WWW #46: Their Sorrow is My Sorrow

This is the sound of Worlds Beyond Number.

In a smuggler's cave, less than a mile north of the city of Twelve Brooks,

under

a dim orange sky of roiling clouds

on an ash and debris choked dying river

we find Ursulan, Suvi, and Ahme reunited

as

Yorin and his shapeshifters enter the cave.

Suvi!

Oh, oh, okay.

Good energy.

Yeah, Suvi's going to immediately like, embrace Ahme as she's hugged.

Well, I do want to know why Keen's dead, but first, I would love to introduce you to my old family friend, Yorin.

Yorin.

Yeah.

Ahi steps back from the hug and looks over at Yorin.

Greetings.

I'm Yorin.

These are some of my shapeshifters.

So how did you meet each other?

And

are all the shapeshifters here?

Are you here to help us?

And I assume that he didn't, uh, you know, it wasn't responsible for.

Um,

how do you do that?

Hmm?

Do what?

What are you referring to?

Uh, the shape-shifting

magic?

Do you want you wanted something more in-depth than me saying magic?

Um, well, I suppose you don't have time for all of that, because I did ask a lot of other questions.

Yeah, my best friends.

Oh, yes, I'm Ami, uh, the Witch of the World's Heart.

Uh, well,

the kid is uh

delivered here to your

fellowship once more.

And

it's my understanding that

you see here, he nods to you, Ursula.

You've come here in search of the children of the Grinnell.

That's correct.

You have reason to believe they're in Twelve Brooks.

I know they are.

Then.

we're here to help.

That is.

good news.

What is this place, this this cave?

It's Smuggler's old den.

We have a map of the different sewers and irrigation ditches and

hidden caves from the run runners back in the day.

Apparently, Grandma Ren fucked a run runner.

Good for her.

I don't know why I hated you for so long.

You're a hoot.

Sufi, how are you alive?

Oh, that's fun.

So, arrested,

we were on the road back to Bracken.

And then all of a sudden, all of the horses turned and jumped jumped into the river, turned into animals, and tried to kill everyone.

Oh, yeah, and I'm just going to turn to the shapeshifters.

Whichever one of you I rode, I'm sorry.

You see that there's a guy in the back who goes, that's fine.

Okay, cool.

I felt weird about that for like a day, so thank you.

I'm sorry.

Killed all the wizards, tried to kill me, couldn't.

I see you're in shrugs.

Well, the kid's cheating, so that's why.

I'm very glad that I was compelled by my solemn vow to your parents.

It would have been a shame for you to die in the dark water there, but

survive she did, and it's my understanding that

Skye has agreed to come with you and

see these children freed.

You have maps leading into Twelve Brooks, yes?

Yes.

Well, I think more than anything, Suvi here needs to rest.

She's been up all night prior to swimming down the river.

We won't be able to get any further down the river than this.

It Peter's out a while away.

It was already getting shallow.

Have you managed to take a look up top and see what's going on in the landscape?

No, I was going to do that before we rested.

Oh, alright.

Well, kid needs rest.

We'll be all right.

We can go and take a survey of the land if need be and then come back and rest, but you know.

is there any chance we can get the fox to take a little peek uh yeah he needs some rest too as well

he was very very brave today

or yesterday it's hard to tell here

you know what honestly same i was in an underwater cave and then underwater underwater cave and what do you mean you were underwater did you did you are you can you breathe like ursalon or oh yeah

uh i was giving gills but then no but no other part of of being able to be good underwater, and my skin feels terrible.

I would love to lay down.

Okay.

When you've rested,

we were able to take some of Keen's things

and would appreciate your

knowledge on them.

And Vandal is.

He's

going to be okay, but

he was also very brave.

Is very brave your code for almost dead?

Uh, I hand her the spellbook.

The fuck happened to the spine?

Oh, uh, I

was

helping a brave little warrior.

I just opened the book to

where the binding is cracked and would fall open.

You see a slender rivulet of red ink at the broken base of the spine.

Are you okay?

An arcane torpor comes back to you, a feeling of a kind of roiling,

deep

slumber of

deconstituting in order to reconstitute.

Then I will take out my pen

and just write in next to where I see that little rivulet.

You're a real piece of shit.

Thank you for taking care of them.

Close the book.

I'm sorry, Suvi.

I'm sorry for a lot of other things, too.

But yeah, we all could use a rest right now.

I would rest easier if I got a chance to take in the landscape before morning.

Uh, do you want me to go with you?

No, I can go alone.

Just going to look and come back.

Okay.

Yorin looks at you and nods and says,

for those of you

here, it seems like you have secret ways into

the city.

The landscape's been pretty chewed up, so I don't...

This map is faithful to a version of the city before this war broke out.

So I would just be aware that there may be some hiccups or surprises.

We're close enough that I may need to consider

making myself known to the sorceress houses sieging the city.

Remember, I'm behind my own lines right now.

I

don't remember, because I really don't know much about you, sir.

Well,

it's my understanding that you killed.

You see, not to yourself, that you did battle with some shapeshifters in Abison.

Those were companions of mine.

We've been busy here in the Shroud Mountains, fighting the Empire.

Whatever revelations you came to since Abison, wish they had been a few days days earlier.

But

such

is life,

I suppose.

Is there anything you wish to know?

Which of the world's heart?

Well, in my capacity as Ame of Toma,

I want to know about your time with Grandmother Wren, and I want to know about where you've been, and I want to know why your blood smells bad, I guess.

I've got that one covered.

Oh,

why don't we circle up?

You go do what you need to do.

