Sailing Ether Tides

Sailing Ether Tides

Ch: 18 Deep, Dark Doings

A round blob of liquid crystal ooze churned and sloshed gently in its prison of chalk, magery and focused Will.

“The crystal golems were unconscious projections of the fractional ghosts trapped in the crystal matrix… They weren’t anything more than a few flickers of frightened animal instinct, bashing and stomping reflexively at anything they perceived as a threat.” Rio lectured calmly, over his soft drumbeat, as Dannyl led them in the performance of a brief funeral rite to release the shades.

He sang the spirits off into the next realm with a strange, sad song that made Rio, Amy and Wilf smile.

“Carry On My Wayward Son, Kansas…Beyond classic.” Wilf sighed softly, once the six ghosts were flitting off into the cavern, as a squadron of shadowy, intangible moths unerringly drawn to the moon so far above.

“Wilf’s got his nostalgia goggles on… Brace for geezer music!” Amy giggled and gave him a swat on the armored shoulder, as she went over to their camp to wash up.

“Now we need to decide what to do with this…” Maya muttered, looking down on the immobile monster.

“It’s a glass slime, it won’t move for centuries, if left unmolested…” Rio muttered. “And then it will just slither off to find more obsidian to consume. We can just let it be.”

“We could kill it…” Ivy muttered hungrily, her eyes measuring up all that shimmering, magical glass.

“If we did that, everything in this cavern would die.” Amy spread her arms wide to encompass the huge, beautiful cathedral of unnatural wonders. She gestured to the cataract of icy water, plunging into a deep, clear pool and the mossy, flower bedecked walls of the huge chamber.

“The light comes from Cinderella… we can’t kill her, I named her.” As if to make her point, a huge, shimmering blue moth fluttered down to perch atop her hat, gently fanning its wings in the rainbow light show.

#

That strange Ward creature the high priestess and her husband introduced the baroness to, turned out to be an affable, glib and deeply odd being. Odd and disturbing, even considering his insubstantial and shadowy form.

“...so it all comes down to how we perceive death and what we consider the purpose of a funeral to be. Is it a woeful scene of loss, or can we celebrate the departed as well?” He sighed, seated under an umbrella and pretending to sip from a shadowy teacup, as they chatted.

“I’d like to lighten up the whole deal and make things a little more natural and organic, more of a party for the living.”

“Spiritual hygiene…” She murmured quietly. “We have had a lot of trouble with haunts, on the leeward side of the island. That’s been a problem for centuries, those are some of my richest lands, lying empty because of spooks and specters.”

“Yeah, I sent my second cultist on a jaunt around that side… He planted some trees and did a few exorcisms and ritual funerals. Things should be under control there now.” The shadow man murmured happily. “It was quite a mess over there, your weather patterns and the natural, ambient magical currents of the island created a spiritual depression that lingered for centuries, swirling around endlessly. It should be all cleared up by midsummer’s day, just don’t cut down my fig trees…”

“Fig trees?” She asked cautiously. “Like, when you said: ‘I am the golden fig’?”

“Uh huh…” He answered distractedly. “I’m the first and only male dryad and the pantheon’s only god of Death. That means where I can’t touch, souls linger and fester, rather than passing on. You really want my roots dug into your soil…” He paused, seeming to listen to some distant sound.

“Sorry, gotta go, somebody is playing my song.” The shadow man whispered, as he evaporated into a pleasantly scented cloud of darkling vapor.

“Now, perhaps you begin to fully grasp the current state of the pantheon… And the lengths your recalcitrant clerics will go to, in hopes of forestalling these changes.” Becky remarked, while the baroness contemplated these new things.

#

Ward coalesced in a shadowy corner, before the funeral rite his kids were performing got to the chorus. He watched proudly, as they slowly and gently eased the fragmentary shades out of their glimmering, radiant prison; before sending them off to their next destination… With a bit of sweet classic rock.

“Very nicely done kids!” He cheered as loudly as he could manage, while insubstantial.

