WWW #21: The Taboo of Passage

This is the sound of Worlds Beyond Number.

In an endless desert of white sand,

under cloudless starry skies,

a tower of glass rises to impossible heights, a lone mountain touching the sky in the center of the desert.

Platforms,

some a quarter of a mile wide, stone and gardens, buildings and courtyards floating through the air in an endless dance.

Half of them spiraling up, half spiraling down

like clockwork the magic of levitation

of summoning of binding

the wonders worked by the citadel itself

the endless beating of this watch

of a city a university, an academy, a place of war, a place of study, a place of wonders worked and of things hidden deep in shadow, is disrupted by the arrival of 40 or more skyships of the Saraz Imperium.

One of them you recognize as the massive red dirigible of the sword of the tower, steel skyship, the one that you flew here to the citadel originally over a month ago, has arrived, but you see others, their dirigible balloon crisscrossed by enormous gilded ropes, ships' cables painted with thick metallic gold paint, and their balloons jet black, the black and gold of the Imperium itself.

You see that the Empire's ships descend.

Eight of the skyships fly straight for Haverward, and as Malakanth rises slowly, you see...

Each of those skyships illuminates enormous blinding yellow spotlights that swivel underneath it, like the searching of some deep-sea predator blinding its prey as they move through Haverward.

You hear shouts, some loud bangs of spell wands as Imperium soldiers rush into Haverward.

Some headed directly for the bloody carnival, others for the night market.

You see

the

police force of the Empire rushing into the base of the Citadel.

What?

What's...

what's happening?

I don't know.

Is it revelry or is it terror?

Hard to say.

You see Imperium skyships.

You see no wizards flying towards those ships.

You see no one firing on them.

And you see that the ships that are moving throughout Haverward,

searching for something.

If you stay at the edge of Malakanth's platform on your way back to Suvi's tower, you

look down and see some shapes of people being dragged off by Imperium soldiers out of Haverward towards the skyships.

Is this normal?

Suvi,

is this just part of um the Empire's thing?

Is this this is normal?

No, no, of course not.

Uh,

as you look to me, uh,

as you look to me, Abria, to ask, is this normal?

I have to ask what you mean by normal.

Has this, are you asking, has this happened before?

Uh, is this an occurrence that has happened with enough frequency that Suvi would not be aghast at being close to it.

Once again, towards the end of one of our arcs, you are asking me what you can accommodate and reconcile with what you have seen before.

The Citadel is a part of the Empire, and these are Empire soldiers.

And

to make it through the glass of the Erian, they followed Steele's ship here.

And you see that a number of the skyships here are Citadel ships as well.

Their balloons red and blue, brighter colors indicating perhaps the wizard who actually owns that ship and oversees its crew.

Empire soldiers come to the Citadel.

Ministers of the Crown walk Malakanth court from time to time.

They do not busy themselves greatly.

It's easier for the Wizards of the Citadel to visit the Crown itself than, you know, vice versa.

And the Crown tends to like the Wizards of the Citadel coming to them rather than the other way around.

But you've seen arrests before.

Haverward has a police force.

That police force is of the Empire in the same way that in a town totally dominated by a university, the police force would still theoretically answer to the state, even if the university had tremendous sway and power and providence over how and where they were policed.

This is not normal.

This is very much not normal.

This is a huge deviation from the norm.

But if you are asking yourself what in principle is different here,

then once again, the word principle goes to work in your mind.

You've seen arrests before.

You've seen Empire soldiers before.

Those Empire soldiers often arrive here by skyship.

What is happening now other than Empire soldiers arriving at a place of and within the Empire on skyships that they used to travel?

And a voice in your head is able to talk you down from the horror you are seeing.

It's definitely the difference between looking up and seeing

helicopters and being in proximity to a raid.

So I think, yeah, there is that initial like burst of panic and confusion on Suvi's face as

this happens.

And then,

yeah, the justification machine goes into effect.

This is a raid.

Of course, that would be like...

Haverward would be where the raid takes place.

It's just a weird coincidence that we happen to be this close.

And whatever is happening needed to happen, has been signed off on by people I respect and trust, still at the literal forefront.

And it's

a little

gauche, but fine, is where she lands.

Like, oh,

okay.

Is something going on?

They must be looking for

something.

They'll find it.

There's a lot of people

in Haverward.

Some sort of enemy of the Empire?

That's the best I can imagine.

Maybe what's something they learned at Fort Kieran.

But they're going into the carnival.

Yeah, well.

Ame.

On your passive perception, which I believe is higher than a 20.

Yes.

you

look and see the massive gates that always radiate a little bit of orange light, the ones that go to Cairo and to other cities of the Empire beyond, where the vast majority of like that basically

makes the citadel within the boundaries of like arable farmland and water and things like that.

You watch skyships descend near those gates, and the orange light fades

as the gates are shut.

Why are the gates being shut?

A lockdown.

If they're looking for someone, they have to make sure that person can't leave easily.

Oh,

I see.

Why are there so many of them, though?

Is it a whole bunch of people?

What are they looking for?

Where's Steel?

And I'm just going to point up to the big red dirigible.

That dirigible

you see heads to and is docking at the far pier.

So you guys are at Malakanth, quite close to Suvi's tower.

Steel, there's the Tower of the Sword, but you also see that some of the lights of buildings that by this point midnight would already have closed for the night.

You see that at the Pyrrheon dome, there's like a couple of lights still lit.

It looks like the Empire's work will not sleep tonight.

Suvi, do we believe this will impact Ahme's ability to travel back to Tomo?

Uh

possibly, but no,

we can leave.

We'll have whatever needs to be.

Actually, let's go find out.

Come on.

Walking swiftly from this place, you, Ursula, I think you look over as well and see the skyships.

Two other Imperial skyships a company steals headed for Malakanth.

Some of the courts are not getting any skyship action.

Two Imperial skyships go straight for Gavril.

You see there are two, there's a couple other courts.

Every court we have described you guys going to gets at least one skyship.

So you see that one of them goes to Zhao and two more go to Gabani.

Close as you are to the Tower of the Glove, do you go there first or do you go elsewhere in Malaketh?

There was nothing important we needed

from

my tower, right?

You had asked for a number of things.

You had asked for Pomeroy to send a list of the paintings that Grandmother Wren had taken.

That was to be brought to the Tower of the Glove.

Suvi, you had asked for books on the Accordati and Antivole, books about the stranger,

and you had also asked for news of Ghost and Flickr, all of which you gave to the page Yulia.

Ursulan, you had asked for a similar shirt.

All of that feels like it can keep for a second, right?

Or do you want to go grab it now?

The opportunity to speak to Steel seems more pressing.

I agree.

There's something in me that

wants to completely be prepared for anything, to grab anything that might be needed.

I don't know what's going on, and frankly, I'm a little nervous about it.

But I

think we should go talk to Steel.

Yes.

All right.

Uh, you arrive at the Tower of the Sword.

Um.

Can I stop everyone before we go inside?

Yeah.

Oh, we're making mention of our intentions to go to Toma.

We know that they will not allow you, based on what the Wizard Sly said.

Oh, uh,

well, I'm a fully named mage, so I'm pretty sure I can do what I want.

Yeah, so no need to uh tell them.

Yes,

it's more for me.

I just want to make sure I don't say that.

