Mystran Dust [6]

Gathering her robes to her, Simbul placed her ear against the strider's chest. "He'll sleep for some time." Danthor examined him briefly, concurred, and lifted Krogenar easily, carrying him from the clearing. Laisha and Grandal conferred as they followed.

"I'll get his ship to where we agreed. I think I can work it well enough." Grandal nodded at Laisha. As the female drow entered the ship, he rejoined the other two wizards and their sleeping friend aboard the Mystran airship.

.....

Laying him down on the mud-cracked ground, Laisha regarded her old friend sadly. In the oppressive heat, she knelt over him as the other Mystrans looked on. Casting her mind back some eight decades, she focused on the first time she had spoken to Krogenar - the day she had extended an invitation to him, to join her family, to join Mystra's family. It was painful, but it was a necessary step in the spell's execution.

She had followed him for a few days, to discern his nature. He had recently fled the destruction of Vector, a fugitive MagiTek soldier. Finally, she had explained Mystra's role in the universe to him, and made her invitation. He accepted, and they had been friends ever since.

Laisha removed the Symbol of Mystra from around his neck.

Whispering softly in his ear, Laisha cradled his stubbled face in the palm of her right hand. Her ebon thumb swept across his wide forehead, slowly, wiping the sweat from it. As she stroked his familiar brow, the past eighty years of his life slipped away from him. Grandal, and the other Mystrans looked on solemnly.

"You will not remember Mystra, or your life in Her Church," she husked.

"We will remember you. Go without guilt, and without heartache." Her thumb was nearly across his brow now. "And most importantly, go to the east, where none will know you." She looked upon her friend for the last time. Though they had shared so many years, he only appeared half his age. He seemed to be in his early sixth decade (a newborn, in her long-lived drow eyes) but his actual age was well over a century. The age-refuting  effects of The Forest of Mysteries would no longer hold the years at bay, and age would  slowly grasp him, enfeebling him.

He would awake as though from a dream. The intervening years were now gone. Lifting her thumb from his brow, a tiny drop of sweat dangled there. Wiping it across the face of a green leaf, she stood, and placed the leaf in her waist pouch. The prostrate strider sighed, and was silent.

.....

"I feel like we're abandoning him." Lanseril said. Grandal turned to the sage, and shook his head. "His choice was to leave. Forgetfulness is our gift to him, and it protects Mystra's children as well. Krogenar saw the truth of it, I think, in the clearing."

The elder wizard walked slowly to his seat at the back of the airship. Lanseril ignited the airship's engines, and looked out the porthole once more.

Krogenar lay on his back, his strange, bamboo airship a few paces away. As the ground fell away from them, the strider's form became smaller, and then invisible. "Was there food enough for him? Water?" These thoughts, and others swam through Lanseril's mind. Laisha placed her hand against his shoulder, as though reading his thoughts. "We've left him in a position of strength. No sense of loss, and the wilderness will protect him from those who will remember his as an enemy. To leave him in a city would be far crueler." The sage nodded at this, and turned back to the controls. Lanseril banked the airship westward, back across the ocean, to The Forest of Mysteries.

Mystran Dust [5]

Guilt flashed across Krogenar's face briefly, and then he was himself again. He crouched down, and offered Laisha his hand. She took it and pulled herself aboard. For the next few minutes, she was led about the strange craft. Her friend seemed proud at the fact that it had no floor. He hopped nimbly from strut to strut, as she hovered through its innards.
As his pride in his bamboo ship became ever more apparent, Laisha became more convinced that Krogenar's future course would take him farther from Mystra's Church.

Since she began her unexpected visit, the two had filled the time with as much chatter about the ship itself as possible - skirting the reason for its being.

Now, as the half-orc swung in his captain's chair (a leather sheet suspended from a convergence of bamboo struts) she could only grin at him. She decided not to let any more chatter divert her attention.

"The first flight was awkward. So much dust!" He donned a pair of aviator's goggles and beamed at her, his canines peeking out at her. "Still self-conscious about his teeth, she noted, and smiled. He droned on about the ship some more.

"... I can push the ship myself, now that the armor is gone." He slipped his bare feet into a set of pedals. Laisha's eyes widened. "You canna be serious? You pedal?" He grinned again, almost shyly. "I can, if I need to - removing the armor has to cut down on the fuel it needs." He shrugged, and frowned. "Lift engines still need to be hot, my legs can only drive her forward, and then, only slowly."

The silence descended that Laisha had awaited. The two stared across at each other.

