IS 603

S-

I'm going to be unreachable for the next couple of years. Don't ask why. And don't invade my country. I'll know.

-F

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IS 610

Sasarai-

I just flew around the world and it was goddamned AWESOME. Thanks for not invading my country or anything while I was out.

You have to do this someday, Sasarai. Lord knows you have the time and the funds. Take a break from the invasions and the subjugations and the fetch-quests and, let me put it bluntly, reap the benefits of this whole immortality thing. You, your pet vampire, and your sleepy dad can hold off six or seven years, right? It'll probably take less time for you, actually, since you'd be doing it in style. And heck, you might even stumble across what you want in some place you never figured you' be able to look.

That said, I'm gonna stop being pedantic and tell you about the trip. Well, maybe not 'trip', it's too big for that. Journey, maybe, but there wasn't really a destination, except, technically, home.

It started when Geddoe came back. This makes three times, you know. I don't believe it either. Anyway, he said he was giving up, and I don't blame him. You've had it out for him since forever, after all, and he finally ran out of allies, patience, and anonymity, in that order. (I hope you're satisfied.) So he turned to me, since I was still around, not technically an ally but at least a potential benefactor. "Futch," he says to me, "Futch, I'm fucking tired." I told him I noticed. He elaborated.

The general overview is that he doesn't trust the sealing idea the Chishans had--with good reason--and doesn't just want to foist the thing on someone. I mean, you had Nash murder the last guy Geddoe was grooming for the slot. Well, I think there was grooming. Or there should have been. You, my Holy friend, have made things so difficult for Geddoe in all the known world that there's no real point in him putting out the classified for competent thunder-mage immortal aspirants. So he's got this plan; he pays me an inordinate amount of money to keep my trap shut and have two or three of my men escort him as far out of your reach as he can get. I ask where that is, he's got no clue, he figured he'd just go West until East stops happening, like the sun does. So I think about it for all of half a second and make sure "So you're asking for a trip around the world," and he says, "Yeah". And I say, "Screw the money and screw the escort. I'm going with you."

I gave him a night to think about it, but he ended up saying "All right."

I've got a really good Second right now and an even better Third, so I told them to take care of things. I put a double-saddle on Bright and we flew out less than a week after Geddoe had flown in.

We went to Vinay del Zexay first, stopped at a few trustworthy places along the way. I figured this was the time to teach your one-eyed enemy how to fly, and he turned out to be pretty good at it. I'm not sure how much of a 'knack' you can have for things when you're as old as we are, but I think he just knows how to learn things. It beat ferrying McDohl and his crew back in the day. (The only good flyer out of that group was Cleo. Figures.)

I hadn't been back to VdZ since leaving it the last time, and man, that place has changed. It's been over a century, I know, but that harbor's got a different kind of ship sailing out of it now. Fat-bellied and fast freighters. They remind me of bodyguards. And they're propelled by runes now, wind and water magic and Kamandohl fans. They've got a big, lazy, religious navy too. And did I mention Chris is a goddess? No, doesn't surprise me either.

I sent Bright to his side of the Veil to follow us. Before we hopped onto the shadiest ship in existence, we stocked up and gathered leads, which wasn't too difficult at all. Except, silly me--you'll appreciate this--I forgot to disguise myself until Geddoe forgot to remind me. I mean, I wasn't wearing my circlet or anything, but they could tell I was a Dragon Knight. And I have this ring-tan around my head. It's embarrassing.

But one-eye and I were a distinctive pair in that city. Almost everyone was bright and prosperous and healthy. There were more water-runes than you could count before getting distracted. No, really. (That was another thing that gave us away. We both wore gloves. No one respectable in VdZ wears gloves anymore.)

