March 06, 2023

Special - Loose Threads

18 minutes

Special: We're going to take a week off of our main story to give ourselves a little breathing space. In the meantime, we hope you'll enjoy this unusual take on a few of the things going on around the world. As Rhett mentioned, here's the text for what appears in this episode:

Loose Threads

The purple-dark sky is sown with stars above the wave-tossed shores of Karavi.

They are flowers in an eternal field, distant and intangible as they peer down upon the world below.

It is tempting to reach up and pluck them, they seem so near,

But no amount of stretching brings us close, so we must look where we are.

We are children in a store, told to look but not touch.

Closer at hand, and within easy reach, the nodding heads of white waves lap the crusted walls of the harbor.

The slimy pilings of the docks are home to clinging things that cluster about their feet.

The smell is distinct.

The noise would seem loud if it had not just been tamed by a louder sound,

One that ripped and tore through the sacred stillness,

Leaving a trail of destruction behind it.

These waves, eternal, yet bound by time,

Show even in the shroud night tries its best to cover them with.

Their rolling rush murmurs dangerously.

They babble about the things they have seen and the things they have not seen;

Their song is for us, a siren’s beacon that lures our senses with delicate hands,

And they will take us from our feet if we heed them.

So I flee, sprouting wings that bear me aloft.

A chance wind sweeps me on, spiraling up and north.

Who am I to question the wind? I do not; I cannot; I will not.

Instead, I drift, closer now to the stars than before, and happy in their glow.

Calamity! Turmoil!

The bright red flame of vengeance has long since burned out,

But the streets of Tlacapa, jewel of K’zaro, seem not to have heard.

In a thousand thousand hearts, pride is rekindled.

A people long suppressed has risen.

Their tread has shivered mountains to pieces.

Their voices have awakened the jungles, made them scream with new life,

And the haughty have been humbled.

From above, I see a man led with rope-bound hands.

His tears have left traces in the powder on his face. They have mingled into paste.

He bemoans his loss of comfort with words that cannot be understood. He wrings his hands.

The lace at one wrist has torn away and hangs limply.

Had he shoes upon his feet, he would once again strut the lanes of his city,

Would see things restored. But no.

He is surrounded by a silent crowd of watchers. The faces are all distinct. They are all the same.

With their dark eyes they usher him past the rough timbers of a bar-grilled door.

He stumbles into the dark of a close strongroom with bound soldiers as company.

The door shuts, and through the bars we see them stare at each other.

No one speaks, but their thoughts scream in the darkness.

I hear the worry spoken aloud in the tense stillness of the room.

I am stirred to leave. Sadness does the stirring.

When vengeance rules the heart, is anyone free?

The hush of high flight is intoxicating; I swoop and dive, rise and plummet.

The rushing air is cold but bracing. It encircles me, I encircle it.

The dimness of the world below is mirrored above me, and I am forever in an instant,

Free to feel without boundaries.

Westward, onward, westward again.

Then, there below, shines a yellow light. It is out of place, and so of course I circle downward, leaving the calm of nothingness to be ensnared in life again.

A meeting in the dark. The light is from a lantern.

Its warm glow swings a bit as the bearer shifts upon a pony. He grunts a bit at the late hour, uses a hand of flesh to move an arm of metal.

He is short, shorter than most, but exudes a sense of power. The light’s warmth picks at gold thread on a scarlet tunic.

He sits taller at the sound of approaching hooves.

Another rider leaves the cloak of shadow to be seen and to talk, pulls a black and white coat tighter against the spring mountain air.

Gruff pleasantries from the one who waited, a light response from the newcomer,

And then a stream of words.

Fair promises, subtle threats, time for thought.

The dwarf’s hard face is set in the lamplight. He is stone itself as he considers.

I see a nod. The riders part, heading in opposite directions.

Before the lamp is swallowed, the horses’ hooves gather speed,

No doubt to bring welcome news south.

The pony, stolid as ever, plods on, heading to the safety of a mountain home where preparations can begin.

No more to be seen—why would I not return to the bliss of the heavens?

The westward wind sweeps on, bearing me far over lands rolling and lands flat.

Into the mountains deep in the west I fly.

They are waiting, like an expectant mother with a recalcitrant child: stern, unyielding, arms folded.

Their slopes are barren and cold, at odds with the land around them.

How can it be that such fertile land sits at the feet of such bitter stone,

Or that there are limits to new growth? Some mysteries are too much.

I mount, turn upon turn into the air, yet still the peaks are above me.

Pinions flutter with small adjustments, and the twitching of my fingers opens a new course.

At last I am high enough, and it’s over the first ridge, then the next.

Clouds, banked row upon row, tear themselves apart upon the jagged heights.

Coaxed from behind, I sail through the wet and somehow find myself in a mountain cavern.

I am translated from darkness outside to darkness inside.

Pressed on every side by walls of rigid stone, by the scent of dust unmoved, by the sudden cutoff of wind,

I fly onward, inward, downward,

Until at last there is a scraping of bone on stone.

A dry voice runs like nails upon my spine.

Chanting words, unrecognizable, seize my ears.

In the dim purple glow, the tilted head and leering smile are illuminated, and all the more horrible for it.

A bundle of cloth strips is held aloft in bone-thin fingers,

The chant caresses it, teases forth new power that wraps the fleshless form in a cold and growing light.

It is too much. The head turns as I start, and I flee.

The cave is much too long, the freeing wind of the outside too distant by far.

Reaching hands stretch, impossibly long as I wing onward, driven by fear,

Clutch at me, to keep me entombed in this hall of ancient bodies.

But no—I burst free, into the starlit world once more, and the searching fingers fail.

They are stronger, but need more strength.

With a shake of my head, I find my wings have folded, and I streak eastward.

