Drastic Measures

Sand?

Looking down she wondered if she had left the doors to the center open. Her feet were standing in sand, white sand. Another wave of nausea hit her. Stacy ambled towards the drinking fountain and she saw that the other people were now staring at her. She had to blink twice to clear her vision, she was sure that those people were holding scimitars! She pressed the button for the water, hoping that some refreshing coolness would calm her intestines. Nothing came out, it must be broken. The three other visitors began laughing. They were laughing at her!

Stacy slipped on the sand, it was beginning to become difficult to walk. And her mouth now burned, as did her head. There seemed to be a hundred drumrolls going off inside her mind and she couldn't stop it. She pressed her palms to her temples but this did nothing to relieve the pressure. The thought of the installation festivals, those that occurred only a few times a year popped into her head as well.

Festivals? No, she meant operations, studies, experiments, sacrifices.

Stacy shook her head violently, trying to clear it, to shake these odd thoughts and concepts. With eyes closed she felt a wave of intense heat hit her whole body, now the airconditioning must have broken as well, she sighed. She became cognizant of a saltiness in the air as well, not like the sea, rather like the breath of some animal. She opened her eyes, hoping that the other visitors wouldn't think her intoxicated.

Stacy nearly peed her pants.

The center was gone, replaced by a shack or hut, an edifice of wood and cloth whose shade seemed almost ethereal. The flaps on the height were waving in the mild breeze but the taste of sour breath was now everywhere. The visitors were standing in what shade there was, no longer dressed in jeans, but linen trousers stitched on the sides and covered in animal hide, on their muscular arms were ringlets of shiney metal and their flesh was tatooed with grotesque imagery of tentacles and triremes.

"Am I dreaming?" said Stacy.

The two... guards?... laughed in derision.

"Perhaps you were," came a voice behind her. "But now you are most awake."

She turned, the white, white sand shifting under her change of weight. She saw a man behind her, he wore grey robes that seemed to protect him from the sun. He held a staff that was carved with odd designs and letters. His face was clean-shaven and ruddy, and though he was not fat, it could not be said he was thin. "Who?"

"Ah, m'lady Stacelyne," came the man. "Are your brains so bedraggled that you can't recall your Uncle Bedience?"

Then it hit her. Uncle Bedience. Supper. The toast to drastic measures. The gods who spoke on the wind and lived in a castles of rounded saucers. The cause for drastic measures.

"Calamari?" she said, somewhat uncertain.

"Aye," answered Bedience.

"Qshooli?"

"And M'ratofip."

"Here?"

"Coming."

"When?"

"Soon."

Stacy, she shook her head to clear that bizarre dream... Stacelyne sat down on the sand. She was the beacon, she was the bait. She had taken on this adventure not knowing her true role. Her Uncle had told her she was important, that he needed her, that the world would praise her name forever. She had liked that. He had never mentioned the tea of lusioness, had never said anything about needing an offering.

"Damn you!" she screamed. The guards took a few steps back (they understood the power of curses only too well).

"Now, now, daughter of my sister's womb," said Bedience as he grinned. "This is the only way, a virgin to open the portal, a virgin's entrails to call out, a virgin's liver to entrap the enemy."

"You bastard!" cried out Stacelyne.

"Perhaps," he smiled. "But what does that make Olyvia?"

A woman wearing grey robes came out from behind a shade covering. "Mother?" said Stacelyne, confused.

"Its the only way," whispered the woman. "Qshooli and M'ratofip must be stopped."

She shuddered again at the mention of those eldritch gods. They were the bane of Ari'dona, the small confederation of towns best known as being west of the Three Kingdoms. Few kings bothered with any annexation, merchants enjoyed its status as a "free" marketplace, and its placement so close to the Calamari but not in the arid zone made the people who knew of its existence value it as a way-stop. All but the gods. The gods were cruel and cold-hearted, one day they brought blessing, the next curse. Though no one compared the troubles of Ari'dona with those, say of Allaria who fought the predations of a great Wyrm, the local calamities were more than enough. And so the drastic measure.

1. The preparation of the blood offering continues...

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