Session 20 -- minus-20,000 HP Under The Sea
Previously, across the Horizon…
The first voyage of the Starfall would be a short one, serving as an exploration anchor for Orrey, Linnet, Yves, and Bast to descend into the toppled temple tower in Alterna, to learn the layout of the ancient airship’s controls and to see what secrets the rulers of the world left behind when they fell.
Early scouting showed that this would be a peculiar trip, as Linnet’s path around the tower revealed a strange pull on the underside, waves of force pushing her down toward the churning ocean below.
The twelfth floor, Yoshuelje’s floor, allowed no light to enter nor exit the room, the windows showing nothing but blackness, no matter which way they looked.
Orrey went in on a rope, dangling from the Starfall, and then slipped into the thirteenth floor, where he found signs of an ancient god, of which the books spoke nothing, of which the histories told nothing.
And then Orrey inadvertently consigned the building to history, and the building started to fall into the ocean, carrying the young human with it.
The rest launched a desperate rescue attempt, Linnet diving down to help Orrey out of his harness, Bast trying to secure the line, and Yves waiting to do the right thing and zap on cue.
Orrey emerged from the temple as it fell, Yves’s well-placed Thunder spell severing the line (and hitting Orrey full-on in the face, but these things happen), Bast helping brace his weight, and Linnet — Linnet trapped inside the temple, tossed around from the fall, unable to find her way free.
Orrey Rewound time to step back into the temple and Alpha Strike the wall, giving the sylph an exit to freedom, and then Orrey would just hold onto the rope and be hauled the rest of the way to safety.
The rope that had already been severed, untouched by the tampering of time.
The temple crashed down into the ocean, Orrey lost in the waves.
He would not resurface.
We join our heroes as they search for their friend in the debris-filled waves… but first, we join our hero far beneath the waves.
**
There is air. Breathable air. There is also a great deal of pain. The sun is somewhere far above Orrey, far out of reach. The immediate future watches him, seven feet of dry cloak wrapped around a body Orrey can’t see, though the gleaming silver steel of the armor on the legs tells the young mage that his conversation partner has seen war, or at least dresses the part. The promised Words have not followed, and the silence that sits in the pocket under the ocean is as heavy as the water pushing down against the dome of air. The figure waits. Orrey pushes himself up to a sitting position, checking to see if anything is broken. There should be a lot of things broken. Or completely crushed or ripped apart or SOMETHING other than sitting on the ocean floor alive. You are here — bodily. Not everything appears to have made the trip. Your satchel is gone. Your sketches are gone. Your helmet — the Forgotten’s helmet — is here. So, inexplicably, is your divine dinner roll. Orrey takes a few minutes to say a prayer of thanks to the Forgotten, and then Yinha too for good measure. Who Are You? The cloak obscuring the figure’s face ripples. The sound of the figure’s voice is deep and resonant, each word accompanied by a rich brass undertone. “I’m Orrey. Orrey Alyon, of Saron. What’s your name?” A beat. Dobverat. Of Alexander. Orrey goes to write that down, and then realizes he has nothing to do that with and wilts a little. He stands up and brushes himself off. “Alexander? Is that a person, a place, or something else?” Sovereign Is Many Things And All Things. We Are Searching For Him. We Wish To Remember Him. A beat. Before It Is Too Late. Above the waves… There have been no cries for help, no emerging bodies splashing and gasping for air. Orrey is gone. “Linnet!” Bast snaps at the frantic sylph. “You were the first down here. Did you see where he went down?” Isa emerges from the bridge onto the deck, jaw set. “What happened out here? It was all I could do to keep the blasted ship level…” She does a quick head count. “Shit.” Only one airship circles the water, the Starfall searching for its fallen crew member. The Slim Reaper has been gone for some indeterminate amount of time. Linnet is still hovering over the section of ocean closest to where she saw Orrey go down. She yells back up to Bast, “Yes! I’m still here! That’s as close as I can get you!” Isa, less angry, more desperate this time, “What happened?” “Orrey tried to shift us both with that weird time thing he does, and he missed! That’s all I know! I’m down here trying to figure out how to free him and I can’t swim!” “Any idea how deep it is out here?” Bast is removing his shirt as he speaks. “Did anyone come across an anchor while we were inspecting the ship?” Isa asks, striding across the deck. “I was checking the engines,” Bast says. “Check the big chain running from the engine room! Big honking silver thing that’ll trip you if you’re not paying attention! Don’t ask me how I know!” Linnet’s voice is louder and faster than normal. Isa