Zaruthustran
The tingling means it’s working!
+2 halberd for a bunch of wicker shoes? Now that's what I call inflation!
-z
-z
Sagiro's Story Hour Returns (new thread started on 5/18/08)
- Thread starter Sagiro
- Start date
KidCthulhu
First Post
Not inflation. Expediency. We had no need for a halberd, which none of us could wield, and a great need for not sinking up to our necks in sand. Especially Ernie & Flicker, who have less space between feet and neck than some of the others.
Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
Hey Plane Sailing, if I get motivated enough to sort out the proper files and zip them up, I may take you up on your kind offer. But in the meantime, I'll just write some more. 
Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 208
Sun, Sand & Squid
“Hey Eyes.”
Kibi stands before his earth elemental familiar Scree, whose component rocks are flecked with sand.
“I know you’re in there,” continues the dwarf in his most polite tones. “If you have any ideas about which way we should go, that would be very helpful.”
nothing, thinks Scree.
“Oh well.”
The cleric spell find the path turns out to be the navigational aid of choice. After much talk of how such a divination might be used, Morningstar casts the spell while naming as the location: “The closest exit from the plane that is not the one we’re standing next to.” Sure enough, she feels in her soul a surety of direction, and no special instructions for getting there beyond a trudge through the sand.
There’s the additional question of how they can best find their way back to this spot in a pinch. Kay notes dourly that the shifting desert will offer no permanent landmarks, and that the sun will have to suffice. The wizards study the spot as best as they can, but knowing that if they have to teleport back to here, it probably won’t look much like it does now.
They start walking, with Morningstar in front, led by the magic of her spell. The snowshoes help tremendously, keeping them from sinking to their ankles or knees with every step. But, oh, the sand! It’s not long before the tiny granules have gotten into packs, hair, noses, eyelashes – everything. When they press their teeth together, they can feel the grit crunching.
Hours pass beneath the hot sun. Morningstar’s spell runs out, and Kay does her best to hold the Company to the same course. There are still no landmarks; just the endless up-and-down march along the ever-shifting dunes. Kay announces that from the sun’s rate of travel across the sky, the day here must be well more than 24 hours long. So it is that when the party is ready to stop for the day, the sun is only now starting to set.
“What’s that?”
One Certain Step points to the horizon opposite the setting sun. There’s something there, some indistinct shape shimmering on the horizon line, fading in and out. It doesn’t seem to be moving, but each member of the Company seems to have a different perspective, and they can’t agree on how close it might be.
Dranko takes Ernie’s Winged Shield and flies straight up for a better look. For a few minutes he stares at it, not understanding what it is, or how close it is. Given its size, it must be practically on top of them, and yet it also looks like it’s still on the horizon. And it continues to shimmer in the heat-haze coming off the desert.
Then it hits him. It’s a moon rising up over the desert, a moon taking up almost a full eighth of the horizon. It’s hundreds of times bigger than the moon he’s used to. He flies back down.
“So, are we going to be attacked?” asks Grey Wolf.
“It’s a moon,” says Dranko.
“What?” asks Ernie.
“I said, it’s a moon.”
“We’re going to be attacked by a moon?” says Grey Wolf.
Dranko rolls his eyes.
For another few minutes the party watches in awe as the monstrous moon heaves itself up into the sky. Dranko, since he’s high up already, does a bit of aerial recon, hoping to spot any sort of distinguishing feature of the desert. The only interesting thing he sees is a black bird flying high above him.
“There’s a bird overhead,” he calls down to the others. “Should I go after it and kill it?”
“No!” answers Kay instinctively.
“It’s heading in the same direction are we are. It’s probably a spy going to report on us.”
But by then it’s already gone.
“That’s a big moon!” exclaims Ernie. He can’t take his eyes off of it. It’s a chalky orange color, with clear bands and dark striations. Craters pock its surface.
“I wonder if anything lives on it?” muses Dranko. Then, turning to Morningstar, he adds, “Just imagine. We can have our wedding ceremony here under the giant moon, after we fix the world.”
“After we fix the world, we’re not coming back here,” Grey Wolf points out.
“Well then, we’ll use illusions to make it look like this.”
Morningstar stares at the moon, trying to glean something of its nature.
“I wonder of the Black Circle created it, or if it’s natural, and if it’s holy,” she says.
Step frowns. “If the Black Circle can create something like that…”
“Then we’re f***ed, “ Dranko finishes.
Morningstar stares for a few more minutes, and abruptly decides that it’s just a moon like her own, but either much bigger or much closer. It doesn't feel evil. She smiles, which has the effect of making everyone else feel a bit better.
“This isn’t as bad as the last desert,” Ernie declares. Then he moves over to stand next to Dranko and sheepishly asks: “Can I use your geyser thing?
“The decanter? Sure. Why?”
Red-faced, Ernie whispers: “I’ve… got sand… in my cracks.”
“In your WHAT?” Dranko roars, grinning. Ernie turns a brighter shade of pink.
“I mean in my toes!” he squeaks. “You know… all those crevices!”
“Oh,” says Dranko, clearly disappointed.
“Just throw me the geyser.”
Ernie goes behind a sand dune and hoses off, only to find that when he’s damp, even more sand sticks to him. By the time he rejoins the others he’s as sandy as he was when he left. Dranko smiles at him and casts a clean orison on himself; the sand goes flying off of him, leaving him grit free. Then he casts another on Ernie.
“Thanks, Dranko! Whew. I hate chafing.”
“When did this become ‘Ernest shares too much information’ day?” says Dranko.
A breeze picks up as the enormous moon climbs higher. Aravis suggests that they sleep in rope tricks.
“A good idea,” agrees Dranko. “Someone spying on us would see it if we used a secure shelter.”
“The real advantage of rope tricks, says Aravis, “is that I thought to prepare them today.”
The wizard casts a couple of the spells a few feet off the ground, and the party scrambles up the ropes into them. Only Dranko stays out in the sand for a few minutes more, enjoying a blacktallow cigar and watching the moon. Another advantage of the rope tricks, he notes. It’s not likely to get very dark tonight.
* *
The next morning Dranko wakes up in his extradimensional pocket. Flicker, Kibi, Grey Wolf and Step share the space. Morningstar, Snokas, Aravis, Kay and Ernie are in the other one. Dranko rolls over and peers out the window in the floor, and (surprise!) sees sand. He sticks his head out, and only at the last minute does he realize the trick of perspective that’s been played upon him. The sand comes right up to the opening! He gets a mouthful of grit as he plunges himself neck-deep into the sand, then yanks his head out and starts hacking violently to clear his throat. When he can breathe again, he wakes the other and tells them what’s happened: while they slept, the wind-blown dunes shifted, and now their opening is buried!
At Kibi’s behest, Scree leaves the space to scout. Abruptly they lose their telepathic link, which bothers Kibi immensely, even knowing it’s only for a few seconds. Sure enough, his familiar comes back quickly with a report that the sand goes about six feet higher that the opening to their space.
