Watr Man and Erthe Woman

The Silvergrey Sea

Part Four: Elementals and Dragons

Watr Man and Erthe Woman

* * *

Drago’s goal couldn’t have been clearer when he finally surfaced in the cavernous underground docks of Azhure’en.

Locate the those who worked for the Manifestation and continue jamming a stick in their spokes. Setting Tranker on the path he needed him to go was the first part. Blinding any observant Manifestation conspirators to his true intentions was next. Tough the Hermetists may be, powerful mages they undoubtedly were, but he had been a Magus in his day and as he was alive again, this was again his day.

Besides, it wasn’t as if he was going to fight them. On the contrary, he intended to speed things along, while sabotaging one vital bit of the plan.

Informing the Order of Hermes of the plan in the works figured into his scheme as a maybe. If they were the Hermetists of old, such a warning was unlikely to have a friendly reception. He hoped they had mellowed some.

His first taste of Mercurial air after surfacing in one of the harbours underlying the Mother Lodge altered his plans. Something smelled wrong.

Well, not a smell, exactly. Another sense he had developed and honed through many years of magical praxis told him the harmony of this place had been badly upset.

Whatever the trouble was, it was near the top of the Order, literally and figuratively. Since rulership of the Order of Hermes was likely in dispute just then, Drago knew he had to make sure the person he reached out to was actually the one in charge.

Perhaps he could place his thumb on a pan and help tip the scales of the current struggle to a candidate likely to be friendlier to his wishes.

It took an hour to find a place to climb out of the water secluded enough that he wouldn’t be noticed. The climb itself defeated him for quite some time as the docks consisted of smooth stone that rose straight out of the water for almost a dozen feet before flattening out. In the end, he made like a dolphin, diving deep and letting buoyancy help him rise high enough out of the water to grab a ledge.

It took nine tries.

Asphyxiation nearly ended him right there. Having existed for millennia as a disembodied spirit, he had forgotten some of what inhabiting a body of flesh entailed. A gasp of air brought him back to the present.

Drago lay panting on the stone for a few moments as he slowly dried. His thudding heart and laboured breathing nearly drowned out evidence he’d been found.

He spotted them first. Two Hermetists on another quay almost a mile distant. There were few ships in the harbour, none in this cove. Unusually for so large a space, it was noticeably quiet. Sound carried quite well over the largely still water. The massive arches of the harbour ceilings echoed and distorted what sound there was. The sound Drago initially mistook for water slapping against stone he eventually identified as footsteps.

Other sounds he knew must be whispers snapped him out of his exhaustion.

He could tell by the tempo of their footsteps that he’d been seen. No way could he bluff his way out of being here. Visitors to Azhure’en were nonexistent.

Disappearing was the only option.

Drago climbed to his feet and began sprinting away from the Hermetists.

For a desperately long time, it seemed, there was nothing resembling an opening off the quay. Drago ducked into the first doorway he saw and rebounded off a closed door back out onto the dock.

Wincing at his bruised forehead and hopefully unbroken nose, Drago scrambled back out of sight. After assuring himself that his injuries were minor, he began trying to figure a way to open the door before him, all but certain that it had a ‘Hermetists Only’ filter. He had some time, unless there was a way for the two who’d seen him to alert others quickly.

Following immediately on that thought was the certainty he was screwed if he couldn’t get out of here fast.

Well, he was a mage.

Hands and forehead against the stone, Drago closed his physical eyes began exploring. He found other Hermetists, first. Two more were headed for his location. They’d reach the other side of the door in a few minutes. The cocky bastards seemed in no hurry.

The door was rigged to only allow Hermetists through, which seemed to indicate the Templars who built this place expected an invasion at some point.

Templars. Azhure’en was made by the Templars.

This door couldn’t have been restricted only to its current occupants. Magick, or rather magical facility had to be the key. Hermetic magick was something Drago was quite familiar with from other lives. He let the appropriate force flow through him.

The door began to move up almost immediately. He was through and gone before it finished. Ducking the oncoming Hermetists was not a problem.

Staying out of view required a bit more finesse. Drago decided the easiest way was to stay in the mindset that had opened the door for him. He figured the only way the others could track him was if his psyche stood out as different from that of the standard Hermetist.

It was a narrow thing, but Drago managed it after a few slipups. He hadn’t exercised his magical muscles since his last death. He got into the rhythm more slowly than he’d have liked to, but he did get there. He wondered how long they would search for him before giving up.

After giving it some thought, it occurred that the Hermetists couldn’t afford ever to give up. That was neither here nor there. Drago’s task was to get to the top of this mountain of a building and get into the struggle for supremacy he could still sense.