nods. “Right. Yves, see what you can find. It’ll give us a sounding and keep us from drifting off target. If we get real lucky, it’ll give Orrey something to climb up.” Yves goes to what might be the anchor, finds a lever on the edge that’s very clearly in one direction with room to go to another direction, and places a hand on it. “Well, this seems unreasonably simple,” he mutters, about to throw it. And then, in the distance… “Was that a train…?” Meanwhile, beneath the waves… You Worship Him, Dobverat says. “I worship the Forgotten.” Orrey pulls himself up. “And the rest of the Twelve, of course.” The Helmet. Orrey nods. “That’s his helmet. Or, at least, it’s a piece designed for the worship of the Forgotten.” Yes. We Seek To Remember Our Sovereign. “You said we must remember Him before it’s too late…you mean, Remember the Forgotten?” Orrey looks around. “And how do we jog our memory?” Orrey starts pacing, his nervousness and anxiety creeping in as the shock of falling into this surreal bubble begins to wear off, and the sheer oddity of the conversation with the strange armored ?person? is making him very conscious of his precarious position. The figure steps forward, the dome of air moving forward with them. Your Companions Abandoned You, but there is uncertainty in the tone. “No. I fell after saving a friend. I miscalculated. I think I saved her…I hope I saved her. Do you have any idea where we are? And…did your companions abandon you after you attacked our ship and fell off?” Your Companions Threw Us From The Craft, comes an almost petulant reply. “My companions did no such thing! At least, not on purpose. Something gave out in the engines and we experienced a rapid slow down. Besides, even if we had, did you not board our vessel uninvited? Yours was the act of war.” Orrey’s voice gets quieter as he finishes that last sentence, realizing he’s in no shape for a fight and there’s a potentially hostile entity in front of him. Another step forward, and the dome contracts. Orrey crouches and flings an arm up in an instinctually defensive posture. We Wished To Warn You, comes the cold reply, a low B-flat sending ripples along the curved water. I Saved You From Your Fall. You Seek To Remember. We Seek To Remember. Orrey blinks. “Oh. We might have a misunderstanding here. A miscommunication.” He pauses. “And…thank you, for saving me. I’m not quite ready to pass on to the next realm.” Orrey gives a halfhearted, fearful grin as he stares up at the contracting dome of air. “Any idea how to get out of here before we’re drowned?” The figure looks up at the water, and with a flick of a steel-gloved wrist, the dome stops contracting. Two shining golden lights peer down at Orrey. I Seek The Restoration Of Sovereign. You Seek To Remember. Together, We Could. Meanwhile, above the waves… Yves lingers by the edge of the deck, hand on what is likely the anchor’s controls. “Train. Still running.” “Train’s our lead on Orrey’s father. Without Orrey it’s a lot less important. Drop anchor.” Yves nods, and then throws the switch. The chain unrolls, and from the bottom of the ship a solid weight emerges, basically a massive club on a thick chain, and as Bast and Yves watch from the railing, the circular weight unfolds into a six-spiked grasping hand of sorts, almost scanning for something to grab onto before plunging beneath the waves. A moment later, the ship lurches just a bit to port. Linnet flinches involuntarily, but only at the sound; she still hasn’t taken her eyes off the water. Bast, watching the anchor drop, suddenly starts cursing under his breath. The lurch cuts him short, and he looks at the water as if trying to see to the bottom. “Yell if something nasty climbs the hawser,” Isa says, and heads back to keep the ship steady. Small ripples extend out from the chain. Linnet continues to hover in a very determined fashion. Yves shows no interest in personally diving in. Linnet watches the ripples with the intensity of a strategically minded tiger, ready to pounce on whatever arises, either Orrey (in which case it’ll be a friendly pounce) or something else (in which case it will be much less friendly). The water near her is starting to crackle slightly, but salinity and movement make it very difficult to accidentally freeze the ocean. Bast gives the chain an appraising look, then sighs slowly and starts pulling his shirt back on. “Too damn deep to dive to the bottom here. If he went all the way down…” Meanwhile, all the way down… Dobverat’s head turns at something Orrey cannot detect, and then the glowing lights are back on his face… but nothing else is said yet. “What is it? Is…something out there? Some kind of sea monster? A sea serpent? A sea spectre?” A Relic. “OK. What kind of Relic? And is it a threat to us right now?” We Are In No Danger From It. “Alexander!!! There’s a book about Alexander we ran across.” Orrey pauses to breath, but no longer. “I don’t know why I just remembered that.” The glow intensifies. “It had chains on it.” Orrey tries to judge what the glow means. The figure covers the ground between them