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A lone rider urged her steed into wrathful winds, her destination a horizon of element ravaged hills. A stronghold sky of purple storm clouds towered above as mount and rider struggled forth. There were paths that traversed this tangled land of grasses and brambles, but the rider was new to this realm and these ways were unknown to her.
She camped when The Sisters had both dipped below the horizon and a procession of suitor moons raced after them. The rider considered this eternal chase of love, a chase that only ended when two of the moons and the two suns met, and cast all of Ur into darkness. This meeting of heavenly bodies occurred once in centuries and lasted but moments, then the suns and moons parted, only to chase each other again, eager for their next meeting.
“You’ve traveled far sister.” Woja said emerging from the darkness. Soja screamed and scrambled to her feet, dagger in hand. “Theres nothing to fear out here, there is none to find you.” Woja said seating herself by a dying fire. Soja tucked the dagger back into her sash and squatted by the glowing coals and guttering flame, urging it back to life with twigs and grass.
“I stayed by the great tree for many days, hoping you would speak to me. As did your husband and son. They left long before I.” Soja said, prodding the growing flames.
“You're angry at me.”
“You died.”
“I did, and it can’t be undone.” Soja stood pointing the charred end of the stick at Woja, who’s form was beginning to drift.
“It was supposed to be me, I was deserving of it,” she cast the stick into the fire, “not you.”
“Things are written as they happen, not how they should be. I could never be what you must be now.”
“I'm not worthy to follow mother's path.”
“yet you carry her spears,” Woja was now nothing more than a mist hovering and drifting out of the circle of fire light. “Beware these lands, though there are many friends to you here, you will face powerful foes.”
“Where are you going?” The mist was gone “Sister?”
“Avoid the Thickets” Woja said, and then was gone.
She continued east, then north. The ever rushing winter winds cut like a blade. The grasses and brambles of the ceaseless steppe became increasingly frost burdened with the leagues. All the while she continued her mothers work, leading the lost and forgotten dead to places of rest. The spring was catching up with the winter when she came across an ancient marsh. Snow gave way to the call of renewal and everything melted, giving way to what had been hidden these long winter months: moss, root and thicket. Thickets, rising from the sponge of the bog land in their thousands.
She had sensed the presence of restless dead in this bog, the place of a terrible conflict. Should could see the mummified bodies of the fallen deep under the mud, could feel they’re trapped spirits, struggling in their desiccated husks. This ability slowly developed itself over the months since she had become Spear Keeper, Wanderess, Death Sheppard. She still found this new sensitivity disturbing, human beings were meant to be preoccupied with life not death. But she often reminded herself that she had once been Battle Master of the Hegemony. Her life had been given to the taking of it. The best she could do now was lead the fitful dead to a place of true rest, where they could continue their spiritual existence in peace.
She spent a day and night raising up these fallen warriors, and leading their stumbling, shuffling remains to a barrow some leagues away, deep in the thicket lands.
She had heard her mother's tales of the bodiless spirits that roamed these lands, of their terrible hunger. Something still resided among the twisted masses of thorns that spotted the plain or wove into labyrinthian forms. She lead her steed with care and watchfulness, staring about at any sound. By high suns they can come to a pool. Soja’s beast went to drink, but was suddenly spooked. The creature reared with a shriek and rushed away into the mist that had been slow to dissipate. Soja didn’t follow the creature. It would be foolish to loose herself in the maze of brambles and fog. She knelt down by the pool to drink. Its was mirror smooth and cast a perfect reflection. Yet as she looked, something strange was happening to the image in the pool. It was distorting as if by a great gust of wind and when the pool was smooth again, she recognized nothing in its reflection.
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Where there had been twisted baala trees, there were now the walls of a room, in great number and of a construction she had never seen. They intersected each other, passing through, creating a bizarre and alien domain of impossible architecture. Amid this domain were two men, in strange dress and seemingly unaware of each other. They each stood before an apparatus of nobs, flashing lights and white keys. She recognized the keys as belonging to an instrument, perhaps a variety of taraskilt, like she used to play growing up in the Hegemony capital of Nolybab. But these strange devices sounded nothing like the famed instrument of her homeland. It was capable of a seemingly endless array of noises that changed as these two men turned the knobs on the machines and worked the keys.
The songs they played were rousing and strange, utilizing chords and scales new to her ears. She had so many questions: who were these men? Why did they stand in this strange realm of intersection rooms with their odd instruments? What did their song mean? None of her questions were answered and the strange room and its occupants suddenly swirled into oblivion as new images formed. It was a parade of sights and sound. She saw past things: the history of her people and its glorious and tragic history; she saw the war of refusal, and the great parting of the curtain, where all saw the hell that was the afterlife. She saw the woman who came before her, leading the dead to peaceful places. She saw her mother in her finest moment, destroying the Khan of the dead and her lowest, allowing the barrows to be looted of their treasure. Then she saw herself, a pure and simple reflection in the mirror pool.