Perhaps the fight would occupy his would-be pursuers sufficiently that he’d be able to slip them and reach his goal.

That was the hope, anyway.

The reality was unexpected for all.

Drago had just figured out a moving, helical stair and was almost up to ground level when a sound like something under great stress made itself apparent. During the minutes it took for the dizzying escalator to reach its destination, the noise got louder. At first, Drago feared it was something wrong with this conveyance and feared a painful or ignoble death was on its way. As nothing about his journey changed though, he began to sense it was a more general issue, might even be an alarm of some sort.

Sending out his awareness, he could sense the consternation-edging-into-panic of those Hermetists within psychic reach. Something had them quite worried. It was a breach of some sort.

Could all this be because of him?

Drago quickly decided that it could not be. His illicit entry into the Hermetic City was a problem to be sure, but only to a small portion of the Order of Hermes. To most, he was just an anomaly. Someone else, it seemed, was seeking access to the wizards’ hidden sanctum.

Not pausing to figure the odds of that coincidence, Drago stealthily exited the tube containing the escalator and found himself in a hypostyle hall.

He had heard whispers of Azhure’en from his fellow shadows during the ages of his semi-doze in the Silvergrey Sea. The effort to get out of the Sea at the docks and the flight to safety from pursuit had left Drago little time to appreciate his surroundings.

In the stillness of this hall, the full realization hit him.

Drago stood between two rows of pillars that supported a fan vaulted ceiling over two hundred feet above. To his left, the upper half of the height was stained glass, depicting scenes he didn’t recognize mixed abstract designs that were haunting. Below, the blue stone was carved in elaborate bas-reliefs of plants, so lifelike it seemed to him they might at any moment move, as if in a breeze.

He was still close to the pillar from which he had exited; the blue stone of it within arm’s reach. Delicately fluted, the pillar had a cylindrical shape that was subtly twisted as it rose. The neighboring columns were a dozen yards away, but they appeared subtly different even at that distance. The one before him was smooth as glass but was visually textured in patterns that changed and flowed as he watched. It was hypnotic. Drago wondered if the pillar was solid matter, or matter of any kind.

Tearing his eyes away, the trespasser moved away from the pillar and the wall.

Passing the row, Drago found himself in another aisle, this one twice the width and twice the height; another window wall above and behind him.

He passed through four more such aisles, each double the last until, after over half an hour of walking, he entered a nave.

His rough mental calculations told him he was looking up at a ceiling seven miles from the blue flags on which he stood. The windows to either side occupied the upper half. Dim light passing through them was punctuated by intensely bright orange-white light through one on his left that travelled, window to gigantic arched window, toward and past him, eventually fading as it approached one far to his right. He couldn’t see the vaulting topping the glass in spots because of wispy clouds. This place actually had weather. Into the silence of this was the faint sound of creaking that had so alarmed the Hermetists, now considerably quieter.

‘Easy to think that gods made this place,’ he thought. He recalled the Templars who had built it, and realized that practically speaking, gods had.

The alarm stopped.

Another alert, a shrill scream, began as the whole of Azhure’en shook slightly. Into Drago’s consciousness entered tendrils of another mind. He sensed kinship to it, though he was sure he’d never encountered it before; or had he?

During his time in the Sea, hadn’t there been others, not of the Sea, that he could almost commune with?

Stone!

There had been large floating mountains in the Silvergrey Sea. Shadows had been living there, just as in the Sea. One of those was here, trying to get into Azhure’en. The Erthe Element had incarnated. That had to be it.

Drago paused to curse. That was all he needed, now. An Element loyal to Poseidon.

He tried to speak to it, sending a tentative greeting.

‘Where are you?’ came though loudly, startling Drago.

After a moment’s thought, he sent back, ‘I’m in one of the Naves.’

‘Wait there; I’m coming for you.’

‘What? Why?’

‘We have work to do,’ sounding impatient.

‘What sort of work?’ Stalling was the only option, at this point.

‘The return of the Templars, of course. Wait. You didn’t know. What happened to you? Was your summoning completed?’ She’d made him. Fuck.

‘I really have no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘You are flawed and must be discarded. Wait there, I’ll end you.’ So much for bluffing his way through this. He’d have to fight her and hope. His one advantage was that the Erthe Woman could have no idea who he had been.

He needed to rise to the top of Azhure’en very quickly. High ground would decide this. He might even end up saving the Mother Lodge and getting the help he needed.

—Gideon Jagged
Innsmouth, September 2026

© Gideon Jagged
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