Session 19 - Falling For the First Time

Previously, across the Horizon… Our heroes have an airship. What’s more, they have decided what to do with it. After a spirited discussion weighing the pros and cons of turning their mysterious, ancient Alternan airship over to either of the two groups looking for it: Cid Tantalus, who gave them the key in the first place, and Aramog Sydney, who works with Saron’s secret police — the group decided together to keep the airship, and to use it to travel the world and help those who need it. One person would not be formally joining Isa, Orrey, Linnet, Bast, and Yves in this — Cassiat, who said her responsibility was just to her father, as was Orrey’s. Her surprise when Orrey said differently was palpable. After a brief lesson in being a Fighter from Isa, which may or may not have been taken to heart, Cassiat watched from the deck as the Starfall took to the sky for the very first time, winding around through the crumbling buildings of Alterna to scout out the train station that somehow still stood, hundreds of years after Alterna’s fall, and which could hide the truth of her father’s imprisonment at the hands of the Avengers, using the printer’s skill to further destabilize the city-state of Saron. We join our heroes in the War Room as Isa keeps the ship up, learning the ins and outs of this remarkable craft’s capabilities…
“So, what better way for Isa to practice handling the ship than to explore the ruins?” Orrey nods sagely.
Cassiat is not in the room, as she is not part of the formal crew. No one but her is really enforcing that rule right now.
“We’ll need to find a place for the Reaper, if only to get it out of here and back to civilization,” Bast says. “The engine room is spacious, but not that spacious.”
“Would it fit on the deck?” Orrey asks.
Yves drummed his fingers on the table. “And it probably can’t keep up with a ship like this under normal operation.”
“Also, there isn’t a single weapon on this thing. What were they planning to use it as, a pleasure boat?” Bast makes no effort to hide his disapproval.
“That’s an awfully big pleasure boat,” Linnet remarks. “Though honestly, they could probably just run over anything they were planning to shoot at.”
Yves is doodling in his notebook. Looks like little viera faces and sketches of the airship, inside hearts, with flowers and vines around the edges.
Orrey points out a few places on his sketches and verifies with everyone that the attachments would be possible in reality as well as theory.
Bast leans over the latest sketch, making the occasional hand motion as he works out the rigging in his head. “…yeah, that should work. Good eye.” He looks at Orrey curiously, wondering if he’s worked a ship before.
Yves contributes nothing, looking rather dreamy-eyed where he sits.
“And then heading back to the building will kill two birds with one giant airship. We pick up Gall and Reap, practice maneuvering by lowering me in some sort of harness into the final room of the tower, and find all the secrets of the Twelve!” Orrey looks exceedingly pleased with himself.
“I can see no problem with that plan,” Yves says absently.
Linnet has been poking in all the cabinets – what else do you do in a strange room you suddenly own? – but perks up at mention of the tower. “I’ll come in with you!”
“You’ll probably be able to keep me from bumping into things?” Orrey’s excitement is only building. “And Bast, we’ll need you to assess the danger if the building starts to go…”
Apparently satisfied with the progress so far, Bast goes off to set up what they’ll need to rig the Reaper. At the sound of Linnet’s voice, he pokes his head back in the door: “You’re not going in together, one dangling egghead will be complicated enough to practice with. If you really want, you can stand by up top to help get him out if the building goes.”
Yves looks up from the notebook. “Wait, I want to go too.” He thinks about it for a second, but only a second. “You might need something… uh… thundered?”
Linnet huffs, a swirl of wind rustling Orrey’s sketches. “I don’t dangle!”
“Linnet, while poking around have you found anything like a harness or extra rope or, I dunno, chocobo tack?” Orrey asks.
Bast drags a hand down his face slowly: “One at a time, people. I guarantee that your research project will crumble into the sea if you all go down there together, probably taking you along for the ride.”
“Bast, is there a way to shore up the building somehow?” Orrey asks.
