descend, descend
The various peoples of the ocean wandering too deep into the Quadrangle of Doom. Most of them avoid the damned place entirely. The only exceptions (besides idiot teenagers on dares) are the sea wardens, servants of the Lord of the Currents. They'll nip at the edges with spurs of woestone coral, keep it from encroaching as best they can, but that's all they can do. Any of their kind foolhardy enough to swim over the black barricade at its border sicken and weaken until they can no longer move. Then they die, dissolving into seafoam. The irreplaceable great pearls that hold their power sink to the ocean floor, lost forever so that none can replace the dead guardian.
They cannot afford to lose those pearls, or the experienced wardens who wield them. It's hard enough to slow the incremental, inexorable growth of the Quadrangle, to stopper rogue currents, already.
This simple fact is drilled into every local merperson from childhood. Never go into the forbidden places, parents warn, especially not if you're chosen as a sea warden. Never pass more than a thousand feet through the woestone.
But every few decades, some moron will make the attempt anyway, claiming that the only way to shrink the Quadrangle is by going inside. Sometimes, they come to their senses before getting too far into the deadly territory and turn around before it's too late. Sometimes, they don't, and another wardenship is lost forever.
(The really frustrating thing is that they know there's a way to shrink and even destroy the area of corruption. The details have been lost to history, though, and most people speculate it's because there were more sea wardens in the past.)
So when the Quadrangle begins to shrink for the first time in centuries, the sea wardens are as baffled as they are relieved. Has someone finally succeeded in penetrating the interior? Has someone chanced upon some clue, some formerly innocuous snippet of knowledge more than what it seems? But no one comes forward.
The sea wardens convene in the Hall of the Deeps. They're only a few hours into their meeting when a terrified messenger bursts into the room.
The Windswept Isle floats on the Quadrangle's outskirts, and it is covered in edelwood trees.
When the uproar finally dies down, the Chief Warden swims to the speaker's podium. "These things must be related," she states. "Perhaps the Beast caught word of the strange occurrences at the Quadrangle and came to investigate it personally…. Or to stop it entirely."
There is, of course, communication between the various layers of the Unknown. Any leader (or, in some cases, endangered child) can wish on a star to meet with the Queen of the Clouds, and she often grants that audience. There's trade between surface-dwellers and merfolk in port cities, selkies and their ilk pass between worlds with ease, and the people of the sea often swim along interesting ships for gossip and trinkets. The sea wardens know, then, that there is a new Beast, one who claims benevolence.
They don't know whether that claim is true.
Debate rages into the night, when light from the specially bred bioluminescent algae common in undersea dwellings joins the ambiance of the sea wardens' pearls. Round and round the argument rages, just as it has many times in Risorgimento and Kenningdole and every little hamlet in the surface world. Most people have already made up their minds one way or the other (most feel they cannot trust a Beast), and they make little headway in convincing their fellows. Eventually, both sides come to the conclusion that they need to investigate further, gather more evidence to convince the clearly irrational individuals who disagree with them.
After all, if he's not attacking people, how is he creating all those trees?
(In their defense, they can't turn people into woestone. The trees and the coral have different sources, opposite sources, and they have no reason to suspect any similarities.)
The Windswept Isle will not stay in a safe zone for long, but as long as it's here, they can spy on him.
The initial period of observation answers one question but opens the doors to many others. The Pilgrim is not hauling merfolk ashore or kidnapping land folk and dragging them through the shadows to an isolated location. Instead, he sings in his low rich voice, and the edelwood trees sprout from the soil rather than a mortal soul. They start as vines but quickly grow thick and tall, their leaves filling the sky. When they are done growing, the Pilgrim presses his hand against their reddish bark, then walks a few steps and repeats the process. He does this for a day and a half, sometimes two days, before shadow walking to who-knows-where.
Now that they can see the Pilgrim in action, it does not take a genius to recognize the parallels between what he's doing and what they do with woestone coral.
The more the sea wardens think about it, the more it makes sense. If edelwood can be the land equivalent of woestone, somehow, despite some edelwoods being made of mortal suffering, then of course a sudden proliferation of the trees would affect the toxicity of the Quadrangle of Doom.
Is… is he doing this, cleansing the Quadrangle, on purpose? He must be. What other purpose could his actions serve? (Actually, there's a theory that he could just be creating a refueling station for the Dark Lantern that nobody can touch. The problem with it is that he'd only need two or three edelwoods for that, not the beginnings of an entire forest.) That would make him an ally, which would imply that he's good, except he's the Beast. He's evil.
And yet, the more he sings his trees into being, the more the Quadrangle weakens. The Windswept Isle leaves restored waters in its wake, and the sea wardens aren't going to look a gift hippocampus in the mouth. They surge into the area it's cut off from the main Quadrangle, growing great reefs of woestone and eliminating two whole acres of corruption in just over a month.
