Beneath a sky that felt too thin to hold the stars, three figures sat huddled around a fire that hissed with the scent of green wood and ancient secrets. Jeny Greenteeth leaned forward, picking her teeth with a sliver of bone, a task she performed with the delicate, terrifying precision of a jeweler.
"A heavy burden they carry, more than most," Jeny rasped, the firelight dancing in the swampwater depths of her eyes. "The weight of a world that’s forgotten how to stay still. What do you think of them, Fenwick? You saw them through that glass eye of yours."
Professor Fenwick, looking jarringly dapper in his white shirt and cardigan against the backdrop of the bog, allowed his monocle to drop. It clicked against the buttons of his sweater like a stopwatch. He closed a small pin knife and tucked it away with a scholar’s tidiness.
"They seem reliable, but only time will tell," Fenwick mused, his voice a dry parchment rustle. "That Clank, Kustos... he is a peculiar assembly. My eye caught the resonance of holy magic beneath that red chassis. I suspect they are the ones the Prophecies have been whispering about for three turnings of the moon."
Jeny poked the fire with a gnarled branch, sending a spray of orange sparks upward to die in the cold air. She turned her gaze to Gerd, the filth-streaked handler of the oliphaunts, whose smell of musk and wet hay was a permanent fixture of her presence.
"And you, Gerd," Jeny hissed, her voice dropping to a low, testing crawl. "You stood in their shadow. You felt the wind as they passed. How one treats the least of us tells the real story of the heart. What say you of the strangers?"
Gerd rubbed a soot-stained hand across her nose, looking thoughtful. "They didn't spook the half-a-lumps," she said simply, referring to the heavy beasts. "Not even that cat person. She was... she was really nice to me. Not like the others who pass through."
"Aye, I saw that in her," the Hag Queen murmured, her gaze turning distant and hungry. "But I saw the mask, too. That Katari is a well-tailored lie. She’s hiding something, a crimson stain beneath all that fluffy blonde fur. There are secrets in her past that she’s hiding from the world, and perhaps even from herself."
Curiously, Fenwick picked at his underpants, "These women's underwear have a strange way of riding up."
The violet flare of the teleportation spell died away, leaving the party standing amidst the comforting shelves of the shop. The air always, smelled of lemon oil and the faint, dry scent of ancient paper. At the center of the group, the shrunken head of the wizard remained, the wick atop his crown flickering with a final, defiant flame.
"S’alright?" Johnny chirped, his skeletal jaw clicking.
Cosma stepped forward, lifting the small, grotesque artifact. She met the wizard’s rolling, glass like eyes with her own ruby gaze. "S’alright, Johnny," she whispered, and with a soft breath, she blew out the flame.
A thin trail of grey smoke spiraled upward just as Jeeves pushed through the velvet curtains. He stopped, his nose wrinkling with the practiced disdain of a high society butler.
"What is that smell?" Jeeves inquired, his voice a cool draught. "It carries the distinct, unpleasant notes of... burnt flesh."
"It is quite possible the burning brains of the wizard," Kustos-749 replied, his tone as flat and clinical as a surgeon’s blade.
Jeeves sighed, a sound of profound patience, and extended a wax-sealed letter toward Cosma. "In that case, perhaps this will provide a more pleasant distraction. You appear to have urgent business in the Grove, Miss Cosma."
While Cosma contemplated the summons to Grellan's Grove, the party retreated to the Great Vault of the shop. They laid out the treasures of the Impossible Vault, the pristine metals and the strange, geometric trinkets and the Black Onyx Sphere.
A debate flickered like the dying wick: why give the Black Onyx Sphere to a creature like Jeny?
"We saw what happened to the wizard," Calliope reminded them, her elven severity returning. "Johnny is a cautionary tale in shrunken skin. One does not doublecross the Queen of the Bog and expect to keep their head....literally."
Katrina nodded, her eyes lingering on the three animal figurines Jeny still held. "Besides, we need the Pig, the Hedgehog, and the Duck. If those 'anchors' can stop the world from drifting, I’d trade a dozen onyx spheres to keep my feet on solid ground."
And after cleaning up they found Jeny at the outskirts, the air around her caravan thick with the scent of stagnant water and old copper. She was waiting.
The trade was swift, but the atmosphere was heavy with the "predatory tension" Katrina knew so well. Jeny was delighted, her gnarled fingers caressing the Black Onyx Sphere. It looked particularly perfect in her grasp, a dark, silent truth held by a loud, ancient lie.
"We’re keeping Johnny," Katrina said, her hand resting on the hilt of Quicksilver.
