Avatar D&D - Fidchel’s Quest - Depths of the Library
Hello one and all. This has been a pretty productive time for Avatar D&D side stories. Below are some useful links to the other side stories in our group, though I think Alseep's are still friend locked and the D&D timeline link should work, but did weird things the last time I tried. This is the last side story taking place before out last session (Session 17, Battle of the Southern Water Tribe).
Avatar D&D Timeline
http://gero-jimbo.livejournal.com/286434.html - Alseep before D&D started
http://zander-nao.livejournal.com/351075.html - Fichel after fall of chaos
http://loosejournalism.livejournal.com/85553.html - Zhu Fin after fall of chaos
http://gero-jimbo.livejournal.com/286608.html - Alseep after fall of chaos
http://zander-nao.livejournal.com/tag/avatar%20d&d - CH 5 & 6 (group, Fidchel)
Avatar D&D
Fidchel’s Quest - Depth of the Library
Co-written by Laura McNamar and Joseph Chapman
There were few places quieter in the world than the Si Wong Desert, where there could be an absence of any living thing for as far as a day's travel in any direction. But there was one place even quieter still, in its heart: the Spirit World Library of Wan Shi Tong. Few had ever come across the strange structure in the middle of the desert, and even fewer had seen it in the days before the sand had covered all but its tallest dome and the pinnacle above. What could be seen of the structure was magnificent, every stone placed perfectly together to form a unified whole. The tower stretched high into the sky, standing tall and proud against the winds and sand storms. And every so often, amidst the unsteady sands, there would be a hurried flash of movement as a small gray fox approached the structure, scurrying up the stone edifice as it carried some relic inside.
High above, in the mid-morning sky, Fidchel could see one of those little library assistants scrabbling down the side of the tower with unearthly ease, as if it could defy gravity at will. Smiling, Fid guided Tura into a long dive, the roar of the wind of their passing filling her ears, the great bird's shadow seeming to ripple and sway across the waves of the endless tan sea, growing ever smaller as the dunes rushed up to meet them. They landed with a muffled thump, Tura's impact on the ground stirring up a great cloud of grit that the wind promptly blew back into their eyes. Fidchel took a moment or two to blink her vision clear before she patted her companion's feathered neck. He burbled discontentedly, thrashing his head back and forth as he fought against the harsh particles assaulting his sensitive eyes. Fidchel just laughed, murmured a few comforting words, and slid from his back and onto the ground.
Shielding her eyes from the sun and the sand with her gauntleted hand, she looked to the top of the spire, to the only entrance left above the shifting, swirling dunes. As she approached the structure, the faint sound of sand squeaking beneath her sabatons grated on her nerves, like nails against slate; she breathed a sigh of relief when she put her feet to the smooth, rounded slope of the jade-tiled dome. At the base of the spire, she unlooped her lasso from her belt and began to twirl it with a practiced wrist. Startling another little fox as it poked its head over the large window's sill, the paladin's shimmering silver rope shot past, snagging onto the spire itself.
With a tug and a deep, determined breath, Fidchel began her ascent to the top of the tower. Not for the first time, she found herself grateful for the lightness of her armor in the face of quite appalling physical conditions. As she climbed, Fidchel caught a few glimpses of Tura far below, nestling into the shifting sands with his head tucked under his wing. It took some time, but eventually the paladin swung through the window, well before the sun had climbed past its highest point.
Stretching down below Fidchel's feet was a vast cylindrical void, the walls covered in gilded patterns of swirling currents and spheres, reflecting sunlight back and forth down into the interior of the dome buried beneath the sands. She wrinkled her nose in distaste, peering into the void as she hauled the dangling end of her lasso inside and tossed it below. As if the ascent weren't bad enough... she might have words with the librarian about basic housekeeping and the sweeping of one's doorstep. If he didn't take some pride in the upkeep of his home, no doubt one day the library might be entirely covered by sand. Rolling her shoulders, putting her irritated thoughts aside and reminding herself that down was much easier than up, she repelled down the ornate wall into the library proper. When finally there was floor beneath her feet, she left the lasso secured behind; she would have no need of it in here, and she recoiled inwardly at the thought of begging the little gray foxes the favor of securing the rope again for her eventual exit.