When the Windswept Isle meanders back into the depths of the Quadrangle, the sea wardens call another meeting. Attitudes have shifted, for none of them can deny any longer that their unprecedented success is a direct result of the Pilgrim's actions.
They skirt around the question at first, but they can't avoid it for long. If they are already doing the same thing as this new Beast-that-isn't—if they have the same purpose, the same powers—should they seek an alliance with him?
The council continues to debate. They go over the points again and again and again and again without deciding on anything. By the time the Windswept Isle drifts back into the new range, everyone is thoroughly tired of the argument but unable to reach a compromise.
None of them are truly surprised when a pair of young hotheads take matters into their own hands.
It feels like he's grown a thousand edelwoods over the last few weeks, but there's still so much more to do just in this one spot. Not for the first time, Wirt wonders how many places like this exist in the vastness of the Unknown, how long it will take him to clean up the Beast's mess—assuming he even has time.
He'd found The Tome of the Unknown ten days ago, that legendary repository of all knowledge. If the world was a fair place, Wirt would know by now whether the Beast-fragment within him was a stable remnant or a growing threat. But the world is not fair, and the Tome refuses to give him or anybody else the answers he seeks.
Wirt's tried everything he can think of. He asked nicely, he read it at a crossroad under a full moon, he hunted for an index. He consulted Whispers and Lorna, let them try to find specific knowledge within the book. The witches, like him and the O'Sialias and his family back in the other world, can only find information adjacent to what they seek, and their many ideas don't work.
So Wirt had cheated. If asking for information about how to use the book produced a list of the Tome's old handlers, maybe asking about the handlers would create a how-to section, an FAQ, anything more useful than the blind guesswork they're currently stuck with. But cheating hadn't worked, so Wirt is back to trial and error.
He's starting to suspect that the book can't be forced to reveal specific information, that it will yield its secrets only when it's good and ready. That would be fine, just fine, if it weren't for the self-aware sliver of monster hiding in Wirt's mind that might take over at any moment.
The Pilgrim shakes his head, leaves swaying, as though he can physically dislodge the unwelcome thoughts. "Back to work," he mutters to himself. Singing edelwood into existence is a great way to keep himself from spiraling.
He loses himself for a time in a haze of song and magic. This island is uninhabited (unless one counts the trapped horde of vrykolakas), which means that for once, he doesn't have to worry about being shot or stabbed or enchanted or anything. It's a nice change, being safe. Maybe, when he has the Quadrangle cleaned up more and can stay here longer without being physically affected, he can use the Windswept Isle as a little private getaway.
But his guard is down, his senses unfocused. When the newest tree is finished and a voice calls, "Hail, Pilgrim!" Wirt does not react with dignity. He jumps, covering himself with shadows until he is nothing but a pair of moonglow eyes in a pool of night.
The voice giggles. It belongs to a mermaid with a long tail of orange and rose, who sits in the tidal pool and stares at him with something like fascination. She is accompanied by another mermaid, this one with scales of rose and navy. They wear breast bands that, if Wirt recalls correctly, are made of a hardy kelp-derived fabric, beaded sashes of the same material, and matching pearl necklaces. Assuming that merfolk age at the same rate as land-dwellers, they're in their early twenties.
"Hail," Wirt answers politely, letting the shadows slip away. He is wrong-footed, off-balance; it's been so long since strangers knowingly approached him that he barely remembers what to do in an unplanned encounter. After a beat (probably hesitating too long so now they think he's an awkward moron), he decides that politeness is the way to go. "Well met. I obviously didn't hear you coming."
A nasty thought occurs to him. He's standing right next to an edelwood tree, an entire edelwood grove. That… doesn't look good.
But they don't seem scared, just curious. Do they not recognize the trees? There probably aren't a lot of edelwoods in the ocean. Wirt will just not mention what these trees are until he's explained the whole healing-the-world thing. Now he just has to figure out how to bring that up before they decide he's trying to hide something.
"Well met," the first mermaid agrees benignly. "I'm Khady, Sea Warden Fourth Class, and this is Coumba, also Sea Warden Fourth Class."
"I've heard good things about the sea wardens. Congratulations on your inclusion to that prestigious order." From what Wirt has heard, the sea wardens are part unofficial police force, part ranger, part environmental protection agent, part bodyguard, and part witch. He doesn't know much else about them, only that they're well-respected. Apparently, they're also powerful (or cocky) enough to feel secure approaching the Beast.
He hopes that they don't try to kill him.
"Thank you," says Coumba, with the air of one who is reflexively polite. She blinks as though startled by her own response.
"You're welcome," Wirt answers, almost as automatically.
