Nomen Infernale XLIII: And Your Daughters Shall Dream Dreams
General Summary
As the golden lotus works on those who partaking, Kegho and Asbjørn feel merry before drifting into a pleasant drowsiness. Riven and Elissa are each carried into the space between dream and prophecy. Riven finds herself in the forests of Palesia stalking a herd of Palesian deer. Two does are distinct, and a void-like black that hurts her eyes. In the dreamlike state she recognizes them as Theo and Teleptyon even though the priest and the wizard look nothing like Palesian deer. As she watches, the other deer in the herd develop pustules which burst and spread. Blood seeps from their eyes and noses as they become increasingly feeble. A voice in her mind that she knows to be Bira commands her to fire. She draws her bow and at the subtle sound of the bow drawing taut the void-black deer start and flee the dead and dying herd.
Riven gives chase.
The chase leads them toward a crescent moon on the horizon and as they draw near the moon she sees a buck made of the same black voidstuff as the does, with great antlers made of a silver metal. The does leap and merge with the buck. As they merge the Riven feels her skin blister and putrefy. She screams but her lungs are filled with filled with fluid and she cannot make a sound.
Theo notices her struggling and rushes to her praying for Lamos's refreshment. She becomes calm and slips into a peaceful, dreamless slumber. Lunja whispers that the lotus can thin the barriers between planes and wonders what is coming their way.
Elissa finds herself in Shagora watching the village burn as Riven had told it in the guest house in Akbyset. The story was not exact though. While Riven had seen no survivors, from Elissa's vantage point she could see her sister, Amma bas Sisa, crawling from under a smouldering beam. Her skin blistered, some of her hair burned away and the rest blackened by flame. Elissa's joy turns to ashes as Amma looks directly at her, eyes overflowing with hatred, and opens her mouth to speak but the vision ends before Amma can get her words out.
The following morning they eat their meals and head the last short distance to the Monastery at Adza Oasis. Brother Nicholas Alexides greets them and encourages the Ouranics to join him for dawn prayer. After prayers, Alex slips to the scriptorium to visit the scribe who had taught him Ancient Khemian hieroglyphs and bring him delicacies from the Anekhsemeru. While they at and caught up, Alex probes him for his opinion on how the Paladins of Aelos will respond to Theo's news. The scribe's responses trouble Alex as he sees the only options are increasing schism between the northern and southern churches or a unification against the Tariqa.
Theo tells Grandmaster Prodromus of whispers of the resurgent Nosofiles. The Grandmaster is disappointed but not shocked. The church fathers had believed that they had rooted the heresy out, but Brother Gregorious had believed they might return and had founded the monastery for just this reason to train and prepare for a time when the church would need their cleansing fire again. He tells Theo that they will set out for Anekhsemeru soon to aid the Inquisitors in cleansing the plague and the heretics. The Grandmaster also suggests the best course of action would be to kill Teleptyon and Theo and place them deep in a crypt where the fragments of the infernal name could be protected. The Paladins are shocked that the healing of Lamos had begun to fail in the face of the rising plague.
La Compagnia accepts the hospitality of the Paladins once more and set out the next morning. As they travel, Alex becomes increasingly uncomfortable and finds that he has swelling and redness in his nethers. He asks Theo for assistance with his legacy of Dhurtanara and hopes that the healing does not rebound into worsened illness as it had in Zahur, but he feels significantly better when Theo is done.
They continue into the desert and find the Demhu Pass. They enter the wadi and camp. Asbjørn sees scorpions skittering in the wastes and encourages the party to slip silently away before they are seen. As they continue down the ravine the weather continues to worsen and the winds become more severe. Riven believes that a storm is coming and calls the wind a simun. They look for places to shelter until the storm passes having lost their tents and their camels last time, but the ravine is steep and provides little shelter.
They see a lush oasis in the distance and tamp down their expectations believing it to be trick of the heat and the sand, but as they near it they see that the palms are real and laden with dates, which monkeys carrying large sacks scampered up to pick the fruit and carry it back to a large tent on the edge of the spring-fed lake. A beautiful sun-bronzed woman with raven-black hair steps out of the tent and calls them over. Alex and Theo approach hoping they are the least likely to cause an incident. Alex realizes that Elissa is raptly at attention just behind his shoulder and he subtly rolls his eyes at her. She does not notice.
The woman introduces herself as Satre the caretaker of this oasis and offers hospitality. A solitary caretaker of an abundant oasis surrounded by well-trained monkeys strikes everyone as uncanny and Alex stalls Satre asking of details for tying up and watering the camels while Teleptyon might have a chance to view their situation through his third eye. Alex and Theo eventually run out of excuses and Alex follows in after her. Teleptyon tarries outside long enough for the wind to pick up again and speaks the words needed to see the vibrations of the Ar when the wind could swallow up the sound. The monkeys and her goats are mundane as are the trees and the tent are not. He sees the outline of her form faintly glow blue but does not know whether she is using some power, wearing a protective charm or under an enchantment. He follows in shortly after to join them for a meal.
She asks why they are traversing the wastes and Alex tells here that they are chasing a possibly legendary cure for an affliction of some of their friends. She is relieved and tells them that she was worried that they were on their way to the Palace of Onurus, which could be entered by a cleft in the ravine further up. She spoke of the fabulous wealth of the city and that it must have been punished by the gods because though the city still stood, the land around it which had once been lush and hospitable for people was now dry desert and her oasis was the last vestige of that. She warned them that though the city was no doubt filled with incredible magical powers and riches but that nobody ever returned and it was filled with dragons.
Theo and Teleptyon excanged looks as the dragons were mostly sleeping after the Drachomachia. Alex pressed asking when the Palace was cursed and Satre responded it was before the memory of her grandmother. He wondered how far back her grandmother's memory went. They asked if they could wait out the storm and whether Satre had any advice about the land past her oasis. She welcomed them to stay as long as they need, provided they sleep in their own tent and do not bother her at night. She is a lone woman in the desert after all. Alex responds that as a lone woman who invited a rough party to dine with her without hesitation he suspects that she is formidable enough in her own right. She simply touches the training whip at her hip and says "they can become quite defensive if I'm in trouble." She demures about knowledge outside the oasis stating that she had not traveled since she was young.
In their own tent Alex tells a Mătăhălos story about Kirke a witch who turned men who offended her into swine and said that the Oameni elders told it to their children as a way of warning them about the way that patriarchal norms can be transmitted even in harmless seeming stories in nominally egalitarian societies by demonizing women with power as an other. Theo cuts in to argue that the story of Kirke was meant to illustrate the decline of civilization away from core values of hospitality. Teleptyon enters the tent and when he finds out they're talking about the Eknon story of Kirke says it was there to teach children to be fearful of those who could use magic. Lunja laughs and said that the wenches in brothels keep small votives to Kirke and make prayers to harm competitors for a man's affection or to harm men who spurn them. Asbjørn would have been concerned by this but he had fallen fast asleep as soon as Alex had said "patriarchal norms."