Flexing some feeling back into her fingers, Fidchel was free to take in the pure scope of the library. She stood on one of a dozen intersecting footbridges that spanned the area beneath the dome. The open spaces between the bridges allowed the light reflected from the spire to trickle down to the lower levels, though a faint teal glimmer came from hundreds and hundreds of glowing lamps secured at perfectly even intervals along the walls. The library stretched off in four directions beyond the perimeter of the open space beneath the dome, cordoned off by tall columns that arched up into an ornate facade that depicted the carved face of an owl every few feet. It was an expertly crafted building, putting nearly every other structure in the mortal realm, and even the spirit world, to shame.
Fidchel couldn't help but smile, closing her eyes a moment and feeling almost as if she were back at her armory. She drank in the presence of the great stones, the ambiance of the diffuse and flickering light, the resonance of spiritual forces laid out in such grand order and scale. There was a sudden pang in her heart, a sudden longing as she remembered Chàng's words. Her shoulders slumped, her armor clanking quietly, and even that small sound echoed for ages throughout the great chamber.
From the stillness of the dying echo came the pitter-pat of paws. One of the foxes moved out from between the aisles, sitting down in front of Fidchel and looking up with curious eyes. His tongue lolled out as he panted gently. Fidchel stooped down to give him a quick scratch behind his ears.
“Pretty as you are, little one, I somehow doubt you are the one I seek.”
Suddenly, somewhere far deeper in the complex, there was a whisper of movement. Something was approaching, and quickly. Even with the scant warning, Fidchel was startled when a shadowy black figure rose up from one of the gaps with little more than the sound of rustling feathers. It swooped to rest on the footbridge, its large, sharp talons clacking against the cold stone. A head bigger than Fidchel's entire body swiveled toward her and bottomless dark eyes gazed into her own. The flat white face of the creature contrasted sharply with its vast black body. Its sharp, narrow curved beak ground against itself contemplatively.
"I thought for a moment more humans had returned to the library,” the owl said in a deep, wise, and resonating voice, “though you are rather different from my most recent visitors. I am Wan Shi Tong, he who knows ten thousand things. Welcome to my study."
The paladin bowed deeply, with her fist against her shoulder and her arm across her chest. "I am Fidchel, Guardian of The Armory. Thank you, Wan Shi Tong, for allowing me to visit your sanctuary."
The spirit's eyes seemed to sparkle in recognition of the politeness coming from his most recent visitor. "Do you have anything unique to contribute to the collection?"
Reaching into the pack slung over her shoulder, Fidchel withdrew a small tome, presenting it to the great owl almost reverentially. "This is a history of our realm, of our conflicts and of the war that nearly tore us apart."
The owl extended a vast wing, collecting the tome with several elongated feathers and passing it into the deep shadows beneath his other wing, where it disappeared. "A first edition, very nice. It is most fascinating to get a mortal's perspective on the events of the spirit civil war, though I can see where Koh had his influence on the author. Still, a very nice addition." Wan Shi Tong tilted his head to the side. "Now, is there anything I can help you with during your stay?"
Fidchel inclined her head. "There is, if you would be so kind. Have your assistants brought you word yet of ?"
The owl's feathers ruffled slowly, and his eyes grew thoughtful. "They... have not.” He paused. “Is there a development I should be aware of?"
Fidchel stood straighter, the soldier reporting to her superior. "Myaku is dead. My masters, Yuàn and Chàng, have tasked me with Wèile's destruction as well. Balance must be restored, according to the terms of the treaty."
Her words did not seem to find a warm reception. The owl's neck slowly elongated, looking almost serpentine, his beak pushing outward. He turned, his large feet carrying him into the quickest, most intimidating pacing of any creature Fidchel had ever laid eyes on. "I brought this library to the mortal realm so the humans could learn and better themselves, so they would not repeat the mistakes of their past. But it seems even the world from whence this came is in need of education. To destroy a spirit..."