That moment of calm was soon swallowed up in sound and light and Soja saw the endless stream of the future, she sobbed as she watched her own death, which was not far hence, and the glorious and terrible things that would follow. Then from blackened water formed structures of stone, taller than any she had ever seen, they were ablaze with fire and smoke poured from the wreckage. Across a broken sky screamed great hawks of metal that poured gouts of lightning from their wings. The bodies of strangely armored men and women were thrown asunder by flowers of flame. Amidst all of this, a woman stared back at her. Her skin was the color of snow, the hair that spilled from under her helmet was the white of a crone. Soja knew then that she was looking at a distant descendant, in a battle that would take place here, unknown centuries into the future. The woman in the vision was suddenly startled by something. She stood and stared into the sky where the clouds were giving way to something massive that was descending, something alive and most surely evil. She desperately wanted the vision to fade, or for the clouds to continue to clothe this writhing form in the sky. But she had no hold over this vision and the clouds parted. Her descendant screamed in horror and madness, the thing in the sky bellowed a sound like the death screams of all humanity in unison. Soja screamed and didn’t stop until a hand clamped down upon her shoulder.
“There is a price for those who look into this pool,” said a wizened voice, “the price is death.”
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She was dwelling on what she had seen in that forbidden pool when a shriek from that damnable bird shook her from her disturbed thoughts. She looked up and saw that she stood before the Stygian black mouth of a cavern. The Ztheradox had led her safely through the brambles for what had seemed days, and tall rock formations had begun to emerge. She stood before one of these towering structures now, grey stone spotted and stained with lichen and moss. The Ztheradox landed on the branch of a nearby baala tree and cocked its scaly head. She looked into the darkness of the cave mouth and tried to resist the urge to enter it. She knew she had to. The guardian of the pool had placed a Gej upon her, a task she must complete even though her will fought against it. She broke into a sweat as she tried to fight the compulsion within her. The guardian’s sorcery won the brief psychic scuffle and Soja strode forward into the Cave of Archetypes.
Had the Ztheradox not continued to guide her, she would never have found her way through those caverns of slumbering things. What horrors her eyes were set upon! Yet she felt that whatever she would see here, would pale to the horror she was set out to find beyond the lizard temple: The Star Crawler. The caverns began to widen as she walked, and eventually she could not see the walls or ceiling at all, just a heavy mist, eerily illuminated by her torch. As she continued on, she explored the confines of her mental shackles. She could feel the edges of the old guardian's power. It was smooth and without blemish. She had been well trained in the arts counter sorcery but she needed to find a crack in the hex.
Before long she was walking among the stones and masonry of the lizard temple. Broken Cyclopean structures surrounded her and massive statues of men with reptilian heads glowered down as she walked compulsively to her doom, a doom that was a mere handful of steps away.
“We meet again child,” came a voice from the mist and stones. Soja spun, reached for her spear, but her body would not obey.
“There is no need for that, I will not, cannot, harm you,” the voice said in disappointment, “ you made sure of that.” Soja had cleared the stones and statues of the lizard temple and set eyes upon the thing twisting and gyrating a meter from the dusty stone ground. She recognized it of course, a mass of stars and void, liquid flesh running and pulsating across it. It was no longer in the nightmare form it had taken during the battle of the Totem Wilds, but the realization that she had not killed the thing that had ended the life of her sister forced a scream of rage and terror from her.
“There, there child. I'm no more happy for this reunion than you. More so because I cannot do to you what I have long wished. I am still recovering, you see. Yet I know one of my brothers would be more than happy to implement your punishment.”
A second gej! The old guardian's magic had fallen away and was replaced by new mental fetters. She explored this new magic, it was rough hewn and hastily cast. As she walked to meet her new doom she searched for a weakness, a place to insert her psychic wedges and crack this new hex apart. The days passed, her feet blistered and bled from the leagues she had tread. Her body took her along unknown trails, and she saw no other human. She began to speak to the Ztheradox, sing to it, feed it. It kept her sane, helped her fight off the loneliness. Then, one day when she was at the absolute edge of her endurance, when she was so weary she could not chew the food the Ztheradox had to hunt for her, when she had to crawl on her hands and knees, she heard a voice that caused her to collapse, and curl upon the sodden earth like a child.
“We meet again girl,” it said. Its voice was like a strong wind that carried thorns on its current. The words cut into her mind, she screamed and felt the hex shackling her will crack. She frantically worked her mental tools into the cracks and began to pry, keeping her eyes shut, not daring to look at the abomination that lay mere meters away.