So we tangled with a fortune-teller on some corner. We passed her and she reeled around like a moth with his wings pried off. She called us 'old ones', and Geddoe told me to just keep walking but I didn't listen. She looked me straight in the eyes--hers were red like Yuber's left one--and called me "Messenger God". No, not 'messenger-OF-God", I think that's you. "Messenger God." I gave her a handful of potch and backed away and she started railing. Wished me luck with 'bearing Wotan', whatever that is. She did it kind of loudly, though. As in she assaulted me and stammered like a drunk. It kicked up a scene. At least Geddoe got away. I met him at the inn later. I'm glad he's not the type to lecture.

You know, he makes me feel young and stupid. Not in the way you do, though. You'd think things would have evened out by now, but the way old one-eye acted at the start was enough to make me wonder when Leknaat needed an errand boy again and how the heck I got this tall. But that comes later.

So, right, the sleazy ship. As I said, Geddoe was out of allies. The closest he had was a bastard great-great-grandson of Salome Harras. You read that correctly. We're that old. No, I will not give you his name. The guy owed Geddoe a favor and I now owe him one, so he forged us papers that would get us to the edge of Zexen territory on a ship that wouldn't ask too many questions. Solid, I know, but it was all we felt safe shooting for. We made it four days on that ship--about halfway to the port in question--until a deckhand asked "So, Messenger God?"

I stuffed my foot into my mouth and told him I used to be the fastest Dragon Knight ever, but my dragon died and my friend and I were in exile, and maybe that was how the lady on the street-corner had heard of me. The best lies have a little truth in them, right? And it made me a friend on the ship. If there's anything I've figured out these last hundred and fifty years, it's that nine times out of ten the friends you make now will have your back later, and they're usually better equipped to help you farther down the line. Case in point, me and Geddoe.

No, I'm not giving you the kid's name either. Get your own friends in strange places.

You see, this is going to be a really difficult letter to write. First off, I'm not dropping any names you don't already know. At all. I'm protecting all of these people, it's their right. Second, I'm going to tell you the events out of order so that you can't trace us. Third, I'm going to exaggerate because that's what I do in some places and I'm trying to convince you to get off your eminent ass and see the world without an army in front of you. Fourth, I'm going to do the opposite of exaggerate because some of these things have to be watered down or fact-pruned to protect the not-so-innocent. So what you have in front of you is technically a romanticization. Who'd have thought it, me, a romantic?

I can tell you about what went down in the Island Nations, since you know where those are and you probably know about this incident anyway, just not our role in it. Thank you for not taking advantage of the unrest. When Geddoe and I got to Ajit, I won't say precisely when, we decided to disguise ourselves as pirates. It was a useful cover story. He was Captain Caster and I was Captain Drake, and we were only captains because the rest of our crews were dead. So we went about trying to acquire a ship big enough for Bright to hang around on as well, and looked for leads West. We got more than we bargained for.

Every time we asked someone about massive ships and going West, we got an earful about something called "the Flock". Apparently there was an internal conflict going on in those Islands again, and again there's a Silverberg at the heart of it. You see, when Albert made a royal mess of things in the Island Nations years ago, he built a stronghold for himself and Yuber to operate out of, somewhere off the coast of Iluya. The smartass had a failsafe so that, if he died before his time, really bad things would happen to whoever had made it to that Island to kill him. And because this is Albert we're talking about, the man who had Yuber by his goddamned side for NINETY YEARS, I don't just mean mundane really bad things. Bad supernatural things too. I feel like I should have been prepared for that. In fact, I think you warned me, a long time ago. I'm sorry for not listening.

I think, in the end, Albert was as powerful as you, Sasarai, and that's without a True Rune. I'm very glad he's dead.

So this Flock thing started off as just a small pirate crew. I got most of the story from before Geddoe and I showed up. They found Albert's mansion. They did what pirates do to creepy abandoned mansions on creepy abandoned Islands--they robbed it blind. And they triggered Albert's failsafes, which of course went off even though he was already dead for what, now, forty years? I hate him.