“Chocobo tack, no, but some sort of other much bigger animal. And rope, yes. Totally unreasonable quantities of rope,” Linnet says, giving the ship in general an odd look.
“PERFECT!!!” Orrey claps. “Anybody know how to sew or tie knots or something like that?”
Bast sighs. “If we had some solid beams in there and a good idea of how much this ship can carry and the building’s weight and some really sharded experienced hand at the helm, we could maybe send someone down there with ropes attached to the ship to hold it up. As it is…”
“Experiment time. Which means, clearly, you should send the one crew member who won’t die if she falls five hundred feet into the ocean.” Linnet beams. “And Orrey, I’m sure among all of us we can tie a few knots.”
“It’s not the ocean that will kill you, it’s the several tons of building falling on your head,” Bast patiently explains.
“You’re no fun,” Linnet replies.
Yves raises a dubious hand. “I can tie… some types of knots.”
Orrey’s determination is plain. “She can scout, but I gotta get in there to record whatever we find.”
“It’s Orrey’s hunt, I’m not taking the credit for anything,” Linnet says.
“I’m being a contributing member of this crew,” Yves says piously. “…so I’ll help however it’s needed.”
Orrey holds his hand up and waves in a negatory manner. “I don’t mind sharing credit with all of you. We’re in this together.”
The Starfall gently makes its way over toward the building where the Slim Reaper is docked, Isa keeping it on target, muttering occasionally about how it’s more responsive than she anticipated, which one wouldn’t think would be annoying, but who knows.
As the Starfall settles into a gentle hover next to the Slim Reaper, Cassiat hovers at Orrey’s shoulder. “What are we doing?”
“Three things: getting Isa flight experience before we take this into a potential battle. Picking up Galley and the Reaper before the building collapses and/or somebody finds him helpless here. And we’re going fishing.” He smiles. “For knowledge.” He smiles wider, reckless and eager. “I’m going to be playing the role of the bait.”
She quirks an eyebrow, waiting for the rest of the sentence.
“We’re doing science. Valuable, valuable science,” Linnet says.
“And it’s not even necessarily lucrative!” Yves adds proudly.
Bast is working on the harness in the background to adapt it for someone smaller than…whatever it was intended for.
Orrey looks over at Cassiat. “You want to get Galley’s attention and explain what we’re doing?”
Cassiat purses her lips, and then nods. “Sure. Go ahead and do the exploration stuff, then. We’ll get the Reaper ready for when you’re done.”
“Just make sure to take in the anchor before we start, in case the gods feel like laughing at us today.” Bast finally has something that he seems to be…less annoyed with than when he started, and glances up at Linnet. “Ready to give this a try?”
“I mean, do you actually want me in the harness?” Linnet folds her arms. “I’m game either way, but we can save your lovely needlepoint for Orrey if that’d help.”
“How well can you hover?”
Linnet glances down at her feet. They’ve been about six inches off the deck for at least an hour.
Bast points upward, as if inviting her to repeat this up near the top of the mast.
Linnet shrugs and zooms up topside, stopping when Bast and everyone on deck can just barely be seen to move their limbs.
Bast gives her two thumbs up and signals her to come down.
Cassiat lingers at the edge of the deck for a moment, watching Linnet fly up, and then very carefully switches over to the Slim Reaper. She and Galley begin talking, words lost on the wind.
Linnet dive-bombs and swoops in a tight circle around Bast’s head before stopping with her toes an inch from his nose. “Hiya.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He pushes her toes away with two fingers and grins as he looks up. “Want to hang on to the harness anyway and help us test the weight, since you can fly up if things go wrong?”
“If you don’t mind having to redo it if it snags on something, sure.”
“Alright, let’s try this thing out.” He gives the pulley he rigged up at the side of the ship a few experimental tugs before letting it take the full weight of the harness and the attached rope.