Rio reached into the shadowy nook his uncle was stuck in, smiling sadly at his semi divine, semi substantial, entirely weird uncle. He clasped the half formed deity and pulled him into reality with a firm, gentle tug; followed by a hug to bring him into reality as mortals know it.

“Unkie Ward!” Amy chirped happily, now that she was clean.

“Hiya kiddos!” He sang back, between great gulping breaths of the strange cave’s atmosphere. An instant later his form blurred into insubstantiality again, as he vanished.

Just as suddenly, he flickered into view, over near the entrance to the side passage where the camp lay, and just as quickly evaporated again.

“Oooh! I Like this place!” The man in black called out to the team, from atop the giant glass ooze creature. “There aren’t any souls trapped in there, it’s more like an echo or a resonance… a harmony, perhaps. Makes it hard for me to stay focused.”

“Yeah, this is a pretty special spot, we should plant a tree here.” Ward grumbled happily, when he landed back among the young Adventurers, a few seconds later. He reached out and dropped a hand onto Rio’s shoulder and clutched onto the young warrior bard for dear life, as unseen winds battered at his form.

“Hey, Danny!” He called into the camp, for his second cultist and current high priest. “I think we’ve found… The Spot! Spooky, secret, hidden, volcano temples dedicated to the god of Death are classic!”

“And you wonder why Becky calls you a big chuni…” Amy scolded her uncle sweetly. “If the delusion fits…”

“Yeah, she’s got me there… but I’d hate myself if I missed out on all the opportunities that my new life offers…” He chortled and cooed happily, while digging around in his fluttering cape of black leather for a trowel. After a second, he shrugged, letting his cape fall from his shoulders. Rather than drifting to the ground, it fluttered and darted away, into the upper reaches of the cavern.

“I’m the god of Death, I have a vampire bat familiar who lends me her wings, I hang out on the moon and appear as a menacing half seen shadow wherever I go.” He shrugged amiably and smiled. “Your dad understands.”

Dannyl ambled out of the camp, greeting his deity with a grin and a lift of his chin. “Wazzup? I was studying when you bellowed.”

“I said, this is The Spot. Please plant my clone over on that little rise, right there.” He turned back to the Ragamuffins and spread his arms wide in joy. “Hey, Kids! Wanna help me consecrate this cavern?”

#

“You boys are really coming along… but you’re not ready to go hunting alone, yet.” Uncle Liam chided the three teenagers gently. “Most of my domain is half wild or worse, including the lake. We aren’t sure what might be down there.” The startlingly handsome count paused for a few heartbeats, letting tension build, before continuing. “All we know is that it hasn’t attacked anyone… yet.”

“Here he goes again…” Harry grumbled, from his perch over by the stage. “There’s no lake monster here; the fae told me so.”

“Harry!” Tawny cried out in alarm at his rudeness, but her smile said she was enjoying the show. “Your uncle is a knight of the realm, he wouldn’t lie!”

“Uhh uh…?” The young rascal sassed the countess, with a wink. “He didn’t lie, he just danced around the truth. There’s a giant water snail down there, it only eats algae and decaying matter on the lake bottom. That’s your terrifying lake monster!”

“Shush, boy! I’m trying to start a tourist trap here…” The grinning count gave up halfway through, when the boys started giggling at him. “My ruling stands anyway, boys. I’ll just have to go on this trip with you.”

All four boys cheered and fell in behind the count, ready to head out. “Could you just spread the lake monster rumors, please? For your uncle Liam?”

Gary came staggering up from the basement workshop, leaning heavily on his enormous, red haired wife. “Triplets… why did we have triplets, woman? Triple the sewing and washing, triple the victuals…” He grumbled sourly at the goofballs goofing in the common room.

“Fie on thee, lazy slackard and wastrel! There be more work tae be done around this house!” She chivied him upstairs, with a broad wink at Tawny and the handsome count.

