Exiled Champion of Earth: Alutea
The Queen’s treasure hunt
Rhubarb had another client. Queen Victoria had approached him as Robina after hearing how he and the Hero helped King Zelgarius. Rhubarb recognized her when they met and called for the Hero, especially when she asked him to come without his crew.
Victoria had found a map in Swordhaven’s library. It led her to a ritual from the inland town of Rheum. At the lowest tide of the year, the townspeople weighed down straw dolls with stones and let the sea cover them. They hoped the Sea Witch would return a treasure she had taken long ago. The people of Rheum had given Victoria permission to complete the second half of the ritual and investigate its history.
What the tide uncovered
Pirates had been searching the exposed beach. The old stone arrowheads they carried looked to Victoria like evidence of a battle. Among the remains of older straw dolls, she and Rhubarb found nothing that showed a witch had taken the offerings. Ghostly eels gathered along the shore, where Rhubarb said they might be drawn to old drownings.
They set out the new dolls where the tide would rise over them and fought off the ghostly creatures that approached. Rhubarb recognized the style of the dolls’ clothes. Digging into the sand uncovered human skeletons lying on their backs beneath stones. Victoria believed the people had once offered themselves to the sea, and that the dolls had taken their place.
The name behind the Sea Witch
Victoria’s search among the spirits had told her little about the Sea Witch. Then they helped Pyralis, Archmage of the Order of the Burnt Phoenix, when pirates menaced her. She knew Rheum and its traditions. Victoria began to suspect the name Sea Witch referred to Neso, the Avatar of Water.
At the pedestal on the edge of the tide, the three paid their respects as the ritual required. It began to glow. A wraith emerged and went for Rhubarb. The Hero stopped it. In a separate search, Victoria found a medal like those worn by warriors devoted to the Avatars. Its gems made her think of Tremblor, and she wondered if the wraith was connected to the Exiled Champion.
The prisoner named on the map
Rhubarb recognized the clothes from his childhood and realized the ritual had something to do with his family. The Hero asked Victoria what she had kept from them. Oxali of Rheum had drawn the map. It depicted a prison and its entrance, and its treasure was his younger sister, the Exiled Champion of Earth.
Victoria hoped the Champion could help protect Greenguard. She had traced her to Rhubarb’s family. Before they could decide what to do with that knowledge, the pedestal activated and carried them away.
Auntie Beryl
In the dark below the beach, Beryl mistook Rhubarb for her brother Oxali. Rhubarb told her he was Oxali’s descendant. He introduced himself by name and called her his grand-aunt. They had reached Alutea, an underwater city of people devoted to Neso, where Beryl was supposed to remain imprisoned forever.
Beryl said Rheum had massacred the Alutians, leaving a single survivor, and called herself the villain Neso had punished. Rhubarb refused to accept that account without hearing the rest. Beryl agreed to explain and help the visitors reach the surface.
The nursery after the invasion
Beryl had kept a herd of Bone Crustaceans since her imprisonment. Alutians once fed them to their young, and she now gave them mineral-rich clay to keep them away from the remains of the dead. The Hero helped round them up and clean the nursery they had wandered into.
The warriors of Rheum attacked the nursery first and crushed its eggs. Beryl believed the eggs had been targeted to drive the Alutians to despair. She suspected a general named Miel could have devised it. Neso’s statue was damaged during the attack. Beryl did not know whether it had wept as the warriors claimed, but Neso was furious and demanded that the harm be balanced.
What Beryl chose
The Alutians had invaded the land first, and Rheum had driven them back. Tremblor made clear that he wanted the attacks to end for good. Beryl insisted he had never told the warriors to wipe out Alutea. Rhubarb argued that an Avatar’s anger could sound like an order to the people who revered him.
Beryl had gone to see Oxali when he was gravely ill. She blamed herself for leaving the warriors without guidance. She offered to go into exile rather than see Rheum give its people to the sea. She had never known they were still drowning themselves in the hope of bringing her back.
The last Alutian
Rhubarb wanted to bring Beryl home. Victoria said the sacrifices had become a cycle they could break. Beryl wanted to leave, but she warned them that a curse and a blessing kept her in Alutea. Only one egg had escaped the massacre. Neso blessed the hatchling with claws, teeth and a stronger body so it could survive, and Beryl said that same blessing kept her trapped.
Beryl begged them to spare the survivor. The group built a sail to catch the upward currents and fought past the Water Elementals stationed at the doors. Before leaving, Beryl went back for the dolls she had made of Oxali and Fraise to keep herself company.
The wave held back
They reached the light, but the last Alutian followed them. Beryl refused to turn the creature to stone because the change would be permanent. When a wave should have crashed over them, it held in place. Rhubarb was holding it back. He realized Beryl could work with the salt in the seawater, and she used it to hold the creature long enough for them to get away.
Beryl’s hand began to melt. She said Neso’s curse would hold because the Avatar was bound by her promise. Rhubarb stayed with the Alutian while the Hero took Beryl toward the beach. He told the survivor that Neso had never asked them to spill blood and that the choice of what to do next belonged to them. Rhubarb’s appeal persuaded the Alutian to stand down.
Beryl’s last sunlight
Beryl was still turning to seawater after they reached land. She had wanted to see what had become of her home. The waves no longer tore at it. She thanked them for freeing her and said she could finally return to the earth.
Beryl called for Rhubarb and passed on what Oxali had told her when he learned she was a Champion. She told him to stand tall and remember that his aunt loved him. The Hero recognized the same power Rhubarb had used against Leviathanius. Rhubarb planned to carry her armor back to Rheum. Victoria planned to go with him, and the Hero offered to listen when he was ready to talk.
What the Avatars owed
Tremblor asked whether Neso had eased the pressure in the deep and reopened Alutea’s entrance. She said she had. Her anger had ebbed into regret. She had failed to understand the value of mortal lives and made destructive promises in anger. Tremblor shared her regret. His words had brought ruin to Rheum and kept him from Beryl.
Neso said the Plane of Water had chosen Rhubarb as her Champion and called him Beryl’s descendant. She promised that her Champion’s bloodline would suffer no more, and Tremblor vowed to help keep that promise.