“when last we met, you implemented your strange weapons upon my poor flesh, to no avail. Only your sister’s spear had any effect. And what effect it had! My flesh is still rent, I am unable to fulfill the gej I sense is placed upon you. Thus I place my own!” Soja screamed in frustration as the shell of the Hex, nearly pried asunder, was replaced by another, this time one of a highly inept nature. But still, she was too weak to work upon the magic.
“Go, seek my father in the very bowels of this land. Find where his blood flows in a great river and cast yourself in.”
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It didn’t want to admit it, but it liked this human woman. For the first time since being snatched from its mother, it felt kindness. True, she called it “you damned bird,” but the human woman would also throw bits of her supper and talk to it, sometimes sing a sweet song. She liked hearing the human talk, Luujgar the guardian of the pool never did that. It would sit on its perch in its bramble cage and wait to be allowed to fly, sometimes for days. And on these days when he was not allowed to hunt, Luujgar would forget to feed him. Leading this woman to her doom had been the longest the Ztheradox had ever been free. It was beginning to hope that the woman would never find what Quatlzephra had tasked her to seek out: the black blood of Tehom.
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Despite a third Gej, Soja’s body would not respond to the hex’s urgings. She lay in the clearing of thorns, before the monstrous form of Quatlzephra. The creature, its four dimensions constantly shifting and turning in on itself, eyed the sleeping girl with a hungry lust. How it wished to chew her in its maw. To feel her bones and flesh become antimatter. To remove the very time of her existence and fold it into its own self. But it remained formless and vast, convalescing as it watched the lizard bird vomit food into the girl's mouth and cover her at night with its great wingspan day after day. Until, wearily, the girl stood on unsteady feet, and not looking its way, passed by the form of Quatlzephra and down into a hole in the ground, where its father lived, waiting for a body.
The Ztheradox had heard its master's mental urges from a long way off. The task was complete, he had led the girl to her end, and it was time to return to the guardian of the pool. The creature stared at the girl standing at the end of a precipice, below her, a tremulous ocean of shining black ichor. The lizard-bird found a rocky ledge and perched there to watch the proceedings.
“You have come child, you have come to your father,” a voice from the expanse of blackness whispered. Soja stared into the fluid void with watering eyes. The pure nothingness of it hurt her head. She shut her eyes and focused on the weak shell that blocked her movements. She hammered at it, chipped away at it with her consciousness, but still it held. Her legs were weak from the long walk into this place, and she fell to her knees.
“You are frightened, this I sense. But there is no need, come child, take up your dagger, pierce your heart and we can be together at last.” The voice held no real power, but it was working with the Hex’s and she felt her hand reaching for her dagger.
This was the moment she had seen in the pool, the moment of her death. She would pull the dagger from her sash, and plunge it between her ribs. The black blood of Tehom would enter her body, and Soja would be no more. Not even in spirit. It was happening now, the dagger was in both hands, the blade was poised to strike. She recalled the distant future, the great, horrific mass of Tehom spilling down from the sky, filling the lands with it all destroying hate, and it wore her face!
“No!” She screamed. There was a rush of wind and searing pain as something knocked the blade from her hands. She fell back, cradling a hand that was now missing a finger. The gej was forcing her up, she reached for the blade, but the Ztheradox was already swooping down again and snatching up the blade with bloodied claws. Soja used the pain and anguish to push against the barrier in her mind.
“Jump in child! Join me!” Tehom said, deadly command in its bodiless voice. Soja got to her feet and shuffled to the edge. The Ztheradox screeched and descended, catching up Soja’s hair in its claws, Soja screamed and felt her scalp tear as the flying lizard tugged her away from the edge of oblivion. She used this pain too, used it like a great hammer. The hex shattered. She fell, landing in a heap upon the ground. Tehom was silent. The Ztheradox licked the blood from her face.
“I see you survived,” Quatlzephra said as Soja and the bird returned from the depths some days later.
“So it seems,” Soja said, “have you another gej for me creature?” She asked.
“I don’t believe they will work upon you any longer,” it said with noticeable disappointment, “regardless, I task you to begone. Leave these lands and never return.” Soja didn’t reply as she walked away, Zthera perched upon her shoulder.
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There is an unearthly season after the great battle of the Totem Wilds. As if all creation holds its breath for the coming of something. Something great, and terrible.
Soja, Wanderess, and outcast, traverses the vast western steppe in search of lost and lonely spirits. Instead, she stumbles upon a most incredible secret. A hidden pool that could unravel all time and space.
Behold! Visions From the Scrying Pool! is the joint vision of progressive synth lords Fen Walker and Scrying Glass. Swirling synths, mind bending passages, and epic bombast await those who enter the world of Ur, and peer into the Scrying Pool!
Limited edition cassettes available from Totem Wilds:
totemwilds.bandcamp.com 