He was leaving The Church of Mysteries, she was certain. She imagined the many enemies he had earned over the years hunting him down, with no one to protect him. As this understanding passed silently across the space between them, Krogenar misinterpreted the silence. The strider placed his hand across his breast and looked at her grimly. As the Supreme Strider of Mystra in past years, it had been Krogenar's duty to visit and maintain the various secret caches of magical knowledge that were scattered across all of known Faerun. Of all Mystrans, Krogenar knew the secret paths and crypts best. Others might know the Words of Unlocking and Sealing, but their actual contact with the locations were limited to a fingertip on a map.

"No hand, no weapon will ever turn me against Mystra. Our secrets will remain our own."

She returned her friend's gaze and replied sincerely, "I know they will." Gripping his calloused and weather-beaten hand, she motioned to the ignition key. "I'll believe this wicker beast can fly when you show me!" As he swung across the helm in his chair, and started the airship's engine, Laisha's fingers brushed against the symbol of Mystra that hung about her neck.

.....

"Water!" he snapped.

Looking into the Lift Drive Mirror, he could see that engine smoking and coughing. He pulled on a rope, and the engine's throttle was cut down. "Not even clear of the ground yet!" he thought angrily.

Laisha followed Krogenar out of the airship. He moved ahead of her now, towards the stream, a canteen in hand. As she followed him, Laisha steeled herself.

The strider sauntered through the grass, his arms loose at his sides. He slowed as Laisha approached him, then stopped. He cocked his head, and Laisha could see the profile of his nose sniffing at the air. His head started to turn, but he checked the movement.

He sighed once.

Three figures appeared from The Weave, each a staff's length away from the half-orc.

Words of sleep were whispered at him in unison. Laisha leaped ahead, and uttered a sleep enchantment as well. Krogenar staggered, and she caught him. Simbul, Grandal and Danthor helped ease him gently down to the grass.

Mystran Dust [4]

The branch of a tree materialized - spearing through the canvas, and becoming entangled in the ropes, pulling on some of them. Engines began roaring into life, and the ship tilted at a crazy angle. Cursing ferociously, Krogenar pulled his knife from his boot-sheath, and slashed at the ropes.

.....

The Weave slid across Laisha's face like the finest silk. Her eyes opened when the sensation ceased, and she found herself on the other side of the Sea of Swords.

While it was usual for Krogenar to be so far from The Forest of Mysteries, it was unusual for him to be building anything.

The female drow passed through Ardeep Forest, Waterdeep City was marked by a distant black cloud to the west. In the clearing, she spied an airship of NyTek design: a Hammerhead.

Murmuring a word of power, she was assumed into the folds of The Weave. From a pouch at her waist she withdrew a small vial of oil. Sprinkling it over herself, her scent was neutralized. After eighty years, Krogenar could scent her easily, cloaked or no.

"An airship? Nay, it canna be," she thought. She remembered Krogenar's first encounter with an airship had induced powerful revulsion in his spirit and his body. He had railed against the idea of bypassing the journey for the sake of the destination. It was like rushing to the point of intimacy with a woman, without dallying to enjoy the contours of the landscape first. That, and the high speed oftravel hadthrown the strider's finely tuned sense of balance into havok. He had staggered through the hallways as though drunk. All his senses had screamed that they were moving dangerously fast, but there was no true danger.

As she neared, Laisha noticed that much of the airship was covered by leather hides stretched across a bamboo platform. Puzzled, she stood beneath the ship.

Looking up into it, she saw a flash of steel. A metal plate dropped towards her. Waving a hand at the wayward armor, it veered away and skidded on the grass. The glade was littered, she noticed, with more armor plates.

Her first impression had been that the bamboo was for making scaffolding needed for altering the ship. To her horror, she realized that the bamboo _was  the ship! Krogenar was cutting away the remains of the ship that he deemed unnecessary.

She stared down at a slab of armor plate and shook her head. One shot from another airship, and the strider and his wicker vehicle would be in flames. A sudden wind whipped Laisha's black robes, and a ball of lightning seemed to open before the ship. As the ship was pulled into the existential tear, the wizardress stabbed her walking staff into the soft ground, and steeled herself against the pull of it. The bamboo ship skidded clumsily into the portal, digging up the grass.

She covered her mouth to stifle her laughter when she saw the ship re-emerge at the other side of the clearing, where a nearby tree promptly fell across its bow. Bloody cursing echoed across to her, and she strolled to her friend and let her veil of invisibility fall away. It was a momentary reprieve from the sadness that was creeping into her heart.

