Sailing Ether Tides 

 

Ch: 12 Sharp Lessons

 

The chimes of second bell rang out over the harbor of Centre Port, as Becky Ward, high priestess of Marduk, the god of Knowledge stepped out of the main house.  Her smooth, dark skin seemed to shine in the bright sunshine, set off by the wildfire colors of her common bodice and skirts. A snug plait of jet black hair decorated with colorful beads of crystal, gems and simple glazed clay crowned her head, in not too subtle mockery of the diadems and circlets some nobles affected. Likewise, her garments were of impeccable quality and fit, but of common, if fine cloth; the final stroke was her Adventure guild badge, proudly on display. 

 

Her husband, sir Kermal Singh wore plain, brown leather armor, just as finely made and ornamented with his personal crest; a black and yellow death’s head hawkmoth, neatly embroidered into his baldric, which carried only a bronze studded truncheon of gray wood. 

His helmet of leather, bronze and brass concealed his face behind a smiling, colorfully painted and ornamented skull mask that somehow seemed cheeky and delighted, rather than sinister.

 

Becky tucked her arm through Kermal’s and gave a sharp, piercing whistle, directed at a fig tree, planted in the center of the garden. 

 

A scant few seconds later, a tall, muscular, dark haired man stepped out from beneath the bough, smiling happily. The man’s teeth seemed inordinately large, bright white and oddly sharp.

“I’m ready when you are…” Ward, the demigod of Death, Vengeance and golden fig trees said cheerily. “I think I should change first, though.” 

Dressed in closely fitted clothes of deep and unrelieved black, it was hard to determine any details of the cut, style and finish of his garments… Save that they were deeply strange, by local standards.

 

He stepped out of sight, under the tree and emerged again in a moment, in plain black leather armor much like the smaller man’s. His baldric also carried a sturdy cudgel of blackthorn and was decorated with an emblem. 

Two pale moons, stitched in silvery spider silk peeked out from among a tangle of flowering duskmoon vines on the wide leather strap… As well as an indistinct, humanoid form among the colorful vines. 

The placement and alignment of the images seemed off, somehow, drawing the eye and demanding closer inspection.

 

Kermal leaned closer to examine his friend and deity’s emblem and snorted a long, loud laugh a moment later. “Oh, you really suck, Ward!” He gasped as he wiped away the results of his sudden bout of uncontrolled giggles with a handkerchief.

 

Becky stepped closer with a much aggrieved sigh for her weird, semi divine, immortal uncle. She peered at the strap and its elaborate stitchery for a long, silent moment.

 

At first glance it was simply a complex bit of stitchcraft… a more prolonged look revealed Ward’s smiling face peering from behind the twining vines, and the moons resolved into the man’s bare buttocks, mooning the viewer ‘cheekily’. Once seen, the effect could not be unseen, no matter how hard the poor girl tried.

“Gods and spirits, you are a huge asshole, you know that?” She asked, through a fit of her own giggles. “Come on, let’s go kick a hornet’s nest.”

 

Dannyl joined the group at the pier, also dressed in simple leather, bearing the Ward family treble clef sigil on his baldric, picked out in black embroidery. He had a strange, rectangular wood and leather case slung on his hip, rather than an obvious weapon. 

The confident young man ferried his trio of passengers across to Westfall Island and the beastkin town in his skiff, among the many, many boats and canoes scurrying back and forth from the busy trading post and the slum.

With the pontoon bridge destroyed, trade had only slowed a little. The islanders were no strangers to small craft and had more than a few enterprising folks hustling for bits, providing transport across the slow moving channel for small change.

 

Dannyl waved as the party strolled off, headed for the city, taking the muddy and rutted path connecting the slum with the town proper. He moored the unnamed skiff and vanished among the crowds of beastfolk and humans swarming the little township. The small, slim man whistled a merry tune, as he walked out of the slum and into the bustling dock ward of the city.

He kept walking past the gate of the walled city proper and vanished into the jungle road leading to the wild lowlands beyond.