A few minutes of study below the ship has Orrey and Bast map out a general idea of the layout of the tower, starting at the Adventure Hole on the Sixth floor, Thalatte. From there, Seventh (Koehnta), Eighth (Yinha), Ninth (Itami), Tenth (Mechon), and then Eleventh (Forgotten), where Orrey finally decided to play it safe and the group departed through the window. Right near the edge of the building are the remaining two floors — with the Thirteenth having no windows. The only way in appears to be through the building itself.
The Twelfth has something else of note — only one window, circular, and it is pitch black.
“Orrey, you had a much better idea of what you were looking for. Just in case this goes completely pear-shaped, tell me what to keep an eye out for?” Linnet asks.
Orrey stares at the ground from the side of the airship. “Winter, cold, darkness. Yoshuelje, alright.”
“Oh, that’s my favorite,” Yves says.
“Should we check the bottom of the building to see if there’s a way in anywhere directly into the thirteenth floor?” Orrey looks over at Linnet and Bast as they finish the final preparations.
“Oh, that’s my favorite,” Yves says.
“I can give it a shot if you want, but I’ll leave the harness to dangle so I don’t snag it.”
Bast mutters something about just cut a hole in the damn thing if it wouldn’t all fall apart. “…yeah, that’s probably a good place to start. Tell you what -” He pulls the harness back in and unties it from the rope. “Just take the rope with you. Tie it around your waist and don’t go inside the structure – that way even if you run into something nasty there, you should be able to just drop down and swing out to where we can pull you up.”
Linnet salutes and dives, and a minute or two later you hear a series of gasping curses. The word “tornado” features prominently among them.
Linnet The flying is normal, as you dip around the side of the building. It’s no different than ducking out of a high window to go grab the mail off the street, versus using the stairs. Nothing abnormal at all. It’s only when you go underneath the building — as in, have any bit of it above your head, you realize — that suddenly there is this weight pushing you down. You are straining against it — you’re not sinking — but it is shockingly, shockingly exhausting. Linnet pushes on, flying to look closer at the underside of the 13th Floor.
“Think the building will survive long with us in it, Bast?”
Yves peers down at the building. “I wonder if there are any trees in there. I’m not sure the ones I was dealing with earlier photosynthesize, as such. Or mushrooms with agendas, for that matter.”
On the bridge, Isa nods to herself, feeling very satisfied with her station-keeping ability.
No windows. Holes, bricks missing. Bit of a tapestry hanging out, flapping in the wind, rippling/flickering/undulating in this wind. Can’t see much inside from here. Hard to keep going. Eyes watering.
Yves peers down at the building. “I wonder if there are any trees in there. I’m not sure the ones I was dealing with earlier photosynthesize, as such. Or mushrooms with agendas, for that matter.”
On the bridge, Isa nods to herself, feeling very satisfied with her station-keeping ability.
Linnet switches to the 12th, to be thorough.
Bast peers over the edge as Linnet’s curses carry back to the ship. “…that doesn’t sound like a good time.”
Orrey cringes. “No it does not. Should we go down there after her?”
“Yes. Definitely. For, uh, safety,” Yves says promptly.
“Using what, the rope she’s currently tied to?” Bast leans over the edge and yells: “You okay down there?!”
Yves considers. “From the way you asked that question, I’m guessing you think that’s a bad idea.”
It looks the same as the top. Inky blackness. Probably even with the top, no light passing through. No light at ALL passing through. Cold air coming out, draining out. Pressure’s mounting.
The rope in question jerks hard.
Bast curses and starts hauling the rope in as quickly as he can.
Yves tries to lend a hand.
Linnet is still hauling under her own power, but as she emerges around the building, you can see that it hasn’t been a walk in the park. She looks like the airship landed on her. “Don’t. go. under the shardblasted tower.”
“What happened?!” Orrey’s eyes are wide and worried.
She zooms the last seven feet under her own power and flops on her back onto the deck. “Bunch of magical hot air. It’s like…whatever’s keeping the building up, it’s almost like I was trying to push through its support structures. Except there were no structures.”