Mystran Dust [3]

As the female drow strode towards the bamboo grove, she mused on the uneasy quiet that had descended upon the Forest since Krogenar's demotion. He was still a Mystran, but was rarely seen in the Forest anymore. Other Mystrans were upset, confused or angry over the strider's repeated displays of stubborness. Simple discussions had routinely become heated shouting matches. Laisha could not lay all the blame on any single person. But Krogenar was the irritant - and he did little to smooth the feathers of those he ruffled.

Those who were upset over Krogenar's actions declared that they would give up worship of Mystra, or quit the Church. It was all Laisha could do to keep people from walking out on the Church. Through it all Krogenar had remained silent (at last!) out of a respect for the chaos he had triggered, or his own sulky mood, she could not tell.

Looking up at the bamboo grove, Laisha knew the depth of Krogenar's upset. Where once a wide swath of bamboo had reached skyward, now only small shoots were visible. Walking in the cleared out bamboo patch, Laisha spied the small shoots that had been laid. The sharp, skilled cuts were Krogenar's.

The strider had taken nearly every rod of bamboo. Laisha knelt and picked a stray bit of the tough, fibrous plant tubing from the muddy floor. Looking around, she pieced the scene together. Krogenar had carefully removed each stand of bamboo, cutting off dead ends (like the one she held now) and then planted cuttings to replace what he had taken.

Running her long black fingers along it, she whispered out to The Weave. Wherever a similar piece of bamboo could be found, The Weave throbbed in sympathy.

And like small wavelets that skim across an ocean, the vibrations caught each other, reinforced each other, and became a current. Laisha stood and walked in Krogenar's direction, in line with that current.

.....

The strider's hands moved quickly, in practiced fashion. Tying a one-handed bowline, he looped the remaining rope over the bamboo strut he was strengthening. He eyed the structure, pulling at the hollow rods. They didn't move.

Satisfied, he lit his blow torch and cut the remaining bolts. A three inch thick iron plate fell away to the grass below. He rubbed absent-mindedly at a singed eyebrow. Swinging hand-over-hand through the floorless structure, he hung now over the 'Munchausen Sub-something Drive.' The leather canvassing rigged over it was littered with his scribblings and drawings. Question marks were prominent.

Every day the half-orc had struggled to wrap his head around the necessary concepts to make the drive work. After trying for a few hours each day, he had focused his efforts back on something that made more sense.

Sometimes he understood something of its workings, and he would quickly sketch a diagram. Slowly, he had begun to understand the beastly machine enough to test it. It sat now on a bamboo platform. The aging strider was suspicous of things too complicated for him to understand. It twisted at his insides to depend on something he could not easily dismantle and reassemble. Turning the contraption on was a simple affair: the activating lever had a rope attached to it.

Ropes ran all over the structure, some connected to rudders, others to lift engines. This particular rope had a red rag tied to it - since it was important.

The strider turned, and picked his way back to the helm, his feet stepping from strut to strut. At the front of the craft, a canvas chair hung down. Krogenar slid into the chair, and surveyed the toggled ropes that were arrayed before him. Each was toggled to a notch in the bamboo.

He licked his thumb, and wiped it against the face of a mirror, then gazed into it. Two thousand paces across the clearing was his meager goal. Nodding, he took hold of the rope with the red rag tied to it. Holding his breath, he pulled it for a fraction of a second. A snap-hiss sound rang in his ears, and ...

Mystran Dust [2]

Laisha stood from her chair, and walked to the door of her room. Her cloak hung from an iron hook, and two bloated black spiders crawled over its silky black surface, slowly repairing it. Lifting the cloak from its hook, she shook the spiders loose and pulled it around her shoulders. She ascended the rough hewn steps of her underground home into the sunlit Forest of Mysteries.

Shielding her sensitive drow eyes within her hood, she began a slow circuit of Krogenar's usual resting places. After making some inquiries, a second level acolyte in Records gave her the clue she needed to track down the half-orc. "He's been to the bamboo grove recently," she said, a frown creasing her brow, some sentiment left unspoken. ".. and he can stay there, for all I care." Laisha expressed the acolyte's opinion in her own mind. She nodded to the woman, and headed to the bamboo grove. As she walked, the happenings of the past few days wafted through her mind.

.....

Laisha pushed away from the table just in time.

The assembled priests and sages of Mystra's Church gasped in unison as the table spun on its long axis, sending glasses of water, documents, and quills crashing to the floor. The table bashed down to the flagstones, landing atop the mess. Ink bottles made delicate tinkling sounds as they were crushed - their contents mingling into the mess. The table lay on its side now, laying like some wounded soldier among the debris.

All faces turned in unison to stare at the far end of the table.

