Nautkia, and the South

[Graybeard]

"No problem," Brother Miguel said, not altogether truthfully. He could understand that Argus might be a little jumpy, but still. "Have you seen a black panther around here? Oh." He noticed that there was a spear already protruding from the tree next to him, and a puddle on the ground nearby. It had that distinctive smell of cat urine...

"That panther was our guy, Father Egbert," he said, picking his way around the spears. "We're definitely on the right track. Rose has him cornered over at the mission -- figuratively speaking, of course. We're worried about his death word capability, if we understand correctly your description of what the Arganials were saying. Some defenses have been set up, we're not sure they're going to work, but we think they will." We hope. "Now ... how are you going to get this decoy out of here? It's getting close to time..."

----------

It was also getting close to time for Lillith and her cargo of half elves to appear at Smuggler's Cove. Leofric had steered her to a well-concealed entrance to a rough cart path upstream of the temple. After a few bits of brush were moved aside, the wagon could move forward. As the road started to angle down the cliff, it offered a view upstream in the direction of Lorenzel; a sailing ship was out on the horizon, eastbound. Our deliverance, Leofric thought.

Nobody was in the mood for conversation. The baby cried briefly, to be shushed and comforted by her mother, and that was about all. The wagon started forward, and Leofric asked Lillith one last question:

"Are you coming with us?"

---------

Waiting is a pain, Sister Rose thought. She figured it was less than an hour now until the boat was due in the inlet -- which meant forty-five minutes or so until Egbert would need to be down there. It might take him half an hour to negotiate the steep trail -- unless he shape-changed again to something flying, or a mountain goat. Well, not much to do about that possibility except intercept him first. With any kind of luck, he wouldn't have regenerated enough mana for spellcasting that intense. Anyway, he'd probably be starting to move shortly.

A voice from beyond the door convinced her that she was right.

[Sareth]

"Yes," Lillith replied softly. "I want to go home. This is no place for me." She carefully eased the cart further down the path towards the landing. Her entire trip had been one frightening disaster after the last. All her efforts, everything she had tried to do... nothing had come to fruition, and she had nearly gotten herself killed time and again. No... She would go home, and content herself with just trying to minister to her community. "Nothing goes right out here," she muttered.

[Graybeard]

Everything started to happen at once, or at least that was the way it looked to Sister Rose.

Noises coming from the forest suggested that Argus was working on getting the decoy down to water level. (About time, Rose thought.) Down below, she could see the wagon pull around the spit of land on the far side of Smuggler's Cove, Lillith at the reins and a number of unfamiliar people in the back; the half elves Lillith was rescuing, presumably. In the distance, she could see a ship that resembled Argus' model, staying well out in the broad estuary rather than heading in to shore. Good; it looked like Lucy Kankaniel had understood the message. And from behind the door, Father Egbert sounded like he was getting ready to move.

She did not notice one of the things going on: a tiny, fairy-like being was flying into Smuggler's Cove and settling into an inconspicuous niche in the rock, far down below.

Well, here goes. Muttering a quick prayer to Luminosita for protection, she stepped into the cocoon of protective spells that she and Brother Miguel had erected in front of the door to the underground. She wasn't convinced that any of them were going to work, but they couldn't hurt, could they?

It sounded like Egbert had discovered the wards on the door; it was resisting his attempts to open it, and some rather un-priestly cursing was going on. Should she dispel the ward so that the man could come out? Rose thought not. It was no bad thing for him to be magically depleted when he emerged from the underground; it might afford her a chance to reason with him before things went pear-shaped, and maybe even a defense against his death word.

Maybe.

Finally, a loud "PASSWALL!" rang out from beyond the door, which simply fell off its hinges.

Puffing, Egbert squinted into the light of day, and the glow of the protection spells, noting a human-shaped form in the midst of them that he could not identify because of the backlighting and the blurring caused by the spells.

"Father, we need to talk," Rose said in the mildest voice she could manage. "We've been looking for you for a long time..."

