40.4 “My Girls”

General Summary

Day 680

Stepping off the bridge, we find ourselves in a mountain valley, with clouds above us cutting off the peaks. Weather on Rainbow’s mountain was so steady that we’ve clearly missed the full transition to autumn - it’s cold and crisp here.   Nearby are some very old ruins of a dragon statue, now crumbled and destroyed. The area around it is unnaturally precise in its barrenness. While the rest of us begin to set up camp, Magdalena wanders away, muttering about how the area used to feel ‘more sacred’.   Camp set up is strange without Trillium. I can’t help but think it will be a long while before I’m able to visit her again, but the thought of her with Mistress and Doraal is enough to settle the absence.   When Magdalena finally returns, we settle in for evening stories - apparently this was a place where dragon elders warred with the Zephyr for control. The atmosphere here is so close to the Dreaming, very similar to the point in the Crystal Spires where we could so easily reach into the Dreaming and Spirit World. Some say that this place is where spirit folk were first born. The dragons considered it sacred, while the Zephyr wanted to study it.   [Author’s note: While staying with Rainbow, Kaide adopted a new name based on Heiassa’s input and she will use it from now on. She is now Ausha]  

Day 681

As we continue to travel, Ausha stays within me most of the time to help us maintain a good pace. Eventually Qing Chen is shown how to make a shoddy pair of sky-walking boots so that he is able to keep up with the rest of the winged party across the rough terrain.   The sun is setting by the time we enter the next valley and find ourselves approaching a village placed around a large, clear pond. With my attunement to life and living things, I can feel no wildlife or prey lurking in the grasses nearby.   What would usually be a grave sign of danger turns out to be a very normal consequence of the village’s inhabitants - cat-like spirit folks who hail us with friendly waves. A few young men wearing open-chested vests and carrying finely made spears accompany us into the village, introducing themselves as Skyen and Alrule. This is the Stargazing Mountain Lion clan, and we are heartily welcomed into their midst.   One particular elder, decorated with scars that look remarkably like claw marks, is surprised to hear that we are heading for the headwaters. Evidently none who have gone there have returned for about a thousand years, the same period of time in which Starfield has been missing.   He concedes, eventually, that perhaps we are up for the challenge and that they would appreciate us letting them know if the path is safe again. Once it was a challenge for their youth to make the journey, but there is no sense sending their young folk to a certain death.   Almost as if on cue, two young men leap from the table and fly at one another with knives, clearly battling for the attention of a young woman lurking off to the side. They swipe at each other until one backs off, bloodied and frustrated but unharmed. The winner struts over to the woman and they leave together, but not before she gives him a full slap across the face. Poor Liliales watches with huge eyes and the elder laughs, telling him that the young men are behaving properly - it’s much harder to back off from a fight when the blood is hot, but they haven’t harmed one another. He wonders aloud if Liliales is a fae of hatred, perhaps? Or maybe of despair, but is surprised when we tell him that we’re a new-old sort of fae and not part of that cycle at all.   We stay awake late into the night with these spirit folk, many of whom shift into their enormous lion forms to watch the stars as they rise. They’re eager to hear about our cycle of fae, especially the midnight fae who watch the stars just as keenly.  

Day 683

The next day we set off with Skyen as a guide, and he proves himself sure-footed and very helpful in picking our way through to the next valley. When we find the creek that we’ll follow to the Great River he takes his leave, as he won’t come any closer to the danger that lurks ahead.   The water itself feels strange, even to me. Ausha calls it ‘dead water’ - devoid of any of the tiny pieces of life that normally accompany a river. Even more than that, it seems like it is leeching the energy out of the surroundings, making it even harder to draw upon magic. It’s not as bad as the Desolation was, but it’s still uncomfortable.   That night I’m visited by Lyssa in the Dreaming and I finally get to show her my own lightning. Wrapped in each other’s arms, she tells me about her own coloured lightning and how she sees it change based on her intention. My clever love found her colours from first principles!   Hero worship in the Valley has apparently died down to a tolerable level and the magic there feels richer after the storm. The dwarves there are tired of being confined to the Valley but many are uneasy at the thought of warring further with their own kind in the Domain. Still, it’s hard to see how they could effectively expand without incurring the enmity of the other dwarves, and expansion is on their mind.  

Day 684

The next morning we set up something of a spatial escape route for Liliales and Qing Chen to return to near the village, if anything goes wrong. Rainbow’s caution for him to remain behind rings in my ears and I have both him and Qing Chen to promise that they will obey if I tell them to flee.  

Days 685 - 687

Three days of uneventful travel brings us right up to the headwaters.  