In the other rope trick the rest of the Company is also discovering that they’re buried, but without Kibi and Scree they have no way of knowing how far down they’re trapped. Morningstar starts praying for her spells a few minutes after Kibi decides to prepare a passwall. Scree thinks there’s an angle that will allow the tunnel to reach the surface without being too steep to traverse. Kibi reaches out and casts the spell. Sand goes flying, blown down the new tunnel and out into the desert air. Almost immediately the tunnel starts collapsing in on itself.
“Come on! Hurry!” shouts the dwarf, and he dives into the tunnel and starts to scramble for the surface. Behind him, Dranko, Flicker, Step and Grey Wolf do the same. Sand pours in on them, and the whole tunnel collapses while they are still a few feet from freedom. For a harrowing thirty seconds they hold their breaths and dig their way through the loose sand, finally breaking out onto the desert floor gulping lungfuls of air.
After they’ve caught their breaths and coughed out some sand, Kibi realizes that the dunes have shifted in such a way that he cannot reach the other rope trick with his final passwall. Time for Plan B! He hands one end of a rope to Dranko, casts xorn movement, and dives down into the sand.
Meanwhile, Morningstar has prayed long enough to cast a summon monster spell. She casts tongues and then summons (of all things) a xorn, instructing it to leave the pocket dimension, learn how far it is to the surface, and then come back down to report. Kibi is startled as the xorn passes him going the other way as he descends.
“Hello, xorn!” he says pleasantly. The xorn grumbles a greeting as it burrows upward toward the surface. When it emerges, it stares at those of the Company already there.
“I didn’t realize xorn movement could actually turn you into one!” says Flicker, agog.
Likewise, only seconds after the xorn has left on Morningstar’s errand, Kibi comes popping up to join her and the others. And while Kibi is explaining what’s going on, the xorn comes back. (Yes, it’s like one of those French bedroom farces, with more sand.)
Half an hour later, everyone in the second rope trick has been dragged uncomfortably through the sand by those already on the surface. Ernie’s starting to think maybe this is as bad as the last desert. Morningstar casts find the path again, and then a couple of wind walks to expedite travel. So much for the snowshoes!
Fifty miles or so later, the flying Company spots something dark on the horizon. There are more birds here, and they are circling above whatever it is. A few minutes later they can see it’s an oasis, and Morningstar’s spell is leading them straight towards it. The huge moon has almost set.
They slow down a bit and approach the oasis cautiously. It’s roughly circular, and about 100 yards in diameter. From their high vantage point they spot a glimmer of blue light in a clearing near the oasis’s center. There’s also something that looks like white ruins nearby, but as they get even closer and lower down, they resolve into the bleached skeleton of a huge dragon.
Closer yet. There is not one blue portal, but two, side by side, of similar dimensions. The clearing is about thirty yards on a side, with a pool along its edge. Dozens of black birds flit and twitter about the oasis. The dragon skeleton is mostly complete, but is in the process of disintegrating.
Closer still. Dranko spies a small pile of something in front of one of the blue portals. The birds are thick around that pile, and large scarab-like insects crawl over it. Wanting to investigate with minimal risk, Morningstar casts tongues and summons a celestial eagle. Her instructions: “Please fly down to that pile and investigate.”
“Why?” asks the eagle, once it’s satisfied that there are no enemies around to attack.
“We want to see what’s down there.”
“Go look then,” suggests the eagle.
But the eagle does as ordered, flying down to the pile and landing next to it. The other birds scatter in alarm. The eagle pecks at the pile and starts eating something from it. After fifteen seconds of this it flies back to Morningstar.
“Fish skeletons,” it says. “Some with good meat still on them.” Then it vanishes.
“Our stock among the celestial eagles has just gone up,” comments Grey Wolf.
“I can just imagine,” says Aravis. “In heaven, most celestial eagles probably tell the same story: “I got summoned, and then immediately attacked some horrible monster that opposed my summoner.” But ours will brag about how his summoner just fed him some fish!”
“Though to be fair,” adds Grey Wolf, “the last few celestial eagles we summoned didn’t fare so well.”
Just as the Company lands nearby to the portals and the pile of rotting fish, a living fish pops out of the gate next to the pile and starts flopping about. It is soon savaged by a swarm of birds that swoop down from nearby trees.
“It goes to the elemental plane of water!” says Kibi.
Ernie takes a step back.
Morningstar walks over to the head of the dragon skeleton and casts thought capture. She gets a vague thought of something extremely hungry.
“Any dragon you don’t have to kill to get its interesting bits, is a good dragon,” says Dranko, breaking off some teeth for souvenirs.
Morningstar casts detect thoughts to be safe, and finds no minds other than those of the Company.
Time for more scouting! They tie a rope around Dranko’s waist.
“I’ll just go in for a quick look. Then pull me out.”
“How many ‘Abernathys?’” asks Morningstar.
“Not many. Maybe five.”
Dranko leaps through. After the black void and uncomfortable pulling, he emerges near the top of a lush, grassy hill. Flowering bushes surround him, and the air is clean and fresh. Around him stretches a beautiful panoramic view of green hills dotted with colorful flowers and yellow gorse. Half a mile to his right the bucolic landscape is terminated by the straight shoreline of a dazzlingly blue ocean. The sky is a clear cobalt blue, marred only by the one strange thing he sees. Out over the ocean is a small localized thunderstorm. He can hear a distant thunder, and small lightning bolts flicker in its confines. The storm is maybe a hundred feet on a side, but it’s hard to be sure of his perspective.
Then he’s yanked back into the oasis, where he reports on what he’s seen. The other agree that in a place that beautiful, there must be some horrible lurking evil waiting to pounce on them immediately.
Wasting no time, Dranko gets set to explore the second gate, the one with the fish. He borrows Kibi’s helm of water breathing and steps through. A few seconds later he is (unsurprisingly) under water. He slowly starts to sink, the warbling blue frame of the portal rising away from him. It’s cold and dark, but he can tell that neither surface nor bottom is within range of his darkvision. Some fish swim by. He pulls himself back up the rope and out, dripping wet.
“I’d like to explore further,” he says. They use a longer rope (in fact, the bag of endless rope, one of their first magic items) cinched to pay out only a hundred feet or so.
“If I’m not back in 90 Abernathys, pull me out,” he says, and in he goes.
This time, though, he starts sinking directly out from the gate, as if it’s in the “ceiling” relative to him. Gravity has changed! He blows some bubbles, and sure enough they rise back toward the portal. He swims up after them, and when he pops back out in the oasis, he falls sideways onto the pile of fish bones. Aravis explains about subjective gravity while Dranko scratches his head.
Dranko goes in a third time for good measure. Gravity goes sideways this time, but it’s still just a cold, dark, salty ocean, with no floor, no surface, and no particularly interesting fish. All the same, Aravis is keen to experience the new plane for himself. (Planar travel and traits have always been an area of keen academic interest.) He takes the helm from Dranko, ties the rope around his waist and steps in.
It’s dark. He has no darkvision. He sinks three feet and is immediately wrapped up in tentacles! His arms are pinned to his sides and he cannot cast spells. He feels something sharp bite at his thigh, but it’s turned away by his magical robe.
Back in the oasis, the rope is suddenly pulled taut, and it starts to slide through Step’s hands. Instantly he and several of the others grab on and haul Aravis out of the water plane. He comes out accompanied by a squid nearly as big as he is. It’s snapping at him with its beak. Grey Wolf draws Bostock and hacks the squid to pieces.