[Viking-Sensei]

"Ok, Compassion said to make it to the ship rendezvous point... that something was going to happen, and that it was going to prove everything she'd been saying." Sasha looked down at the elven battle armor she'd nicked off the elf - not that the elf was in any shape to protest - and adjusted it to fit her more reasonable proportions. Then she tied her hair back - she was pretty and had fair skin, and with the pointed ears she'd recently developed, she might even pass for an elf (assuming that the person looking at her had never seen a real elf - and she was going to trade heavily on this factor.

Underneath her, she heard the cart rumble past - she confirmed that it had Lilith, as well as a whole bunch of other people she hadn't met yet... they looked like refugees, which meant that this was probably the half-elf migration the elf had tried to interrogate her about. Moving as swiftly and silently as she could through the trees, she shadowed their movements from above.

[Graybeard]

"There's somebody out there," Brother Miguel said to Argus. He'd seen a glint of sunlight off something metallic out in the forest -- Sasha's "borrowed" armor, but of course, there was no way for him to know that. A smuggler? Police/militia? An elf, heaven forfend? One thing was sure: farmers and lumberjacks didn't wear metallic armor to do their business. A saw, maybe ... but not moving that fast.

"I don't like this," Miguel continued. "Let's get this boat moving downhill, and if you can spare the energy, get some defenses up." But would Argus still be able to drop the boulders on the decoy? Well, first things first; in other words, at least in this setting, survive, then deceive. He started gathering mana for an offensive spell, not that it would avail for much against an elf.

----------

Father Egbert's eyes were already starting to glow, and he was starting to form the fatal word on his tongue, before he realized who was addressing him. The glow subsided and he swallowed heavily. The effect was as of a deflating beach ball.

"Rose? Is that you? What in Luminosita's name are you doing here?" he said.

Sister Rose let out an immense sigh of relief; she'd been scared that Egbert was going to ... test ... the defenses. "Yes, it is," she replied softly. "Egbert, we've been terribly worried about you. What is the problem?"

The concern did it. Egbert was near tears as he answered. "Rose ... Rose ... You were always the best of the whole damned bunch of them ... This is nothing you can do anything about, nothing all the priests of Luminosita can do anything about. I ... made some bad decisions ..." And suddenly, he knew what he had to do about them.

"Egbert, there's still time to undo whatever your 'bad decisions' were," Rose said. "Come with us. We'll do everything we can to help. We can sort out the bad decisions later. Luminosita's Grace covers us all -- and we all have sinned."

Egbert was in tears now. "No ... not these bad decisions. There's only one thing I can do about them. I'm sorry, Rose. When you get back to Kiyoka, or to Emerylon if you have to go there first, tell them I said it was okay, that you did everything you could, that you were one of the good guys. Of course you were one of the good guys; you always have been. And that's more than I can say for myself. Don't say I forgive you; you have done nothing to forgive. Rather, say that you forgave me."

Rose gaped, speechless, as Egbert concluded his oration. "There's only one thing left for me to do. Goodbye, Sister Rose; pray for me."

"NO!" Rose shouted, in a voice that could be heard deep into the forest, even down on the river. But it was too late; Egbert was mumbling a spell.

[Drannin]

"Well, basically, I'm going to shape the terrain around the ship so it basically phases through the earth down to water level. Sort of like a protective cocoon, but far more extensive. A rune I carved on the main deck will allow for some degree of piloting." Argus gave a quick run-down to Miguel.

"That's where I come in." Harker commented. "Can't do much, but I can get it into position. I'm indestructible, so no worries about surviving the crash."

"Afterwards, I haul it over to the cliff and just cause a major fissure, making several tons of stone fall onto the craft. Instant destruction." Argus nodded. I twas the best he could do, under these circumstances. "Now, I'll be drained and pretty worthless for a while after using so much mana. Still, I can pull this off." He was deferring his reaction to the panther's identity until later. One thing at a time."

"Sounds good," Miguel nodded. "Better hurry then, we're running out of time-" he was cut off by the sound of Rose's scream, carrying through the air.

[Sareth]

"Rose!" Lillith gasped at the sound. Before she knew what she was doing she had thrust the reins for the horses into the hands of Leofric, and leapt of the cart to run back up the path.