Oh, no, you're good.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah.

I'm bad at lying, so I'm just gonna.

Abstain from telling the truth.

Yeah.

You approach the Tower of the Sword.

Massive white stone, crawling vines.

At the top of the Tower of the Sword, you see

two massive balconies that raise out to either side, much like the cross guard of a blade itself.

A

rope bridge descends sloping down anchored to one of those cross guard half bridges from the skyship itself at the very top of the tower steel's offices are alight and busy with activity you see at the top there are not only soldiers with war staves up at those balconies you see several wizards just flying and hovering over the top of the tower who have clocked your approach and see you at the base of the tower

There is a ton of activity.

The front door is open with soldiers sort of coming out of Steel's tower, headed about, beginning patrols throughout Malakanth.

As they do so,

what do you say on your approach, Subhi?

I'm just going to try to flag down a soldier to get an early warning on what's happening.

Hey,

hey, what's what?

What is happening?

You speak to an Imperial soldier, and you see he says,

There has been a discovery of several malefactors hidden within the citadel.

None of them are expected to live or be within the clearance of Malakanth itself.

However, many of them have had access

to some wizards within this place, or more importantly, their research.

So patrols are going out to warn those wizards that there may have been a contamination or compromise.

I hope that helps, Wizards Guy.

Yes, thank you.

You notice that he's not said too, it's a very vague, there's no like mission compromising stuff.

He's basically like,

you see a perfect answer for, don't be worried.

All the wizards should feel very special and respected, but we're not really going to tell you what we're doing.

Like, like, if you're important, you'll be safe.

You're important.

Pat, pat, pat.

Not that he's giving that, not that he decided to get that answer, but you can see communicated through him a very carefully crafted answer

given to you to assuage what they think wizards would be worried about, which is what's going to happen to them.

Oh, I'm really bad that all of Supi's thoughts are, well, the nice thing is that soldier knew who I was and didn't have any extra information for me, so I'm okay.

Oh,

shit!

It's the right message, and this is how we are.

Oh!

Does

am I aware of like any like page, like page or pages, like people,

small runners and gophers for steel?

There is a mage knight

down at the base of the tower.

You can see in the front room talking to Sonder kind of calmly.

She is six foot eight, this enormous kind of

she has her skin has kind of a a slate mineral gray tint to it from years of enchantment to make herself more stony and she has like basically a permanent stone skin spell on her

she's got thick square jaw um like a kind of very feminine like smile for having such like a wide set jaw like long eyelashes but a big

shaven head with a couple scars and nicks on it.

She's got golden armor similar to steel that has like a helmet in her hand.

But she's just enormous, burly.

This is the wizard slate.

As you approach, you see two soldiers.

They aren't barring your path, but they are standing to bar the path.

And as you approach, they say, Wizard Skye, I'm afraid at the moment the...

And you see that the Wizard Slate says...

One moment, gentlemen, and beckons you to come into the room.

Wizard Skye, hello.

Congratulations on your name cloaking.

I'm sorry that the knight finds things so

heavily in turmoil.

You see, Sonder puts a little hand on your arm and says, Sky, good to see you.

Hi.

Hi.

Things are a little crazy right now.

Are you dropping by just to see what's going on?

Yes.

Everything's going to be okay.

You should probably head on back to the tower because

Steele's going to be pretty busy until everything's taken care of.

You see, Slate looks and says, If you'd like a,

you see, turns to Sandra and kind of corrects the civilian talking and was like, You shouldn't head back.

I'd be happy to escort you back right now

to your tower.

Are you coming in just to check on what's going on, or did you have any updates?

Update?

No.

I just wanted to check.

What are they looking for?

Oh, that

give me an insight check.

That's a 23.

The wizard Slate turns to you

and

you immediately are kicked into like which training overdrive you've stepped in it.

Not your question to ask.

And you, you know, the Wizard Slate looks at you

and immediately you know that she's going to have a conversation with someone else about you after this interaction that will make your life harder because you asked, who are you looking for?

This seems, this is, I've never seen so many soldiers, and everything's

there's so many noises, and it's very much

a lot.

Please forgive the Witch of Toma.

She very much needs to return home.

So, my questions were more for

if we are locking down in order to find whatever's here,

how will that affect travel for the next 12 hours?

You asked Skye for updates.

Should she have any updates?

We did just come from Haverward.

You did?

Yes.

Ah.

And you, sir, what is your name?

She points to Ursula.

Bear.

I'm the protector for the Wizard Sky.

Ah.

Suvi nods.

Understood.

She looks down at the

fox, looks down at your familiar and says,

And this is a summoned beast?

Well, a witch is familiar.

He comes and goes as he pleases, really.

Not a summon.

You see that?

Yeah, Ami, you watch as Suvi saves you again having stepped in it.

You watch comes and goes as he pleases and a bunch of other soldiers turn their heads to look at you.

Just the implication that you can do what you want in this moment is making people

halfway closer to violence.

She says, stay here one moment and walks out of the room.

I am going to do my best to interpose.

Like if Bear is sort of on one side of us, I want to sandwich Ahmed just sort of turn in and just go, hey,

radical candor is not for right now.

They are worried and you are different.

And I don't mean that in any way other than I just don't want any extra heat on you while you're trying to leave.

Copy that.

Thank you.

Yeah.

You're doing great.

Okay.

Sandra comes over and just goes,

it's going to be one of those days.

Yeah.

But she's okay?

Oh, she's okay.

Yeah.

It's just, you know, you know, she doesn't tell me everything, but the, the,

you know, she carries a lot on her shoulders.

I think that

she was very upset not to be able to share

the names with you or herself.

Do you guys want anything?

Do you guys want some fruit salad?

We have some, I have some, I got some of that mint tea and I iced it and there's some nice nice little, there's like a rosemary.

I'll take some fruit salad as long as it's not too melon heavy.

Okay, so it is melon heavy.

Oh.

You see that?

I think I'm just putting my hand kind of on Saunders' like arm in like a comforting gesture.

Like I, we've both been very worried about steel before.

So this is a, this is a normal vibe of he is going into comfort mode.

I'm just kind of surprised because they just all came back from the war for

a manhunt.

I mean, sounds like whatever triggered Fort Kieran might have its roots here.

Give me an insight check with Advantage, Sufi, real quick.

12.

I think you just clock Ahme saying they all came back, and you just know that 48 ships is not all, and it's not close to all.

Yeah.

Oh.

Enough came back,

but not all.

Remember, the war's been in a lull.

So the first time something kicks up, they're going to send a lot of their preparations.

But did they not come back because

they didn't need everybody to come back?

They just needed 48 whole ships for some sort of manhunt?

Or did they send back that number of ships because

that's all they could send?

I don't know which.

And I think it's very obvious that, like, Suvi is swallowing down panic at the realization of your second option.

Slate re-enters the room.

Would you all come upstairs with me?

Oh, yes.

Thank you.

She falls in behind you.

Four other soldiers fall in as well as you all walk up.

Ursulan, give me an insight check.

19.

Woo!

Let's go.

You just get a bad feeling, man.

I'm going to slow my steps and so that there's so that it's Suvi Ame

a couple of paces myself.

Kind of so that those guys are right up against my back.

Every part of your

adolescence and the years you spent away from Suvi and Aame comes back to you.