Jeny let out a cackling rasp that sounded like dry leaves skittering over a grave. "Keep him then, little cat! But remember, he is only as good as the spells I weave into him. Once his shrinking brains run dry of my magic, he’s just a candle that smells of failure."
She leaned in, her eyes twinkling with a terrifying mirth. "The price to make him permanent? Three chests of gold. Or..."
"Or?" Katrina prompted.
"Or you can find me again," Jeny purred, tucking the sphere into the folds of her tattered robes. "There is always another favor. Always another game. Assuming our interests have a way of remaining... aligned."
As they walked away, the three animal anchors tucked safely in Calliope’s satchel, they felt the weight of the world shift, just a fraction, toward something more stable. But behind them, the Hag’s laughter lingered in the air, a reminder that every anchor has a chain, and they were still very much attached to hers.
They found Dr Dee buried beneath a mountain of vellum, his quill dancing across a tome with such fervor that the friction seemed a language of its own. Calliope cleared her throat, a sharp, elven sound that finally broke the Doctor’s trance.
"The Dwarves," Dee began, without a word of greeting, his eyes wide with academic mania. "The old sagas had it wrong. They weren't just miners and masons; they were powerful sorcerers, travelers from beyond. Their mastery of geometry is the very basis for our own fragmentary scientific knowledge! If their original writings could only be recovered..." He caught himself, clearing his own throat with a dry, rattling cough. "But. I have news. More pressing than ancient syntax."
He leaned over his desk, his voice dropping to a gravelly whisper. "My page, Patch, is coordinating with the faculty regarding the Gladius. It seems to be associated with the The First Men and in particular a fellow named Thunyun Mayatte. Meanwhile, I have a lead on Akiva the youngest of the three sisters. She is "swift of thought and utterly devoid of moral weight". Once a rising star in the magi-medical community, she was banished for practices that even the most jaded necro-alchemists found... unsettling."
"And you want us to play doctor?" Katrina asked, her feline pupils narrowing.
"I want you to find my agent, Madden," Dee snapped. "He is two days overdue. Perhaps it is nothing, a missed tide, a tavern brawl, but I have a feeling the geometry of his situation has turned hostile. You must discover what Akiva is doing. Use stealth. Use deception." He looked at the group, his gaze lingering on Katrina’s fluffy, blonde mask. "Who among you is the best liar? Use every scrap of lore you’ve found to pad your fabrications. Do not fight her. Not yet."
As the mission's weight settled, the office door creaked open, admitting a gust of air that smelled of brine and old kelp. In walked Seamus O’Malley.
He was a Drakora of deep cerulean scales, scarred by the ocean’s teeth. A complex, swirling tattoo, reminiscent of the old Maori voyagers, ran from his jawline down into the collar of his weathered vest. He looked like a man who had been sanded down by the tides, leaving only the hard, salt-crusted core of a sea-dog.
"This is Seamus," Dee introduced. "He will escort you to Angler’s Wharf. There you will rendezvous with Captain Harlan Vane. He holds a tracking compass tuned to a device Madden planted before he went dark."
The transition to the Wharf was a sensory assault. The "metallic tang" of the Vault was replaced by the screaming of gulls and the rhythmic slap-slap of the river against the pylons. Captain Vane waited for them aboard a vessel disguised as a humble fishing boat, though the way he stood, shoulders squared against the wind, eyes like cold grey glass, spoke of naval authority that no amount of fish guts could hide.
"Cast off!" Vane’s voice cut through the fog like a foghorn.
The ship slipped its moorings, gliding through the river-locked waters of Kashal. Ahead, the horizon was dominated by the Warp Gate, the city's great architectural defiance of geography.
It appeared as two massive, curved pillars of white stone rising from the riverbed, etched with glowing azure runes that hummed at a frequency Kustos felt in his very chassis. Between the pillars, the air didn't ripple; it folded. A shimmering, vertical pool of liquid light stood suspended against the current, reflecting not the river, but a distant, churning ocean under a different sky.
"Hold fast!" Seamus warned, gripping the rail with clawed hands.
As the prow touched the shimmering veil, the sound of the city vanished, replaced by a momentary, terrifying silence, the sound of a world being "solved" from one coordinate to another. Then, with a roar of real ocean spray and the sudden, violent pitch of the deck, they burst through the exit gate into the open sea.
Kashal was gone. Ahead lay the open seas a vast, featureless slate, and with Cosma’s departure to the Grove, the deck of the vessel felt strangely quiet. Captain Vane stood at the helm, his eyes never leaving the tracking compass, while Calliope remained at his side, her elven severity weathered by the spray.