and Orrey in three quick strides, the dome sweeping along with them — and then they drop to one knee, next to Orrey, and Orrey can see the outline of a carved metallic face inside that robe, a mouth that does not move, ornamental eyes without lids or pupils. Tell Us. Please. “I didn’t get a look inside the book. But I can probably help you find it.” The figure looks to the helmet in your hand, and then back to your face. For Sovereign. “Do you know an Alitheia or an Arendall, perchance?” Nothing moves in the face, recognition or otherwise. “Anyway. You can maintain this bubble indefinitely?” Orrey eyes the edges of the water. You Can Help Remember. You Can Help Us. “I am absolutely in favor of helping you remember. But we’re going to need to get out of here in order to do so, right? Any chance you can move this bubble upwards?” Orrey is getting a little frantic. “Also, did you happen to see what happened to my bag?” The figure holds an outstretched hand down to Orrey. Orrey sighs deeply and takes Dob’s hand. Meanwhile, above the waves… Fifteen minutes have passed. Nothing has climbed the chain. Nothing has surfaced. Wait? Y/N Linnet will wait until something emerges. If nothing else, corpses float. She could probably be moved by force, but DETERMINATION holds her in place. “We can’t wait here forever,” Isa notes. Twenty more minutes pass. A torrent of bubbles emerge ten minutes to the north, but an examination of the area turns up no bodies, and some crumbled masonry. That whistle blows again. Bast turns to Linnet. “Hey. What can you do with air? Shape it, contain it, that sort of thing.” “Um. Depends what you’re asking.” “Anything that might help underwater.” “Probably not. I could probably move little bits of air around, but not however many feet of water is between us and Orrey.” She turns back to the water. “I appreciate your line of thought, but right now all of my remaining power needs to go to healing Orrey if he bobs up alive.” Bast shakes his head. “Unless he ran into some sort of miracle on the way down, I don’t think your chances are good.” “Linnet, if he bobs up, it’s not going to be alive. It’s been too long,” Isa says. “Shut up, both of you.” Linnet doesn’t move her eyes from the water. “I am reserving my power for a potential miracle. You two need to be either controlling the anchor to find Orrey or praying for that miracle. Now go do something more useful than telling me he’s dead. Because he’s not.” The ocean gets a bit more crackly and noticeably chillier. “That’s not how-” Bast pauses for a moment. “Never mind.” Isa looks at Linnet for a long moment. It’d be easy to be cold, or cruel, or both. Instead, she just says “Five more minutes,” and goes to help Yves with the anchor claw. Five minutes pass. Meanwhile, under the waves… Dobverat takes Orrey’s hand, and the world flashes gold. We Have Waited For His Return. An energy fills Orrey, an energy unlike anything he’s ever felt, power burning beneath his skin, conviction roaring in his veins, an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and truth and justice welling up within him for that instant. You Think As I Do. The dome breaks, and the water rushes in. Do Not Be Afraid. Orrey is AFRAID. Remember. Remember Who We Were. Remember Who We Yet Will Be. “What do you mean?!” Orrey panics and tries to pull his hand away. Remember Who He Is. Dobverat’s grip is bonecrushing. Remember Who You Are. All is dark. All is light. Above the waves — above the waves, a pillar of golden light. A startled Linnet finally tears her eyes from the surface of the ocean. The pillar remains, glowing, light emanating out in steady rhythm, pulsing from the sky to the sea. “…Isa? Can we get a bit of distance from whatever that is before it explodes or something?” “Yeah that’s a really great idea. Yves, weigh anchor.” Isa leaves the Viera to his work, and starts back to the bridge. Then the pillar fades out, the aftereffect of its brilliance briefly scarring your eyes, for that is the only logical explanation for why a man is hovering there, wrapped in white-gold robes, four angelic wings extending out from his body. And then the wings were never there, the light is fading, your eyes are adjusting — and Orrey tumbles down through the air into the sea, unconscious. “Linnet!” Bast checks his own rush at the rail, certain that she’ll get there faster. Linnet screams in wordless panicked rage and dives underneath Orrey. She doesn’t manage to actually catch him, but when the two of them hit the water, she’s underneath and gripping tightly to his shirt. She bobs up spluttering, still with a death grip on Orrey’s clothes, and looks around wildly for the anchor chain. Floundering a bit, she does manage to get enough of a move on to grab the chain with the other hand. “PULL, YOU SONS OF MOTHERLESS VULTURES, PULL!” Bast, after checking that Linnet isn’t about to drown right away, darts over to the rope still dangling overboard and tries to throw it in Linnet’s general direction. The part of the rope that’s been sitting in the water doesn’t move far. “Get us the hell out of the