WWW #23: On Your Way

This is the sound of Worlds Beyond Number.

A forest of flame

writhing in inferno.

Trees and leaves and branches branches made

of rippling iridescent fire, purple, green, silver.

This forest of flames stands

in the penumbra of the world of Umora.

Itself

a reflection of,

but not truly, the world of spirits.

This

reflection

exists through magic artifice.

In some way you are still within the burning sand created by those wizards of the citadel and yet that magic leads to so much more.

Their conjurations, their movements through space take their shortcuts through the spirit, through these reflections, channels, byways created through what Sufi's mother called the greater binding.

Her theory that all magic came from the interplay of spirit and the real.

Standing here

in this fiery reflection of the great forests of your birth,

you feel the familiarity of home while knowing that you look simply at an echo of it.

Ahead of you,

you can

smell or hear

honey,

goat pens, and a chicken's roost.

You hear the babbling of a brook, the swaying of familiar trees that you knew in childhood.

You hear them as though played on the instrument of fire.

Burning reflections of other places within Umura.

You reach out, feeling with certainty, Ursulan,

that Ame is already safely home.

That all of the other mortal wizards that were flung in here, you have safely cut from the spell work of their own hands that would trap them and return them to the citadel.

Behind you,

you hear footsteps

that make a sound like

shadow touching fire.

It is silent, and yet still you can hear it

with the approach of the man in black,

the king of night.

That pilgrim under stars who walks his way towards you.

And then

there it is,

off the path to your side.

A burrow.

It exists in almost comic contradiction to the wreathing fiery spell world that surrounds you.

This forest of flames still moist and humid and hot as it was the first time you went through a smaller version of it.

But that burrow in the flame

goes dark and yet you can smell cool earth,

moist

ground.

And looking at it,

it looks so real, like a hole.

that a little woodland creature would dig at the base of a tree to make a home for itself.

And yet, to look so real and humble in a forest of iridescent fire is almost to tell a joke.

But then

some spirits are very funny.

That burrow to you

With these exceptional rolls of insight, your wisdom saving throw, this enormous exertion of attunement to your breath.

You've cast the fire back with your shield to give yourself space to breathe, and the sword of Naram now rests in your right hand.

The burrow is a spell.

Within this spell,

some great art has concealed a piece of magic within this greater working of magic.

Perhaps where no one would ever think to look for it.

I asked you,

what do you want to do?

And in this moment, does Ursulan know?

Yes.

Ursulan

breathes deeply

and feels his breath replace the sound of his heart beating

as he feels it extend from his chest to his fingertips and feels his size and his mass again.

I think having spent so much time in the citadel, most, if not all, of his time was in his glamour.

And I think

feels himself take up space again.

And I think with eyes toward the whole, just kind of making sense of it,

but remembering the words of the man behind him,

he's going to say,

Brother, I know you have many names.

Which would you have me address you by?

Brother, it is good to hear you.

What would you call me

of the abilities which I have?

Behold me.

What do I seem like to you?

Still facing forward.

The man in black

was my favorite.

That is me,

brother.

You are a child of the Great Bear.

Long way shadowed here

in Umora.

Yes.

A tragic fate.

The hands of humans

can be ever cruel.

You are not wrong.

The many

of them are kind.

Kind and cruel alike.

So goes the world of spirits and the world of mortals.

Yes.

Something tells me, though, brother, that you have become aware in time

of where the hands of the cruel and kind most often alight.

In tall towers,

do the wicked do their work.

Their desire for control over that which they don't understand

seems to have no end.

What you want with me for a spell,

Brother,

perhaps another time we will walk together.

For I feel my time here is short.

I am almost by your side.

I've heard, in one year's time, since the day of Grandmother Wren's passing, you will return to the cottage.

Do you

know

and walk within within the trust of that young witch of the world's heart?

I do.

She is under my protection.

And well protected she is.

My fear that I share with you here at the edge of Spirit and Real

is that the time will soon be upon her

where her kindness

is is used to cut her throat

when I arrived

at her home

a wizard already stood within

that tower is the handle of a knife plunged deep into the heart of this world

A heart that witch is responsible for

Kind faces and friendly names obscure

a truth

of murder to the world of spirits.

They are coming.

They are coming for you and me and for us all.

I will do my best to heed your warning, brother.

In this moment

of choosing

remember always this

though I wish for you to walk beside me,

your choice is your own.

Go where you will,

but if you wait a second longer, I will be by your side.

Ursulan is going to look to Grandmother Wren's cottage

and think to himself,

I just have to be at the North Pole in two days.

And I'm gonna

get in a hole.

You dive off the path

and swear you come within an inch of feeling the brush of a long traveler's cloak as boots step right behind you.

But the hole is wider than it first appears

and descends more shallowly and with more space and comfort than it first seemed.

You dig and pull and scratch

until the wild feeling of play and strength comes back to you and you are running through the tunnel.

The heat of fire is behind you, Ursulan.

You can smell a forest.

There is hope,

and suddenly the burrow opens

and you fall.

Flame, iridescent, purple, green.

Ame

for the first time,

you watch the sun

rising

over the cottage

and do not hear the crowing of a rooster.

I look down.

I feel myself: is this real?

Is it real this time?

You are standing

in

a little patch of the the yard

a little

less

grassful than the rest.

You've seen some teleporters appear in this spot before.

It seems like sort of a place in the yard that almost like the groove of a seat.

One person teleported here and the next person that teleported to the cottage just kind of naturally appeared in this spot because the last person had appeared right here and it kind of wore a groove in the magical space of the cottage.

A little bit less grass.

Your fox in your arms leaps down to the ground, steaming a bit, the moisture kind of wicking off.

So there's a little sort of a singed smell.

Fox goes,

How you feeling, fox?

Wow.

Yeah, yeah.

Thank you.

You did it.

it.

Oh, God.

It is

an eerie strip of orange in the eastern sky.

It was broad daylight in the citadel, but that's part way across the globe.

Here in a calm, the sun is just rising.

You

see the image of the cottage.

There's cool

dew

everywhere

hanging on the grass.

Bees are not buzzing yet.

Chickens and goats are still asleep.

It is the quietest time of day.

The fox pads around, sniffing at the ground.

You okay, boss?

I

physically, yeah, it seems so.

I take stock of myself and of my surroundings.

Your equipment is here.

You have the ceramic platform given to you by the Wizard Sly.

In your pocket, a little

a little jewel hopper.

Seconds tick by.

The fox sniffs at your leg, looking up.

Is him okay to you?

Yeah,

I think so.

Where's the rest?

Where's Russline?

I don't know.

Are you okay?

I don't think those wizards died.

I think they're fine.

I love your optimism, Fox.

No, I feel like I looked.

I looked back.

It feels like they're fine.

They jumped

and just sit on the ground for a second and collapse.

Fox, I don't.

I don't know where Ursulan is.

I don't know where Suvi is.

I think.