A lot of letters got sent, detailing the weaknesses and secrets of nearly every government within the Island Nations to select other nations. Who was corrupt where, who could be bought and for what price, details on secret weapon projects, border skirmishes, executions, kidnappings, you name it. Everyone wanted to capitalize on the info, so everyone tried. And these were up-to-date secrets too, not from before he died. It'll make sense later, I promise.

And on top of that, there was this rash of monster-related killings. Invisible creatures. Not wide scale or genocide, more like serial killing; there were links between most of the victims. One of the kids on the Flock-that-wasn't-yet-the-Flock figured out that nearly all of the people killed had important libraries or connections to the occult. Even the ones we thought were anomalies--there were a couple of middlemen and tavern owners among the dead--had something important to contribute. There was even a street kid who had stolen an old Silverberg journal.

The result of this was that a lot of important knowledge that had been just sitting around got revealed to people eager to use it. They couldn't help themselves. The countries invaded each other and the mystical stuff got reenacted, all at the same time. The islands were in chaos and the Flock was right at the heart of it, and they of course got blamed by people in power. Because it was, kind of, their fault.

And then, apparently, Leknaat showed up. And she says to the not-yet-the-Flock, "Fix this. I can't. And besides, you started it." Essentially. And, well, the Stone Tablet showed up and some punk kid with a bandana started recruiting the furniture.

I got to be an end-table. I think Geddoe's an ottoman.

Geddoe--I mean "Captain Caster"--and I filled up our old slots, Tenjyu for him and Chibi for me. We met up with the Flock about halfway into their crusade of information. They stopped the little wars one at a time, reassembled and sealed up all the important books, and exterminated the last of Albert's invisible army. We think. And then we split up.

I caught a couple of familiar faces. Viki either didn't recognize us, or played along, but she was there, manning the mirror as ever. I was expecting Pesmerga to show up, but if he did I didn't notice. Jeane I just avoided, which was easy, considering I owe her something. And the Flock itself wasn't a bad bunch, otherwise we wouldn't have helped them. I think Geddoe was hoping to find his successor among that bunch, but the only likely candidate decided to guard the Island in the end, and I think Geddoe needed someone that wasn't attached to a place. The better you'll never find him. Or her. Or it.

Let's see, what else can I tell you about, keeping it out of order...well, we made it to Marlintine and crashed with the Silverbergs there. There's a war on there too; one of their colonies to the south up and declared independence. And by declared independence I mean dug a canal and made itself an island. I don't think there's a stronger way out there of saying "I don't want to be part of your country".

I can explain this. So, Marlintine. When Caesar got booted off the continent all those years ago, he apparently did very, very well for himself in Marlintine. I think he wound up the financial advisor to a couple of really important people, in addition to the "ambassador" thing he wound up doing by accident. So of course, he wound up with mansions, concubines, priceless artwork, and aristocratic titles that I can't pronounce and don't translate well. He died back in 529 by our calendar, but happily. One of his servants is writing an epic poem about all that. Shocked me too.

Well, he had a lot of kids, some calling themselves Silverbergs too, some not. In fact, "Silverberg" here is more like an estate or a Grassland clan than a family, but they live in the city. They call it a "wengoya", and the word the Falenans use when they translate it is "bu quoi", which means academy, but I seriously think I lost something. And all the servants of the house associate themselves with the name Silverberg. So when I say there are Silverbergs on both sides of the war, I might not actually mean in terms of blood relation. And it isn't a war yet. Well, technically. I can't think of anything else to call it; it's bigger than a border skirmish, and no one's really raiding anything else. But when the side that dug the channel decides it doesn't have to obey the new laws some lower official made and claims that the estate system lacks unity—I don't rightly understand all of it myself—it gets pretty violent.

Thing is, they spend more time building defense on both sides than they do being offensive. When it's bloody the channel runs red with it, but the war seems more about intimidating the other side into thinking whatever they're planning is just not going to work. There's actually a kind of Rune shield both sides are using, like what you were using against me and mine during the war in the Islands. One side builds theirs higher, the other side retaliates by adding an element-shifter to that, you get the idea.