Whatever questions I don't have coverage for, you can absolutely assault him with when he has sort of no bandwidth and desperately needs to sleep.

Okay.

Prime time.

He turns to depart.

He looks at his shape changers and says, You should all remain here, provide protection for the Wizard Sky and

Ame.

And he's gonna walk up the bank with you, Ursula.

Great.

And I think you and Suvi have a chance to interact in this moment.

I'm very happy that

you were able to make your way from Keene.

Suvi, I'm so sorry.

You told me specifically,

don't do it.

And I did it.

I feel a pressure all the time to be good and to do the thing that's right.

And I think I tried to do the thing that was right for the spirit and for the town, but I didn't do the thing that was smart or clever.

I promise that I will try

to be more careful

with my actions

and also with my words.

I'm really sorry.

I think a lot of times I've been

scared to tell you something.

Me, yeah, I'm so approachable.

And at that, like, you see that as you were speaking, Suvi is immediately exhaling.

She was spinning up to have a hard conversation that she didn't want to have, yeah, and instead is just going to actually grab you by the shoulder and like pull you into her.

And she gives you a kiss on the top of the head.

Thank you.

It's been a

very

tough day, but I can't even imagine how are you

Do you need anything from me now?

Oh, in this moment

Thank you.

I

I'm sorry for the ways in which I have made it

so difficult to have difficult conversations.

I will do better to remain open

to things

that I don't feel

ready to hear because the course I am set on

requires a single-minded focus from me.

I'll be more open

like you and like Ursulan.

And I'm sorry if I've made you feel like you have to pick your words so carefully that you'd rather not say anything at all.

No, it wasn't.

it wasn't just you.

I think I was scared of

saying something that would hurt you or make you go away again.

I don't ever want us to be apart again.

Well, sometimes we get arrested, so.

Yeah, and sometimes we fall into traps or trying to help a spirit.

But we always find our way back.

I'll always find my way back to you, Suvi.

You'll never be rid of me.

That's what true friend means.

Can't do it.

Impossible.

Uh.

I don't need anything.

Except desperately to sleep.

And if you see me pick up my spellbook,

just

don't.

Don't let me do that.

I need to rest so badly.

I can smell colors.

Okay, then I'll wait to

give you the thing that

we also found on Keen.

Fucking thing?

No, show me the thing.

Ah!

Why would you say that?

No, no, no.

Why would you title that?

There's a single time now.

From Keen?

You stole stuff from.

What is it?

Just show me.

Just show me, and then I'll know.

And then I'll go.

Okay, you just get one look at it but you're not allowed to do any magic about it okay okay deal i'm lying

well i in any event i pull out the glass disc from my pouch and carefully unwrap it

hold it out

this is fragile lingua arcana hold on uh and i try to like find enough light with like the candle that's lit i don't know if we've gotten around to building a fire Yeah,

go ahead and give me an Arcana check.

Dirty 20.

Yeah!

This is

the language of a very powerful teleport spell.

Oh, may I love you so much?

Oh, I love you too.

Stuff is my love language.

This is great.

May I hold on to this?

It's a teleporter.

I don't know what it's going to do yet, and I know I would have to do more magic about it, but I did say I wasn't gonna do that yet.

Yeah, well, I'll figure it out.

And this feels very good and useful.

Oh, fuck you.

Yes.

How did he die?

He was the worst.

I don't even know if you heard it because I can't tell like when you were unconscious or if you were just sort of like so angry you weren't really moving, but he was disgusting.

He was a real sicko, Suvi, and he died horribly.

And I don't regret any part of that.

I love you so much.

So much.

Good.

Good.

Okay, sleep.

You have to sleep.

Yeah.

Oh, and just for the record, all of them are very amazing, especially that one guy that I rode, Delightful Horse.

You.

Oh, yes.

No, not like that.

We have got to.

I'm not getting any sleep tonight.

And Esther's like making your beds.

She's like doing the thing where she's like telling half-weird anecdotes about like stuff that she's noticed from the shape changers.

and also just being like, oh, yeah, also talked to Yorin,

and

he's not responsible for my parents' death, and like, Steele's been lying about basically everything.

Stuff that you all said before, so, like, of course, just

such an

a meandering, wild, eclectic conversation of important pieces of the story and feelings about what I experienced and what Suvi's

revelations were like,

also with,

you know, speculations about how do they, but how do they, like, do you think they're shape-shifting when they know for sure?

They have to be right.

So, like, you've got to, you've got to, you've got to fuck as an animal, but then, like, as a person.

God, we got to get one.

Yeah.

Hold on.

Lohana.

Lohana turns around to gaze over at you.

Okay.

Are we in a place now where you feel comfortable with a less serious conversation

potentially

i don't can i do an insight check on her does she like me yet

sixteen sixteen yeah

hard to say

i think that i think on a 16

you can't tell if it's a cultural

if it's like is she being playful maybe in her culture dead impassive glares are playful.

You know,

I think there's a degree of

unfamiliarity that obscures her intention in this moment as she looks at you.

Great.

But yeah, I don't think you.

It's not going to stop me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, go for it.

Okay.

Nah, we're great.

So, do you fuck as animals when you shapeshift?

Would you?

Yes.

She smiles and goes,

for the most part,

anything that you would want to do, you'd want to do from a human perspective.

And the gear tends to make that better.

Oh,

that's great.

Yeah.

Nice.

You try it.

You try it a couple times and then you go, oh, there's a reason that...

Yeah,

okay.

Thank you so much.

That question comes up, it's almost always the first question to come up before we have the ceremony where we take on our first shape.

Because that usually happens when you're around 13.

And so that's oh my god.

