The Elements Escape the Mother Lodge

The Silvergrey Sea

Part Four: Elementals and Dragons

The Elements Escape the Mother Lodge

* * *

The Erthe Woman didn’t trust the Watr Man. How could she? She wasn’t in his mind; the link couldn’t be established. The minds of the Aer Elders and the Fyre Child were already one with hers. It was on their advice that she had decided not to simply kill him, grab another, and wait for the Great Soul chosen as the Watr Element to inhabit it.

It would take too long, argued the Aer Elders. Killing the vessel of the Watr Man would be far more difficult than she thought, said the Fyre Child.

The Æthyr was there, even if the host for the moment was lost. It would work, if they could get him to the site and hold him in place long enough. The Erthe Woman’s order to the Fyre Child was to do anything necessary to get the designated host of the Æthyr to cooperate; if she could keep him pliable long enough, he wouldn’t be wise to the deception until it was too late for him to back out. For now, though, she had other problems.

“Follow me,” she said to the Watr Man.

“What’s the plan for getting out?”

“We’re not.” She didn’t follow up. The part of her that was relieved warred with the part that worried about his silence. Did he know more than he’d hinted at? She glanced back as they left the dungeon. His face was as unreadable as ever. The former Rayne Hermit couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Again, she had to fight the urge to strike out at him—kill him. Some part of her was deeply mistrustful. Was it the vehicle, Drago? The Hyboreans weren’t even a footnote in the history of the Pleroma. A backwater with nothing of more than local worth, they stood to gain by the restoration of the Shining Empire. None of them should have had a grievance^[1].

The Erthe Woman glanced back again as they entered one of the helical moving stairs that infested this place—and caught a glimmer of malevolence from his half-lidded eyes. It died almost immediately, but she couldn’t doubt what she’d seen.

There was no way out of Azhure’en that would go unnoticed by the residents.

Well, there was one.

None of them knew of it, though.

Only one Templar-trained would know. For all their generosity in gifting this place to the Order of Hermes after their own demise, the priest-mages of Atalanté had kept certain bits of it a secret.

But that was for later.

Now, there were the dragons.

* * *

An often noticed but rarely discussed feature of Azhure’en’s architecture were the dragons sprinkled over its many roofs. Only a few of the Hermetists knew what they really were. None knew all their secrets.

Though not a Hermetist, the Erthe Woman did know.

The classic four leggéd, two winged shapes were the size of the elephants of Oerth, though considerably sleeker in outline, and looked to be made of alabaster. They moved, in a way that escaped the notice of all. They crawled over only the roofs of the iteration of the Lodge on Mercurius. Guardians they were, but not of Azhure’en, rather against a possible day when someone might try to free the White God.

The Erthe Woman intended to repurpose them.

* * *

The two wouldn’t need to get to the top of Azhure’en, but they would need to get onto a roof. Ironically, getting fifteen miles up would be easier than getting a few hundred yards up if one wanted to be outside at the end. The peculiar design of the Mother Lodge had to do with its ultimate purpose, one which necessitated, among many other things, minimizing openings.

There were a few if one knew where to look. She didn’t, so she guessed—

Wrong.

Three times.

The alarm was raised before the pair found their way outside. Someone had noticed their absence from their cells. The Erthe Woman had hoped the two of them would be done and out before that happened. She was going to have to get creative.

Currently, the Elements were near one of the crossings of a nave, above the third aisle. Next to them, so large they couldn’t really see it was a window. Over the stone rail to their right was a gulf of dark blue. The translucence of yellow coloured glass was to their right. After a few steps, it changed to red. The transition was a clean sinuous line. She was too close to the material to get a notion of what image it represented. The fact that the window was eight hundred yards high didn’t help, either. The view through the glass was of a sky not part of Mercurius. A clear pane revealed its colour as bright white. The whole atmosphere was brilliant.

She had a clear view of three dragons on the sloping roof on the other side of the window. At the end of it, the Erthe Woman had hoped would be a door that would lead out onto the leads.

The clarion had long since stopped, but she knew the search hadn’t. There might be people on the grounds looking for the escaped Elements, but most would concentrate on the exits. The sheer size of Azhure’en worked in favour of any potential escapee who knew their way around.

Another corner, another dead end. Or so it seemed.

The Watr Man saved the day. As he leaned against the window just near the corner, his weight seemed cause a distinct crack! sound. “It moved,” he said, turning and pressing against the spot where he’d put his weight.

It took a frustrating few moments to figure out how, but part of the window eventually swung out. She felt like hitting herself. It hadn’t occurred to her to look for egress through the windows. There were likely many such places, including the three they’d already rejected.

Hours wasted.

No visible hinge or anything else joining the section that they swung out could she detect. The glass, which was less than half an inch thick and, to her surprise, seemed to be attached at the absolute edge of the join. Looking closer, she could see a small space—it wasn’t attached at all; it floated free seemingly without any sensible support.

The two passed quickly through the large opening. Pushing it closed left no indication that it had ever been anything other than solid. A little experimentation failed to find a way to open it again. They were committed now.

“What now?” Watr seemed a bit nervous.

Standing on a roof of slate-like material that sloped away at better than twenty degrees might have been the reason, though the Erthe Woman had no trouble keeping her footing. Maybe it was the dragons, only a few feet away, one looking like it was stepping toward them. More likely it was the view, for it unsettled her, as well.

Looking up, the Erthe Woman expected to see the sky of Mercurius. Instead, she saw only a blank, pearlescent white. It had no depth; she didn’t think it was the sky of another world, or any kind of sky at all. The light from it banished all shadow. She couldn’t tell how deep it was. She realized it must be the inside of the shell protecting Azhure’en. How the light of each world was visible through the windows from farther away was a mystery to the Erthe Element, one she had no time for.

“Come on, Drago.” Together, the Elements approached the stone drakes.

---

[1] She was hilariously wrong about this. Recall: Fatherhood and the Apocalypse, supra

—Gideon Jagged
Innsmouth, September 2026

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