So people swim the channel. Some Silverbergs have, some haven't. I wanted to stick around and watch this conflict play itself out, but Geddoe thought we were still too close to home. I mean, they teach our language now. And we had to get to places you didn't know about at all. Half-formed jellyfish countries don't count.

"Jellyfish countries." Definitely one of those phrases that doesn't translate well.

So, let me see, what else can I tell you about….There's the second of the four islands we got shipwrecked on. It turned out to be part of a long archipelago. We ended up tangling with the natives, who were at war with the island next door. In order to save our necks, we had to paint ourselves red and run this kind of obstacle course. After that, well, it took a few months for us to learn enough to explain to them that no, we weren't new additions to the tribe, and really had to be on our way. They sent someone off with us, to get us to a place where we would, perhaps, be understood. I picked up Falenan and enough Marlint in our time at sea, but by this point those languages were starting to be just about as useful as ours.

Apparently, though, the way we left that island was as part of a kind of slave-trade. Well, not really slave, more like contender for bride, but it's still human traffic. When we found out the girl they'd sent us with had intended as a kind of tribute to the local ruler of the archipelago, well, I wanted to make damned certain that she wanted to go ahead with it. Geddoe didn't rightly care. Or he pretended not to. But she ended up not going to the chieftain she was supposed to go to. Also, one of the more powerful islands—not the one we'd crashed on—sent a couple of assassins instead of a proper tribute. Familiar face, one of them. His sword says hello to your pet vampire.

Turned out that the chieftain was, in fact, a creature of the night, and after our buddy and the sword put the chieftain to sleep, our buddy translated some stuff for the girl from that island. Who we are, what we were up to, why there was a huge white lizard following me around, you know, the little things we never quite got to. She ended up sticking with us for a good long while after that, but not long enough for me to take her home. I think she liked old one-eye more, anyway.

Now, I was all for taking that old friend and his sword along with us, but Geddoe didn't seem all that enthused, and besides, the talking sword wanted to get back to business and business was taking them to a place out of our way. Namely, East. Back in your direction. Don't say I didn't warn you. So we shared a few drinks and fireside tales and if anyone there was able to translate what we were rambling about they would have been really, really confused. And we braved the hangovers and set out for less human-traffic-heavy places.

I think we managed to make it to a proper continent after that, going a fair bit north. The climate was more like Kamaro than anything else, and I seriously thought we'd gone the whole way around and that Marlintine really was halfway around the world. We were wrong. If I had to guess, I'd say the center of Marlintine actually marks about a third around, now that I've been the whole way.

So this new place, the full continent, with all the coldness, we ran into a Squirrel-folk society. They were welcoming. And, oddly enough, they spoke something approaching our language, some of the time. Apparently they have a real network, ongoing for hundreds of years. They've been in our neck of the woods and farther south than Falena. It was, though, apparently the first time that someone from outside had decided to come to them, so they made a big deal out of it. I now know more ways of preparing tree-nuts than any human being really should.

Geddoe and the girl and I ended up accompanying one of their clenches on a southward expedition, to get back on our track. Human-friendly country, I'd say, a lot like Tinto must seem to a foreigner. Once we got out of the forest it was mining territory, for a kind of liquid coal. If the terrain weren't so water-rich I think they'd be in real trouble.

We met a couple of interesting folks in these parts. It's a big continent, larger than Harmonia I think, though I will admit to not running across a block of land claiming fealty to one ruler as large as yours. There was a very Grassland arrangement to this whole part of the journey, little societies that appeared to know about each other and interact with each other and fight, but not over land. That's probably because they were farther apart than the Grassland clans are, and everyone traveled mostly by river. There's this elaborate mess of rivers, with tolls and taxes and people who seriously make a living making it harder to get from place to place. And, of course, pirates. Lots and lots of river-pirates. And better at what they did than Anji and the gang from back in the day.