“I think he’s feeling better.” Liam barked happily. “Let’s go hunt something dangerous for dinner. I think there might be an inkwhip landsquid nearby!”

“Ooo, takoyaki and ramen?” Harry asked eagerly, with a hopeful glance at Tawny.

“I don’t know your weird foreign dishes, young man. You’ll settle for squid dumplings and calamari noodle soup.” She scolded with a smile. “First you’d best catch it! Off with you, silly filthy boys!”

Her graceful hunting cat of a husband and four excited, eager teenage brothers stampeded out of the inn by the lakeside and into the nearly wild woodlands beyond, hungry for monster flesh.

Tawny’s small, golden hand fell on the musician’s shoulder, gently but firmly. “They will be back tomorrow or the next day… until then, I plan to give you a thorough examination.”

“Hey, you guys said I was doing better…” He whined piteously, ever leery of authorities, medical exams and doctors.

The tiny, golden priestess smiled grimly up at her pale, shaky patient. “You are in my power now, Gary. Physician’s prerogative.” She growled. “Shai, might I take a sample of his brain matter?”

#

“That’s got feels…” Rio whispered softly, as St James Infirmary drew to a sweet, sad close in the echoing caverns deep below the surface. “I wonder how Figaro is doing… He’d be about Benny’s age.”

“Shush… speaking the names of the dead in the temple of Death is a fraught and perilous thing.” Ward gently scolded his nephew.

“He might not be reincarnated yet, we don’t wanna jinx his rebirth.” Dannyl urged gently. “He deserves a peaceful, tranquil life.” The red haired young bard hopped up on the altar monolith in the newly created henge, beside the little lake and smiled. A ring of twelve pairs of massive standing stones, topped by megalithic lintels of rough cut volcanic rock surrounded an altar of dark basalt and a thick bolled fig tree.

The same colorful flowering vines from the ceiling wound around and among them; similarly, thick, green moss festooned the monuments, as though they had been there for uncounted ages.

A tidy lawn scattered with many tasteful plantings of exotic blooms and fruits gave every appearance of an ancient garden, tended through eternity by diligent and careful hands. In the center of the henge grew that single, mature golden fig tree, gnarled and thick, softly groaning as unfelt, eldritch breezes stirred its shining leaves.

Jet black, obsidian glass wasps flitted to and fro among the fig boughs, emerging from a hidden hive, somewhere among the branches.

“Ok, Uncle… that’s a pretty nice temple.” Amy admitted grudgingly. “The pretty flowers saved it from tedious banality.”

“Everyone’s a critic…” Ward strolled by, in a fully material form with his bat familiar dangling on his back, peering over his shoulder at everything. She cooed and chirped in barely audible frequencies, just the odds and ends of her speech that could be perceived by mortal ears.

“Yes, Xyll, we are fully physical here, interesting…”

He turned to the gathered young people, on the edge of the lawn and opened his arms in welcome. “This place is mine now, sanctified and hallowed in my name… glory onto me!” He sang cheerfully.

“I’ll be passing the collection plate and hearing confessions all day! Cinderella’s light is extraordinary and deeply invigorating!” He paused to chat with the vampire bat clinging to his neck.

“Xyll’s worried you might attack her new sister… I bestowed my blessing on her, so no attacking my new sacred beast.”

“Yeah, there’s still the matter of the dead locals inside your ‘new sacred beast’.” Ivy complained. “We should bring them back and put them with their kin… You know how your brother is about mortal remains.”

The dark clad Death god blanched a little and nodded. “Yeah, good point… lemmee…”

He furrowed his brow, gazing into the depths of the crystal ooze looming over the cavern from the obsidian outcropping it was slowly consuming. The colors of the creature’s illumination shifted into sunset and evening hues, as six dark, irregular masses began moving, deep inside.

One by one, six oblong crystal droplets oozed out of the thing, dropping to the mossy floor in a heap. Around six feet long and two feet across, the elongated ovals contained a human corpse, desiccated and shriveled with age. They weighed surprisingly little, perhaps fifty pounds each, suggesting that they held nothing but skin, dust and bones.