So it's the first ceremony and you can choose to do that.

There's a it's a you know when when you're a really little kid, you go, Am I gonna be able to fly?

Am I gonna be able to swim?

Yeah.

How do you keep from crashing?

How do you keep from da-da-da-da?

And then right before the ceremony, there's usually a much more hushed, embarrassed conversation.

That's really funny.

My dad told me that if I did anything in that shape, that you get stuck in it.

I can't believe that that's true.

That just sounds like

something you say to your kid.

He said it as a joke.

He said it because he was messing with me, but yeah.

That's fun.

Well, I'm gonna keep guard.

What?

Okay, well, there's other

outside on the riverbank.

Gray ash

chokes the riverbanks.

Ursulanis, you ascend to the top with urine

and look out over a landscape.

Over the western edge of

Twelve Brooks,

an

oil slick

painted on the underside of the clouds is burning.

Much like the flame on the underside of a log, it is not tall and dramatic because it's not stretching up into the clouds.

In that way, where you look at the bottom of a log and there's a ripple, a small ripple of flame, you see rippling flame on the underside of a two-mile stretch of clouds seeking to go up and it cannot.

Underneath that orange light, you see

shapes of giants that have to be 100 feet tall.

Dark,

many-legged monstrosities is the only way to describe them.

That

shift from side to side ever so slightly, but due to their enormity, these shifts move them a score of feet in any direction at a shifting of their weight in wind that carries gray ash across a destroyed landscape.

Within your field of vision, in the miles and all directions that you can see, there's probably two dozen skeletal remains of Imperial skyships.

You see massive carcasses of these

things that are the size of craft, but you see the carrion birds crawling over

these

many-legged

flesh behemoths, eyeless and featureless, but with some sort of skeletal structure.

These walking flesh vehicles are rotting on the ground, covered in ash, being picked apart by birds under the dim light cast over the landscape from a burning sky.

In the city of Twelve Brooks, you can pinpoint a number of gem-like gleams of purple and green light and a shimmering diamond blue cascade

of

prism light only reflected at strange angles.

Sort of like if you took a

16 faceted sided diamond and removed all of the flat planes to just keep the angles and then transpose them into a gem-like light.

And even then it's not constant.

It flickers and pulses so you kind of get the outline of a diamond shape being projected over the city of 12 Brooks from

an old castle.

12 Brooks as a city

used to be this beautiful waterfall mid-sized city in this region where the waterfall hit the edge of an old castle from hundreds of years ago.

During Sir Curran's time, there was a lord's castle here, and the castle oversaw the expansion of a big

city that are a medium-sized city that was sort of a place for musicians to come and celebrate.

The brooks of Twelve Brooks are these irrigated, falling brooks.

There are frog statues all throughout the town, frog gargoyles.

You're too far away to see any of this.

You just sort of see the image of the castle that projects that prism of light down towards a massive crater that you recognize as a cracked and waterless lake.

There is sort of a graveyard of boats piled up from where the water vanished as they crashed into each other at the mouth of 12th Brooks where the water meets the lake.

You see some constructs at a tension under that perimeter within 12th Brooks.

12th Brooks is not a walled city, but you see that there are large barricades.

Many places in the outer city of 12th Brooks have been completely demolished.

But still, that rubble has been quickly used by the Imperial forces there to barricade roads.

And 12th Brooks has all these waterways that you can see are covered by bridges.

The very thing that's going to save 12 Brooks is also the very thing that is now putting it in jeopardy.

The depletion of the riverways that's going to allow Imperial forces to get here to break the siege also means that the brooks that were partially making the city more defensible, now the empire has barricades but ways around them through the dry brook channels.

Outside the city

there are

multi-horned rhinoceros slightly larger than elephants that in addition to the horns on their noses also have them curling up from from their brow as well.

Huge jeweled palanquins on their back.

Endless tents of sorceress soldiers, bright orange, blue, and yellow.

All of these rich colors of the houses of Gauthmai completely covered in gray ash.

You see the flags of three different houses.

You see the symbol of Bahathi here and two other sorceress symbols.

In the far distance, you see

with decreased invisibility because as the ash blows at a far distance, it becomes almost like a sandstorm where you can't see the horizon here, but you can see the smudge of those massive fleshcraft like moving and patrolling the supply lines farther to the west.

And you see several points of light, one of them, a like lone sorcerer hanging in the sky eight miles away, so radiant that you can see them through the ash storm.

Yorin stands at your side, surveying the ruin around the crumbling remains of Twelve Brooks.

Behold the fruits of empire.

If they keep getting their way,

eventually,

it will all be this.

This is not the dream

of

the Arch Magi of the Citadel, nor of the great

lords and ladies of the Conterranaut.

But

given that they don't want the other to have their dream,

they're happy to settle for this.

I think Ursulan has stopped breathing

and feels every individual hair on his body

stand up.

What are those?

And Ursulan is going to point to the multi-legged

living craft.

It does help to know that they have a name.

When you see them and you don't know what they're called

And they're coming for your village

You'd almost hope that you'd dive of something else before they get to you

Those are dreadnoughts of the House Kashif.

That's what they're called

That's what they are

and as you see from their carcasses out here in the wasteland

They can be brought low.

Don't freeze.

And he claps you hard on the back and says, and remember to breathe.

You...

You said you knew sorcerers here.

Yeah.

Rounza, the house of light, and Kashyif are the fleshcrafters.

You swam here, right?

I did.

Did you see the giant at the bottom?

Of the...

Yes, with the lance.

The arcade.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

So that was a harpoon gun from an Imperial sky and that was a Shahoran, which are...

That giant was a human.

