For this group, the Tithe River certainly has 2 mouths.
The first was invisible. The Hidden Mouth, as the villagers called it, had some kind of field-effect active-comouflage bullshit that seriously screwed even with Hasver and Takir. Not to mention, of course, Simon: vanished into the river in the dark, miracles and all.
They engaged the creature with fire, mud, blasts of focused mind power, the debilitating doom contained in the future and the past, and ultimately: a doom laser. Finally, the thing was consumed in hungry green flame that ate chitin, fat, organs, and even bone in its grisly green dance (note to Roz: beware the Doom Laser).
Suluku came to praise them. Rhotia came to help Hasver after he collapsed from his wounds and exertion. The man was showing his age, and during treatment they saw how the synth side of him was growing in to replace fleshy portions burned by the plasma fire from the Doom Laser.
They rested for the night. They perused the floating houses, arguing from their own strengths and understandings. They chose one, and fitted it out a bit for floating with extra lily-pad analogues, and poles for poling, and food, and a portable brazier, and their trepidation.
The might of the Tithe bore them across Navarene, and into the depths of the Steadfast.
They found evidence of a sky-based weapon used by (presumably) the Gaian’s to destroy (and leave lingering negative effects in) the large port on the Tithe, and later, the remnants of the floating trade caravan they may have been on. Whatever the weapon was, it turned people into shadows, and ate substance, and left a stain in metal and stone – but not glass.
The river turned up its volume. Cliffs rose around it. In the gathering darkness they were powerless to escape the boat without great danger to themelves.
A long, long night of spinning and poling away from cliffs wore them down into exhausted sleep.
In the morning, they woke to find the river a pale mirror of the gorgeous heavens, spreading out seemingly to infinity.
They had reached the Sea of Secrets.
By the gulls wheeling overhead to the south, and the vague smell of pulp and vinegar, they knew: they had found Harmuth, or something quite like it anyhow….
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So, in order to help get into the right headspace, I’ve been meaning to write short pieces to flesh out Roz a bit. Pol suggested posting one here, as an addendum. Copypasta below:
“I hate mornings,” the monk muttered under her breath, calloused hands firmly on the tiller of the rudimentary houseboat. The Temple frowned on personal luxuries and possessions and smiled upon a productive day of meditations and forms, so sleeping in was one of the few extravagances Roz could grasp. Still, waking early was an ingrained habit, after many years in the Temple. And so the first shift at the rudimentary tiller belonged to the monk.
It was not without its benefits. Truly, the mosquitoes didn’t wake up until after the sun, so Roz had perhaps the fewest bites among the troupe. Save Hasver, of course, being half-synth. That required investigation, she mused. While the other slept, it was easy to drift off into a half-blank state, hand on the rudder. The motions and eddies of the river were easier to see out of the corner of one’s eye, and so Roz came to spend the mornings half-draped over the crude steering structure, eyes blank, muttering repetitive prayers. The afternoons and evenings were spent much the same, save the time spent teaching Ariodica. While Roz never believed, as her master did, that poverty was a blessing, she had to admit that the austere beginnings and heavily-restricted and very strange occupation had left the maid-cum-adventurer a solid reserve of patience and attention. “Would that half my students had been so dedicated,” she often joked with their new companion.
Things seemed to go smoothly, something that Roz had not quite expected. She had been taught to wait patiently, that the extra eye she possessed would be her warning, but she never could quite give up that seed of anxiety in her belly.
The problem with that was that the warnings always hurt. And, on the third day, it was no different. The morning sun could not account for the burning of her skin, nor the redness suffusing the usual sun-baked color. Suddenly, she was suffocating, hot, surrounded by some toxic heat. The voluminous shrouds of fabric came flying off as she panicked, again. As usual. This strange toxic heat seemed to dim in the flush of shame that rose at the though of how ineffective she was during the fight with the river’s monster.
“Not now, not NOW,” she screamed to herself, in the echo chamber of her mind. A crisis required a cool head, she continued, splashing water over her flesh, surprised that it did not steam upon contact. Invading her thoughts was a panicky high-pitched click. Nausea roiled in her belly, threatening the simple breakfast she had gulped down. The boat was moored and Takir and Hasver went to go investigate the source of the poison.
It seemed they would never come back as Roz drowned in a incalescent stupor, soaking yards of cloth in the muddy river, trying not to cook alive. When the priests returned, they reported a destroyed town, with people burned into shadows. All the monk could think about, even with the clarity the Speck usually provided for, was setting sail once more. As they sailed down the river, the clicking slowed and subsided, and the heat lifted.
Even later, all Roz could remember was that feeling of dying. Her memory would always be fuzzy, never quite remembering why they decided to stop. Just panic, just the painful fear lodged in her throat, the screaming, though she didn’t remember screaming. The Speck remembered something though, somehow knowing what that village saw on its last day.
Oh very nice!!