And I think I died today.
Ten years ago, I was a resident of Seattle, Washington. I worked as a paramedic.
It was also the last time that I saw water, well, like lakes, rivers, streams ... drinkable bodies of water.
Jenni - she was my girlfriend - she and I decided to go to Burning Man. We went looking for an escape, looking for art, love, sex, and excitement out there on the playa; we found it. It was dizzying, intoxicating - we found others and spent who knows how many days and nights totally high, whacked out of our minds, just enjoying each others company. We called it Shangri La. Others, they called it Tanelorn. Whatever it was called, we didn't care. We were happy, together, and in love.
But hours turned into days then days into weeks. The party just kept on going. Jenni was getting nervous and said we should leave but the playa had changed. It was no longer a desert but swamps, then snowy cliffs, mountains, green grassland, tundra. Every day it would change. So when the desert returned and it looked like we were back home, I took Jenni in hand and we left. It was a leap of faith.
Out in the desert, the beating sun scorched us. We weren't prepared. And in six hours, we were attacked by what could only be called dragon-men. Jenni was dead. I was left as fucking vulture food.
I was found by a black-skinned, emerald-eyed nomadic tribesman named Khal who nursed me back to health. He didn't speak English. And, oh, he's a dark elf. They call themselves Drow. He taught me just enough of his language to know basic commands and instructions; he fed me; kept me safe; and, over time, I learned he called me slave. I guess I knew my place.
Yeah, it's been ten years since then and I've learned that Tanelorn - whatever - didn't drop me back on the playa. Far from it. I went somewhere else. Like, I fell into a Harry Potter novel or Tolkien for fuck's sake. I just thank God it wasn't a George R. R. Martin thing. I'd be long dead by now.
Anyway, today. Today I think I died.
Khal was in the lead. We were approaching the mukdah - the hideout - where four of his soldiers would be in-waiting for supplies that we were delivering to them; food, water, basic supplies. We'd done this many times before and he suspected nothing. The Drow twins - Qazan and Abja - didn't have their bows out and were busy telling each other jokes; and as usual, Jeu took up the rear, looking fatigued, skeptical.
But we weren't alone. We had strangers with us that we found in the desert. Oh man, real storybook stuff. A seriously-devout teenage priestess in flashy metal armor; a spellcasting witch with a quirky sense of humor and a need to collect spare body parts; two freekin' Dwarves - yah, no kidding - Dwarves, sporting axes, shields, all that dwarf shit, but also pies, for Christ's sake, fresh pies, made from some magic pie box; a good looking guy whose lute-singing-songs either made people crazy or created glowing orbs of exploding death appear out of nowhere, I swear; a tall backwoods red-headed chic who was a better shot with a bow than even Khal was, and hey, he was the best that I'd ever seen in my life; and this tiny guy that would be like Bilbo Baggins if Bilbo Baggins was a killer ninja who occasionally made you a decent breakfast.
When we all approached the mukdah, we were surprised to find the four soldier's slain bodies had been laid out in a ritualistic fashion, and a bevy of locusts were crawling out of one's body. Immediately, those locusts swarmed and were attacking our skin! To make matters worse, the Dragonmen with red scales emerged from the darkness! They were breathing fire on my friends, cornering them, keeping them within the swarm!
And just as everyone was reacting to the Dragonmen and trying to get out of the swarm, a massive column of fire appeared, swirling out of the darkness of the Underdark, causing a massive maelstrom of flame to erupt all around us! The insects were singed and were tossed all around; trees went up in flames and incinerated; those Dwarves' shadows were crouched in the fire. I fell to the ground. I felt pain and it was overwhelming.
I think I died.
When I came to, I felt burns all over my body; I could barely breathe; smoke was everywhere. I was being drug out of the middle of the insect swarm by the teenage priestess. She was shouting orders to the others just as those dead bodies of the soldiers were animated and staggering towards Khal and the twins, while more of those Dragonmen were attacking the rest of the party.