The fox next to Fidchel put his chin to the floor and put his paws over his eyes, whimpering and quivering. She crouched down, scratching behind the fox's ears comfortingly. "Myaku had tainted several mortals, thereby influencing the world beyond his prison. All attempts to remove the taint proved... disastrous. If not for our intervention, he would surely have escaped." She frowned, standing once more, her head held high. "His death was sanctioned by Yuàn and Chàng. We were granted the tools and the knowledge we needed in order to accomplish the task. He violated the treaty by extending his influence. He brought this upon himself."
"You sound like a mortal," Wan Shi Tong said, his serpentine head slowly lowering. "But I suppose our fates have been linked since the birth of the human race. Even when the spirits moved to their own realm after the end of the war, there were still those that reached out for the other side. The stories we have about Koh alone..." Wan Shi Tong muttered, his head craning back to come eye-to-eye with Fidchel. "But you didn't come here merely to tell me of this news. That alone could have been your contribution to this collection."
To her credit, Fidchel didn't even blink. "I must know about Wèile. Any news of her activities, any word of her haven, any secret we might be able to use to defeat her." Then suddenly, her composure wavered, and she bit her lip. "I have...been thinking. I do not believe Wèile to be innocent in this. I... I have no evidence, but I sense her hand in the current unrest in this world. She has always walked abroad while her counterpart was sequestered away... and I see her mark everywhere my companions and I go."
Wan Shi Tong stared her down for a long moment before his neck began to retract. It took significantly longer for his feathers to soften enough for him to seem comfortable with his next suggestion.
"Climb on my back..." he said with a discontented sigh of resignation.
Fidchel bowed deeply before carefully and deftly vaulting onto the spirit's back, the motion second nature to her. "Thank you," she murmured.
With that, the spirit owl stepped up onto the banister and then dove down, dropping like a stone through the gap. He plummeted past countless floors of the library before he evened out, shooting down an aisle and into the darkness.
While all the innumerable levels of the library were impressive, the lower levels were positively fantastic. Wing upon wing of the library flashed past, with grand bookcases of rich wood filled with delicate scrolls and gilded tomes, some of which glowed or sparkled with latent and powerful energy. Magnificent frescoes decorated the walls, detailing the sort of knowledge each wing contained. And all about, huge jets of air lifted documents and even foxes up to the higher levels, while others cushioned their fall to the lower reaches.
Suddenly, the two shot down an aisle so tight around them that the edges of the scrolls fluttered in the wind of their passing. Fidchel frowned, looking about with concerned curiosity after such splendor, as it seemed that she and the spirit were in the middle of nowhere. The books were all a dull gray, and though the teal lights glimmered the same here as everywhere else... it seemed to be a point of complete nothingness, at least at first. When the great owl finally came to a stop at the end of the hall, she could see out of the very corner of her eye, just beyond the edge of her perception, a familiar, swirling blue-and-silver pattern, one that she had grown up with.
She tilted her head to the side, looking around with a puzzled expression on her face. "I thought you'd brought the whole of your library into the mortal realm?"
"It is entirely in the mortal realm," Wan Shi Tong explained. "That does not mean that it is entirely -for- the mortal realm. I finished this wing a long time ago, and even though I brought the library to this realm to learn of it and to let mortals learn from what there was to offer, some truths are too complex for humanity as they are now."
The owl lowered himself to the floor, helping Fidchel off of his back before he brushed his wingtip across the wall. From under the guise of stone and wood, a vast doorway appeared. Above the door was a trapezoid sign of blue-tinged white with the carved symbol for the spirit world above it. The doors groaned and then shuddered open, revealing a much more complex wing. Like the wings and aisles they had passed, it had scrolls and books and tomes of incomparable beauty and antiquity. But this hall also contained sculptures, masks, artifacts and displays, packed on the shelves and standing alone, all stretching away as far as the eye could see. There was a soft brush of fur against Fidchel's leg as a pair of foxes appeared, one with a stack of parchment in its mouth and another with a corked bottle of ink and quills.
