Raket was having a hard time making their way through the swamps north of Lost Council. The bugs were terrible. Swarms of buzzers and biters attacked relentlessly. They had been through buggy swamps before, but this seemed out of control. It was like all the fly-eating predators had moved out and left the population unchecked. Raket wore their dust goggles and had strapped a tarp around their body as armor against the incessant attacks. Hopping from tuft to tuft, they tried avoiding the swamp water. Keeping your feet dry was key unless you wanted a case of bogfoot. Eventually, they came to a large pond in a clearing where the wind helped scatter the flies and gave them a slight reprieve—a place to rest.
Laying down in a grassy clump, they squinted into the sky, watching a bird fly across the opening in the trees. Raket wondered where the bird was going and then wondered where they were going. What was their purpose? To what end—do we do anything? Indeed, Raket’s perspective had shifted dramatically. Shifted to what? They weren’t sure.
Raket had traveled from one of the southern cities on a pilgrimage to Godface, a stone monolith in the north beyond the stacklands, said to be a beacon of divine awakening and a key to unlocking spiritual consciousness. They didn’t know what any of that felt like or meant, but they wanted to find out. After the last week, they were more compelled than ever, as if these recent events were some bizarre harbinger of enlightenment.
After a quick nap, Raket ventured to cool their feet in the dark pool. Shooing a couple of errant bugs away, they hiked up their tarp robe and waded into the water.
Something slipped under their feet, and the next step slipped again as they fell, splashing backward. The water here was only thigh-deep, but it was hard to steady themselves with their hands; they couldn’t find a firm hold. Sliding further into deeper water, they made another attempt to grab hold of anything. So they plunged their arms into the water but only managed to pull up handfuls of dead snakes.
After a few more scrambles, sliding further into the pond, Raket managed to paddle themselves to shore and caught their breath. Then, with some investigation, raking into the water with a tree branch, they discovered the entire pond bed filled with decomposing reptiles.
Raket got out of the swamp quickly. The bog and bugs were the least of their worries. They couldn’t stop feeling the slippery dead scales sliding through their fingers.
Juujee, perched in the scout chair, looked down at the landscape slipping underneath. She could see the Sindonglahya winding away in the distance and then arching back in her direction, a great blue dragon. Unsure of how to steer or sail back against the wind toward Mount Magnet, she resigned to continue southwest and find some other kind of help. After all, who knows if Dez even made it to Neckbone Springs.
The derelict figure in the corner hadn’t stirred all day. Wondering how long they’d gone without food and water, she looked for stores but found all the containers and compartments empty, though she did find a heavy tube hidden inside the aft-mast at the back of the ship, locked up with a combination roller. She shook it around, listening, thinking there might be some rations inside. Finally, after fiddling with the lock and rolling the tumblers around randomly to no use, she set the container aside and decided to focus on refilling the water supply.
The trick was descending without just falling from the sky. Juujee didn’t understand all the mechanical controls. The levers and dials were unfamiliar, but she knew enough about basic physics to understand that pointing the ship’s nose down with some propulsion should send them in the right direction.
Moving anything that wasn’t bolted down to the very front of the compartment, she piled up ballast bags, barrels, riggings, and the comatose cartographer at the bow, which didn’t seem to do much until she climbed out in front hanging from the prow sloth-like, gently rocking and pulling the dirigible on a shallow angle toward the scrubland below. The electric motor purred, propelling them down slowly. She’d figure out the landing when they got there. But, for now, this looked like it was going to work.
“Beach him here,” Captain Pearl shouted, pointing at a sandy bank dotted with saltgrass,” I’m tired of y’all whinin’ about the fish. Go ahead and catch yerself a ratrabbit if you can. We’ll stay the night, but it’s fast and loose tomorrow morn. Enjoy your dirt legs while you can!”
They hadn’t stopped moving for days, so Dez and the crew were quite happy to disembark and wobble around. They set up a temporary camp. Rocks. Fire. Spit. Shade. Then armed the area with deadfalls to squash some critters—blood meat.
The terrain was vaguely familiar, but they were far away from any place Dez had heard of before. One of the crew mentioned something about Capricosta as they landed, but then they thought maybe it was some exotic delicacy by the hungry look in their eyes.
Capricosta was a large block of land surrounded by rivers. To the north, the Sindonglahya, and to the south and south-east, the Borgundpetera and the Fraslichumbrun formed a vaguely triangular island, home to burrowing Rodentia and an infamous wild goat colony.
Sidling up to the captain beside the fire, always curious, Dez asked, “Can you show me where we’re at? Like, how far have we’ve traveled? How much more do we have to go?”