You watch your two best friends, one of whom is the heir ascendant of the Citadel and its majesty, the other of which has just joined the Coven of Elders, walk with their

connection of twin purpose and invitations to the world and the stewarding of the world.

And you are flashing back to getting jumped and clubbed over the head, beaten, punched, and just this world of the real and of people putting hands on on you.

And just feel these soldiers behind you.

On a night team, which is a really good insight check, you don't feel

that

smelling salts, wake-up feeling of hands are about to be put on you, but you feel the dull, sinister smell of people who are ready for that to be an option.

Who do I get it most from?

The Wizard Slate.

Shit.

Who's behind the four soldiers?

So you're at the front.

There's two soldiers up ahead that are leading the way.

There's the four behind you, and then Slate is at the rear.

I think I perceive

the rigidness in Ursulan's back.

There's something about his posture like animals that are ready to bolt.

But I follow him up the stairs.

Up the interior spiral staircase of the tower.

You go many times.

Up, up, up through this central staircase until finally a door opens into a chamber that occupies the entire top of the tower.

And the spiral staircase in the center means there's this big sort of central, it's almost like being in a carousel where there's a stone wall, circular wall in the middle that covers the top of the staircase.

And then Steele's office is this sort of donut-shaped room at the top that that has multiple desks in it, swords, armories.

You see,

you've walked into an area of the Pentagon.

You can look around and see maps and wildly powerful suits of armor.

It looks like Steele has more than just her gold suit of armor up here.

There are spellbooks lining the walls.

This is a very intense wizard's sanctum.

It has the feeling of almost a reflection of Grandmother Wren's bedroom in terms of how cluttered it is.

But whereas Grandmother Wren's bedroom had poultices and trinkets and memories of adventures long ago, everything

here is polished, kept safe, bound in a wardrobe or hanging from a mannequin or put to the side, well ordered, except for those things which are taken out because they are in or expected to be immediately of use.

A map unfurled with little brass chess pieces holding down the corner.

An area where a sieve has been filled with water in preparation of scrying spells cast by war wizards.

Things are out and about, and this place is cluttered with people.

You can immediately see Steel standing in this room, looking uncomfortable with the amount of people that are in this room.

And you can see that people are quickly being filed downstairs.

The people in charge are Steel's warriors, these golden armored, white-caped

sort of sword wizards of the citadel.

They are directing soldiers down the staircase.

You pass a bunch on the way up, directing people down the staircase, but you see she's standing in a corner over a map, heatedly talking with a couple of people.

Give me a history check, Suvi.

You can make it with advantage.

All of us?

Actually, just Suvi, give me a history check without advantage.

Would love to crit.

And be like, I know all these guys.

Yeah.

Oh, these dudes?

15.

You do not recognize any of the individuals here, but you recognize elements of their station by what they are wearing.

So their uniforms are doing their job, essentially.

There is a much older woman, deep brown skin, a forest metallic green eyeshadow around wearing white pearlescent robes with high shoulders, carrying a staff.

You recognize her as...

a first you're like oh this is a powerful like high status guild mage and then you see that she is wearing an amulet of the Seuraz Imperium, marking her as the Grand Vizier of the Empire, the court mage of the Syrah's royal family.

You would know her name.

She is the Wizard Grey.

There is a robed automaton made of brass, clicking, whirring gears in the side of

his head.

You see that there is just, you just, Amay and Ursulan, you watch a brass man,

like a wind-up brass man wearing red robes, and you can hear ticking in him like of clockwork.

How much attention does he pay to us?

None.

There are then

two people dressed in black and gold that you recognize as being of the Imperium.

You see that there is some

member of the Ministry of War here, a bureaucrat, but an important one, like if not the minister of war, then like a deputy minister of war.

And you see, covered in medals, tall, broad-chested, is an old salt-and-pepper-bearded general.

Suvi will not say or do anything to disrupt the chaos in the middle.

And instead, if they are murmuring and talking amongst each other, Observant gives me the ability to read lips if I can see them.

So I just want to watch whatever conversation is happening.

Likewise with Ame and in my

just passive sweep around the room,

I would like to clock

who is paying attention to us.

Everyone's paying attention to you, but everyone has clocked you and no one's paying attention to you.

Sure.

Does that make sense?

Yes.

Like you walk in.

Like Steele is so.

And I think also, Suvi, you just know, you know, Steele.

She is nervous.

There's a deep...

Number one nervousness is just a deep animal nervousness of any wizard being like, I don't like all these people in my sanctum.

Yeah.

Number one doesn't feel good.

And you can tell from her energy, she's trying to end this interaction.

And right as you walk in, she says, she says,

The council will have assembled in the Pyrian Dome in a matter of minutes.

We should head there now to not keep them waiting.

Like right away, she's trying to end this weird interaction in her sanctum that she doesn't like.

And I think you can clock to that the Imperium people are what is making this happen in literally the first room that was available to them in the Citadel.

Where someone's like, we got to pull over to this gas station and do this right here.

And someone's like, and Steel's like, we're fucking, we're...

We're down the road from the place where this is easier and better to do, right?

You see her talking and you see, she says,

she says, we can go over, as you see her like reading lips, you catch her mid-sentence going, All day, if we want, we can go over these maps and show it to you, or we can go to the Pyrenean Dome and scry there and see it for ourselves.

These maps won't have any of the information you need.

And you can see on your past investigation, she is pointing to an area that is a hotly contested area of shifting borders between

Gauthmai and Ruve.

You see that as you guys come in, you see that she she says, Slate, thank you very much.

Please roll up these maps and bring them with us so that the head diviner can scry on specific locations.

Thank you.

The maps get rolled up and you see that some pieces get cleared off of it as well.

You see that the pieces that are getting cleared off of it are in that place.

Give me a history check.

11.

You see the pieces getting cleared off.

It doesn't strike you that that many pieces were on the board on an 11.

got it

you see that the attention turns to all of you in this space um as you look slate steps up

ah

sword of the citadel i present to you uh the wizard sky and her retinue you see that uh that even for you see that is formal um

uh you guys got company um

You look over and see the rest of these people here turn to behold you.

Steele looks at the rest and says,

thank you, everyone.

Prepare whatever you need.

Prepare for this moment.

We'll be moving to the dome in a second.

And Steele moves over to the rest of you.

Anyone who wants to can make an insight check, and you can tell me if you are focusing on any individual of this number,

and you will have a slightly easier time doing insight on them.

14.

And I'm only concerned with Slate and the four soldiers.

I'm staring down at the Grand Vizier.

17.

And Amy, who are you focused on?

Steel.

15.

Steele

moves over to you quickly.

You see that the rest of the group is that the Vizier keeps her eyes on all of you as you've entered.

You see that she is a very powerful wizard.

It looks like the general is speaking to the deputy minister of war, but the minister is also looking over at you as well.

Mostly, you would guess for benefit of seeing why Steele cares or what this is about, right?

Yeah.

And then you see that the brass wizard keeps his eyes on the rest of the group around him.

So he's looking at the vizier, who is looking at all of you, and the two members of the Imperium that are also gathered here.

Steele walks over

and says,

did you get the names?

I did.

Thank you very much.

I would love to have more of a conversation, but it seems like you are pressed.

No, no, no, no.

It's all alright.

This is going to be a scary time for a little while.

