Michael Chatfield
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Ilus Rises: Chapter 4
🕑 Added 2023-12-29 12:00:05 +0000 UTCChapter 4:
The sun slipped down from midday into afternoon as Petor and Valter finished up loading the cannons.
Petor checked the guns by eye as he grabbed onto the rope bannisters of the stairs pitched almost to be a ladder and climbed back up onto the upper deck.
Hi eyes itched, from the powder, or a lack of sleep.
Valter climbed out of the other hold opposite and pulled off his helmet.
“All cannons ready?” Mya asked from the helm.
“Hatches locked, cannons loaded and corked, cap’n.” Petor touched his fingers to his head in a mock-salute as he walked for the poop deck.
“Good stuff, we’re making good time,” Mya said.
Petor drew and drank from his canteen, putting it away to haul himself up the steps to the rear of the ship.
Looking around he saw the water all around them, turning back to look at the sails that covered the ship, stretching high above.
His stomach squirmed with the memory of being up in the crows nest.
Desari was sitting next to the navigation table.
Mya secured the helm with a rope and leaned on the banister infront of it.
Petor found a barrel at the rear of the deck and sat down on it heavily. Even Mya was sagging at the helm. Valter sunk down to squat on a chair built into the side of the banister that ran around the deck.
“How long till we reach where this plane reached the material?” Valter asked.
“Should be afternoon in three days. I would guess,” Mya said.
“Two on watch, two sleeping?” Petor asked.
“I can run the watch, don’t need the sleep,” Mya said.
“You got hit more than me and I feel like I’ve been battering ram target practice,” Petor said.
Mya grunted. “That’s fair. Closing my eyes for a bit might be a good idea.”
“We’ve all been fighting for nearly a day solid, all we’ve had to eat were those snacks at Irshon,” Valter said.
Desari clenched her jaw.
“Ain’t nothing we can do to hurry things along,” Petor said, trying to be soothing.
“What about Limos?” She asked.
Petor drew out the card.
“I still can’t summon him.” He turned the card over so she could see it.
She averted her eyes, the skin around her jaw tightening. So tightly controlled.
“Clean ourselves up, prep our gear, and head for the island. Once we’re there we see if we can get through and into the material plane.” Petor slumped forward, using his elbows to prop him up on his legs.
“What can we expect at this place that converged with the material plane?” Valter asked.
“It should have elementals and creatures from across the water plane and probably people and creatures from whatever is on the other side. Usually they are ruled over by powerful beings. Creatures that can face Mythical creatures and win. Passage will be expensive,” Desari said.
“How many cores would we need for the gem thing to get us to the material plane?” Petor asked, rubbing his fingers against his palm, feeling the power around them calling out to him.
“Less than what we needed to get here, but the interplanar gem had stored power. We’d need at least seven green grade cores,” Desari said.
“With all we’ve got we could cobble together enough power for a yellow mixed with green core,” Mya said. “Not that I’d think about using them here. Cores with different elements within them must go for a pretty copper here. Green cores will be hard to find and at ten thousand gold each. Yeah that’s a fair bit of cost.”
It petered out into the sounds of the ship at sea.
“I’ll take the first watch,” Desari said.
“Any of you know about guiding ships?” Mya asked.
“I’ve rowed boats before,” Petor said.
“Was more liable to sink them than be on them,” Valter said.
“I’ve worked with ships and been on them. Give me a heading and I can follow it,” Desari said.
“Alright I’ll take on the second watch, Valter you take first watch, Petor you look like you’ll drop and you took some nasty hits,” Mya said, a thread of command through her voice.
Petor bobbed his head and drew out his canteen, pulling off the stopper.
“Eat the rations we’ve got left over?” He drank from the canteen.
“Don’t’ think it’d be a good idea to be tending a fire right now and you’re the only one that can get a flavor other than ‘semi charred’ or ‘full charred’,” Mya grinned.
Petor swallowed and nodded.
“Alright, well then, I saw some cots down below. I’m going to grab one.”
Petor let out a sigh, drawing energy beyond the fatigue that wearied his very bones. Without the adrenaline he was flagging hard.