Day 688

Water gushes out of the mountain itself and the early segment of the river hidden between the mountains is surrounded by tall grasses. I had expected this place to be uninhabited but there is a small cottage here, and the magic feels distinctly shaped in some unnatural way. There is a gravelike quality to the air, similar to Wraith’s aura. I wonder if it is Starfield?   Momentarily, a young woman with foxlike ears and three tails emerges from the cottage on the other side of the water and looks us up and down before beckoning us over.   If she is the caring guardian of this wonderful place, I don’t understand her brusque tone as she asks if we are here to help the spirit, or for some other reason. I answer her questions honestly, as best I can, but the truth is that I came for a single blade of grass and she seems very suspicious.  

Do you really think it will retain its power when you leave? Fine. Take your blade of grass and go!

  There is just something too strange about her behaviour, and that is when I hear the faintest whimper from behind the gushing waterfall at the head of the stream. It is something of a miracle that I heard it at all, but every one of my powers is focused on my senses and not even Alder could have hidden from me in that moment. Magdalena sends Liliales and Qing Chen away via their spatial talisman just as I ask the woman:  

Are you guarding her too?

  Her eyes narrow when she realizes that I know exactly who she has imprisoned here. She only manages to make one attack before Magdalena destroys her, but the magic she hurls from the soul grass nearly shreds the tether that binds Ausha and I together. It is all I can do to channel the same magic and infuse it with metal to bind us even tighter. The grass I reach for tears at me as well, dulling my own mind and senses even with my staff and hunting instincts empowering me.   Both Ausha and I collapse in exhaustion with Magdalena hovering about us, tending to our injuries and letting us rest. I can feel the fear coming off of our teacher in waves at the thought of having nearly lost Ausha.  

The only one who can take you from me…is you.

   

Day 690

After two days of sleep, Ausha and I both wake and find that Magdalena has ransacked the fox-woman’s cottage to learn whatever we can about her circumstances. The findings about who she actually is are sparse, but we think she was in her mid 3000’s and many of her notes are in demon and Zephyr languages. Evidently she had discovered her own way of being Undying, by using spirit grass to possess other living vessels and prolong her mortal life. At first enough people came to seek the headwaters that she had her pick of vessels but eventually she found that spirit folk made the best victims and as more disappeared, fewer and fewer made the trip at all. In the last thousand years, she had resorted to finding disciples elsewhere and bringing them back to study and eventually become her next vessel.   It’s sickening, but the dullness in my mind prevents me from feeling it as acutely as I ought to. The simple truth is that I don’t think such a thing counts as being ‘Undying’ - imprisoned to a single place because the necessary component doesn’t grow anywhere else, constantly stealing life from others…it registers as cheating to me. Prolonging one life at the expense of others is not a net gain - it’s very clearly a loss in terms of the world itself. A thousand years ago she captured Starfield and has spent the last millennia slowly preparing the dragon as her next body.   Ausha is healed, but I am still fairly sluggish and need help to understand the complex wards imprisoning Starfield behind the waterfall. Still, we can construct a key for it eventually and find the wounded and poisoned dragon within. She is in a humanoid form of a young woman with white-starlight hair and it’s clear that she has been poisoned and drugged so thoroughly that she can’t easily regain any energy all, even from my healing. She is hardly able to respond when I tell her the barest context for her rescue - the witch is dead, I’ve been looking for her, I’m so happy to have found her.   She smiles at all of this - wondering who I am to have destroyed the witch and to be searching for her after so long.  

One of uncle’s family, perhaps?

  The amount of raw information I need to give her to understand…my slow mind quakes at the thought. It will have to wait until she is free, I think.   A heavy chain secures her, keyed to her blood so that it is especially resistant to any other magical tampering. Fortunately the three blood mages present have several ideas for how to temporarily change her blood enough to fool the wards…surely not something the witch thought would be possible. As we discuss, Starfield starts to recognize Magdalena as a Treeborn and bows just as she would to a dragon elder.  

Father always said that we should respect Treeborn just as we do venerable elders.

  Once I have administered some of the heart cleansing spirit drops from Wayin, Starfield’s mind begins to clear enough that she can participate in the magical conversation.   I could offer her heartsblood to change her bloodline enough to escape, but it would be dangerous for me and her bloodline is so weak right now that she may not recover it. Magdalena sighs at my constant impulse to bleed on dangerous things. With the two elves present, one of us could swear oaths with her as dragon and rider, but I’m hesitant to use such a significant oath as a bandaid to a problem and Ausha is too weak still to sustain her own oath. I think we could use a blood-bonded circle as a temporary shift to fool the magic of the cuffs, but Magdalena is concerned that such a bond might entrap me as well and that we might not be able to sever it once it is finished.