Spear of Clouds Unfurled 5.13

I was standing on Guildport's bluff. Beneath me great ships with metal hulls ploughed through the waves, giant water-wheels turning and propelling them forward, powered by great crystal and metal cages within which lightning elementals crackled and surged. I turned slowly, frowning as I saw that instead of the wood and handful of partially stone buildings I knew, there were more solid ones, with intricate stonework and brightly coloured roofs in a totally different style. Beneath, down where the dungeon's large well-like entrance was, there was instead a huge circular fortress that dominated the town.

The people too, were different. Caith, all of them, and wearing tightly woven, perhaps machine produced cloth. There was a whirring sound, and in the blue sky above I saw a large airship with a balloon on top, side-masts with sails furled, and another of the crackling cages of crystal and iron containing a lightning elemental. It cut through the air, bleeding off speed and slowly manoeuvring to come in to dock at a large spire that jutted upwards to my left and where several similar vessels were hanging, suspended in the air.

"Hello?" I said in my limited Caith, addressing the closest person, a young woman dressed in a smart wrap-around skirt with a ribbon at her throat.

She ignored me.

"Sorry, hello?"

She walked towards me, and I yelped as her body connected with mine and she… walked through me?

There was no feeling, no sensation beyond my general unease at having been passed through like a ghost.

I frowned as I watched her go. There was something wrong- no, there were several things wrong here. How had I come to be here? Where was my Guildport? And… and why couldn't I sense anyone?

Everyone was blank, flat, cardboard cutouts without a hint of an emotional aura that I had come to expect. I hadn't realised just how used I had gotten to being an empath; without a sense of the minds and feelings of those around me, I felt almost blind.

It was almost like it wasn't real; almost like…

I rubbed the side of my head as the confusing fog faded. I had been in the dungeon. Yes, that was it. I'd been in the dungeon, we’d just fought the Shai-Hulud, the sandworm, and I'd been thinking about how much I wanted to have a bath when suddenly…

Ah. The dungeon; I remembered now. I'd felt it reach out towards me, as it had once before, making me feel like an ant staring up at a God, and then… then I'd woken up here.

It had clearly changed its approach from 'inducing a seizure' to… what was this? Some kind of dream? Vision? What was it trying to tell me?

"Hello?" I said, addressing the sky above me. "What are you trying to say? What are you trying to show?"

A crackle of thunder was my answer, and a sudden wind picked up as the sky darkened and grey storm clouds rolled in from every angle. Blinding lightning struck the tower above me, and a gale force wind pulled at my long sandy-coloured ponytail. I held up a hand, shielding my face as screams echoed in my ears and more blasts of blinding light smashed down around me, blowing the roofs off houses, killing people where they stood, and igniting fires that exploded upwards too fast to be natural.

Then something moved above me, and I looked up to see a massive figure in the clouds overhead. No, not in the clouds, of the clouds.

I tasted copper. My vision blurred—

"Chezza!? Chezza!?"

I groaned, or rather, I tried to groan. Instead, I spluttered as hot, warm, metallic blood went down my throat.

I rolled over, coughing and spitting the mouthful out onto the churned sand.

"I'm OK," I said, grimacing and wiping my mouth with the back of my gauntlet as Nathan rubbed my shoulder. "I'm OK."

"What happened?" said Velevir, who was also squatting next to me.

"Fucking dungeon," I said. "Tried to contact me again. Different this time. Like… like a dream. I was in Guildport, but… but it wasn't Guildport. It was the place, but… but I think it was long ago. There were lots of Caith there…"

Velevir raised an eyebrow. "Caith?" she said.

"And they had metal hulled ships, and… and skyships that ran on some kind of bound lightning elementals. And- and there was a huge circular building over the mouth of the dungeon."

Velevir looked at me sceptically. "The Caith built that?" she said. "The people who live in mu- in tents in the jungle?"

I shook my head. "There was… there was some kind of disaster," I said. "A horrible monster, made of clouds—like a living storm. It destroyed the town." I sat back and ran a hand through my hair. "I think- I think it was showing me the civilisation that once controlled it, the Caith—that was what it tried to do the first time too. How they were destroyed. It felt… it almost felt like a warning."

I took off my now mostly useless glasses and cleaned them with my cloak.

"Damn," I muttered. "I wish I could talk to the Caith about this. They might know more…"

Velevir looked extremely sceptical, but restrained herself from any further derisive comments.

"At least it waited until we were done with the boss," said Nathan, hauling me back to my feet. "Why don't you take it easy, Chezza? We'll handle harvesting this beastie."

I nodded and moved over to where the sand sloped slightly and sat down, staring ahead blankly as the others began pulling out the huge crystal teeth from the giant worm. As I sat I tried to figure out what the dungeon specifically was attempting to warn me about. Because if it was 'a giant cloud monster might appear and destroy everything,' there didn't feel like much I could do to stop that.

Had there been some cause? Some trigger it was trying to tell me to avoid? If so, what was it? Why couldn’t it communicate clearly?

My ruminations produced no answers, and my head was aching as we walked across the sands to where a small rocky vestibule had pushed itself up and out of the dust, and within which we found a spiral staircase leading downwards into the earth. We descended, Mousington, Velevir, and myself conjuring flickering warelights to guide our way.

Down and down we went, what felt like hundreds and hundreds of meters. Ten minutes passed, then twenty, the smooth walls and the identical stairs going round and round and round until when they finally ended and at a pair of stone doors I felt dizzy.

The portal opened with a blast of cold air, revealing a huge, sprawling underground cavern filled with cascading waterfalls, huge mushrooms that were shedding blue, bio-luminescent light, rocky crags, and plunging crevasses that looked like it would be an absolute nightmare to navigate.

Thankfully, that was a problem for future Charlie, since none of us were in the mood for doing more than moving over to the simple wood and iron chest that had appeared in front of us and receiving the spoils of four and a half days of toil.

Inside the chest, in addition to four yellow gemstones that fitted into our bracelets and sealed with a hiss of magic, allowing us to skip the desert, there was a veritable wealth of items for us: a new hammer for Velevir, perfectly sized; a lightning attuned focus-ring better than anything Sir Mousington had seen, and which he immediately put onto his paw; a full set of plate armour for Nathan in dark blue-black metal; and, for me, a book.

A book written in Caith.

How did I know it was for me? Because it had a picture of me on the cover, sitting in some kind of meditative pose. Books were something that I usually enjoyed receiving as a gift, but I'd be lying if I wasn't more than a little grumpy to have received one that I couldn't properly read while the others had all gotten cool upgrades for their gear. I could get it translated, but I doubted that Laera was going to pay for that.

Still, we were finally done, and after divvying up the bed of gold and gemstones in the chest we teleported back to the entrance, where the siren song of baths and cooked meals and beds awaited us.

Well, first I had to give my report to Laera, because apparently 'that was my job,' but then it would all be over. For a little bit, at least; I was sure that Velevir would have us back down there tomorrow. At least there wouldn't be any more desert or sandworms. Although, there'd doubtlessly be other horrors, probably fungal related if the giant mushrooms had been anything to go by.

Joy.

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