There’s a shocked silence while Aravis gets to his feet and shakes off some severed tentacles.
“I suppose you’ll want this breaded and fried,” Ernie sighs.
…to be continued…
Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 208
Sun, Sand & Squid
“Hey Eyes.”
Kibi stands before his earth elemental familiar Scree, whose component rocks are flecked with sand.
“I know you’re in there,” continues the dwarf in his most polite tones. “If you have any ideas about which way we should go, that would be very helpful.”
nothing, thinks Scree.
“Oh well.”
The cleric spell find the path turns out to be the navigational aid of choice. After much talk of how such a divination might be used, Morningstar casts the spell while naming as the location: “The closest exit from the plane that is not the one we’re standing next to.” Sure enough, she feels in her soul a surety of direction, and no special instructions for getting there beyond a trudge through the sand.
There’s the additional question of how they can best find their way back to this spot in a pinch. Kay notes dourly that the shifting desert will offer no permanent landmarks, and that the sun will have to suffice. The wizards study the spot as best as they can, but knowing that if they have to teleport back to here, it probably won’t look much like it does now.
They start walking, with Morningstar in front, led by the magic of her spell. The snowshoes help tremendously, keeping them from sinking to their ankles or knees with every step. But, oh, the sand! It’s not long before the tiny granules have gotten into packs, hair, noses, eyelashes – everything. When they press their teeth together, they can feel the grit crunching.
Hours pass beneath the hot sun. Morningstar’s spell runs out, and Kay does her best to hold the Company to the same course. There are still no landmarks; just the endless up-and-down march along the ever-shifting dunes. Kay announces that from the sun’s rate of travel across the sky, the day here must be well more than 24 hours long. So it is that when the party is ready to stop for the day, the sun is only now starting to set.
“What’s that?”
One Certain Step points to the horizon opposite the setting sun. There’s something there, some indistinct shape shimmering on the horizon line, fading in and out. It doesn’t seem to be moving, but each member of the Company seems to have a different perspective, and they can’t agree on how close it might be.
Dranko takes Ernie’s Winged Shield and flies straight up for a better look. For a few minutes he stares at it, not understanding what it is, or how close it is. Given its size, it must be practically on top of them, and yet it also looks like it’s still on the horizon. And it continues to shimmer in the heat-haze coming off the desert.
Then it hits him. It’s a moon rising up over the desert, a moon taking up almost a full eighth of the horizon. It’s hundreds of times bigger than the moon he’s used to. He flies back down.
“So, are we going to be attacked?” asks Grey Wolf.
“It’s a moon,” says Dranko.
“What?” asks Ernie.
“I said, it’s a moon.”
“We’re going to be attacked by a moon?” says Grey Wolf.
Dranko rolls his eyes.
For another few minutes the party watches in awe as the monstrous moon heaves itself up into the sky. Dranko, since he’s high up already, does a bit of aerial recon, hoping to spot any sort of distinguishing feature of the desert. The only interesting thing he sees is a black bird flying high above him.
“There’s a bird overhead,” he calls down to the others. “Should I go after it and kill it?”
“No!” answers Kay instinctively.
“It’s heading in the same direction are we are. It’s probably a spy going to report on us.”
But by then it’s already gone.
“That’s a big moon!” exclaims Ernie. He can’t take his eyes off of it. It’s a chalky orange color, with clear bands and dark striations. Craters pock its surface.
“I wonder if anything lives on it?” muses Dranko. Then, turning to Morningstar, he adds, “Just imagine. We can have our wedding ceremony here under the giant moon, after we fix the world.”
“After we fix the world, we’re not coming back here,” Grey Wolf points out.
“Well then, we’ll use illusions to make it look like this.”
Morningstar stares at the moon, trying to glean something of its nature.
“I wonder of the Black Circle created it, or if it’s natural, and if it’s holy,” she says.
Step frowns. “If the Black Circle can create something like that…”
“Then we’re f***ed, “ Dranko finishes.
Morningstar stares for a few more minutes, and abruptly decides that it’s just a moon like her own, but either much bigger or much closer. It doesn't feel evil. She smiles, which has the effect of making everyone else feel a bit better.
“This isn’t as bad as the last desert,” Ernie declares. Then he moves over to stand next to Dranko and sheepishly asks: “Can I use your geyser thing?
“The decanter? Sure. Why?”
Red-faced, Ernie whispers: “I’ve… got sand… in my cracks.”
“In your WHAT?” Dranko roars, grinning. Ernie turns a brighter shade of pink.
“I mean in my toes!” he squeaks. “You know… all those crevices!”
“Oh,” says Dranko, clearly disappointed.
“Just throw me the geyser.”
Ernie goes behind a sand dune and hoses off, only to find that when he’s damp, even more sand sticks to him. By the time he rejoins the others he’s as sandy as he was when he left. Dranko smiles at him and casts a clean orison on himself; the sand goes flying off of him, leaving him grit free. Then he casts another on Ernie.
“Thanks, Dranko! Whew. I hate chafing.”
“When did this become ‘Ernest shares too much information’ day?” says Dranko.
A breeze picks up as the enormous moon climbs higher. Aravis suggests that they sleep in rope tricks.
“A good idea,” agrees Dranko. “Someone spying on us would see it if we used a secure shelter.”
“The real advantage of rope tricks, says Aravis, “is that I thought to prepare them today.”
The wizard casts a couple of the spells a few feet off the ground, and the party scrambles up the ropes into them. Only Dranko stays out in the sand for a few minutes more, enjoying a blacktallow cigar and watching the moon. Another advantage of the rope tricks, he notes. It’s not likely to get very dark tonight.
* *
The next morning Dranko wakes up in his extradimensional pocket. Flicker, Kibi, Grey Wolf and Step share the space. Morningstar, Snokas, Aravis, Kay and Ernie are in the other one. Dranko rolls over and peers out the window in the floor, and (surprise!) sees sand. He sticks his head out, and only at the last minute does he realize the trick of perspective that’s been played upon him. The sand comes right up to the opening! He gets a mouthful of grit as he plunges himself neck-deep into the sand, then yanks his head out and starts hacking violently to clear his throat. When he can breathe again, he wakes the other and tells them what’s happened: while they slept, the wind-blown dunes shifted, and now their opening is buried!
At Kibi’s behest, Scree leaves the space to scout. Abruptly they lose their telepathic link, which bothers Kibi immensely, even knowing it’s only for a few seconds. Sure enough, his familiar comes back quickly with a report that the sand goes about six feet higher that the opening to their space.
In the other rope trick the rest of the Company is also discovering that they’re buried, but without Kibi and Scree they have no way of knowing how far down they’re trapped. Morningstar starts praying for her spells a few minutes after Kibi decides to prepare a passwall. Scree thinks there’s an angle that will allow the tunnel to reach the surface without being too steep to traverse. Kibi reaches out and casts the spell. Sand goes flying, blown down the new tunnel and out into the desert air. Almost immediately the tunnel starts collapsing in on itself.