“Well, that’s sort of weird. Do you think superchilling it would help? I could try to put together some sort of cooling system…” Yves trails off, already mapping it out in his head.
“Magic.” In Bast’s mouth, the word sounds unclean.
“There’s no windows on the other side, and Yves, hot air was a euphemism.” Linnet enjoys a few deep breaths. “It’s like, whatever bad juju is lingering in these rooms, it’s all built up underneath. Which of course doesn’t mean I’m not going back in, but underneath was not a good idea. So I’m taking full blame for that one.”
Yves looks down at the tower. “So what direction should we be coming from, to /not/ go through that… stuff?”
Upon closer inspection, Linnet appears unhurt, just exhausted and bedraggled.
“Then through the twelfth window I go. Linnet, you shouldn’t have to go through that again,” Orrey says.
“So it’s whole on the other side? Not falling apart like the adjacent rooms?” Bast asks.
Linnet waves a hand in the air. “I mean, from the top seems as sensible as any.”
Orrey picks up the harness.
“Floor thirteen isn’t entirely whole on the other side; the wall is old and starting to crumble. Floor twelve…it’s like all I could see on the other side was that black hole. And I’m totally fine to go in again, just not from underneath.” Exhausted as she is, Linnet looks indignant at the suggestion of not doing valuable, valuable science.
Bast glances at Orrey. “How about we just lower the rope into that first.”
“Be my guest. But after that, I’m going in. Do we happen to have a good light source?” Orrey looks around. “Cass, do you have a torch handy?”
Linnet waves her hand again. “Yves, how about some lightning?”
Bast scratches his chin. “Any idea what’s going on with that darkness? And for light…hm. I could try to rig something up from my supplies, but I wouldn’t expect good light from that.”
“NO NO NO No lightning yet!” Orrey exclaims.
Cassiat left the ship some time ago, Orrey finds. She went over to the Reaper with Galley.
“I’m reasonably certain I can’t make ice glow, but if you think of a way, Yves, I’m game.”
“Hm. I’ll look into it,” Yves says, and does in fact make a note in his book, next to one of the adorable sketches of the airship.
“I don’t think I should bumble around in the dark…” Orrey says.
“Nope. Whatever that is, I’d rather just try to cut a hole to the thirteenth floor than try to have someone stumble through to find a way. Especially if there’s something holding the thirteenth up?” Bast glances over at Linnet.
“There’s nothing visible holding any of the floors up.”
“…so what did you run into there, exactly?” Bast asks, lowering the rope.
“Mystical magical broken wind.”
The rope, minus harness, minus sylph, minus human, minus viera, slowly descends into the inky blackness of the window. A moment later, it’s hauled back up, none the worse for wear, except perhaps it’s a slight bit cooler to the touch.
Yves examines the rope for a second. “That seems perfectly safe. Who’s next?”
“Well, at least that darkness doesn’t seem to be immediately horrible.” Bast looks like he might be fighting off a headache. “Still doesn’t seem like a good idea to wander through it, though.”
“Lower me in and I’ll take a look,” Orrey says.
Linnet gets back to her feet. “I’m standing by as either backup or frontup.”
Orrey settles the harness in place and dangles himself over the side of the airship, incredibly thankful he’s not afraid of heights.
Bast levels a finger at him. “Ten seconds at the surface so you can test it with a foot or something and yell if something bites, then we lower you in for ten seconds, then bring you back out and you tell Linnet if there’s a point to going down again or if we need to get you a torch first.”
“Sounds good.”
The airship holds steady, and then dips, just a little, as Orrey is lowered down to the edge of the inky blackness. A dip of his boot reveals no shadowy horrors attempting to consume his person. Then, he goes in. The darkness is cold and all-encompassing, all light snuffed out, a harsh wind across Orrey’s face — and then he’s inside. And then he can see.
