or how they got there, the answer cannot always be to destroy them. Sometimes they may simply want to go home. He believes in a better future. But to reach it, they must take it one day at a time. Dash agrees with both of them. Alone, he says, he can do good things to bad people, but that is no longer enough. The wider picture has made something else clear to him: what matters now is making good people better, exposing the lies and propaganda that teach the world to fear those like them, and showing what a group like this can actually do. If hearts can change, then the tide can change with them. Hatsu adds one more reminder, pointing to the sakura forest on the island as proof that they have already achieved things once thought impossible.
Amaedrianna Blüdfist listens from the beach without interrupting. Boreal arrives next in characteristically chaotic fashion, flying in only to land face-first in the sand, brought low by the sheer weight of the helmet he has made. Then Weslyn Theiwyse emerges from the forest to join them, only to realise he has forgotten his trousers and must immediately retreat to fetch them. Even that absurdity does not break the seriousness for long. Boreal reminds the group that kindness is their ally, and that hate cannot be killed out of people by force alone. He also adds something far darker and more personal, warning them that if he ever loses control again and becomes violently unstable as he once did in Session 8, they must do whatever is necessary to stop him, even if that means killing him. Weslyn then speaks in his own way, full of symbols and certainty. He says they must continue because they must. Each of them holds keys to many doors, but there is only one path, even if they do not yet fully understand it. Their feet know the way. Their bodies remember. They can cling to those keys forever and never open a single door, but then no one moves forward. They need answers, and they exist in a world that hates them enough to kill them for what they are. If they remain still, that fate will find them sooner or later anyway.
Dash takes that moment to propose something more binding than words alone. He says he has thrown himself into danger for less-than-sensible reasons more times than he can count, but he considers them family. Families argue. That much is natural. But he hopes they can still find a way forward together, and if he has to put his life on the line for that, he will. His chosen brothers and sisters are worth it. Eos reinforces the points already made, and Dash says plainly that they move forward together, as a family, as a single unit. Then he cuts his palm. Hatsu does the same. Boreal joins them, followed by Eos and then Eldrin. It becomes an oath, a bond, a promise sealed in blood. Weslyn refuses to bleed for another pact, and Amaedrianna remains apart from it all, hidden nearby and watching, but not stepping in and not offering herself to the vow.
Instead, Boreal offers Weslyn something else. He gives him the bracelet he crafted, the one carved with Chicken, an owl, and the forest. He offers it freely, not as a burden, not as a demand, but as a branch extended toward friendship. He says they got off on the wrong foot, and it would be an honour if Weslyn wore it, though he is equally free to burn it if he wishes. Weslyn treats the gesture with unexpected seriousness and uses it as a turning point. He says this brings them to a necessary conversation: the blood moons are getting worse, and they need to decide what they will do when that danger comes again. He admits he was wrong to think violence was the answer, but insists they still need an answer, because the risk remains real and constant. They must have a plan.
Soon after, Dash says they need to ship out in the morning, but before that he must leave the group for a while and go find Lysa Sablewood. Boreal quickly warns the others to leave Dash and Lysa alone. Amaedrianna quietly stands and departs as well, returning to the bastion without joining the end of the gathering. Eos, meanwhile, carefully collects the blood she and Eldrin shed during the oath, while Boreal scorches his own before she can take it. Then she and Boreal go fishing. Eldrin, still troubled by the matter of blood magic, asks what magic Eos could possibly want their blood for. Weslyn answers instead, explaining the nature of old magic: it is rooted in blood and in something deeper than the elemental, something primal, primordial, ancient. He warns them all to be careful when blood is spilled, and if it is ever given willingly, to be absolutely certain of what that means. When Eldrin slows the conversation down enough to ask Weslyn whether he himself is alright, Weslyn shrugs it away and asks whether anyone really is. Eldrin pivots and asks after Chicken instead. Weslyn says Chicken has their own reason for being here, their own path and purpose, and that in time they will give everyone the answers and guidance they need.
At last Dash finds Lysa and walks with her down the beach. There, away from everyone else, he tells her that she has been making him better, that he is better because of her. They have been partners in theft and survival for a long time, but he wants to make their bond official in life as well. He presents her with the ring Boreal made. She accepts. They are engaged now, and with that acceptance something quiet and hopeful opens in the middle of everything else. Elsewhere, Eldrin lies alone in bed, turning over the road behind them and the road ahead. And then 28/09/43 begins. A new journey begins with it. Today is the first day of the rest of their adventure.
