A reckoning recounted

“I heard Cleric Vaschel fought a thousand monsters!”

“I heard it was ten thousand!”

“You’re both wrong. It was a hundred thousand, and they were all bigger than cobras!”

Three children huddled upon a breezy rooftop terrace, their voices lowered to conspiratorial whispers despite the increasing volume of their disagreement.

“I heard it from Brother Amidror,” insisted the eldest, a freckled boy whose solemn expression did little to conceal his delight at possessing such privileged information. “And he was there when they brought the High Cleric into the new infirmary. He said there were so many monsters they couldn’t even move or think!”

“That’s nothing!” interrupted a girl with two dark braids. “My sister heard the High Cleric himself talking in his sleep! He said they were trapped in a hole filled with eggs, and every time they killed a monster, ten more came crawling out!”

“Monsters don’t lay eggs in holes,” declared the smallest of the three.

“These ones did!”

The trapdoor swung open and a fourth child emerged, carrying a half-eaten apple and the unmistakable expression of someone eager to join in the conspiracy.

“You’re talking about the monsters, aren’t you?”

“We’re talking about what happened to the High Cleric.”

“Oh.” The newcomer took another bite. “I heard he died.”

“He did not!”

“He nearly did,” corrected the eldest with considerable satisfaction. “But he fought them off with fire! And that’s not even the best part!”

“What best part?”

“The God! He was there on the other world!”

“The world they fell into?”

The boy nodded with tremendous self-importance. “They went through the stormrift and came out of the sky over a distant star. They fell right down through the clouds, and there were broken buildings everywhere, and the whole world was being pulled apart!”

“Pulled apart by the God?”

“By a great black hole in the heavens. Brother Lorlek said it was called the Last Horizon, and that it swallowed entire cities!”

“Entire cities?”

“And mountains.”

The girl with the braids shook her head. “I heard it was swallowing the stars, too. And there was fire everywhere, and the ground kept breaking into pieces, and the pieces went flying up into the sky!”

“Ground doesn’t fly upward.”

“It does if the world’s ending!”

The smallest child looked down at his feet, experimentally pressing one sandal against the rooftop. “But where was the God?”

The eldest drew himself upright. “That’s what I’m telling you!” He lowered his voice, though the effort lasted scarcely a moment.

“At first they thought the sky was covered in stormclouds. Huge black ones, stretching everywhere! But then lightning flashed, and they saw something moving!”

“What?”

“Wings!”

The girl gasped. “How big?”

“Bigger than this.” He gestured to the plateau beneath them and the endless jungle canopy beyond it.

“That’s not very big for a God.”

“Bigger than all the mountains!”

The fourth child stopped chewing his apple.

“Even the Vasnari mountains?”

“Yes! They went around the whole planet! But that’s still not the best part. The God was standing in the sky, and His head was above the clouds, and His shoulders were bigger than even the biggest tower there ever was.”

“How could the God stand in the sky?”

“Because He’s the Skylord!”

“Oh.”

This settled the matter satisfactorily.

“What I don’t understand,” said the girl with the braids, “is why didn’t the God just bring everyone home? Was He angry?”

“I don’t think so,” replied the eldest, suddenly thoughtful. “Brother Amidror said the High Cleric told him the God wasn’t angry at all.”

“But He was destroying a whole world!”

“Because He had to.”

“Why?”

“Because it was full of Chaos monsters that ate all the people and ruined everything.”

“That’s a very good reason,” observed the child with the apple.

The girl with the braids asked again, “That still doesn’t explain why the God didn’t save the High Cleric and everyone else.”

The eldest sighed with the weary patience of one forced to explain the obvious. “Because they weren’t supposed to be there!”

“But it was the High Cleric’s ritual!”

“Yes, and he said the words wrong! He was supposed to bring the protection of the Sky down here, but instead he sent everyone up to the Sky!”

The girl leaned forward. “That’s a very big mistake.”

“Yes,” said the eldest. “And then the God said he wouldn’t stop exploding the planet to save the people who got sent there accidentally.”

The child with the apple frowned. “That’s not very helpful.”

“Well, I heard He said something else,” the girl interrupted. “He said they had to prove they were worthy, and use all four of His Fulcra to escape.” She counted them upon her fingers. “Fury. Ambition. Conviction. Reckoning!”