“Come on! Hurry!” shouts the dwarf, and he dives into the tunnel and starts to scramble for the surface. Behind him, Dranko, Flicker, Step and Grey Wolf do the same. Sand pours in on them, and the whole tunnel collapses while they are still a few feet from freedom. For a harrowing thirty seconds they hold their breaths and dig their way through the loose sand, finally breaking out onto the desert floor gulping lungfuls of air.
After they’ve caught their breaths and coughed out some sand, Kibi realizes that the dunes have shifted in such a way that he cannot reach the other rope trick with his final passwall. Time for Plan B! He hands one end of a rope to Dranko, casts xorn movement, and dives down into the sand.
Meanwhile, Morningstar has prayed long enough to cast a summon monster spell. She casts tongues and then summons (of all things) a xorn, instructing it to leave the pocket dimension, learn how far it is to the surface, and then come back down to report. Kibi is startled as the xorn passes him going the other way as he descends.
“Hello, xorn!” he says pleasantly. The xorn grumbles a greeting as it burrows upward toward the surface. When it emerges, it stares at those of the Company already there.
“I didn’t realize xorn movement could actually turn you into one!” says Flicker, agog.
Likewise, only seconds after the xorn has left on Morningstar’s errand, Kibi comes popping up to join her and the others. And while Kibi is explaining what’s going on, the xorn comes back. (Yes, it’s like one of those French bedroom farces, with more sand.)
Half an hour later, everyone in the second rope trick has been dragged uncomfortably through the sand by those already on the surface. Ernie’s starting to think maybe this is as bad as the last desert. Morningstar casts find the path again, and then a couple of wind walks to expedite travel. So much for the snowshoes!
Fifty miles or so later, the flying Company spots something dark on the horizon. There are more birds here, and they are circling above whatever it is. A few minutes later they can see it’s an oasis, and Morningstar’s spell is leading them straight towards it. The huge moon has almost set.
They slow down a bit and approach the oasis cautiously. It’s roughly circular, and about 100 yards in diameter. From their high vantage point they spot a glimmer of blue light in a clearing near the oasis’s center. There’s also something that looks like white ruins nearby, but as they get even closer and lower down, they resolve into the bleached skeleton of a huge dragon.
Closer yet. There is not one blue portal, but two, side by side, of similar dimensions. The clearing is about thirty yards on a side, with a pool along its edge. Dozens of black birds flit and twitter about the oasis. The dragon skeleton is mostly complete, but is in the process of disintegrating.
Closer still. Dranko spies a small pile of something in front of one of the blue portals. The birds are thick around that pile, and large scarab-like insects crawl over it. Wanting to investigate with minimal risk, Morningstar casts tongues and summons a celestial eagle. Her instructions: “Please fly down to that pile and investigate.”
“Why?” asks the eagle, once it’s satisfied that there are no enemies around to attack.
“We want to see what’s down there.”
“Go look then,” suggests the eagle.
But the eagle does as ordered, flying down to the pile and landing next to it. The other birds scatter in alarm. The eagle pecks at the pile and starts eating something from it. After fifteen seconds of this it flies back to Morningstar.
“Fish skeletons,” it says. “Some with good meat still on them.” Then it vanishes.
“Our stock among the celestial eagles has just gone up,” comments Grey Wolf.
“I can just imagine,” says Aravis. “In heaven, most celestial eagles probably tell the same story: “I got summoned, and then immediately attacked some horrible monster that opposed my summoner.” But ours will brag about how his summoner just fed him some fish!”
“Though to be fair,” adds Grey Wolf, “the last few celestial eagles we summoned didn’t fare so well.”
Just as the Company lands nearby to the portals and the pile of rotting fish, a living fish pops out of the gate next to the pile and starts flopping about. It is soon savaged by a swarm of birds that swoop down from nearby trees.
“It goes to the elemental plane of water!” says Kibi.
Ernie takes a step back.
Morningstar walks over to the head of the dragon skeleton and casts thought capture. She gets a vague thought of something extremely hungry.
“Any dragon you don’t have to kill to get its interesting bits, is a good dragon,” says Dranko, breaking off some teeth for souvenirs.
Morningstar casts detect thoughts to be safe, and finds no minds other than those of the Company.
Time for more scouting! They tie a rope around Dranko’s waist.
“I’ll just go in for a quick look. Then pull me out.”
“How many ‘Abernathys?’” asks Morningstar.
“Not many. Maybe five.”
Dranko leaps through. After the black void and uncomfortable pulling, he emerges near the top of a lush, grassy hill. Flowering bushes surround him, and the air is clean and fresh. Around him stretches a beautiful panoramic view of green hills dotted with colorful flowers and yellow gorse. Half a mile to his right the bucolic landscape is terminated by the straight shoreline of a dazzlingly blue ocean. The sky is a clear cobalt blue, marred only by the one strange thing he sees. Out over the ocean is a small localized thunderstorm. He can hear a distant thunder, and small lightning bolts flicker in its confines. The storm is maybe a hundred feet on a side, but it’s hard to be sure of his perspective.
Then he’s yanked back into the oasis, where he reports on what he’s seen. The other agree that in a place that beautiful, there must be some horrible lurking evil waiting to pounce on them immediately.
Wasting no time, Dranko gets set to explore the second gate, the one with the fish. He borrows Kibi’s helm of water breathing and steps through. A few seconds later he is (unsurprisingly) under water. He slowly starts to sink, the warbling blue frame of the portal rising away from him. It’s cold and dark, but he can tell that neither surface nor bottom is within range of his darkvision. Some fish swim by. He pulls himself back up the rope and out, dripping wet.
“I’d like to explore further,” he says. They use a longer rope (in fact, the bag of endless rope, one of their first magic items) cinched to pay out only a hundred feet or so.
“If I’m not back in 90 Abernathys, pull me out,” he says, and in he goes.
This time, though, he starts sinking directly out from the gate, as if it’s in the “ceiling” relative to him. Gravity has changed! He blows some bubbles, and sure enough they rise back toward the portal. He swims up after them, and when he pops back out in the oasis, he falls sideways onto the pile of fish bones. Aravis explains about subjective gravity while Dranko scratches his head.
Dranko goes in a third time for good measure. Gravity goes sideways this time, but it’s still just a cold, dark, salty ocean, with no floor, no surface, and no particularly interesting fish. All the same, Aravis is keen to experience the new plane for himself. (Planar travel and traits have always been an area of keen academic interest.) He takes the helm from Dranko, ties the rope around his waist and steps in.
It’s dark. He has no darkvision. He sinks three feet and is immediately wrapped up in tentacles! His arms are pinned to his sides and he cannot cast spells. He feels something sharp bite at his thigh, but it’s turned away by his magical robe.
Back in the oasis, the rope is suddenly pulled taut, and it starts to slide through Step’s hands. Instantly he and several of the others grab on and haul Aravis out of the water plane. He comes out accompanied by a squid nearly as big as he is. It’s snapping at him with its beak. Grey Wolf draws Bostock and hacks the squid to pieces.
There’s a shocked silence while Aravis gets to his feet and shakes off some severed tentacles.
“I suppose you’ll want this breaded and fried,” Ernie sighs.
…to be continued…
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LightPhoenix
First Post
I love that image of fish just popping out of the portal. For some reason, I can't get it out of my head that the sound they make is "Poot!"
