239 Lunacy

Hogaz, Servant of the Moon.

***

I had trouble sleeping.

Ever since I made my pact, ever since I sold my soul with The Man Inside The Moon, I found sleeping to be the most arduous task of all.

But the last night of my first leave of absence inside the moon, I slept like a log.

And when I awoke, I felt a biting cold against my skin, heard the gentle lapping of waves and the perpetual rush of water around me, smelled the salt in the air and the many flowers sprawled across the ground. And… I saw the half-lidded eye of Mani floating high in the sky, staring down at me expectantly through a web of boreal leaves and frost-crusted branches.

"Where?" I shot up at once, hoping to see the worlds of the other Captain's trailing through the distant skies.

Instead, I saw a well-dressed half-orc with deep green skin and silver strands in his inky hair, peering over the ledge of the clearing I apparently bedded down in. "As we've been told," he- my Doppelganger, said, pausing to turn his gaze up toward the deep blue skies. "One week has passed since we took our leave. Two remains until the rendezvous."

"Two weeks to travel through nearly sixteen hundred klicks of inland waterways and blue waters." Neil, the shadow undead hydro-mage and thief, stepped out of my shadow to say. Then trailed over to my clone's side to peer over the edge as well. "In that."

Silent, smiling, they waited until I stepped between them and looked down upon the sinkhole of floating stones and the deep lake at its basin.

The stones, shrouded in a perpetual mist rather than floating in midair, acted as anchor points for the many trees, glistening flowers, and other plants poking their leaves through the uncountable volumes of water and ice pouring from an unknown, omnidirectional source above. As it cascaded down into the basin, the water turned from a roaring rush to a soft ripple that meandered its way towards the silvery eye at the center of the vast mountain lake.

This was the wondrous Eshthesian Waterfall.

The object of Neil and my clone's interest, however, was the flint of silver far below.

Like a distant lantern in a foggy night, it loomed through the mist, compelling me to jump from the edge while simultaneously reaching into my pack for my trusted feather.

The magic imparted onto me reacted instantly, flowing into the feather and back out in the form of a pulse that grasped onto the surrounding mana, pulling it into my spirit in an instant to make my flesh as light as the object in my grasp. And gently, I floated down and down into the lake, watching the mist part ever more below me and reform above my head until I was utterly alone.

Trapped in this void of icy mist, I could only feel the energy of my patron looking down on me from above and simultaneously focus on the glowing object far below. It glowed with the same silvery-blue hue as Mani, the moon. Making me yearn more and more for it to come into sight with each passing second.

Yet, it seemed to not grow any closer.

Or rather, it wasn't until I got close enough, that the illusion faded to reveal a silvery-blue teardrop floating on the water.

With that revelation came a mind-searing burst of knowledge, memories, smells, sounds, and sights concerning the creation of this ship. But not how to use it.

The Moondrop was a hydrogen-powered luxury fast attack craft, built to be an astounding 41 meters in length with a beam of 14. Two decks sat above the main deck and another level was found below. In order, being a small deck with an outdoor helm and saloon, followed by my quarters and the bridge.

The mostly enclosed main deck contained plush sofas and silver screens, an open kitchen, and a crystal dining table sitting below a moon-shaped chandelier; though, the deck was open to the bow and stern to permit space for a three-pronged moonbeam cannon at the bow, and storage space for a powered tender.

But the lower deck was where the fascinations were. There were luxurious quarters for the crew I had yet to recruit of course. But so too did it house the technology that kept the ship running smoothly. Some devices could devices that could purify river water or turn salt water into fresh water, and then that water could be split into oxygen and hydrogen, giving us the means to fill metal tanks with air with the former and power the ship with the latter.

Strange spinning things on the sail-less mast could pass along or retrieve information and entertainment from Eotrom. Or, they could render the surrounding environment in vivid detail. There was a... system, that would control everything on the ship from the comfort of my cabin. Everything from lights to the speed and heading- and even the cannon.

But beyond even that were the materials comprising the Moondrop. Metals and woods imbued with the power of the moon, the same magic that I now possessed; albeit to a limited extent.

The Moondrop, however, possessed the full breadth of the eldritch Lunar Magic. It could shroud itself in illusions or turn nearby rain into a cloud of mist. It could glide seamlessly through the water and even call to nearby animals.

And with a hyrdomage at the helm, our potential path lay in all directions.

Even the cascading outlet of the waterfall basin proved to be a paltry challenge. We were down and out within seconds of us raising anchor and sailed smoothly under the canopy of a sprawling temperate forest, looking occasionally to the towering mountain at our backs from the choppy reflections of this broad river.

The frigid winds yielded a fear of the river icing over among the locals, I assumed. Regardless, we made good time, sailing unseen past a human settlement of ten thousand within the hour and continued at half speed throughout the night.

With Neil at the helm and the small undead dwarven creature navigating, I spent the hours learning about the land I woke up in. And more importantly, toying with the ship.