In the center of the ship, the two land bound souls found their own ways to cope. Kustos-749 had lashed himself to the main mast with a length of heavy hawser. Unknown Katrina, meanwhile, found the scent of fish pleasant enough, but the endless, undulating horizon left her feeling uncharacteristically vulnerable, a predator out of her element.
At length, Captain Vane joined them mid-deck, holding the now pulsating compass for all to see.
"I’m afraid she’s beneath us," Vane shouted over the rising wind. He gestured to a pile of sandbags attached to long ropes and a set of glass vials filled with a shimmering, viscous liquid. "Gill Ointment. It’ll let you breathe the brine for a time, but it isn't eternal. A storm is coming; I’ll have to move the ship off to keep from being hammered, but I’ll keep the compass on you."
"You mean... swim... like they are in an underwater vessel," Katrina asked incredulously. The captain merely nodded.
The descent was a nightmare of physics. With sandbags slung over their shoulders, they stepped off the rail into the abyss.
The transition was violent. The roar of the wind was replaced by a crushing, rhythmic thrum. Calliope, trusting in the "provenance" of the magic, drew the water into her lungs and felt the cool, alchemical rush of oxygen. But for Katrina, the instinct to survive was a cage. She held her breath until her vision pulsed purple, her eyes wide with a feline panic, until finally, mercifully, her lungs forced a draw. The water rushed in, terrifying and cold, and then... it was okay.
They sank into the twilight of the deep, a slow motion fall through the blue, black silence. Seamus O'Malley swam with them, a blur of cerulean scales in his natural habitat at times he grabbed Kustos and help the group stay together.
Suddenly, a massive shape shot past them, a streak of predatory intent. A shark, scarred and ancient, circled back. Seamus moved his hands in a sharp, urgent sign language, pointing at the beast and then pantomimed a fist: Hit it on the nose.
Kustos did not wait for the creature to close the distance. He invoked his Bolt Beacon. A shimmering lance of radiant light tore through the dark, striking the shark’s snout. The beast thrashed, turning away, but the magic clung to it, now the hunter circled as a dim, ghostly lantern in the deep. Calliope’s rapier flashed through the water, piercing the thick hide, and Katrina struck with a desperate, underwater swipe, but the shark, was past them, flicking its tail and vanished into the gloom.
Below them, lights appeared, not the organic glow of jellyfish, but the steady, artificial hum of civilization. A yellow submarine, the Brass Koi, loomed out of the dark.
As they drifted past a reinforced porthole, inside lights revealed a haunting tableau: an ornate, velvet-draped bed; a heavy iron cage; and the desperate, wide-eyed stares of reptilian heads peering back from the shadows.
Kustos and Seamus reached a side hatch but found it sealed by the crushing pressure of the deep. Below, Katrina and Calliope clung to what looked like inlet ports, their fingers slipping against the cold metal. The "metallic tang" of the ointment was fading; the gills were beginning to fail.
In a moment of desperate bravado, Seamus hammered his fist against the portal. Clang. Clang. Clang.
From within the belly of the beast, three distinct knocks returned. Knock. Knock. Knock.
With a mechanical groan, the pressure equalized, and the portal transformed into a vacuum. Kustos and Seamus were sucked inward, followed unceremoniously by Katrina and Calliope as the intake drew them into a dark, flooded chamber.
They breached the surface in three feet of water. The air was thick, carrying a sharp, biting scent of ozone and scorched copper, breathable, but not for the faint of heart. In the distance, the muted thump-and-hiss of steam pistons and the rhythmic flash of arcing electricity echoed through the hull.
"Up the ladder," Seamus wheezed, pointing to a circular hatch with a massive iron crank.
They climbed into the heart of the Brass Koi, a steampunk labyrinth of brass pipes and hissing valves. As they stood on the grating, dripping and exhausted, Katrina began the grim task of wringing the seawater from her blonde fur.
"I preferred the desert," she hissed, her voice vibrating with a wet, predatory tension. "At least the sand doesn't try to live in your lungs."
and from the distance they heard a female voice.
"Gilly, is that you?"
The voice was melodic, sharp, and carried the effortless authority of someone used to being obeyed. "For a second there I thought you could talk... I didn't teach you to talk. Oh, never mind.... Something is wrong with the oxygen levels. Did you remember to feed the eels?"
The party froze, the only sound the steady drip, drip of seawater from Katrina’s fur. With a series of silent hand motions, they began their exploration of the current deck. Katrina, moving with a "predatory tension" that even a flooded submarine couldn't dampen, slunk behind a massive brass boiler. From her vantage point, she caught a glimpse of a hand, covered in iridescent fish-scales, adjusting a pressure gauge before it vanished into an adjacent cabin.
