Journal of Miyara Kyosuke (72)

    We entertain ourselves however we can between times of gathering food and firewood. The barbarians are being surprisingly scholarly in their choices, at least as far as barbarians can, studying some backward lore or another. Pireseri's body has been packed in ice, hoping it will make it through the winter until we can leave.
    Hosei has accepted the sogin roku of water, and has been studying it. Goru has also been studying his stone. Time will tell if they achieve any understanding.

    It has now been two weeks in Fallingwater. We are tired from gathering food, about an hour after dinner, and almost all of us are resting by the fires. It is Goru's turn to be on guard. I am in the guard's room.

    ((Goru's stone begins to move quickly and drag him down the hallway.
    Rabena's starts to rip from her clothes and move. She tries to stop it, but it keeps dragging. It breaks free, and she runs after it as it floats rapidly through the air.
    Ashu's sogin roku moves too. He has his hand on it, and it drags him along.
    All are pulling northwards. They pull regardless of the holder's will. They even drag Goru through the river on their path towards the old temple. Hosei stands above the hole, as his sogin roku and Rabena's both went down.
    They don't go to the temple, but in the room below the hole, all four stones smash together, Goru and Ashu along with it.
    There is a blinding flash, so much so that it shoots back up the hole. It illuminates the whole area.

    Everyone has a vision.

    The stones have fused and are floating, giving off a slight glow. It rotates slowly, tumbling in place.))

    I have a vision. I wake up.

You go blind. Everything is dark. You're a liquid, You're the thoughts of Tzeentch. You're being distilled into a liquor. You dribble and fizz through piping. Tzeentch is eternal. Someone is waiting to drink you. It has been a long time since he's felt firm enough to drink you. Tzeentch is inevitable. It's because of what those adventurers have done, far away, that gives him the strength. The strength to drink of Tzeentch. Tzeentch starts a plan in one century, and ends it forty centuries later. The stones, when together, they will end his plan. You will quench the man's thirst, his thirst for Tzeentch. Maybe Tzeentch doesn't plan things at all. Maybe he just is and it's men like this distiller of chaos, the one who is about to drink you, who make things happen. People like him, and people like you, who connect stones that were never meant to be connected again.

    I go to look for Miyara. Being the distilled essence of Tzeentch is something she should hear. The wind is blowing down both of the tunnels that lead to the inside, towards the back of the caves. The White Fairy is not here. I proceed very carefully and quietly so as to surprise the invader who has taken him down.
    There is no-one in the kitchen. There are slight signs of a struggle. There is a little blood, and it trails in droplets towards the door to the north. The furniture shows everyone moved North quickly. I proceed carefully.
    Suddenly I hear Miyara yell something in barbarian, like an order but not a battle order. I continue.

    Hosei, Carimera, Baraku, Sun come towards me. In a whisper I ask them what's happening. Hosei says something happened to the stones, and there was light. He's not very coherent. I wave him aside and rush back, but there is no-one there. I can't find anyone, but by the time I'm back to the dining hall everyone is there.

    I tell Miyara, who holds out the clumped crystals. I hesitate and tell her I'm going to be drunk. I have had a vision. I tell her about it, while Goru heckles. I ignore him.
    Miyara asks Hosei if he had a vision. He did. A terrible smell, he is lying in bed, and he is the source of the smell, of disease and death. He has helped bring a terrible doom, we saved Eyrie but made a terrible mistake and doomed the world. Monks come to attend his death, and he has been thrown into the body of Yazeran, and he needs to write a warning, but first off course he must write the prophecy. He could only say not to attune the last crystal. But they are, and they are together, and there is an awful doom that awaits us that he cannot remember.
    Baraku: everyone looks sick, that is good, he feels sick. He is not supposed to be sick, his mother who had an eye in the back of her neck told him. <something about vomiting>
    Sun was fighitng ande the old man was holding him down. His body is so old and corrput that it cannot be distinguished form the world. Whenever he hits him, Sun and we bleed. The man thanks him for fusing the stones, for what he's done for chaos. And the stones are fused.
    Carimera: She tried to stop it but couldn't. Something was pulling her away. She's gone, somewhere else. Heavily vield gyspy woman sat across a table of runes and incense. Seemed familiar, maybe not. hard to remember who she herself is. Woman screeches fooL! that she is fated to bring hte stones together, bringing chaos and doom and descrution to all.
    Rabena: she saw a tiny hole and knew that if she could throw a crystal through the hole evreything would be allright. But she failed.
    AshU stutters: stone back together, bad. World bleeding. He is the world, in pieces bleeding. Only the fools who put the gall stones together can fix it. we are fools so small. Carimera bringing forces against us. Carimera will kill us all, we will fail. Carimera doesn't care. Carimera is coming, against us, and all is doomed.
    Goru: he has always relied on strength, and now he holds up a piller of stone holding up a wall of fiery liquid, his companions do not realise this, do not realise that the stones were together and weighing him down.
    Miyara, holding the combined crystals, says her vision was that she believes most of us will die before this is finished.