#

 

All through the slums, the two warriors and the small beautiful young woman smiled and waved at passers by, shopping in stalls and pausing now and again to sample the local street food. The slim, girlish young woman seemed to have an insatiable appetite, as they snacked their way to the city gates, one tasty morsel at a time.

“Curried gator kebabs are going on the menu, Kermie… you should try one!” She sang enthusiastically.

 

“I would rather not meet the local gentry with curried swamp lizard stuck between my teeth, darling.” He answered mildly. “You do you though.”

 

“I told you we should have brought Amy… she knows how to have fun.” Ward whispered more than loud enough for the young knight to hear. He was three kebabs in and eyeing a nearby noodle cart hungrily, while still licking sauce from his fingers.

 

“I sent the kids out of town for that very reason, ya big doofus.” Becky shot the tall, muscular man a glare that should have singed his nose hairs, were he a mere mortal man. Even so, he wilted a little, while sir Kermal smirked abominably at him, over his wife’s head. 

“To be clear, I want to ‘encourage’ these townies to straighten up. This will be an exercise in soft power, not an opportunity to unleash my little sister on them.”

The swagger in her walk and insouciant smile on her dark pink lips greeted everyone in workman’s clothes or beggars rags without hesitation, while gliding past the affluent with exaggerated disinterest. Her whole demeanor was a carefully crafted insult, calculated to infuriate and enrage the upper crusty side of town she was on her way to visit.

She wore her robes of office loosely, draped over her colorful clothing, drawing eyes from all around as she strolled through the slums and outskirts of the city.

 

As they neared the gates, Becky shrugged herself into her robes of office and raised her hood. In a brief few heartbeats, the smiling young woman became a frightening, fascinating harbinger of eldritch wisdom, touched by divine grace. Her dancing feet vanished into impenetrable shadow, as she seemed to glide forward, as though propelled by an unseen chariot. 

Flanked by her two guards, the small priestess glided along dressed in a dark gray hooded robe, embroidered and ornamented to evoke a deciduous forest, in the throes of early spring. Poppies, wolfsbane, monkshood and duskmoon flowers twined and entangled her hem, with maple leaves scattered across her shoulders, in the brilliant green of springtime.

Tendrils of dense shadowstuff crawled and reached from her hood occasionally, as the menacing trio marched and glided through the quiet streets of the walled city. Silence descended as they passed, as even children, pets and familiars paused to watch the uncanny people drift by, headed for uptown and the temple district.

 

The fresh morning air was perfumed with the springtime scents of citrus blossoms and new growing things. Daybats, batlizards and giant dragonflies patrolled the shady boughs that shaded every avenue and street, feasting on the vermin hiding there. They darted among the branches devouring the ever present pests that were the island’s bane. 

 

Strolling under the trees and flitting, flying predators, the people of Centre Port proper went about their days. Colorful awnings and brightly painted signpoles advertised a dizzying array of goods. Spices, exotic fruits and vegetables, trinkets, baubles and costume jewelry met their eyes wherever they looked, as the city bustled and traded all around. 

 

Off the main avenues, the streets and lanes were lined with neat, compact houses with tiny front gardens. Most sported a fruit tree or flowering bush and offered a pleasant place for the residents to take the evening breezes… Or to watch a strange trio march past their doorsteps, on their own mission in the temple district.

The main feature of the temple district was, of course, the temple. A single large stone cathedral stood in a central court, surrounded by acres of paved plaza. Trees and fountains provided comfort and places to rest or chat, as did a wide park, ringing the temple.

In the center of that idyllic scene the cathedral itself stood; four grand architectural wonders joined together to form one moderately ugly building. 

The north entrance was Healer’s, made of white marble and the local volcanic stone. It displayed the simple and tidy aesthetic her worshipers were known for, with a polished bronze sun disk above the elegant door of pale, varnished oak.

The west and south faces belonged to Order and War, respectively, Order’s temple of gray granite and dark wood panels contrasted fiercely with War’s brutalist slab of dark basalt. Healer’s temple seemed to almost hide behind Joy, who held the eastern side, opposite Order, as if they stood between her and War. 