As the party moved toward the bow, they were intercepted by a muscular Katari officer. He was sharply dressed, his uniform crisp despite the humidity, and he carried himself with a jaunty, rhythmic baritone that struck a chord in the party’s collective memory.
"I say, are you the lot sent to refit the safe, what?" he asked.
The air in the cramped corridor suddenly felt thinner than the ozone, heavy atmosphere of the bilge. Calliope’s elven severity shattered into pure, wide-eyed shock. Katrina’s fur bristled, her pupils expanding until her eyes were nothing but black pools of recognition. Even Kustos’s ocular sensors flared a brilliant, pulsing red.
"Indeed we are," Seamus lied, his voice smooth, but he was the only one whose heart wasn't hammering against his ribs.
"Kaiser?" Katrina blurted out, the name slipping past her "blonde and fluffy" mask like a confession.
The Katari officer paused, his ears twitching with a familiar, feline curiosity. He looked at the dripping, bedraggled group, his gaze lingering on Katrina and the red armored chassis of Kustos. For a heartbeat, the "theatricality" of the submarine felt like it might peel away.
"Kaiser?" the officer repeated, a puzzled but polite smile touching his lips. "I’m afraid you have the wrong chap, what? The name is Madden. Chief Mate of the Brass Koi."
"Madden?" Calliope stepped forward, her hand reaching out as if to touch a story she thought had ended in the Kashal. "But you look exactly like... We thought you were dead. We thought the Grave Order had..."
The officer, Madden, let out a light, breezy chuckle that carried no weight of history. "Grave Order? Sounds like a dreadfully dull social club. I assure you, I’ve been here, keeping the Captain’s laboratory on an even keel. Now, about this safe? An awful lot of people needed to trim the wick on one Glockenspiel, wouldn't you say? Four of you?"
The party stood paralyzed by the "transactional nature" of the moment. Here was their friend, their companion, wearing a face they knew and a name they didn't, speaking with a jaunty cadence that held no room for their shared trauma. It was as if the "Form" of the world had not just drifted, but had rewritten Kaiser entirely.
"Apprentices and specialists," Seamus countered, sensing the tension of the group and taking over. He stepped between his companions and the Katari who looked like a ghost. "We just need to know where the work order is."
"Quite right! Sternward, then," Madden replied, gesturing with a hand that carried the same scars Kaiser had earned. He led them down the companionway, whistling a tune that Calliope recognized from their early days in the Little Shoppe, blissfully unaware that he was walking alongside people who had mourned him.
The laboratory was the largest space on the Brass Koi, a cathedral of "unbalanced science." Shelves groaned under the weight of unctions, potions, and jars filled with gel-preserved anatomy, fins, lungs, and hands of various ancestries.
There were "Gillymen," mutated hybrids of fish and folk, and aquariums teeming with octopi and anglerfish that watched the party with too-human eyes. In the center sat a long steel table, draped in a white sheet that clung to an ominously still form.
But the most stunning feature was Akiva.
She wore a leather surgeon’s apron and a jaunty pillbox hat. She moved with a practiced, rhythmic grace; the sharp click-clack of her high heels against the metal grating served as a constant metronome for the ship.
"You can fix the safe?" she asked, scribbling on a clipboard before handing it to a Gillyman. "It’s totally been on the fritz. I mean, seriously?!? You need to make your safes way easier... opening it would have taken me forever."
Seamus and Kustos retired to the captain’s quarters to "work," while Calliope and Katrina remained in the lab, feigning a scholarly interest in the horrors around them.
"Experimentation mostly," Akiva explained, her mannerisms fabulous and distracting. "These Gillymen... they will be safe after the big disaster."
"Disaster?" Katrina asked, her ears twitching. "What disaster?"
Akiva’s expression went cold, her flirtatious manner vanishing for a heartbeat. "My sisters would kill me if I said more. Uloo is always telling me what to do, her magics don't even hold a candle to my works here, and Margosa... she’s a cold one. They just don't respect me."
As the conversation flowed, the "echoes" of a terrifying truth emerged. The Sisters were not causing an apocalypse; they were expecting one. A Great Unmooring. These Gillymen were prototypes for a world where the land was no longer a certainty, a relocation project for the end of days.
And as for Madden, the missing agent? Akiva spoke of him as a "created personality," a mask fashioned by Margosa to manage the ship’s functions. He wasn't a man; he was a vessel, someone who had been many people before, and would likely be someone else again when needed. That was Margosa's work.
In the quiet of the captain's quarters, Kustos and Seamus stood before the Glockenspiel safe. Kustos’s placed the final cell and the safe gave of a brief lightning flash.
With a heavy thunk, the door swung wide.
