Figure: Six-Link Circuit from Isewalus on Clarus, to Hashawami Temple on Olympia, and Back to Isewalus on Clarus.
Here are the adventures of Hashawami journeymen who departed Clarus through CSDS3 on 27th November, 2479. Passages in italics are dramaturgical notes. Other passages are written by one of the journeymen in her diary. We will give days according to Kambiz's Almanac of Conjunctions, 2475 edition.
The planet Draxius has gravity 0.90 times that of Clarus, day 1.02 Claran days, and year 1.67 Claran years. It's tilt is 18° and it has no moon. It's seasons are deep and its nights are lit only by stars. It is an Open World managed by the Athena Corporation. No public summoning is allowed. Draxius's strong maeon wind attracts many conjunctions.
Draxius Day 2338 That is the day according to the Almanac of Conjunctions, 2475 edition. Dharmesh Khatun, Hemendra Ali, Prisha Sah, Bhavin Patel, Naitee Biswas, and I, Tanvi Ray, left Clarus on 27th November, 2479. We passed through the conjunction called CSDS3 and arrived at Lat +38.8 Long 65.7 on Draxius day 2337. It is mid-autumn here. Our destination is a Draxius-Igneus conjunction, DSIS4, at Lat 39.1 Long 53.2, a distance of 933 km. Conjunction DSIS4 opens on Draxius day 2414 and closes on day 2420, but we must reach DSIS4 by day 2418 because the next conjunction we want to take, ISKC1 from Igneus to Kryanic, is a day's journey across Igneus and closes on Draxius day 2419.
Draxius Day 2386: Arrive Peyton, on the western edge of the Red Mountains, population five thousand. We believe we are 100 km east of DSIS4. We have walked, sailed, and ridden in a stage coach to arrive here. We survived three combats.
Draxius Day 2388: My five comrades are working for Sally and George Grensham. They are building a fence for a horse paddock. Looking from the main street in Payton, across the foothils of the Red Mountains, I see flat-topped pillars, called mesas, that rise thirty to sixty meters above the grassy plane. The countryside is dry. The bedrock is sandstone, as it is in the Red Mountains. The Grenshams are sheep farmers. They own one hundred hectares. The plane is covered with such farms. I am working for Roderick Goodheart, a tailor. He is old, with no children to carry on his trade. I am staying in the back room of his shop.
Draxius Day 2399: Last night, a giant bird descended out of the sky and stole a sheep from the sheep pen on the Grensham farm. There is one mesa on the Grensham farm, twenty meters tall and one hundred meters across. Naitee climbed it but found no giant bird. Three soldiers Arcturus, Mandrake, and Silas, all young men go to the farm. A month ago, the town posted a one-hundred guinea reward for the capture of this bird. The three soldiers go searching for the bird, walking down a river canyon to the west. One of them is now dead. The other two report that my comrades followed them into the river canyon and attacked them, killing the one called Silus. My comrades carried the body back to the Grensham farm. The body is now in the town. My comrades left the Grensham farm, going west. I believe they are not coming back. I am leaving the town tonight, riding on an pony with the Peyton sheriff and four deputies. They are hunting my comrades.
Draxius Day 2400: I am alone. The search party has returned to Peyton. My comrades have flown west on the giant bird. Last night I rode with the sheriff's posse. We went down the river canyon. We camped. We returned today. At the base of a tall mesa the sheriff found the footprints of my comrades: sandaled prints going up the south slope of the canyon. We found the place where they had camped the night before, and a trail leading to the sandstone cliff of the mesa. I stood at the bottom and shouted. My comrades answered from the top. I climbed up. When I reached the top, my comrades told me their story.
The day before, they followed the three soldiers into the canyon. When the three men turned around, my comrades hid. Later, they continued on down the canyon. They found the tracks of two giant birds, one twice the size of the other, beside the river. They find a giant feather. At this point in time they testify that they were attacked at a range of thirty meters by the three soldiers firing arrows from bows. My comrades charged. They say they wanted to close the distance so they would could not be killed by arrows. There was nowhere to hide in the canyon. The young men were armed with swords and protected by armor. Dharmesh tried to avoid combat by saying, "Stop!". I deduce that Naitee said something that infuriated the young men and the young men attacked with their swords. Naitee struck the one named Silus on the head. Silus collapsed. The fight stopped.
Hemendra, who is a healer of considerable skill and kindess, even though he is also tall and strong and fierce, determined that Silus was dead. Arcturus was pacing up and down and angry. Mandrake was sitting beside Silus's body and crying. My comrades retired twenty meters, trying to decide what to do. Eventually, they all return to the farm, my comrades helping to carry Silas's body. George took the body to Peyton in hand-cart, accompanied by Mandrake and Arcturus. Sally told my comrades that the justice of the peace in Peyton is her own mother Greta Grensham, but she suspects this incident would lead to a confinement and trial before eventual release. She recommended they flee. She gave them five days provisions as payment for their work.
My comrades fled from the law. They walked to the place where they found the giant footprints. They camped above the canyon, beside a mesa. They heard our search party pass down the canyon in the night. In the morning, they climbed the tall mesa. There, they found an adult hippogriff, which is a giant bird of mass roughly three hundred kilograms, and its offspring of unknown gender, of mass roughly half the mass. Naitee says the big one is the mother. She does not know the gender of the little one. Before I arrived, they found a torn harness made of leather, along with saddle bags. The saddle bags contained books and clothes.
After I hear their story, I gave them a message from the sheriff. They have nowhere to run to and they should surrender or else they will be arrested for resisting arrest. They laughed at that. I am not sure if they were laughing at the sheriff or if they were laughing at the way I say my ars.