To let you know how scary it is,

this is one of the few investigations I've gone on where I don't know what I'm going to find ahead of time.

So we just need to be really careful and really safe.

This is,

you have your name cloak.

You're You're not a kid anymore.

Normally, I would give you a softer version of it in order to soothe your fears and anxieties.

I'm going to tell you the truth.

Uh, this is very bad.

Um,

the war is either going to start again slowly or quickly.

Those are our options.

Oh, that's both of the ways that could go.

Yes, there is no there's no backing down from where we are right now.

Um,

you mentioned that Ame needs to travel.

Yes.

Okay.

And it's incredibly urgent.

Okay.

Where are you trying to travel to?

Are you trying to return?

Back to Toma.

Okay.

At the present moment, it is not going to be possible for us to get you back to Toma.

If there's some other way you have of getting back there that is open or available only to you, then that's perfectly fine.

But I cannot guarantee the safety of any of our means of transport right now.

And I can't,

for reasons of the safety of the Citadel, allow you to have harm befall you on the behalf of the Citadel.

This matter should be resolved hopefully swiftly.

How great is your urgency?

I have three days to decide the fate of

relations with witches and humans.

What?

So pretty, pretty big.

Yeah.

Okay.

You see Steel make a face like

the world needs to take this back.

Like the emotion on her face is like, we'll take it back because I have too much to worry about.

It's like the emotional

face.

Sorry, I know this is a terribly inconvenient time for it.

But I am at risk of being destroyed if I do not leave imminently in the next moment.

What do you

describe?

Describe the risk first.

Tell me the danger you're in and then the conditions that trigger it.

I have to speak with my sisters.

The coven.

The coven.

I realize in this moment that she doesn't know about the coven of elders.

I am a representative for

human and witch relations, I suppose you could call it.

And I need to speak with the other most powerful witches in the world.

I have inherited Grandmother Wren's responsibilities, and now it is incumbent upon me to represent her and

the station of the witch of the world's heart.

And I have to do it in three days.

Um,

okay.

Ame.

I.

You see that people are getting ready to go to the Pyrian dome behind her.

You see, she says, I'm going to need you to,

we need to be able to talk tactically here.

So have-tos and musts,

there's a huge spectrum of what those words mean when we're talking about magic.

You could be saying must as in you are magically compelled to.

You could be saying must as in there is a bad situation that happens if you don't.

So we need to be as clear as crystal right now.

When you say that you have to, what does that mean?

I am not magically compelled to do so.

If I do not, I and the station of the Witch of the World's Heart will be destroyed within three days.

What gives you that certainty?

Have you been threatened?

It has been promised and foreseen.

It has been promised and foreseen?

By whom?

By these witches?

Suvi will just give you a look of a nod to say that mentioning a wizard is probably a good idea in this.

This is a knowledge that comes to me via divination

that I cannot

fathom,

but that I know to be true.

I okay.

Okay.

And you see that the vizier comes over and says, Sword of the Citadel, I'm given to understand that time is of the essence.

Should we not make and you see, Steele says, Ahme, can we talk about this tomorrow?

I know that time is of the essence, but can we please confer tomorrow?

Yes, we can.

Um, everyone, give me one last insight to check:

eight, sixteen,

fourteen.

Okay,

as the group leaves, Steele looks at you and says,

Ahme,

you are the new witch of Toma.

Far be it from me to denigrate your craft or to suggest that there may be wisdom that you do not seek.

I know a dozen ways to make a young witch see a vision, and it can be anything I want it to be.

So,

we've got to be really careful and we got to work as a team.

And we're going to figure this out.

And

I'm sure there is some spirit or witch or warlock or sorcerer out there that would have a lot to gain by scaring you.

And I'm going to tell you this right now.

The heavens and the earth could have put all their power into hurting you

and we'd stop them.

You see, she leans, gives you a kiss on the cheek, and says, we're going to talk tomorrow.

Nothing's going to happen to you.

Not on my watch, not on Sky's watch.

And

she walks out of the tower.

As she does,

you all, you see that the vizier nods to you, Wizard Skye.

The

brass wizard nods to you as well.

The general kind of regards all of you.

And I think you see that the deputy minister of war

almost like rudely does not make eye contact with Suvi as you all walk out of there.

Interesting.

Slate says, in the absence of the Wizard's Steel, this room must be vacated.

Please, downstairs.

Understood.

Is there any chance I could have made an insight check as the Vizier and those two Imperium officials were leaving just to clock for recognition?

Like, were the nods like

fellow fellow magic, fellow, or was there any sense of like recognition, especially because the bureaucrat did not make eye contact?

The vizier making eye contact is an acknowledgement of your lineage, you feel like.

The general making eye contact is a knowledge of your station.

You're an Archmage apprentice.

The Brass Wizard, you've heard of this guy.

He's a guild mage construct.

So he's outside of the citadel, but you know, some of those wizards do cool shit from time to time, and they made this guy.

Um,

and uh, uh, the

deputy not looking at you, you don't know that that is a true question mark to you.

You're like, why didn't that why didn't that guy

the general acknowledged you, right?

Like, weird, okay.

Uh, anything else?

No, I think we should return to the tower of the glove.

Okay,

escorted out of the tower of the sword, you walk back through Malacanth Court.

Small patrols, usually of three soldiers each, pass by, nodding respectfully to the Wizard Sky as you hold the staff of the Citadel.

Once or twice, you are stopped and asked briefly,

usually respectfully, to be like,

hello, Wizard of the Citadel, have you seen any non-wizards walking here in Malacanth Court?

Not unattended, no.

Very well, thank you.

And

what might we call you?

The Wizard Sky.

And this is your retinue?

Yes.

What may we call you?

Bear.

And you?

Ame.

And you see that sometimes they look down at the fox, and the fox just...

And you guys continue walking.

Very respectful.

Very short.

You are all asked your names in a very respectful way.

You move through this place and arrive back at the Tower of the Glove.

The Archmage Silences Tower has guardians out in front of it, but you see these guardians are the Archmage silences.

You see, there are two 12-foot-tall giants, beautiful marble statues that you recognized from a back portion of the tower that have left their posts and come here.

Two massive wizard statues.

Each of them turns to look and says,

The wizard sky approaches

and open the gates of the tower as you walk in.

I think you can see that Suvi has a little, like, a little, little bit of a grin that maybe there would be a different, lighter interaction.

That she's probably seen these

constructs before and has had

other, uh, had a more light-hearted

vibe, but schools it very quickly and just walks straight forward.

I'm Amay.

Hello.

Oh, the constructs turn to regard you.

What may may we call you?

You stand in the threshold of the door, and they cannot close the doors because you are standing here.

Oh, sorry.

Okay, come on.

The doors shut behind you, and you hear powerful abjurative spells

take their place once more over the sealed doors.

I normally give them new names every time.

That's fun.

Yeah.

What's happening?

We are in lockdown.

Yes, but why?

How is that connected with the war?

And in the tower,

all the way out.

You get to the Tower of the Glove and arrive.

You see that there are lights on in the Archmage Silence's tower.

You can hear that there are staff assembled here that are very busy with their own affairs.

And you look out and see now that all the lights of the Pyrrhion Dome are lit.

It seems that Steel has arrived there with

the Empire's entourage as the other Ark Magi have been woken from their slumber to appear at the meeting place of the Citadel.