With a subtle flexing of his will, the giant ooze’s illumination returned to bright hues of rainbow sunlight. “I’ll give these to Axio I think… He’s all about mortal remains and returning to the soil.” As he spoke, he shifted the awkward, oblong glass coffins into his shadow, where each one sank below the surface and disappeared.

He smiled winningly at the Adventurers and shrugged. “I’m learning this as I go along, gang. Come inside, check out my new house.”

He led them through the standing stones, each one feeling a weird combination of welcome, melancholy, warmth and ease, as they passed through.

“Was that a cleansing barrier?” Ivy asked in surprise. “And large enough for all of us to pass through?”

“Well yeah, I don’t want any tagalongs or sneaky spooks following anyone in.” He shuddered in horror.

“Uncle Ward… Are you still scared of ghosts?” Rio asked softly. “I thought…”

“Look, spooks’re… Spooky!” He complained, while his guests got settled in a section of the garden hidden from view by the megalithic structure.

Moss, rounded boulders and a few suspiciously flat lava flows at a convenient table height were scattered among the garden planters. Wicker chairs and lounges, upholstered sofas and a trickling stream of chilly, pure water all aimed at a well lit corner of the chamber.

In an alcove of blackened volcanic rock, a tiny wildfire plum blazed merrily, in her most impressive springtime vigor. The sparks fell on bare stone around her little patch of soil; a hearth that cast warmth, light and the scents of spring into the cozy little common room.

The petals of her pale, glowing red blossoms would occasionally leap off with a quiet pop and sizzle, each becoming a short lived firework, as they fell to the stones and crumbled to ash.

She too held a swarm, glittering amber bees in her case, buzzing from their hive to visit the flowers all around. They buzzed and bumbled about, interacting with the obsidian wasps very cordially in their endless labor.

“She’s… beautiful…” Ivy whispered softly, while the others gasped at the tiny, blazing tree.

“Unlike any other…” He whispered with filial pride. “The first new dryad in who knows how long… and my first daughter. We were looking for The Spot, all this time. Now here she is.” He sighed happily, as he sank onto a sofa, to bask in the light of Cindi, the crystal ooze.

“Watch closely, friends, this is way more than once in a lifetime.” The god of Death patted the wicker couch, with cushions of moss green denim, beside him. “My daughter is emerging at last.”

#

She’d been waiting a while… a long while; trapped in her waxy cell, until everything was right… Now, with the strange, jewellike rays of this crystal sun shining down on her leaves…

With a mighty heave and a bit of a nibble, she pierced and consumed the waxen lid of her birth coffin, emerging into the free air at last.

“If I’d known it was that delicious, I’d have eaten that waxy rascal right away…” She buzzed happily, before going back to the serious business of getting her shining, gossamer wings in shape, they were a little wet and wrinkled.

A huge shadow blocked the blessed sunshine… or whatever it was, interrupting her work. A terrible, dark figure loomed over her newborn form, peering down at her where she perched, in her own slender branches.

“You’re blocking the light, Papa!” She sassed her father, in a way that suggested he would be getting a lot of lip, going forward.

“Tallums…” Ivy whispered breathlessly into her earcuff, transmitting through hundreds of yards of volcanic rock and soil, to the surface. “Baby, the wildfire plum just hatched…” She winced at some deafening sound that the others failed to perceive.

“I know… but Dannyl’s here.” She cooed, when her ear stopped ringing. “He saw everything so at least we have pictures…”

“Hey!” The picture dispenser shouted angrily, but he already had pencils in hand and his easel was set up…

#

Ten minutes later, the high priestess of the cult of Knowledge sat on the deck of her ship and played a merry, cheerful tune on a white, clay ocarina. The instrument was unglazed white earthenware, crafted to resemble a chubby sparrow in exacting detail, save for its hollow body and the finger holes scattered here and there.