On this mesa is a shed in some trees made out of a sparkling gray material. Dharmesh, who is very clever and has read many books, says is made of spirit matter, a magical substance. There are a dozen small goats and their kids wandering around, but not the climbing kind of goats. These are farm goats. There are several rabbit warrens with dozens of rabbits. Bhavin killed a rabbit with a stone and cooked it over a fire. I repaired the harness. All this time, the sheriff's posse is waiting below, but then Prisha sees them starting to try to climb the mesa. When I had finished my repair, Naitee approches the mother griff with the harness. The griff snatched the harness away. Bhavin kills a goat and Naitee feeds some of it to the griff. Among the books, Dharmesh finds a photograph of a man mounted on the same griff, as is obvious from the colors of the feathers. The man's skin is black, but we do not think he is one of us. Naitee puts the harness on the griff. The griff's beak is big enough to bite Naitee into two pieces. Naitee is very small and pretty. I would not like to see her bitten. But she mounts the bird and the bird and just like that she takes off. The bird runs off the mesa and disappears. I screamed because I thought she was going to fall to her death, but soon after I see her rising into the sky on the giant bird.
My comrades found a way to escape the law. Naitee took each of the others to another mesa several kilometers away, one after the other, until only I remained. I did not want to ride the bird, and I had given my word to the sheriff that I would return to them. I climbed down to where the sheriff and his men were almost at the top, with their ropes and spikes and hammers. I explained what had happened. The sheriff and his deputies laughed. They were glad that the monster had been taken care of, and how they did not even have to give out the reward. "All's well that ends well," the sheriff said. I believe that my comrades are safe from persuit, so long as they do not return to Peyton. Now I am sitting in my comrade's camp of last night. It is getting cold, but I have a fire.
Draxius Day 2405: I have not yet found my comrades. I walked down the river canyon to a town on a lake they call Mellisani. The tailor in the town did not want help. A boat took me to the other side of the lake to the town Marvellos. I am working for the tailor, sleeping in his back room. His wife is a good cook. The tailor's shop is busy with visitors who gossip.
Draxius Day 2400: I am recording what my comrades tell me of their adventures without me. On they flew on the big griff, Naitee going back and forth to carry them forward, the little griff following. This was New Year's Eve on Draxius. The big griff flew off on its own at the end of the day and came back with a sheep.
Draxius Day 2401: In order to avoid making the griff hungry, so that it would not steal another sheep, my comrades walked. They following the path of the river to the west, but not in the canyon. An hour before sunset they came to a cliff over Lake Mellisani. To the south, on the coast, with a tall mesa overhanging it, they saw Rodakino. The name of this town means "peach" in Greek. The town is famous for peaches it grows in glass houses. There are two walls about the town, one within the other. The glass houses are at the center, and they were shining in the setting sun. My comrades were cold and without blankets. They recalled the words of The Book.
Let the acolyte go to the new city, Let her enter in, rather than pass by, For how else can she find ways to serve? How else can she make the world glad?
They descended to the town, where they were welcomed by the mayor and chief botanist, a man called Venitos Arianopolis. The town was suffering from a conflict, and my comrades were invited to arbitrate. Sixteen of the town's children, aged thirteen to nineteen, were living on top of the mesa overhanging the town. These youths climbed up with ropes, and the adults were unable to reach them. The youths lower a basket each day and either the adults put food and peaches in the basket or the youths drop rocks on the glass houses. The youths demands eighty peaches a day.
The town produces two hundred and fifty peaches a day. Half of these are given as tithe to the Godess Athena. The other half are the town's livelyhood. They sell the peaches for one hundred dollars each. So each day they are giving the youths eight thousand dollars of peaches, and are left with only four thousand five hundred dollars to support the town. The adults of the town include the parents of the youths, and they wanted no harm to come to their children. This was the conflict that my comrades were asked to resolve.
Draxius Day 2402 Naitee and Prisha fly up to the top of the mesa on the big griff. They talk to the leader of the youths, a young man called Alexis Polydrachma, who is the son of Rodakino's head shepherd. Alexis tells them they are, "Spitting in the wind." He asks them to leave, and they do. The sheep of Rodakino eat a particular type of grass that the town cultivates in the fields outside its walls. The sheep produce wool, lamb, and droppings. The dropping fertilise the peach trees, which grow in pots in the glass houses.
Draxius Day 2403: They talk to many people, but mostly they remember this day as a day when they were amazed by how delicious the food was in the hotel.
Draxius Day 2404: Bavin and Hemendra fall sick. Naitee, Dharmesh, and Prisha go down into the sewers beneath Rodakino and do battle with a monster with tentacles that lives in a pool beneath the city. The pass by the monster and retrieve a chest of gold for the mayor. The monster is called a Gulosis. The mayor pays them sixty guineas for this work: fifty for retrieving the chest and a bonus of ten for not killing the monster. He promises to give a good report of my comrades to the agents of Athena.
Draxius Day 2406: Prisha has fallen sick. Before dawn, Naitee flies Dharmesh, Bavin, and Hemmendra to the top of the mesa, as well as the chief shepherd. They wait for dawn, then approach the youths. The youths are awake and gather together. My comrades deliver an ultimatum to the youths: they must come down on the griff or be tied up and taken down by force. Alexis laughs. My comrades attack. The youths put up a good fight, but in the end they are overcome by the prowess and staffs of the Hashawami. Alexis is subdued. Once he is taken away, most of the others were willing to ride down. One young women fought to the end. She and Alexis were locked up in the town jail. Everyone seemed content with the outcome, with the exception of the two in jail. The mayor paid Naitee, Dharmesh, Bavin, and Hemmendra a carton of twenty peaches each as payment for the successful arbitration.
Draxius Day 2406: Prisha has recovered from her sickness, but wishes to remain in Rodakino for a few days longer. My comrades believe that Prisha so enjoys the food that she will never leave. I hope they are wrong, because I will miss Prisha. Naitee flies across Lake Mellisani to Marvellos. Dharmesh, Bavin, and Hemmendra help a man sail his boat from Rodakino to Marvellos. They find me in the tailor's shop and tell me their story. They are staying in a house down by the docks. The owner of the house is Sarah. She is the sister of the man they helped sail across the lake. They paid her twenty peaches for room and board for themselves, and barn and food for the griffs at her nephew's farm.
