The thin finger of the Tine led them up below a place west of Uxphon called Scorpion’s Rest.

Somewhere up north, the Baron who in some way started this whole mess had been marshaling troops for the Amber Pope’s war on Gaian heresy and aggression.

With the boat engine all silent and the bow bumpers knocking quietly against the hexagonal stones thrust up above them, a quiet settled over the group. In the pre-dawn morning, Ariadoca quietly finished packing, twirling her closed parasol. Finally, Frund began the transition. He told them how he had nothing waiting for him back in that miserable little seaside town of Harmuth. He told them he might as well come and do something useful. All of them understood the need to be useful after losing something. Someone.

He took a pale gleaming sphere with a dark button, pressed the button and tossed it toward the Floating Lady. The sphere became light, encompassing the ship. And then Frund was holding the sphere, and there was a little ship inside it – although not really his ship – as though it were a model set in clear synth.

---

The land was made of pale browns and reds. It was rumpled, and full of thin if lush plants, the occasional trumpet vine, and some succulents with little pale berries they decided not to investigate.

Eventually, they found the moated-off little island that Jack had suggested this Eenosh fellow might live on. Strange, syrupy music floated out to greet them off the island. Several huts, they saw as they approached on the road banked on one side by a small cliff, and on the other by the waters of some dirty river, clustered around a larger central hut. Many poles stood around the property with oddiments and some laundry dangling.

Abhumans rushed out to greet them with spears and some strange language that seemed to consist mainly of the word “bar” repeated over and over again. Without a head, their faces in their chests, they tended to hold their spears over their shoulders and be somewhat jaunty with them.

The group was escorted into the central hut where they met Eenosh the Nevajin. Imagine taking a spike-covered turtle, disassembling it, connecting it with wires and then making the limbs float somehow. That’s a Nevajin. Red eyes. Gargly voice. Great command of the Truth, some sort of technical specialist. Probably not good at parties.

It also turned out after some initial haggling, that Eenosh was being held prison by the chirosh as a kind of techno-slave. He fixed all their stupid gadgets, and acted as their DJ during the day.

He did know of an Impossible Blade, he told them, once possessed by the queen of the great kingdom that lay all around them. This most wondrous Queen Starloscet ruled a great empire and her 2 great lovers were legendary. After her death, the kingdom of Garamur fell into a terrible and protracted civil war that felled the City of the Spire and the Pit and eventually led to Garamur falling into ruin and ignominy. Eventually, the Queen’s tomb was moved into the Pit and strange legends ensued.

The bit of freeing Eenosh was quick and bloody. Roz would recover. The unnamed chirosh would not. The chirosh fled. Eenosh staggered away in a stately manner. Everyone was somber after Hasver’s display of power

After a short rest, they continued toward the modern-day spire city that Eenosh had told them lay to the west in the ruins of Garamur, whence they could surely locate The Pit. The remnant-place bore the present moniker, Barrow Town.