Inside sat six Black Onyx Spheres, nestled in velvet like dark, unholy eggs. Beside them lay an unknown potion and a handwritten note.
Kustos’s red eyes scanned the parchment before he tucked it into a hidden compartment in his chassis. Seamus, realizing the real mechanics would eventually arrive, reached into the safe’s delicate power cells. With a precise twist, he sabotaged the internal resonance. The safe would never open for Akiva again, at least, not without a total refit.
Kustos took a moment to empty the 'unknown potion' and replace the contents with a vial he'd been holding onto, a vial of Dripfang poison, before wiping it clean and replacing where he found it in the safe.
They emerged from the room, their expressions as cool and unbothered as a "fleshing" could manage. The prize was located, the "Madden" enigma was deepened, and the shadow of a coming apocalypse now hung over them, heavier than the ocean itself.
As they stood in the cramped quarters of the Brass Koi, the party looked at the Katari who bore Kaiser’s face and Madden’s voice. The "metallic tang" of the submarine’s air felt heavier now, charged with the realization that the man before them might be nothing more than a slate, wiped clean and etched with a new, jaunty script. Like a misfiled artifact in their own shop, he was a vessel for a truth that had been overwritten.
"It’s a marvelous bit of kit, isn't it?" Madden said, oblivious to the predatory tension of his former friends as he gestured toward the Glockenspiel Rescue Buoy.
With the practiced, rhythmic cadence of a safety briefing, he began to demonstrate its usage. "Upon finding yourself on the outside of your submersible, grasp one of the hexagonal positions. Do this before assisting others, mind you. Once you have a full complement, pull the mask and attach it to your face. When all parties are secure, pull the ring, and a large bladder will inflate rapidly, taking you to the surface."
He stood there, smiling, a perfect, hollow reflection of a man.
Kustos-749 stepped forward. His red armored chassis hummed with a different kind of intent. He took Madden’s hand between his own cold, mechanical palms. He didn't use logic; he used a surge of channeled energy, a pulse of "holy magic" intended to clear the stress and the fog, hoping to find the Kaiser-shaped soul beneath the Madden-shaped mask.
Madden simply blinked, his expression one of polite confusion. "My word, you lot are a tactile bunch. This Kaiser chap must have been quite important to you all."
The silence that followed was brittle. Seamus O'Malley, the Drakora sea-dog who understood the "transactional nature" of a hard choice, stepped up beside the Katari.
"Just need you to sign and date the inspection card here on the buoy, lad," Seamus said, his voice as steady as the tide.
As Madden leaned forward, Seamus brought his fist down with a sickening thud against the back of the officer’s neck. Madden’s knees buckled, and as he began to slump, Katrina, her vertical pupils Narrowed with a mix of rage and grief, delivered a sharp, secondary strike for good measure.
"Well," Katrina hissed, her voice trembling slightly, "if his wits were dull before, a little more damage shouldn't make much difference to our Kaiser."
They moved with a grim, practiced efficiency. With the storm beginning to howl against the Brass Koi’s hull, they secured their "prisoner" and triggered the rescue buoy. The ascent was a violent, rapid rush of pressure and light, the bladder expanding until they burst through the surface into the salt-spray of the real world.
Captain Vane was there, his vessel a dark silhouette against the roiling grey sky. He hauled them aboard, his eyes widening as he saw the unconscious Katari clapped in irons.
The journey back to the docks of Kashal was a quiet one. The city’s "Warp Gate" loomed ahead, a shimmering doorway back to the familiar. But as they slipped through the liquid light and made for Angler's Wharf, the mood was far from celebratory.
They had the Black Onyx Spheres. They had the note. They had the "Anchors." But in the hold lay a man who was a living puzzle, a friend who didn't know them, a soldier who had forgotten his war.
As they stepped onto the damp wood of the wharf, the bells of the city began to toll. The "Form" of the world felt a little steadier with the anchors in their possession, but as Calliope looked at the chained "Madden," she realized that some fractures were too deep for even a pig, a hedgehog, and a duck to fix.
Handwritten Note found in the safe aboard the Brass Koi
I have found Barlow's source for the black onyx gems and although he is dead, we now have ample supply. It is a dreadfully dull village but the inhabitants have proven excellent experimental subjects. Still, I am anxious to try our experiment on new subjects in larger towns and cities. My zombies are powerful, but after the Never Setting Sun we'll need your creatures.
I must warn you Margosa is getting more and more reckless. I have to bring her prey every day now just to keep her satisfied. It is time to take this to the next step it is getting too risky. If you need to reach me inquire at the Shoe follow the yellow ribbon and you're find me.
Stay safe sister,