Watr Man Hunting

The Silvergrey Sea

Part Three: Conspiracies and Secret Orders

Watr Man Hunting

* * *

Her name had been Rayne Hermit. Now, she was the second of the Elements to manifest ahead of the Rebirthing Rite.

She was now the Erthe Woman. Unlike her predecessor, there was no vestige of the host left. Rayne Hermit had been subsumed so thoroughly she might as well be dead.

The Albedo had been wrong; the Erthe Woman was not going for the dragons of Azhure’en.

Not yet.

There was one other she had to find before that; the first of the Elements to emerge: the Watr Man. That emergence had not gone according to schedule or to plan. Finding out why and, if necessary, returning the Great Soul in the Watr Man to the Silvergrey Sea to try again, was her priority.

Poseidon must be obeyed, she knew.

Having no information to guide her, the first place to visit would have to be the nomad world, the Hermetist’s planet of Mercurius. It would be death for her to touch the Sea. Finding Mercurius therefore meant going the long way: finding it in spacetime.

In which Aion it was, she didn’t know. The Erthe Woman only hoped it was in one of the thirty that had formed the Pleroma. Knowing the Hermetists the way she did, that as not a sure bet. A systematic search was the only way.

Fortunately, she didn’t need to worry about the time it would likely take.

* * *

For most, searching for a world that roamed unsunned in one of the voids between galactic super-clusters in one of thirty infinite spacetime continua would have been a hopeless task. For one born in the strange semi-reality between worlds that held that stranger Sea, it was a matter of following her nose.

Mercurius was not a natural world, and its synthetic nature made it stand out in many subtle ways. There were other more pedestrian methods of trimming the list of possible locations, as well. The Erthe Woman knew where and how that world had been manufactured, after all.

That haystack was still quite large.

She spent a subjective millennium looking.

Being able to sidestep time was her biggest advantage.

Despite all her sensory abilities, she twice missed it. The Hermetists really had been incredibly careful when hiding their adopted homeworld. Its gravitational mass had been hidden, likewise its heat and magnetic signatures.

But not perfectly. The Erthe Woman ended up having to be much closer to it to detect these things than she at first assumed. She was less than three of the planet’s diameters away before a faint tug betrayed a mass to her right. Judging by the strength of it, it was much smaller than it should have been. Her many other senses told her nothing.

She turned and descended, guided by that faint pull.

Hitting the outer atmosphere was a nasty surprise. She couldn’t penetrate it more than a few feet before pain exploded all over her.

She woke floating in space still shuddering with an acute ache. It took a long time to fade.

When the Erthe Woman could finally move under her own power, there was no sense of Mercurius.

The search began again. At first, she reasoned it must still be close. After days, she had to admit it had likely moved to another Aion.

‘Have to begin again,’  she told herself. Stifling an internal sigh.

* * *

It took half the time, a mere five hundred years, to locate it again. During the centuries of her search, the Erthe Woman had time to reflect on the defenses the home of the Hermetists had, and to think of ways to counter them.

This time, she tried to make herself as invisible as possible. She approached the planet slowly, feeling ahead for the boundary that had caused so much pain. Despite her caution, she penetrated a full body length into what proved to be a very sharp boundary between space and atmosphere. Immediately backing off, she managed to avoid fainting this time, though the pain lingered for almost an hour.

Having shaken off the worst of it, the Erthe Woman inched closer until her hands just touched the barrier. Wincing as the pain returned, she focussed on the substance of her difficulties. After a few minutes thought, she had it and wanted to slap herself for her error. Not less visible, but more.

No way to avoid detection, but she could avoid passing the barrier while descending to the surface if she took the barrier with her.

The Erthe Woman allowed her essence to shine forth and slowly pushed against the barrier. It stretched as she descended, enveloping her. The atmosphere slid along the outer edge of it as it hugged her form. Finally, it separated from the whole, leaving her sheathed in energy and protected from the outer air.

Quickly, before a response from the Hermetists could catch her, she dropped.

— Gideon Jagged
Innsmouth, September 2026

© Gideon Jagged
All Rights Reserved