Draxius Day 2408: We have been busy in the tailor's shop for the past week, making costumes and drapes for a rich man called Pernassus Artichokhos as well as the all the guests who are coming to the party he is throwing tonight in the villa he has rented for the winter. He came into the store today and saw my comrades and invited them all to the party. So they all went up the hill to his villa for the party. They walked, but there was also a wagon to take people up the hill. During the party, this wagon came back down into the town and out to the docks where it picked up a cargo of humans and transported them through the town and up the road into the mountains, then returned in time to take the guests back down the hill from the villa after the party. Dharmesh, Bavin, Naitee, and Hemmendra ride the wagon down again and in the light of the lanterns they find some hair and some skin and a drop of blood. Sarah says she heard people wailing in the cart as it went by her house.
Draxius Day 2409: Naitee flew up into the mountains to see what became of the people in the cart. At the highest point of the road, she found a stone house with a slate roof and smoke rising from a chimney. Beside the house was an open grave and the dismembered corps of a red-headed woman. She saw two men hiding and she landed her griff. Five people came out from behind rocks and trees. They attacked her by charging and leaping. She is sure they were trying to bite her. Two of them were women. She escaped on her griff and returned to us. We ran up the road, which is uphill all the way. My comrades went slowly so I could keep up with them. A cart coming down the road warned us of five bandits who persued him and his wife.
After two hours running we reached the top. We saw movement behind rocks that we believed were people. A man opened the door of the house. "Come quickly or you will be attacked!" Dharmesh did not want to go in at first, but the rest of us did. Mr. Ellis Snell and his wife Ingrid gave us pea and ham soup, which was delicious. "We are of the Order of the Necroni," Ingrid told me. "We come from Weiland on Clarus. There we suffered persecution because of the way we can coexist with the diseases of the undead. We are descendents of Galahad Mortus, the founder of our order, and from him we receive our immunity to these diseases." There was a big fire blazing. The house was one big room. Sitting in front of the fire on stools and chairs were fourteen people who did not move much at all and spoke not at all. But their hair was combed and some of them were eating soup from bowls they held to their lips. "They have zombiism," Ingrid said, "When cared for by us, they make calm and hardworking farm-hands. In the lands where they come from, they would be put to death."
According to Mr. and Mrs. Snell, they ordered twenty zombies for four hundred thousand Olympian dollars, and we deduced that Mr. Artichocus's men delivered the twenty last night. But five of them were not zombies. They were ghouls. The ghouls attacked and killed one of the zombies. Mrs. Snell, knowing a ghoul when he smells one, did not allow the ghouls into the house. Somehow, the dead zombie ended up in a shallow grave, only to be dug up the next day by the ghouls, just before Naitee arrived.
Ghouls are suffering from a disease that spreads from saliva to blood. The disease makes them want to bite people and then eat them. The only way to cure the disease is to pay the gods a lot of money for a course of medicine. And that would of course require that the ghoul be captured and restrained. "They will either run away and hunt somewhere else, or they will wait for us to come out. My wife and I are immune to cannabalistic schitzophrenia, but you are not, and nor are our zombies. Somebody is going to have to kill those ghouls. The only question is how many people they will kill before then, and how many more ghouls will be born of them."
Five Hashawami all agreed that it was our duty to go out and hunt down these ghouls and kill them. And that is what we did, with our staffs. One escaped us and ran down into the next valley. The mountain was steep. Hemendra and Naitee sprinted down, leaping from one boulder to the next like mountain goats. Bhavin and Dharmesh followed them. I came down the path, which went back and forth across the slope. They caught up with the ghoul at the bottom of the slope, before he reached the hamlet of the Necroni, where we could see zombies working the fields. Instead of turning and fighting like the others, he lay on the ground, curled up, panting and sobbing. We stood over him.
A tall woman approached us, dressed like the Snells: black long-coat, black top-hat. She gave her name as Glenda Olaf. She knelt by the ghoul and made a keening sound. The ghoul stopped sobbing. She sniffed him. He tried to grab her hand, but she slapped his hand away. "He is a ghoul," she said. "What are you going to do with him, now that you have caught him?"
We answered all her questions. After that Glenda agreed to take custody of the ghoul. Hemmendra held the ghoul from behind and made him walk to a stone building where Glenda locked him in a cell. The ghoul spoke on the way. "He comes from one of the tribes to the north," Glenda said, "They have many languages, and I speak none of them."
Hemmendra and I walked back up the mountain to tell the Snells that it was safe to come out. We stayed the night with them in the hall at the top of the road. Dharmesh, Bhavin, and Naitee stayed in Glenda's house. Glenda has a zombie servant called Gweneth.
Draxius Day 2410: In the morning, we fed the zombies, combed their hair for nits, cleaned the hall, packed up the perishable food, and set out with all fourteen zombies. It took all day to get down to the village. Tonight we are staying in the Snell's barn.
This village is calle Mica. The Necroni founded Mica eighty-one years ago. There is a mine in the cliff beside the lake. The mine produces sheets of mica. There are one hundred hectares of fertile land beside the lake cultivated for crops and grazing. Population: 163 zombies, 34 Necroni, 1 ghoul. Streams fall down the cliffs into the lake. The lake is long and thin and goes to the ocean. To get to Mica from Marvellos, take the road west up into the mountains, and when you get to the very top, go south. You should see the hall and find the path leading down into the valley to the south. You will see Mica from the top of this path. The lake is of a special kind: a fjord. It is one or two kilometers wide, but forty kilometers long. Mica is at the top end of the lack. The ocean is at the bottom end, to the south.
Draxius Day 2411: Say goodbye to the Necroni. Hemmendra, Bhavin, and I board a merchant ship. Dharmesh and Naitee start walking back to Marvellos to getch the two hippogriffs. Our plan is to meet on Skid Island in a few days time.
Draxius Day 2412: Dharmesh and Naitee fly up the mountain road from Marvellos, one person flying at a time, because the griff cannot lift both of them in the mountains. They glide down from the top to Mica, where they spend one night and buy a sheep for the griff mother and child to eat, for which they pay ten Rodakino peaches. Hemmendra, Bhavin, and I are sleeping on the ship's deck at night.