That was a...

What?

The sorcerers of House Kashif work the magic of flesh.

And they...

Ursulon,

at the phrase work

the magic of flesh,

I think there's a chill that goes through Ursulan

that feels of the spirit.

Jorin feels it palpitate in this moment.

I've referred to

what I practice as a gift.

And I think there is something

I think there is something good about receiving a gift yourself

rather than inheriting it.

The spirits that gave their gifts to the great sorcerers of old,

some did not know where that gift would end up.

The sorcerers of House Kashyf are

And you see that Yorin sort of lists to one side and gets a faraway look in his eye.

He says

I want them

dead.

I want them all dead.

I want

the cousins and the distant relatives.

I want the ones that don't know what the house is doing dead.

I want everyone who's ever looked up at their banner with pride.

Just because it flew over the grain house where they brought their barley, I want them dead.

House Kashyif,

long ago, was the first of the great houses to pass a law calling for the capture and death of shapeshifters.

So

in Gauthmai,

shape-changers are

forced to fight.

Have always been.

Ursulan feels that

energy

so white,

so

stable,

ripple, and

the frequency gets higher

as he feels himself get angry

for the first time in days.

That is not right,

not right.

You see that Yorin nods,

and as he lowers his head head in defeat, he swells in size so he goes from a man standing tall to a massive garing crouched down with his head hanging low.

I

hate them

with every fiber of my being.

And I am here

fighting alongside them.

That is how great the danger is.

Is this your true form?

Or is

the other?

How you see yourself?

When

you go to the spirit world

to ask for your first form,

you don't get it

until you are at peace

with the fact that all forms are your true form

he reaches out a massive clawed hand knotted with thick green hide

huge claws that you can see are veined with iron and could tear through the wooden hull of a sky ship you can tell at the full extension of his arm span it's probably like 25 feet wide

And he wraps a whole hand around you and lets it lightly on your back, this massive claw.

And he just goes...

If I am you and you are me,

because we are of the breath of this world together,

how distant can I be from one form to the other?

The thing in me that lives forever honors that in you which lives forever.

You're

here

in the wholeness of what you are.

The only difference between you and me

is that when I go, I'm gonna leave a mess.

But I believe deep down that we are one.

I agree.

My old man

asked me one time

because he thought I was losing the way.

That my hatred for them

meant I was losing sight of the impermanence of this world.

because if this world is a dream as I believe that it is

why should I be so filled with hatred

and I didn't understand his question it made so little sense to me

because

if the point of this world

is to dream something into being

why the fuck would you dream of hurting people

And yet here I am,

having devoted my life to hurting people.

I guess

they picked the game

and it's just our lot to try and win it.

But that is not what you do.

From what

I have learnt

of Suvi's parents

and their

their goals

was that the game would not exist at all.

I don't know a way to end it without playing it.

And I've been doing this a long time.

Have you seen what you needed to see up here?

I'm going to open up my divine sense

and see if I can't

notice

a certain firefly

behind you down by the water you see a minute glow

I've seen everything I need to see up here

I'm going to go down to the water

Make sure that we got everything out of our craft.

He turns to you and says,

I'm very honored

and grateful

that you're fighting for our world.

He turns and lopes off into the ash, headed towards the sorceress encampment.

Ursulan stands a moment

watching him go,

looking to the fire in the clouds,

the strange living crafts,

and the diamond shaped

piece of arcane above the city

and then descends

you head down towards the water

and see the firefly take to the wing

and sort of lazily fly out over the water

you hear

a noise from upriver

tap

tap

tap

Keeps in time

to the watch

for a moment

it sounds like boots walking on a road

Until you see in the distance a small light

There is a ferry moving downstream.

A wide, broad water craft.

And at the front of it, a ferryman with a long pole.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

Behind the ferryman's head,

there is a globe

of glass with a small opening.

In the basin

a slick of sugar water and the firefly moves towards the globe to join its brethren.

Fireflies illuminate casting the man's face in shadow as he approaches on his ferry

The man

pulls up the pole, leans it across his back

as the ferry slows but still inching forward,

imperceptibly slow

as the figure in black regards you from the ferry.

Brother Ursulan,

to think that I would find you here.

You see, he reaches to a post of the craft and takes a wide-brimmed hat and puts it on his head.

Smiles.

You saw my boat in the cavern.

That's Lucio's ferry.

Lucio's ferry?

I'm called that here.

To some, the rivers are roads, Brother Ursulan.

You have been on my mind.

Supposedly, in this part of the world, you are part of a trio.

Those worshipped and looked to.

The Grinau.

Yes.

They have given me their songs.

This is true.

When we last were together, you spoke of purpose.

I did.

What is your purpose, Brother Ursula?

While we were at the edge of Hallaker Forest,

we met a family

that begged us not to take their children

because they had come to understand

that children were being taken.

And I have never known a feeling like the one I felt in that place.

That there was nowhere else in the world that I was meant to be

that wasn't breaking the shackles

and undoing the bonds of those children.

It's all I've thought about.

Their sorrow has become mine,

and I can think of nothing else.

Any other feeling

has been a moment,

something passing,

before I again imagine them in cages held against their will.

The wind blows.

Ursulan,

give me a perception check.

Natural 20.

As you speak,

the wind

finds its voice

and for a moment conspires.

As if on the edge of darkness in the face of horror, a distant dawn cries out to be unleashed.

That a new sun would rise.

That the better world is on its way.

Hands and hammers, wide wings open and unfurling,

clean water and bright skies,

breaking of chains, the unfastening of bonds.

You on a NAT 20 perception

feel

the weight

of responsibility and purpose.