I think I

do you know the expression burned a bridge

burned a bridge

means you can't go back

Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah.

You think you burned a bridge with

Ursulan and Subi?

At least with the Citadel.

Oh.

And if I burned a bridge with the Citadel, then that means that I

okay, let's let's go inside.

You You open the door and you see the fox walks into the cottage.

It's dark in here.

It smells so familiar.

It's your home.

There's the carpet where Ursulan slept indoors for the very first time.

Where Suvi cast her very first spell.

to protect him on the night that he was trapped forever in the mortal world.

There's the door that Grandmother Wren walked through

that she'll never walk through again.

In my mind, I keep calling it Grandma Wren's cottage,

but it's not, it's mine,

I don't like it,

Mr.

Soup.

You hear a little knock at the door.

Tap, tap, tap.

Open them.

A very, very

old man

with a round pot belly, a little tweed coat, and a little tweed flat cap and an undershirt, with a big, big beard that has a little bit of a stain of some soup in it,

and an old wooden cane.

You see he's got a little bag of onions and a big pot and some ladles and other things like that around him.

You see

Dalma, the shrine spirit, wearing his human glamour.

Dalma?

Amy.

Welcome home, young one.

Why don't I

get some things ready for a soup?

And

I've been sitting out here on your front step every day since you left, letting people know you'll be back soon.

Oh, thank you so much.

Um

I'd like to help you with the soup, if I may.

Yes, but

I think it'll

help.

All right.

Um

you sit on the front step and help him

cut and peel onion, which is very helpful because you're weeping

You see, the fox goes, pee you, and goes off into the house and starts sniffing around.

You see, he comes out to you as you sit on the stoop and says, Boss,

there's a room that smells a lot like you.

Is that your room?

Mm-hmm.

If it has a little bed nest in there, yeah.

Okay, I'm gonna go snooze in there.

Okay,

you go take a nap.

You've had a big day.

I've been working hard.

Yeah, yeah.

And he walks off into the room to go to sleep.

You and

Mr.

Soup sit on the stoop.

And as we peel,

I tell him about

my adventures away from the cottage.

And

it's a little bit scattered and piecemeal, and I'm still processing it myself.

In some ways, it sort of jumps around a lot.

Sort of starting with how I got here and the

the portal, the fire, the citadel.

I mention that

and then I mention the coven I have to get to

and that they had apparently sent messages by the cottage that I hadn't been there to receive.

Mr.

Soup opens his coat and takes out a number of missives, scrolls,

important

harvesters, some of them like written on thick insect-covered scraps of bark, others in beautiful sealed silver envelopes.

Yes, the Coven of Elders has reached out.

I told them the nature of your absence, and

you should know, Ami,

this is far from the messiest transition.

I mean, it's up there,

but it's not the messiest.

That is

a small comfort, yes.

Thank you.

I can do my best to help you ready yourself.

And you know, for these coven meetings, when it's a full conclave, that all of the coven will be there.

You know, you're allowed to bring a retinue, if you want.

Oh.

I mean,

I'd really hoped that it would be

Suvian or Salon.

In fact,

there seems to be one of Grandma Ren's true friends told me that if I didn't bring them,

I would

be destroyed.

Or that perhaps, well,

never

run down for him my interaction with Fly.

Why would they want to get rid of the station of the witch of the world's heart?

I don't know all of Wren's business, but I know

that

she was at odds with the coven for many many years.

There was a plan

that she didn't want to go along with

and that she had been searching for a long time

to find a way to convince her sisters to do something else, and that she had not been able to.

I have to find out what the plan was, what her plan is, and what she was trying to show to them.

And I have

less than two days to do it.

Give me an insight check.

Fuck!

It's an AT1 on the die.

You see that Mr.

Soup lowers his face

What?

Well,

I'm not really allowed to call you a kid anymore.

You're the witch of the world's heart.

Yeah, show some respect.

Sir.

If Grandma Wren had a plan, she would have shared it with you.

She wouldn't have kept a plan hidden.

I think

I don't like to speak ill of Grandma Ren, but I think she was coming up with nothing but straws.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well then, uh, okay.

New list.

I have to

figure out what their plan is and figure out how to oppose them and find a thing that I don't know what is or if Grandma Wren knew what was to convince them.

Oh, um, the carrots are ready.

You see, Mr.

Soup gets the soup up and ready.

As you guys get it, sort of get the day's chores started.

You see the sun rises over the cottage, you hear bird song, it's early summer,

crickets, songbirds, babbling brook.

As you think about how you can get ready in the short time that you have,

probably half a day and a half now,

You see,

walking up into the courtyard is Lohan the Baker.

Older now.

Oh.

Hey there, friend.

Is the Witch of Toma home?

You see, Mr.

Soup looks over to you.

Hi, Lohan.

Oh, Amy, you're back on the village.

I'll be so happy to hear it.

I thought I'd come by and try you again this week.

Um,

Bessie has a problem with her hand, it seems like some sort of arthritis or something like that.

Gosh, uh, it's yeah, it's around that age that happens.

Um,

I can, um,

yeah, I can, I, I can, I just actually have something for that a little bit.

Um, but you might want to tell folks that I have to be gone again for a bit,

really?

Yeah,

oh,

long journey, longer than any Ren took, I think.

Yeah, well.

I don't know.

I'm getting used to having to do all the kinds of things that she did, and it's taken a little bit of adjustment.

All right.

Uh, well, I don't mean to I don't mean to trouble you, um, me.

No, no, no trouble.

Um, I think I go over to the medicine cabinet, and there

um, I slide it open.

There's tinctures and ointments and and ground up salves and powders.

There should be something that's at least,

you know, even just a basic Arnica to

help with

joint pain.

You gather some remedies together, hand them to Lohan.

As you hear Lohan walk away, Daoma looks at you and says,

Well, I've been up out of the shrine for a long time, and if you're you're gonna need me watching the house again, I'd better get some rest.

Yes, please.

Thank you so much.

Soups on the stove.

Take your time and just wake me up again at the shrine if when you're ready to go.

Yes, thank you.

Oh, and I

reach in and I get some

little rice cakes.

You know that he likes

you see, he drops his glamour, his little sort of poursing of spirit this he sort of wobbles and dances a little bit with the rice cakes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Vanishes back up in the direction of the shrine.

Soft bubbling of soup.

House settling.

Wind and crickets and songbirds and the little snoozes of a fox.

And you are

in this house.

It's mine.

It's mine now.

But now I look at it with the eyes

of someone who remembers.

I remember everything that Grandma Wren told me in this house.

All of the secrets that she kept weren't secrets at all.

They were things

that she brought me up with.

And now I remember

why she kept the cabinets unlabeled and where

the things that are precious are kept and

what kind

of books

she would find it necessary to keep and where.

I'd like to look around the cottage, busy myself with finding things.

Books about spirits,

a flawless sapphire,

the places where Grand Moren

would hold

things that were precious

and important.