I listened intently to my clone while I practiced using and maintaining the almost endless array of equipment, learning in the process that I was close to the northern edge of the Vrurian Empire, heading west, down the Lirwin River, towards the coast.

While being the largest and most peaceful empire in the south- allied or friendly or more with everyone but Nevstan, they were the only nation in the peninsula to not host a sub-guild of the Bodhi Tree. Making it the unsaid haven for Clerics and Warlocks to step further down their paths. Being a nation of widely separated, but largely populated settlements, there was more than enough real estate for foul beasts to dwell.

And even more real estate, in which the gifted could release their power safely.

But I was here on specific business. Business that took me another fourteen hours down the river, to a small cove just past a town of sixty thousand called Anabel.

From there, I took to land and flew by torch over a hundred kilometers above the dense, but hardly giant forest to the object of Mani's interest.

The first sign of my arrival was a sudden disappearance in the surrounding foliage. It was almost as if something told the trees or any other plant to never grow beyond a radius of thirteen meters, leaving a circle of polished stone as black as night acting as a dais for a white marble monolith.

It seemed to tower over me ever more as I approached, turning from a pillar that could compete with trees to the tombstone of an ancient giant or magnificent beast, memorialized by scripts and glyphs that seemed to come from half-a-dozen cultures lost to history. A cipher of curved lines and geometrically arranged circles mixed with picturesque characters and maze-like scribbles.

Acting on curiosity more than the pictures and whispers lingering on the edge of my senses, I reached out to rub my hand across the unerringly smooth surface.

Acting on my actions, Mani's radiance increased tenfold and shone gloriously down on the monolith, which seemed to drink the pale light greedily. Yet, no new knowledge or memories found their way into my mind. Instead, the grogginess and fatigue that had accumulated in my body over the last six months suddenly weaned. Then disappeared entirely.

Words of the arcane appeared before me soon after, while the monolith brightened still, stealing my attention away from the details of my class to pull my eyes towards a glistening pile at the base of the now-dull monolith.

I reached for them immediately, finding a set of mail armor and a matching sword- a falchion, set beside a strange mask that glowed with the silver radiance of the moon like the other pieces. But the mask, undoubtedly made of wood, seemed almost insubstantial. Ghostly. Showing more of the many faces carved into its grains than the fine curves of the mask itself.

Just as I began to slip it on, I found the cool touch of the grains released from my fingers and jump to my face to start burrowing, pulling my skin away from the underlying muscle and cartilage to make room for the many-faced mask to reside. Yet the pain was as incorporeal as the mask itself. Ghostly. Distant enough for me to focus instead on the moon mail armor.

And then the whispers came to tell me how the pieces were created and made and even how to care for them. But, like my ship, not how to use them. For that was the curse of madness I was granted in return for power. A taste of the truth. A glimpse, long enough to come to an understanding, nearly- to nearly see the entire picture. And then be turned away.

It was knowing ninety-nine percent of the answer and focusing on that last percent. Focusing. Unhealthily. Compulsively. Obsessively.

Maddeningly.

From the greatest fighters to the mightiest mages, that was madness. But it wasn't that way for Mani. Nor the man who lived inside it.

He- Amun, loved seeking out the unknown to learn. It was what he dedicated his life to. Both of them.

It was what I dedicated my life to. After selling my soul twice over.

That was the reason I found myself unsurprised upon realizing I was sitting- had been sitting for two hours, feeling the essence of the moonlight-infused mithral armor in the same way as the sword before it.

And when that was done, I spent hours more before an easel, standing before a large and particularly long piece of parchment throughout the day and night while I sketched, drew, and painted everything I saw before me with more skill than I ever thought myself capable of.

The feeling of the place itself was embedded in the parchment. The otherworldly feeling brought on by the forest's sudden end by this ring of stone. The half-lidded eye of the moon above, shining brightly on the ancient stone as if it sought to learn as I learned. Even the motions of the moon throughout the days and the rising and dipping of the distant sun were portrayed.

And when that was done, I spent days more scribbling on another parchment, copying the symbols and glyphs after I'd arranged them by likeness. Making notes and guesses about the origin of the structure and its makeup, its position on the land and its orientation to the horizon, and what was hidden in the stone below or unseen in the air above.

I spent a tenday studying the thing. Learning until arcane words appeared in my vision to both reward me for my actions and give me another goal to strive towards.

And most of all, signaling the whispers to scratch at the back of my mind- deeper this time, enough to make me collapse hard on the nightly stone and scream in agony as knowledge and orders and magic were implanted in my mind and body until, as before, I realized I was sitting- had been sitting for nearly an hour, chanting words that didn't exist within a circle of silvery-glowing glyphs.

My body was acting on its own, and I let it sing its song. I listened to the incantations rise in tune with the building moonlight within the structure and watched the monolith shroud the parchments in the pale light, changing them from a handful of merely painted sheets to a silver rod, floating in place, fanning its endless, silvery pages around it in a circle.

Changing them into the Scroll of Secrets.