I'd like to catch a staffer if there's any one of them within my AoE before we get

to my place,

just to let one know that I'm available to silence if needed.

Amazing.

You catch one and they say, very well, Wizard Sky.

We shall let the Archmage Silence know at once that you are

standing by in the Tower of the Glove.

Thank you very much.

Page takes off.

You arrive back at your sanctum in your smaller sort of sub-tower, where

waiting on your table are a big number of books and items that you all requisitioned earlier in the day.

Your page, Yuli, has been very busy.

I am going to ask for, so the things for Ursulan and Amay are simply here.

Ursulan, you see that there is a folded-up bit of green wax paper with a small note in it that has the address of a tailor down in Haverward.

But within that, you see a beautiful, long

white shirt that as you remove it where your fingers touch, blue seeps into the shirt and you realize that the white are clouds and that as they move,

it is a very cloudy sky that is being depicted by the shirt right now, as little seams of blue open up behind it.

Oh, blow on it real quick.

The clouds are banished away, and you have a blue

sky shirt that has been created with an illusory image of depicting the sky.

You can see that it

has been made to fit your glamour.

There is a small

note that has been delivered, you see, on stationery from Zhao court.

There is no other information attached to it.

It simply says

Kashali-Lamasu,

Ranbu-Frog Spirit,

Tatom-Forge Spirit.

And this was a list of the spirits who had been, Grandmother Wren had taken.

And you see in parentheses next to these names and sort of categories,

there are dates next to it.

So one of them says 1663.

Another one says 1657.

And then another one says 1652.

For the many things that the Wizard Sky asked for,

I'm going to ask for some investigation checks.

Yulia only has a plus one proficiency bonus.

She's still a kid,

but she has a plus three to her intelligence.

So she rolls a plus four.

I want you to roll a D20 three times, and I'll let you assign them to three different categories, which were the books about the Accordati and the Antivole, books about

the stranger, and information about Ghost and Flickr.

Cool.

Okay.

Do I have to decide which is which before or after I roll?

After you roll.

Okay.

Be kind.

Yay.

All together.

Oh my God.

So nasty.

Two threes and a five on the dice.

Can I also help?

Since I was the one that requested the stranger information, can I give guidance or advantage?

Oh, that's actually, that is correct.

You, I will allow you to give a guidance D4

on the whatever you assign to the stranger.

Terrified.

plus a four

bria

uh okay so with a plus four what are your how are you assigning your roles

let's give a total of eight to looking for the stranger

it's so sad the nine is for the accordati

and the other

seven

was for the third thing I've Ghost and Flickr?

Ghost and Flickr.

Yikes.

I'm sorry, I've made your very cool NPC incompetent.

No.

She's a page, plus four, you know.

Yeah,

what you see is the stuff she could get from Malacanth, which is one of 24 courts.

Yeah.

So it's like, it's like, I want you to find me books about advanced physics and get every book from the White House Library on advanced physics.

And you're like, ah, okay, we have Encyclopedia Britannica.

We have, so it's sort of like Malachanth has what it has, and that was the stuff that was easiest for her to get.

But it was more time.

This was just what she got on the first day, right?

For the stranger,

you have titles and honors, volumes seven, eight, and nine, which are huge encyclopedic lists of honorifics and titles for different spirits.

And there's a little note from Yulia in there saying some of the titles appear in entries about other spirits

in these encyclopedias.

Oh, she's so great.

You get a book called An Account of the Cataclysm of Caro from the Wizard Throne,

which is sort of a, you know, middle-grade history book about the cataclysm of Caro that sort of covers a lot of what I already described.

100%.

But there might be some more details in there.

You know, I get a name.

It's a little bit more in-depth.

It talks about the, you know, the differences.

And sort of.

Stop telling me I'm going to get information out of a social studies book.

I asked for a history thing and I was given a social studies book.

Come on.

It's like a big illustration on the front.

You're like, I need to know a lot.

Like, I need to go deep into the history of fucking this thing.

And it's like, it's like.

changes, a story of the past.

Like,

thank God I got my shirt before Yulia gets fired.

You got an 11 on the on information about ghost and flicker, correct?

No, no, it's low.

It's a seven.

Oh, ghost and flicker is only a seven.

Yeah, I didn't get double digits anywhere.

Anywhere.

Wow, but I was really excited there for a second.

I was so excited.

The highest one

was.

Social studies book.

There's a note saying there is no record of a ghost or flicker at the Citadel.

Oh,

I will flip

that note over and write out just, thank you very much.

You can return all of this.

I'm going to hand off

the names books.

Titles and honors.

Titles and honors seven, eight, and nine to you.

Like,

are there any sort of bookmarks as to where some of the names might appear?

No, no.

I'm seeing a no fine.

I would find that condescension.

Okay.

Okay,

that's fine.

Do you want,

is this useful?

Let me just open up the book really quickly.

Is this at all a useful book?

The interior of the book, it's a massive, well-kept grimoire

that

begins to go through all the various spirits of different realms.

The way it's organized is each massive page has like three columns of text on it.

So it's very like textbook style.

The pages are not, it's like.

written more like an encyclopedia.

You see that there are a number of entries on individual spirits and different titles that they have had.

And this appears to be a reference summary of a lot of other knowledge elsewhere.

So, the hard thing, I think, for you as a witch looking at this is that there's a tremendous amount of information here without context.

So,

you know

what,

like the Elm Lord Lord was called by the five different clans of the Great Gray Forest during antiquity by these different groups.

But you're like, and there's no name associated with Elm Lord.

And then you go to the next page and it's like the King of Elm was referenced in a marriage between great spirits.

And you're like, is the King of Elm the Elm Lord or is this a different guy?

Like there's, it's just very much like, you're, it's almost like looking at fucking coding.

Like you're looking at like, you're looking at a spreadsheet for something that to you would be best, most useful in like a letter.

Right.

I, I look at it, like I open it up and I flip through it immediately closing being like, thank you.

I'm done.

Great.

Okay.

Well, yeah, I will literally line up everything of like.

All of the books with the thank you.

You can return these note on the top.

Go ahead and give me an insight check, Suvi.

13.

You are watching.

There is just a panic attack on this desk.

You cannot imagine the stress that Yulia was under today.

Oh, yeah.

As someone was, as the first day of her new job, her boss was like, Can you get secret information about the most powerful spirit in the world?

And

she was like running around.

It was like someone being like, there's a tiger on the loose somewhere in our city.

And someone's like, I have copies of Ranger Rick from 1988

navigating the libraries of the Citadel requires tremendous skill yeah you know Yulia is a page she did her best job um I think you would also see uh there is a note left here as well from Yulia that that as you go to go to flip something over that says thank you the note from Yulia says

I can follow up with other librarians and other courts later

There were a lot of slips about

the stranger and the names you gave me that look like they were already taken out.

Okay, then I'm going to write a much longer note thanking her, asking her to return them,

and just giving some,

just some.

She isn't just my page.

This is like a mentor situation.

And just some advice on how to use tomes that are essentially indices and indexes and how to like cross-reference them and get better information later.

Like, great.

Volumes seven, eight, and nine are a good launching off point.

If you see crossover in places, you make a note of that.

And then go and you would want to go over to Zhao.

They're very good with turning rows of names into usable information and turning these into living, useful docs.