With a day and a half to prepare,

knowing that if Suvi and Ursulan do not join you,

according to the wizard's lie, you are doomed.

You will take this time

to search for answers in this home

and leave Suvi and Ursulan's business to them?

I want so badly to reach out to them.

But do I know how?

Without the secrets of my sanctum,

what can I do?

How can I find them?

Realizing Realizing that reaching out to your friends is beyond your gifts,

you go upstairs,

open the cabinets, the drawers and armores, shelves, and wardrobes that have long been off-limits to you to find what armaments of secret knowledge and hidden lore might help

the newly stationed witch of the world's heart.

There is one more place too

that I especially

think of.

Rug

up

fast-flowing water.

As the rug folds at your command and the trapdoor opens,

light dappled like running water touches your face.

Suvi

We know where we know where you are you are standing at the Galithopter pier having ordered soldiers

to bring them to you

five Galithopters

More and steel with the retinue behind her you see the brass wizard slate behind her more soldiers,

about 10 golden armored wizards of the sword of the citadel leap forward.

Steele looks at you standing here.

What is the expression on your face as she emerges from the Galapagor?

It is blank.

There's not emotion.

It is the absolute lack of.

Steele leaps from the ship,

sees you, has a moment of rage and tension, and a moment of, I don't fucking need this in her face.

And she looks at you standing here completely vacant.

She is brilliant.

She knows that the order she gave you was to stay.

And she sees you staying.

And she sees that Ursulon and Amay are not here.

Looks at the troops behind her and says,

fan out, find the witch, find the protector.

And she turns and

sighs and looks so tired.

And she embraces you and brings your face into the crook of her neck.

She's

sobbing softly, and it's just a litany of

she believes what the diviner said.

She knows that if I don't go, she'll die, but she she just left.

They left, they didn't care, and

there was a fire.

Her rush was due to being in a coma because she couldn't wait.

They never wait.

They don't care.

It's okay.

If I don't go, she'll die.

What?

If what the diviner said is true,

if I don't go, she will die.

You see that she casts a deeper form of detect magic, something actually quite potent that you don't even fully recognize.

She looks at you and goes,

Did you grab her?

I tried.

I just wanted her to wait for a second.

I wanted...

She seizes your arm.

You're so fucking crazy, kid.

What?

Why?

You're so crazy.

I...

I should have been more specific in my orders.

You see that she just touches your head and gives you a kiss on the cheek and says,

I gave you the order to stay.

Thanks for following orders, kid.

You're a good wizard.

Okay.

Hey, hey.

You did

everything you thought was right.

I want you to know

I'm not even that angry at Aame right now.

You're going to be madder.

There was a big inferno for a second.

Hey, I saw it.

Yeah.

The whole citadel saw it.

Yeah.

Timing bad, and lots of Imperial people here.

Timing bad.

Would have loved the fiasco to wait, I don't know, 36 hours.

Right.

But

bottom line.

Aame

got bad intel.

I just have come from Kibani.

Aame is acting in a way that makes sense if you're really scared.

Ah, just woke up from a month-long coma and is really scared.

And if I was not totally preoccupied with a million other things, I would have had the time and space to try to calm her down.

This is not on you.

This is on me.

I had a witch in the citadel, and we couldn't make her comfortable because everything's fucking sliding off the deck of the ship.

I don't necessarily agree, but it feels better that it's not my fault.

So I'm going to let you take this one.

Thank you very much.

She looks at you and goes,

Okay, fires put out.

No sign of Ursulan.

And in fact, you see that she stops.

She's getting sendings from other elsewhere in Zhao.

No casualties.

Ursulan was seen going into,

and he's made.

That's all right.

Well,

now I've got to figure out how to tell the truth and lie at the same time to everybody about why your protector was a spirit and he was not

doing what spirits do for a while.

Okay.

This is all alright.

You know,

that's the whole joy of wizardry is as soon as you get good at solving a problem, they give you a new one.

So, this is what we asked for.

And life's not bad.

Actually, life's good.

This is what I sound like.

Let's get in the Gamothopter and head home.

Come on.

Oh, hold on.

Hold on.

You said the intel was bad.

Who did you talk to?

I talked to Scholar.

I talked to the wizard Scholar.

She's been,

she was very clear.

Look,

let's just, let's go.

How are you physically right now?

Did you get hurt?

No.

Okay.

Do you want to go back to your tower or do you want to go to mine?

Yours, please.

She

creates a dimension door, walks through it, takes you with her, and goes, Uh,

Sander, we'd like some

frozen yogurt.

We'll get some frozen yogurt and put booze in it.

She walks you up to the balcony.

Okay.

I talked to Scholar

who

was able to tell me that witches have been casting magic into the Citadel.

I don't know how we didn't notice it, but we didn't notice it.

What do you mean?

Well, there's

on the night of you.

No, no, I do know what you mean.

What?

The night of my the name cloak,

we were on Gavril

and two ice fairies

from

injury,

the witch of

something with W's that I'm very sorry I don't remember.

That's Suvi, not Abria.

Okay, gotcha.

Yeah, yeah.

That I do not remember because they all had W's.

Sent Ahme missives about

having to pick a time and a a place for this conclave.

So that did happen.

I forgot.

And I forgot it was a bigger deal.

Okay.

Becoming a little bit mad again?

No, I understand.

I understand.

Okay.

It was a big, bad dish.

We just all have to always be saying what we know.

Now, in all fairness, I would not have had time because at shortly there

you were deployed.

I was deployed.

That's correct.

That's correct.

I need to give you a way to always be in touch with me.

So I'm going to figure out how to do that.

Yeah.

Less shatterable, thank you.

Okay.

No, no, no.

Spirits are wild, and apparently we just rock up on them all the time.

She looks at you and says,

speak to me of

this conclave.

What is the nature of Ahme's covet?

Ahme is the witch of the world to heart and makes her the fifth member of the coven of elders.

She is the one tasked with the connection between people,

though the rest of their domains speak to nature and the self.

Her station could be lost as well as her life.

The diviner that you spoke to in Kibani.

Who tried to warn her that she was dead in days?

What happens to them if I tell you their name?

I trust you with my life.

Please tell me the truth.

Steele looks out at the citadel.

Wizards are known by their secrets.

She bites her cheek hard enough that you can tell she's got blood in her mouth.

And a tear falls down her cheek.

I don't know how this place works.

I don't know how any of us can trust each other.

It feels like every inch I move within this citadel,

someone has a great reason to protect people from accountability,

from knowledge and from clarity.

Everybody's got a vested interest in putting up walls and fog

in a place whose sole purpose is to bring light to the world.

What do you think I'm going to do, Suvi?

Think I'm going to go find the diviner who was probably insorceled or enchanted by a powerful witch of this coven of elders?

And I'm gonna have them beheaded in the square?

No.

And by the way,

what if this diviner that you spoke to is nefarious?

