Deathblossom, Angler's Spire: Montage/Scenes
Atus—Dancing the Tempest's Waltz
Park—Eating at the Charred Mantis
Tharr—Earning his medical botany degree at the Garden of Memory and Sorrow
Tolliver—Bartering with a Tzelicrae and Ketra at the Aster's Scar
Charred Mantis—Park
Immediately distracted from his resolve, Park beelined toward the cookery, even the ominous clouds above him forgotten as he lost himself in the smell. It eas fortunate for his clothes that he was so eager to step inside the stone building, for not a moment after he opened the wooden door and he stepped inside, the deluge began.
Park did not notice, however, as he found himself inside a single large room full of heat. An actual, honest-to-goodness fire was roaring in the center of the room fed a constant supply of wood, leaves and aromatic herbs and spicy roots. The fire was built on a massive pit, with a gargantuan iron cauldron (it could easily have fit Park in there ten times over) suspected above it. An impenetrable cloud of steam poured from the stew inside, whisked away by a series of complex vents in the ceiling. Scaffolding had been built around the cauldron, alongside a more permanent stone platform, allowing people access to its top. Several individuals stood there, of mixed bloodlines, while others were lined up in two lines below it. Park's eye fell on the large (but not overly large) spigots at the cauldrons' bottom, their handles covered with a bright red rubbery substance. Attendants stood there, turning the handles to let stew into the bowls held by those waiting in line.
Unsurprisingly, the divine smell was coming from the stew. Park watched in fascination as chars carrying massive dishes loaded with seasoned and chopped insect parts, alongside a wide range of herbs, climbed the scaffolding and dumped their delectable cargo into the stew.
A semi-inebriated man with a bowl of steaming stew nearly stumbled into Park.
"Ah, sorry, friend! Here to get your pot of immmmmmmortal mantis stew? Been cooking for twenty seasons, they say, never stopped. Same... same mantis drake at the bottom. So god. Neverending. And free! It's all free!" He giggled. "Just gotta wait in line." Park looked at the two lines; they were so long that they curved in on themselves, and one of them even extended out the door into what Park finally registered as a torrential downpour. That did not seem to bother those waiting, though.
As the drunken man stumbled on, Park's eye fell then on a familiar site; a staircase led up to a loft overlooking the rest of the room, where a half dozen people were processing and rendering massive insectoid carcasses. It took him back to Verdurance, which, he realized, really hadn't been that long ago.
Around the edge of the room were tables for two or three, where people sat eating their stew, some in silence, some in gossip. Distracted as he was by the heavenly scent of stew, Park did catch some snippets of conversation wafted about the aromatic breeze.
- At a nearby table, a mothryn, their chin dripping with stew, was discussing the Tyrant's Bloom legend animatedly with a more dour-looking squat gau, whose stew was untouched and cooling.
- In the loft above him, where there were literal bug butchers, Park saw a short gau with a massive, spade-like head who looked like he didn't quite fit in waving an oversized cleaver about, talking about the "pinewood shark," while a strapping young ardent woman rolled her eyes and assured him that the "Tyrant's Herald, butchered, would taste much better than a mythical... what did you call it? 'Shark'?"
- At the end of the shorter line for stew (Park didn't know why one line was shorter than the other), a gaggle of ketras were talking about "replenishing the stew's stock with the mantid drake prowling about up north."
Of course, the chars standing atop the scaffolding stirring and seasoning the stew also intrigued Park. There were many possibilities before him.
Gardener's Shed—Tharr
The gardeners frowned. "We prefer our plants to grow in... well, either through the bark of trees or in proper soil, like here," said the ektus.
The ketra knelt by the mothryn and inspected the chest wound. "Sorry, friend, but this is more the domain of a doctor, I think. I... I'm not sure I can yank this thing out without killing them." They leaned in close. "Looks like a dahlia tuber though."
"That would be fitting," rumbled the ektus. "Those were cultists of the Tyrant's Bloom, which is said to be a dahlia, or a distant relative at least."
The sprinkles from above became a proper, light rain. Another peal of thunder rolled across the sky.
The ektus joined their ketra friend, then shook his head. "Just yank it out, I say."
The light rain became a downpour. All four of them were immediately drenched. The ketra began cursing, and the ektus scooped up the fallen mothryn. "Follow!"
Tharr did, and soon found himself out of the rain, a cup of fragrant tea in his hands, in a wooden building filled with ceramic pots and gardening tools. Firefly lanterns made the shadows of shears and rakes seem wicked and long, and the rain drummed hard on the roof of the shed. There was a small leak in one corner of the room. The fallen mothryn was lying, twitching, on the table, eyes still unfocused but now very damp. Their breathing was shallow, and their skin squirmed around the tuber.
The ketra looked to Tharr. "You saved her; your call. Your responsibility. It looks like this tuberous parasite is growing rapidly; we can try to just rip it out here and quickly staunch any bleeding... or we can go for a more... surgical approach." They nodded to a rusted machete the ektus was holding thoughtfully. "Or we can leave it in them and see what happens. Or drag them off to a proper doctor."
"I'm not sure if a doctor or gardener would be more helpful here," the ektus said morosely. "We can remove it, certainly... but I am not sure at what cost. I doubt this will kill them... physically at least. But it sems to be acting quickly. Shall we try to remove it?"
Heart of the Storm—Atus
Atus left the dazed and semi-sputtering guard behind him, shutting the door to the spire firmly out of courtesy. As the door slammed closed, the storm - Dajel - answered in kind with a roar of thunder. The rain followed, sharp, cold, and piercing, questing, obscuring his vision like a thick grey curtain. Atus' world shrank to include just him and the storm.
He initiated the conversation, or dance, with words enunciated clearly, punctuated with lightning and its sonic counterpart. The storm's response was immediate; the world turned blindingly white and so loud that it became silent. After a moment he realized that his feet were no longer on the ground; he was soaring through the air, his metallic body tingling as the storm's lightning dragged him through the air, higher and higher. He briefly glimpsed the bright light at the top of the spire as he flew up and over it, and then even it fell from sight, and all there was around him was lightning, rain, and power.
Atus had the vague sensation that he was being tossed back and forth between hands of lightning, electromagnetic forces striving to rip apart his metallic body. He kept himself together by sheer force of his will. After some time, he realized that there were patterns to the electromagnetic tugs and the rumbling of thunder. The storm was speaking to him. He loosened his mind (just a bit), and allowed the storm to speak directly to him, strumming his spirit, using his metallic body as a conduit.
"Little raincloud, why do you call to me?"
Atus could not form a reply with words; instead, he could only speak via lightning, approximating speech through releasing the energy passing through his hands, combined with focusing his thoughts; he felt the storm worm its way to the back of his mind, eavesdropping on his reflections and ruminations. Thoughts, emphasized with lightning and energy; that was how to speak to Dajel.
If it was Dajel.
Aster's Scar—Tolliver
The tzelicrae tilted their head in Tolliver's direction, and prompted him again. "Have you an offer for my chart, friend?" As if to underscore his words, thunder boomed, and the relentless drumming of rain on the roof began.