Part II
With a final multi-voiced scream, the creature in the back left the ship, or so Matobolus judged by the mighty lurch which forced him to grab the rail by the view port.
Glancing out of the viewport, Matobolus almost felt that he could see the creature's "back." Tamathus began to chatter. It was unfortunate that his Mindlink with the chaotic beast, filtered through Tamathus' own chaotic nature, often resulted in garble. Still, Matobolus had faith in the ability of the ship's scribe, Flatius Amensis, to take down whatever Tamathus said. Sometimes it could take weeks to discern important facts from what Tamathus said -- of course, this time they didn't have weeks, so he hoped that use of the Lhankor Mhy spells on Tamathus could produce faster results, if they were needed.
As the hours passed, Matobolus' hopes for something fruitful from Tamathus' Mindlink with the Chaos beast were not being borne out. Even compared to his usual low standards, his talk was gibberish. Just then, worse happened. Tamathus let out a prolonged scream, and fell prone to the floor. His skin boiled and began to pop, as sometimes happened when he was disturbed. Then all activity ceased.
Reluctantly, the ship's doctor touched the prone man. He reported that Tamathus was still alive, and did not seem to require a healing spell. After several hours, Tamathus woke up, but only sat whining in the corner.
Upon examination of Flatius' texts of what Tamathus had said, it appeared that the beast had not found anything of importance until what had apparently been its last few seconds of contact. Whatever it saw then had terrified even that horrible monster.
Oh well, thought Matobolus, time for our next trick. At least it did not require the participation of Tamathus. Their studies of the Godplane and of mathematics of Chaos had taught them that travel through Chaos could be possible, that they could be attracted to things or moments of Power. The danger of this was obvious, but perhaps unavoidable. They must abandon themselves to the paths of power, trying to see where Chance would lead them. Chance, after all, was master here. But most such events, out here, would be of necessity Chaotic in some fashion.
These paths involved a typically complex Godlearner assortment of mathematics, logic, spells and machinery. Matobolus thought complacently to himself, despite the danger of what his crew was doing, how remarkable the advances of the last few centuries had been, and how fantastic the opportunities that lay before his race. It was, after all, true that Man had become the measure of all things.
He gave himself over to his ceremonial roles, as the others played their respective parts. He could tell that the ceremony was doing SOMETHING, but wasn't quite sure what. Suddenly, something became visible through the port. It was a humanoid figure that seemed to be walking through the chaos. "How is this even visible?" thought Matobolus. As it grew closer it became obvious that the creature bore horns. It seemed to have hundreds of tiny heads strung around its waist. Only when the terrified captain realized that the heads, or most of them, were human did it become obvious just how far away the creature had been, and how large it actually was.
This miserific vision was so appalling that those of the crew who saw it wretched in horror. He remembered childhood tales that the even looking at Wakboth could damn you, and he was prepared to believe those tales now, on viewing what must be one of his servants.
The creature picked up the ship in one of its great hands, and placed one of its great eyes at the viewport. Looking at the little crowd of explorers inside, it uttered what might have been a laugh. The sound, if that was what it was, was as bad as the sight of the creature. It dropped the vessel and strode away through the roils of Chaos, as Matobolus lost his vision and fell to the floor.
He awakened hours later, to find that he had bitten his lip almost through. The sour smell of vomit and urine was in the air. He realized that all but one of his fellow crewmen was as unconscious as he had been. The one exception was Tomathus, who crouched in the corner gibbering and crooning to himself.
It took hours to bring the crew around, and to repair the minor wounds on the bodies of the crew. It was beyond Matobolus to repair what must have been the greater wounds on their spirits, most especially Tamathus, who had been twice smitten that "day," once by loss and once by awe.
Overwhelmed by despair and tiredness, Matobolus was not sure what to do next.
"Dare we try this again?" he asked. "We have no alternative," grimly replied
Fyrantus, "but we must rest until 'tomorrow,' if that is what we call it
here."
Another sparse meal, and another night of sleep, even worse than before, lay before Matobolus.
It would be nice to say that he felt refreshed in the morning, but it would be totally untrue. As the bedraggled and drawn crew gathered for the morning ceremonies, several of them were visibly reluctant to participate. Matobolus spoke briefly, saying that the only choice before them was to find a path of Power out of the Chaos, or to remain in it indefinitely, and thus to die beyond even the likely reach of Solace. The crew seemed unenthused, but, as befitted their training, accepted the Logic of their position.