Is that impossible to conceive of?

No.

Can I make an insight check?

Yeah.

16.

She's looking at you and she is angry.

She doesn't know whether the prophecy is true or not true.

She has information secondhand from you and firsthand from this other diviner.

And it's possible to

trick seers and soothsayers.

some abjurers' wards don't stop the sword or the fire some diviners see things that don't end up being true some there are all these edge cases in marginalia and you just see that what's what steel is furious about is

that

she's got an impossible task and all these moving pieces

deep in her heart she's reaching out trying to grab somebody's arm.

But she's trying to do it to the whole world.

Someone in this citadel wanted a series of things to happen and made it happen.

What I'm reacting to isn't even whether that thing was actually wrong.

It was why nobody else knew about it.

If we had the witch of the world's heart in our citadel and a member of the citadel knew that she was going to come to some utter doom,

there are a million tools at our disposal to make sure that doesn't happen.

To be honest with you, even if I was certain that this prophecy was correct, my suggestion would be to keep Ahmed here

and have these witches fucking,

you know?

Yeah.

You see what I'm saying?

No, yes, yes.

You know, the impossible witches.

Look, I've always told you to respect witches, and I mean it.

I mean it, because they are subtle, and they move in strange ways, and they pop up where you least expect them, and I always knew that Grandmother Wren was a way bigger deal than she seemed fixing horse hooves in Toma, and now I discover that my suspicions were very correct.

What I will say to you here is this.

Everybody underestimates wizards, and they do it in a a way that'll drive you crazy if you think about it.

Suvi's just going to reach out and grab Steele's hand as she gestures.

Suvi was resolved to this a minute ago into this rant.

That at the end of the day, laying all the pieces on the board,

Steele has been there her entire life.

In every moment of true crisis that she has experienced with Ursulan and Ame.

They have cast her harshly aside.

So, why suddenly would she put away all of the empirical evidence

about who to trust and what to do?

And she just says,

The wizards lie.

She narrows her eyes.

Office of preemptory catastrophic deviation?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Where?

What?

How did he even get in touch with you?

He's a friend of Grandmother Wren's.

He's a fr.

I didn't.

I am a friend of Grandmother Wren's.

I am that.

I am a friend of Grandmother Wren's.

Yeah.

Oh, God.

So what?

You were in Kibani getting donors and you said, hey, do you want to stop an apocalypse that's not going to happen for 400 years?

Yeah, something like that.

Okay.

Well, great.

I'm glad you met Sly.

Okay.

Did Sly come here to Malakanth?

No.

Once Amay awoke, she remembered everything that was lost to that curse, except for who put it on her, which again, I know is the thing that you,

I agree that waiting waiting and doing things right yields better results.

I'm I don't have to get mad because you're mad.

You can have you can hold that emotion and I can just be sad.

I'm actually the vibrations of anger have become so furious that now I'm sort of at rage enlightenment on a new plane.

That's good.

I'm in a new plane of being.

So I'm good.

Give it, just pile it on now because it's going to all get metabolized.

Perfect.

So let me feed this fire real quick.

Ame woke up with all of her memories intact.

She knows

who

Grandmother Wren's allies are in the Citadel, and we made the rounds to visit them.

Well, she made the rounds to visit them and I got to go to this one.

Subi has decided in this moment to lie a little bit.

Made the rounds to visit them and while meeting with Sly,

we were

made aware of her stakes and her timeline and what could happen if Ursula and I were not with her.

Okay, that makes sense.

So,

waking up out of the coma was sort of a brand new Ame, one that had a lifetime of memories.

Yes,

she

arrived and on one of the, I'm imagining the day that I was out at Fort Kieran,

went around.

You went to Sly

first?

No,

the Kasov

collection.

Kasov Collection?

Yeah.

Grandma Ren has a friend at the Kasov Collection?

Yes.

Who's even

what, in one of the paintings?

Pomeroy.

You don't say,

well,

that

little

freak.

Yeah, friend would be generous.

I don't think Wren would call Pomeroy a friend.

He's so gross and scary.

Yeah.

He like wants to be here.

He's into this.

Yeah, I know.

We don't, we allow.

Why did you he seems like a liar?

That wasn't my call.

Yeah.

There's the conjurers take care of themselves.

He's bad.

But good to know.

Now, wait, Pomeroy's an actual friend of Grandmother Wren?

I don't know if friend's the word, but someone Ah needed to know in the Citadel existed in the citadel.

I wonder why there was a connection between Pomeroy and Grandma Wren.

She's a witch, spirit, but why would there be a connection there?

That's so strange.

All right.

Well, good to know.

Yep.

After Pomeroy, where next?

Sly.

How did you get to Kibani from Zhao?

The fire.

Yeah.

Okay.

I didn't because there's no.

Never mind.

Give me an insight check.

Yeah, what the fuck was that?

12.

Yeah, you see a weird, it's like a weird skip in what she's talking about.

Hold on, what's that?

What's what?

You did that.

You moved past the thing.

What happened?

What's going on with the fire?

Fires.

Fire.

No, I just.

Because

while that was, we were already beginning to lock down.

the citadel even as Fort Kieran was happening.

Oh.

In a subtler way.

So I was just wondering why.

But there's a lot of gallithopters and fires and dimension doors and traveling doors and yada yada.

And there's a lot, there's a lot to keep track of.

Sure, sure.

Sly,

you talked to him.

He, as a pal of Grandmother Wren's,

what were all the things he said were going to happen to?

The big one was Conclave's going to happen with or without Ahme in three days time.

If she's not there to defend herself, her office will be destroyed and her along with it.

If I'm not there, she won't survive it, and they won't let me go.

Don't know what that means.

And in a year, if Ursulon didn't have a shield, both Ame and I would die.

So then we went next to my friend Hana to try to find a shield.

And that's the end of that very bad day.

And that this was all last.

This was yesterday.

Yep.

Yep.

Okay.

All right.

You see that she says,

Sly says, if you're not there, they destroy your station.

Yes.

Does that mean they destroy Ahme as well?

Yes.

Okay.

And

where is this conclave happening?

The North Pole.

Witches are so fucking whimsical.

I don't think there's anything whimsical about freezing to death.

How the hell is Ahme going to get there?

Hey, calm down.

We're in the middle of a fucking desert.

We made.

Yeah, but we're great at everything.

I don't know how these like,

did Ahme talk about getting, you know, cold weather gear?

That's probably why she wanted to go home.

All right.

I don't know.

Witches do crazy witch shit, and now she's a full-ass witch.

Does she, but do you know if she has a means of actually getting to this?

So was her intention to go back to Toma and then go to this conclave at the North Pole?

That's why she was desperate to get to Toma.

She needed time.

Okay.

That makes sense.

She needed time prior to when the conclave was happening.

So if she went to Silbury, then she.

Can you get me to Silbury?

Sorry, I know this is not the question you wanted at the end of this conversation.

I don't think I can get you to Silbury.

