Skyclad - Epilogue: Winds that Whisper

Morgan Mackenzie savored the sensations of the valley winds against her skin. The trip back to her valley had taken almost two weeks, and would have taken longer without the Titan to help clear the path for the wagons and Dana’s mobile workshop. The downside to her father’s current form she now understood to be similar to her own reliance on food. He had to eat. A lot. Fortunately, Maxwell Mackenzie had been an extreme example of pragmatism even on Earth. He was not picky about the origin of his nutrition.

Trees made handy toothpicks for his massive maw, or at least the smaller ones did. It had been disturbing at first for the travellers with the Expedition to see. The vines that trailed down the Titan’s back writhed and roiled as the Titan lumbered along. Trunks that he uprooted and cast aside to clear the path caused hordes of smaller wildlife to flee, and his vines danced a remorseless rhythm. They speared outwards as if they had minds of their own, lancing into [Tyrannorabbits], [Murdersquirrels], and dozens of other species Morgan had not encountered in such a way as to learn a system name for them. 

The Titan had fed as he walked, Morgan riding on one shoulder. She’d stood with a hand on a massive spike of crystal for balance, reminiscent of the times she’d perched on her father as a laughing child. Times changed, in his own case a lot of time, so the nostalgia had been short lived. Their trek had not gone uncontested, either. Even with the massive form of the Wanderer leading the way, smaller creatures fled and larger creatures were drawn to his hulking form.

Such larger creatures similarly had found their way into that impossible ogrish maw with the same ease with which the Titan consumed everything else. Morgan now understood all too well why so many hordes of beasts fled from his wake to cause what the others had told her was known as a “migration year.”

Letting the Expedition into her valley had been a complicated ordeal of its own. The Titan’s prodigious caloric needs had faded upon crossing the threshold of her magical barriers once she had convinced him not to just walk through and wreck her enchantments. It seemed he simply needed energy, and the prodigious concentrations of Mana in her valley worked just as well as meat to sustain him. He had stood near the shore of the small lake looking at her spire for what seemed like hours, vines and roots digging down into the earth. She had to admit to some bit of nervousness; if her workings reached down too close to the ley lines she knew he would tear it down. So it was to her relief he had finally declared it good, with a bassey screeching from the crystals on his head before lumbering down the shore to wallow in the mud.

“Is he using a tree for a back-scratcher?” Dana had approached, still looking green around the gills from the excess mana in the atmosphere of Morgan’s valley. Almost a full day, and most of the Expedition still had not acclimated. Biggles had informed her that it would likely pass, especially as the work began on the airship.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Morgan asked. “Build them a flying ship, I mean…”

The metal-clad woman looked back down the valley, where several Dwarves were overseeing the construction of scaffolding from fresh hewn timber. “I’ve been thinking about it,” she said, unphased by the more serious turn of the conversation. “It changes a lot of things, but I realize that it was inevitable. There are more Worldwalkers than just you and me, and it was only a matter of time before we started to really shake things up.”

“Why does that make you so sad?”

“It means I can’t go back to Thun’Kadrass. You’re good with magic, the one they call The General is some kind of military officer, I’m sure of it. There’s no telling what the Twins or the Hammer or The Shadow can do, but sure as shit you can bet the Dreamer is gonna give stuff to the Deskren.”

Morgan thought in silence for several moments. “But you build things, weapons, and now a flying ship. Everyone will want you.” Another thought came unbidden. “And me, too.”

“They’ll want to control us, and if they can’t do that they’ll want to kill us. The ship is merely the beginning of an arms race. Magic and science, there’ll be no way to just skate by once things get rolling, Morgan.”

“Can you do it? Can you stay ahead of this arms race?”

Dana shook her head. “It’s not about staying ahead. That’s only possible in the short term. Once we fly across the mountains it’s game on. A few years, maybe a decade. Two decades would be some really long odds.”

“Not following you here,” said Morgan, shaking her hair back to make room for a wurbling Lulu who had just hopped back to her shoulder.

“We don’t have to stay ahead forever. After things trickle out, the Dwarves, the Gnomes, the human nations. They’ll pick up the tech and run with it, and that saying about quantity over quality will bear out.” The engineer spoke absentmindedly, sketching on a clipboard of all things while she rambled. “The trick is to stay alive and free until we’re less valuable to the different nations, and that’s gonna be hard. It means becoming powerful enough that nobody can challenge us head on, and doing that fast.”