Draxius Day 2413: We rowed and sailed forty kilometers down the fjord from Mica, in a direction that Hemmendra judged to be south. When the fjord opens to the ocean, we turned west and then north. We sailed past Conjunction Island. We examined it through the captain's telescope. It is one kilometer across with cliffs all around. There is no natural harbor, only docks built onto the cliffs. A plateux hosts the two conjunctions: Draxius-Igneus Four (DSIS4) and Comitor-Draxius Two (CRDS2). Dharmesh consulted his almanac and provided the following schedule, in Draxius days:
2148 CRDS2 open 2157 CRDS2 closed 2184 DSIS4 open 2191 DSIS4 closed 2413 DSIS4 open 2414 ISKC1 open 2419 ISKC1 closed 2420 DSIS4 closed 2497 CRDS2 open 2506 CRDS2 closed
A mountain-top is home to a monastery. The monks of the monastery are responsible for keeping the peace during the conjunctions. Dharmesh and Naitee landed on Conjunction Island at about mid-day, soon after we had sailed by. Hundreds of merchants with their cargo and livestock are waiting on the plateaux. The DSIS4 celesti had arrived, and was due to open in a couple of hours.
The mother griff was able to carry Naitee and Dharmesh after coming down out of the mountains to the fjord. After leaving Conjunction Island, they must have overtaken us in our ship, although we did not see them. They arrived first in Skid City. They saw another griff landing in the higher part of the city, which lead them to the Broadnight Arms and its hippogriff stable. There they met Baradash Ragoon, who recognised our mother griff and called her "Flea". Mother griff and Baradash were happy to see eachother. Naitee gave Baradash all of his books and clothes, which we had been carrying, but did not agree to return the hippogriff of her child.
Our ship arrived in the late afternoon. Skid harbor is large and calm. The city is set in a forest that climbs a mountain. The captain of our boat recommended the Broadnight Arms, and that is how we found Naitee and Dharmesh. Before dinner, I went into the shop of Catherine Skiddle the clothier. She sells winter coats, and we may need such coats when we arrive in Kryanic. Her coats are well-made, but expensive. We are not yet decided if we should buy coats before we reach Kryanic, or trust that we shall be able to procure them upon arrival.
We are sharing one large room. We had dinner with Baradash. He works for the First Interplanetary Bank. He flies around Draxius on bank business. He has a new griff called "Wilks". He says he left Flea tied up outside a roadside inn in the mountains east of Peyton, one stormy night a year ago, when someone jumped on Flea and flew off with her. Baradash offers to pay us five hundred guineas for Flea and her child. He urges us to open an account with his bank so that we can keep our money safe and withdraw it from the bank on our journey to Olympia.
A man called Faust Grimm tried to take Naitee captive during dinner. He is a bounty hunter. Dharmesh and Naitee recall three soldiers on the road to Marvellos a few days ago telling them that there was a two hundred guinea bountee for the return of Naitee to Peyton, put out by Silas's mother. Silas is the man that Naitee struck and killed by accident. Faust is a big man. He was wearing studded leather armor. He surprised Naitee when she was coming out of the toilet. She escaped him, and the people in the dining hall were outraged that Faust would try to take a bounty in the Broadnight Arms. So he left, but he did not seem to be afraid or ashamed. We are keeping watch tonight.
Dharmesh consults the almanac of conjunctions, which gives the following Draxius dates and times for DSIS4 and ISKC1.
2413:13:37 DSIS4 open 2414:13:09 ISKC1 open 2419:10:48 ISKC1 closed 2420:10:19 DSIS4 closed
These same moments in Igneus date and time are:
1301:15:14 DSIS4 open 1302:04:48 ISKC1 open 1305:00:36 ISKC1 closed 1305:14:09 DSIS4 closed
We expect the conjunciton DSIS4 opened today at 13:37 Draxius time, 15:14 Igneus time. The ISKC1 conjunction opens tomorrow at 13:09 Draxius time, 04:48 Igneus time. The Igneus day is 1.77 Claran days, 1.73 Draxius days. We will arrive on Igneus through DSIS4 at lat 55.7°, long 14.6°. We leave through ISKC1, which is only three kilometers from DSIS4.
Draxius Day 2414: I am sitting in the Guest Hall on Pusillus Island. It is warm in here and they have free lentil soup for travelers. We flew from Skid Island this morning and the flight was cold. We flew here on Flea, Wilks, and Penelope. Flea's son, who Baragash Ragoon has named Azalia, flew with us. Baragash rented Penelope for 50 gp, and Wilks is his own. We have given him Flea and Azalia in exchange for the ride this morning. We declined his offer of an account in his First Interplanetary Bank. He says he owes us a favor, and claims that we can get in touch with him using something he calls "the net".
In Skid City they call this island Conjunction Island. But the monks of the Order of the Blue Robe call it Pusillus Island. Their monestary is at the top of the steep hill on one side of the island. All the monks are fit from climbing up and down the steps. Brother Samual invited us to stay with them, but we decided to go to Igneus today. There is some crisis going on there with a volcano and monsters. We are leaving now. I must stop writing.
The planet Igneus has gravity 1.17 times that of Clarus, day 1.77 Claran days, and year 12 Claran years. It's tilt is 2.2° with respect to the orbital plane, so it has no discernable seasons. It is itself a moon orbiting the giant planet Leviathan in the Quattor system. It has no moon of its own. It's maeon wind is weak: 0.4 Y, compared to Clarus's 1.0 Y and Draxius's 1.6 Y. Igneus is an Open World with sapien population roughly one hundred thousand, owned exclusively by the goddess Pandora. Public summoning of healthcare is permitted, but not of creatures.