Zaruthustran
The tingling means it’s working!
Dude, what an awesome update. "Sliders" in D&D--love it. Did the huge moon cause tidal movement in the sand?
-z
-z
Spatzimaus
First Post
Zaruthustran said:
Well, it sounded like the desert was on the moon of a gas giant (so the striped "moon" they saw was actually the Jupiter-like planet they were orbiting around). In which case yes, the tidal forces could easily do that, especially if the entire "planet" is just one big desert; in fact, it'd probably be worse, with near-constant earthquakes.
And, it's not like the characters would have any idea what this implies. Now, a moon probably couldn't easily form in a way that gave it that kind of orbit, atmosphere, etc., but it could be a captured object. But never let the laws of reality get in the way of a good story.
Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 209
Kay, unhinged
Grey Wolf, who was against Aravis’s unnecessary excursion, lets out a sigh.
“Never toss the mage through a portal,” he says, exasperated.
“Let’s go back to the nice place,” says Dranko. Everyone agrees.
They all go through, and after the obligatory seconds of sucking void, they’re deposited on the lovely grassy hilltop that Dranko had described moments earlier. Clear blue sky, green grass, yellow and red flowers, and….
Dranko points. “Um, guys? That storm is about twice as close as it was a few minutes ago.”
“It’s moving towards us, too,” observes Kay.
A stiff breeze is blowing from the storm, stirring their hair. Dranko does a visual check on the other blue gate he saw. It’s two hills away, with over a mile of trackless, steep and folded terrain between them. It would be a good hour’s journey, and the storm will be on them in minutes.
“Towards us, and speeding up,” amends Kay. “Clearly not natural.”
A sharp blast of lightning fires out of the storm as it reaches the shoreline, straight down into the ground. Sand flies up in a cloud, while some is fused instantly to glass. This engenders some hasty planning among the Company. Dranko has a lightning bolt – ironstorm flashback.
Kay’s eyes go wide for a moment.
“Oa Lyanna is extremely worried,” she says, trying to keep her own voice calm. “She thinks this creature is a God.”
“Aiiieeeeee!” says Ernie.
“Leaving now,” adds Grey Wolf.
In a voice that literally is thunder, and whose meaning is mysteriously conveyed through the throbbing roar of sound, the storm speaks.
WHY ARE YOU HERE?
Aravis shouts into the wind.
“To restore our world to its proper state!”
Another bolt of lightning slams down from the storm onto the hillside, a hundred feet below the Company.
Morningstar casts wind walk on several members of the party, to allow Aravis to teleport the whole party at once. The storm moves closer, and the wind-walkers start to have trouble standing still.
YOU ARE NOT ABIDING BY THE AGREEMENT!
Another lightning stroke burns the ground, closer this time. In a loud and frantic voice, Dranko answers:
“Perhaps you would be so kind as to tell us just what that agreement is!”
The wind-walkers start to take damage from the violent winds of the storm, which is now nearly upon them.
YOU HAVE AGREED THAT…
But they miss the end of the sentence, as Aravis teleports the party to the distant hilltop with the other blue portal. At once the sound of thunder grows quieter, and the wind here is only a gentle breeze. They can see the storm far off, enshrouding the distant hill on which they just stood.
Kibi at once tries to move through this new portal, but discovers that in his misty form he cannot make egress. His vaporous body just splashes against the blue light and flows around the portal’s edges. At that, he and the other wind-walkers start the 30-second process of becoming solid, while the storm (seemingly aware of their new position) starts to boil toward them. Ernie, solid to start with, jumps through to investigate the place into which they are almost certainly about to flee.
He lands on a solid stone floor, indoors. He glances about and discovers he’s in a small room, or a large closet, six feet wide and fifteen feet long. It’s lit by a sconce with continual flame upon it at the far end. The air is stale but breathable, just like the air in the woman’s bedroom. In fact, like that boudoir, the walls here are of the same dark gray stone with a blue-stone diamond pattern inset.
On the two longer walls are pegs, most of which have cloaks or robes hanging from them. With a last look around to verify that there are no obvious ways in or out other than the portal, Ernie leaps back to the grassy hillside near to the storm.
Meanwhile, said storm has been fast approaching the party. Lightning is crackling angrily down from it, scorching the grass and blasting small trees and bushes into splinters. Ernie sees upon his arrival that it’s only about 15 seconds away from them! His fellows look at him expectantly.
“It’s a closet,” he summarizes.
“Is there another way out of it?” asks Kibi.
“I didn’t see any, but I didn’t spend any time searching. It’s got the same blue stone diamond on the walls, like in that woman’s bedroom.”
“It’s a Black Circle place then,” says Morningstar. “We should check it out.”
Aravis starts tying a rope around his waist. Another bolt of lightning shoots out of the storm and blasts the ground.
“The bedroom would be better than this!” shouts Grey Wolf above the howling wind.
“I want to stay and talk to it, just a little more,” says Aravis. He hands the other end of his rope to Ernie, while Morningstar casts bear’s endurance on him. Everyone except Aravis leaps through into the cloakroom. Once there, Grey Wolf grabs the rope in Ernie’s hands and suggests that everyone else do the same, “in case Aravis becomes a kite out there!”
Inside, the Company looks around as they hold the rope. Morningstar turns to Kay.
“Why does Oa Lyanna think that’s a god?”
Oa Lyanna says to Kay in a shaking voice, “It’s a living storm! Such beings are… beyond my scope.”
Outside, Aravis casts energy buffer on himself, just in time for the storm to arrive.
EXPLAIN WHY YOU HAVE BROKEN OUR AGREEMENT? it thunders.
“We didn’t make an agreement with you,” Aravis explains calmly. “We aren’t of the people who created this place. We believe that those people are involved in a horrible magic that has changed our world beyond all recognition. We were told…”
YOU ARE TRAPPED AS I AM rumbles the storm. I WAS PROMISED… SOLITUDE.
A lightning stroke crackles not ten feet from Aravis’s head. His robes start flapping wildly in the gusting wind.
I SHOULD SLAY YOU, adds the storm.
“We are only here to fix our world,” says Aravis. “We are not here to disturb you.”
THEN YOU MUST LEAVE IMMEDIATELY AND NOT COME BACK.
Well, okay! Aravis steps through the portal.
Dranko has been listening intently, but hears nothing beyond the breathing of his party-mates. After Aravis has returned and told his tale, Morningstar walks to the far end of the room to cast thought capture while the others start a more thorough search of the place. The cloaks and robes are mostly black, and of varying quality. Some have black circles embroidered on them. Flicker finds a bag of old spell components in the pockets of one. (With the exception of Kibi and the halflings, everyone takes a black-circle garment that fits them and stows it with their gear.)
Morningstar’s thought capture captures a thought of someone musing upon an academic point of indecipherable magical philosophy. She gets the sense that thinker is pondering a book or scroll he has just read.
There is a doorway out of the room, but it’s directly behind the blue portal at one end. The portal is so close that it’s practically painted on, and so there’s no clear way to make use of the door. Dranko goes back into wind form and manages to slip into the sliver-thin space between portal and door, but it does no good. The door is also the boundary of this plane, and Dranko’s brain doesn’t allow him to try going further.