Captain Pearl looked over at Dez, nodded, then picked up a stick and etched a long winding line in the clay, then scratched two other shorter lines all intersecting each other. “We’re here. Capricosta.”, She drew a C in the middle, “This is the Sindonglahya. These are leechers,” tracing the two shorter lines, “We’ve run upriver from here, and we’re headed here.” She poked two holes in the ground far away in opposite directions of the dirt sketch. The Captain paused and started again, “I know I told you—where we’re going’s not on any map. But I know you’ll ask me anyway, so here goes.” She stood up, walked away from the fire, and drew something new. Leaning out, she turned around in place, shuffling her feet, dragging the stick in a big circle. Then she drew a few concentric circles inside, stepping out of the rings as they got smaller. She erased a section of the outer circle with her foot and made a small rectangle, then two parallel lines winding away, an anguine neck under a big round head. “This is the Circle Sea—it’s a crater lake and, somewhere down below, the font spring of our river here,” She waved the stick toward the Sindonglahya, “And this is my dam!” she stabbed at the rectangle, “And we’re taking it back!”
“Taking it back from who?” Dez asked, leaning forward while the crew leaned back, looked away, or left quietly, anticipating a rant from Captain Pearl.
The Captain kicked at the ground and grumbled, stomping out part of the glyph. “Plum Tommy—Bah more like plump tummy the shit goblin!” she blurted, lifting a leg, making a farting sound. “He won’t trick me again, that’s for damn sure.”
“Pun intended,” quipped Dez, amused.
“Right yeah—we’re taking it back or tearin’ it down tryin,” agreed the Captain,” And I’m keeping the Axolotl too! No more of this wild goose chasin’ in his fancy boat—lurein’ me away while he sneaks in with those blasted Light Strikes—lost three good crew—bore holes in em like a hot poker.”
Dez tried to redirect the Captain back to Capricosta, “Are there any other people here? Villages? Cities nearby?”
Somewhat calmer, Captain Pearl answered, “Yeah—there’s the goat folk wandering around, chasing their lunch. Personally, I wouldn’t go near one of the horned buggers if I didn’t have to.”
“The goats or the folk?” said Dez trying to keep the mood light. Captain Pearl harumphed and softened a little toward Dez.
Later some of the crew returned with a few skinned rodents to put on the spit. Dez sat by the fire, smelling the drumsticks sizzle over the flames, now a little worried about so agreeably joining the expedition. They poked at the fire with the drawing stick, thinking about making less impulsive decisions in the future. Three little sparks crackled into the air, then another three, then three more. Dez watched them drift away with a long exhale.
The Columbo Asteroid impact had left a crater forty kilometers wide. It was devastating and the aftermath even worse; however, at the time, not well documented. The world population had been decimated, and technology was stripped away like a tablecloth pulled out from under a dinner setting, unsuccessfully shattering everything to bits. Nobody knew then that the asteroid smashed deep into the planet's mantle upon impact, producing fissures connecting to an immense subterranean ocean that began to bubble up and fill the crater creating the Circle Sea.
The water then spilled over, down the crater ridge, and flooded an ancient riverbed somewhere along the way. This became the Sindonglahya. The area connecting the waterfalls that cascaded down from the crater to the mighty river was the Boa Gap. At the top, engineers of unknown provenance had built a dam long ago to regulate the water pouring into the land below.
The strategic fortification had changed hands many times. No one kept track. As long as the river flowed, everything was good. No one actually knew how to turn the water off.
Plum Tommy was a hairy, burly sort, always with a purple-colored swatch tied loosely around his neck. His rough and tumble physicality seemed at odds with his scientific curiosity and intellectual ambition. Trying to fast-track a tech renaissance, he collected a surprising number of weapons and defensive gadgets stolen and acquired from other would-be warlords and curators. Defying the generally utopian sensibilities of the district, he wasn’t afraid to use them.
He knew the Boa Gap Dam must have been operational at some point, and he knew if he controlled the water, he could control a lot more. Though occupied by Captain Pearl and crew, it wasn’t hard to trick them into leaving. They were always looking for a shiny new object. The Axolotl and a vague story about hidden treasure was more than enough to distract them. After that, taking the dam was easy, and defending it on their return was a little messy but decisive.
The most immediately valuable thing about the dam was the massive electricity-producing turbine. Able to power hundreds of huge battery blocks, Plum Tommy could charge his rail guns indefinitely—among other things.
Work had begun rebuilding the sluice gate that could restrict the water flow. This was tricky business due to the massive scale. Maneuvering a fifty-tonne block underwater to the sluiceway required some fancy engineering that kept Plum Tommy and his work gangs busy for months.
“... they discovered the entire pond bed filled with decomposing reptiles.” —- creepy!