The Silvergrey Sea
Part Seven: What Is and Should Never Be
Trapped in the Elven Dark
* * *
Drago realized before Abram did that the dragons were not those of Azhure’en. It took a shocking change of scenery for his companion to get it.
The two of them were a third of the way down the jungle slope when the landscape turned to a desert of silver sand. The sky was a sighing storm of greyish white. The horizon had gone.
The dragons were now…no longer dragons. The one he focussed on initially looked like a vortex of blue liquid, throwing off sparks of silver. It changed into a mud-coloured phallus. It changed again. The others, Drago saw, were doing the same. Fantastic shapes and horrifying, gone before he could apprehend.
“Gods of my fathers,” whispered Abram from his left. “We’re in the Elven Dark.”
“Well spotted, my friend.” Drago managed to keep the sarcasm out of his voice, but only just.
To judge by Abram’s expression, he heard it anyway. “I’m not the one who got it wrong, Watr Man; you did. Or did you?” Suspicious.
Such distrust, especially in this situation, was more than understandable. “I did guess wrong and I regret that miscalculation.” The Hermetist’s expression relaxed; he really did want to trust Drago. Good. “She’s one of the Elements, one of the Great Souls. The risk for the Erthe Woman is almost as great as for us. She might very well be worse than dead by now.”
“So, our adversary is insane—if she still lives.”
“Without doubt.” A shrieking sound that climbed in volume to the pain threshold very quickly curbed further debate. It presaged a ball of blackness that passed high overhead. The sound, dropping in pitch and intensity followed it.
Both returned to their problem. That whatever-it-was meant nothing; being just a manifestation of the chaos of this Aion.
“I’m not current on Hermetist history, Abram. Has anyone ever escaped the Dark Aion?”
“In the history of the Hermetists since the creation of the Aions of the Elven Convocation, seventeen Hermetists and nine others that we know of have found themselves here. None were ever heard from again.”
“What of elven excursions?”
“Elves never come here. Never speak of the Dark. I heard rumours of a couple of elves trying it about fifty years ago, UT but we were never able to confirm1.”
“Did the rumours mention if they made it out?”
“They did and they did make it out. That part of the story is one of the reasons we doubt the event happened.”
“So, what do you know of this place, really?”
Abram sighed as he contemplated the silver haze where a horizon should be. “That getting out means finding a Færie Door before it moves when the Aion resets itself, which it does at random intervals. Resets are the real problem. Each one could suddenly land us in a situation that is immediately fatal, or worse.” He didn’t need to elaborate on what ‘worse’ meant.
“So, you know nothing more than the rumours state.”
“Not even that, for certain. The only ones who might know more refuse to talk about it.”
There was glum pause while they silently cursed all fæ for their closed-mouthedness.
Eventually, Drago asked, “Is there any way to narrow the search?”
The landscape changed again. Both men fell a dozen feet into extremely prickly orange bushes. After much cursing, Drago disentangled himself, the momentary fear he had felt while falling gone. He helped his companion, who’d been dumped in a much fuller, taller plant.
Bleeding staunched, the two of them looked at the new environment.
Rocks.
Definitely rocks.
A tan to orange on colour. Rising all around them.
The sky was an unremarkable pale yellow with…clouds? Slightly darker patches, quite jagged in outline covered the sky. There were layers of them, the closer to the horizon the darker the hue.
“Damn!” exclaimed, Abram, whispering. “Those are higher cliffs.” He turned to Drago. The Watr Man replied with a nod.
Wind sighed a dirge above.
Another sound was almost audible below the breeze.
“Shall we—”
“Ssshh!” Drago said. “Listen.”
After a moment. “Can’t be the beasts, can it?”
The Hyborean Element gave Abram a slim smile.
Abram’s face betrayed a faint hope. “If those creatures are real…”
“Their exit from this Aion will be arranged—”
“By Poseidon.”
Despair almost extinguished hope, then.
- see: The High History of the Thirty Aions, Vol 4 (forthcoming) ↩︎
—Gideon Jagged
Innsmouth, October 2026
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