“Stupid Black Circle!” blurts Ernie. “Why did they make a world that only consists of a stupid clothes closet! Who builds a hallway that goes nowhere?”
That drives home to Kibi a fact that has been disturbing him. Ordinarily his dwarvish senses can tell how far underground he is. But here, in this little room, he has no sense of the surface. There is none.
Morningstar decides to blanket the far end of the room with more thought captures, and sifts through her mental findings. Some are thoughts similar to the first one. Some are more specific, thinking about tasks they have to do or jobs to perform, none of which make sense to Morningstar. There are two thoughts, though, that are very distinct, and nearly identical though they come from two different minds. The gist of these thoughts is that they’re worried about “the stability of the rotunda.” The rotunda! That was mentioned in the love letter found in the Black Circle Boudoir.
There’s a final thought of: “Why do I have the crappiest cloak?”
Before the subject of “what do we do now” can be raised, Kibi suddenly grows tense. He can sense something odd stirring around him. The air takes on a peculiar vibration that only he seems to feel.
“I think something’s about to happen,” he warns.
“Why?” asks Grey Wolf.
“It feels like there’s about to be an earthquake. Can’t you feel it?”
Actually, yes, they can. Whatever it is is growing stronger. Could it be the god-storm outside is affecting them? Dranko jumps up and readies his whip. The ground isn’t shaking, but somehow reality is. Except for Kibi, each member of the Company feels like they are coming unanchored from space-time, though they might not have thought to phrase it that way. Kibi still feels firmly rooted, as though he is a heavy statue in a rushing wind.
“Fascinating,” says Aravis.
(Grey Wolf isn’t much impressed either. His guts felt worse than this for months!)
Kay’s eyes go wide. “Ow! It’s painful! Don’t you feel it?”
Yes, everyone feels it, but no, no one else is in pain. Her face contorts in a agonized grimace… and that’s before the phenomenon spikes.
Everyone feels the world blur around them, feels caught in a terrible wrenching turbulence. (Still not Kibi, though. He remains solidly rooted to reality.) Kay and Oa Lyanna scream as one, a terrible double-voiced cry of pain that is abruptly cut off as their body shifts several feet in a crazy blur before vanishing entirely.
“Kay!” cries Ernie.
“What happened?” shouts Morningstar.
“Holy s**t!” says Grey Wolf.
“Bring her back! Bring her back!” Ernie wails, not sure who he’s asking.
A few seconds later, whatever it is dies down quickly.
“Kay is gone!” says Ernie, in case everyone hadn’t noticed. “Aravis, find her! Use the Maze!”
“I don’t think I can,” says Aravis, shaking his head.
Morningstar keeps a level head.
“Kay, are you here?” she speaks into the room. No answer.
“I wonder what it was?” says Kibi. “It was odd, but I felt fine through the whole thing. What did it feel like to the rest of you?”
“You felt fine?” cries Dranko, incredulous. “Why didn’t you tell anyone you felt fine? Maybe Kay could have grabbed onto you and been okay!”
“Eyes?” says Ernie angrily, turning on Scree. “Aren’t you suppose to stop this sort of… oooo.” He stops, and grows red. “I should have given her my belt!”
Scree rolls over to stand before Kibi, and the sapphire eyes blaze.
“Oh, now they talk to us,” mutters Grey Wolf, disgusted.
“What happened to Kay?” Kibi demands.
She is… probably safe. She was not properly anchored. She was made somewhat of air-stuff, and came loose.
“Can we find her?” asks Morningstar.
She is outside of Het Branoi. She cannot be found while we are inside.
Dranko laughs nervously. “If any of us could survive out there on our own, it’s her. She can eat moss and drink raindrops or something.”
“I hope the universe doesn’t decide that it hates her,” says Aravis, worried.
She is not in this universe.
“What?” several voices cry.
She is probably still with you.
Not comprehending, Ernie starts waving his arms around, as if Kay is merely invisible and might be discovered by touch.
You are multiple. Infinitely. All of you are.
“So where is she then?” asks Ernie.
She is with others of you. Probably.
“Does that mean there are two Kays with the other ones of us?” asks Kibi.
If so, I am sure they have much to discuss.
Scree’s gemstone eyes lose their glow. The Eyes of Moirel have finished talking.
Ernie wheels on Aravis, his head spinning.
“What does that mean!”
Aravis starts into a halting explanation of parallel world theory, planar offsets and simultaneous cosmic splintering. Dranko gets a twinkle in his eye.
“You mean… there are two Morningstars. And they could be together, at the same time?”
“You can’t really look at it that way,” says Aravis.
“Besides which,” says Morningstar, smirking at her fiancee. “At any given time, even if one of us were happy with you, the other would be annoyed at you.”
“So I can’t win,” Dranko complains.
“Well, there’s a lot of disagreement about how the universe works, in academic circles…”
“You’re making this crap up, aren’t you,” says Dranko.
Morningstar stamps her foot. “How could the universe have multiple versions of people? That’s ridiculous! When I cast a sending, I get you, not multiple versions of you.”
“Well, you get the one you’re more… anchored to,” Aravis explains.
“So we exist in multiple planes?” asks Grey Wolf?
“Like I said, there’s some argument about that.”
Dranko tries another optimistic angle. “So why don’t we get one of the other ’us-es’ to fix the world, while we go lie down someplace warm?”
“It doesn’t work that way,” sighs Aravis. “Those other ‘us-es’ don’t care about our universe. They don’t know about it.”
“Goddammit!” Dranko spits.
“Is our Kay somewhere where there’s another Kay?” asks Morningstar, still not entirely buying it.
“That, I don’t know,” admits Aravis. “Yes, probably. It sounds like that’s what the Eyes think.”
Grey Wolf’s head hurts. He groans. Morningstar tries sending to Kay and gets no answer. It appears that Kay is just gone. No one speaks for a few seconds.
“I have a theory that I’d like to put to the test,” says Aravis, tying the rope around his own waist. “I’m going to step through the portal. As soon as I’m gone, I want you to pull me back.”
“Are you protected from lightning?” asks Dranko.
“Yeah. energy buffer.”
He steps through the portal. He finds himself in the middle of the storm, but before it can do him any harm the others yank him back as instructed.
“Well, we didn’t move physically, when whatever happened happened.”
“I wonder if that sort of thing happens often… like earthquakes,” ponders Grey Wolf.
“Or maybe it happened because of the “instability of the rotunda,” guesses Morningstar.
“My rotunda’s pretty stable,” Dranko laughs nervously, patting his own backside. No one else laughs. “Well, okay then,” he continues. “I suggest we make camp. It’s that, or make a run for it out there.”
“Remember what happened last time,” says Kibi. “If we camp here for a whole day, tomorrow there’ll be five storms waiting out there…
“…and lots of little stormlets?” says Dranko.
Ernie makes a noise of frustration as he prepares his cooking gear. “I want to make a fire, but this room would just fill up with smoke. And I was going to cook Kay’s favorite.”
“Why?” asks Dranko. “She’s not here to enjoy it.”
“Dranko!” snaps Grey Wolf, but it’s too late. Ernie turns on Dranko, his face florid.
“Because maybe I’m thinking about her!” he yells.
