Lost in the Flood 23/03 Nessa

I'm in love - truly, madly, deeply in love - with perception. I counted seventy-three shades of grey in an eight-by-ten room this morning. The only reason I could drag myself away was that I find I still adore walking. Absurd, obviously, what with it being merely a case of putting one foot in front of the other and so on - but there you are.

And the inns and eateries. I tell you solemnly: ice-cream is so delicious and so bad for you I can't believe Asmodeus had nothing to do with its invention. But he didn’t. Someone on this plane came up with it all by themselves. Imagine that.

And coffee. Coffee justifies the existence of the word 'aroma' all by itself.

The only thing that troubles me is money. I know it’s necessary and I have no moral problem with it. There’s even a joke about that on the celestial plane which – it’s hard to get the punchline right in this language but bear with me…

Most people think that the rich and successful never end up happy. Those with wealth and fame incite an envy so urgent that people can only escape it by translating it into pity. “If you live like that you never end up happy,” people say. Which is true. But then, those people don’t end up happy either. And in the meantime, the rich people have had all the sex and power and money.

Yes, it doesn’t quite translate. Always gets a laugh back home.

But then, without money you’d have no temptation. Temptation's less about wearing someone down with repetition than it is about finding the right phrase and dropping it in at the right time. And in my case it was two words – material components.

Now, I’m not one to question the ineffable grace of the all-knowing. Everyone knows where that leads. The road to Hell isn’t paved with good intentions, it's paved with intriguing questions. Mostly ones which start ‘why..?’

All the same, it does seem strange to me that the bountiful grace of her lady is expressed through the prayers of the faithful - and in my case, very distant relatives – but for some of these prayers you need jewellery. And expensive jewellery at that.

If, for instance, I want to call on my half-sisters for aid I need an incredibly expensive gold statue of them. They love that of course. Bless them, obviously. Vanity and pride aren’t deadly sins. There aren’t actually any deadly sins. We have a bit of a snigger about that when the paladins show up and realise what they’ve been missing.

Anyway, if I’m going to fulfil my potential I need the readies. And so it came to pass that I had to earn some gold and with this place so stacked with healers that the ‘curing the sick’ schtick is not going to be the cash cow it was on my last incarnation it seemed that I needed to take my skills where they were most needed – serving the greater good with a party of warriors.

Which, I confess, did send a shiver of excitement down my spine. It has been close to a century since I last faced serious danger. In the name of the greater good of course. I’m no thrill junkie, whatever Ezrael claims. And when the message arrived, I could feel the goddess calling. This was my first task for her. My job had begun.

The Cavernous Sea Shank

Again, I have to stress, the casual way you people wander into public spaces without reeling at the beauty of the scents and the colours baffles me. I’ve been around long enough – try five millennia darling – that I could see the Shank wasn’t offering nectar and ambrosia. But then, my tastes have always tended to the earthy.

I inhaled the wall of fruity drains, caramlised nuts, fried onions, animal faeces, smoke, stale alcohol, fresh alcohol, alcohol breath and alcohol belches, relishing the detail and nuance of each subtle thread. I love the way red wine ages on old carpet and how it forms a – I don’t know how to say it… you know music? You know you have notes and then you have chords, and the chords are three different notes but put together they sound better than the three notes by themselves? But how that only works for notes that have a specific wave form relationship to each other? It’s a word that means that but with scent. Let’s use chord.

I love how red wine spilled on a carpet forms a chord with the sweat of a frightened man and dog urine. And the faces… features glowed and gleamed, mouths like scimitars in claret, smokily shadowed eyes with diamond flecks. Like the poet I found myself ‘drenched in being here.’ And I needed a drink.

A strange looking portly figure lurched around behind the deeply stained epic frieze of misbehaviour that served as the bar. I demanded something brutal, something that would wind me with the sheer force of its metaphysical anger, and he came up trumps. He took a bottle of outrageously fused chemicals, added an egg and dramatically overcharged me. If I hadn’t been so hungry for the system shock I might have quibbled but as my whole body shook with pain following the raw beast through my guts I thought, if anything, I had got this cheap.

There I could see the table of those that also sought to serve the greater good. Seraphina I had seen around the Temple. She sat there, six foot two, gleaming in the light with elaborately decorated raiments serving herself from a small teapot. I had a little bit of a crush on her, just because she seemed so tranquil and was clearly of this plane rather than a transplant.

With her was a haggard halfling, clearly lacking a good night’s sleep, and wrestling with the echo of the moonshine currently dancing through my veins. Then there was a drow woman, tall, muscled, wearing heavy armour, sporting twin curved swords, with thick long wavy hair and blue green crystals growing out of her head. Fetching. Finally there was a feywild type – a sort of fairy beetle. Tiny little thing but you could feel the energy buzzing off her.