Truthfully, I wasn't bullshitting.

It's incredibly dangerous to do that kind of teleportation right now.

But it's what?

We got like two days, a day and a half.

Right, but what if she has to go leave early to get?

I don't know how she's going to get there.

The exact wording of this prophecy.

So if you're not there to advise

her, what happens?

She dies.

You just see Steele running numbers in her head.

Okay.

When you have all the information,

that's when you can make the right decision.

I can't get you to Silbury, but I think I can do you one better.

You want a skyship?

Old stone steps

carved into the bedrock of the hillside itself.

Dappled light from water below.

One of the earliest memories Ahme has of coming to Grandmother Wren's house was of waking up in her little nest in the middle of the night,

looking under the door and seeing the ripple of watery light across the ceiling the first time Grandmother Wren told the rug to fold itself up,

open the trap door, and walk within

Down to the river flowing under the house.

Deep well of magic.

Ame.

You descend the steps.

Wooden beams.

Humble nailed together.

The same style as the rafters and beams of the house above.

Holding up the stone and earth.

And at the final stone step,

you see the little lapping of the stream.

To duck your head down, you can see just a little of the water

and hear the light of some bioluminescent moss underneath the water, casting light on the small cavern.

So small, this underground river.

There is no massive cavern waiting for you here.

It is a private space, a small nestled nook of the welcoming earth and the water rushing underneath.

Ame, you behold it here

in your first visit to the basement of your home, Witch of the World's Heart.

I rub my hands as I walk across the smooth

stone walls.

They're so cool and comforting.

It's funny that this whole world existed right underneath my feet my whole life, practically my whole life.

This is my first time here.

I call out,

hello?

Water rises up,

laps at your feet,

cool,

but it does not send a chill through your body as it soaks into and around your feet.

You hear voices,

they don't speak to you in words.

The whispers simply tell you what they feel,

which is recognition,

acceptance,

sorrow and comfort,

knowledge of what you have lost,

soft readiness

to act with the knowledge you would give them.

I hold in my mind

the events of the last three months

in that way that's not recounting it

word by word or even seeing it image by image.

It's the

cloud almost,

the

amorphous

feeling

of this monumental time in my life.

What I've lost, what I gained,

what I

threw away.

I ask for guidance and I ask for permission

to

take up

what Grandmother Wren

had left for me.

Please.

Up above,

you hear the rattle of the house as the water rises to your shins.

Light.

You hear drawers unlocking, cabinets opening, trapdoors and cupboards

shaking.

Gifts of the house that had long been secreted away from you.

You sense magic at your disposal.

No

great point of vision, but tools to use.

And then the light

shows you.

A mask bone white.

Rin.

The world has burned before.

They cannot be allowed to do this thing.

If we do not act now, we will miss our chance.

You hear Grandmother Wren's voice.

There has got to be a way, Marara.

There has got to be a way.

We cannot be forced to choose between one slaughter or another.

Forever.

I believe

that these sides may see a way to live together in harmony.

Then you are a fool, Ren.

I would sooner wager to see mountains bow

and oceans bend their knee

than see the will of wizards debase themselves.

You are wrong, Marara.

The times have grown dark,

the hour late.

But there is nothing I have seen in the world of mortals or of spirits

that

shows me that

there is a path that is wrong to tread.

Merely those who tread paths hurtfully, with cruel intention.

There is nothing innate

to the search for wizardry.

There is nothing with

what can it even mean

to say that there is an abomination against

the natural order of the world.

If it exists, then within nature's order, it must hurt enough, Ren.

Walk in the halls I have walked.

See the things I have seen.

and tell me

that the poison of wizards does not spread so quickly as to choke the life from this world.

The hour grows late.

What salvation are you hoping to find?

I am hoping to find

two hands

turned away from weapons of war,

of conquest and control,

reaching to hold in and of themselves the other.

Hands cannot hold forever, Ren.

And choices must be made.

The light fades.

And you see Ren

in the water, her reflection of the time she came here, her brow wrinkled with fear.

What was she afraid of?

You hear the ticking of a clock.

A tower surrounded by endless white sand, snow falling gently.

A rift.

Shattered glass.

An ending

from beyond which there can be no return.

I know the stakes now.

For all of my youth and inexperience,

the things I don't know and my mistakes thus far, I have a clarity of purpose at least, and I have the powers of one of the greatest stations

in this world.

I will

find these tools that I need.

I will find my friends.

They'll come with me.

I have so little time and so much to do but I will get it done.

That's what a witch does.

There is nothing.

that cannot be fixed by hard work

and care.

And I am filled with the aptitude, the experience, and the knowledge, and heart for both.

I run upstairs.

Tools at your disposal.

You refresh your supplies, your herbalism kit, those things you need to cast what spells you can.

Gathering what you can to your aid.

You feel the house filling you with power.

You level up.

Uh-oh.

Third level.

Night falls.

The fox awakens, comes to help you, even just providing comfort on your lap.

Ursulan never arrives.

And neither does Suvi.

You find

resting on a desk of Grandmother Wren's is correspondence with the wizard's stone.

A flawless sapphire.

In the correspondence, you see

beloved words of kindness between a wizard and a witch.

Great workings of magic

when things that the world has conspired to keep apart instead come together.

You see

talk of a flawless sapphire from a young man named Gult.

And you see an enchantment

as the two of them correspond and speak of

Stone's acknowledgement that her life was entering a place of such great danger that she felt that she could not continue unless she could guarantee safety for her child.

You see the schematics drawn by a wizard with thoughts and critiques offered from a different discipline.

You don't see the messages that Grandmother Wren sent because those would have been in the care of Stone, but you do see

Stone's replies that acknowledge the thoughts and feelings of Grandmother Wren.

A pendant

capable

of hiding her child

from the greatest of spirits, and in fact, only great spirits.

That small spirits might be able to be befriended by her child and see her, but that great spirits would never be able to see her.

And you remember the shrine of Orima?

She put herself on mute.

That

also protect her from the scrying of the citadel.

Oh.

You see

various and sundry talismans and tokens, and also laid out on your bed.

Describe for me the clothes that you will wear going to the far north of this world.

Laid out on Grandmother Wren's on my bed,

under the watchful gaze of that creepy green man that always unsettled me so deeply as a child, but now offers comfort with his vigilance.

I find

a gown

similar in structure to my normal little red and white witch's uniform

with the long sleeves and the

tunic robe.

A longer skirt and longer stockings to go under it.

So light, like silk, but somehow warm.

It's all pure white like snow.

I'll disappear

in a snowy background in these.

Just in the way that

ermine

turn white when the season changes.

I fold it over me,

the panels of my cloak left over right.

I put on the underskirt, the stockings.

I tie the white belt around my waist with all my pouches

now which have faded.

devoid of color.

It's almost a little too warm for this summer day here.

You have the ermine on.

The day is fading.

The fox comes up to you.

You hear a knock at the door.