The fourfold temple was a bit of an eyesore, but the shrines to Secret and the spirits scattered in the parklands drew the tall man’s attention. 

“Before we kick this hornet’s nest… I’d like to stroll this plaza, do you mind if we weird out a few more locals first?” The black armored man asked softly, in a singsong, lilting accent.

 

“Sure… We’ll do the whole ‘dutiful cleric’ number, then see how much trouble we can get into.” Becky chirped happily. “I haven’t been able to spend much time with you lately.”

Ward and Becky toured the shrines before approaching the main temple, visiting each in turn. They found a few surprises in their wandering; the shrines to Fire, Earth, Air, Water and Light were all neat and well maintained, as was Secret’s… 

Tucked away here and there, were a few new additions to the pantheon. Kermal spotted it first, a small altar under a tile roofed, stone shelter, just a few yards from Water’s fountain. Clever hands had felted and woven a splendid idol of Thirp, in her busty, four armed, four legged persona. She was crafted in woolcrab fibers and canvas, but the feelings of the crafter came through, even with such humble materials.

 

A minute or two later, Becky found a rose arbor, concealing a small idol dedicated to Eponna. An obelisk inscribed with the names of four dragons, representing the winds, stood nearby. The Greenman had an effigy sculpted into a mighty oak tree by the market gate, while Quetzalcoatl twined around a stone altar, carved in cunning bas relief into a small column of local obsidian, topped with a sundial.   

 

After a pleasant and distracting hour spent enjoying the shrines and chatting, they turned their gazes onto Order’s temple and nodded. “Time to get started?” Becky asked softly.

 

Kermal glanced at the large number of locals who were lingering in the temple park and very obviously not watching the strangers and gossiping furiously… certainly not. They were no doubt huddled together in tight clusters all around, whispering and surreptitiously glancing their way every few seconds for unrelated reasons. 

“I think we have enough of an audience. Shall we, High priestess?” He bowed low to the robed woman and arose with a hoop drum in his hands.

 

Ward knelt down on the turf near Secret’s shrine and began digging a hole in the ground with a bronze trowel, while Kermal’s drum and Becky’s harp struck up a tune.

“Really, Becky? ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper’?” He demanded with a smile. “Kermal has no idea, does he?”

 

“Kermal hasn’t a clue, save that his wife asked for a beat… You understand how it is.” The knight answered with a happy sigh. “Now, are you going to get started? Or is this going to be an ‘instrumental jam sesh’?”

 

Ward slipped a familiar guitar into view, drawing the instrument out of a pocket that could never have fit it. He strummed and ran his fingers up the neck, dancing over the monster tooth frets in a confident, driving sound. 

“You know what we need…?” He asked, as he made his mortal brother’s guitar roar and growl in the late morning sunshine.

 

“A god of death who isn’t a massive goof?” Becky suggested.

 

“No, I need more cowbell.” He sniffed at the cowled priestess in obvious and exaggerated offense; as a dark figure rose from his shadow, playing the aforementioned cowbell in a rock steady beat. “Now shut up and play, mortal girl!”

 

The crowd watched in confusion and annoyance, as the group made a noisy nuisance of themselves in the temple park. The robed girl and the black clad warrior quarreled and bickered constantly, trading insults between bars of raucous, powerful music and verses that made little sense.

 

All our times have come,

Here but now they're gone…

Seasons don't fear the reaper,

Nor do the wind, the sun or the rain…

 

They wrapped up and tucked their instruments away neatly, before the first knight of Order came trundling out of the temple to demand answers. Few of the witnesses could give a good description of the vagabond musicians, finding their memories hazy. Fewer still could clearly remember when a large, golden fig tree had come to dominate the north eastern corner of the outlying park.