Never, never go to Malacanth for this kind of information.

Amazing.

You leave this note.

It's like

the criticism contained within it is probably nicer than like anything you got growing up.

Yeah.

Of like, you know, it's a very helpful set of information for Julia.

With all of that done, with these books sitting here on the counter,

you also hear a little chirping of the little jewel hopper cricket in Ame's cage.

You see, the fox looks at it and goes, well, hello, hello, little friend.

And he's like, what's up with you?

Can't be sure, but probably not for eating, considering that it will degrade magical effects.

It degrades.

I don't know what would happen to you if you ate it.

It probably wouldn't taste good and it might kill you.

No.

Okay.

Well,

dang.

And you see he walks out.

You see your little ink demons displayed over here, these books in front of you.

But all of you are standing in here as you hear the sort of humming and distance of skyships in this place.

You are going higher and higher.

The noises have sort of faded below, but distantly, you do think you might hear some noises down from Haverward below.

Okay.

Time to have a conversation.

It's bad.

It's locked down.

We're not going to get help.

What do you want to do?

Steele will throw all of the bandwidth she has left over, which I will be very honest, doesn't seem like a lot, but she does more with a half of a thought than half of the people in this.

It's true, but I don't think that she has the bandwidth or the resources to be able to get me where I'm going right now.

So we have to go.

How do you want to go?

We have the platform to go straight to the North Pole, but you want to go to Toma.

I would like to go to Toma.

Is there a way to do that?

Bypass

all of this.

What is this?

How many days is it by skyship?

Like, how far truly are we from Toma when not traveling in a

by portal or television?

Three, three, over three days, right?

Yeah, it took Steele three or four days to get here from, to get to Port Town.

So you can assume about three or four days to get across the ocean.

So there's, I mean, it took us several days to get here.

I'm not sure how we might travel to Toma, if not by gate.

All of the gates are sealed?

All of them.

She didn't say sealed.

She said she could not be responsible.

She would feel bad if anything untoward happened if we tried to travel through compromised gates.

To me, that wasn't closed.

That was dangerous.

When you say compromised,

this is a thing that happens a lot

in times of war.

Travel and then abjuration,

it becomes a race because the more you can move soldiers, the easier it is to win wars.

So it sounds like if everything is spinning up again, then the first thing you're going to do is make sure you can

hinder the movement of your enemies.

So there's a chance that if we use the gate, we may not end up where we we want to go?

Absolutely.

But we always have the fallback of using

the gift that Sly gave to Ame.

We can get to

the North Pole.

It feels crazy when I say it.

It does.

I mean,

it's funny.

I had never even considered the poles of our world.

That's right.

Until.

A witch is most powerful in her sanctum.

I have not been back to mine for months.

I have not been back to it since before I

understood my role as the Witch of the World's Heart.

I would dearly love to get back to it, even

for a chance to peruse items and tomes that would be useful in this interaction.

But

if

we have no choice but to go directly to the North Pole, then that is what we must do.

Do you want to stay long enough to have a conversation with Steele?

I would love for that to happen, but I know full well that I cannot compel a witch nor an honored friend.

I don't think that we have the time or the

ability to convince her of the urgency of this.

Well, let's run it down.

You have three days.

We lose 12 hours if we wait to speak to Steele.

If we speak to her and use a gate, that eats up one entire day because then it's a half a day's ride to get to Toma.

If we speak to her, then try a gate.

Beyond that, we don't have other recourse.

So what the difference between daring to try a gate now and in 12 hours does not run us against a deadline.

Do we know how

dangerous it might be?

What is the risk here?

Also,

truly, what is happening?

Ame.

The war is restarting.

But what does that have to do with a manhunt in the citadel?

What are they looking for?

Who are they looking for?

Why are there so many people being dragged out of their homes by law enforcement?

There are double agents everywhere, spies everywhere.

The best you can hope to do to attack the Imperium is to attack the place that creates its weaponry and some of its strongest soldiers.

So, of course, if things are spinning up again, you look in your own house while you prepare to walk outward.

I don't have more information than you, and I don't know how dangerous a gate is.

We have to talk to someone else.

I don't know.

Know that I am your advisor in this, and whatever you want to do, I will follow.

But I beg you

to look or wait for more information.

We have to try tonight.

Why?

There is

no time to waste.

And I don't think Steel can get us where we need to go.

Ursulan?

I'm torn.

But more of me stands with Suvi.

I think that there is information that Steel might be able to provide us

that could help.

That could

I

what we are doing

is very dangerous.

And I can't help but feel like we should go into it with everything we could possibly have at our disposal.

I do not

I do not believe if we wait 12 hours that our situation will be so drastically different.

All right.

All right.

We shall wait to talk to Steele.

I'm going to spend tonight packing and

preparing in any way that I can.

And I head to my room to pack.

Pear,

do you need time to pack?

No.

I'll be ready.

I'm going to.

I think I need to find out

if there's any update on silver before we leave.

Would you like me to accompany you?

Would you mind?

I will come.

Suvi and Ursulan head out.

Ursulan, you

have finally gotten these shields back to the tower.

You have this enormous tower shield and this unmarked, kind of a little bit tarnished golden shield, sort of archaic.

Do you take one or both with you, or do you leave them here at the tower?

I'll take the tower shield with me.

Huge tower shield comes with you.

You

head out into the night.

Ame, you are in your room packing up.

It is just as chaotic a process as it was leaving Toma.

I am just truly like I take a

knapsack and like stick it on the ground and clear

all of the things on the desk into it.

I pull cloth and pouches off of the dummy.

I start

pulling herbs and flowers and bunches of dry leaves off of the walls and rafters.

Again, I've been in this tower for maybe 48 hours.

Wild.

You have a little cage with the jewel hopper in it.

You have,

you know, the little poems written by the ink demons.

You've already collected so many special little things from your time here in the citadel.

And you begin to understand that

you've been here for less than 48 hours and your witchy instincts already have so many treasures to your name.

Given 40 years, what will your cottage look like?

And so much of Grandmother Wren begins to make sense.

And you're like, look at all the treasures the world has to offer.

And what if, in many decades from now, a little child runs through your attic with their friends and finds a series of strange little poems and a strange gem-like bug in a cage in an attic somewhere?

And will they know this story?

you may hear the cry, you fucking monster.

It's beautiful.

You see the fox with sort of with his ears back on his head, picks up some trash from a wastebasket and begins to put it in your

pack.

Thank you, fox.

Hey, you got it.

How you doing?

How you feeling?

Time to go.

All the animals here are fake and

I've gotten fat and fluffy on all this food I didn't have to catch.

Yes, you have.

Yes, you have.

He looks up and says, It's good.

The whole life I had in the forest,

I just thought, I gotta get

food.

Then I came to this place, and no one here has to get food.

The food's just around, it's just everywhere.

It's always within arm's reach.

And

it's good.

I don't want to go back to the forest and hunt.

It's

happy here, but there's no play here I don't know how to describe it

I got all these I got all these tricks to get food and I can't use any of them

well I think when you have the stability of of being able to just live and survive and even live well

sometimes that helps you turn your pursuits to higher things like for these wizards it's learning or in some cases

you know making their own fun

What do you think you'd do if you knew for a fact that you could have the food anytime you want?

What would you do with your tricks then?

Would you just do them

for fun?

To play?