Khady looks from the Pilgrim to her fellow sea warden, gives her head a little shake. She opens her mouth, closes it, tries again. "Are your edelwoods like our woestone? These ones, I mean, not the ones that you and the first Beast could make from people."
Wirt pads closer to the shore. Neither mermaid flees. "I'm not sure what woestone is," he admits.
Khady points to the dark stone—coral, he realizes—of her necklace. "Woestone coral," she elaborates. "We make it out of sour magic like the sort that fills the Quadrangle. Is that how you make your faceless edelwoods?"
The Warden of the Woods freezes, his thoughts screeching to a halt.
"Is he all right?" Coumba whispers to her friend.
"I'm fine," Wirt answers. "I—just—you can do that too? Concentrate the corruption into new life?"
"Yes!" Khady exclaims. "We've been trying for so long to keep the Quadrangle under control, but it kept expanding year after year until you started doing all this." She gestures at the edelwood grove. "Now it's shrinking for the first time in living memory, and the elders think that it could be destroyed entirely within half a century."
"Or less," Coumba supplies, "since we'd all be working together. Ah, assuming you're willing to do so, Horned Lord."
"Yes," Wirt chokes. There's a lump in his throat, a burning in his eyes. "I'd love that."
The other sea wardens are less than happy when Khady and Coumba guide a long, slender black eel with tricolor eyes to their headquarters. Thankfully, the eel's mere presence keeps them from yelling at the wayward mermaids. They're limited to glares and snide comments, but those don't last long.
The Pilgrim is willing to help them. The Pilgrim, who had singlehandedly shrunk the Quadrangle, who can survive for days in the heart of corruption, who must have the power of a hundred sea wardens put together. With his aid, they'll destroy the largest and most virulent abscess on the face of the world, reclaim all the pearls lost within its borders. Then they can disperse their strength, work in places that have been neglected for well over a thousand years. They can go on the offensive rather than trying to delay the inevitable.
So the sea wardens do as they have not done for centuries. They send an emissary to the darkest depths of the ocean to wake the Lord of the Currents from his long slow dreams. He sleeps upon a great dark plain of woestone fragments, offerings from his servitors, and grows a great shining pearl above and between his eyes. In twenty years, that pearl will fall, just as it does every century, and the ranks of the sea wardens will grow by one.
At first, the Lord of the Currents does not understand. Last time he was wakened, he'd told the sea wardens to work with the Keeper of the Heart of the Unknown; why then do they seek his permission to do as he had ordered? What mean you that this Beast is not the Beast? How can this be? Bring this new Edulcorator to me; I wish to meet him.
He closes his great eyes and dozes off. He has not yet resumed dreaming when the black eel and his escort arrive.
They speak for a time, merwoman and youth and ancient dreamer. When the great eyes (as large as a human man is tall, and bright with eerie bioluminescence) close once again, the three of them have come to an agreement.
The Pilgrim will help the sea wardens destroy the Quadrangle of Doom and six other great projects, one per year. They will reclaim the pearls lost to those vast infections, bolster their failing strength. After the seven tasks, however, the sea wardens are responsible for the rest of the ocean—though of course, the Pilgrim assures them, he'd be happy to help if needed.
It's a good deal, very likely the best thing to happen to the sea wardens in well over a thousand years.
It's a good deal for Wirt, too. He gets a huge weight—several huge weights—taken off his shoulders. While he'd tried very hard to not think about the possibility of corruption in the ocean, working on the Windswept Isle had made that impossible. If this world is anything like the world of Wirt's birth, water would cover about three-quarters of the surface of the globe. The land alone harboring tainted magic would be bad enough; since the seas too could be corrupted, Wirt's burden had increased fourfold, and he'd had no idea how to use his purifying magic underwater.
Now, though, he doesn't have to. He's still the only Caretaker of the land (that he knows about, at least), but three-quarters of his burden is greatly lightened.
That would be good enough on its own, but there are other benefits, too. He has allies, now, in his quest to cleanse the Unknown, and free access to their repository of knowledge. Once the Quadrangle is destroyed, the sea wardens will make his aid public; the news will spread first through the ocean and then onto the land.
Also, figuring out how to shapeshift into an eel goes a long way towards alleviating Wirt's fear of being underwater. It still frightens him—he could barely make it to the Lord of the Currents, and he shot for the surface the moment their negotiations were concluded—but the terror is less all-consuming. One day, he might actually enjoy swimming again.
But the most important benefit is this: His future is bright with hope, and so his Lantern shines more brilliantly than ever.
Title is from "Onward, Cherubs" from Chapter 8.
It's been a while, but I intend to put up another fic on Halloween, as is tradition. The epistolary fic just needs a few tweaks, but I can FINALLY publish it then.
Wirt deserves nice things. He can have this to make up for still not knowing whether the Beast will possess him to begin a new reign of terror. I think it's a pretty fair trade.