water so I can bring this idiot back to consciousness and then kill him! Possibly twice!” Yves gets distracted by the genealogy of carrion birds, but luckily the anchor is motorized and continues to retract the chain back into the Starfall. As Orrey is hauled onto the ship, sopping wet, head lolling to the side, looking like he absolutely hit every floor of a building on the way down… that train whistle sounds again, distant and decreasing. “That’s quite a whistle for a secret prison train.” “RIGHT.” Linnet shrugs Orrey off of her and collapses on her knees, sopping wet. “Time to get you back on your feet, genius.” “BAST!” comes Isa’s voice from the bridge, “ARE WE CLEAR?” Linnet surrounds Orrey in a haze of white light and makes three rounds of blurry hand gestures. “Clear!” Bast glances at the surface of the water suspiciously, as if waiting for another magical visitation to prove him wrong. Orrey smiles gently up at Linnet. “Hi.” “That better have worked, that’s all I’ve got. I need a nap, but that’s not happening until you show some sign of life, you brilliant and easily distractable heroic idiot.” “I think you saved me.” Linnet possibly undoes some of her handiwork by nearly crushing Orrey in a hug. “Thank the Twelve Gods.” Orrey closes his eyes and tries not to wince noticeably as he hugs his friend back as hard as he can. She plants a quick kiss on his cheek and sets him back down on the deck gently. “I’d say ’don’t you ever do that again,’ but I suspect that’s unlikely. Just…give it a few days before you try to be a hero again, all right?” The deck of the Starfall lurches, as Isa engages the engines to get clear of collapsing buildings, weird oceanic light columns, and possible ghost trains. “I will order Isa to confine you to quarters if need be. That anchor chain could probably be repurposed…” “We have an anchor? What for?” Orrey tries to sit up, which doesn’t go great. “Does the ship actually sail on water, too?” Yves offers his opinion, which contains more than a few tangents about strong prevailing winds, as well as conjecture about its use as a salvage crane. There are diagrams. It is unclear when he had time to produce them. “Does anyone need anything else from me right now? Because if not, I’m retreating to quarters and sleeping for about three days. I am spent,” Linnet groans. Bast walks over to stand nearby as Orrey and Linnet catch up. “…hey, welcome back among the living, what the hell happened there?” His sweeping gesture encompasses both the water below them and the space where the building used to hang. “The armored being that jumped on our ship saved me. I think. Is Dobverat here?!” Orrey forces himself up in spite of the pain, looking around. No armored figures walk the deck of the Starfall. “Isa, if he tries to do anything else dashingly heroic, restrain him and block the door of his cabin. Wake me if the ship is on fire.” Linnet salutes the party, winks at Orrey, and leaves to go fall over in the cabin she’s claimed as hers. Isa takes the Starfall through a few careful looks through Alterna as Orrey and Linnet recover as much of themselves as they can. Later, straws are drawn between four members of the five-person crew, and then the short straw is taken away from Yves (“for political reasons,” Isa says) and given to Linnet instead. Linnet breaks the news to Orrey: The Slim Reaper is gone, Cassiat and Galley with it. The ship left sometime between the start of the spelunking and the capsizing of the spelunking. What’s more, any trains that may or may not have been carrying his father are also gone. No more whistles blew in the few hours that followed. Orrey has gained a tremendous amount of knowledge, and he and his new friends have gained an incredible airship. But his father, his sister, and his best lead at finding his family, they are gone. About thirty minutes after this news has been given to Orrey and he is back in his cabin alone, the door bumps itself open. Cinnabar’s inquisitive nose peeks in, the rest of the sparkling rabbit’s face peering in after. She disappears out of view for a moment, and then reappears, dragging a slightly beat up backpack with her. “What…” “What do you have there?!” Orrey doesn’t let himself hope too much… But he gets up and pets the rabbit while he checks out the bag. Cinnabar bumps it with her head, and it tips over. It’s Orrey’s backpack. Orrey opens it up as fast as he can, checking the contents. The problem is, Orrey stopped keeping count of his sketches sometime ago. So it’s impossible to say if everything else is there, but he can confirm that his sketches of Alitheia, Arendall, the 13th Floor, and the Skull Shadow are gone. “Cinnabun, you deserve a treat for this. Let’s go get you something from the kitchen. Now, if you can tell me HOW you got this, and who stole my sketches, you’ll be even more amazing than you already are. Such a good bun!!!” Orrey picks up Cinnabun and scritches behind the ears as he heads down the hallway. (Fortunately, Linnet keeps a plate of cinnamon rolls stocked in the galley at all times.) And with that… End session.
