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Day of the Domicile Fintrothas (the Obscure)

THE FRESH, WARM WATER OF THE RIVER BECAME THE DEMON’S BLOOD, a vessel along which it cli round it Somewhere ahead, it no, lay a heart, a source of power at once strange and fa of it, else he would not have permitted the demon to draw ever closer, for that power, once possessed, would snap the binding chains

So waited In the buried courses that ran ceaselessly beneath the great city on the banks of the river The de the fleet of ships – an irritating presence plying the surface above – to the city This would be sufficient proxirasp that dread heart in itsthe strength of ten gods To rise, like an elder, froo Do with fury

Through the river’s dark silts, cla centuries of secrets – the bed of an ancient river held so much, a multitude of tales written in layer upon layer of detritus Muddy nets snagged upon older wreckage, sunken ships, the sprawl of ballast stones, ragged rows of sealed urns still holding their athered up in sinkholes where the currents swirled, and deeper still, in silts thick and hardening and sed in darkness, bones flattened by pressures and transformed into crystalline lattices, arrayed in skeletons of stone

Even in death, the de was still Foolish mortals, short-lived and keen with frenzy, clearly believed otherwise, as they scraht above the patient dance of earth and stone Water, of course, was capable of spanning the vast range of pace a all else, and it could stand seeods, yet it was, of itself, senseless

The demon knew that such power could be harnessed Gods had done so,themselves lords of the seas But it was the river that fed the seas And springs froods were, in truth, subservient to those of the rivers and inland pools The deht the balance once ods of the sea would be e with clarity as they were – a clarity the demon had not possessed before The taste of the river, perhaps, these bright currents, the rich seep fro within it

Such pleasure

‘Nice stopper’

She turned and stared, and Tehol s, Tehol Beddict…’

Brows lifted ‘I would never do that, Shurq’ Tehol rose fro in the sht to be proud Why, the way you tucked in the skin around the gem, not a crease to be seen-’

‘Unless I frown,’ Shurq Elalle said