Igneus Day 1303: We passed through Draxius-Igneus Four at 10:30 am Draxius time and arrived at 3:15 am Igneus time. We have three Igneus hours until dawn, which is like five Draxius hours. The sun rises at six every day here, and sets at six, every day. When we arrived, it was raining and dark, but the rain was warm. It is almost dawn now. The rain is still falling, but it is even darker. Joshua Carnapi says the moon is setting. The moon is bright at night when there are no clouds. But there are usually clouds. Joshua is from Draxius. He works for traders who want to move their livestock to Plossis. Plossios is a town on the ocean to the south of us on Igneus. Joshua says there is a volcano erupting two hundred kilometers to the north-west of us. Lava is flowing across the plain. The lava flows in tubes. We are on a plateau. Fifteen hundred meters to the east is the Steaming River. On the other side of the river is another plateau. That is where the Igneus-Kryanic One conjunction should be, although nobody here knows if the conjunction has appeared yet. Animals are fleeing from the eruption. They are fleeing down the valley of the Steaming River. Birds are flying from the eruption. They are flying over us now. They attacked a flying hippogriff yesterday. The hippogriff fell to down to the plain. Nobody knows for sure what happened to its rider. The birds are loud. The sound they make is one loud note, long or short. No singing. Joshua says there are small, medium, and big birds, and they all eat meat. There are small, medium, and big hunters that go around on two legs. There are medium, big, and very big grazers too. There are large, slow insects flying around the luminous stone.
The bounty hunter called Faust Grimm came through the conjunction and tried to take Naitee, but Naitee, Bhavin and Hemmendra fought him off. He went back through the conjunction. An old man called Hamid Ghorbani provided the luminous stone that hangs from the ceiling of the rain shelter near. There are tables and benches and a map. Dharmesh and Joshua are leaning over the map. I am writing at a table. We are going to go East three kilometers to see if the path to the Igneus-Kryanic conjunction is clear for trade. Samuel the monk from the Order of the Blue Robes on Pusillus came through the conjunction to speak with Joshua. There are twenty or thirty travellers on Pusillus who want to go to the Draxius-Igneus Three conjunction that is opening on Igneus day 1306 a distance roughly 200 km north of here. By making this 200 km journey across land, they were hoping to travel five thousand kilometers across Draxius. The DSIS3 conjunction stays open until day 1311, so if they come through now they have 9 Igneus days, or 16 Claran days, to go 200 km.
Igneus Day 1303, Mid-Day: We are in the fort of Duke Tonic. From the top of the fort's wall, we can see Igneus-Kryanic One. We are on the other side of the Steaming River from Draxius-Igneus Four. Both conjunctions are open. The sky is dark. I am writing by the light of Hamid Ghorbani's luminous stone. Hamid says the sky goes dark for one hour in the middle of every day. He explained it like this. Igneus is one of the moons of Leviathan, which is a giant planet. Here, at this particular place on Igneus, Leviathan is always in the middle of the sky. Igneus goes around Leviathan in one Igneus day. In the middle of the day, Igneus is in the shadow of Leviathan for one hour. Hamid says we would see the stars if the sky was clear of clouds. It is pitch dark outside, and the air is cooler. Most people are sleeping. Duke Tonic calls it "nap-time".
Going back to the early morning today, we waited for sun-rise and walked east across a field of tall ferns. Cairns of stones marked the trading path. Everywhere else was covered with these ferns. Bhavin was in front. We were bashing the ferns flat with our staffs, making a path. Bhavin saw a green head staring at him from the ferns. He stopped and warned us. The creature jumped at him. At the same time, five other of the same creature jumped at us from their hiding places in the ferns. These were what Joshua called "small hunters". The Duke calls them "raptors". They are chest-high and dark green. They go on two legs. Their skin is covered with scales. They clawed on their arms. Their jaws are big and full of teeth, like a crocodile, but not as long and thin. They charged and tried to bite us. We fought them with our staffs. We killed three and wounded another before the final two ran away. We left their corpses behind.
We descended a causeway made of earth to a long, arched bridge that crosses the Steaming River. There were clouds of steam. A "big grazer", which the Duke calls a "bronty", was stuck in a broken section of the bridge. It was standing in the hot water on four legs. From head to tail it was twenty-five meters long. Its back was five meters above the water. It was shades of dark green. Its skin was like leather. Raptors were climbing on it and biting it. It was bellowing. We were on one side of the break and Garath Jones, the Duke of Tonic, was on the other side with ten soldiers. We fired sling stones at the raptors and struck at them. The Duke and his men sang a stirring song. They speak Latin. The raptors ran away.
The Duke and his men climbed down off the bridge and one of them threw a lasso around the bronty's neck. They pulled on the lasso rope. The bronty was stuck in the mud. Through the steam to the north, which is upstream, we saw a "big hunter", or "teerex". It was forty meters away, dark green and brown. We fired stones at it. Naitee and Bhavin jumped on the back of the bronty and put a rope around its head. Bhavin jumped down and the Duke's men pulled on the both ropes. Naitee was still on the bronty's back when it staggered up and moved forward. The teerex turned away and disappeared into the steam. The river smells like eggs.
The Duke welcomed us and thanked us for our help. We decided to go back to the conjunction to bring people to the bridge before more bronties could break it in other places. Bhavin stayed with them to help put planks across the break. The fern-covered plane was now covered with brightly-colored "medium grazers", or "duckies". They can stand on their two hind legs, or lean on their front legs when eating ferns. The ferns were almost all eaten to the ground. Their skin was mostly green, but they had streaks of red, blue, and yellow. Their mouths are shaped like a duck's bill, but with teeth to pull the ferns. There were hundreds of them, maybe thousands. We walked through them and they made way for us.
We reached the conjunction and about that time the duckies started to stampede to the south. The merchants herded their sheep and themselves into the conjunction. Now a pack of raptors, hundreds of them, came chasing the duckies. We climbed up on top of the conjunction. Hamid Ghorbani stood at the entrance to the conjunction. Around him there were flashes and bangs. He is a wizard. The raptors jumped up onto the conjunction and attacked us, so we fought again. This time we were more frightened because there were so many of them, and they were so hungry. But Dharmesh was singing as he fought, and the raptors seemed not to like the singing, so we all started to sing, although not as loudly and clearly as Dharmesh, who sings very well. In less than a minute, the raptors jumped away and ran to the south after their pack. None of us were hurt.