#

 

The local giant ‘skeeters were deeply upsetting, even for veteran travelers. Somehow, Centre Port had developed a uniquely horrible version of the blood sucking vermin. They were nearly twice the size of their mainland cousins, but possessed soft, dusty wings like moths rendering them silent. Even worse, they were known for crawling under simple mosquito nettings, displaying a level of cunning that pleased no one. 

Canny travelers quickly came to understand the value of the more costly local mosquito curtains, with strands of weights stitched in the hems.

 

Frankie and Maya had mosquitos on their minds, since a number of particularly large examples had flittered out of the shady crevice, as Rio and Amy climbed down. They gave the young couple a wide berth, repelled by the vermin ward charms built into their armor and clothing, but the things were awful. 

Down in the lava tube, signs of web were more obvious, though the stench they had expected, failed to deliver. It was funky and stale down there, reeking of acrid substances best left unconsidered, while delving in a dark hole that almost certainly contained something venomous.

“Ivy, this is not a trapdoor spider, I repeat, not a trapdoor. We have plenty of webbing, but no stink.” Amy spoke clearly and softly into the silent cave, transmitting her voice to their comrades through her vocal gift.

 

While she spoke, the others ignited the glowstones built into their armor, illuminating the place. The fissure in the mountainside outside ran fifteen feet down, before it opened into a lava tube of sharp, volcanic stone. Flinders of obsidian and coarse, abrasive lava stone linde the bowels of the mountain, running off in either direction. 

The tube itself was irregular and chaotic, everything was uneven, pointy and rough, with no signs of sentient craft or work to smooth the natural rock. The space at the bottom of the fissure had filled in with silt and rubble to create a surface that was only uneven and treacherous.

Strands of shining silver spidersilk drifted and dangled, there were no webs or signs of a funnel of silk, just random strands of very thin silken threads, hardly thicker than a normal giant spider’s product..

 

“Wait for the rest of us, we’ll be down presently.” Ivy answered a moment later, through her comms device.

 

“Sorry auntie… we’ll wait, but they won’t.” Amy sounded calm, but Maya’s shrill scream of terror came echoing up from the rift at the same time.

 

With cool and calm deliberation, Amy raised her pistol crossbow and fired a slim steel dart at a pale gray form zipping through the air at them at an alarming speed. The transfixed creature splattered into a coarse outcropping of obsidian with a wet sound. 

“Frankie, get Maya under control please.” Amy ordered calmly, as she reloaded her pistol crossbow. “Watch our back line til the others arrive. Just like in training.” She drew a bead on a fast flying, winged spider and launched her dart with careless precision, even as she nailed another with her left hand weapon. 

Rio’s spear point was streaked with dark reddish blood and ichor and at least four of the creatures were twitching and thrashing at his feet. 

They weren’t especially large, perhaps the size of a small chicken; though an eyeless, chitinous, web spitting, ill tempered, bat chicken, with two pairs of bat wings, four grasping raptor legs and a stinger tail.

 

Amy holstered her crossbows and drew her saber, moving to intercept one that was swooping down from near the entrance fissure. The spider pulled all of its legs close to its body, tucked its tail so the stinger led the way and streaked down, in a flash of grayish white chitin. 

 

Frankie was standing over Maya, who was still struggling with her first monster mishap. “A trapdoor would be bad enough… Why flying spiders?” She gasped raggedly up at her boyfriend.

 

“I have you, love… it’s all going to be ok.” He answered confidently, with his eyes on the dark tunnel leading in the other direction

 

“Incoming, Frankie!” Both Amy’s warning and blade were a hair too slow, she sheared off one wing, but the beast slammed into the young Adventurer from behind. 

Five or six pounds of flying critter drove the sharp bone spike on its tail into him, between his breast and back plates, piercing Frankie in the side with its barbed stinger.

The young warrior swatted it flat with a wet crunching sound, but too late; he felt a burning numbness spreading from the wound like liquid fire, followed by creeping ice in his blood. 

“Right between the armor plates!” He yelped. “It got me good.”

 

“We’ve got flyers. Small and fast, they have venom. Frank got stung already…” Amy paused to slash another ghastly creature from the air with her flashing blade.