    Ashu believes that Carimera's blood is the essence of Tzeentch.

    The wind is blowing through the halls from the entrance towards the back. I get up and follow the wind back into the center.
    At the back, the wind blows upriver. The roof is about three feet from the water here, and gets smaller further up the tunnel. I enter the water and keep moving with the wind.

    At the corner, I am caught by the current, dragged under, and dumped out in the central pool. I go back and try again, ignoring the people being washed past me. Two feet after the corner this time, I am thrown back again.

    Miyara suggests we could all go together and withstand it. I think that is a good idea. We try pushing each other. It seems to be working, we make slow progress, but the water flows over us and it is hard to breathe. I keep trying to move, regardless of breathing. There is no more air. We press on.
    We slip and wash downstream.

    After catching our breath, Goru suggests that the elements are merging. I ask him where the fire might be. I say we should make a fire, lots of it, and carry it with us. The object, but when I finally say "Come on, let's burn something!" they agree.
    Ashu realizes he does not need to touch the stones to make fire anymore. He has a connection now and does not need the stone itself. He makes a ball of fire on the ground.
    I look around quickly for something to burn. I see nothing, but I rush up to the old temple and come back with some wood. The torches are all out in the hall. Where did the fire go? I still grab a torch and rush back, and stick it in the fire.   It burns, and I wave it around a little.
    I walk upstream with a torch, being sure it will work. I am soon out of sight of the others. I get to the corner and am washed back down quickly.
    ((Rabena tries to breathe underwater without the crystal too. It works. That also means that Hosei can probably walk through the water without being affected by the current. He could also get an elemental to move the water. Goru could get the stone to open up the passage, but instead he drops and prays to some dwarf god for guidance.))
    When I return, Hosei is ready to move up the waterway himself. He carves a channel through the water upstream. He moves forward, and I, Miyara, Rabena, and Ashu follow. Goru is still weeping to himself on the floor.
    The wind is still blowing up the tunnel. We have reached where the water fills the tunnel except for the hole Hosei is making. Every once in a while Miyara glances at me with an odd speculative look, but says nothing.
    Eventually the roof has raised, and there is still water all around us. After a few more minutes of walking, wind at our backs, the tunnel ends at a rock. Hosei cannot part the rock, and water is all around us and we cannot see into the water. We walk around for a while to try to find the opening, but it is soon clear that we have opened into an underground lake. The water is not rushing now, calmer.
    I step into the water and try to float up enough to see. It is water as far as I can see in every direction except down. I can see the bubble below me. I go back, take another breath, and try to swim to the top while not losing sight of the bubble so I can get back down.
    I put everything I have into it. There is no air at the roof. I go back down. I drop into the bubble and thud onto the ground out of breath. I almost died. I tell Miyara what I saw, and that we could try a few other places if we moved around down here, although it would tricky.

    Rabena believes she can fly and breathe under the water, and she goes off to investigate the room. She does find several entrances where water feeds into the lake, smaller than the one we entered by. She starts to realize that it's not the stone of air that's moving her through, it's the stone of water. Her white robes are frozen and cold, uncomfortable but not painful. She continues looking around for other entrances, air, tiny pinholes to throw crystals through, and so on. She returns to the pocket, and appears with her eyes glowing and her robe frozen. She tells us what she found, about the stones as well as the room. Her eyes glow a pale blue. Her robes start to melt and fall off her body as she warms, standing naked in front of us. Perhaps wind and water make ice?
    We return to Fallinwater, where Rabena puts on some clothes and we meet in the dining hall. All the fires had gone out while we were gone, and Goru tells us that his chest had rotted. He adds that there is a major snowstorm outside.