The ferns were almost all gone. The conjunction opened and out came twenty men, women, and children from Draxius singing, playing horns, banging drums, and clashing some cymbals. They started off to the East. Dharmesh tried to tell them to wait, but they would not. They are Athena's Musical Travelers, and they are protected by the goddess, they said. So we went with them to protect them, and Hamid came too.
We made it to the bridge with the Musical Travelers. There were three bronties coming down the river on the eastern end of the bridge. The Duke said, "Oh boy. I don't know if we are going to be able to sing our way out of this trouble." It is getting lighter again, so I must stop writing.
Four teerexes attacked the bronties. Two bronties became stuck trying to push over the bridge on the east end. Two others passed through the repairs in the gap. We were on the bridge with the Duke, his men, mister Ghorbani, and the travelers, in between the gap and the two bronties who had their chests on the bridge. Two teerexes attacked the bronties. One sank his teeth into the smaller one's back. The bronties made tremendous honking noises. Their blood is red. We wanted to move the travelers past the bronties, but they would not move. Dharmesh picked up one of their children and carried her past the bronties to the east bank. Bhavin took a girl's hand and lead her. Dharmesh came back to take another child but ended up getting into a fist fight with the child's parents. We were yelling at the travelers. At last Branden Loff, their leader, started yelling at them too, and the travelers struck their drums, blew their trumpets, and moved forward. They passed under the waving bellowing bronty heads and the hungry teerex.
Igneus Day 1303, Evening: It is still light outside. The days are almost twice as at home. We are exhausted. It has been raining. We have been suffering from headaches and feeling dizzy. Before nap-time, we felt like throwing up, except for Naitee, who felt fine. Everyone drinks a bitter kind of tea here. They drink it all day. We all drank two cups of it earlier today. Dharmesh did not drink any. We all felt much better. Dharmesh did not. He drank tea with dinner, along with the rest of us, and he feels better now too. The Musical Travelers were suffering in the same way until they started drinking the tea. Cynthia Davies is the chef here. She made the tea out of fresh, thin, green leaves, oval and pointed at both ends. She called them "tea", even though it is not the same plant we call "tea" at home. On the underside of the leaf there are two curved lines parallel to the main vein.
We don't know what is making us dizzy. We are all heavier here, by about one fifth. I always feel like I am too heavy. I can't say I have really noticed that the stairs are more difficult for me to go up, but we certainly noticed a difference when we were throwing stones today. We had to aim higher. Maybe we are allergic to something in the air. The air smells like mushrooms and eggs.
We left the bronties bellowing behind us and walked up out of the clouds to a field of ferns. Five hundred meters away was the ISKC1 conjunction. Behind the conjunction, another few hundred meters up the slope, is the stone fort. The Musical Travelers were making their music. The Duke encouraged them, saying the animals do not like to come near music. There were animals in the field of ferns, standing on four legs, three meters high, six meters long counting their tails. There were two types, "tritops" and "steggies". The tritops have bone heads with three horns sticking out. The steggies have a row of diamond-shaped plates running down their backs and a bone spikes at the end of their tails. The tritops charge if they are angry. The steggies will swing their tail at you if you get too close. The Duke says these creatures weigh around five thousand kilograms and their meat is too tough to eat.
There were five or six tritops near the conjunction. "Well, Mister Ghorbani," the Duke said. "We'll not go any closer for now. Let's go around and have some grub, shall we?" So we walked around and up to the fort. We ate lunch in the hall of the fort. So did the Musical Travelers, the solders, and the Duke. Their Mister Loff interrupted the Duke's lunch to complain about Dharmesh. "A Hashawami monk striking my people with his staff! I'll be sure to file a complaint." The food at lunch was good, and there was as much as we could eat.
After nap-time, we set off to the north to see what we could do about the tritops and steggies coming up an old road from the bed of the Steaming River. We saw the beasts coming up the path from the battlements before lunch. "Oh, that will be trouble," the Duke said. There are not normally any big creatures near either of the conjunctions. The volcanic eruption has driven them down the valley from the north. The Duke's soldiers stepped back when he asked volunteers for this mission to step forward. So we were left out in front. The soldiers thought this was most amusing. Hamid Ghorbani came too, so it was monks, Duke, and a wizard.
Moving through the ferns I was on the lookout for more of those hungry raptors. From out of the sky came four giant flying creatures. I won't call them birds because they were so stange. The Duke calls them "giant terranodons". Their wingspan was ten meters. From head to tail they were eight meters. They landed on their two legs twenty meters from us, then folded their wings and used their wings as front legs. They were white on their bellies, red on their head and beaks, and gray on the back. Their heads were high up and stabbed down at us with their beaks closed and pointed like lances. We stood with the Duke in a circle around Hamid. I don't think he cast any spells. The Duke cut off one peeterosaur's head, we wounded another and the other two creatures ran off on their four legs, jumped into the air, and flew off with rapid beats of their enormous wings. They look almost as heavy as hippogriffs. That was a tiring fight. I had a headache after.
We reached the top of the road and Mister Ghorbani cast a spell that built a green wall. The wall material came out of the end of his staff. Mister Ghorbani is blind. He tells me he sees with a magical spell, but he does not see all that we see, nor do we see all that he sees. That's what he told me. We used the staff to put the green material on top of itself to make the wall. We watched a tritop try to push through the wall, but the wall was strong. So we started for home. Another tritops charged us when we reached the field of ferns. It came straight at us. Nothing could stop it. We all jumped out of the way, pulling Mister Ghorbani with us, and the tritops went pounding by and off to the south. We took Mister Ghorbani to the ISKC1 conjunction and he went through. I hope we see him on the other side. But we did not go through. We feel needed here, and we like the Duke.
We returned to the fort with the Duke. The lookout on the wall announced that a woman was approaching at a run from the south. "And what of it boyo?" the Duke said. The lookout described the woman: black trousers, black doublet, running fast. "Oh," the Duke said, "Let her through the gates." He turned to Dharmesh. "This will be interesting."