The only indication of her amazement was her wide eyes. She was no gawking tourist, and the vast majority of her long life had been spent removed from the mortal world. Still, she was impressed. So much here... she would have been glad for a century or two lost among these walls, studying and reading and learning. But she didn't have a century or two. Her look of muted awe suddenly turned into a contemplative frown. Her time here at the library was clearly limited by the mission at hand, but... would she even live another century, now that she was here in the mortal realm? Her shudder was involuntary. "Where do I begin?"
"You wanted to learn about Wèile, her comings and goings. So you could end her too..." The owl's voice nearly dripped with disgust. "I suppose there is no alternative if Myaku is truly dead. The world is out of balance, and such drastic steps will be necessary before the solstice...or all of humanity's progress will truly have been for nothing."
As the owl strode deeper into the wing, they passed a painting of an insect-like creature stealing the face of a wayward soul, the colors rich and almost moving. Fidchel's eyes lingered on the painting of her neighbor for a moment or two before turning toward the owl's back. "Wouldn't this be her unfavored solstice? She's always allied herself with Shen Yi, with fire and summer."
The owl's head turned nearly all the way around, peering at Fidchel curiously. "It won't matter. Chaos and Order are equals and opposites, kept in balance only by each other. Without Myaku to keep her at bay, Wèile's powers will reach a zenith on the solstice, when the spirit world is closest to the mortal realm, regardless of which one it is. And if that is allowed to happen, she will be able to exert her power over the entire world. Chaos, chance, luck, and independence will be thwarted..." Wan Shi Tong murmured quietly as he turned his head forward again, the proud head now bowing slightly. "Though if they have resumed their old ways, there may have been no other choice."
Fidchel bristled. "Jīhuì hasn't," she said, invoking the name of Chance. Then she shook her head, dismissing her sudden ire. "If anyone has fallen back to old times, I would think it is Wèile herself. The sudden ambitions of the Fire Nation...the Sun Warriors were already scattered when I war born, but it -feels- the same, their quest to impose their own order on the mortal realm." She frowned. "Intuition is a strange sensation."
"You know the first law of history: It repeats itself if left unchecked. And your experiences have brought you wisdom." The owl approached a large golden book emblazoned with a half-sphere on the cover, licks of flame radiating out and counter-clockwise around it. He opened the book and flipped through the pages, which were filled with archaic words interspersed with pictures of great golden cities made of sandstone, step-pyramids and monuments, golden eggs and pinnacles... and a large pillar with an orange stone to detect the time of year. Wan Shi Tong finally stopped on an image of those golden cities filled with the dead. There were no enemies, no wounds upon the bodies. They were merely dead, nearly the entire civilization, page after page of devastation and death. "It...was random. They died with no cause. It was her punishment for interfering..."
Fidchel's face became a mask of stone upon seeing the illuminated destruction. Flashes of a bronze face lit by a wall of fire intruded upon her mind; the flames roared as they consumed the wind, and the earth broke open to consume the flame. The uneasy sensation in her stomach faded as she pushed the images and sensations away with an act of will. "They were destroyed, because of her? But it wasn't their fault...."
"They offered to become her army in exchange for the prestige, the power and their place as the chosen people. They were to be heralds of law, the dispassionate keepers of order. They were a threat to the world and most certainly to chaos, and they were destroyed. The survivors and their descendants lived only because they agreed to be forgotten by the mortal world, to never again reach for glory ahead of all others, to be a lost people. It was just the same as when Wèile destroyed the armies of Chaos marching upon the gateway to the spirit world in the Great Divide. The losses were great on both sides." Wan Shi Tong moved in farther. "And all because Wèile and Myaku did not want to be forgotten by mankind..."