The first voyage of the Starfall would be a short one, serving as an exploration anchor for Orrey, Linnet, Yves, and Bast to descend into the toppled temple tower in Alterna, to learn the layout of the ancient airship’s controls and to see what secrets the rulers of the world left behind when they fell.
Early scouting showed that this would be a peculiar trip, as Linnet’s path around the tower revealed a strange pull on the underside, waves of force pushing her down toward the churning ocean below.
The twelfth floor, Yoshuelje’s floor, allowed no light to enter nor exit the room, the windows showing nothing but blackness, no matter which way they looked.
Orrey went in on a rope, dangling from the Starfall, and then slipped into the thirteenth floor, where he found signs of an ancient god, of which the books spoke nothing, of which the histories told nothing.
And then Orrey inadvertently consigned the building to history, and the building started to fall into the ocean, carrying the young human with it.
The rest launched a desperate rescue attempt, Linnet diving down to help Orrey out of his harness, Bast trying to secure the line, and Yves waiting to do the right thing and zap on cue.
Orrey emerged from the temple as it fell, Yves’s well-placed Thunder spell severing the line (and hitting Orrey full-on in the face, but these things happen), Bast helping brace his weight, and Linnet — Linnet trapped inside the temple, tossed around from the fall, unable to find her way free.
Orrey Rewound time to step back into the temple and Alpha Strike the wall, giving the sylph an exit to freedom, and then Orrey would just hold onto the rope and be hauled the rest of the way to safety.
The rope that had already been severed, untouched by the tampering of time.
The temple crashed down into the ocean, Orrey lost in the waves.
He would not resurface.
We join our heroes as they search for their friend in the debris-filled waves… but first, we join our hero far beneath the waves.
**
There is air. Breathable air. There is also a great deal of pain. The sun is somewhere far above Orrey, far out of reach. The immediate future watches him, seven feet of dry cloak wrapped around a body Orrey can’t see, though the gleaming silver steel of the armor on the legs tells the young mage that his conversation partner has seen war, or at least dresses the part. The promised Words have not followed, and the silence that sits in the pocket under the ocean is as heavy as the water pushing down against the dome of air. The figure waits. Orrey pushes himself up to a sitting position, checking to see if anything is broken. There should be a lot of things broken. Or completely crushed or ripped apart or SOMETHING other than sitting on the ocean floor alive. You are here — bodily. Not everything appears to have made the trip. Your satchel is gone. Your sketches are gone. Your helmet — the Forgotten’s helmet — is here. So, inexplicably, is your divine dinner roll. Orrey takes a few minutes to say a prayer of thanks to the Forgotten, and then Yinha too for good measure. Who Are You? The cloak obscuring the figure’s face ripples. The sound of the figure’s voice is deep and resonant, each word accompanied by a rich brass undertone. “I’m Orrey. Orrey Alyon, of Saron. What’s your name?” A beat. Dobverat. Of Alexander. Orrey goes to write that down, and then realizes he has nothing to do that with and wilts a little. He stands up and brushes himself off. “Alexander? Is that a person, a place, or something else?” Sovereign Is Many Things And All Things. We Are Searching For Him. We Wish To Remember Him. A beat. Before It Is Too Late. Above the waves… There have been no cries for help, no emerging bodies splashing and gasping for air. Orrey is gone. “Linnet!” Bast snaps at the frantic sylph. “You were the first down here. Did you see where he went down?” Isa emerges from the bridge onto the deck, jaw set. “What happened out here? It was all I could do to keep the blasted ship level…” She does a quick head count. “Shit.” Only one airship circles the water, the Starfall searching for its fallen crew member. The Slim Reaper has been gone for some indeterminate amount of time. Linnet is still hovering over the section of ocean closest to where she saw Orrey go down. She yells back up to Bast, “Yes! I’m still here! That’s as close as I can get you!” Isa, less angry, more desperate this time, “What happened?” “Orrey tried to shift us both with that weird time thing he does, and he missed! That’s all I know! I’m down here trying to figure out how to free him and I can’t swim!” “Any idea how deep it is out here?” Bast is removing his shirt as he speaks. “Did anyone come across an anchor while we were inspecting the ship?” Isa asks, striding across the deck. “I was checking the engines,” Bast says. “Check the big chain running from the engine room! Big honking silver thing that’ll trip you if you’re not paying attention! Don’t ask me how I know!” Linnet’s voice is louder and faster than normal. Isa nods. “Right. Yves, see what you can find. It’ll give us a sounding