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The earth is no more than a fallen blueberry off of the world-tree, Yggdrasil... Plummeting through the black void of space, like countless other worlds, countless other fallen fruits that are bereft of both god and magic. The boughs of the world tree are are moist, and full of clouds, and the inhabitants of the blessed worlds use Vapour Ships to travel via "the dew between" As earth approaches the end of it's long fall, an impulsive war goddess masquerading as a schoolgirl whisks off a Chinese violinist with existential issues, and a Scottish farm-boy, taking them to the "nightbranch" in an insane bid for the power to either end an ancient war, or profit from it.



Applestem tower trembled like a lone piece of prairie grass being wrenched to-and-fro on a windswept steppe. Woshkiva was a thick, lush-green world still attatched to the tree of life, It resembled the rainforests of India, which was a certain spot on the little blueberry called earth. A blueberry that had long since fallen from the branches, doomed to plummet into the void forever; In the eternal free-fall called space.

A beautiful female-troll glanced absentmindedly into the fireplace. Now please understand when I say beautiful troll, your sense of imagery does an injustice to a race of very beautiful people. They do tend to be somewhat taller, often roughly seven feet tall, but with an almost identical build as humans. Their hair is always gray, but also silky. Their skin is dark, and their eyes are either albino-pink, or blood red. They have fangs, and little stubby horns. One may also note that they have bushy tails, and cloven hooves instead of feet.
The mentioned cloven hooves clacked as she paced.

The rain stopped, signaling the passing of time.
Since it was always night in the troll-home, the only cycle, rather than being from bright to dark- was actually from rain to no rain. When it rained, it was time to sleep. When the rain let-up, it was time to wake up.

Hereka was an aristocrat with more ambition than her reputation warranted. She was a powerful sorceress in her own right, And first and foremost, a cunning entrepreneur and merchant. She’d carved a small empire with her success, peddling goods reasonable decent folk wouldn’t associate with; gates into fallen lands, which were fruits from the tree of life, forever spinning in a black void. Possessions stripped of forgotten deities, souls, and objects crafted from them, such as chalices sculpted from the damned, made to scream breathlessly in eternal pain, causing delightful, blinking, eyelike bubbles to rise up into the wine…((Not for herself, she felt macabre art was distasteful if it was alive.)) the list stretched on forever…

But at the moment, she was preparing to obtain the most valuable find of her life. After obtaining it, she would burn it in her fireplace. She and her band of thief/merchants , The Stemcutters, were preparing their vapourship fifty meters off the ground, just by the docking balcony on the top floor of her tower. Hereka was studying her spells carefully, knowing only half the perils awaiting them in the next world, and sufficiently sobered by them alone.

She was absentmindedly sharpening one canine fang with another, a common and inconsequential nervous habit. Excitement for power and pride bubbled in her veins, and an elixir was carefully stirred in her hands, one nearly as potent as the red ambition fermenting in the chambers of her pulsing heart. The effects of both elixirs were similar to that of large amounts of wine.

A robust, jovial voice shouted for her. “Hereka, come ‘ere an’ let’s off with us!” It said with a rich Euntragan accent. Her concentration broken by this man who seemed so able to stoke the fires of her enthusiasm, she shut her book and walked outside, the leather vest she wore was hot in the humid air, but would be a godsend in the vapourship, once they left the warmth of Woshkiva, and spiraled up into the damp mist of “the dew between”. Despite the protection it offered, it revealed a graceful, wiry pair of arms that would make any human jealous, be they a strong man, or a beautiful woman.

“I’m coming, Daggest. You wouldn’t want me to be all vulnerable without my magic in a tight spot.”
She warned him playfully. Daggest grinned, his grey, silky beard, not an inch which glistened with a rare silver sheen. Vulnerable. She was many things, but never that.