Fidchel clenched her jaw, coming forward to shut the book and block out the tragedy written on the pages. "It is the nature of mortals to be deceived and swayed. They chose, and they chose poorly. But..." The words warred in her mouth, the struggle evident in her eyes. "Was there no hope for redemption? Could they not have been saved, like Koru?"
"Not from the wrath of the other or the greed that grew in their hearts. They grew bloodthirsty and vengeful for each advance the other made, even though it was together that the seed for their dissonance sprang... And they would never give up the power they had gained. Though tell me, young one...what is your purpose?" Wan Shi Tong peered at her with a deep, dark eye. "How is it that I can know nearly all of creation but be unfamiliar with you?"
She blinked, taken aback. "I...I do not know." She pursed her lips in thought. "Mine has been a quiet life of service. I am Lán Fěn‘s student, the Guardian of The Armory now that he is gone. I am the orphan that Hei Bai found in the twilight of the Great War." She peered up at him. "My purpose is to serve Yuàn and Chàng, to enforce the treaty to the best of my ability."
"Then it is my unfortunate duty to aid you in your quest, though I do not know where she is or what guise she has taken recently, only what she has done in the past." Wan Shi Tong looked to the foxes, who set their burdens of ink and quill and parchment down. "You will gather any information you can on Wèile," he commanded. The foxes scurried off and others seemed to fall into line behind them, leaving Fidchel to gather up the scribing tools and slip them into her pack so that she could take notes later.
Once more, Fidchel bowed deeply to the knowledge spirit. "I cannot thank you enough, Wan Shi Tong." She straightened, managing a small, sad smile. "If it is of any comfort to you, I do not relish this task. Chàng...he said that our time is ending." She swallowed hard against the lump in her throat. "I can understand the fear Myaku and Wèile possessed so long ago."
"Chàng...he always has such a dreary perspective," Wan Shi Tong chided. "In the loosest sense of the word, it is ending. It is ending as it is now, but we will never be gone. We are a part of this world, just as the humans are. It is just the way of life to change, to grow and transform into something new. That is why this library is so important...to capture the essence of every era, to learn how everything was before it changed into what it is. Do not fear what is to come; it will come regardless. You might as well look forward to it." Wan Shi Tong lowered himself to the floor to offer access to his back once more.
The paladin hesitated a moment before lightly climbing on. "Change is not easy for me. So many quiet centuries tending my garden. Even stepping into the mortal realm has been...overwhelming." She hung her head, burying her fingers in the soft feathers. "You have no idea," she whispered, "how much I wish I could simply return to my garden, and have things be the way they were for so very long."
"It is mainly my purpose to make observations about the past and present,” he said as he lifted off, beating his soft wings upon the air, “but if you are successful by the solstice, there will be no need for the spirits to wage war in the mortal realm. You will be free to return to your armory to protect it from any that would misuse it or to merely tend your garden. And should you fail, you must return to prevent Wèile from crossing into the spirit world to steal the weapons for herself." Wan Shi Tong suddenly glided up at such a steep angle that Fidchel had to hang on for dear life. She gritted her teeth, noting silently that Tura had been trained much better.
"I suspect Yuàn and Chàng have other plans in store for me," she yelled above the roaring wind of their passage. As they reached the top, the owl's momentum and change in direction caused Fidchel to feel perfectly weightless for a moment before he set down next to her rope. Wan Shi Tong turned to look into her eyes again.
"Perhaps, though they can only see the brightest and darkest futures for you. Your fate is yours to decide."
She laughed, the sound both bitter and merry, her icy eyes alight with a strange amusement. "I think that is what I fear most of all."
The owl's feathers bushed up a bit before he shook his head. "For what it is worth...good luck restoring the balance. I am not eager for this collection to become entirely memorial." Without another word, Wan Shi Tong pushed off and disappeared into the shadows below. Fidchel sighed, looking over the edge.
"Thank you," she said to the empty air. "And I am sorry that it must be this way." Below, she could see the little gray foxes darting to and fro on their mission. They would find her when their task was completed, so she grabbed hold of her lasso and began the long ascent to the top of the spire. It was time to move on.