Yeah.

The fox looks over at you, Amy.

You're feeling something, aren't you?

I feel a lot of things all the time.

Yeah, I can tell.

We can speak to each other like this, he says in your mind.

Spooky head voice.

You see, he stops speaking with his mouth and just speaks telepathically.

You're scared of something and it's making me scared.

I'm sorry, I don't know.

No, no, no, it's good.

I can smell things you can't smell, and you can too, in a weird way, right?

Mm-hmm.

I can smell what you smell.

No, no, you can smell things I can't smell.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, it's a smelling sometimes without your nose.

It's a sensing or an intuiting.

Yes.

I'm scared.

You look like someone who's just stepped

into leaves that are a little bit too dry and a little bit too perfectly scattered.

A trap?

I wouldn't know.

I've never been caught.

But I've seen foxes that were.

They all had the same expression on their face.

Is it like what I've got on now?

A little bit.

Doesn't make me feel happy.

Makes me feel pretty scared.

Yeah, it's okay to feel scared.

No, it's not.

Really?

I mean, that's how you stay alive.

No, but it's.

Oh.

It's good to have a feeling that you want to avoid.

It's good to have a feeling.

Yeah.

You see his eyes bug out and he goes, it's good to have a feeling that you want to avoid.

I'm going to lie down.

Got him.

You got him.

Got him.

Honestly, maybe the first time.

Straight up.

Straight up.

Hey, the people are on the board now.

People on the board.

It's kind of like Rocky, you know?

It's a victory.

Just the fact that we fucking got there.

Yeah.

Well, I think to myself about how,

yeah,

I have been caught.

There's a lot of things that hold me here, and not all of them are bad.

Sometimes some of them are good, and that's the really scary part, I think.

But I continue packing feverishly.

And I try to think if there's anything else here in the citadel I need to do before I leave, or any other scrap of information, any...

any loosed ends that that need tying up or that I can tie up

a jewel hopper

a massive

platform of tiles set in clay

clear blue glass cream white stone

orange clay all set in a pattern a platform to transport you to where you need to go

questions

Looking for books that didn't arrive.

People that are not here.

Friends below in Haverward.

A note.

Suvi's parents' names and a journal.

The Battle of Starling's Ford.

The word badger crossed over.

Grandmother Wren

let a spirit stay in the citadel with its true name and told none of her wizard allies so that she could come on three separate occasions to take three separate spirits from this place,

and a wizard named Sly,

who can see the future,

and works in a tiny office in a back corner of the citadel.

You look down,

a perfect sapphire,

the taboo of passage.

Give me an Arcana check.

That's 19.

Nice.

You've heard the term taboo in reference to Ursulon before, the taboo of slumber.

Think about the taboo of passage.

You hear Grandmother Wren's voice.

Do not set foot upon the road.

Something looms out there in the dark.

Crunch of leaves underfoot.

Some foxes only realize they've stepped in a snare once they're already in it.

Ursulan and Suvi,

you move away from the Tower of the Glove,

walking together towards the Pyrrhian dome.

As you arrive at the dome, there are many soldiers gathered here.

How do you address them as you walk up, Suvy?

I need to speak to the most important person here that isn't in that room.

And I want to point at the like locked room where everything's going down.

Yeah.

You see that Slate once again walks up.

Hey.

Skye, hello.

Hi, sorry.

You're having a big night.

Do we...

Where can I find any sort of list of who came back and

what's happening at Fort Kieran?

Fort Kieran?

You see, as Slate says that, it sounds like Fort Kieran isn't even on her mind anymore.

Oh.

She looks and says,

the sword's plan was to return to her.

She's been awake for some time, was to return home at once after business was concluded here.

But she has an office within the Pyrrhion Dome.

I can

bring you to her office and tell her once her business is concluded inside.

We'll be speaking tomorrow morning.

This was just something I thought I could run down quickly.

I know that the Wizard Steel does know of the events of Fort Kira and would be able to tell you it's up to you if you want to wait or not i i you see she leans in and smiles and says i doubt the constitution of the ark magi will see this meeting going much longer

very fair i'm

what's

what relationship have i had with the wizard slate

you're steele's surrogate daughter you're her kid you're you're like you know, I think that

the warrior wizards that follow Steel

stay close to you.

I mean, I think they all treat you with respect and some degree of kindness, right?

Slate probably started work, like came into Steel's employ when you were probably like 13.

Okay, cool.

Ursulan, you see with your golden shield on your back, that Slate Tower.

Oh, sorry.

With your tower shield on your back,

that Slate,

the moment has become a little bit less tense and sort of sizes you up a little bit and clocks the citadel pin on you

and

looks over at you, Suvi, and says, if you want to wait in her office, you can.

I think she'll probably be done in another, don't hold me to this, but probably another half hour.

Okay.

And I think Suvi, like, kind of lets go of a lot of rigidity and is just going to lean in with sort of an embarrassed air.

And it's like, okay, I was just, look, I just want to check and see if a friend came back in this grouping.

I don't want to ask Steele.

See, she looks at you and goes, aha.

Yeah, yeah.

Please don't make me ask her.

The humor of the moment mixes with some unfortunately unhumorous trepidation on Slate's face.

My understanding is everyone that was at Fort Kieran,

Fort Kieran sustained tremendous losses in the initial attack and that the forces that went to

liberate it have

sustained minor losses.

I don't have individual information.

Understood.

They're being careful.

They're doing this the right way.

They know Fort Kieran's defenses.

They know that it can't be breached easily.

And

if it's who I think it is,

everyone saw me kiss him before.

Yes, yes.

Listen,

I'm a married woman, so I don't, you know, I'm not.

That makes you more nosy, probably.

I got nothing going on.

Yeah.

Me and my, you see, she says, me and my wife, it's, you know, we, we, all we do is just try to keep.

You're in that age of right around when people get their name cloaks and go berserk.

Yeah.

And it's hard to keep up with, but we've got a lovely sofa and a crystal ball and we try to scope out the parties and see who's leaving together and, you know, come to us for the tea if you want it.

Yeah, I'm look, I'm here for that smoke.

Okay, this made me feel better.

Thank you for doing the nice thing of trying to make me feel better while also treating me like an adult with a name.

That's a very nice vibe.

You are an adult with a name.

I understand that things went a little sideways in Port Talon, but I also know how much worse it would have been if the Citadel did not have a presence there.

I don't know everything and how it went down.

I know that Galani was a huge help there, but I also know that Galani spoke of your help and excellence in that moment.

So

Skye, the Citadel is lucky to have you.

I think you will hopefully put another huge banner underneath a very important name.

Thank you.

Stay safe and get some rest.

You look like shit.

Oh!

You see, she slaps you on the back.

She's so strong.

Listen,

Suvi, are you alright?

No, I'm dying.

Kill her.

Avenge me.

You see, Slate says, come on, Bear, kill me.

Another time.

You see that.

She looks at you.

Give me an arcana check.

Please, please, Dice.

Natural 20.

You see her cast detect magic.

Very subtly.

Looks.

And you see a wrecking.

On a Nat 20, you even see a little rune of illusion flash over her eyes where she has clocked that there's an illusion on Bear.

You see, she goes,

Uh, all right, stay safe.

Um, are you gonna wait in the office for Steel?

Are you gonna head back?

No, gonna head back.