 

Frankie’s cry shook something in slim, slender Maya; something fierce and terrible. She scrambled to her feet, standing over the lad, as he slowly sank down to the cave floor looking weak and ill. With a sharp shard of volcanic rock in each hand and a pile of additional flinders and chunks all around, she began to hurl stones at the flying wretches. 

With starting accuracy, she picked off one critter after another, bashing them with fast flying chunks of the cave itself. Whether her sharp, jagged projectiles struck wings or bodies, the flyers’ began falling in greater numbers, even as more began swarming from the darkened lava tube.

 

At Maya and Becky’s feet, Frankie leaned back against the cavern wall and began digging in his kit for bottles and packets of herbs. He dropped one pinch of dark, flaky, dried and crumbled herb into a porcelain mortar and pestle, with a few drops from another bottle. A little of this, a few pinches of that… 

He began stirring and grinding his mixture, as the other Adventurers began dropping in from the fissure above, one or two at a time. 

 

Ivy landed with effortless grace, with a pair of bronze bound wooden cudgels in her hands. She took in the scene and lept into action within a second or two, swatting the creatures down as they spun and wheeled in the confines of the long, low, cavernous chamber.

 

Striking the beasts’ wings while they performed diving attacks  resulted in spectacular crash landings and bloody, cartwheeling wrecks. 

As will happen, they began competing against each other, each one seeking to clobber more of the things than their comrades. Maya dedicated herself to the task with particular zeal, continuing to pelt the flyers with jagged stones.

 

As the cadre of Adventurers grew, they sent small, winged monsters tumbling across the cave floor, while Frankie worked feverishly, mixing his muddy, reeking stuff.

“It’s nasty…” The young man gasped, when Benny landed beside him and began checking him over, while he kept working his mixture. “Scorpion venom… pain and paralysis. This should take the edge off and slow it.” 

 

He took a pinch of his thick, nasty goop and began rolling it in his palm, swiftly creating a half dozen small, irregularly shaped pellets of coarse, blackish green crud. He popped one in his mouth and swallowed with a wince. 

“It’s gross, but everybody needs to take one, just in case….” He murmured softly, while continuing to form more of the ugly little pills. 

“In an hour give me another one…” He gasped as the venom wracked him with pain and disorientation. “Never mind, I’ll probably be unconscious by then.” He grimaced and swallowed two more of the dreadful, stinky concoctions.

 

“Benny, carry Frank. We’re pulling out.” Ivy ordered calmly, as she shook what was left of a bat spider off her left hand club. “Amy, Wilf, Rio… You know what to do.”

 

“Scorched earth?” Amy asked sweetly. “The nuclear option?”

 

“We need to be able to confirm our work… nothing That might cause a cave in.” Ivy and the kids continued smushing the seemingly endless stream of flying vermin, as Benny and Frank began rising up the shaft. Benny half climbed and was half lifted by a rope harness binding the injured man to him; hauled up by Tallum’s terrifying might, up at the surface.

Ivy and Maya followed swiftly, climbing the lines dropped by the team when they made entry.

 

“All right boys…” Amy sang cheerfully when  the others were out of the cave. Wilf and Rio defended their sister, the two armored boys eschewed weapons, in favor of just grabbing or swatting them with their armored gauntlets. The venomed stings that managed to strike flesh raised little more than a drop of blood and a minor welt, as the venom failed utterly in the face of alien physiology.

 

Amy’s guitar began to wail, sending loud and harmonious agony into the swarm, in frequencies that confounded their echolocation… while the bat spiders were flying fast among a forest of razor sharp stones. Her voice roared out, slashing through the cavern with terrible violence.

 

You see me now, a veteran,

Of a thousand psychic wars.

I've been living on the edge so long,

Where the winds of limbo roar!

 

And I'm young enough to look at,

And far too old to see,

All the scars are on the inside…

 

“You're really into Blue Ӧyster Cult lately.” Rio mumbled as his drum joined Wilf’s flute, wreaking havoc on the flyers.

#