[sblock=Verulo]You're falling. You know that you've jumped off the black tower next to the growers dome. It's midnight. You don't understand why you were up there. You woke up just as you kicked off the tower. You've got your mirror.
It's sunset over the Golden City. You love to watch the sun going down, it's warm light reflected off the golden domes. Of course since you just lept off the sultan's tower you don't really have a whole lot of time to enjoy it.
The weeks spent as Kurakree's "manservant" paid off. You've got the The Final View now and in a moment you'll be free and away. There were other ways to get into the Sultan's castle of course, but when you heard about the Fixer's new incarnation you knew that only one of them would be this much fun.
Verulo blinks. It's midnight again now. Going to have to stop falling soon..., He finds himself thinking.[/sblock]
[sblock=Eldan]Your dream is powerfully vivid.
You're hurt, badly. So is the dwarf; -this- him is called Bronzethunder. He assures you it sounds better his his language.
There is a hissing. One of the snake people. You gut him.
Bronze...thunder... stupid.. name... you hear yourself gasp out. It's extraordinarily painful. You've lived many times over the years, but this death is already up there for it's pain.
There's a crunching sound. The dwarf dropped another one from the other side.
Sounds better 'n me own tongue....
There is a deep cracking sound, the tunnel lurches.
They're really going to leave, you realize. Three more snake men rise up. They die fast, but you're making too much noise. More will come.
The council?
****'n cowards... Turning tail...
If they stay.... your legs are like lead now. Walking is hard. Standing is hard. Your blood feels thick with the poision
S'not the point....
A crack of lightning engulfs you. Their spell casters have found you. The dwarf... Thunderbottom? staggers. "Stand firm" you manage to gasp out.
The dwarf straightens, Stand... firm... yerself... pansy...
He's running on pride now, it won't be long.
He brings down his oversized mallet. The deafening wave of thunder drives them back, and brings down the ceiling.
And cuts off your exit.
You're leaning on your sword now. Well, you'll have a nice rest... wherever it is you're going.
**** that. **** them. I'll be back.
But, you heard them.... there won't be any dwarfs left...
... come back as goblin.
You feel youself laughing at the thought. Or trying to. Something important feels like it comes loose in your chest.
the least... could manage... as an elf.... There's a lot of blood in your mouth.
God's canna be so cruel...
The ground is very supportive beneath you. You feel yourself slipping. Nearby the dwarf is yelling again.
... yah pointy eared pansy....
***********************
Eldan wakes up with a start. He thought his head hurt. He thought... he remembered things. But he didn't of course.
He touches his forehead. There is a scar there. He didn't have it before.
He feels curiosity for a moment. But then something else rushes over it drowning out everything in gray. It's just going to be another day. Like every other. He'll watch the river and maybe help his father with the wash.
Eldan feels a pull, a strong pull then. Like there's a string attached to his heart and someone is yanking on it. Reflexively he pushes open the shutters and stares across the river.
Across the river, in the shade of the forest is a creature lurking in the shadows. It's hard to make out the details, but you see a squat body, a wide brimmed hat.
For an instant it's like there's a voice whispering in your ear. I'll be back.
Then you see something else across the bank of the river something shadowy and unpleasant with red eyes, slipping through the underbrush. Seeing it doesn't surprise you. You feel like you've spent your whole life watching it. Or things like it.
Your friend makes a small salute and seems to fade into the forest. His hand looked odd. White and puffy. Not at all like a dwarf's.
A moment later the shadowy thing disappears into the depths of the forest. You feel the tide of gray-nothing-ness, of obliviousness, rising around you.
[/sblock]
[sblock=Neeloo]You're dreaming again. The same dream. You're in the bramble. Playing hide and go seek. It's tremendously unfair. Since you can't ever see Big Green Eyes unless he lets you.
But you do it anyway. You are so sure he's close. You can almost smell him. It's rained and he smells whenever he gets wet, a thick animal smell. That smell is all around you.