Just then, the insects dropped clean out of the air and a figure emerged from the last of the flaming maelstrom: six-foot tall, black braided hair, red plate armor, a wicked set of deformed pointy teeth, and a nasty looking mace that erupted in fire as she approached, marching right for the young priestess who was helping me! The Cleric of Tahkesis' feet swarmed with ethereal misty dragons that dove in and out of the stone floor, and she headed towards us with a murderous glare!
Then I think I died again.
When I came to, I was drug out of the way by the older red-headed woman who fed me some red liquid from a vial. Things weren't good. Khal's body was surrounded by ghoulish zombies that were eating his flesh; the twins and Jeu were down; the Dragonmen and Dwarves were locked in to mortal combat; the singing fella was doing his thing, and Bilbo was slashing at the backside of the distracted Dragonmen. The young woman was still down. The red-haired crack-shot fired deadly arrows into the body of the red cleric, just as the red cleric was going to knock the snot out of ninja-Bilbo.
Suddenly, just as I was getting to my feet, a Dragon-man's sword cut into me and I fell unconscious again.
Yep, three times. Dead. Right there. Bleeding out on the cavern floor.
And when I woke, the young priestess - mussed up but no longer bleeding or bruised - hovered over me. Khal and the twins were alive and firing arrows at the remaining Dragonmen! Ninja-Bilbo and the crazy witch had seemingly cornered another Cleric of Tahkesis, apparently this one a young teen, too, platinum white hair. It wasn't long before she was subdued and the Dragonmen slaughtered. I was pained, sore, but no longer bleeding, no open wounds. It was a miracle!
What happened next was a blur. I helped Jeu with my healing packs and helped him to rejoin the others. Meanwhile, the man-dwarf named Chasmjumper smashed in the face of the red cleric until it was a bloody stump, and the young priestess cut it off and threw it into a small hole she dug. The white cleric was taken, bound, gagged, and drug up to her feet. Everyone else was getting ready to leave. Khal in particular. He knew what was going to happen next.
"We must leave this place. Now." Khal said, and everyone was rushing back into the Underdark after him; I was helping Jeu lean on me as we rushed to get as far away from this place as we could. Khal was right. If we stayed too long, the Risen would come for their tribute, and none of us were in any condition to fight them.
The Risen never came. After five hours of pushing, Khal brought us to a distant grove in the Underdark. We made camp. Healed up. Jeu even asked for help from the young priestess; I'd never seen him soften up like that, but he was in bad straights. The party talked about where to go next and decided to return to the home of the Drow, and to a place Khal called Elfhome, and a place near there that he wished to show the young priestess; they questioned the white cleric; Khal reminded everyone that the Dragonkind would send more patrols and track them in the Underdark, and they needed to keep pressing south; the Clerics of Tahkesis would be relentless to return one of their own.
I asked the young priestess how I could come to know her goddess, Isthmeira, and Elan carved a holy symbol for me out of bone.
We traveled. Three days in, we encountered a Kenku named Ekom who traded information about the road ahead with us in exchange for water. The Kenku traded a bag of nuts. The Kenku said that water could be found at various points ahead, and that he saw hundreds of the Risen near a place called the Seaside Pyramids, some eight days away. The Kenku also said that he had passed nine men...
He passed nine human men. Ekom says that there are men here, humans. A band of nine, slaves to the Efretti Dajashakour, on a mission of mystical origin. They seemed lost. They were arguing amongst themselves. They seek something the Efretti wants from the Underdark; they seek a zalam shitana - a dark hag, a dark elf - but for what purposes, he does not know. They paid him well for information … Ekom knows of Faewalks and Landings...
But my bounty and good fortune were seized by Minotaurs. Ekom says that there are Minotaurs on the path ahead. They extorted a traveler’s fee from me. They took half my water, and took my information. It was either that or be taken to their fighting pits in the Deep. I am no fighter. The Minotaurs left me and went after the nine men I told them about.