That weight

is for the first time

not pushing down on you.

It is pushing up like the great force of wind filling wings.

The heft of responsibility is not a burden.

It is that which allows one to soar.

On a nat 20 perception

For a moment, you catch an edge of the man in black's face

and just a crescent of the edge of his eye, which is the most you have ever seen.

And see it wide in recognition,

not of the enormity of what you are, but the enormity of what you could choose to be.

On a nap 20 perception,

You may ask me any questions you wish about the man in black, yourself, and this moment in space and time.

First, of the man in black.

I have seen him in many forms.

Are any of them his true form?

And if they are not,

does a true form exist in this world somewhere?

Echoes of Yorin's statement come back to you.

You cannot change your shape until you realize they are all your true form.

The nature of spirit that reveals itself to you in this moment, as certainly as

the hardness of stone, the movement of wind,

is that the forms forms of the man in black are facets of a diamond, the trees of a forest.

They are faces of a truth.

No

less true in each and every instance for representing but not being the whole.

The man in black's true form does not lie

in this world,

but rather in the spirit.

And it may be that his true form,

much like the center of a diamond, can only ever be seen through its facets.

That you will never see his true form, but maybe

one day you will understand it.

Of this present moment in time,

with regard to

the path it lays before Ursulon,

will you tell me

who is the most powerful entity that physically stands between here and Ursulan freeing the children of the Grinau?

At the edge of the spirit, all wind and air, all root and stem, the whisper of branches, the chirping of crickets, the song of birds, far distant from this ashen wasteland, reaches you beyond the ruin in this place, connected as you are in any depth of horror and despair, still in your spirit to all things.

A force moves to interpose itself between you and these children.

The forces that now exist between you and it are overcommable.

And the one that comes is not.

Your greatest opponent is time.

And of myself.

Once upon a time, a cub in a forest found a mushroom.

And everything that has followed since then has been your story.

Of quests and honor, of shame and failure, of wizards and witches, the world of Umora has unfolded itself to you.

And you have always been Ursulon.

Even when you have been Bear, the strongest man in Silbrey,

you wear more than one form.

And you wonder if you

have seen every facet of your own.

Beholding the man in black who has held his breath since the dawn of time and who calls you his brother,

you feel the vastness of breath

that avails itself to you.

But wings only soar when they are spread wide.

Great quests come with great burden,

even if that burden lifts us up rather than pushes us down.

And I think you feel yourself standing in the threshold of a doorway

with great power

calling itself to your need.

The heartbreak in the tragedy, Ursulan, is that the ability to do what you want requires you to name what you want,

requires you to choose who to be.

When you dedicate yourself to something, you dream of a world and stand any chance at all of making it possible.

But it means something to choose a dream.

And there is a heartbreak and a sorrow in the choosing of a path.

A moment of great decision awaits before you, and on that nat 20 perception,

the man in black regards you, understanding

that

a spirit

before him may choose to go from being a

wild one

to a one of the wild, may go from being the cub of the great bear to being the spirit of something.

Ursulan,

you feel

power and potential brimming, and you feel the ability for it to wait there in reserve.

But all things

flow.

The wind rises and subsides.

And the power that has been called to you in this moment will fade unless it is named.

Freedom.

White ash rises in all directions as a wind rips down through the riverbed.

Water and ash spraying in all directions

throughout the river, you hear

of something breaking in all the vessels and you see the fixtures of the vessels unspool.

The anchor chains, all of their links snap and fling to the side smashing into the rocks of the riverbank.

You breathe clean air here as water rushes past you.

In the reflection of that water, in the reflection of the light of the now swinging glass globe, the man in black's cape unfurling around him and sort of reaching off past the reach of his hand,

he beholds

a spirit of freedom.

You feel

your breath

mighty within you.

It cannot be called a decision.

It is you naming what has been you.

You feel

changed.

To even become aware of who you really are is a form of change, maybe the most potent because it's not really a transformation.

The greatest change is actually catching up with yourself, realizing who you've been.

And in this moment, you realize too that the freedom that you mean

is

grand and mighty, and you remember the shining on the armor of those knights.

Freedom is a virtue.

It is something

like and of the world of honor.

You were a cub and a wild one, and yes, wild ones are free.

The fox would chew his paw off to get out of a trap, but you would chew your paw off to get the world out of a trap.

When you were a child, you hid your breath in honor,

and when you say, their sorrow is my sorrow, and in yourself take up the cause of freedom,

you know a truer piece of the honor of the world than you have ever felt before.

You know what freedom is.

There are sorcerers in the Ashen Wasteland and wizards in the sky who believe

in a word that they call freedom,

but by which they mean power.

The freedom to control,

to own, to bind.

Your freedom is full bellies.

for everyone.

Play and chase and trust.

For truly, while any yet are captured, how can any be free?

When Ursulan realizes the

power he has come into and that his identity is now wrapped in and of

freedom and its cause amongst all beings.

What images and sights and senses, what feelings come to his mind in this moment of assuming his true nature?

Amongst the wreckage and ruin of this landscape,

in Ursulan's mind play memories of

his earliest days at the feet of the Great Bear

and the choice that he and his siblings had to rest, to play, to eat,

to chase.

That choice should exist for all.

Far distant laughter.

Dance and song and play, and the riverbed fills with song again.

Clean, clear water rushes through the stones towards Twelve Brooks.

Still not filling up the riverbed, but you hear something distant.

The spirit world has been hurt here,

and spirits are answering the call.

Somewhere in the world of spirits, your siblings are still marching.

The man in black

lowers his cap and nods in deference to you in this moment.

Brother Ursula,

you are

mighty.