“And the airship is the first step?”

“Ships, plural. I’ve done research, and you would think a magical world would have this kinda thing already.” Dana drew more lines on her parchment with broad swift strokes, filling out a design Morgan couldn’t quite make out. “This is just the first one, big and ugly and slow, but I can get us off the ground. That Witchwood is some great stuff for taking strengthening enchantment, and I think we can even use the leaves to weave the gas bags. Flight is one of those things, y’know? It’s like the wheel, or electricity, it’s one of the big game changers when you point to the timeline of history and see huge jumps in civilization and progress.”

“And war, too.”

“Yep, and war. Sad thing is, war and conflict drives the most progress, and the nations are going to war whether we help out or not. It’s not just the tech we give away that’s going to change things, either. Just by seeing a flying ship, others will work to copy it and learn how to do it. Same with anything. If not the Dwarves or the northern countries, the Deskren will for sure. We have to deal with them, even if it means arming everyone else.”

Morgan shuddered her agreement. “Those collars are sick. Disgusting!”

“So yeah,” Dana said, flipping her clipboard and parchment around. On it was a rough sketch of an ugly, boxy looking barge of a ship with several globes that resembled hot air balloons nestled in a row down the center like peas in a pod. “It’s big, nearly six hundred feet long to get all of us on board with the necessary supplies and food. It’ll be slow unless we catch a good tail wind, but I can get us out of the Wildlands, and then we need to find a way to not be stuck working in a shop for some king or queen while I work on better designs.”

“I can help you work out the enchantments, and my dad can drag as many trees as you need up here. But I think I’ll be leaving in a week or two, especially after this little chat…”

“What!? We just got here, and it’ll take a month just to lay the keel and frame out the structure!”

“Once the magic is worked out, you won’t need me, and there’s something I need to do,” answered the Sorceress, her words punctuated by the chill northern winds.

Dana simply stared, at a loss for words, before Morgan continued.

“It’s time for me to get some wings of my own.”

====================================================

Over a thousand miles away from one very naked sorceress and her newfound friends, a massive dark shape descended from the evening sky. A giant raven, talons outstretched, flapped its wings with lazy nonchalance as it dropped the last few feet to the flagstones of an ancient courtyard before the feathered shape dwindled, resolving into the form of an old woman leaning on a gnarled wooden cane. Smaller feathered forms flapped and screeched, fighting for space to perch upon the surrounding stone rooftops and the few sparse trees populating the bits of bare earthen gaps in the paving stones. Moghren chuckled, pacing forward with her stick for balance as she approached a stone table nearly thirty feet across.

Shadowy forms flitted back and forth above the courtyard, ravens smaller than her raptorial form, and some of them left feathers in their wake. Shards of midnight, drifting down to fall as light as nothing onto the table. “Yes, little ones, we know she’s coming back.”

A framework of bones and sinew lay upon the table, and Moghren pulled open a small satchel to add another slender piece to the puzzle. It had been an engaging task the summer past, collecting the proper materials. The fruits of her efforts were evident in the nearly complete shape of a pair of wings, similar in size to her own while she rode the winds in her other form.

“Learn and grow, we told her.” 

Gentle caws and mimicry from the ravens perched around the rooftops cast eery echoes of her words, but instead of being unsettled the old woman seemed almost comforted by the company of the creatures. From another pouch she produced a tiny bone needle, wickedly sharp, and threaded it with a strand of inky-black hair from her own head. She worked through the last light of the day, and then past as the two moons rose in the east casting dappled shadows across the table. One by one, more feathers joined those already stitched to the wings. She stepped back some hours later, looking at the nearly finished appendages.

“Something more, I think.”

With a blur and a wave of power, a giant raven stood where the woman had been. A few moments of cold regard through inhuman eyes, looking down at the construct of bone and feathers, and the oversized corvid shook its head before preening as if grooming itself. A few jerks of its head and a mighty disgruntled caw later, and several feathers fell, many times larger than any gifted by its smaller relatives. A heartbeat, and Moghren stood once again in the same place, stooping down to reverently retrieve the feathers from the ground.

“A gift, a price, and a bargain. Which do you think she shall choose?”

The croaking and caws of the ravens were her only answer, but Moghren thought that was well enough.