“I’d make use of myself if you should.”
He promised ambiguously. She smirked but let it drop at that.
Daggest was only about six feet tall, but his stocky frame made him seem bigger, somehow, than she was. He was famous for his two warhammers, a foolish combination of weapons to most ways of thinking, but with the two heavy weapons, he could recover quickly from his swings by balancing himself out with the other hammer. He called it fancy brawling, and indeed, it did seem only a slight improvisation on fist-fighting. A terribly effective one too.

Among the less vocal members of the band were a couple of other trolls, one a typical broadsword-swinging fighter, and a couple of humans who were speaking among themselves, though the one named Glenn kept making glances towards them that caused her to chuckle sadly, as they were, essentially subtle in nature, but they were overtly subtle. The humans had little desire to become involved in the trivialities of small talk at the moment, or sparring, though this wasn't usually the case. Gold and blessings can’t always buy cohesion for a group, but something had bought cohesion, just a few days ago, and somehow it had flickered away…

Hereka sighed as the atmosphere cooled like a glowing ember. The sunset clouds fell beneath them, and almost at the same time, Daggest grew silent and almost brooding. He always did this when they took off, and she was willing, if not pleased, to allow him to his thoughts. Inevtably, she herself glanced around them at the countless clouds, woven together in hues of white, orange, pink, red, lavender, and more. Many of the clouds were really clusters of stars, but a bit more than half were indeed water vapour.

There were islands floating about in this misty muddle, but they were rarely found, and only possible to map if they were massive enough to stand out in the celestial fog. The other human in the group, Yun, had gone into his quarters, admitting that the view dizzied him, beautiful as it was. Hereka asked to be excused a few moments later, and as she went belowdeck, her bushy tail swaying in harmony with her graceful steps, she took out a wire with an iron arrowhead upon it, sitting down at the navigation table. The iron stablized a 45 degree angle to the east, and while this was most agreeable, she made no expression.

She filled a ceramic dish with water from a vial, and closed her eyes, bonding her mind with the natural mirror. After several seconds of meditation, she'd convinced herself that the real world was rippling, and only the image in the water was smooth, and she began to attune to it. "My lady." She mumbled, and she sensed a moment of curiousity, suggesting that her employer was in a docile mood.

The mental contact came, and Hereka twitched, feeling like she'd been struck by lightning, and had a sort sensory overload... and not an unpleasant one either. She felt strangely less tense as the magic took hold. Good day, Hereka. I was expecting contact." The ripples spoke, taking the shape of a face, then fading slightly as it listened. "Good day, Lady Morgan..." She began hesitantly, wondering what to say to her fickle employer, who's temper was legandary. "We're going to the world of
Feib-Kephiss to pick up the wood you instructed us to for the pyre." She said matter-of-factly, forcing her doubts and fears of offending her away.
This seemed to have only further good effect on Morgan's mood, and she sounded almost like a schoolgirl excited for a dance. "Perfect! Have I told you why we need fire to travel?" She asked in an academic voice. She seemed to think she was revealing a grand secret of the world, and Hereka was special in that she was slightly interested in what Morgan had to say...she was, after all, as wise as anyone she'd likely ever meet.
"I don't." She stated curiously, and Morgan went on as if she it were all rehearsed. Perhaps it was. "The mists in the boughs, and the dew between follow the water and starlight that is the lifeblood of the world , and we exploit it for travel with vapourships... however, for a land disconnected from the tree, we will have to burn rootwood of the same kind as that which gave creation to Earth. You will find this on Feib-Kephiss, and burn it in the pyre on Woshiva. I already have a brick fireplace on earth, and each brick is cut from you're native soil. When you feed the two Harvesters into one end, I'll get them on the other, and instruct them in their future endeavors."

"I trust there will be... extra pay for the latter?" Hereka asked coolly. She wasn't going to get bullied into staying on the job longer than she was payed to. "I don't care about your harvesters you know." She added, and Morgan sighed. "I'll keep the fire-port open. You will own all access to earth, which will go up in value once the harvesters return to it. At least, it will be expected to."

Hereka smiled. "Same thing."