The woman was breathing hard when she entered the hall, but she stood straight. Her black leather doublet was suppressed at the waist, with tapered sleaves, and vented discretely at the back. Her leather trousers, an exactly matching shade of black, were cut with a low rise, and tapered so that they stretched just a little at one point in her stride. Her shoes were black leather slippers. Her skin was white and her long hair was tide up under a leather cap with a visor that she wore strapped under her chin. She put a leather pack, a sword, and a bow on the ground beside a bench, and sat down.
"And you are?" the Duke said.
"I am Pandora. I heard there was trouble, so I came."
The Duke smiled. "Well, ta for that." When he says "well" he makes it last for a long time. The woman says she is "Pandora". That is the name of the goddess of this world. But Cynthia says there is a society of women all of whom go by the moniker "Pandora", dressing like her and acting like her. We think this Pandora is a human Pandora not a divine Pandora.
Branden Loff complained again to the Duke about Dharmesh fighting with two of the Musical Travelers. Pandora said, "Let there be a trial." And so there was a trial. Cynthia Davies is the justice of the peace here in the Fort. She presided over the trial and was the judge. Naitee represented Dharmesh. Branden Loff represented his own people. Naitee interviewed the witnesses. Some said Dharmesh attacked with fists only. Others said he struck with a staff. Dharmesh and Bhavin fought a duel in the courtyard so Dharmes could demonstrate the way of the defending staff. He showed it very well. Naitee spoke eloquently in Dharmesh's defence. She described how Dharmesh had taken one child to safety and wanted only to take a third. She said that it is the duty of every parent to protect their child, and if negligent of that duty, another must protect the child in their place. Branden argued that the parents decide what is the best protection, not anyone else, and so remaining on the bridge might have been best. The trial took an hour. Everyone in the fort paid attention. At the end, Cynthia took five minutes to consider the case. She went into the kitchen and chopped up a bunch of what smells like fenugreek, but looks like a type of fern. She came back to the hall to deliver her judgement. "Dharmesh did not assault with a deadly weapon. He caused no serious injury. We accept his claim that his only objective was to save the life of a child. Nevertheless, he is guilty of assault. I sentence him to serve water to the people in the hall, from this moment until sunset, including gathering the water from the well in the courtyard. Court is adjourned." She struck the bench with a pewter cup.
Dharmesh served water. The musical players are satisfied. Many are now thanking him for his efforts on the bridge. After dinner, while Dharmesh was still serving water, we sat at the same table as the Duke and Pandora. We asked her a few questions, and learned that yes, she has menstrual cycles, but no, she has no children. The Duke, however, has four children, ages six to twelve. "And I wanted them to be here, to see the travelers. But the wife, Ginan, she was too worried about it, with the eruption."
Igneus Day 1303, Bed-Time: While I was writing the passage above, my brethren were down in the hall talking to Pandora. She is going to escord Athena's Musical Travelers along the north-east road, through a mountain pass, to a river, where she says there is a barge waiting to take all the travelers down-river to the DSIS3 conjunction, which opens on day 1306 and closes on day 1311. My brethren said they thought it was a good idea, but they came up to talk to me about it first. I do not like the idea, and I told them so. I think the musical travelers are ungrateful and rude. It's not our job to protect rude people who want to go marching across dangerous country. And I'm not sure I trust this Pandora woman either. Is she really a goddess? I don't think so, because I don't think goddesses have menstrual cycles. She said she could "gate" us wherever we wanted to go, in the even of our following the travelers and missing the ISKC1 conjunction. After we talked for a while, my brethren changed their minds. So we went and knocked on her door and told her we would not be coming with her.
Igneus Day 1303, Night-Time: We woke up well before midnight. The sky is clear. We can at last see the moon, which they call Leviathan. It is directly overhead. It is so large in the sky that I cannot cover it with two hands next to one another at arm's length. It is so bright we can see for miles. We are told that Leviathan is a giant planet, and that Igneus goes around the giant planet, always facing towards its surface. At night, we Igneus faces away from the sun, but towards Leviathan. We are going to go back to sleep now. At midnight, we will eat and begin a new task.
Igneus Day 1304, Moon-Time: I am not writing this on Ignus. My brethren and I are on Kryanic. We rose at midnight and had a midnight meal and plenty of tea. We are all agreed that the tea stops our dizzyness, nausea, and headache. Pandora set off with the Musical Travelers. The travelers were making loud music as they went. We still do not know what happened to them. Pandora had not returned by the time we left for Kryanic. The light from the mooon at midnight is like a cloudy day back home, so we set off with the Duke and two of his carpenters to fix the bridge. The Duke left his ten soldiers to guard the DSKC1 conjunction, under their captain, a woman called Gladys, who is tough and white and strong. After we fixed the bridge with some planks, we walked back to DSIS4. There we found merchants with twenty cows and one hundred sheep waiting to move DSKC1. The Duke tried to persuade the merchants to take their livestock south to Tonic, but the merchants would not agree. Despite having nothing to gain from escorting these three merchants, their dogs, and their livestock, the Duke agreed to escort them.
We were attacked by four giant terranodons before we reached the bridge. We fought them off. On the bridge, we were attacked by raptors from both ends of the bridge. We fought them off, but then we were attacked by four teerexes, and these we could not stop from grabbing a sheep. But once they had one or two sheep in their huge jaws, they went away to eat it, so we could keep going. One of them Naitee drove off with an incredible sling shot to its eye. That would have been okay, but the raptors were becoming more numerous and there was still another teerex hiding in some trees to the north. We were not sure how we were going to get off the bridge.
That was when Owen Thomas, the First Singer of Tonic, approaches, riding on his tritop. He stood on the back of his tritop and sang. I don't think I have ever heard anyone sing so loudly, and so well. "Comfort ye," he began, and "Every valley" he sang. And he kept coming down the hill from the east, singing. The raptors stopped, then they turned and left. The teerex came out of the trees and walked to the north. The Duke greeted Owen with great enthusiasm and we all went as quickly as we could up the hill to the conjunction, where the Duke prevailed upon the merchants to sell him ten sheep and one cow to go in the fort, and the rest went through the conjunction to Kryanic. After that we all went to bed and slept until dawn, which was a long time.