I said, interesting folks. By far the most interesting was the one who gave us the hardest time getting around of any of them. I'm not naming names, of course, but he was—well, I'd say the Third but you'd call him the Second—of one of those bands of river-pirates. And when a not-quite-accident involving Geddoe's right hand and a small rock outcropping happened, the Third or Second or whichever became the leader. He made it his personal business to hinder our progress from state to state.

It worked. At first it was kind of funny, you know, because we had such an advantage on him. I mean, I'm no pushover, Geddoe's Geddoe, and Bright occasionally enjoys foreign foods. But with every time we threw them back, they'd regroup with new followers and more devastating plans. I think there was witch-hunting involved. I mean, they had Runes and all in this half of the world, but I don't for the life of me know how else to explain it.

I think we ended up accidentally uniting those countries and causing an economic truce. I swear, in the end, anyone on the continent who was mobile had taken up arms and started chasing us off it.

I almost forgot—something that would be of real interest to you. On one of the islands, I think it was technically part of the archipelago that we were shipwrecked on for the fourth time, but before we actually crashed, there was a mountain that the locals had carved to resemble their god. An entire mountain. Probably about as big as Tigerwolf, and that's after they gave it robes and a funny hat. Now, Geddoe and I didn't speak a whit of their language, but the mountain was specifically carved in a way that used a different kind of stone for the god's right hand, so I didn't have to speak to know that this "god" was really a Rune-bearer. I didn't recognize the sigil, but by the time you get this I'll have at least started looking.

The god looked kind of like old Maximillian, actually, in robes and a funny hat. Did you ever get to meet that man, when he was alive?

Let's see, what else…I think I almost fell in love with a tree.

Anyway. I know you're probably not looking forward to hearing this, but Geddoe and I had a lot of interesting conversations. He may be a reticent man, but I didn't spend the whole time talking to myself.

(What? It was a really nice tree.)

Some of them were important, others not so much. I even got to learn some thing about his past which, no, I don't think I'm at leisure to repeat, but which he'd otherwise have taken completely to the grave. We talked politics, we talked strategy, and even with a wanderer's lifestyle you manage to see a play or two in three hundred years of existence. He never sang when we got drunk, but he corrected my words. I reckon he's heard every tavern ballad ever written on our side of the world.

(Besides, it was a very shapely tree. And soft. And I could have sworn it was whispering to me. And I was very drunk.)

By the end…or the middle, since I'm throwing things out of order and exaggerating and all…we had one that went kind of like this.

"But look what you've done in these five years, Geddoe! You got new allies— myself included, you know—you got out of the reach of all those people after you, learned new things, saw new places. You could start a new life out here. It's a big world! And you're free to just keep going around it. Why don't you? Seriously, why don't you? Why end it here?"

"...Think about the old ones you know, Futch. what do they call themselves?"

"I don't know any old ones."

"You know five old ones. Lenkaat. Windy. Pesmerga. Yuber. Sierra. What do they call themselves, Futch?"

"Demons. Vampires."

"Not Leknaat. You've got a one-in-five chance. You've fought worse."

"It doesn't get easier."

"It's not supposed to."

"…Just leave me here, Futch. Maybe I will and maybe I won't, but if I start down that path it's your fault."

And all I could do was say "Deal."

So I guess that makes it pretty clear what happened…he found and started training a successor that you'll never get the chance to kill. And I left them, somewhere that maybe I mentioned, maybe I didn't. And Bright and I made it back to Goya on our own.

There's so much I didn't tell you…not because I don't remember it, and not because I don't want to, but because I want you to go. And then I want to sit down and compare notes. I didn't miss anything more than you while I was gone, you know. Nearly every place I wound up in, I wondered what you'd think of it.

In fact, just go. Don't reply to this letter. Finish reading it and set your affairs in order and tell Orosi he's got another stint as you coming up, and go. West until the East stops happening, like the sun does.

And when you come back, I'll be here.

-Futch

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Futch-

I am in awe.

Sasarai

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S-

I said don't write. Just go.

F

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