Cool, cool, cool.

Did you hear what you wanted to hear?

No,

but if he's there,

he's he's probably still there.

God, fuck, fuck, fuck.

It's impressive the way you

charm people.

They have known me my whole life.

You return to the Tower of the glove.

Whatever fitful sleep

you can

acquire,

you do.

A bear, where do you sleep or Ursulan, where do you sleep that night?

I think I kind of descend the tower of the glove, like to maybe some of the more empty rooms that haven't been as filled in yet.

And I'm going to train just with my shield now.

He's so cool.

Trying to do the same forms that I was working on with steel, but now with the weight of the tower shield.

You attempt to get that tower shield up, fight with it as best you can.

It's really more...

you see that the use of the tower shield.

Give me a

athletics or acrobatics check.

Modified 20 athletics.

You can muscle this tower shield around, but you can see at the bottom, the bottom lip of it, has a little thing for being inserted into soft soil so there's an element where you're not supposed to be swinging this thing to and fro it's and you also look and see

a little element of like a lip on the

on the right edge of the tower shield where you see that there's like a mirror to either side of it or when i say a mirror there's a reflection on either side of it of other tower shields where you see this locks into place with other tower shields.

And you see that this is really supposed to, like, you understand tower, this is a mobile wall.

This is for you to come up and use other tower shields to create a standing wall in like a phalanx of soldiers and see that this is like there, it's a beast to get this thing up and run around with it.

And it's awesome.

You're like, oh, if I was fighting in like a very narrow passage or something something else like that this could be incredibly helpful but you do you get the sensation as you're fighting with this that you're like this is architecture i'm fighting with this is like this is to like control the shape of a battlefield essentially then probably halfway through

this period i think he's gonna put it down and try uh the shield that ame found

uh you put it down you leave a little training area you go out um there is not a big martial training area in this wizard's tower.

Like, I think I've definitely pushed a bunch of chairs up against a wall.

You go to get the golden chair.

And this is the area where the fox found the sausages earlier.

You see a small,

as you pick up the golden shield, you see that there is a small little produce basket.

There's like some zucchini, some squash, and up above it, you see there's a few small cream-white mushrooms.

You look and see a little basket of mushrooms there as you hold this golden shield.

You look down

and the shield is undecorated.

It's a prototype.

You even see that it has

a piece of warm brown leather bolted to the back, but that the leather isn't even secured.

It hasn't even been like formed or fastened to an arm yet.

They didn't know the size or the height of whoever would be wielding this.

So it's just straps of leather bolted to an undecorated golden shield.

You look down in the soft starlight just coming in through the window.

You don't have like a light on down here and just see your face that looks so much like Suvi's reflected in a golden shield.

I think Ursulan is going to

take a break from training to snack on one of the mushrooms

and see if he can find some, I guess, a paint, just straight up paint.

You look around.

Absolutely.

There's a ton.

There's, well, like, there's so many ink demons and shit running around in here that finding paint is sort of no problem at all.

You find that there's a small area.

You don't find, unfortunately, any big bottles of paint, but there are many, many small bottles of ink.

And you see that they are organized by color and rows and rows.

There's like a small art desk.

It's almost like one of those writing desks that has like the flat panel that you fold down to create a surface.

And then within that are tiny little wooden drawers of so many different bottles and pots of paint and ink.

You can see this is for sort of intense scroll work to create like illuminated diagrams and things like that.

But you find it, and you know, there's lots of brushes that go with it.

You don't find anything.

The broadest brush you can find is like,

you know, a 16th of an inch across.

I guess Ursula will take an extended break from trading

to just slowly but surely draw a red tree with blue fruit kind of along over the kind of front of the shield.

I'm going to say, go ahead and give me a

this is I'm going to call this performance.

Okay.

Give me a performance check with advantage.

And I'll also say

that

something

nearby lends you a D10 of inspiration.

Oh, wow.

All right.

Performance.

Performance.

31.

Oh, my God.

Oh my God.

Woo!

Wowie.

That's the highest role of the campaign.

Oh, yeah.

And it's not close.

Well, it's, you know, well, I'll tell you, we're making like

10th level character moves with second level character stats out here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I only know one way to tell a story.

There it is.

As you begin to paint this tree here,

you go into a flow state of like creativity, artistic expression, that

your breathing just becomes measured, steady,

focused.

You are creating something.

It's similar to the flow state you achieve in training

as

you find the different pieces of paint and begin to decorate the shield.

What does this tree mean to you?

Where is it from, or

what is it trying to express as you create it on the surface of the shield?

Ursulan's been

trapped in

his own head so much today,

given the experiences they had

in the Cassoff collection

and the difficulties he's had kind of expressing and dealing with what

he has witnessed as kind of they got into the darker elements of or the more conflicted as they got into the more conflicted elements of the citadel.

And I think in this moment, Ursulan just returns

Ursulan's feeling so much about this world of humans and I think in this moment kind of just returns to those things that brought him here

and I think in the drawing in choosing to draw the tree and its fruit returns to Sukurin and that idea of honor and a quest

but chooses red to remind him of the kindness and generosity of Ame Ahme,

and blue for Suvi to remind him of her

charm and courage and skill.

Do you envision any heraldric symbols behind the shield?

Is there like a chevron pointed upwards?

Are there bars on it?

Or is it of a single solid color, like a field behind the tree?

I think a single solid.

I almost think Ursulan doesn't fill any of that in.

I think it's just.

Gold.

It's just gold.

You create the tree, illuminating it here.

And I think if you're avoiding heraldic symbols and symbolism, I think that the tree is rich in detail.

It looks like the illumination of like a children's fable.

There is something to it that it is like rich and almost shifts in the light.

It looks...

Do you make any attempt to disguise it as being magical or does it look like otherworldly?

You mean in terms of like the details of the tree?

Is it like a tree of the spirit world, of a tree of the human world?

Kind of.

Yeah.

You know, I think it is a tree of this world.

Yeah.

But with a little mushroom at its base.

So.

This shield stands out.

The painting on it is beautiful and textured, but does not immediately draw the eye as being magical.

It instead, in a way, almost harkening back to your time, like as the ogre of the actors company of JP Adelaide, that there is something to it that's like, oh, that is as beautiful as it can be just before crossing into the supernatural.

But then also there's an element of looking at it that you

that it's so it's so much more beautiful than a historical knight's shield would be.

It is illuminated as if a as if a painting, like rich in texture and detail, and a little mushroom at its base.

Ursula puts one of the mushrooms that he's looking at, just staring at it.

You create this tree, and you can feel magic flowing from you.

That so far you've only been able to harness your breath in divine smites.

You've been able to harness your breath to like fight powerfully, but you feel this place,

the room filled with the sweet smell of honey, the sharp Christmas of rosemary and pine, and a sweet, earthy smell of mushrooms as you create this work of art.

In so doing, you have lain some spell into this.

You don't know what it is, but there is a spell waiting.

The shield is enchanted.

And

in so doing,

you feel that inspiration.

You look out through the window outside of the kitchen.

You smell mushrooms.

For a moment,

you feel like

maybe she's about to walk down that path where I can see her through the window.

And then you realize, no, no, no.

It's not that she's about to.

It's that she did.

At one point under these stars,

your sister found her way to this world and walked through here.

And some piece of magic was left here all these long years to find you.

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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