In the morning, my brethren shared out the last of our Rodakino peaches, which were much enjoyed by everyone who received a piece. We ate with Ginan, the Duchess of Tonic. She arrived with the Duke's children last night. Owen brought them up from Tonic. Everyone seems to agree that you are safe from monsters when you are with Owen. Ginan is very pretty, and plump like me, with red hair and freckles, not like me at all. She touched my skin and said my skin was lovely. Her children stared at my brethren.
After breakfast, we climbed to the battlement of the fort and looked out across the valley of the steaming river. The sun was shining. Hundreds of tritops and steggies were walking up onto the plateau using the path from the bridge. A teerex came right up to the wall and put its head over the battlement. We moved back, and the Duke's children were shouting with excitement. Owen Thomas climbed the stairs and sang to the teerex and the teerex turned away. I have never heard anyone sing like Owen Thomas can sing. Now we saw a great herd of duckies climbing out of the river valley. Directly above us, in the sky, was the giant moon Leviathan. As the morning passed, Leviathan went from half-full to quarter-full, and then just a sliver of a cresent. After that, it blocked out the sun and the sky went dark. We could see the stars. The animals on the the plane slowed down and stopped. A cool breeze started to blow from somewhere. Next to the dark disk of Leviathan was a bright object in the sky, with a long white tail.
"The comet of doom!" one of the solders said, "It is the end of times!"
Igneus Day 1304, After-Noon: The idea that the comet was a harbinger of the end of times was the reason we said goodbye to the Duke and marched up into the hills to consult Archibald Jones, First Astronomer of Tonic, in his hill-top observatory. "I have to go back to Tonic. These dinos could force our stockade, trample our crops, and eat all our sheep. I know you cannot come with me. You must go through ISKC1 by midnight tonight. I can't take anyone else with me, because there are going to be too many dinos around. I'm leaving Owen Thomas to protect the fort. But there is one last thing you could do for me, if you are willing. It would help if I knew what my astronomer had to say about the comet and the end of times."
We brought tea in glass bottles for our hike, because we have all become rather fond of the drink, and it seems to give us energy and enthusiasm. We carried baskets of food to give to the astronomer and his housekeeper. It seems the housekeeper had not been down to collect her groceries for over a week. Given that we later met Janice Davies the housekeeper, and she was rather elderly, I'm not sure how she managed to carry the groceries up, but this is what I was told she did. The observator is on top of a cliff. If you walk around the cliff you come back to where you started. At the bottom of the cliff were five men. Their leader was Xavier Balash. They wore wide-brimmed hats. The robes were black, hanging straight and heavy, with wide sleaves that hid their hands. This is the costume of the Celestial Monks. Xavier, Malcomn, Aspen and the two others had been camped at the base of the cliff for a week, saying they would not leave, nor let Janice get groceries, until Archibald let them come up to the telescope and view the comet.
"And what does Archibald Jones say about that?" Dharmesh asked.
"I believe he called me a dung-eating child of a stinking cow," Xavier said.
The means for getting up the cliff was a wooden cage with an iron chain, supported by an iron cantilever at the top, with an iron wheel. The cliff was thrity meters high. We suspect that iron is not as valuable on Igneus as it is on Clarus. Hemmendra and I withdrew and lit a fire while the others crept off through the forest. But Malcomn and Aspen came down to ask what was going on. We ended up fighting them, even though Hemmendra was very nice about everything and offered them tea. We each broke one of their arms, after which Hemmendra set their bones. While this was going on, our comrades went through the forst, where they were attacked by small raptors and scorpions, climbed the cliff on the far side, reached the garden of the observatory, and introduced themselves to Janice, who was at work in the garden. Archibald was not willing to see them immediately. While my brethren were waiting, Xavier climbed the cliff in his loin cloth, was stung all over by some kind of insect, and then gets into a fight with Dharmesh, Naitee, and Bhavin, which he loses.
Archibald wrote a letter to the Duke giving the path of the comet through the sky and stating that the end of times is not going to be caused by the comet under any circumstances, and my comrades brought this letter and the captive Xavier with his painful bites down in the basket with the help of the chain and wheel. We showed Xavier the letter and he was content to see the measurements, do they agreed to go home. We went back down the hill. We were chased by a teerex, which was very exciting, especially for me, because I am not as fast as my comrades, but they did not leave me behind, and it turns out that teerexes are not that fast at runnding down a path made for humans. So we eventually escapped without having to fight it. We gave the letter to Owen Thomas, said goodbye to all our friends in the fort, and went through the ISCK1 conjunction.
DSIS2 -181 381 11 {-8.5 102.7} {56.4 14.1}
DSIS3 -242 354 8 {-7.1 87.0} {56.2 14.9}
DSIS4 0 234 6 {39.1 53.2} {55.7 14.6}
ISAO1 -21 480 14 {56.0 14.0} {55.6 154.0}
ISAO2 -526 711 25 {56.1 14.5} {27.4 -144.5}
ISKC1 0 234 5 {55.7 14.6} {-35.2 171.7}
ISXT1 -253 403 13 {56.4 14.1} {40.2 -53.9}
ISXT2 -169 260 9 {55.7 14.6} {55.9 18.6}
XFIS1 -77 150 5 {56.1 18.4} {56.1 14.5}
1216:21:20:54 DSIS2 open 1218:00:28:01 XFIS1 open 1220:20:15:49 XFIS1 closed 1223:02:30:03 DSIS2 closed 1237:19:02:36 ISXT1 open 1245:03:18:52 ISXT1 closed 1301:15:14:48 DSIS4 open 1302:04:48:22 ISKC1 open 1302:18:21:55 XFIS1 open 1305:00:36:09 ISKC1 closed 1305:14:09:43 DSIS4 closed 1305:14:09:43 XFIS1 closed 1306:17:16:50 DSIS3 open 1311:19:18:52 DSIS3 closed 1314:15:06:40 ISAO1 open 1323:02:30:03 ISAO1 closed 1323:02:30:03 ISXT2 open 1328:04:32:05 ISXT2 closed 1387:12:15:49 XFIS1 open 1390:08:03:37 XFIS1 closed