Orrey pulls out his sketchbook as he dangles there and does his best to capture the room.
The room is circular — no walls but the outside. No light comes in from the outside, and no light passes through the darkness below you either. The room is lit, a soft blue for which you find no source, and you can see an altar in the center of the room, on the floor — a wall, to you — with a black disc nestled on top. Stairs lead up to the 13th floor, and down to the 11th as well. And then it’s dark and cold and then VERY bright and windy, and you’re outside, with three heads peering down over the railing at you.
“Not dead?” Yves calls out.
Orrey lets out a whoop. “WOOOOO!!!! Not dead! We are good to go! You can see once you get inside, and there’s a staircase leading up to the top!!!”
“Thank you for not falling through the floor!” Linnet calls down to him.
“Send me back in!” Orrey grins up at his companions.
“You want some more hang time to draw this room, or are you going exploring?” Bast asks.
“Yeah, I’ll tug the rope when I’m done drawing, then lower me down again. Two tugs and pull me up as fast as you can!”
“Alright, going back down! Try not to break the building!”
Orrey tugs once on the rope when he’s done. “Here we go…”
Bast lets out the rope slowly.
Orrey gently impacts the floor and gets his balance, gathering up a little slack. He starts up the stairs to see what the 13th floor has to offer.
Each step creaks under Orrey’s feet. The third sends a little bit of the stonework tumbling out to the right, landing on the wall with too loud a bounce for Orrey’s liking.
The eighth gives, too much, the stone softened through erosion or something else, perhaps just another element of the fading magic.
“No….” Orrey mutters to himself as he continues on…
The thirteenth step… holds.
At least for the moment.
“Hold it together just a little longer…”
The 13th Floor.
Orrey breathes out a sigh of relief and hopes it’s not enough to collapse the building.
The altar has been defaced. A hammer was taken to the top. The rug on the ground has been burned, the tattered remnants balled up on the new floor, the wall on which you stand. Light shines in from the cracks in the wall below you, and you can hear the white noise of the ocean below, mixing with the white noise that’s tickling the edge of your senses. The light in here is faintly blue; a familiar blue, a crystalline blue. Where it comes from, you cannot tell.
“A personified crystal goddess? Hmmm. Maybe.”
As your pencil dances across the paper, you constantly feel as if you’re chasing something, some idea of a framing, some edge of an outline, something undefinable. And then you feel as if you are the focus of another drawing, another still-life, a moment frozen in time for further examination, another specimen for observation. And then the wall is rapidly becoming wall, and the ceiling is shifting toward floor.
Up on the Starfall, the ground is suddenly sliding up very quickly on one side, and down just as quickly on the other.
The building is falling. And it’s taking Orrey with it.
Back on the ship, Bast begins to haul on the rope without waiting for Orrey to signal.
“Oh that seems bad,” Yves says.
Orrey frantically tugs the rope about 500 times. Then he gets his head together and casts Haste on himself.
The spell fails. There is no magic for you to touch.
“WHAT?!”
Orrey runs, using the rope and the walls to steady himself as much as he can.
“ISA! TAKE US UP!” Bast shouts.
Yves is helping with the rope, as it doesn’t look like anything needs a hole blasted in it just yet.
The ship lurches higher into the air a moment later — and then stops. Inside the tower, Orrey slams hard into a wall that can’t decide how it feels about gravity. The line is caught. The Starfall is trying to fall. The holes in the building show an ocean beneath Orrey, and it might be getting bigger.
Linnet is hovering anxiously beside the rail over which the rope is draped, waiting for potential usefulness.
“Hold onto the rope,” Yves tells Orrey. “I’m gonna fix this.” At which he runs for… the engine room? Probably that, yeah.
“Linnet!” Bast grunts with the effort, giving Yves a wild-eyed stare as he sprints off. “Is that wall holding?”
Orrey attempts to climb the rope.
“YVES! Get your tail back here!” Bast shouts, voice already threatening to go hoarse.