===============================================

Belka Torm eyed the clouds in the far distance to the northwest, weighing his options as the hired guards and workers readied the wagons and prepared to break camp after another night on the road. They had left Fort Expedition in haste, when word of the approaching Deskren had reached the city. Just over two weeks on the road, and he still slept nervously. He likely wouldn’t rest well until they crossed the border into Forvale and pulled his wagons in behind solid stone walls, but even that was doubtful.

The storm worried him. The cool winds of autumn were no trouble, but the approaching winter meant that pleasant breeze could turn biting cold at the drop of a hat with no warning. If it weren’t for the invading slavers, he would have turned his wagons off the road to wait out the storm. As it was, fear drove him to continue another few days at least, hoping to reach a settlement in the eastern reaches of Forvale for shelter.

Sudden shouting from the covered wagon where his wife still slept drew his attention. The morning was early yet, and it would have been another hour before they were ready to actually move. He had let her sleep, as dreams had been troubling his spouse since before they left Fort Expedition. Indeed, her own nascent talents at divination manifested through dreams, which had been the push that led him to abandon profits and flee the city in the first place.

“Get everyone off the road!” Laren Torm was panicked, suddenly screaming at everyone. “Belka! Get the wagons off the road! We have to get out of the way!”

“We’re just about ready to get moving, what are you on about now!?”

“Off. The. Road!” she screamed in his face. “They won’t stop for us! We’ll all be trampled!”

Belka Torm was many things, but a fool was not a label he ascribed to himself. His wife’s dreams had led him to many a profitable venture, but more often had helped him dodge disasters. He wasted no more time, joining his workers in leading horses and their wagons off the road into the grassy fields to one side. They had barely cleared the roadbed when the winds picked up, stormclouds suddenly darkening the skies. Thunder rumbled in the distance, strongly enough he could feel it through the soles of his boots more than anything his ears could hear.

“That’s not thunder,” said Laren, standing nervously beside him. “Or at least, it’s not just thunder, not normal. They’re coming.”

“Who?”

“Red eyes and one arm, thunder under the banner, the dream wasn’t any more clear than that except that we’d have been crushed if we stayed on the road.”

Belka didn’t argue with her. His wife did not have the true dreaming often, but when she did he knew better than to protest and risk tragedy. They didn’t have to wait long, the low scudding clouds drawing closer, shadows deepening in the hills to the northwest as the thunder he could feel under his feet grew loud enough for him to hear.

“No, not thunder. Drumbeats. And Hooves,” he said. The clouds flashed with lightning that danced but did not dart towards the ground, the deepest shadows on the road giving way to a swaying banner in the distance. And under the banner he could just make out a wagon, with a grizzled bearded man at the reigns of the mules pulling it. The grass in the fields swayed as the winds whipped into a frenzy, the ominous crashing of thunder matching time to the beat of the drum. The darkness deepened almost to night, the morning light surrendering to that terrible banner and the power of the soldiers marching under the storm.

As above where lightning danced in the clouds, so it also sparked and leapt to and fro from every hoof-strike as the horses struck the cobbles with iron-shod hooves and the soldiers on foot stepped in time to the beat with hobnail boots. Eyes forward, gaze locked on some distant goal they marched as if demanding the ground surrender to carry them forward. They marched, and the wind howled, yet it did not cause that banner to sway. A black lance on a dirty sheet, collars for tassels holding it flat against the winds. 

Lightning did crash then, a flash that banished the darkness to reveal a huge armored form on an even bigger horse, his lance couched and upright. The stallion upon which he sat stamped the ground with impatience, ignoring the massive wolf-men that flanked him.

“Your goods?” rasped a voice as dry and cold as the autumn winds that had preceded him.

“Stamina potions, healing tonics, and a wagonload of Mana crystals bound for Forvale from Fort Expedition. We got out ahead of the siege…” Belka’s voice trailed off as the apparition tugged a pouch from his belt, tossing it at his feet. The renowned symbol of the City of Prophets, an eye in a white circle, decorated the bag in embossed stitching, and rectangular chips of shiny metal fell out of the bag. “That’s… Mythril chits?”

“We’re buying your wagons.”

“But this is too much-” Belka tried to protest before Laren elbowed him in the ribs. He recovered after a harsh cough. “Wait, what do you mean the wagons?”

“Your goods, your wagons, all of it.”

“But we just left Fort Expedition barely two weeks ago!”

“And now you’re going back.” Thunder crashed again as the man spoke, the last soldiers in the column marching past. “Fall in, and keep up.”

