Rinrose might feel a brush of hoary whisker and a smudge of rain-soaked fur bump against her hand in an affectionate headbutt. The panther from before, whose name was Cosmo the Third, looked up at her with warm amber eyes. The big cat, of course, could not talk, and if a Tower weaver had examined it, they would have deemed the creature
simulacrum -- incapable of life or feeling. Even so its face squinted up into an expression which any cat owner would recognize as affection.
Cosmo III wanted to tell the knight that it remembered being created, and its creator had given it one purpose: to survive. And it wanted to say that a mote of dust would always try to linger in the sun as long as it could. All it managed was a second headbutt against the palm of her hand, firmer than the first.
"Hey!" [Xanatos] called out, and took sure steps toward the dwarf and their glowing beacon. "That is property of house Sinclayr!" Hacked his way through whatever wretched shambler came across his path. "What do you think you are doing with that, rif raff?!"
"Saving all yer asses," the dwarf with one wooden leg replied. Despite the threat of the towering Senechal, he did not stop his fiddling with the Scorpion. Unscrewed a valve and caused a bout of iridescent steam to hiss into the atmosphere.
"Pretty little Sinclayr included."
The lady Sinclayr was laid out on a pile of netting, nestled between boxes of equipment. Her coat had been draped atop her in an act of care that must have taken up too much time in the middle of the chaotic storm. She lulled her head from side to side and muttered as if having a nightmare.
"Now, if you wanna save your Ladyship you'll pick 'er up and hoof it outta 'ere faster'n the Wayfarer. Anything within shoutin' distance will be going up in sparkles shourtly." The salty old dwarf was nearly done with his work. He was unconcerned now with any stragglers who might get caught in the flurry. He reached into a place where several sinewy components crossed, his thumb hovering over a small lever.
"Aster, how we looking?"
The Astersaari (whose name was not Aster, but he'd never bothered to correct anyone) peered over the edge of the docks, nictitating membrane wiping the rain out of his eyes.
"Stand by to loose shroud," he called out to his companion, voice honed to echo commands across a ship deck. He did not move a muscle as he watched the darkness with unblinking eyes.
"Lights above man, I've got a cramp in my butthole from clenching!"
"Stand by..."
The dead swarmed towards the rigged Scorpions, like locusts to the last sheaf of wheat. Dark water lapped against the last few steps leading away from the shore, licking at the heels of those who retreated. The Astersaari waited for a few more people to make it up those steps, to disappear to higher ground. Waited as long as he could.
"LOOSE SHROUD!" He called at last, becoming a twist of strength as he spun away and took leaping steps back towards the dwarf on the Scorpion.
The dwarf struck the match. The shroudstone at the center of the Scorpion cracked. The night bloomed with color.
Yellows, pinks and oranges exploded from the dead's husked bodies. Bloated flesh split and bleached bones cracked to reveal clusters of coral, anenomes and red rhodymenia. They could no longer move, overgrown with those lush forests which inhabited the sea floor. Dead come alive again and so drained of their malice. Gardens, now. And what of the already alive caught unlucky in the pulse of verdant shroud? Well, who was to say what was seeded inside of them?
The shroud explosion was not a radius in the sense that a ripple is or like the dust cloud of an explosion. Instead it spread like the topography of a soap bubble, where sometimes the soap pooled thick and iridescent and cloying, while in other places it was so thin as to pop harmlessly into bitter mist. Who it hit was random. Who is spared, cruel.
Motes left to hover for a few more seconds, suspended by a warm current they could not see.
through the night...
The rising tide and the crack of the shroudstone saw the remaining survivors scattered. Up dockways and cobbled streets they ran, sailor and knight, noble and commoner, Eight-blessed and the Living Tide cultists alike. Into the multi-story ramshackle houses and warehouses quickly barricaded against the dead knocking. And knock they did, through the storm raging and the singe of shroudfire still in the air. For hours the dead would knock. The breath of the living grew short, arrows dwindled and blades went dull hacking through bone and brine sacks.
Until the dawn broke through distant waters and the horizon line bled out a bloody red.
People said White Port had the best sunrises in all of Ilica. The dead must have thought so too. They stilled at the sight of the sun. Their fervor slowed until they were standing in place, swaying gently as fat-headed kelps in the current. Only if someone came too near would they stir. Otherwise, their glassy white eyes faced eastwards, nodding gently upward as the sun rose.
IMKISH 28, 10 HOURS WITHIN THE QUARANTINE ZONE.
They'd figured out a field office for her. One of the nicer buildings in Rimrock, a Temple-built stone hall where the Harbormaster and his hands conducted their business. Eden was in the Harbormaster's office on the second floor, sat at his commandeered desk, scratching words against a thick stretch of vellum. The desk was glossy with shellac and had several milky rings of water damage from cups long past. Sullied white curtains behind her had been drawn back only so that the sailors could nail boards against the picture windows.
Eden's thick green coat hung on the back of her chair. Lifting the quill, she watched the lines she'd just drawn seep into the vellum until the ink disappeared.
RIMROCK PIER HAS BEEN LOST TO UNDEAD. SCORPION CLASS WARMACHINES RENDERED INOPERABLE. REMAINING GUARDSMEN RETREATED TO HARBORMASTER HOUSE.
CONFIRM EVACUATION.
It did not take long for the Council to seal their fates. Before the mounting sun could even reach her through the cracks in the boarded windows, Eden recieved a response.
The words wrote themselves on the vellum between her hands.
QUARANTINE ZONE EXPANDED TO SURROUNDING DOCK 15 DISTRICT.
FLOOD BARRIERS ERRECTED AROUND DISTRICT. SHROUD ANOMALY CONTAINED AND BARRIERS STABLE. EVACUATION NOT GRANTED. REMAIN SHELTERED IN PLACE UNTIL QUARANTINE IS LIFTED.
Too quick a decision to have any real vote behind it. Had this been the plan all along? Her hand went to the spot along her ribs where the knife had struck her. Dried blood clung to the ragged hole in her shirt, stiffening fabric. Someone had known that the cultists would be here, that the dead tide would rise. And they had set a trap to make sure she never left the quarantine zone alive.
Her, and dozens of innocent men and women.
Eden clenched her fist, and thumped it against the desk. A collection of brass trinkets lined up along the edge of the desk rang and rattled at the disturbance.
"They've raised the barriers." Eden's voice didn't match the tension there in her poise. It was dry and grey.
"We're on our own until the tide ebbs."
