Bridge of Dreams

They call themselves Tryad, children of the Triple Goddess. They crept into the city of Vision, pathetically hoping to gain a foothold here, but my wizards caught two of the creatures for my examination.

A Tryad is three beings who inhabit a core body, which consists of the brain (but the mind is distinct to each), the internal organs, and bones. Height doesn’t change, and there is no significant difference in weight between the aspects, as they refer to themselves. However, there are sufficient differences in muscle and body shape to be noticeable, especially between the weakest and strongest of the three. Each has a distinct face, and features like the color of skin, eyes, and hair can vary widely. Each has its own personality, its own memories, although they can share an experience to some degree.

One member of a Tryad has a brand on the left arm—a heart within a triangle. This allows them to identify others of their race, since they are never open about their presence in a city.

This ability for only one of them to bear the proof of a physical change fascinates me, so I have conducted some tests. Violations like burns or cuts on one have no effect on the other two. Despite being part of the shared core, a broken bone, if it is a clean fracture, only hobbles the one on whom the injury was inflicted, although the other two experience weakness and pain in that limb and are severely limited in its use. A fever produced in one will weaken the other two to some degree, or they may suffer a minor version of the same illness. However, if a hand is amputated on one, that hand is lost to all three. Interestingly enough, removing the eyes from one of the aspects does not blind the other two. Neither does destroying the eardrums carry over to a loss of hearing in the other two aspects. On the other hand, the teeth and tongue appear to be part of the core, and if lost in one are lost in all.

It took me some time to recall what I had learned during my training, but as I experimented with my specimens, I remembered the reports about this demon race.

Dark Guides found these creatures generations ago, before the world was broken during the war between the Guides of the Heart and the Eater of the World. Some of the Dark Guides sowed their seed in females whose hearts already fed the Dark currents of the world, so that offspring would be born with an instinct for discord—and maybe even some portion of the wizards’ gift of persuasion.

We helped them turn against their own kind. We helped them break their piece of the world away from the rest of Ephemera, and then salted their hearts with guilt and blame that soured their land, spreading those feelings like swift-growing weeds. Even after we abandoned them, our resonance in their hearts helped them crush their own hope, their own future. There is so much destruction a Dark Guide can accomplish when the hatred in one sibling is nurtured and disguised as love.

Yes, we have seen these creatures before. We have used them to change the resonance of other landscapes into something darker. When a race is so different, it becomes easy to blame them when things begin to go wrong, as things will when wizards put some effort into reshaping a place.

They call themselves Tryad. We call them scapegoats.

—an entry in the Book of Dark Secrets