Is it one hour gone? Two?

I cannot say. The pall of night seems to stretch time in weird ways.

Over the rolling grassland far below I speed.

The trackless plains wave in the breeze, nodding this way and that.

Mile after mile is unbroken, pristine, undisturbed.

I revel in the unspoiled, I dare to dream of a place like this lasting forever.

Then there is a glint, and another, and the dream is shattered.

A line, arrow-straight, stretches north to south.

The file moves without slowing, a steady step-step-step of many feet trampling the land.

Moonlight shines on bone and rotting flesh.

Onward it drives.

I would liken it to a river, but there is no uncertainty here, no deviation or mutability.

Water flows where it will, purposeless outside the channel.

Not so this host, that marches with single devotion.

And there, upon a horse upon a rise, a single figure, picked out in silver.

He watches the passage of body after body, marks each one.

Would you say his eyes glimmer?

Is there pride in having brought things thus far, in having heeded a master’s command,

Or is there something more?

I have taken my fill here. The scent is too much.

The shifting wind pushes me on, and I must fly ahead of this troubling place.

On, to the south, where ocean breezes will scour the stench and maybe the memory.

Far to the south, but not far enough to the south, another army gathers.

It is pointed north, it has been made to go in one direction only.

Already, tents are arranged in loose grids, and the ground between them has been torn by the passing of many feet to become muddy.

Large fires burn here and there, fueled by wood that is all too hard to come by.

They gutter and wave, but their inconstancy does not keep cold hands from stretching and flexing in the warmth they provide.

Dark shapes pass around them.

Along the north edge, flags of black and white snap fitfully in the wind

Beyond this, in the uncertain embrace of the ocean,

Ships at anchor in the harbor roll beneath the sail-furled masts.

Longboats dart from ship to shore to ship, carrying load upon load of soldiers.

The oars creak under the strain of wood against wave.

Hulls grate into the sand, bodies roll over the gunwales to splash into the surf,

Water roils as hard warriors come ashore.

How long will it be? What lies ahead? Hard arms do not mean hard hearts, and some who warm at the fire tonight know their time comes.

I cannot linger. I must obey the wind, and I move eastward.

Home calls, I must return to where I began. The voice is insistent, and though you and I hear it, is it really there?

Over recently familiar lands I wing my way, a dark shape over dark jungle lands below.

There comes a call as I pass over the crater, endlessly waking, a strident voice that shakes my heart.

A roar primal, a roar lonely.

The blue moon shines on the matte sheen of a shielding shell as, heedless of obstruction, a monstrous turtle tears its way forward.

I may live a thousand years and never forget the horror of that momentary sight.

But what is this? A rising cliff at the east end of the crater,

And a city teetering at the edge of a roaring waterfall?

There, the motley crowd stands, eyes upturned, to trace the purplish path of a rising star.

They want to speak, and cannot.

Wonder is in their eyes.

Terror is in their eyes.

This sight is a sign of things to come. They have chosen change; will it be what they hope?

Only vague time will tell.

Onward. My wings work of their own volition.

Along the shore, the blue-white walls of Ebendele are almost silent.

The ocean still works its will, but only some of the crumble is due to its effort;

The rest is the hand of war.

And townspeople entombed in their homes are only just starting to sniff the air of freedom as an occupying army has moved on,

But there is hesitance. The rabbit still sees the hawk’s shadow at the mouth of its hole.

In the waning silence of this extended night, five fellow travelers appear at my wing. They do not speak to each other, but with a single mind they point at the ruined city, and fall suddenly away.

One by one, they settle to the ground on an open hillside.

I am curious, and I circle overhead.

Silence stretches out from the still figures. They look at each other, then throw back their heads.

Music pours forth.

Is it my imagination, or is the purple streak of the rising star strengthened?

But no—the glint of crystalline facets does grow!

The song takes shape, melody, harmony, descant,

Rising tune and rising pillar.

Then, at last, the crystal winks brightly, and the world below shudders with ecstasy along fault lines we cannot see.

This is too much. I must be off. I must return to where I started.

One last leg to the journey: seaward once more, and east to the islands of the dawn.

It would be a pleasant thing, this homecoming,

But as the eastern sky begins to show the first tinges of returning light,

A ship with black and white sails appears upon the swelling tide.

I do not need to approach to know a troubled heart.

The speeding vessel cuts east and north,

Its prow is pointed where I am going, and I feel I must beat it there.

The crew is steady in its work.

I am more steady in the beat of my wings.

The work of my wings has bought two days, perhaps. Two days in which to capture the sights and smells and sounds of a place I have come to love.

Two days before the darkness returns.

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Our spot for Battlebards uses music from Battlebards! We hope you like our use of:

Capital City - Middlegate - Score Music by Shams Ahsan

We're glad you're sharing our story; we really appreciate your support and hope you enjoy what we've created together. We're having fun sharing our adventure with you each week, and we'll only get better with time! If you like what you hear, please take the time to leave us a review on iTunes, since that bumps us up in the ratings and lets others join in the fun. For quick updates on a more real-time basis, follow us on Twitter (@stackodice) and on Instagram (@stackodice), where we'd love to hear from you. Or if you want to share a question or idea with us, drop us a line at [email protected].

Also, if you aren't on our Discord server yet, you should be! Check it out here: https://discord.com/invite/sUUJp78r3E

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We used a Battlebards sound effect. If you like what you hear, check them out at battlebards.com. If you sign up for a Prime account, be sure to use our special code, stack, and you'll get a 20% discount on your subscription.

Here are the sound effects we used in this episode:

Downtime - Fantasy Ambience - Score Music, by Alexander Nakarada

And now, on with the show-- we're excited to tell a story with you.

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