As I sat down the ur-pirate walked in. There’s a character on one of the other planes, you won’t have come across him – Plato, he was a funny sort, but he had a theory that there was a single perfect form for everything the gods created, like a blueprint or prototype. It was a terrible theory, of course, like all of his theories and it involved a cave somehow, but he did keep trying, bless him. Anyway, as this pirate walked in I did think of Plato – he would have felt justified at seeing this Tricky Otto character and claimed her as the original model of all pirates.

Something oozed from her, some scent of sanctity, that spoke of more than just yohoho.

She had, she said, a mission from the goddess. But we would have to wait for the details. Which suited me down to the ground. Selûne knows how I like a little suspense. The minx.

The Briefing from... 

It wasn’t until we were close to our destination and I was deeply ensconced in a little Lady of Silver fangirling with Seraphina that our employer’s factotum appeared in the form of a strangely forgettable…

Bless me, I’m not sure.

I want to say half elf but… anyway they appeared and delivered the psychic instructions I was more used to a few decades back.

“Thank you for coming on this mission – not all of you know this sign language. To spare our captain the burden of translating we will do it this way instead. I serve a person who serves a higher person - to stop the coming storm in the name of Selûne. But we need help. Not so far from here is a place where other servants of Selûne have hidden a tome that could be useful in fighting back the storm. When the sun gives way to the moon and the heavens set the seas on fire her light will guide your path. There is something out there and we to retrieve it. And when I say we I mean you. I must stay on this ship. For reasons I am not at liberty to tell. The second you set foot on this island things will happen. To call it a trap is generous. Many people are watching this place. Be ready for trouble.”

Zola – wait, I beg your forgiveness, I have forgotten the basics of storytelling. Zola was the drow warrior, Marto was the haggard halfling’s name and the fairy is called Beets. Zola asked the… elf? Something like that. Hard to remember what they looked like if I’m honest. But their name, they told Zola, was Kháos.

Something echoed inside that name. Chord, again, would be the right word. This language makes certain words work very hard, I notice. Stream, for instance… but again, I forget the basic rules of storytelling.

Marto, it transpires, had a sort of tattoo or brand – brand, another hard working word – in the shape of a mystic symbol. The pirate ships crew – who I was starting to suspect weren’t really pirates at all – eschewed her after that. (You could use eschew a little more if you ask me. I love the games it plays with the tongue. And do not get me started on the tongue.)

The point being, we arrived at an island. I say island, it was more a large rock. (Well, it was bigger than that. An islet? This language makes no sense. Some words mean everything. Other things there are no words for. Get to work, someone. There’s an imbalance.)

On this island was a tree that sparkled like – we’ll be here all day if I describe the sparkles. Let’s just say I almost didn’t move of the boat, I was so entranced. Especially as they rose up into the sunset then divided in five lights…

Hold on.

Five lights.

That struck a big chord. Something far back in the closed off part of my mind was screaming at me.

And then the sea burst into flames, a devilishly handsome fiend appeared and three vast beasts of blazing seawater charged at us.

Battle. That is a rare scent indeed.

The First Battle

I was proud of my companions. They attacked instantly. Beets and Marto were clearly ill equipped for combat – their blades lacked enchantment and we were opposed by creatures of the arcane and the Nine Hells. Zola carved her way forwards and Seraphina’s holy radiance fell on the enemy.

It had been a while since I fought. I have no time for weapons, trusting in the goddess, and I channelled the radiance of the dawn into a wall of holy energy that weakened their dark power.

The battle teetered on the brink for a while when I noticed another fiend, male I am certain, his tattooed back to use as if unconcerned.

And then I was hit. The pain – it was delicious and nauseating at the same time. It triggered something ancient in me – rage. The rage of battle. I could feel it growing within and locked eyes with Seraphina as I saw it storming through her as well.

The goddess needed us to win this combat, trivial though it may have appeared to an onlooker, and her radiant glory filled us, setting free our wings, her light pouring from our eyes as we rose to the skies and crushed these abominations.

Zola slew the handsome fiend, a minor inconvenience to one of his kind and his face is etched in my mind for any future journeys to the Nine Hells to finish the job.

Marto, meanwhile, faced the final figure and some troubling words – “don’t fight this” – almost caused her to falter. But as Seraphina flew to her aid, the devil disappeared.

Interesting.

In my (considerable) experience, they like to go out in style, scoffing about returning or uttering dark prophecies. They rarely vanish. Perhaps Seraphina is more powerful than she appears.

We found the book and some trinkets, and the journey home was as interesting as any journey I’ve had in quite some time.

The followers of Shar have returned. This must be why I was sent. The Five have entered the material plane. I had forgotten their names – mercifully.

Adhyël the Stallion. Rahmiël the Scorcher. Ophanim the Vain. And then there is the flesh-eater and the silent one. They are calling themselves the Heralds of Blades and Ash.

I remember the last time. The serpent. The poison. The darkness. The fire.

I pity the Dawnlands.