The Kenku noticed that there were so many of us and yet we didn't carry a lot of water or food or provisions, and was surprised by this. When we went on our way, Khal nodded to Jeu, who seemed to then disappear menacingly into the dark forest.
Yah, Khal's no idiot. You don't let the information-trading-bird-man go on. Practical.
The party pressed on. The next day, Khal took the party to a hidden place that was much closer to the surface. We encountered a large bowl-like cavern. In the middle of it, a 30' colossus made of sandstone: a thin human hermaphrodite whose face looked blankly to the cavernous ceiling, and whose arms bore a massive stone water basin. Desert sand cascaded from a hole in the ceiling and fell upon the figure's face, and its face - over time - had been scoured away, so it looked eerily faceless. All around the colossus were walking trails and small sitting areas for contemplation and prayer. Far above the cavern was a slit - some ledge that peered out to the outside world. Sand was all around the figure.
Khal had never taken me here before. He looked to the young priestess and suggested that she may wish to spend some time here to know more of this space; to explore it spiritually. "Fear," he said, "is a disease. Hope... is its only cure." He looked sternly at the young priestess as if she alone possessed something, some innate knowledge or understanding about this place that he did not.
And he looked at the colossus for a long while then asked the Dwarves a question. "In your culture, do you have a saying. 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend?'" And the Dwarves agreed. Khal explained. If the Kenku was right, there are at least nine slaves of an Efretti Lord out there who the Minotaurs most certainly would have hunted down and taken hostage as to submit them to their fighting pits. Should just one of those slaves be recovered and returned to the Efretti, then those who did the saving might earn a boon of a reward, something that could help Khal save his brother. So he asked, would the Dwarves help him ... to fight the Minotaurs and to retrieve the slaves? And he asked Elan, the red-haired ranger, if she would help track them?
We couldn't waste any time. We couldn't return here after saving the slaves because we were likely already being pursued by Dragonmen scouting parties, looking for their lost white-haired girl. Now would be the only time to do both things - to explore this cavern, and, to rescue the Efretti Lord's slaves.
Nearly all agreed, and they left, leaving myself, the twins, the bound white cleric, and the young priestess in the ancient cave, promising to return in three days.
There, the young priestess began to walk the narrow pathways that circled around the colossus. This was a prayer-walk, and I followed behind as instructed, concentrating, praying to the Goddess she called Isthmeira. She used winds conjured from her will to blow away sand and dust to find characteristics of water erosion, and that these places use to be small pools and wading spaces. When we walked, we prayed. We walked in a meditative state for hours. We walked up and down the sides of the bowl-like cavern, tracing and re-tracing our steps over and over again, until we finally - after maybe six hours -arrived at the ledge some 40' above, to look out upon the horizon. We squinted - our eyes not adjusted to normal daylight - and we saw miles of dunes, but, far away, she could see the ocean.
The sea! She seemed to stand up straight, could smell the salt in the wind. She could feel the tempest raging, out there, deep within her as much as it was so far away. She felt the tragedy, the irony, of this holy place, this figure meant to capture water from the sky, so bone dry, dusted, buried. She felt an intense... anger.
"Phedarge," she whispered, and looked at the colossus again in an attempt to recall this aspect of the 16-Pointed Star, an aspect of the Tempest Goddess, one that is particularly vengeful and full of fury and rage. She clinched her fists, feeling that sense of rage building within her ...
... and I felt angry, too. Angry ... at being trapped here for ten years, for losing Jenni, for not believing that the Clerics of Tahkesis could be stopped! For all of the running - ten years of running - angry for never being able to fight back! For running away when the Risen or the Dragonmen came...
... And Siegride's eyes narrowed as she began to feel the effect of this place, realizing ... that centuries of loss, neglect, anger, rage... built around this Goddess was swelling within her soul ...
R
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