Hello?

Sorry, Aome.

It's just me.

Uh,

I came down from the shrine early.

Oh, no, no, no, no.

I was gonna go up to see you.

I go down and I open the door.

Wearing his glamour again, you see Dalma.

Dalma, is there anyone else that you can help enlist the aid of?

Any any friends, other spirits,

people from the village?

Folks from the village got problems enough on their own with

well, without having a witch around.

I'll be alright looking after the house.

Maybe you'll get a chance to come back and wake up some of the other spirits around.

I mean, Ren just didn't didn't need that much help.

She had you.

Oh, yes, that's true.

I can do that, can't I?

Well, Ms.

Ame,

I think you can do pretty much anything you set your mind to, just with enough care and hard work.

Do I know, off the top of my head, how long and how much effort it would take

to awaken some local spirits.

I don't know.

Give me a uh

a nature role.

17.

I think it the wilder spirits farther afield, I don't know if you would know how to go wake them up, but you feel like

well,

you're the witch of the world's heart.

You hear bees buzzing in the hives nearby, and there are some goats out in the pen.

I close my eyes.

I think

they don't have to be great spirits, they don't have to be guardians,

but everything here,

and as I saw in the citadel, you know, even unthings not of nature

have a spirit,

and I ask them

if they could help

I don't know if I'm gonna be coming back

or if there will be another witch of Toma or or

of

the council

I want to leave this place

in the event that I don't return to the people of Toma and to all those who need its aid

Can I ask the house that?

Can I ask the bees and the goats

and the trees nearby?

The wind in the village?

The bees buzz.

You hear the goats

come out of their little wooden plank into the pen.

Out in the garden, little scarecrow swings in the wind.

up above that rooster weather vein with the long

forked tail.

Talma looks around

and he looks out to the garden.

You see he goes

Elbeth

and coming out from the beehive you see a farm woman.

A dress of yellow and black, checkers, a white apron.

One of her canine teeth as she licks her lips is a little longer and sharper than the other one.

Thick black eyebrows, olive skin, black hair tied under a black and yellow checkered bandana.

She goes, Delma, you old so-and-so,

it's been too long.

That Wren was tired near the end.

And you see, he says, I won't have any words spoken against Grandmother Wren.

Not here, not now.

And she comes up and and says,

I'm awake.

I'm awake.

What's your name?

Oh, here, sorry.

Don't tell me your name.

What might I call you?

Oh, thank you.

Uh, Ame, Witch of Toma.

Witch of Toma, but maybe not.

But maybe not.

Well, we'll see about that.

And you see, she says,

I can smell it here.

Kitchen smells like a mess.

And you see that she walks in and says, All right, the village needs its food.

And you suddenly hear,

Aha!

I'd appreciate mightily a hand getting down!

And you see the scarecrow flopping in the wind.

Hanahana mohe!

Um what'd you say?

Hanahana mohe.

Hanahana mohe, yeah.

It's like they do a little.

It's the Japanese hiragana, and it looks like a little face.

Yes.

Little eyebrows and

eyes and a nose and a mouth.

And it's usually, it's often drawn on scarecrows or little

doodle doodle faces.

You see that the scarecrow, Henahana Mohe,

sort of waving up there,

sort of got the pole

on his back.

He's got, he's like, his sleeves are buttoned up and he's got buttoned-up pant legs.

And

describe what else, if that's his face.

What are the clothes that comprise

Henna Henamohe?

He's wearing oversized overalls.

They're orange.

And he's wearing

big ol' wader boots that stick out at odd angles.

His shirt is at this point just

stripey rags.

But

he always gets a little fresh stuffing of hay.

You know, every month or so.

And it's summer, so he's at his plumpest.

Dalma says, Moe!

Uh, and goes over

and gets him down.

You see, he pulls the little pole that he's off the ground and shoulders it.

And you see, he looks around and says, Oh,

oh, pleasure and an honor.

Oh,

I can't believe it.

I've been looking after you since you were little.

And coughs up some, like, what looks like a rock or something that's in his head.

Ugh, some hey, uh, it's a pleasure.

You see, he shows this this big floppy bow.

Oh, I used to talk to you a lot.

I didn't know that you'd be able to talk.

Did you hear everything?

What did you hear?

He says, ah, nothing I repeated to nobody.

I see it as I can't talk unless you wake me up.

Okay, well, see that it stays that way.

I have appreciated the company.

Crows aren't always so kind.

You see the Elbith says, well, Mohe, why don't you do what you do best and go make sure that no demons come in?

And he says, you got it.

And walks off.

You see, this sort of ancient,

a goat goes and knocks the pen door open.

And as the goat steps out, it stands up and is a burly old man who you see, he's got a little button nose,

two big eyes that are made even bigger with the spectacles on his nose.

He's got two horns on his head and a wisp of a beard with no mustache.

And you see, he's carrying a little doctor's bag.

walks out with this like little blue blazer

uh you see he walks out and says

pleasure to meet you i'm dr yagi oh it's an absolute honor doctor uh pleasure pleasure my understanding is you attend to the people of toma as a physician usually well seeing as your absence may be marked for some time i don't see any reason that i shouldn't help out um you see that uh you see hana Hana Mohe, Elbeth, Dalma, and now Dr.

Yagi all sort of appear as you've woken up the spirits of the yard.

Thank you so, so much.

The fox looks up at you and says, You know all these people?

Uh, well, I just met them today.

Did you know these people?

I'm an animal.

You see, Dr.

Yagi looks and says, Well,

I know you have your work cut out for you.

We'll see after Tomo while you're you're gone and try to keep the house in one piece until you get back.

Oh, thank you so much.

Oh, and I send a little message out.

I have a little scroll just through the usual ways

telling the people of Toma, you know, about our new friends and to treat them as honored guests and trust in them as they would trust in me.

You see, Elbis gets to work in the kitchen.

Hanahana Mohe is sort of like looking out around the garden.

You see, he's helping Dr.

Yagi carry a little picnic table out of a shed.

Dalma sort of laughs,

you know, cutting potatoes on the stoop of the house.

And

you hear the buzzing of bees, chirping of crickets, as you and the fox

go back inside.

I'm ready.

And I

I do I do leave a note for Suvi and Ursulan just in case they do make it back to Toma.

And I tell them I'm sorry and that

I have to go do

my duty

and that I love them

so much.

Hey, Fox.

Yeah, boss.

You ready?

No.

You gonna come anyway?

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

Me too.

Hey, boss.

Yeah, Fox?

I think you're the best witch ever.

And I'm gonna say that to every witch we meet.

Right to their face.

You are the best fox

who ever lived.

I know it.

I put down

the ceramic dish.

Hits the floor of the cottage.

You see

a billy goat spirit, a stream spirit, a scarecrow spirit, and a bee spirit all in your kitchen.

Looking out and nodding as light pours out from under the rug.

thank you.