“Alright, so I guess I should give you the overview of Mesurial,” Mya patted the bannister.
Petor climbed down the stairs, looking over the waters. What a life to live—again.
His feet guided him across the upper deck and down another set of stairs into the welcoming darkness below.
***
Valter scanned around the poop deck once more, checking up in the rigging. The sails blocking Desari up in the crows nest.
Mya had headed into the cabin below the poop deck and Petor was probably asleep.
The wounds they both took.
Any mortal would have been dead a dozen times over. Instead they’d pushed the pain away and fought on through it all, healing themselves as they went. That took a certain amount of will and fuck you that few had.
He moved to one of the seats built into the bannister, right at the rear. The railing was taller than he when sitting while slit openings allowed him good sightlines over anything to the rear and side.
He drew out his armor checking all of it. He took a wire brush to it, clearing off muck and dirt. A chisel got off the globs of solidified magma.
Every few minutes he checked his surroundings, the sails drawing them forward steadily. The oars creaking below decks rhythmically.
He maintained his armor, then weapons, holding his hammers veins of heat ran from his hand into the heated one.
A dull pounding headache pulsed at the base of his skull. He knuckled it with his fingers, standing and walking across the deck, breathing in deep and scanning around the ship.
Valter checked the compass and the helm, reaching into his storage and pulling out food, he put it in his mouth, the familiar taste of jerky filling his mouth as his chewing slowed and he looked at it in his scarred and calloused hands.
How many times did we eat jerky on our hunts? Mushed it up for their meals as they teethed?
A shaking breath ran through his frame, unable to fill his lungs completely before he let it out in a single steady exhale.
It took a force to push away those thoughts that didn’t serve him, his worries and fears. If Xander was reborn again. How was his son doing? Would Xander return to the celestial plane to attack his family?
He hit the side of his fist against the bannister the pain a welcome diversion as he gritted his teeth, looking around. No one to have seen it.
Limos was unreachable, they were stuck on their journey. He pulled out the card, still not available to be summoned.
Just like when they were inside Sorelli. Being inside the city around the tear in the plane wouldn’t help.
Valter put the card away and drew out the book Irshon had give him. His feet carried him across the deck, checking the sea once more, the sun setting in purples, reds and oranges that stained the layers of clouds scattered over the world.
Plane. Valter corrected himself and sat down, pulling out a notepad, his metal book, and a pencil he set them on the sloped floor, the pencil going behind his ear.
Another scan before he cracked open the book.
Insights into smithing Mythical gear.
At a random place on every third page he dragged his eyes back up and scanned around the ship and moved to a different seat with his books and pencil.
“I’m going to need a lot more heat for this, and mana.” Valter held his chin. “Re-working that set of armor is going to be a bastard.”
***
Desari’s dagger pla7yed over hier fingers, flashing with the caught moonlight. Has three moons just like the material plane.
She rolled her shoulders and shifted, limbering up her muscles. The fights they had been through were the things that should be part of legends, or drunken exaggerations by mercenaries that would have run awawy at the first sign of no gold.
She spun her blade between hier fingers, around her hand and into a reverse grip. Her hand tightened over the weapon till her knuckles went white.
Her eyes caught the lines carved into the side of the crows nest. Crude ones to be sure, a few names, people trying to make their lives more permenant. Of course a few dicks, someone always draws a dick.
She leaned against the mast, looking out ot the dseas beyond, searching for anything.
The ship continued to hiss through the water, the waves calmed before the bow. The wind pulled at her as she drew up her cowl around her nose and mouth against thechill.
How many drawings had she seen on the desks and tables in her lectures. In the hidden crevices of the academy and city. Even the vaunted youth of the Ilus academy. Adults in their own mind, carving in their and the names of their lovers into trees, as if to lend it more permeance a timelessness.
She stabbed the point of her blade into the crows nest, testing the wood. Will blunt the blade and I’ll sharpen it again.
She pulled the blade free and stored it away.
Frustration balled up inside of her like a ball of impotent fire, her back arching to yell before she slumped back into the nest.
Nothing on the horizon.
She glanced down to the deck, the sails blocked her from seeing Valter. The man was reliable as the armor he wore.