“Sorry, Ernie.”
After a cold meal during which no one says much, Ernie says,
“I think we should wait it out in here. Remember, the storm wasn’t on top of a gate when we came through. It was out over the ocean. Maybe it’ll get bored and go back there.”
The others nod in unenthusiastic agreement.
“So,” says Dranko after another awkward pause. “Who wants to play mumblety-peg?”
…to be continued…
Kay, unhinged
Grey Wolf, who was against Aravis’s unnecessary excursion, lets out a sigh.
“Never toss the mage through a portal,” he says, exasperated.
“Let’s go back to the nice place,” says Dranko. Everyone agrees.
They all go through, and after the obligatory seconds of sucking void, they’re deposited on the lovely grassy hilltop that Dranko had described moments earlier. Clear blue sky, green grass, yellow and red flowers, and….
Dranko points. “Um, guys? That storm is about twice as close as it was a few minutes ago.”
“It’s moving towards us, too,” observes Kay.
A stiff breeze is blowing from the storm, stirring their hair. Dranko does a visual check on the other blue gate he saw. It’s two hills away, with over a mile of trackless, steep and folded terrain between them. It would be a good hour’s journey, and the storm will be on them in minutes.
“Towards us, and speeding up,” amends Kay. “Clearly not natural.”
A sharp blast of lightning fires out of the storm as it reaches the shoreline, straight down into the ground. Sand flies up in a cloud, while some is fused instantly to glass. This engenders some hasty planning among the Company. Dranko has a lightning bolt – ironstorm flashback.
Kay’s eyes go wide for a moment.
“Oa Lyanna is extremely worried,” she says, trying to keep her own voice calm. “She thinks this creature is a God.”
“Aiiieeeeee!” says Ernie.
“Leaving now,” adds Grey Wolf.
In a voice that literally is thunder, and whose meaning is mysteriously conveyed through the throbbing roar of sound, the storm speaks.
WHY ARE YOU HERE?
Aravis shouts into the wind.
“To restore our world to its proper state!”
Another bolt of lightning slams down from the storm onto the hillside, a hundred feet below the Company.
Morningstar casts wind walk on several members of the party, to allow Aravis to teleport the whole party at once. The storm moves closer, and the wind-walkers start to have trouble standing still.
YOU ARE NOT ABIDING BY THE AGREEMENT!
Another lightning stroke burns the ground, closer this time. In a loud and frantic voice, Dranko answers:
“Perhaps you would be so kind as to tell us just what that agreement is!”
The wind-walkers start to take damage from the violent winds of the storm, which is now nearly upon them.
YOU HAVE AGREED THAT…
But they miss the end of the sentence, as Aravis teleports the party to the distant hilltop with the other blue portal. At once the sound of thunder grows quieter, and the wind here is only a gentle breeze. They can see the storm far off, enshrouding the distant hill on which they just stood.
Kibi at once tries to move through this new portal, but discovers that in his misty form he cannot make egress. His vaporous body just splashes against the blue light and flows around the portal’s edges. At that, he and the other wind-walkers start the 30-second process of becoming solid, while the storm (seemingly aware of their new position) starts to boil toward them. Ernie, solid to start with, jumps through to investigate the place into which they are almost certainly about to flee.
He lands on a solid stone floor, indoors. He glances about and discovers he’s in a small room, or a large closet, six feet wide and fifteen feet long. It’s lit by a sconce with continual flame upon it at the far end. The air is stale but breathable, just like the air in the woman’s bedroom. In fact, like that boudoir, the walls here are of the same dark gray stone with a blue-stone diamond pattern inset.
On the two longer walls are pegs, most of which have cloaks or robes hanging from them. With a last look around to verify that there are no obvious ways in or out other than the portal, Ernie leaps back to the grassy hillside near to the storm.
Meanwhile, said storm has been fast approaching the party. Lightning is crackling angrily down from it, scorching the grass and blasting small trees and bushes into splinters. Ernie sees upon his arrival that it’s only about 15 seconds away from them! His fellows look at him expectantly.
“It’s a closet,” he summarizes.
“Is there another way out of it?” asks Kibi.
“I didn’t see any, but I didn’t spend any time searching. It’s got the same blue stone diamond on the walls, like in that woman’s bedroom.”
“It’s a Black Circle place then,” says Morningstar. “We should check it out.”
Aravis starts tying a rope around his waist. Another bolt of lightning shoots out of the storm and blasts the ground.
“The bedroom would be better than this!” shouts Grey Wolf above the howling wind.
“I want to stay and talk to it, just a little more,” says Aravis. He hands the other end of his rope to Ernie, while Morningstar casts bear’s endurance on him. Everyone except Aravis leaps through into the cloakroom. Once there, Grey Wolf grabs the rope in Ernie’s hands and suggests that everyone else do the same, “in case Aravis becomes a kite out there!”
Inside, the Company looks around as they hold the rope. Morningstar turns to Kay.
“Why does Oa Lyanna think that’s a god?”
Oa Lyanna says to Kay in a shaking voice, “It’s a living storm! Such beings are… beyond my scope.”
Outside, Aravis casts energy buffer on himself, just in time for the storm to arrive.
EXPLAIN WHY YOU HAVE BROKEN OUR AGREEMENT? it thunders.
“We didn’t make an agreement with you,” Aravis explains calmly. “We aren’t of the people who created this place. We believe that those people are involved in a horrible magic that has changed our world beyond all recognition. We were told…”
YOU ARE TRAPPED AS I AM rumbles the storm. I WAS PROMISED… SOLITUDE.
A lightning stroke crackles not ten feet from Aravis’s head. His robes start flapping wildly in the gusting wind.
I SHOULD SLAY YOU, adds the storm.
“We are only here to fix our world,” says Aravis. “We are not here to disturb you.”
THEN YOU MUST LEAVE IMMEDIATELY AND NOT COME BACK.
Well, okay! Aravis steps through the portal.
Dranko has been listening intently, but hears nothing beyond the breathing of his party-mates. After Aravis has returned and told his tale, Morningstar walks to the far end of the room to cast thought capture while the others start a more thorough search of the place. The cloaks and robes are mostly black, and of varying quality. Some have black circles embroidered on them. Flicker finds a bag of old spell components in the pockets of one. (With the exception of Kibi and the halflings, everyone takes a black-circle garment that fits them and stows it with their gear.)
Morningstar’s thought capture captures a thought of someone musing upon an academic point of indecipherable magical philosophy. She gets the sense that thinker is pondering a book or scroll he has just read.
There is a doorway out of the room, but it’s directly behind the blue portal at one end. The portal is so close that it’s practically painted on, and so there’s no clear way to make use of the door. Dranko goes back into wind form and manages to slip into the sliver-thin space between portal and door, but it does no good. The door is also the boundary of this plane, and Dranko’s brain doesn’t allow him to try going further.
“Stupid Black Circle!” blurts Ernie. “Why did they make a world that only consists of a stupid clothes closet! Who builds a hallway that goes nowhere?”
That drives home to Kibi a fact that has been disturbing him. Ordinarily his dwarvish senses can tell how far underground he is. But here, in this little room, he has no sense of the surface. There is none.