“What wall?” Linnet exclaims. “I can’t see underneath while I’m on deck! It looks like it’s crumbling!”
Yves makes a reluctant U-turn back to rope-holding central. “But we need more power!” he says, grabbing hold again.
The fall knocks the wind out of Orrey. The wind is rushing through the cracks in the floor/ceiling, the sound of the waves mixing in.
The Starfall is listing down after the rope, but the rope is straining. Given the three forces at play here, the rope may not survive.
Bast sets his feet on the deck, gripping the railing. “We need him out of that building! Anyone have a knife?”
“No! Just magic! It’s not very precise outside of a lab setting!”
Linnet pointedly does NOT toss a large butcher knife over to Bast. She flies it over and hands it off very carefully.
Bast holds a hand up. “Do you think you’d be able to lift him?”
The sensation of being on display is only heightened with the freefall, Orrey notes somewhere in the back of his mind, the part that works faster in a crisis, but only on things that don’t matter.
“I could probably lightning a… /section/ of the rope,” Yves ventures.
“Historically, me trying to lift things in midair has gone poorly. I could try, but I’d most likely just break his fall when we both hit the water.”
“Glide, then? Rope’s stuck on something, hopefully not Orrey – could you go down, cut him out of the harness and bring him out? We’ll hold as long as we can!” Bast shouts.
“Roger dodger.”
Orrey gets out his new helmet and puts it on as he realizes how trapped he is. He needs a miracle.
Linnet takes the knife back and starts tracing the rope downward into the black window.
“Yves?” Bast slides a little along the deck. “Would you be…so kind…as to…tie the end of the rope to the rail? This pulley’s helping, but not that much!”
Yves grabs the end of the rope, and goes to tie one of those knots he promised he knows how to tie.
Orrey puts the helmet on.
And in that moment, he feels.. peace. There are many tasks that can be undertaken without glory. Without the promise of glory. Without even the dream of glory. It does not matter if anyone remembers, only that the job is done. So this peace can continue.
Linnet flies down into the 12th Floor, through the darkness, down is up, up is to the right, everything is very turned around… and she is, for the moment, rather discombobulated.
“ORREY! I’m coming, I swear! It’s dark as the inside of a thundercloud in here!”
Orrey breathes out deeply, then grabs the rope again and attempts the climb.
Yves is knotting vigorously, trying to remember which of these are /slip/ knots and which are just, like, knots.
“When you’re done, get to the rail and see if you could blast the rope just above the window from here!” Bast thinks for a moment, every muscle straining. “Don’t do it yet, though!”
Orrey uses hands and feet and climbs with something resembling skill till he reaches the 12th floor.
“Done,” Yves calls, and runs to the rail to wait for the signal. This bit he’s a lot more confident on.
Linnet still has a hand on the rope but can’t see a damn thing worth anything. Then she stops looking at the ceiling and manages to find Orrey.
Orrey looks at her through the visor of the helmet he’s wearing. “Linnet, we need to get out of here!”
“Science guy! C’mon, let’s get you out of here before the whole building comes down on our heads. Nice helmet, by the way. How many tugs was it…” Linnet gives the rope two sharp jerks.
As they are reunited in the center of worship of the rapidly-descending Yoshuelje, they can see how the rope has latched itself tight into the jagged rocks around the window, plus where Orrey passed around the altar to head to the stairs.
“Science? No, history! We need to get that rope loose!” Orrey scrambles along the constantly shifting surfaces. “You get the part by the window, I’ll free it up around the altar!”
“Now?” Yves asks anxiously, staring down over the rail. “I mean, they’re probably fine by now, right?”
“Not until they’re out and above the part you’re blasting! Fuck!” Bast slides another couple of feet. “…or until I tell you.”
Linnet starts sawing at the rope, to almost no effect.
Little bits of debris are falling up, passing by Linnet’s wildly whipping hair.