The ceremonies took longer this time, it seemed: even though they were more familiar with them, everyone said the words and performed the actions more slowly.
This time, the completion of the ceremony seemed to have no result. But after a few heartbeats, the ship began to rotate. The stomachs of the crew, not entirely recovered from the previous "day," began to rotate in turn.
Suddenly there was a strange sense of "movement" and the ship was "translated" high in the air over a landmass.
After a few minutes to recover from what had happened, the crew began to report. It was not entirely clear whether or not they had returned to Glorantha. If they had, it was not the Glorantha which they had left. Although they could see the great shape of Pamaltela in the South, their Jrusteli homeland seemed largely to have vanished, while the coast of Genertela was different from what they remembered.
Even worse, some of their magics had failed. Others seemed not to work in the same way. Worst of all, the place FELT wrong.
Before them lay the strangest of all sights -- a gleaming red circle which they had never before seen in the skies. Tamathus fell prone on the floor, in a position of worship towards this object.
There was activity around the circle, as great shapes were rising towards it. Flavius the lesser activated his detector, and suddenly it became obvious what they were -- dragons -- and not dream dragons, but the incredible True Dragons. The sight of such creatures overwhelmed even this hardened group, who had seen Gods in Godtime, and survived the miserific vision of the "day" before.
The vision of True Dragons was neither beatific or horrific, but simply overwhelming.
Suddenly,
a great explosion blanked all the screens, and threw the little ship
through the upper Air.
The crew bounced off the battlements, except for Tamathus, who let out a truly appalling scream. Matobolus spit some blood from his cut lip, and cast a minor healing spell. A confused babble of voices rose from the crew.
It took several hours to regain control of the damaged ship and its almost equally damaged crew. All but one of the crew was repaired by the ship's doctor. Tamathus, however, was stone dead. The cause of his death was inexplicable, because he had less physical damage than any of his crewmates.
Luckily, they had been so far in the Air that the ship had not hit the ground. But they had no choice but to bring the ship down in order to fix the rest of it.
It was only then that they realized that the explosion that had so nearly destroyed them had done equal damage to the world below. Was it possible that the explosion had blown them to some other place than Glorantha? The shape of the lands beneeath them was once more different, mostly ruined, and there was a strange white orb shining above the land.
Skilfully, Setondal brought the little flyer down onto what looked, unchanged except for ash, like the Rockwood Mountains. It seemed safest to come into what would most likely be an unpopulated area, especially as the viewfinder showed many of the towns and cities below to be in ruins.
"It's going to take us quite a while to get this thing running again," said
Setondal," especially because some of our spells don't seem to be working."
Experimentation revealed not only that some of the spells but even some of their
knowledge no longer seemed to exist. The air of wrongness somehow seemed to
continue, and Matobolus somehow felt an ever-present sense of danger, as though
this world itself was working to hurt them.
The Lhankor Mhy priest cast his spells, which at least still seemed to work, and the vision of the end of the red object in the Sky became clear. After the explosion, strangely, TWO objects, together larger than the red one had been itself, appeared in the vision -- one a small portion of red tumbling to the ground below, and casting up ruin in its wake -- the other, strangely, a serene white orb, untouched and unhurt by the massive explosion that had just occurred. Even more strangely, after the explosion, the two mighty dragons had settled back onto the new orb.
Matobolus said, "If this is Glorantha, and not some chaotic phenomenon, we have
arrived at some great moment of transition, like the Sunstop." Fyrantus replied
"That should have been expected, given the process we used to get here."
"Well," said Fyrantus, "we need two things in about equal proportion, materials
and information."
Matobolus said, "It seems that most forms of sorcery still work, so let's use the good old sense projection plus fly method to get what we need."
"Given the chaos -- err, disorder -- out there -- we should be able to get
things without too much trouble."
"Two of you go outside and bury Tamathus."
Hours passed, as the several skilled sorcerors, Matobolus included, used their skills to study the neighborhood and to "appropriate" the necessary materials and scrolls.
Just before nightfall, if that was what it was (the disk of Yelm was occluded by the dust from the mighty upheavals) they had some success.
Japsus explained: "I found this in some sort of beehive temple a few hundred miles North West of where we are. The explosions and fires damaged the temple, so its defenses were down."
"What exactly is it?" asked Flavius the Lesser.
"Well, this is some sort of religious book, written apparently from the point of
view of a worshipper of some false God called Yelmalio. It seems to be some
sort of Sun cult, judging from the name and the religious views here expressed."
- -- to be continued --
End of Glorantha Digest V2 #681
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
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