She sat for a little while, playing with her toy instrument, until a small, white bird took wing from her hands, flashing over the decks of Moonrise. It darted off into the sky, flying north east, with a skirl of sweet, piping music trailing behind its arrow swift flight.

“So that’s what Ward and Dannyl have been searching for… Some mystically potent place; somewhere touched by Earth, Water, Fire, and Light.” Becky sighed happily, once her messenger bird was on its way and she was curled up in her husband’s arms.

“To think that there’s a spot that’s safe, magical and stable enough for her to finish developing here on the island…” Kermal muttered happily. “Wish we could have been there.”

“Yeah, remind me to bust Dannyl’s chops later.” His cuddly armful answered, as she snuggled in for an ‘emergency nap’.

It always felt odd, dreaming herself into her uncle’s dream realm in the space between mortal reality, dreams, the myriad metaphysical worlds and the swirling chaos of the unbounded ether. She conjured clothing for herself, after waking in her bed, under her own roof, safely tucked away ‘between the buttcheeks of reality’. As always, she’d appeared in cute, striped cotton panties and an oversized, but still too short shirt. She took a quick twirl, before banishing her skimpy sleepwear away with a smile, “Just a little fanservice… for old time’s sake.” She giggled to herself, as her slim, dark legs carried her outside the cozy little cottage of her dreams, even while her skirts and bodice in all the colors of a forest fire, settled comfortably around her.

Her little patch of ground was normal, comfy and beautifully vibrant, with jewel bright insects fitting about among her garden’s blooms. Her small orchards and well tended garden sat on an island, where the outflow of the hotsprings at the main house joined the river, before emptying into the sea. Below the dark, empty inn on the bluff, the sea thundered its subtle drumbeat against that rocky promontory. A few hundred yards in any direction from her tidy little home, below the tall, silent house on the bluff.

The gardens of the big house were tangled and overgrown, a mad jungle of brilliantly colored insects and lurking shadows. Haunts and shades drifted about listlessly, attempting to do chores and tidy up the place, but their efforts made no changes to the decrepit, but still beautiful, vacant structure.

Over by the boundary stream, stood a towering sugar maple tree, splendid and regal, with her hive of jet black wasps buzzing all around in excitement.

“I guess you already know…” Becky sighed to her friend, Maple.

The relatively huge, pale golden stick insect tapped a complex dance with her many legs, while clinging to a branch at eye level with the smiling woman.

“Such news travels quickly, my dear… the congress of immortals is in a tizzy, I can assure you. A new dryad has not emerged in uncounted mortal generations…”

Maple squeaked and clicked with excitement, stridulating her legs too quickly in her eagerness to create her voice. She nearly fell from her own tree; the dryad equivalent of a human man slipping on a banana peel into a midden heap, or stepping on his own carelessly dropped rake and teeing off on his own ballsack.

She barely avoided the most embarrassing pratfall a dryad can experience, suffering only a humiliating wobble and stumble.

Once the immortal Maple grove had recovered her slightly battered dignity, she continued on.

“Your kind were freshly out of the trees, learning to make wine and mastering agriculture, when we last welcomed a new member into our forest; now we celebrate our new sister; in ways the multiverse has not seen in so long!”

She raised two of her forelimbs, holding them out expansively to embrace the dim, misty forms moving beyond her borders, in the fog.

When Becky looked back, Maple was in her mortal guise, a slim, small blonde girl of about twelve, in a cute summer dress sewn of fallen maple leaves in brilliant spring green at her collar, graduating into brilliant autumn colors at her waist, and finally, deep earthy brown at the swirling hem.

Her bright blue eyes, radiant smile of delight and short, flower strewn, golden pixie haircut gave few hints of the ancient and powerful being’s true nature. “Come along darling, but stay close to me; I will shield you from the energies running rampant in this place. Your uncle is still in the mortal world, and the pantheon is feeling… frisky.”

The immortal grasped her hand and pulled her across the bridge and into the strange realm where the immortals danced and played, hidden beyond the waking world.

#