[Quest] the desert sings at night

[Random Events]

the songs of dead and lost things

It is late evening in Solterra and almost disgustingly hot – although winter has come rolling in, ambling and stormy, this evening is warm and humid enough to feel sticky, the air hanging heavy with the promise of a distant storm. Nevertheless, out on the Mors, dusk is beautiful. Rolling golden dunes stretch out as far as the eye can see, dark as honey now that the sun is low in the sky; when the light hits the sand, it sparkles as though there are chips of diamond embedded in the crest of each dune. The western sky is ablaze with passionate orange and sweeps of red, and, like a watercolor painting, it dies to a lush, royal violet as it creeps west. Small creatures are just beginning to come alive in the sands, little foxes with ears far too big for their heads, locusts, and serpents with sharp, sharp fangs. There are other things, too, distant dangers: the howl of jackals echoing from afar, the dark, swooping shape of a teryr on the horizon, a shifting of sands that implies a sandwyrm. It is almost ironic that the dunes are so alive when night falls and so quiet during the day.

In the Mors, the sands are apt to shift. Rarely ever too drastically, which is why they can be navigated, but, on rare occasion, just enough to uncover something interesting. On this particular evening, they have uncovered a short marble base, the face of which is barely visible beneath a fine layer of sand. It looks as though it might have held a statue, at some point in its history, but all that remains of the figure is a pair of hooves, and the worn inscription on the base is in such an ancient dialect that it is likely impossible to translate.

More striking than the yellowed marble, however, is the gemstone embedded amidst the inscriptions, which run circles around it. It gleams brilliant orange, so bright that it practically glows with some internal force – and, when approached, it does begin to give off a dull glow, which spreads to the runes and grows far, far brighter. When examined more closely, the gemstone seems to flicker, as though something is moving around inside of it – but this can so easily be mistaken for a trick of the light.

At first, the dull whispers might be mistaken for the wind across the sands, like a soft, shuddering hiss. Like the bright light of the gemstone, they grow louder and louder when the pillar is approached. It is not one single voice; rather, it is a cacophony of different voices, perhaps from hundreds of different speakers. There seems to be no common thread between the voices – they don’t even speak in the same language.

One thing is clear, among the voices that are comprehensible: they are begging. “Free us,” the voices beseech. “Free us. Please. We have stayed so long in the dark, away from the sun – free us.”

Whatever spirits are inside of the stone seem to be trapped. Perhaps the dead have something to offer to the living – but, with the inscription illegible, it is impossible to know why they have been left to sleep beneath the sands. 

---

Who knows why Teiran was wandering the dunes at dusk - perhaps it is fate, or perhaps it is the lure of magic, of something more calling out to her even without her realizing it. No matter the reason, something about the dunes seems special, exaggerated; as if anticipation has turned the dunes to diamond, as if all the world is pressing against her, urging her on to find the marble statue.

Can she hear the whispers?

Does she know how to free them?

Will she free them? Is the enchantment in her dagger strong enough?

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This quest was written by the lovely @Jeanne.

Enjoy!

[Teiran]

i'm meaner than my demons, i'm bigger than these bones
Teiran is patrolling. There is nothing unusual about the path her hooves take her on through the desert, except at which time of the day it is. Night is falling, quickly, and it is hot and hot and hot, like the air is pressing in on her from all sides, like it is trying to drown her. Normally she would not move through the Mors at night, because that is when many of the more dangerous creatures come awake. But something doesn’t feel right, tonight.

Something is telling her that she needs to.

That is how she finds the half buried pedestal of what used to be some kind of statue. Nothing left but its hooves, nothing left but the stone base encircled with bright, sparkling stones. Teiran can hear the voices, like they are rising up out of the desert all around her.

The closer she gets, the more unbearable they become, grinding into her skull. Incomprehensible, mostly, but for a select few. Even those are buried beneath the whine and drone of the combined force of all the voices together. Oh, she can barely stand to be near the piece of ruins long enough to see the unreadable inscription and to see the bizarre swirling inside the gems.

Teiran retreats until the voices fade to nothing more than a mere whispering breeze, sage eyes narrowed as she watches the fading sunlight glint off the aged marble. It’s clear, if only from the few voices she could understand, that someone or something wanted to be freed. Many of them.

How many of them, she wonders?

Without being able to read whatever is written on the base it’s impossible to know why or how they’ve been trapped. The soldier is still looking at the statue from a distance when the angle of the sun begins to reflect light off the gemstones and into her eyes. She shifts her body slightly, and in the process catches sight of something strange in the gemstone at the forefront of the platform.

It looks slightly larger than the others, but more than that there almost appears to be a seam going through the middle of it. Teiran braves the buzzing of the voices again to get a little closer, and now she can see a very fine line spreading all around the base, connecting each of the gemstones.

The voices beg and beg and beg in her mind as she considers what it could be. Clearly there is some strange magic going on here, trapping these souls, or spirits, or whatever they happen to be. She can’t get close enough to strike one with her dagger and see what happens… but maybe she doesn’t have to.

Teiran looses the dagger from the sheath on her right side. In the late evening light, the gold of the snake handle is bright like a flame. The gemstone in its mouth seems to glow, the obsidian blade limned in golden light. The rose-hued woman locks her eyes on that slightly larger stone and lifts the dagger into the air, poised to throw. She whispers, “The seam,” and lets go.

The dagger flips through the air, and although she expects it to bounce off the gemstone, to barely fracture its surface, it slips into some space there almost like a key into a keyhole. The line she had noticed begins to fill with red, starting from that gemstone where her dagger is embedded. Each stone that red line reaches begins to glow, and Teiran can feel a strange vibration in the sand as it begins to shift underhoof.

The voices are crying, or screaming, or rejoicing now; she can’t quite tell. When the red leeches into that last stone, there is a sound like a thousand mirrors breaking, and a flash of bright, bright light. The soldier is forced to close her eyes and turn her head away until it subsides.

After a few silent moments she turns back to the plinth, which is now broken into several large pieces. The stones are scattered to the sand, no longer whole—nothing more than glimmering shards in the failing light. There are no more voices, but if she glances up she almost thinks she sees the shadows of strange shapes dissipating into the air.

She can’t be certain what she’s done, but that feeling of wrongness has vanished, much like those shadows. Teiran moves toward the destroyed marble, collects her dagger which has fallen to the sand, and turns back to the court. Somehow, the air almost feels lighter.

"Speaking."

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