The Baron Northcrest's ritual, as many of his grand plans, intended to be, in theory, harmless.
The wells of the city were often run rampant with disease and filth, though more often than not, the wells would freeze during the colder seasons and stubbornly refuse to thaw well into summer. Many households had taken to collecting snow and ice to thaw as needed, some families going so far as to sacrifice their basements in order to create water stores to last through the warmer months where paradoxically, water ran rare.
The Baron proposed a new system, innovative and mechanical in design. Replacing the simple hand crank wells which had stood and operated perfectly well for generations with looming structures designed to syphon water right from the stone, purify it of waste and disease, all of which would have been perfectly fine and well had any of that water ever reached the lips of those it was most promised to…
City agriculture had always been unreliable, that was simply a fact of life. Spring always tended to be too wet with winter thaw for most things to grow well, and trade tricks brought north by southerners with nowhere else to go fell short. Elevating the growing fields and clearing the plots of snow before sowing the seeds was a pointless endeavor when the same storms that buried the streets in six feet of snow began drowning the fields in six feet of rain. Summer on the other hand was a bitter affair, brief, gone often before anyone realized it had come, with such limited amount of time to work with, farmers had to pick their crops wisely, for some years, summer lingered long enough for two rounds of growing to be had, others years summer lasted exactly a week, and if a farmer chose a crop that needed more than a week of sun, then that farmer's plot would be auctioned off the next spring, the farmer and whatever family dead in their hovels, starved and frostbitten.
Such was life, it wasn't pretty or kind by any means, but it was all the city knew, it was all the people knew, and the people knew how to survive such cruelties, after all, it was simply because people had been surviving such natural trials and tribulations that the Eternal City still stood. The Baron however, saw a crisis, a crisis with a solution. If elevating the fields away from thaw waters was not enough to keep crops from drowning, then the answer was simply to shield the plots from the rains. Greenhouses were not new to the city, many households with gardens implemented some sort of protection for their crops, but to raise such an expansive operation of greenhouses was unfeasible for mere farmers.
So in a twisted act of appeasement to soothe his own ego, the Baron offered up plots of farmland to those who could afford his solution, playing mind games with numbers far beyond what any commoner could fathom, the nobility leapt at the opportunity, swindling simple farmers of the land beneath their very feet with promises of coin and fortune so long as they work. Many farmers and their families fell victim to such promises, but perhaps it was those without means to grow their own crops that suffered the most, for while the farmers certainly struggled on their own, their prices were in fact expected for such a backwater city. But greed breeds greed, and the nobility were never the sort to be anything but self serving.
What once cost maybe a favour or tinder box or maybe even a coil of twine now demanded a solid fee of coin, coin that few commoners could spare, coin that fewer commoners had ever even seen.
The ritual the Baron Northcrest had been attempting that fateful night was, as many of his grand schemes intended to be, in theory, harmless.
But as all of Baron Northcrest's grand schemes became, it too turned to be anything but.
The Balance, the echoing visage of the Primordial Sea, the very surreal concept that the Haven and her Keepers had spent years upon lifetimes upon generations upon eons attempting to maintain and understand… Was simply supposed to be harnessed and tamed, allowing men to reign over the Primordial Sea and the will of the Leviathan.
A, quite honestly, monumental idea, one so removed from reality that it was surprising how much traction the Baron Northcrest had managed to gather behind himself to even begin to accomplish such a wild feat of ignorance.
The Balance, the so-called Primal, was not a mere thing to be tamed and controlled, it was not alive in the same way a blooded man or beast were, it was alive like the ocean, constantly in motion, guided by frivolous things as waves were by wind. There was no hope for such a force of nature to ever be truly governed by mere men, not even the Leviathan, the deity who dwelled within the very depths of that unalive ocean held no sway over such forces.
The Baron Northcrest and all those who longed for such trivial things as power and glory, were undoubtedly, fools who wished for themselves that which man could not and would not ever find fortune over. Not to say that their silly dances and songs would not have been for nothing, just that whatever outcome they were expecting would have most certainly not been what they would have received had the interference of the two thieves prevented such an outcome, for better or for worse.
Though perhaps either way the world would have been better off damned…
As the Primal, still young and innocent, seated itself within Erin, the tides of the Primordial Sea shifted to form something new, a Primordial Basin if one could describe such a thing, a new plane, nestled between the endlessness of time and the impermanence of humanity.
The shift wasn't at all easy, for anyone.
Nor was it perfect in any capacity.
A few delicate shards of the ancient Primal Eye were ripped asunder as the Primal Basin took root within the young woman, syphoning waters of the Primordial Sea from anywhere it could, including the ancient eye, forged from sea ice so long ago.
The rapidness of which the Basin drank caused the Primal Eye to splinter, the fragments catching in the wind and taking flight within the desecrated hall of the Baron's supposedly hallowed hall.
Many of the pieces would simply melt away, the Primal Basin devouring the essence of the Primordial Sea which kept the ice and eye intact, other less fortunate shards would find themselves embedded within flesh of the unrighteous faux holy men who had aligned themselves with the Baron that eve.
One such fragment however sat contently within Garrett's right eye, yet another consequence of the night, and the cause for one of the more visible and obvious injuries Garrett had acquired in his life; it was a small thing, no larger than a poppy seed, but precious.
Indescribably so…