Glenn stared down the stubborn root, the offending tangle that had pushed the picket fence up from the ground. At his wits end, having tried to simply break up the three-inch thick tree-root with his shovel, he realized he was dealing with solid wood, and departed tiredly...
He returned a minute later, axe in hand, and proceeded to hack the oaken tangle into little cylinders of wood, making a rough cut all the way through in one section, and then on another, and pulling the section of wooden root that had been between the two cuts, out. This continued for awhile, and finally, stroke after agonizing stroke, his axe cleared away the earth and allowed him to fit the picket fence back down. He felt so at ease, working with earth and plant. It has been the duty of man to care for his land for as long as man has divied up duties amongst his peers. He felt... useful.

Glenn's life was not as sedintary as one might suppose for a boy on a farm; There was a good school not twelve miles away, and he came in contact with more than several people his age, for which he was very grateful. Growing up, he'd lived like the average farmboy, almost completely lacking in contact with the outside world. He'd hated it.

In the scheme of things, Glenn craved to be useful- not in that smarmy self-worth way, but to achieve a labor he had set for himself, from that primal need to craft and ken, what made a human a human... Glenn was uniquely human.
The farm he lived on was bought with a minor fortune, and though it was a carefree, lovely home for him, it was really a corporate farm, owned by Vinevalley, or whatever cheery name they gave the company. Though his father owned it, Glenn was often needed for strenuous work, and had proven rather adept at engineering, fixing things, and building. Glenn was eighteen-years old, and had a clear, soft face, with blue-green eyes, and thick brown hair. He had an atheletic build, and the only trait about him that didn't look boyish was the square of his shoulders. He mounted a new machine that they'd bought- a shredding device that read drove over the stalks in the field, spraying them elsewhere in the form easily-chewed food for the livestock. He watched fascinated as the gout of nutrients washed over the land, and marveled at the speed with which it allowed him to finish. He heard a loud serpentine hiss and kept going, assuring himself there was no danger to him this high off the ground. When he shut he machine off and got his feet back to solid ground, he found himself facing a giant pair of glowing orbs peering out between the trees.

Glenn was not as surprised as some might have been at this developement; two years ago he'd made contact with this creature, who's eyes shone behind trees, who'd breath formed clouds of mist before his eyes. "Dirong?" He asked not concealing his shock. He didn't know what Dirong looked like, because his cloudy white breath obscured all but his eyes, and Dirong had never looked at him any way but with a firm, unwavering gaze from the front of his face. "It is." The eyes replied simply. Glenn had to remind himself the idiosyncrocies of communicating with this being. "Why have you come?" He asked directly, not allowing himself to mince words, as he normally enjoyed doing. "Come Spring, you may swim with me away from here. You desire this still, yes?" He asked again, and the luminous eyes flickering in the mist.

Glenn, who, while very superstitious and spiritual, still did not know if this creature was a hallucination or not, remained silent for a moment. "I asked if you could show me the world a long time ago, and you said no. Why is it different now?"
He asked, sounding a little bit more petulant than he'd meant to. Dirong chuckled, or, at least, produced some similiar sound from the bottom of his throat. "I will show you that too. I can take you with me when I leave in spring. My brothers would like to meet you." Dirong explained, almost cheerfully. "I'm cautious about meeting a family of anything that's many times my size, but I don't suppose they can do much to me that you haven't had ample chance to do already. It's not like I'd feed a family any better than I'd feed you." He replied sourly, though he followed it up with a laugh. He thought's he saw Dirong's eyes widen in irritation at his statement before they faded away into the mist of his breath, which remained hanging over the land all day in the form of fog.

