fighting our fears by Millimax | World Anvil

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Crownsday, 11 Sunfall 998 Y.K.

fighting our fears

by Millimax

 i left out a lot of details in yesterday's journal so i'll elaborate before medya wakes up
 to be fair the galleon "squallchaser" was lovely and i really enjoyed most of the flight
 the only way between decks was by ladder so i did have to modify my shoes to walk on walls but that was refreshingly simple and fun
 as a bonus they let me stand on the top deck out in the open and watch medya fly for the first time in days
 i've never been that wind-swept before
 
 during the whole trip there was a whistling-then-ringing sound that kept coming from the secure hold as sykes tried harder and harder to knock the locking spell apart
 but the spell worked by being constantly observed and rakela was right there watching it
 sykes never tried different methods and he didn't explore the problem at all so how did he get a reputation for being such a threat?
 as we neared xandrar rakela asked the co-pilot to take over
 
 rakela gathered us to listen in on a sending-stone conversation with a spy pretending to be among the "swords of breland" – a bunch of dissidents with a serious gripe about their country's political structure
 she reported a supply drop that included a strange change of orders
 two days later some of them – including another spy – left notes saying they were headed to xandrar on a suicide mission
 
 the whole thing was odd in three ways
 it looked unusually desperate for the swords of breland who are ready to fight but aren't really aggressive just angry and scared
 the spy with them definitely was not the traitorous sort
 and the notes were perfectly identical in their wording
 as a result she suspected the group to have been magically coerced into it
 rakela started to explain about other similar raids but was interrupted—
 
 the co-pilot must have been distracted because the sound of sykes' knocking changed and the locking spell fell apart
 through persistence and blind luck he broke it open – oh, so that's what makes him so dangerous!
 also he summoned a flame elemental which raced out to the lightning ring keeping the ship aloft and started to tussle with the air elemental there
 ever been in an airship that suddenly pitched toward the ground?
 i do not recommend it
 
 medya and i went to the top deck – third use for the gravity shoes! – to lead the fire elemental away while bell used the ship's ballista to disperse it
 the others stayed below deck to get pummeled while trying to force sykes back into his box
 it's for the best i wasn't below deck because i'd probably have tried to lecture him even though that ... didn't go so well for me last time
 anyhow they managed to knock him out so we made it to xandrar intact
 
 the local watch captain wasn't happy about us bringing a dangerous war criminal to their town without warning while docking without permission which is understandable
 while rakela tried to explain the mayor showed up to make a lot of noise about how the swords of breland were treasonous and would be killed on sight which seemed a bit excessive
 zer' used his mindlink to suggest to us that he may have been manipulated into such anger
 
 since it all seemed really suspicious and we didn't want things to escalate further we promised to help out
 also rakela figured that deterring the incoming raid could earn us an official commendation which would help us past a lot of other barriers later on
 that's how we found ourselves in carriages heading through the ruins of pre-war xandrar
 and then we found ourselves staring down eight masked horse-riding weapon-havers and ... something terrible
 
 time for a quick recap of early pony history as filtered through my current knowledge
 the place is the "old green" – what we call our ancestral home in the fey realm of thelanis
 the time is around maybe half a millennium ago – we don't have precise dates that far back
 what had been a strong herd has lost their harmony and become distrustful of each other for unclear reasons
 the growing cacaphony draws the attention of terrible beings called "winter wolves"
 
 they sweep in to chase off all the ponies and by "chase off" i mean "trap them in swirling fear-fuelled madness before consuming them"
 some manage to run
 some of those who run survive
 they find their way to the everglow – a co-terminus between thelanis and this "prime material" plane – but so devastated and spread out that it takes hundreds of years to reunite
 we call it the "great scattering" and it's amazing we have any records of it at all
 
 back to yesterday
 i can't describe the quori or even put together a clear mental image because i was too terrified to think or even run
 somehow i felt deep down that they and the winter wolves are one and the same and this might be due to the way they froze me in a horrible hallucination that i also cannot remember clearly
 if zer and atesh hadn't drawn its full attention i might have ended up like all those ponies from long ago
 history
 
 as if that weren't bad enough three of the attackers let out blood-curdling screams that delivered painful and destructive force before they fell unconscious
 with the quori too busy to corral them the other fighters became disorganized
 we quickly found that by pulling off their masks we could free them totally from the mind control so we did that while zer and atesh banished the quori
 success – everyone survived the fight!
 
 all involved returned to xandrar proper
 we did get those official commendation letters so now if anyone wants to harass or detain us they'll have to take it up with rakela's commander first
 so that's convenient and possibly worth the heart-wrenching terror we went through
 rakela split off to drag sykes to starilaskur and we decided to head back to the h&h so we could rest and relax
 well that was the hope anyhow
 more on that later

Continue reading...

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  157. loud and clear
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by 3 Armored Kittens · Prodromos v.1.1 - World Anvil 0.9.15.009 © 2017-2024 [en] | Anvil Time: 21:06, Apr 28 2024