“And then He said…” The eldest paused, lifted his chin, and attempted the deepest, most commanding voice his young throat could muster. “‘I am the reckoning that brings annihilation! You brought them here, mortal. Now you shall bear the burden of finding a means for their return!'”

His companions stared at him.

“Did He really say that?”

“Yes! My cousin heard the whole thing.”

And so began another furious exchange. They argued over the battles fought among the ruins, over adventurers who had slain entire hordes of chittermaws with single swings of their weapons. They spoke of scouts leaping across broken cliffs, of mighty warriors holding back the swarms while the wounded High Cleric struggled onward, and of mages whose magic kept the air from being pulled out of everyone’s lungs.

“They fought a giant bird thing who shot colours out of its eyes, leaped across broken platforms, and climbed to the very highest hill left on the planet.” The eldest continued, “By then, the High Cleric was so poisoned he could barely stand. So everyone had to use the Fulcra together.” He spread his arms dramatically. “First Fury made the lightning come down, then Ambition channelled it towards a distant point in the sky, then Conviction binded it all together, and then Reckoning gave them the power to open another stormrift so they could all come home!”

The smallest child smiled with relief. “And then they came home?”

The eldest nodded. “And then they came home.”

For a moment, the four looked across the courtyard toward the restored buildings of the Seat. Beyond the herb gardens stood the infirmary, and through its open windows they imagined they could hear the clerics discussing the ordeal, just as they were. The youngest considered this for a while, then said, “I’m glad. I sure wouldn’t want to be stuck fighting Chaos monsters until I got swallowed by a black hole.”

“Well,” said the eldest, “that’s still not the best part.”

The others turned toward him. “What do you mean?”

“Something followed them.”

A silence settled over the little gathering. “What kind of something?”

He leaned closer. “The mother of all the monsters. It was so big it couldn’t fit through the stormrift, so it tore the opening wider with its mind!”

“How?”

“By screaming!”

The girl seized upon this revelation. “I heard everyone in the whole world could feel it screaming! Even people in faraway cities! And their heads hurt, and they could see its eyes inside their thoughts!”

The eldest continued, “It tried to crawl out of the stormrift and eat everyone at the Seat, but the adventurers fought it until its head fell off.” He paused for dramatic effect. “Even though some people tried to help it.”

The smallest looked horrified. “Why would anyone help the mother of monsters?”

“Ashtan,” said the girl with considerable disdain.

“What’s an Ashtan?”

“It’s a city, silly.”

“Why would a city help the mother of monsters?”

“Because they like Chaos.”

“Even Chaos monsters that eat all the people and ruin everything?”

The girl nodded gravely. “Apparently! And the God was so displeased He said He wouldn’t be their God anymore.”

“Can He do that?”

The eldest considered the question. “Yes, because He’s the Skylord.”

“Oh.”

Once again, this proved a sufficient explanation.

The children abruptly straightened as the trapdoor opened and an elderly cleric emerged from below. His disapproving gaze settled upon the gathering, and he raised one eyebrow at the sight of four pupils loitering when their afternoon duties ought to have taken them elsewhere.

“Have you nothing better to occupy yourselves with?”

“Yes, Brother!” came the immediate chorus.

“Then see to it.”

They scattered with remarkable haste, their whispered arguments resuming almost before they had rounded the corner.

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Summary: Vaschel, High Cleric of the Seat of Vastar, invited adventurers to witness an ancient Seleucarian ritual. A nascent stormrift opened over Meropis that required adventurers to empower it. Once fully expanded, the stormrift wrenched everyone present across the expanse of Creation to a shattered world, where the Skylord was in the midst of enacting Necessity. The High Cleric realised too late that he had mis-translated the ancient texts, putting the trapped adventurers in great peril. They were forced to battle hordes of skittering chittermaws, defeat an avian aberration, leap from platform to platform as the landscape crumbled around them, escape from a writhing nest by piling the corpses of fallen friends and foes alike, and finally channel the Fulcra to return home. A colossal broodmother followed them through the rift, requiring great effort and an even greater number of sacrifices to defeat. Though the citizens of Ashtan chose to aid the calamitous monster, it was ultimately slain, and the ordeal culminated in the Skylord renouncing His allyship to Ashtan and withdrawing His protections from the city.