"Lillith!" She heard the call behind her.

"Go!" Lillith called back over her shoulder. "Board the second ship! Not the first! The one that comes after the destruction! I'll join you then!"

She ran up the path...

[Graybeard]

Sister Rose would replay the next few seconds in her mind, over and over again for weeks, months, even years, always wondering if she remembered them right, constantly asking herself if she could have done anything differently, never getting an answer that she liked.

Father Egbert was rushed in his spellcasting, so his polymorph was off in certain non-essential regards such as color. The impala -- or was it a gazelle? -- that now stood before Rose where Egbert had been was a uniform, dull gray. However, the color didn't really matter. What mattered was the way it jumped -- out of the underground passage, over Rose and her magical bastions, onto the landscape beyond --

-- And, with a great, decisive bound, off the edge of the cliff.

"EGBERT!" Rose screamed again, as the gray creature reached the apogee of its leap. And then she screamed something else: "SLOW FALL!" And prayed that it worked...

For a moment, the animal seemed suspended in midair, as its momentum carried it out into space beyond the cliff's edge. Rose even had the tiniest moment of hope as it seemed to flutter very slowly downward ... and then came the thing that would haunt her dreams.

Reality blurred. The gray antelope was replaced by Egbert's human form. He pointed a hand back to his body and gave a mighty roar of his own...

"DISPEL!"

And as he plummeted earthward, Rose would believe for the rest of her long life, he was smiling at her, to the moment when his body was dashed on the rocks, 500 feet below.

[Sareth]

Lillith had probably never run so fast in her life. In spite of the fact she was racing up a slope on the side of a cliff, she was at Sister Rose' side in less than a minute. So rushed had she been getting there she'd never even seen the drama playing out above her, never saw the plummeting figure, never heard the shouts...

Standing at the top she could see Sister Rose standing by the edge of the cliff, unmoving. She knew the woman was a veteran, that she'd seen action. Sister Rose was tough, down deep. But even so, she could see that the woman was shaking, pale...

Shock, Lillith thought to herself. And that was the excuse she used, telling herself that really she was just trying to treat Sister Rose' dangerous physical breakdown when she wrapped the nun in her arms and held her close.

[Viking-Sensei]

Egbert fell. Not just the physical fall - that was only the beginning. His body seperated from him with little more than a tug, a momentary sting as his physical form was left behind on the rocks and his soul kept going down... down... down. Past the rocks. Past strange skeletons of beasts the likes of which he could never imagine. Past hot rock, past cold slate, past all light and love and life's reach, into the darkness beyond.

And in darkness he remained - for an amount of time beyond his knowledge; possibly only a second, possibly a thousand years, floating in the void, alone. Cast out from Luminosita's presence. Still... this was less than he expected. "Well... that's the risk one faces when betraying their own God, right?" He mused, quietly to himself. Not that quiet mattered here, or that there was anyone other than himself to muse to.

After an undefined period, again somewhere between a heartbeat (if he still had one) and an eternity, he apparently nodded off, because when he awoke there was a blazing light before him. A woman... the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen... was floating before him, gliding through the darkness on burning white wings. "Father... " she said, reaching a hand out towards him. "...I have been sent to free you from this prison of darkness that you have made for yourself."

"Are... are you an angel?" He asked, hesitantly. "I thought this is where I'm supposed to be. I turned my back on-"

She smiled at him. "The bars of blackness have been forged from your own guilt and lack of belief in yourself. Close your eyes and take my hand."

He hesitated.

"This is just a test, like all others in your life. This, like what you took to get here, requires... a leap of faith."

Reaching his own somewhat squat hand out and grasping her slender, glowing fingers in his, the darkness disolved around him, revealing the bank of the river for just a moment as he rose. For a second, he caught sight of himself, dashed upon the rocks below, and a sobbing Rose being comforted by somebody he didn't recognize. But before he could speak, even to call out to her, they were gone... flying faster than he ever had been able to as a bird or a bug, shooting across water and earth, through mountains and forests, past a giant golem rampaging through what appeared to be Southern Farrel, and on to some place... beyond.