You sit back on a wooden stump. For a moment. The smell is so strong. Where is he? How is he hiding? The trees are too thin. The puddles aren't deep enough. He's not invisible. You'd know if he was invisible.
You sit on the stump and think.
The stump doesn't feel precisely like a stump. It's warm and furry.
You're a moment too slow. A massive hand wraps around your head. Another one engulfs your torso pinning your arms.
He's cheating. You know that. Something instinctive rebels in you. There's a fundamental deal. That you've made. He's breaking it.
Stop fussing so. His voice is a rumble. You've not found me if you can't see me.
You want to scream at the indignity of it. But you've got a mouthful of fur. And you can't call him the oathbreaker that he is.
Now little one... back to sleep. They'll be no deals in this age or any that comes after. Those days are done.
You think that he sounds sad. But his grip is firm. You can't get free.
Sleeep....
You can feel his words burrowing into your mind. Overpowering.
There is a bright silver flash.
So bright that it almost binds you even through the thick furred arm. The hand flies in away from your face. You blink through stars and and see him.
You hear your own voice sure an strong. "Unseen walker seen,..." you begin. He snarls in anger, but you've started and he can't interfere now.
He must accept the pact.[/sblock]
[sblock=Heian]You awake with a jolt. It's in the middle of the night. You've had one of those strange dreams. You have them sometimes. And you're muddled terribly for days after.
The ones where Neeloo is dressed all in emerald like a fairy queen. Or even the one's where she is a fairy queen (for a day? for a thousand years?). Or stranger things like a lady satyr or a stag-of-shadow-and-mist.
And you're a knight. Sometimes she's your missing sister, or cousin. Or your brother's wife. Sometimes you're suppose to save her for a king. Or kill her for a king, but then the king is evil and you're supposed to save her.
Saving her.
That's always the same.
Everything else is a confused mess.
A shaft of moonlight illuminates a bit of your room.
This dream was less strange in the dream. Neeloo looked like Neeloo. She was in the bramble.
And in great danger.
You feel something pull. Like a string is attached to your heart and something is yanking on it.
There is a little stone statue sitting by your bed. Terribly beaten up. It's of a man with fire for hair, mist for legs and shiny, mismatched wings. You've seen others like it before, in the building with the colored glass windows that you love to visit. But you've never seen this one.
A little voice comes from the statue.
Save her.
[/sblock]
[sblock=Quinn]
For as long as you can remember you've had a strange relationship with Old Gran, the decrepit crone who sleeps in the building with glass windows. When you were young you'd look up to see her watching you with her one good eye off in the distance.
When you were playing alone in front of one of the mysterious doors without handles or key holes; touching the funny writing that covered it she'd come along and say things.
"Touch this one!" she'd say in a hissing voice and you would reply to the contrary. For your knew it wasn't the right one. And she'd smile and say something pleasant.
She was not pleasant to other people, but she was pleasant with you.
When you found your pebble she came to you again. Why not give it to that nice old man in the tower? she asked. But as always, you replied to the contrary. No. The pebble was yours. And you weren't going to give it away.
And she smiled again and patted you on your head.
In time you grew old, and lived alone, always seeking patterns and strange writings and no one (not even you) could understand. You frustrated your family and grew apart from them.
Even Old Gran seemed to go away for a time, she was obsessed with a new boy, named Karothen, who could fix things. And years turned to decades as you grew old, helping out at the growers dome even as you haunted it's halls, staring a the runes.
Last night you had a dream. In it Karothen's face appeared, but he had fire for hair, and great silver wings on his back.
You awoke to see a thin pillar of silver light shooting up from through the roof of the castle that overlooks the town.
Down on the street a light rain fell, and you found Old Gran shivering in a doorway. Stupid stupid stupid she muttered. That one, always too brash, ruining everything. Can't walk but he tries to run...
She'd gone blind in both eyes now and couldn't properly get around, or even stand up straight.