and keep us from drifting off target. If we get real lucky, it’ll give Orrey something to climb up.” Yves goes to what might be the anchor, finds a lever on the edge that’s very clearly in one direction with room to go to another direction, and places a hand on it. “Well, this seems unreasonably simple,” he mutters, about to throw it. And then, in the distance… “Was that a train…?” Meanwhile, beneath the waves… You Worship Him, Dobverat says. “I worship the Forgotten.” Orrey pulls himself up. “And the rest of the Twelve, of course.” The Helmet. Orrey nods. “That’s his helmet. Or, at least, it’s a piece designed for the worship of the Forgotten.” Yes. We Seek To Remember Our Sovereign. “You said we must remember Him before it’s too late…you mean, Remember the Forgotten?” Orrey looks around. “And how do we jog our memory?” Orrey starts pacing, his nervousness and anxiety creeping in as the shock of falling into this surreal bubble begins to wear off, and the sheer oddity of the conversation with the strange armored ?person? is making him very conscious of his precarious position. The figure steps forward, the dome of air moving forward with them. Your Companions Abandoned You, but there is uncertainty in the tone. “No. I fell after saving a friend. I miscalculated. I think I saved her…I hope I saved her. Do you have any idea where we are? And…did your companions abandon you after you attacked our ship and fell off?” Your Companions Threw Us From The Craft, comes an almost petulant reply. “My companions did no such thing! At least, not on purpose. Something gave out in the engines and we experienced a rapid slow down. Besides, even if we had, did you not board our vessel uninvited? Yours was the act of war.” Orrey’s voice gets quieter as he finishes that last sentence, realizing he’s in no shape for a fight and there’s a potentially hostile entity in front of him. Another step forward, and the dome contracts. Orrey crouches and flings an arm up in an instinctually defensive posture. We Wished To Warn You, comes the cold reply, a low B-flat sending ripples along the curved water. I Saved You From Your Fall. You Seek To Remember. We Seek To Remember. Orrey blinks. “Oh. We might have a misunderstanding here. A miscommunication.” He pauses. “And…thank you, for saving me. I’m not quite ready to pass on to the next realm.” Orrey gives a halfhearted, fearful grin as he stares up at the contracting dome of air. “Any idea how to get out of here before we’re drowned?” The figure looks up at the water, and with a flick of a steel-gloved wrist, the dome stops contracting. Two shining golden lights peer down at Orrey. I Seek The Restoration Of Sovereign. You Seek To Remember. Together, We Could. Meanwhile, above the waves… Yves lingers by the edge of the deck, hand on what is likely the anchor’s controls. “Train. Still running.” “Train’s our lead on Orrey’s father. Without Orrey it’s a lot less important. Drop anchor.” Yves nods, and then throws the switch. The chain unrolls, and from the bottom of the ship a solid weight emerges, basically a massive club on a thick chain, and as Bast and Yves watch from the railing, the circular weight unfolds into a six-spiked grasping hand of sorts, almost scanning for something to grab onto before plunging beneath the waves. A moment later, the ship lurches just a bit to port. Linnet flinches involuntarily, but only at the sound; she still hasn’t taken her eyes off the water. Bast, watching the anchor drop, suddenly starts cursing under his breath. The lurch cuts him short, and he looks at the water as if trying to see to the bottom. “Yell if something nasty climbs the hawser,” Isa says, and heads back to keep the ship steady. Small ripples extend out from the chain. Linnet continues to hover in a very determined fashion. Yves shows no interest in personally diving in. Linnet watches the ripples with the intensity of a strategically minded tiger, ready to pounce on whatever arises, either Orrey (in which case it’ll be a friendly pounce) or something else (in which case it will be much less friendly). The water near her is starting to crackle slightly, but salinity and movement make it very difficult to accidentally freeze the ocean. Bast gives the chain an appraising look, then sighs slowly and starts pulling his shirt back on. “Too damn deep to dive to the bottom here. If he went all the way down…” Meanwhile, all the way down… Dobverat’s head turns at something Orrey cannot detect, and then the glowing lights are back on his face… but nothing else is said yet. “What is it? Is…something out there? Some kind of sea monster? A sea serpent? A sea spectre?” A Relic. “OK. What kind of Relic? And is it a threat to us right now?” We Are In No Danger From It. “Alexander!!! There’s a book about Alexander we ran across.” Orrey pauses to breath, but no longer. “I don’t know why I just remembered that.” The glow intensifies. “It had chains on it.” Orrey tries to judge what the glow means. The figure covers the ground between them and Orrey in three quick strides, the dome sweeping along with them — and then they drop to one knee, next to Orrey, and Orrey can see the outline of a carved metallic face inside that robe, a mouth that does not move, ornamental eyes without lids or pupils. Tell Us. Please. “I didn’t get a look inside the book. But I can probably help you find it.” The figure looks to the helmet in your hand, and then back to your face. For Sovereign. “Do you know an Alitheia or an Arendall, perchance?” Nothing moves in the face, recognition or otherwise. “Anyway. You can maintain this bubble indefinitely?” Orrey eyes the edges of the water. You Can Help Remember. You Can Help Us. “I am absolutely in favor of helping you remember. But we’re going to need to get out of here in order to do so, right? Any chance you can move this bubble upwards?” Orrey is getting a little frantic. “Also, did you happen to see what happened to my bag?” The figure holds an outstretched hand down to Orrey. Orrey sighs deeply and takes Dob’s hand. Meanwhile, above the waves… Fifteen minutes have passed. Nothing has climbed the chain. Nothing has surfaced. Wait? Y/N Linnet will wait until something emerges. If nothing else, corpses float. She could probably be moved by force, but DETERMINATION holds her in place. “We can’t wait here forever,” Isa notes. Twenty more minutes pass. A torrent of bubbles emerge ten minutes to the north, but an examination of the area turns up no bodies, and some crumbled masonry. That whistle blows again. Bast turns to Linnet. “Hey. What can you do with air? Shape it, contain it, that sort of thing.” “Um. Depends what you’re asking.” “Anything that might help underwater.” “Probably not. I could probably move little bits of air around, but not however many feet of water is between us and Orrey.” She turns back to the water. “I appreciate your line of thought, but right now all of my remaining power needs to go to healing Orrey if he bobs up alive.” Bast shakes his head. “Unless he ran into some sort of miracle on the way down, I don’t think your chances are good.” “Linnet, if he bobs up, it’s not going to be alive. It’s been too long,” Isa says. “Shut up, both of you.” Linnet doesn’t move her eyes from the water. “I am reserving my power for a potential miracle. You two need to be either controlling the anchor to find Orrey or praying for that miracle. Now go do something more useful than telling me he’s dead. Because he’s not.” The ocean gets a bit more crackly and noticeably chillier. “That’s not how-” Bast pauses for a moment. “Never mind.” Isa looks at Linnet for a long moment. It’d be easy to be cold, or cruel, or both. Instead, she just says “Five more minutes,” and goes to help Yves with the anchor claw. Five minutes pass. Meanwhile, under the waves… Dobverat takes Orrey’s hand, and the world flashes gold. We Have Waited For His Return. An energy fills Orrey, an energy unlike anything he’s ever felt, power burning beneath his skin, conviction roaring in his veins, an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and truth and justice welling up within him for that instant. You Think As I Do. The dome breaks, and the water rushes in. Do Not Be Afraid. Orrey is AFRAID. Remember. Remember Who We Were. Remember Who We Yet Will Be. “What do you mean?!” Orrey panics and tries to pull his hand away. Remember Who He Is. Dobverat’s grip is bonecrushing. Remember Who You Are. All is dark. All is light. Above the waves — above the waves, a pillar of golden light. A startled Linnet finally tears her eyes from the surface of the ocean. The pillar remains, glowing, light emanating out in steady rhythm, pulsing from the sky to the sea. “…Isa? Can we get a bit of distance from whatever that is before it explodes or something?” “Yeah that’s a really great idea. Yves, weigh anchor.” Isa leaves the Viera to his work, and starts back to the bridge. Then the pillar fades out, the aftereffect of its brilliance briefly scarring your eyes, for that is the only logical explanation for why a man is hovering there, wrapped in white-gold robes, four angelic wings extending out from his body. And then the wings were never there, the light is fading, your eyes are adjusting — and Orrey tumbles down through the air into the sea, unconscious. “Linnet!” Bast checks his own rush at the rail, certain that she’ll get there faster. Linnet screams in wordless panicked rage and dives underneath Orrey. She doesn’t manage to actually catch him, but when the two of them hit the water, she’s underneath and gripping tightly to his shirt. She bobs up spluttering, still with a death grip on Orrey’s clothes, and looks around wildly for the anchor chain. Floundering a bit, she does manage to get enough of a move on to grab the chain with the other hand. “PULL, YOU SONS OF MOTHERLESS VULTURES, PULL!” Bast, after checking that Linnet isn’t about to drown right away, darts over to the rope still dangling overboard and tries to throw it in Linnet’s general direction. The part of the rope that’s been sitting in the water doesn’t move far. “Get us the hell out of the water so I can bring this idiot back to consciousness and