Lou, you can go ahead and

level up to level five and choose your subclass.

Let's go!

Woo!

The man in black looks to you and you see that he does not have his sword on his belt.

I thought I would not see you again, Brother Ursula.

You

tread carefully around the heart of Halaker Forest.

Did you dread then to see me?

I did not, but I traveled with those who do.

Your cause will fail in their company, Brother Ursula.

Though their hearts are with you,

their spirit is not strong enough to see the great work done.

They will not,

when the time comes, commit themselves to see the tower fall.

I have hope.

And my hope leads me to stand beside them.

And my cause lends me to let them make that choice for themselves.

The man in black looks at your implacability in this moment moment

and looks

for the first time in a long age, the King of Nights sees a smudge of distant light on the eastern horizon.

Hope, indeed.

Very well.

You go then

to Twelve Brooks to free the children of the Grino.

It was the task

I wished to give you in the heart of Hallaker Forest.

But I see now

that you have turned to it yourself.

I was as surprised as any

that after you skirted the heart of the forest, that I could feel

the footsteps of your horse.

head on the road to Twelve Brooks.

I was aghast and agog, Brother Ursulan, that you would avoid me and then seek common cause.

To think,

by some measure of a few days,

had your friends taken up this new banner earlier,

you might be my champion.

A little light on the edge of his cheek as a smile rises.

I see that you are great indeed, and it is as it should be that this task was chosen for your own sake and your own cause.

I have come here in this moment

to send you off, for I would see the children of the Grino freed as well.

The river ends here and thus the road.

What aid can I give you, Brother Ursulan?

You've already provided me with much,

and I would would not ask for more

Very well

Then I turn from this place to wend my way

Those children now count on you

Oh Ursulon of the golden pauldron

Who is called Bear the strongest man in Silbury

Spirit of the wild and of freedom.

I honor you.

And though you will not accept my gift, let me instead give as warning.

Let no shadow betray this noble spirit.

You feel that a certain kind of freedom has been placed in and around you, honored here in this moment, as you have assumed this great station here before the King of Night.

Brother,

you have your road and I mine.

I'm sure I'll see you by and by at the crossroads.

The lantern of the man in black fades.

as he win his way back up the Lithwyn River, his path to Twelve Brooks broken by the subsiding of the stream itself.

Ursulan.

You look up and see the entrance to the smuggler's cave.

An enormous lion

and a huge buffalo rest at the entrance to the smuggler's cave, looking down as as you approach up the riverbank and nod at your approach.

Pass them

goes to find a place to sleep beside his friends before the daunting day ahead.

You sleep.

Suvi and Ahme, we can compress time here a little bit.

So you guys are going to have your long rest,

and you are also going to

be able to, I think, Amy, if you want to create those tokens.

Yes, I will.

That may give you the time you need to complete, because you were halfway done,

I believe, with Counterspell.

Yeah!

So go ahead and give me, and we'll bring those difficulties down by five.

So now it's 5, 10, 20.

Oh, sorry, 10, 15, 20.

So rolling with advantage, because task is out.

10 completes the transcription,

15 completes it and pre-prepares it, and then 20 does it in half the time.

Perfect.

15 on the die.

Hey!

We've done it.

So, waiting in your own spellbook, though you cannot cast them, are fireball and counterspell.

By the way, this completely tracks with DD

leveling up processes because the moment you level up, you just have two spells in your spellbook.

So we're just kind of narratively.

We did it!

We did it!

We narratively played through it.

I love it.

I love alignment.

So there's a moment while Ursulan is still snoozing that Ame, you, Ame, you see yourself side by side as Suvi spreads out arcane tracts and treatises with a tiny mirrored spider skittering to and fro.

Who's this?

Oh, this is Task.

Wait, did we not meet at the coffin, but I didn't know that he was.

Hello?

This is Task.

I stole him from the music box.

We are friends.

Well, he stole himself from the the music box.

We're friends now.

Task projects the word hello onto the equipment.

By the way, it's in very clearly Suvi's font.

I think, or like handwriting, I think we've done a bunch of like normal things to say, and like Suvi's written them out.

So Task has some pre-prepared responses.

Like, it's very like Ouija board, like yes, no, a whole thing of letters.

Like, they start to put it together.

Well, it's a pleasure to continue your acquaintance task.

And as Suvi lays out her papers and scrolls and inks,

Ahme sits and stitches.

She pulls out the gold thread that she got from the keep of the world's heart

and a little needle.

And she starts sewing.

Ready, work it up.

Well,

I was thinking that

it seems like you've learned a couple of things from your time with the witches, and maybe you might want a little something to

hold on to that that might help you with that later on.

You're making something for me?

Mm-hmm.

A token.

Oh, thank you.

And

Amay stitches into a glove, delicate golden needlework

of a grasping glove.

She remembers the spells that have protected her

when she'd reached out both in a bit of friendship and in retribution.

And she wants Suvi's very clever hands to have that ability as well.

That's very kind.

A token of witch's grasp.

Incredible.

This does not consume a spell slot.

It is a.

It just firmly gives you the ability to cast a spell as if Ahme was casting it.

But also,

it's an important thing too, because even if you decide not to use it, you're holding on to it.

And I think that...

Well, not to

brag, but I think holding a token from a witch is something that.

It means something.

It means something deeper.

I still have the bracelet you gave me.

Oh.

Does it still smell like lilacs?

It absolutely does not because I've worn it for 14 years.

Oh!

Oh god, don't sniff it.

No, don't sniff it, like see if you like takes her hand.

Like, give it, don't smell it.

Don't smell what I smell like.