Orrey climbs with unexpected athleticism and manages to get out of the window. “Leave it Linnet, there’s no time!”
Bast strains under the pressure of the rope and the falling ship. “Yves! Can you see them yet?”
“I think I see Orrey at the window! Blasting time?” Yves shouts happily.
Bast’s look of relief is only present for half a second. “Is he out of the harness?!”
Yves is already sketching lightning into place. “Probably?” he says. “I’m giving him a loose end, anyway.”
Linnet shoves the knife back into her belt and starts a prayer of desperation.
“If he’s still in the harness, the building will pull him down!” Bast shouts into the wind.
Lightning rips down the rope, through Orrey, on its way to its destination of the corner of the wall, shattering stone, ripping the rope apart, and shredding one shoulder of the harness.
“Sorry,” Yves calls, from up on the airship.
Orrey swings free of the tower, wind whistling through his helmet, his muscles burning with newfound strength. Bast tries to haul him up, grumbling that at least Linnet isn’t adding anything to the weight of science on the other end of this rope.
Yves is still leaning over the rail, watching for Linnet’s no doubt triumphant exit from the building.
Orrey shakes his head as he looks down at the window that Linnet is not coming out of and Resets.
Wounds heal. Burns cool. Skin knits that was never broken. Ropes that were torn remain torn. Linnet is upside down.
“Get ready to fly straight up!!” Orrey shouts.
“What the flipping – " No time. Linnet attempts to figure out which way UP is. Questions for Orrey later.
Orrey unleashes hell on the wall in front of them.
Yves shields his eyes. “Hey, does anyone see where Orrey—”
Bast stops. “What do you mean-”
The wall cracks below the ship, masonry splitting apart, light shining down into Yoshuelje’s temple room.
Yves stares. “Huh.”
The rope dangling from the Starfall is empty.
“Well, I’m sure Linnet is taking care of it.”
Orrey aim himself for a perfect dive into the water below, dodging masonry and praying to the one whose helmet he wears.
Linnet breaks free of the tower in the midst of a considerable explosion, looking around wildly and only spotting Orrey when he’s halfway into his dive.
Bast, suddenly with no weight on the other end of the rope he’s been hauling on this whole time, falls over. His indignant reply to Orrey’s commentary turns into more of a yowl.
“You insufferably noble brilliant cloud-brained dumbass! ORREY!” Without a second thought, Linnet dives after him, not really expecting to match his speed.
She cannot.
Even if she can’t catch him, maybe she can at least recover whatever’s left…
Rocks fall, Orrey with them, splashing down deep into the water.
With a final groan, the rest of the ancient temple tower falls in after him.
“…I mean, that looks kinda bad, but I’m sure she has it under control.”
He does not surface.
The Starfall descends around the sinking rubble, and with a start, you realize there is only one airship doing this.
The Slim Reaper is gone.
Yves makes a face. “Is, uh, is anyone really good at swimming?”
Linnet pulls up at the surface of the water, trying to figure out a way to solidify the entire ocean with one casting of Blizzard, all while crying.
Bast stands at the rail, looking down, finally managing to uncurl his fingers from the rope. “Where did he go down?”
The ocean churns underneath Linnet, uncaring, unfeeling, unmoved. ** The ocean churns above Orrey, uncaring, unfeeling, unmoved. A little light makes it down through the water, a deep blue he’s always favored in his moodier pieces. A bit of the Thirteenth floor rests next to Orrey, half in the water, half out. The water’s edge forms a dome around Orrey. The air is breathable, if damp and unpleasant. The sand pulls at his arms and legs, ready to claim him, to keep him, to leave him behind. Orrey is not the only thing that does not belong at the bottom of the ocean, in this strange gap of air. Another figure, in fact, a broad humanoid figure standing in the middle of the dome of the wild, wild sea,, wrapped in a tattered brown cloak, metal gleaming all along their body in the rippling light. It looks.
We Will Have Words.
End session.