Irshon had been her shot. Of all her elementals he was the most learned and was always gathering more information. Trading it with others that might peruse his libraries.
Re-creating the bond wihth him felt like she had a limb returned to her.
She reached out with her mind to the water feeling and understanding it iun a way that few could. As if it was part of her whole, even with a slight thought the water would respond.
Empowered with her mana a simple thought could do much. Adding in the layers of information that came from knowing about water, its freezing point, its boiling, fluid dynamics. The salination of the water around them.
That knowledge eased her control, increased it.
She turned her hand, the seas reacting with her, waves flattening out to mirror smooth, to be cut up by other waves.
Spells were a rough understanding, taking something nebulous and breaking it down into components. Through spells one might learn the parts that were missing, they might come closer to the elements and control something beyond just the stated power of spells.
Her pacts with her elemental friends had bridged that gap. Transforming her spells, refining them adding in new complexities with simplicities.
What a time I lived in? Where I could spend my days talking to others about the mysteries of the worlds and planes. Learn from books across the centuries and millenia. Secrets there to be learned and brough tot reality with but a word a motion and thought.
She’d had friends. For what would she call her elemental bonds when even in her death they sacrificed their power, a thing that was central to their survival to bind her soul together, to give her a chance.
She’d arrived in Ilus as a manipulation of her orders, a change among her superiors. Coming from a childhood where she was neither the strongest or the most connected and her life held in the balance for the game of heir-ship. She’d learned to play the games, the machinations.
Ilus, the academy and city state that stood apart from others on the continent. Her target, her mission. To gather informaotin and to understand the nation in a way so that the armies of the Empire could consume it, its knowledge and artifacts.
Piecemeal information threaded over years as she gained knowledge, becoming a mage in her own right. Understanding the powers that her bonded elementals gave her.
Becoming an assistant and teacher in her own right. A guardian of the very nation she was sent to destroy and tear apart from the inside.
“So damn close.” In just days and she would step upon Etera again. To be so close and so far and sitting in a damn’s crows nest doing nothing. It grated on her. Hurrying the seconds, the minutes, the hours ahead.
Limos who held the information that they needed couldn’t be reached. She let out a tightly controlled breath that came from the back of her throat.
She drew out the book that Irshon had given him. The book that had made all of the other’s eyes light up.
Theories and stories on killing gods
She opened the first page.
‘Even gods can be killed. The evidence is all around us. In this book I have boiled down the information contained within the stories of the fallen gods.
This information is hidden in plain sight, for to hide it altogether-not even the gods have that power.
Let me highlight three things. The AGES.
The primordial Age.
The Age of Heroes.
The Age of Unification. (Known as the Warring God’s age).
In the primordial Age gods were rare or simplistic. God of death, life, war, home, balance. More often the people that were revered were not gods but powerful people.
This gave rise to the age of heroes. Heroes were those that went well beyond what mortals could do. These people were idolized and they became the powerhouses, creating nations around them. Their people’s idolization gave them power beyond what they naturally used.
Heroes rose and fell constantly, borders moved constantly.
Heroes banded together and they grew stronger. Though there were more people in the world. They believed in a great number of things, gods around smithing, or cooking, or farming. These ideas and devotions over years created creatures born of devotion.
They didn’t have the natural might of the heroes, but they could use their celestial powers.
Heroes were stronger than gods though the gods placated them with belssings and their power. Uniting them together more fully. Then if the hero died they could live in bliss within the celestial realm. Some heroes grew so powerful, their idolization so much that they were able to create their own celestial realms and become akin to gods.
The difference between gods and heroes is gods are born with celestial power. Heroes are born without any power at all.
Heroes and gods came into conflict at the same time people and creatures started to move through planes and worlds with greater rapidity.
Gods spread their religions far and wide. They killed native gods and heroes. Heroes were a power onto themselves. When they died they could pull their souls away from the gods and continue on in paradise. Gods became stronger and started to steal their souls. Gods mortal bodies could be killed then with time and devotion they would be reborn. As their heroes and people died, their power would empower them.
Here are stories of heroes and gods that have killed one another. Faithfully recorded with additional sources so that one might understand. Gods may die too.’
