A Momentary Delay in Glyph

The Silvergrey Sea

Part Three: Conspiracies and Secret Orders

A Momentary Delay in Glyph

* * *

Drago had some trouble getting through Glyph. He had been there a lot in the past but had been in rather a different form. Walking into walls as the Hyborean did a couple of times was embarrassing to say the least.

Drago hadn’t had to worry about material obstacles the other times he’d been here.

This presented a problem. He needed to get to the Mother Lodge on Mercurius and didn’t know the way to the hidden river Styx that incarnate beings had to take.

A few discrete inquiries and Drago knew he couldn’t go the proper way, as he would never get past the Mages.

As it turned out, there was another route.

It was not one the Hyborean relished taking. He had died one too many times as it was.

On the other hand, he wasn’t sure he could die, given his current existential status.

The tall man was standing in the Mages Quarter a mile away from the Keep, leaning on a stone railing overlooking the Phlegethon. A red, green, and gold fire, flickering without heat danced along the surface: ripples on the river. The light from the spheres that did service as a sky here were mauve, rapidly turning deep green.

The buildings around the square began to glow muted pastel colours. That much he inferred from the reflections on the wet stone under his feet.

It was quiet just here, but Drago could hear some bustle on the other side of the open space behind him.

Glyph kept no regular hours, but the citizens had a routine of sorts. By their reckoning, it was late evening.

Drago let his thoughts drift as he let the flames play with his unconscious.

The Great Soul had come here full of fire, hungry to begin the task of undoing a sinister plan that not even the Hermetists would know about until it was too late to stop. Informing the leaders of the Order and enlisting their help now seemed more than a little Quixotic. He still didn’t know how to convince those most in a position to help.

Perhaps Drago had been hasty in abandoning Tranker. His friendship with the Hermetist Abram might have made introductions smoother. As it was, the most likely result of his appearance would be his summary execution.

He remembered that poisoned blade.

Someone wanted Drago silenced and not for what he knew. The Meraculus Mercurius had likely assumed him a casualty of the Silvergrey Sea, though that might now have changed. If the M.M. knew what his advent meant, they would most likely have been the ones to try to end him.

The dread thought occurred that someone knew what he was really about; not the rogue experiment of the Meraculus Mercurius, nor the missionary of Poseidon, but his true task to subvert the Sea God’s plans. If that were the case, killing him would simply mean another Watr Man would have to be made who would do what he was supposed to. That thought terrified him.

So. What to do?

The conclusion was as obvious as it was inconvenient. The Hermetists were the only ones who could offer him protection. Drago stood up, vaulted the rail, and dropped, feet first, into the flaming river. He heard the beginnings of vocal objections to his dip in the Phlegethon, cut off as the liquid closed over his head.

The cold of the water burned his skin. The Hyborean hybrid was quickly disoriented as the strong current carried him downstream and into the darkness of the culvert that funnelled the river under the Plaza of Dying Suns. Soon, Drago wished he’d taken a bigger breath.

He remembered from his earlier, discorporate experiences in Glyph what the path and length of this pipe should be. It seemed to have grown considerably longer since then.

Drago was seriously beginning to worry about drowning—an especially bitter irony considering his dwelling place for the last few thousand years—when he was spat out of the flow of water.

The Great Soul still couldn’t take a breath, for the weight of the entire river it seemed was pounding down on his supine form. With some difficulty, he rolled over and rose on knees and elbows. At last, he gasped fresh air.

Crawling a few feet on hands and knees, the Hyborean was clear.

After spending a few blesséd moments collapsed and simply breathing, Drago swept the water from his eyes and stood.

Just behind him, roaring like a blaze but no longer seeming afire, was the Phlegethon. It drained through the heavy mesh grate that had caught him. Not for the first time, the Hyborean wondered where the water for the rivers came from and where it went. He suspected the answer to both was the Silvergrey Sea, even though it had no actual water in it.

Drago was in an oval tunnel much larger than the one that channelled the river. It curved before and behind him, suggesting it was circular.

He had to be above the path of the hidden river Styx.

Now to find a way down. Drago began to walk along the bottom of the tunnel.

Three hours and twice around the loop later, and he confessed himself stumped.

He had found the outflows of the other three rivers, but nothing else.

The Great Soul dared the torrent of one of the rivers; he was no longer sure which. He could see nothing through the grate, nor could he determine a way to shift it, even if he were to decide to drop through. Drago began to wonder what purpose this tunnel served. Evidently, it was never visited.

The answer to the riddle came after a few moments’ thought.

This tunnel contained the Styx.

Now Drago just had to figure out why he couldn’t sense it.

Every entrance to the Silvergrey Sea consisted of a virtual tunnel with the Sea at one end and normal space-time at the other. The two merged into one another gradually. The fog was a by-product of the collision.

He should have been dumped into the Styx when he exited one of the rivers that fed it. Why wasn’t he?

It had to have something to do with the rivers that provided Glyph with both its water and breathable air.

He hadn’t seen the Sea since he had left it for Drago’s body. The Great Soul wondered if that might have something to do with his predicament. Normally, he would merely have to shut down that part of him that was mortal, and he’d be able to sense the Sea again. There was no longer a ‘mortal’ part of him however, not since the elf Dævara had worked her magick.

Perhaps if he invoked his pure self, the Great Soul that had swum in the Sea, that would do it. Sitting himself in an upright position, Drago let everything in his mind go, except the sensation of gliding through the medium of the Silvergrey Sea—

And found himself floating in it. The Hyborean’s contribution to his psyche was all but gone, for the nonce. He couldn’t even bring up the mortal’s memories.

Drago could sense the tides and currents and the locations where the Sea touched the worlds.

He felt the place where Azhure’en was.

Drago set out, moving much faster than any Hermetist ship.

— Gideon Jagged
Innsmouth, September 2026

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