The Center of Time

Echo, Antor, Seregal, Duncan, and Ohm head across field and bridge, eyes open for any more chronal feeders. It seems as if Wisco and Xaion's distractions, whatever they were, have managed to buy you some breathing room, at least. The bridge continues to shoot up new towers and connections until it slopes down to meet at the ground with those who chose to traverse the space with their own feet.

At the city gates, the sunlight ripples upon the door, then reflects brightly off of those close by. The light fades in a moment, but the color of it does not. It almost looks like you've been dusted with golden powder. Except it's moving, crawling over your skin and clothing forming some sort of pattern. There's no feeling of movement on your skin, no itch, but there's a faint sensation of heat.

OOC: Holidays + sister returning from college + taking over some supervisory duties at work because mine is pregnant = holy crap I did not update this is way too freaking long! Sorry!

Seregal stands in front of the city. "At last," he cries, surveying the front door. "Now, how do we get in?" He frowns; this place doesn't quite resemble the original story he heard.

"Echo? Is the map showing anything useful?" he asks.

Echo, distracted by the bizarre beauty of the city, looks at Seregal and then quickly digs in her pouch to unfold the map. She holds it out, comparing it to what she sees before her, hoping to make sense of what it shows.

Echo examines the map, to discover that it has changed! The area of the Shear has been crowded over to the left, and the city is much more prominent, with hints of streets and buildings, the pulsing power point still in the middle. The gate is visible, and as Echo concentrates on it, an image of a slim, four-fingered hand comes into view.

Following a burst of inspiration, Echo brushes at the glittering dust on her body, but it seems to resist her fingers. In an instant, it forms into a right-angle pattern on her skin and clothing, then flies off again to swirl upon the door, all but a few grains on her palm that maintain their pattern.

The same pattern, your pattern, forms on the door, with an empty space in the center..

You think you might have just been... issued an identification?

Touching the gate again, Echo's hand fits into a hollow in the pattern, completing it. The doors abruptly fall into dust, the warm sunlight from up above is abruptly gone, replaced by the hard-edged cool shadow of the hovering mountain.

Inside, the city is an abandoned ruin, stone streets pounded into rubble and dust, buildings with the falls still standing, suspended from trusses of corroded metal ready to shatter at a touch. And yet a hundred feet further in a fountain of purple water and brilliant blue light dances in a shaft of warm sunlight on a beautifully mosaicked street, the buildings glittering gold and silver with glittering purple patterns running through them.

Echo can't decide what to marvel at more; the city, the mountain, the strange machinery that marked her...she wants to sit down with all of them and stare at them and work out their secrets. But the deeper mysteries of the place called to her.

"I think it might be safer if we have something in front of us...yes. Something that can go bad, or change visibly over time. We tie it to a stick and poke it out in front of us. If it starts to rapidly change, we know there's a time pocket there. Food maybe?"