Thank you.

Ursulan,

would you mind if I

added a little

something to your shield?

Of course,

I'll hand you the shield.

I

sketch

a little fox's face on the inside.

I think

that the reminder of

his friend

might help Ursulan

with protecting those he loves.

And you gain sanctuary as a token in that little doodle.

So you can ward a creature within range against attack.

Ursulan is always so good at shielding others.

But this is Ahme's little way of helping him.

So it doesn't consume all of his energy and magic.

Because Lord knows he's given enough of it for her already.

Thank you, Ahme.

It is beautiful.

After watching Ahme work for a little bit, especially as she's sketching the fox,

Suvi's going to like

pull some sheets from her spellbook and write out two long missives.

Task is nowhere near this, so it's clearly not like academic or wizardly work.

Then she folds them and seals them with blue wax.

And then I'm going to pull out

the other two vials,

Cyril and Enzo, and unco-

Oh, I know, it's not great to uncork two at the same time.

Uncork both Enzo and Cyril at the same time.

Our brother has been slain.

I have composed a ballad of the death of Vandal.

Oh, he's not dead, he's just sleeping.

That's in a book.

I will have to amend my

I was wrong.

I thought he died.

Do you think it will be as well received if he is merely badly injured?

Absolutely.

Sleep rhymes with deep.

Oh.

Hmm.

I use the word sleep, but not at the end of any lines.

Are you going to do it?

Replace sleep with deep?

No, perform the poem.

Oh, yes, I shall.

Harken evangelists.

Are you asleep?

You go back to sleep.

I start pushing Ursula.

I've been woken up

to look at this sketch.

I demand a poem.

I never get to finish my ballads.

Oh, it's a ballad.

Okay, I am going back to sleep.

Hearken, avail ye, the tale of Vandal,

of great might, though the size of a sandal.

He who braved the castle walls and loved to say stuff like cock and paws.

See the sound of the sound of the sound.

He is beautiful.

That's verse one of 874.

As

he goes off, Suvi's just looking at Ahme, going, please, please may I stop him?

Please for the just silently like I beg of you.

Cross rhymes with ass.

Okay, well, I don't like, I don't like this.

I don't.

Gentlemen.

Yes, mistress.

I need you both to do something for me, and then we need to have a discussion about what happens after.

Very well.

I have a letter for each of you to deliver.

Uh, Cyril,

you're gonna give a note to Sworn.

You have to find him, and then you can tell him your whole ballad to Vandal.

He's gonna wanna hear all of it.

Very well.

I shall hunt high and low for the wizard Sworn, therein to deliver my mistress's missive.

Thanks.

And after that, about the whole mistress thing.

What do you want to be

published?

Was that the right answer?

It's a good dream.

Do you think?

Do you know anybody?

Is there anybody who's accepting queries?

Interestingly enough, I'm telling you the entire truth.

I've never sought poetry or the publishing of it, so I don't know anyone.

And I might not be the best fit for you.

More of a prose person.

Definitely more of a non-fiction girly.

Ooh.

Yeah, rough.

I know.

I'm sorry.

Sworn?

I hear he loves a sonnet.

ABAB.

There you go.

You can stay with him if you want after you deliver the letter

or you can destroy your own bottle and choose your own way.

You

feel

a

moment of

depth and profundity.

This

ridiculous

little inky gargoyle

looks up

and

holds his bottle, which you realize you've never seen one of them do.

Holds it from the outside.

My fiddle.

Yeah.

I accept.

Will you not be

left without attendant or service without me?

I

will have to manage to make my own coffee from now on.

I don't know what's going to happen today.

And I think the worst thing I can think of is not offering people their best chance.

Cyril takes the missive for Sworn

and tenderly

wraps it, tying a tiny piece of twine around it and putting it into his own bottle for for safekeeping.

He turns to look at you

and

as he does, there is a blue gleam in his eyes and

you see

something

which Ursulan lying next to you sees as well and Ursulan just recently has

the power to describe which is all of the space of spirit behind Cyril.

Just as each blade of grass with a tiny spirit of its own, through their eyes can be seen the wholeness of the living world, the plants and creatures of its wild places.

And though Cyril is

diminutive and

a, in the classical sense, a grotesque, a gargoyle,

a

accidental byproduct of the wonderful workings of the great citadel.

Through his eyes, you see the vastness of a love

for language and the written word, of poetry and song,

of the desire to capture in some degree of permanence great truths and passions.

Even in this

comical creature is some corner of the great and beautiful truth of your world kept.

Thank you, Wizard Sky.

I will see it done.

And though it is my own to use as I wish, I hope what I do in my freedom gives you cause for comfort and joy, for pride and purpose

That

you would know happiness from what I pursue in this wide world.

Thank you for everything.

I don't think I said that enough.

You are very strange.

Not many wizards like this have I ever known.

Thank you.

for being

the only like the wizard sky that I have ever met.

Get out of here.

Goodbye.

And as he left, a hand he raised

in silent voice a gestured praise

that lights the way for all her days.

Glory, honor, the sky to blaze.

My greatest and most important poem, farewell.

She flies off.

That was very nice.

Oh, hold on.

Don't talk.

I gotta do this one more time.

Oh, God.

Enzo, less floored.

Same thing.

I have some notes on Cyril's phone.

Okay, there we go.

And we're back.

Hey, bud.

Deliver this to the Wizard Silver, who you have delivered

a message to before from me.

You'll find him with

the forces marching in Reedport and on the road to here.

Very well, Mistress.

From there,

your will is your own, and your bottle is yours.

Understood.

