Tao and Galanna

He braces himself, and looks out into the thundering storm of whirling mist. "What in the world...?"

Agar pushes past him, locking arms with Tao and Malachite before pushing his face through the portal. His breath is quickly drawn from him by the whirling maelstrom, and he fancies that he can hear the screams of the damned echoing on the etheric winds. With some difficulty, he draws his head back. "Ethereal cyclone," he states matter-of-factly. "Geez, I'd hate to see the astral plane right about now."

"Why?" asks Mara.

"Well, it seems that the death of the goddess has done bad things to the local planar weather. If it's this bad on the ethereal, the astral – the plane of thought – is likely a complete disaster. No wonder divinations and communication spells aren't working. Anything that has to travel through that mess is going to be disrupted."

"That explains why the pit fiend was worried about us traveling to Agar's village," muses Nolin. "I bet you can't plane shift through this."

"Should we try?" asks Tao. "I can do that, or open a gate."

"This might be the wrong time to experiment," says Galthia with a shake of his angular head. "If something goes wrong, it could endanger us all."

Agar frowns. "He's probably right," he apologizes to Tao, "as much as I hate to admit it. Summoning spells might be difficult, too. We'll have to find out. But at least we know now why no one was answering our sendings."

"Because they're all dead?" muses Priggle sotto voce.

"It's more than that, though," says Malachite, not having heard the deep gnome. "My attempts to detect undead aren't working, either." Agar shrugs philosophically.

"What can you do? It should fade in time."

"How much time?"

"I have no idea. Sometime between a week and a year, I'd guess."

Malachite shakes his head once, back and forth. "We must keep faith. I'm more worried about the darkness."

"Yeah? Well, me too, but I'm also worried about where these tired bones are going to sleep tonight." Velendo takes one more suspicious look at the chaos behind the open planar door, sighs, and slams it shut. "Come on. Let's use the Flickering Needle, and keep watches."

"Proper watches?" asks Splinder. His beard twitches, and he raises a mailed fist to hide a tiny smile. "It's a step in the right direction. Next thing you know, we'll be eating actual salt pork and hard tack instead of that decadent banquet food that the Castle normally produces!" He nods in thorough approval. "The troops were getting soft. I just wish we were to be in open caverns instead of this portable fortress." Behind him, one of the dwarves snorts sarcastically.

"Be careful," Priggle says philosophically. "I'm sure we'll get there."

They watch as Tao pulls the heavy iron cube out of her pack. Setting it down and standing back, she says the command word, and the cube ratchets open to double its size, then quadruple. The fortress grows larger by the second. Tao says a second command word, and the iron door clanks upwards. One by one the group files into their sanctuary, and the black metal door clanks shut behind them.

Other than the howling wind, the pitch-black cavern is silent.

The night passes quietly for those inside the Daern's Instant Fortress, other than the sound of the icy wind outside and the total lack of light. In fact, once Agar's mass darkvision spell wears off in the early hours of the morning, all the surface dwellers but Stone Bear are virtually blind.

Tao doesn't sleep, though. She stays up in a state of deep meditation instead, her prayers drowned out by the thrumming of the wind against the cold metal of the tower walls. "Galanna, I offer myself to you," she implores, emerald eyes turned towards heaven as she calls to her Goddess through the darkness and the miles of stone above her. "I am nothing, but even the smallest ant can help move the mountain. Take from me, if you so desire, for I am your servant and your agent on Spira. My strength is your strength. Draw from me, if I am worthy." Over and over, deeper in prayer than she's ever been before, repeating her invocation to the unnatural wind and the everpresent stone, even as the night stretches out before her and the heat dies from the fireplace embers that still refuse to shed light.

In the long, dark slow time of the early morning, her prayers are answered.

Tao's mounting sense of dread is kept in check by her faith, but the taint of Imbindarla's death weighs heavily on her soul. As she prays, Tao feels an empathy for Galanna's pain, and she desperately works to understand what it must be like to have to kill one that is family. Yet another prayer... and suddenly Tao understands, and it is as if a dam has broken, for the full magnitude of Galanna's sorrow and despair washes over the Knight of the Horn. The difference between Tao's and Galanna's grief is as the tiniest stream to the largest river, and for a timeless second Tao feels like her heart may burst.

Then she feels a torrent of utter and incomprehensible bliss, and the ocean of sorrow drains away from her all at once, leaving behind a tide of warmth and reassurance that fills Tao with joy. Galanna's touch falls from her, drawing with it the gift that Tao had offered, and Tao falls to her knees. Face pale but heart singing, through her cascading tears she sees the faint coals in the fireplace in front of her. "Light!" she thinks, head still reeling, and she hears a metal door clang open somewhere down the hall.

"Dawn!" clamors Mara, voice cloudy with sleep but nevertheless triumphant. "It's dawn! Somewhere above us, the sun has just risen! Praise Aeos!"

Still kneeling in prayer, Tao smiles to herself. "Aeos, schmaeos," she thinks. "Galanna did that, perhaps with my aid. Let's see what the snotty paladin thinks of that." Holding that thought close, Tao finally falls deeply asleep.