I step on it,

and I say,

I am Ahme,

the witch of the world's heart, and I seek conclave with my sisters.

Frost, light, mist,

energy,

runes appear,

the spell work of the wizard's lie.

The light covers you and the fox, and there's a flash of cold and white.

All things occurring as they have been seen,

with perhaps one or two tricks just to keep the story interesting.

Ursulan,

you fall

and land.

Strange smells.

Unfamiliar.

Deep forest.

Wet earth.

Boots in hand.

Your glamour dropped.

Give me perception.

16.

Swamp, marsh, jungle.

Some mixture of the three.

Smell of rotting vegetation, waterlogged, thick vines, trees around you, unfamiliar, unlike a calm.

You are still within Umora.

Things are moving.

Do you stay,

one hand on the ground,

or do you stand?

I'm going to stay.

and use defined sense to kind of open,

connect with my breath,

and sense if there are other spirits in this place.

You spend a lot of time in a calm

forests, towns,

hints of the spirit.

They're back again.

Ursulan

has met spirits and he's met mortals.

But what happens

when one

melds with the other?

What happens when the spirit is trapped within the real and left to faster?

Urzulan's never met monsters

before now.

Things are moving towards you quickly in the darkness.

You hear them moving through the forest.

I'm going to stand and hoist my my shield and draw a wave breaker.

They smell like they were

spirits once.

Or maybe.

maybe something else.

The realm of spirits is full of mountains and of streams, of forests and stones.

It has its horses and its birds that sing.

It has its beasts too.

Not like you, not like the children of the great bear, that are named and speak and talk and think.

Sometimes,

when spirits become way shadowed like you, they are able to hide under human glamour, but not all beings of the spirit world are so fortunate.

What happens when a beast, truly a beast of the spirit world, becomes wayshadowed like you?

Sometimes they survive,

and sometimes their descendants live on.

Three beasts close into the circle with you.

Give me an insight to check.

Difficulty 20.

Fucking 19.

No!

Straight up, 19.

Roll initiative.

18 initiative.

Three shapes, beasts, charge out of here.

Your divine sense.

Oh no, you had your divine sense on.

So you can sense only their shapes, but not the environment around you.

As you stand, they

scream out, leaping towards you with long clawed hands.

I'm going to

bonus action wrathful smite and square up

back

and swing.

Go for it.

19 on the die for 26.

That is a hit.

24 points of damage.

What you see before you is a

simian feline monstrosity.

Something like a baboon and a panther.

If the skin was pulled back from the face to expose skull and blood and muscle, with wild eyes bloodshot with sleeplessness from a creature that cannot rest.

You see

green scales with mottled sickening splotches of gray fur, like a thing that is made rank as though its own scaly hide is itself a series of lesions or diseases that crushes it.

You see it leap forward with elongated arms, extra jointed, as though given some uneven number of elbows on an arm stretching towards you.

Describe how Ursulan destroys this thing.

Coming from below, swing up.

I think as the the blade makes contact there is that familiar smell of honey uh

that that ethereal honey scent that then gives way to just that

rank musk of a predator approaching prey

that fills both Ursula's

like takes over Ursulan's senses

and is communicated to this beast as he essentially I think guts it from stomach through up through the head.

The lead beast is immediately eviscerated.

The following two leap upon you.

That is a hit and a crit.

From the first, you take three points of damage, and the other one strikes you with a natural 20 on the dive, dealing eight points of damage.

At 11 hit points,

raking across.

You see that one of them them goes and sinks deep claws into your chest and rips a chunk of your flesh out of your torso from the.

As it does so, you see it pulls something off and attempts to crush it into the ground, smashing it over and over, destroying its own fist out of a sense of berserk fury.

It is your turn to act.

That the smashing thing, that's.

Do I perceive that to be just its own unnaturalness, or is it some how does that somehow affect you?

It grabbed something off of you.

Okay, uh, can I uh perception check for what it was?

Uh, in this, you will be taking your action to do it.

Well, then, no, I'm gonna kill that one.

Uh, I

want whatever it is back, so I'll swing on it.

23 to hit.

That is a hit.

Uh, 11 points of damage on the second strike.

You reach forward, and the one that is smashing to the ground has dropped its guard, and you behead it.

Wavebreaker comes down.

There is one left that is going to attack you.

With only one opponent left, this thing leaps, and you put your shield in between you and it and throw it off of you back to the ground.

It is your turn.

That does not hit.

It's a natural one.

You swing.

This beast leaps back.

You have a moment as it leaps back to look down at the ground at the open, bloody fist of this creature.

You see it holding the badge of the citadel ripped off your chest.

Do you hesitate in this moment?

It is your turn once again.

I do.

This thing leaps at you.

It misses again.

You step to the side and bat it off with your shield.

Not surrounded, not being able to be flanked anymore.

These things are horrifying, but you look at them and go, oh, this thing probably weighs 120 pounds.

I'm bigger than this.

I'm going to keep my shield in between us.

I am not of the Citadel.

Give me either intimidation or persuasion.

Give you intimidation.

24.

Whew!

This thing...

You don't think it can speak.

You think this is a beast.

This is not like you meeting other people out in the world.

This is like you've come across a yard with attack dogs in it.

There's like a feeling of this thing sensing you're a bigger, stronger animal and

backing down.

And it looks at the pin, it looks like the badge of the citadel in the hand of its sort of like packmate.

I'm gonna

sheathe wave breaker and put my hand up.

I am not of the citadel

in the distance, maybe like

less than half a mile away,

your whole world spins into insanity as

a wall of fire spreads across the horizon.

And you see a shape in the clouds above that, for a second, you swear to God, you see wings wider than the sky.

As a thing disappears into storm clouds, lightning crackles, and the edge of forest is just a light in fire.

The wall fades, but you see the dim haze of fire in the distance, now seemingly farther away, but just hell in that direction.

The beast cowers looking in surprise as well.

Do you know Kalia?

It comes back to you.

The speech of beast and leaf.

Oh, that's right.

You say Kaliya, and the thing goes.

It bolts off into the woods.

I chase after it.

This thing moves through the woods for so long.

It gets up to a sudden boom.

It stops looking surprised.

Ursulan, you look out over

ash and ruin.

An expanse.

You see

skies

filled with clouds.

And then you realize it's not clouds, it's smoke.

You look from a cliff.

high above

this jungle is perched somewhere high, high, high in the air.

Looking down, you see lights, towns, and cities,

skyships descending

of fire.

With your keen eyes, you look down.

In an eruption of flame,

one of the flags of Gauthmai

erupts of fire.

The beast

looks up and scuttles back into the forest, seeming to know another way to where it was going.

I follow it.

You move.

After perhaps an hour's journey, you cross a river, find a way deep into some canyons.

The sound of bombardment, of smoke and fire, fades away.

You're at the base of some kind of ravine crisscrossed by ancient tree roots.

Smells like clean water down here, deep earth.

