Gabriel's uneasy return

The mission to the sea was far shorter than Gabriel had expected when he set out. Most of that was due to the fact that they couldn't replenish their water supplies. They had hoped for rain, though Gabriel had also secretly dreaded it. 

What if the acidic qualities of the water were also in the clouds? They could all die from it once the water burned through their shelter. There wouldn't be a place to escape from it. 

On the other hand, it would be refreshing to know for sure that the rain was clean. He would worry less about the people inland. They'd had no word from Klain since their departure, and he worried just how much water was poisoned. 

Whalen was recovering well, but there were no signs of other survivors. Evey whined in the evenings when the acidic tides left new rotted corpses on the beach. The smell was unbearable, and the home camp was moved some distance further away at the edges of what was the Settlement. 

Captain Napier had maintained a stoic air, but when the water supplies began to run low, he commanded everyone to pack up and head back to Klain. Gabe acknowledged it was the right decision, but he also felt terrible that there wasn't more he could do here. 

Salvage something, even if he couldn't save somebody. But they didn't know how far upstream they would have to go to be free of the bitter, poisonous waters. 

"Could it be that the bad water has already washed downstream and out to the sea again? Perhaps it was only the initial wave that put some of the bad water up past the point where salt and freshwater mix." Gabe tried to think aloud hopefully. 

The troop was to follow the river back up to Klain, since it was the most familiar route. 

In his mind, the young man was already catastrophizing the situation. He imagined the giant hole-ridden rock had some sort of magical poisonous qualities that crept upstream against the flow, and had already gotten to the lake and killed everyone in Klain, and they would come back to a city empty of living inhabitants. The thought was horrifying, and he tried to distract himself from it. 

At least Victoria was far to the North. 

"The weird thing is, stuff that falls in the water doesn't usually cause tsunamis, least as far as we know." Whalen was saying next to him. "I didn't see the thing directly, but we Cetoans think that most of the truly large waves are caused by earthquakes under the ocean. The islands way out on the sea, they feel the earth move, usually the same day or day before a large disastrous wave hits our shores." 

No one had any response to the information. None of the group besides Whalen had extensive experience with the phenomenon, but something bothered Gabriel about it. 

Maybe young Roen would have some insight. The child was only ten, but he had some connection with the earth, with dirt, and could move it himself. If the thing that fell from the sky was made of rock, or dirt… no, that was a silly thought. There was no way they could sail over acidic seas and find the thing that had long sunk to the bottom of the ocean. 

They would have to find some other way to solve the mysteries of what was happening in the world. Why these portals were appearing. Whether it would get worse! 

Gabriel shuddered. He didn't want to ever see the Darkness again. He wouldn't mind Faeland. 

He was ambivalent about other worlds. They could be exciting, or incredibly dangerous.

Probably both. 

The grouping of soldiers tested the water every few hours by sticking one end of a branch into it. The first several times, it was dissolved before even a minute passed. 

That was highly discouraging to them all. The boat hadn't begun to be affected by the acid until much further downstream just a few days ago. That meant that the poison was spreading upstream. 

Would it stop? Would it wash back down? Or would it poison everywhere? 

The carrier bird had reached Klain, presumably, long ago. Gabe trusted that Roland had the foresight to refill all the water stores. This would be a disaster. Water was the one resource that would not be stretched thin by the influx of refugees, but now… it just might be. 

And in winter when the glaciers refroze and the lake levels went down, it could be even worse! Gabe shuddered. Perhaps they should begin moving people to the west, closer to the village where he spent his youngest childhood. The poison would hopefully take much longer to spread that far, and the farmlands were fairly rich. 

It would mostly be up to Roland. 

By the time Klain came into view days later, Gabriel's ability to contain his worry was wearing thin. The water finally ceased being poisonous, but much too far inland for any comfort to be taken from it. There was no doubt it was spreading. 

At least an acidic moat would be an interesting addition to Klain's defenses?

The morbid joke was not something Gabriel would ever dare say aloud, and he felt a little badly even thinking of it at all. His internal sense of humor had gotten a little twisted in the Darkness, and sometimes still sprang forward. 

The gates opened wide for them, happy to receive the group, plus one human addition and a dog, back to the city. 

They went straight to City Hall to debrief with the Council, who gathered back into an impromptu afternoon session for the report. 

Captain Napier gave most of the information, and Whalen answered the Council's lingering questions. Their faces were particularly grim as the tale of the river was recounted.

Roland's shoulders looked like they held a great weight, and Gabriel wished he could help take more of the burden. He'd longed to be treated as a man, but it seemed like often, men were just as helpless as children against the world. 

What a disheartening thought. 

"Is there anything else pressing that you think we should know?" Roland asked, his typical question when concluding a council meeting or important conversation. 

Gabriel frowned, knowing that the open-ended catchall was intended to allow opportunity for any information to be shared that the Council had not specifically been looking to find out. There was silence for several seconds. 

"Gabriel, there is something on your mind." Roland said, startling the younger man. Gabe paused, looking at the expectant faces of the council. He'd not realized his own had been readable in that moment. 

"I had been thinking over the cause of the wave," He began hesitantly. "Whalen mentioned that previously, such large waves seemed to be caused by earthquakes, movement of the ground under the ocean, and it reminded me of…" 

Gabriel stopped here, unsure of what Roland had shared with the Council, if anything, about the incident with the Fae and the portal, or the fact that the ground had moved slightly before its appearance.

"Ah, yes, I see." Roland's eyebrows drew together. "That fits together with a theory I've been playing across my mind. There seems to be a pattern emerging between movement of the ground and the formation of the portals." 

"A pattern?" Gabriel only knew of the two incidents, but then, he'd only seen one portal himself. 

"But people have been seeing the sparkles for years. No one's noticed anything before." Riley interrupted. 

"The theory I'm playing with is that the size of the ground's movement correlates to the size of the portal that's about to emerge." Roland explained. "The tiny sparkles might not correlate to large enough movement to even be noticeable. The one I witnessed, the ground moved to about the size of a person's head, and the portal was approximately the same size." 

"But the size of a portal that let a mountain-sized rock fall from the sky…" Gabriel began. 

"Would cause roughly corresponding movement under the sea, I think." The king finished. 

"That would be plenty to cause a tsunami." Whalen nodded. 

Roland thanked them and dismissed the reporting soldiers with an even larger weight on his shoulders than before. Gabriel lingered, concerned for this brother-in-law, but knowing the line between king and relative was thicker here in the official chamber. 

"Gabriel, you may stay a moment," Roland resolved the conflict easily. "Since you had the same idea, I will share with you my concern." 

The young man swelled with pride that he was finally considered man enough to be included in the deepest discussions of his kingdom. It was an honor he hadn't expected despite his close relation to the king. 

Roland sighed heavily and turned to the rest of the Council. 

"You will remember there was a discrepancy in the mapping, and we sent a delegation of surveyors to resolve which had been incorrect. I have been to the library with the Treasurer to look over copies of their maps, and have discovered something deeply troubling." He paused and took a deep breath. 

"Walter surveyed an area some many months ago and reported it to be flat with a stream running across it. Far more recently, Shayn and Kyler were surveying along the border of that area and reported not a flat area, but a significant rise in topography."