===================================================

Everything was red. Red light, like fire, burning through her being. Even the scent in her nostrils felt red, inundated by the light, the red red light that consumed everything. Until even the red faded away to darkness.

She woke with a gasp, jerking upright from the cold stone upon which she lay. Tall gothic arches surrounded an atrium and in the center was what looked like…

“Is this an altar? Or a crypt?”

“Six of one, half a dozen of the other,” came a voice to her left, and she tried to spin but tripped and fell to the floor with clumsy jerks of unfamiliar limbs.

“Now, now, no need to panic,” said a second voice, and the woman pushed herself up from the floor with weary arms that only reluctantly obeyed. Her eyes met three pairs of feet, one in armored boots, one with comfortable looking sandals, and another pair bare on the floor. Three women stood before her, looking down as she sprawled in a white linen shift as she wallowed in confusion.

“Where-? What?”

The woman with the armored boots stood likewise armored in full to the left, and clucked her tongue. “She’s forgotten so much, Ruga. Are you sure we should be bothering with this instead of letting her pass back into the cycle?”

“Hush, Koma. You know she’s earned the chance to make this Choice,” said the center woman, her figure and bearing much softer than the harsh Koma with the hard eyes. She had been afraid of the armored Koma instantly, but this Ruga was a kinder presence. The third had yet to speak but was simply confusing, clothes flashing from one outfit to the next every few heartbeats. 

“What choice do you mean,” she choked out. Her lungs did not seem to want to obey, and she couldn’t even remember her name. That made not knowing what was happening even worse.

“So sad,” said the third woman with the shifting clothes. “She always wanted to enter the Temple, and now that she’s finally here she doesn’t even remember.”

Temple? The thought was familiar, and mournful.

“Don’t taunt her Ingra,” said the middle woman before turning back to kneel before her. A small basin of water appeared in one of Ruga’s hands, along with a washcloth which she handed over with a comforting smile. “She’s sacrificed enough.”

“Sacrifice? What did I do? Who am- Who are-” she sputtered uselessly, confusion rising once again.

“Shhhh,” said Ruga, helping her wash her face. “Yours was a long and twisting story, first a human, who sinned her way into the service of the hells. But you made up for it.”

Koma snorted with amusement. “I’ll say, you don’t see a demon sacrifice herself. Ever.”

“So that brings us to here. You did an impossible thing,” said Ruga gently. “And the reward for a job well done has ever been more work to do.”

“If you’ll take the job,” said the last woman, her clothes shifting from blouse and breeches to a scandalously sheer silk gown that covered little and hid less. “You’ve earned the Choice, to pass on and forget and start again.”

“Or you can stick around, with a new job, maybe help some more people,” said the woman in armor.

“Maybe help lots of people,” said Ruga, helping her to her feet.

“How can I help people? I don’t know who I am!”

“You’ll get those memories back if you choose to take the job. You won’t need them if you choose to pass on,” replied Ruga.

“That’s not-”

“No, it’s not fair. Nothing in life or death ever is. But that is the choice. You can choose to do some good, or you can choose to pass on. You’ve already died, girl.” Ruga pulled her in suddenly, a gentle hug that soothed her mind, small comforts against the confusion. “Most only do it once, but you’ve died twice.” Ruga stepped back, holding her at arm’s length while looking in her eyes. “If you could remember, it would sway your choice. You have to decide from down here in the dream, the person you are, not the person you were.”

“Everything was red…”

“We can’t tell you any more than we have,” said Koma gently. “But if you choose to stay, I can tell you for certain it is worth it, if you want to help people. Not easy, but worthy.”

“You’ll have to travel a long way, from this island temple all the way to the middle of the mainland.” Ingra’s clothes still shifted, now luxurious robes of purple with oversized golden loops hanging from her ears.

“How will I get there?”

“I think she’s choosing to stay, if she’s worried about that,” laughed Koma. Ruga grinned as well.

“I’ll tell you if that’s your choice,” Ruga told her with a smile.

“I think I’d like to help people, if I can,” she nodded at the women, strength slowly returning to her limbs.

“In that case, I can tell you, you’ll get to the mainland with these,” whispered Ruga, this time stepping close and reaching behind her. She could feel a strange sensation in her back as the other woman’s arm pulled something out to the side, holding a wing draped in feathers of brilliant white.

“You’ve got a job to do on the mainland, Zizael, Herald of Redemption.”