Glenn thought little of the encounter a few days later, and he continued with his ordinary life for about a month. He encountered more supernatural creatures than usual during that month, and his parents no longer heard his tales, now that he’d discovered that such things were best kept from them-ever since he was seven, that is. During that month, unknowing of the significance of his actions, he planted a tree atop the highest hill on the land. He cradled it’s seeds in the warmth of his hand, picking out the best ones, and dug a large hole for them. Once the Rowan was planted, rain fell every day over that hill. It was his chief delight, on some days, to gaze beyond the brightness of the day at the grey sky hanging over the hill in the distance, dark steaks running down from the clouds like wet paint on a canvas of the sky. Some days, he fancied he could see a long, blue serpent coiled around the tree, but it could just as easily have been fog, as when he approached the hill, it was merely a damp hill, upon which rain was no longer falling- and the tree was growing nearly sixty times as quickly as it would normally. One day, he came to find the tree standing well over ten feet, and a bright orange bird resting on it’s branches. It’s feather’s seemed to flicker with life, and it’s eyes were black and gleaming with intelligence. “Dirong bids that you now chop this tree down.” It screeched, and Glenn had a moment of doubt. “What is this? Tell me?” He asked suspiciously.
“Your benefactor is Dirong, no? You must fell this tree and load it onto the next store truck. They will know where to take it.” The bird said simply, and vanished in a puff of smoke. Glenn retrieved his heavy axe, made of steel and sharpened to the point where it could almost cut a piece of cloth aloft in the wind., and struck the tree. It groaned, branches creaking, interlocking scales of bark meshing and disconnecting as the branches moved like flailing limbs. The tree’s boughs knit together into the likeness of a serpent then, and it’s eyes glowed with what looked like sunlight shining through treetops. The creature struck Glenn with power greater than he’d known in any presence other than Dirong, and possibly that of a ghostly woman dressed in ornate green clothing who he visited in the fields on occasion.
The Rowan serpent struck at him, strangely realistic fangs readily dripping with venom in it’s wooden maw, and Glenn instinctively wove in closer to the base of the serpents neck- the tree’s trunk. Fangs thundered deep into the soil, and the ripping of grass and roots preceded a chunk of dirt being hurled away. Glenn struck again with his axe, dancing to another side. He connected again, though the weapon already seemed a bit heavier after he tore it out. The sylvan snake was able to reach him at it’s trunk, though it adjusted awkwardly whenever he switched from out of it’s immediate reach, to in it’s very shadow. Glenn wove in and out, coming in close and dancing about the serpent as he drove the axe home, finally drawing a moment of tense silence as the tree relaxed and collapsed- the foot-thick trunk crudely cloven in two. He cut the tree into manageable pieces of lumber, puzzled as he was at the lack of warning from the bird. Perhaps it was a test… Why this tree that he’d planted though? Perhaps it was the hill. He’d always known this hill was special… He shrugged, going on with his instructions as he dropped the wood off in a cart that was labeled “Dirong shipment”; Headed for Beijing.

As lunchtime dawned over the school with a loud ring, Yun rushed down the halls, waiting impatiently in line, and walking briskly with his tray to place himself down on the seat across from Morgan, having abandoned his usual conversation for an exciting new flavor. "You were amazing." He said simply, and felt his sense of purprose vanish with those simple words. He suddenly felt very awkward, he he listened closely, hoping she would supply him with something to grapple with.

The smile of an amused woman spread over Morgan's face, contrasting starkly with her childish, hazel eyes. "Oh? I think I may have plucked your cord in particular, Yun. Just listen to the waves coming off of you!" She crowed. Yun smiled too, despite himself. "And that makes it better than if everyone had liked it, for then I would only doubt my tastes. As a rule of thumb, I don't consider the majority capable of distinguishing the quality of music or art of almost any kind." He said with a slight air of surperiority. "But not you. I recognize it; You're very good, Morgan." He amended gently, confidence back in full. His confidence sure was confusing!

"But as I said before, you are only one cord. Perhaps you have a different pitch, but you are not the instrument itself." She said, none-too-subtley taking him down a notch.

Yun shrugged. "As much as I love the metaphor game- and truly, I do, I don't think you can consider some people to be as artistically savy as others. Some people are just clueless about that sort of thing. Some things really are tasteful, and some things are in bad taste, no matter what you say. Take rap for instance..."

Morgan made him look like a fool that day, and they laughed.