Krogenar's eyes smouldered with anger and frustration. His shoulders remained set - the same as they had been when he had upturned the table.The half-orc strider's eyes remained focused on the table.

Some of the gathered Mystran clergy backed away from him.

Others gawped at the incredulity of his action. A select few, Laisha's sharp eyes noted, nodded very slightly and merely mimed surprise.

A high-ranking clergyman pushed his way through the shifting mob. "You cannot dictate the direction of Mystra's church, Honored Tribunal." The last two words he uttered with a mocking sincerity. He continued. "This is Mystra's Church - not The Church of The Pax Faerunis. Once you grasp this simple concept, 'Lord' Krogenar, you will begin to divine your true duty to Mystra. Methinks you focus too deeply on politics."

His fists balled, Krogenar took a deep breath to respond. The clergyman wasn't finished speaking, however.

"Before you speak Krogenar, let us digest your last-" he looked over his shoulder at the wreckage. " ... argument first, hmm?" He glowered at the strider through square-rimmed glasses, turned and then left the meeting room.

Laisha was in the crowd now, calming people, assuaging their concerns. With a fingersnap, apprentices from the various schools of magic were gathering the remains of people's notes, and had righted the table. In that activity Laisha noted that Krogenar had left the room, thankfully.

The next day a meeting was held, to determine what should be done.

A day after, Krogenar was removed as a member of The Tribunal. Azuth, in Mystra's stead, had whisked the mantle of leadership from his shoulders, where Mystra had once laid it.

Mystran Dust [1]

Hopping to a stop, his legs hummed with energy. Walking to cool himself down, the strider's small, tight chest still sucked air greedily. Cocking his head left and right, Krogenar pulled his neck bones back into place with a dull crackle. His breathing slowed, and his legs began to cool. He shook his hands at his sides, and rolled his wide shoulders. A cool breeze toyed with his shaggy red-brown hair, like a surprise visit from an old friend. The sweat on his brow was chilled by it, and streaked down the sides of his stubbled face. Putting each of his thickly calloused thumbs at the point where his shaggy eyebrows touched, he pressed them outwards. Sweat squirted past his fingers and streamed down in his cheeks.

Ardeep Forest lay behind him, and the open plains lay ahead. His mental almanac of this area told him he would sleep well. The grass of these plains was especially thick and luxurious. At night he'd would lay down, and pull the greeness around him into a thick pad, and sleep in the plains' perfume. The splash of stars would swirl its chaotic lullaby for him tonight.

The sun began to dip behind the distant mountains beyond the plains. In the twilight, the half-orc walked serenely in the grass, with no particular thought in his mind, and his feet moving in no particular direction. Nightfall was about to descend.

He looked up at the sky, childlike, and waited for the first stars to arrive.

A flashing white dawn rose up over the mountain's shoulders. Krogenar's eyebrow's arched, and he stared at the unnatural dawn in wonder. A white brilliance built up slowly, and night was turned to day. And then it receded to darkness again. A moment ago, the grass had waved around him in a fitful breeze. Now it became still. The air around him seemed to somehow recede, to pull away. Fingers pulling at the grass, Krogenar tried to rouse them back into their dance - but they would not. The green strands bowed their heads solemnly.

He squinted into the distance, and horror began twisting in his stomach. His legs suddenly came alive again, hot in an instant. Instinct warred with the doom in his heart. His head sagged down against his chest. Somewhere, he knew, another half-orc would be on a mountaintop somewhere, undead arms open in a rapturous embrace. Westbridge was gone. He longed to picture the Mystrans huddled in The Archive, but he could not be sure. Built using the funds and resources of The Pax Faerunis, it was to all outside observers an ordinary library. In that deep shaft underground, they, and the knowledge that they could fit inside would be safe from The Rok's impact.

If they went inside.

Krogenar lifted his head, and peered out between fear-sweat soaked strands of hair. His hands twitched where they hung loosely at his sides, reminding the strider that they were ready to act - if he could only think of something to be done.

The first white clouds could be seen now, racing along the ground towards him. Small flecks of black could be seen bobbing on their surface. A snarl twisted its way onto his face, and he screamed at the wall of whiteness.

The shout's sound was clipped to silence as his lungs explosively decompressed, and the strider was swept away, limbs pulled from their fleshly moorings, joining what remained of him in the chaotic flotsam of the shock wave.

Krogenar bolted upright from his bed of grass. The stars drifted above him, and the smell of wildflowers drifted on the wind. Hringorl, his great bear companion snored softly some distance away. He lay back again, and tried to sleep.