When you bent down to help her she caught hold of the pebble around your neck. You felt different, good or bad you couldn't say. But different. And here you are again. All these years have passed, but he does not see you. First among equals and even I had forgotten you.
To his house we must go.... yes. And you helped her go to his house, and to find a book. A special book, a strange book. Quite a queer book, for it hissed, it seemed when you touched it.
But old gran soothed the book, "You shan't be difficult with him... no no...." she said and made it accept your touch.
And then she pulled Quinn's head close to his and they made a deal.
[sblock=OOC]Normally I'd roleplay this out. But I don't want to hold up the game for too much longer. So lets say you make some sort of deal where you agree to help her return to the mortal world in the future and in return she gives you her spellbook and tells you the name of your heroic soul.
Provisionally, your heroic soul is called "the Hidden Sage". If you don't like that we'll change it. [/sblock]
***********************
You were like a newborn.
The book opened to your touch, though only the first few pages. You spent the day in your house, not eating, not leaving, just reading.
Reading.
How you loved to read.
To think that you hadn't been able to before.
And what you were reading? Magic. The best thing to read.
You devoured each word of the spells. Familiar to the part of you that was the Hidden Sage, but new to Quinn.
And there you would sit, until Verulo came for you.
[/sblock]
[sblock=Silvi]
[sblock=The message]The message has always facinated you, your father prepares it every day in private, but you've managed to crawl up onto the roof and peek through a lose shingle more than a few times. He starts by grinding different powers together and then takes a set of 12 stones, each with a different mark on one end. He gently places each stone in the ground powder and then rests it on the tiny message.
He doesn't press into the powder, or into the message, but oddly, depending upon the day the amount and color of each mark varies widely.
You've never seen what the return message looks like.
[/sblock]
[sblock=The blue feather]The first night that you got it the blue feather fluttered constantly, as if it were in a breeze. When you released it it would simply hover in the air. You could jump off any building when you where holding onto it and you would just float to the ground (this was tremendous fun; you and your sister Lini (who would never find a pebble of her own) spent an hour just leaping off of different buildings and high places. And when you waved it you could make a great breeze strong enough to blow the other children around).
Of course, it's just a regular feather now.[/sblock]
[/sblock]
[sblock=Silvi and the Snake]When she was younger, Silvi was positive that that something, something inhuman, visits the town from time to time. She first came upon the trail when she was younger, and would have missed it but for a single, purple scale. It was a snake, or something like a snake, but an order of magnitude larger than anything she'd ever encountered in even the darkest pits of the bramble. It came infrequently traveling from the swampy marshes in the south around through the city to the SE section where the black walls formed a labyrinth near the tower of the Geeche. It traveled only at night, using tunnels and gullies, so picking up it's trail proved challenging. It left spoor only once or twice and always in secluded spots; like a human might.
As a girl, even as the daze came upon her, she briefly attempted to trap the creature, but after the first pit trap it simply disappeared. She searched for six months, and it wasn't until she overturned a lose pile of rubble near the SE section of the city and found it's tunnel that she realized what she was up against. The creature had apparently constructed a tunnel, almost sixty feet long, directly under several houses. The tunnel itself seemed natural enough, but she couldn't, for the life of her, find the dirt that had been excavated.
There should have been a lot of dirt, somewhere, but there was nothing around either entrance.
After that she simply observed, hoping it would grow bolder. On nights when the daze was weak she would slip away, scale a nearby building, and watch. Then, one night, she saw it. It's dark colored form was hard to pick out against like the shadows; it's head rode up much higher than a snake's would and it had barbels like those of a catfish, save that these seemed to writhe in the night. The way the creature poked it's head out first, craning about to see if anything was around, was positively human.
And then she thought it saw her, for she heard an odd word, and seemed to go blind for a minute. When she managed to clear her vision the creature was gone.
The walk home was cold and fearful, it was hard not to hear slithering in the evening breeze, or to see purple coils slithering in the shadows.
The next evening the daze came for Silvi; to such a degree that she had never encountered before. It would be years before she awoke again.[/sblock]