Thank you for everything,

including the ways in which you wanted desperately to help and created more work for me by adding inaccuracies in the marginalia of my work.

Wizard Sky,

would you trust me to break my bottle before my final task is rendered?

I am a demon, you know, so I would not fault you your distrust.

I gotta trust someone.

Why not you?

He smiles.

Long nose and long ears and long claws and bandaid legs.

He shatters it.

And you see, Enzo stands up.

Two foot, four foot, six feet tall.

A true demon of ink.

Mistress

Sky.

Might I add some final inaccuracies that I feel may aid you in the journeys yet to come?

You're bigger.

The bottle was, I am afraid, a stopgap.

Did you know that black is the most common color of ink in the writings of the Citadel, and that my form was somewhat constricted by the enclosure in which I was kept?

Oh, we should have done this a while ago.

I owe you an apology.

I owe you some spellcraft.

And I, like, gesture to my book.

It's sitting on the ground.

It flies flies to my hand, and I open it to a blank page.

He lays a hand on it, and from his hand spreads one of the most

complex, gorgeous calligraphic runes you have ever seen in an encryption of the lingua arcana like you have never seen before.

And he is going to cast

non-detection on your spellbook.

And as it leaps one to the other, he begins to point

first at a flap of white silk on Ahme's robe, at the bottom of Ursulan's boots as he lies on the ground, and he covers you and all of your known belongings with glyphs of non-detection.

Inaccuracy, Marginalia Urata.

Instances by which

miscategorization can be seen as a benefit when the librarians are not to be trusted.

Oh, friend,

I wish we would have had more chances to talk like this.

Chances taken are rewarded.

Your trust and faith, given in the face of some risk, is of course a great working of magic.

A final task to be done, and my thanks is in Sky.

And mine in return.

And he flies from the cave.

I too am glad for the strangeness of the Wizard Sky.

His calligraphy is gorgeous.

He has very nice handwriting.

Oh, Subi.

It was the right thing to do.

I've gotten rid

of

almost everything

that was lent to me by the Citadel.

I think that you have more than enough that is already yours.

I'm sorry.

It's okay.

You have to make space.

Mouth of the cave, a massive Garin lands.

Yorin does not shed his shape, instead pushing through the opening much larger than it and pulling himself into the cavern, Hulking over you here.

Times of the essence.

They make a move on 12 Brooks.

Now

I have spoken to Kashif and Rounza.

The houses, Bahadi, they are moving.

You must move at once.

Okay.

Welcome.

Going back to the sluice, you see Yorin doesn't waste any time looking for a key.

He pulls the gate off the stone.

You six to the sky, the rest with us into the cavern.

Six of the shape changers

take to the wing, massive eagles, birds of prey.

And you see that the others, Yorin drops down into a medium-sized creature.

He turns, takes the form of an enormous wolf, and the rest of them get small enough to go through the passageways and begin to tear off.

I'm going to need you guys to make a group investigation check for him.

That's a natural one for your girl.

Oh, we're back.

We're so back.

We're so back.

14.

19.

19.

Okay.

On a 14, you,

which will be our group check roll, you make your way down through the tunnels.

Moving through, you are in a sewer way here moving along.

Stone masonry work, long ago storm drain.

You see, it's been dry for a while.

It's not even it's it's to be this dry in this place.

The water has truly been sucked out of the landscape.

On a 14, you have a hard choice to make.

The war and battle that has rocked the landscape here has suffered a collapse in one of the tunnels.

The collapse ahead of you is the fastest route to 12 Brooks.

Looking at the collapse, you see an image up at the top of a little bit of that orange light breaking in, meaning that this tunnel got close enough to the surface that when something hit up above, it collapsed the tunnel.

You're not sure how much land there is, but you know by the nature of the collapse that some distance ahead, the tunnel opens back up, directly leading you into 12th Brooks.

So here's the devil's bargain you have to make.

This is the smuggler's path in, and the smuggler's path continues in one track, getting you deep into the heart of 12 Brooks.

If you peel off from here and work your way back to go through another gate, the sewer is going to lead you to the outskirts of the city.

So, yeah, you'll avoid being in the open air, but you'll be deposited potentially outside of the Empire's defenses.

So, the bargain you're making here is a short sprint across open landscape to get back to the sure bet,

or

staying away from open air and danger but depositing you at the beginning of way more problems at the edge of 12 brooks what do you do in this moment i think ursalan moves to take the riskier option ame also instinctively goes for the direct route but looks back at zuvi

risk it Let's go.

As you begin to scramble up towards the light, knowing that it's gotta come back down, so the tunnel's gotta open up somewhere through the rubble.

Um, you climb up and you see uh Yorin behind you with the other shape changers.

You get to the top of the rubble.

Suvi, Aame, Ursulan, the fox.

You stand up, orange light, massive legs.

As tentacles extend from from a Kashif dreadnought,

barreling down on you,

the lights of Twelve Brooks gleam

as Gauthmai pushes to take the city.

They stand no chance there, those last soldiers of Empire.

And in this moment,

the clouds part.

Airships dropping from the sky.

10,

20, 30.

Imperial warships from where you do not know.

But at the head of their vanguard,

red,

gold brocade.

The flagship of the citadel steals vessel, rides to war, and opens fire on the dreadnought that you see

just before your eyes.

War is here, and I need you all to roll initiative.

That was Lou Wilson as Ursulan, Erika Ishi-e as Ahme, Abria Iyengar as Suvi, and Brennan Lee Mulligan as Everyone and Everything Else.

Worlds Beyond Number is edited, designed, and scored by Taylor Moore at Fortunate Horse with additional sound design from Michael Gelfie Studios.

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