then kill him! Possibly twice!” Yves gets distracted by the genealogy of carrion birds, but luckily the anchor is motorized and continues to retract the chain back into the Starfall. As Orrey is hauled onto the ship, sopping wet, head lolling to the side, looking like he absolutely hit every floor of a building on the way down… that train whistle sounds again, distant and decreasing. “That’s quite a whistle for a secret prison train.” “RIGHT.” Linnet shrugs Orrey off of her and collapses on her knees, sopping wet. “Time to get you back on your feet, genius.” “BAST!” comes Isa’s voice from the bridge, “ARE WE CLEAR?” Linnet surrounds Orrey in a haze of white light and makes three rounds of blurry hand gestures. “Clear!” Bast glances at the surface of the water suspiciously, as if waiting for another magical visitation to prove him wrong. Orrey smiles gently up at Linnet. “Hi.” “That better have worked, that’s all I’ve got. I need a nap, but that’s not happening until you show some sign of life, you brilliant and easily distractable heroic idiot.” “I think you saved me.” Linnet possibly undoes some of her handiwork by nearly crushing Orrey in a hug. “Thank the Twelve Gods.” Orrey closes his eyes and tries not to wince noticeably as he hugs his friend back as hard as he can. She plants a quick kiss on his cheek and sets him back down on the deck gently. “I’d say ’don’t you ever do that again,’ but I suspect that’s unlikely. Just…give it a few days before you try to be a hero again, all right?” The deck of the Starfall lurches, as Isa engages the engines to get clear of collapsing buildings, weird oceanic light columns, and possible ghost trains. “I will order Isa to confine you to quarters if need be. That anchor chain could probably be repurposed…” “We have an anchor? What for?” Orrey tries to sit up, which doesn’t go great. “Does the ship actually sail on water, too?” Yves offers his opinion, which contains more than a few tangents about strong prevailing winds, as well as conjecture about its use as a salvage crane. There are diagrams. It is unclear when he had time to produce them. “Does anyone need anything else from me right now? Because if not, I’m retreating to quarters and sleeping for about three days. I am spent,” Linnet groans. Bast walks over to stand nearby as Orrey and Linnet catch up. “…hey, welcome back among the living, what the hell happened there?” His sweeping gesture encompasses both the water below them and the space where the building used to hang. “The armored being that jumped on our ship saved me. I think. Is Dobverat here?!” Orrey forces himself up in spite of the pain, looking around. No armored figures walk the deck of the Starfall. “Isa, if he tries to do anything else dashingly heroic, restrain him and block the door of his cabin. Wake me if the ship is on fire.” Linnet salutes the party, winks at Orrey, and leaves to go fall over in the cabin she’s claimed as hers. Isa takes the Starfall through a few careful looks through Alterna as Orrey and Linnet recover as much of themselves as they can. Later, straws are drawn between four members of the five-person crew, and then the short straw is taken away from Yves (“for political reasons,” Isa says) and given to Linnet instead. Linnet breaks the news to Orrey: The Slim Reaper is gone, Cassiat and Galley with it. The ship left sometime between the start of the spelunking and the capsizing of the spelunking. What’s more, any trains that may or may not have been carrying his father are also gone. No more whistles blew in the few hours that followed. Orrey has gained a tremendous amount of knowledge, and he and his new friends have gained an incredible airship. But his father, his sister, and his best lead at finding his family, they are gone. About thirty minutes after this news has been given to Orrey and he is back in his cabin alone, the door bumps itself open. Cinnabar’s inquisitive nose peeks in, the rest of the sparkling rabbit’s face peering in after. She disappears out of view for a moment, and then reappears, dragging a slightly beat up backpack with her. “What…” “What do you have there?!” Orrey doesn’t let himself hope too much… But he gets up and pets the rabbit while he checks out the bag. Cinnabar bumps it with her head, and it tips over. It’s Orrey’s backpack. Orrey opens it up as fast as he can, checking the contents. The problem is, Orrey stopped keeping count of his sketches sometime ago. So it’s impossible to say if everything else is there, but he can confirm that his sketches of Alitheia, Arendall, the 13th Floor, and the Skull Shadow are gone. “Cinnabun, you deserve a treat for this. Let’s go get you something from the kitchen. Now, if you can tell me HOW you got this, and who stole my sketches, you’ll be even more amazing than you already are. Such a good bun!!!” Orrey picks up Cinnabun and scritches behind the ears as he heads down the hallway. (Fortunately, Linnet keeps a plate of cinnamon rolls stocked in the galley at all times.) And with that… End session.
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