41.4 Obligation of Feeling
General Summary
Day 679
Starfield, Magdalena, Qing Chen, and I work together on finding a counter to the toxin. In this studious environment I see Starfield’s brilliance even more clearly than before - she thinks so deeply about the magical circles we’re using and how to link it all together. Some of her circles (constellations, really) mimic the night sky directly and draw power from the heavens even as she extends them with additional complications and contingencies. I want to see her with Tira.
Qing Chen is only present for a day before the spiritual treasure is born and he whisks himself away to compete.The vortex in the swamp is still so powerful that it’s too dangerous to draw closer and so many have gathered on the outskirts to wait for the beam of light that erupts from the condensation. Detoura, in fact, slows their rush a little by commenting that they ought to wait for the first rush of foolish adventurers to die before they set off. Evidently he has been treasure-hunting for quite a while in the hopes of helping Cantha, but nothing has worked so well. He outlines, for the youth, the five dangers of treasure-hunting:
- Many spirits will be born or strengthened along with the treasure - they can be a hassle.
- The natural danger of the other competitors.
- “Troublemakers” who are simply there to prey upon competitors, like bandits or thieves.
- Additional hazards that are born alongside the treasure - wild magic, traps, etc.
- The treasure itself, with its own spirituality that will likely be hostile.
- And so they will all set off after the sun sets, when both Qing Chen and Liliales will be at their best.
Day 684
The hunt itself lasts for five full days. At first, the throngs of people delve into the swamp and both the city and outskirts drain of people - nearly 3000. Then, the waves of battered and exhausted adventurers start emerging again, and some don’t. Some bring bodies with them, looking harrowed. Later still, people start emerging with some other treasure, enough that they don’t feel like their efforts have been wasted. Markets spring up to swap these lesser medicines, and this is helpful to our own work on the antidote as well.
By the fourth day, the returnees thin out even more and we start hearing rumours that a well-known group of treasure-hunters known as the Inescapable Jaws have been killing other adventurers and looting them. Their group, led by several Soul Rending Imperius Crocodiles, apparently met their own bad fate by ‘tangling with a pair of fae’. Other emerging hunters confirm this, and tell their own stories about this formidable pair of fae. It sounds like things are going fairly well for them, and even Qing Chen starts to make an appearance in the rumours…along with ‘lightning foxes’.
The rumour mill eventually settles on the favourites who will emerge victorious: The fae-demon-lightning-fox team, the Swan Princess (Mireen), or a group of otters who are making a very stealthy run of the challenge.
Close to the treasure, apparently, the world begins to feel strange and illusory, somewhat disconnected from reality. People tell stories of visions of the dead returning to interfere. People who have simply gone mad from their interaction with this mind-bending affect. It's an enormous collection of rumours for only a few days of competition, but I spend most of my time working on the toxin. I’m hopeful that our solution will be effective, even if it is not what we expected. Without the toxin itself to experiment with, an actual ingestible antidote is a dead-end but Ausha has led us through creating a token that might combat the effects of the toxin, since we know its behaviour. So we address the symptoms, rather than the behaviour.
One night when I am visiting Cantha to relieve some of her pain, she wakes. She wonders if I, too, have hope that we could find something to address her toxin.
Detoura will chase hope at the bottom of the river.
She asks if he is well, which is something of a complicated thing to answer. That he could play music still is a good sign, but she worries he will take too many risks in trying to help her. I can't deny that it's a sensible fear...I know exactly what sort of risks someone in such a position might take.
Do you think you can help him too? He is clinging to a past to fight the present. Last time, he was born to Wrath. When Despair seems to overwhelm him, anger is what pushes him through. Right now, he is railing against cruelty and fate. He is using what he was because it is the only way he can get through what he currently is. I’m worried he will tear himself apart with rage that is incompatible with what he currently is. He doesn’t need magic to fix him, but you seem like someone who has been around for a bit. Think you might be able to give him some advice?
Of course I will do what I can, but I tell her honestly that Liliales will probably have quite an impact on him as they adventure together. We spend the rest of our visit exchanging stories about our respective cycles.
I tell her stories about seasonal fae and fae of day and night. She is interested in our sleep cycles and how we inherit our songs. It is a good conversation, and I have the opportunity to ask her about their cycles as well. She tells me that the weak ones can’t survive and access other emotions. The simplest form of agony is physical sensation, but that is shallow. Real agony is wrapped up in everything else, and to experience heart-rending agony means you must also be capable of love. You must know the value of something in order to experience the suffering of losing it. If there was never joy to feel, the agony becomes dull and monotonous. The challenge of their cycle is how to keep feeling the other things while something tries to overwhelm you.
Detoura, for her, is the person worth enduring the agony for. She likes to think that she is the person worth enduring despair for. She thinks their cycle of fae knows love and happiness better than anyone, because they fight for every moment of it. It is a beautiful parallel to my own belief that I can only be so happy and loving because I've felt it ripped away.
Nowadays though, she says, the weak ones seem to have amassed power. She and Detoura have avoided their Grove because of people she describes as ‘The Overlords’ - one fae representing each phase of the cycle. The fiercest, most powerful, most overwhelming of that phase. They are rulers and dictators. .
Where is your Treeborn?
There are only rumours of their treeborn - ‘Ancestor’ they call her. But she went missing before Cantha was born, and the Overlords came after. The Overlords say that she was stifling her children, but this is not a universal belief. Cantha herself says she doesn’t care about people she’s never met. Temira must have been gone for a very long time, though I still hold hope that Magdalena and I will be able to find her and bring her back to tend to her lost children.
Cantha thinks that eventually the spirit folk will burn their grove - the Overlords have ruled over a dozen tribes with cruelty and the power of their cycle. All they know is inflicting their own pain on others. It is so strange to tell a near-stranger, every seriously, that I will do whatever I can to help. Here in the Dreaming, without any of the trappings of my family and clear aura of power, I feel powerless to show that when I say I can help, it is not an empty offer.
Cantha promises to help however she can to repay the debt of my helping her and Detoura, and after some minor disagreement, we settle on describing this as an obligation of feeling rather than a debt.
Shortly after I return from the Dreaming, the treasure-hunters emerge from the swamp and stumble back to our boat.
Liliales is in extraordinarily rough shape with a splinted wing. The wing, however, is not the most disturbing thing about Liliales. Something about his magic is disrupted...almost illusory. If I didn't know him so well, I might think that he was actually a very complicated illusion himself.
Qing Chen is in even worse physical condition, with a large bandage winding around his head and eye. Detoura is an accomplished alchemist and has patched them up, but no one in the group is a true healer so they have been barely keeping it together. With them is a stunning green fox-woman with two tails (Qishali) who seems in fine shape, and a young mouse-boy (Nestin).
Once we are inside the boat, Qing Chen collapses to sleep and Liliales reveals the treasure they found - an ornate brooch called the Phantom Dream Spike. It makes the area around it thinner between the Waking and Dreaming worlds. It helps haul people into dreams, so it is not something Detoura can use…not that Liliales would fight to keep something that is simply ‘handy’ if it could help Detoura's love.The fox-woman settles Liliales to sleep, but not before he tells me that he feels like he’s drifting between worlds. At his request, I scaffold an anchor for him to keep him here until he can integrate it better. It’s eerie - it really does make the border between worlds thin, and it has its own consciousness to it like a newborn creature. I assume that a spiritual treasure is something like the newborn spirit I bonded with on our way here - aware of the world in some way.
With all of the returned adventurers asleep, I sit in silence with Qishali for a while, wondering who exactly she is.