Morningstar decides to blanket the far end of the room with more thought captures, and sifts through her mental findings. Some are thoughts similar to the first one. Some are more specific, thinking about tasks they have to do or jobs to perform, none of which make sense to Morningstar. There are two thoughts, though, that are very distinct, and nearly identical though they come from two different minds. The gist of these thoughts is that they’re worried about “the stability of the rotunda.” The rotunda! That was mentioned in the love letter found in the Black Circle Boudoir.
There’s a final thought of: “Why do I have the crappiest cloak?”
Before the subject of “what do we do now” can be raised, Kibi suddenly grows tense. He can sense something odd stirring around him. The air takes on a peculiar vibration that only he seems to feel.
“I think something’s about to happen,” he warns.
“Why?” asks Grey Wolf.
“It feels like there’s about to be an earthquake. Can’t you feel it?”
Actually, yes, they can. Whatever it is is growing stronger. Could it be the god-storm outside is affecting them? Dranko jumps up and readies his whip. The ground isn’t shaking, but somehow reality is. Except for Kibi, each member of the Company feels like they are coming unanchored from space-time, though they might not have thought to phrase it that way. Kibi still feels firmly rooted, as though he is a heavy statue in a rushing wind.
“Fascinating,” says Aravis.
(Grey Wolf isn’t much impressed either. His guts felt worse than this for months!)
Kay’s eyes go wide. “Ow! It’s painful! Don’t you feel it?”
Yes, everyone feels it, but no, no one else is in pain. Her face contorts in a agonized grimace… and that’s before the phenomenon spikes.
Everyone feels the world blur around them, feels caught in a terrible wrenching turbulence. (Still not Kibi, though. He remains solidly rooted to reality.) Kay and Oa Lyanna scream as one, a terrible double-voiced cry of pain that is abruptly cut off as their body shifts several feet in a crazy blur before vanishing entirely.
“Kay!” cries Ernie.
“What happened?” shouts Morningstar.
“Holy s**t!” says Grey Wolf.
“Bring her back! Bring her back!” Ernie wails, not sure who he’s asking.
A few seconds later, whatever it is dies down quickly.
“Kay is gone!” says Ernie, in case everyone hadn’t noticed. “Aravis, find her! Use the Maze!”
“I don’t think I can,” says Aravis, shaking his head.
Morningstar keeps a level head.
“Kay, are you here?” she speaks into the room. No answer.
“I wonder what it was?” says Kibi. “It was odd, but I felt fine through the whole thing. What did it feel like to the rest of you?”
“You felt fine?” cries Dranko, incredulous. “Why didn’t you tell anyone you felt fine? Maybe Kay could have grabbed onto you and been okay!”
“Eyes?” says Ernie angrily, turning on Scree. “Aren’t you suppose to stop this sort of… oooo.” He stops, and grows red. “I should have given her my belt!”
Scree rolls over to stand before Kibi, and the sapphire eyes blaze.
“Oh, now they talk to us,” mutters Grey Wolf, disgusted.
“What happened to Kay?” Kibi demands.
She is… probably safe. She was not properly anchored. She was made somewhat of air-stuff, and came loose.
“Can we find her?” asks Morningstar.
She is outside of Het Branoi. She cannot be found while we are inside.
Dranko laughs nervously. “If any of us could survive out there on our own, it’s her. She can eat moss and drink raindrops or something.”
“I hope the universe doesn’t decide that it hates her,” says Aravis, worried.
She is not in this universe.
“What?” several voices cry.
She is probably still with you.
Not comprehending, Ernie starts waving his arms around, as if Kay is merely invisible and might be discovered by touch.
You are multiple. Infinitely. All of you are.
“So where is she then?” asks Ernie.
She is with others of you. Probably.
“Does that mean there are two Kays with the other ones of us?” asks Kibi.
If so, I am sure they have much to discuss.
Scree’s gemstone eyes lose their glow. The Eyes of Moirel have finished talking.
Ernie wheels on Aravis, his head spinning.
“What does that mean!”
Aravis starts into a halting explanation of parallel world theory, planar offsets and simultaneous cosmic splintering. Dranko gets a twinkle in his eye.
“You mean… there are two Morningstars. And they could be together, at the same time?”
“You can’t really look at it that way,” says Aravis.
“Besides which,” says Morningstar, smirking at her fiancee. “At any given time, even if one of us were happy with you, the other would be annoyed at you.”
“So I can’t win,” Dranko complains.
“Well, there’s a lot of disagreement about how the universe works, in academic circles…”
“You’re making this crap up, aren’t you,” says Dranko.
Morningstar stamps her foot. “How could the universe have multiple versions of people? That’s ridiculous! When I cast a sending, I get you, not multiple versions of you.”
“Well, you get the one you’re more… anchored to,” Aravis explains.
“So we exist in multiple planes?” asks Grey Wolf?
“Like I said, there’s some argument about that.”
Dranko tries another optimistic angle. “So why don’t we get one of the other ’us-es’ to fix the world, while we go lie down someplace warm?”
“It doesn’t work that way,” sighs Aravis. “Those other ‘us-es’ don’t care about our universe. They don’t know about it.”
“Goddammit!” Dranko spits.
“Is our Kay somewhere where there’s another Kay?” asks Morningstar, still not entirely buying it.
“That, I don’t know,” admits Aravis. “Yes, probably. It sounds like that’s what the Eyes think.”
Grey Wolf’s head hurts. He groans. Morningstar tries sending to Kay and gets no answer. It appears that Kay is just gone. No one speaks for a few seconds.
“I have a theory that I’d like to put to the test,” says Aravis, tying the rope around his own waist. “I’m going to step through the portal. As soon as I’m gone, I want you to pull me back.”
“Are you protected from lightning?” asks Dranko.
“Yeah. energy buffer.”
He steps through the portal. He finds himself in the middle of the storm, but before it can do him any harm the others yank him back as instructed.
“Well, we didn’t move physically, when whatever happened happened.”
“I wonder if that sort of thing happens often… like earthquakes,” ponders Grey Wolf.
“Or maybe it happened because of the “instability of the rotunda,” guesses Morningstar.
“My rotunda’s pretty stable,” Dranko laughs nervously, patting his own backside. No one else laughs. “Well, okay then,” he continues. “I suggest we make camp. It’s that, or make a run for it out there.”
“Remember what happened last time,” says Kibi. “If we camp here for a whole day, tomorrow there’ll be five storms waiting out there…
“…and lots of little stormlets?” says Dranko.
Ernie makes a noise of frustration as he prepares his cooking gear. “I want to make a fire, but this room would just fill up with smoke. And I was going to cook Kay’s favorite.”
“Why?” asks Dranko. “She’s not here to enjoy it.”
“Dranko!” snaps Grey Wolf, but it’s too late. Ernie turns on Dranko, his face florid.
“Because maybe I’m thinking about her!” he yells.
“Sorry, Ernie.”
After a cold meal during which no one says much, Ernie says,
“I think we should wait it out in here. Remember, the storm wasn’t on top of a gate when we came through. It was out over the ocean. Maybe it’ll get bored and go back there.”
The others nod in unenthusiastic agreement.
“So,” says Dranko after another awkward pause. “Who wants to play mumblety-peg?”
…to be continued…
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