Minerals have filtered the rain and a clear brook moves.

And you arrive as the ravine opens up.

In the deep earth, you see

roots of ancient trees.

And here...

Seemingly impossibly in this deep ravine with almost no sunlight, you see a massive massive tree.

Red leaves, blue fruit.

There are windows set into the tree.

A beautiful door.

The beast goes and

in abjuration, the beast cannot approach, but you see it snarls at you and head-butts you in the butt, like to push you towards the tree.

Stop.

The thing sprints back off out of the ravine, loping on all fours.

I turn to face the house and look at my shield.

It looks

the same.

I go to knock on the door.

Stepping towards the tree, as you step past this threshold, you suddenly see

grass on the ground.

This ravine, small stream.

This place is abjured powerfully.

Illusion.

The ravine.

Something keeps this place hidden.

You look up to try to see the canyon walls that revealed this place, but you actually see this tree just

in a small glade of the jungle.

Kept safe somehow.

Other trees around it bearing fruit, bananas, mango.

You see soft grass, this little cottage built into this tree.

You hear some laughter, and from up above, there's like a small tree house in like the upper branches with like a little string of pieces of paper, like of a kite's tail.

And you hear some scuffling up there, and a ball falls out and bounces across the yard.

And you hear some scuttling, and some kids jump down.

You see there are two

younger children who run out across the yard.

They look,

for all the world, kind of like they're related to Suvarin Kadbarica.

You see these two kids run out, except that they, in their black hair, there are stripes of white going back.

And you see, they run out and each look up and suddenly see you and go,

Mom!

Mom!

And they both run to the door as fast as they can.

I chase after them.

Wait, wait.

They get in the door and they say, put the illusions up, put the illusions up.

And you see that as they rush in,

you see there's a woman who steps out.

You see, it's sort of like a mid-30s black woman.

She's got like a gown on.

You see, she comes out and has a frying pan in her hand.

Get in it, kids.

It's all right.

She steps out, sees you, and says, sir, I don't know how you found this place, but please.

My name is Ursulon.

I'm looking for my sister.

She looks at you.

You're not wearing your glamour, right?

No.

She looks at you with no glamour, and you see she doesn't drop her glamour.

She does look like this, like a human with some features, but you see that she actually changes

almost like a like a lycanthrope or like a aware being.

She

changes into a more badger-like form, tall, broad, furry, looking at you and says,

Come inside quickly, please.

Come, come, come.

She takes your hand, brings you in the door.

The family's looking around and talking.

You hear them saying, Ursula,

and they bring you in as you walk into this tree, enormous, like a baobob, massive, massive tree,

brings you back.

In an ancient round bed with a quilt of patchwork, there is an ancient woman.

Hair of her head

gone white.

Grandma?

And you see a woman looks up at you.

A little bit of rheumatism in her eyes.

Ursula.

Ursula.

Her glamour fades.

A very old badger, lying in a bed,

looks up.

Is it really you?

Yes, yes, Goliath.

I'm gonna drop my shield.

Approach the bit.

Oh,

oh, it's the happiest day.

You see that she holds a very feeble paw out to you

and takes your paw in hers, takes your hand.

She goes,

You're so tall.

Weren't you a little roly-poly cub?

Well, I've grown.

I can't believe I.

I was at the citadel.

Did you find it?

Did you find the little burrow I left in the the side of all their comings and goings?

I did.

I spent a lifetime of mortals looking for you.

Did I?

Did I get it wrong?

No.

I...

Whatever space exists between...

where we're from and where we are

I believe I may have spent more time there than you did.

I came after you.

Oh,

I've only been here for

20 some odd years.

I'm so happy.

You see, as she hugs you and she says, I thought

it was so much worse if it was the other way.

I thought there was a world where you died at Starling Ford.

I thought there was a world where I was too late.

It's all okay if I was too early.

You see, she just starts sobbing and embraces you.

I just lay there and hold her.

You see, she smiles and says,

I learned so much magic

just to try and find you.

And

you weren't hidden away you were just a little late

you were on your way this whole time

I'm so happy you found me

I think Ursulan

holds

kind of even more kind of envelops Kaliah

I don't

feel only two days ago I found out you'd ever crossed over.

It.

It's...

I can't believe you went through all that you did.

I'm sorry I didn't.

You don't have to be sorry.

You don't have to be sorry.

We're spirits.

We're wild ones.

You chose to run, and so did I.

And I've lived a wild life, my brother.

My little brother, no matter how big you get.

I missed you so much.

I mean,

I cannot stay for long.

No, no, you cannot.

And there's a lot to tell you about this strange

world.

But

I would stay here a moment and meet

all of these people.

I

had kids with humans.

What?

I had kids with humans.

You're not supposed to do it, but it's hard.

You fall in love.

Multiple humans?

Well, I have an ex-husband.

There's so much to tell you.

Wait!

Wait, I'm getting up!

And you see there, you turn to see a weeping family of half-spirits behind you go, Grandma, no.

And she's like, she can do it.

She can do it.

I've stolen so much magic stuff, and I'm gonna give all of it to you.

Let's, this is my little brother.

I'm gonna pick her up.

She claps you, My little brother, he was on his way.

I lived a life of mortals, and you were always

on your way.

You are on the right track

blinding snow, whistling wind,

harsh night illuminated from wild lamps.

No ground, no sky, no mountains or plains to either side, just endless snow rushing past faster than the wind.

As we see the deck of the meridian, its frost-white blimp and endless riggings and ropes.

You see crew members hacking away at the ice forming on the ropes.

A alchemical artificer's lamp blasting out in the blinding snow.

The light barely helps the snow blasts forth as this skyship races through the Arctic winds.

And we see a figure tied to a mast so as not to go over in the sudden movements of the harsh winds move back to the helm.

Crying out the crew member of this, the Meridian, calls back.

Mistress!

We've just crossed the Boreatic parallel!

We should be there in less than an hour's time!

Wizard Sky will be putting down at once!

And we see at the helm the Wizard Sky, Abria.

Please describe your character as she is aboard her skyship hurtling towards the North Pole.

Suverin Kedbariket, the wizard's sky, stands in a massive black coat lined on the inside with jet black fur.

It is like midnight because the sky is not dark blue, it is black here.

And at that note from her crew member, she stamps her

staff glowing in the light and hectic

world around her once on the deck of her ship and I cast mage armor

and the light that reflects and refracts off of her over her if you knew if you watched the interplay of Aurora Borealis lights dancing across the invisible glass you would know that that is steel's armor

This is a wizard of the citadel and she is coming with all the strength of her home behind her and she looks out and forward and any bit of snow that touches her clothing or her face or her hair melts away immediately i will not be touched by this world or any other without my permission again

ship of the empire approaches the top of the world

at the coming hour

it has been foretold where witches meet,

the empire stretches,

and far away

the world of spirits waits and watches for what will come next.

That was Lou Wilson as Ursulan, Erika Ishii-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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