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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sagiro" data-source="post: 4096653" data-attributes="member: 726">Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 273Condor’s FollyThe Company appears in the dark, under a bright half-moon and a sky full of stars.   It’s a pleasantly warm evening with a light breeze ruffling the tall grasses indigenous to Harkran’s southern plain region.  The Mirrors of Semek, a.k.a. Condor’s Plinths, are not immediately at hand.   Aravis looks around with arcane sight and there is no magic within a hundred feet.But while Cranchus’s teleportation was not spot-on accurate, things are not as dire as they might seem – as Grey Wolf’s half-elven eyes adjust to the moonlight he sees blocky shadows silhouetted against a darker horizon, no more than a couple hundred yards distant.  They are doubly protected against observers, being both disguised as small rats by a veil from Kibi and invisible through Morningstar’s cloak of night.    A few minutes of walking brings them within a short stone’s throw of the Mirrors; they halt, and Morningstar casts true seeing.  Neither she nor Aravis can detect any magic auras besides the overwhelming Earth Magic radiating from the Plinths.Suspicious of their inaccurate arrival, Dranko suggests they circle around to the far side of the Mirrors in case their vector of approach was specifically arranged by an enemy, but all seems just as quiescent on the far side.  Only the breeze and some field mice keep company with the Company.Cautiously they move nearer to the standing stones, expecting ambush at every step.  As close an observation as they can make without crossing the perimeter shows no footprints or scuffmarks on the dry dirt within the ring.  As a final precaution Aravis casts mirage arcana, generating a duplicate illusionary ring of Mirrors next to the real ones,  and adds a fake secure shelter in the middle of it implying that they might be hiding inside.They step into the ring and walk warily to its center.  Kibi takes the restored Eyes of Moirel from his robes and holds them in his cupped hands; immediately they start to glow a soft white.  Seconds later they rise up into the air of their own volition, forming into a flat circle some ten feet above the ground.   There they begin to spin, and as happens on Flashing Day, white light flashes from Mirror to Mirror, reflecting off of each polished obsidian face until it forms a seven-pointed star.  Ernie concentrates on Home, one hand on his belt of stability.  A minute passes.Two minutes.To maintain the ruse of the mirage arcana, Kibi uses his staff of illusion to mimic the light show there.Three minutes.The Eyes of Moirel spin faster in their circle, and the translucent beams of light now start to flicker with color.It is in the 6th minute, when the Company has just started to believe that the ambush will come at the end of their journey rather than the beginning, that they are attacked.* *Most wizards, if asked to produce magics that could send a subject far into the future, would laugh at the very idea.  For two reasons, the Earth Wizard Condor did not.For one thing, laughing at Emperor Naloric is not typically conducive to long-term survival, no matter how outrageous his suggestions.  For another, Condor actually knew he could do it.  Time travel was, at the time of the Emperor’s humble proposal, mostly a theoretical possibility.  Condor had dabbled in small ways over his many years of study, pulling at the threads of causality and continuum surrounding small, inanimate objects.   He had drawn up schematics for larger projects, surmised impossibly complex formulae, constructed elaborate jeweled constructs.   And he had descended to the deepest hot pits beneath the Emperor’s palace, there to commune with the Source and learn its secrets.  Naloric was not normally a patient creature, but he took a surprisingly relaxed and tolerant attitude towards Condor’s eventual proposal – a ring of standing stones crafted in conjunction with a set of tortured and magic-saturated diamonds.   Condor suspected the reason, and he was correct: for all of Naloric’s malign power and formidable intellect, he didn’t really know what Condor was talking about when it came to the project’s details.  “I anticipate that the entire undertaking will last eight months,” Condor had said at the conclusion of the presentation.   “My apprentices can begin on the plinths while I prepare the diamonds.  There will be seven of each, in order to preserve the essential symmetries of...”Naloric cut him off with a dismissive wave.“Can your apparatus be tested, before I go myself?”“Of course, my lord Emperor,” Condor had said emphatically.  “I will be able to tune the diamonds as well as infuse the...”“Enough, Condor.  I believe you.  And to further demonstrate to me your great confidence, your daughter Moirel will be the test subject.  I will afford her that singular honor.”Time slowed then for Condor, and he knew that the next second contained many possibilities, few of them good.  His words, his expressions, his posture, these all could betray his concerns, his doubts, his unspoken fears of side-effects.   Would Naloric see into his soul, see that Condor had already considered that, were the Emperor not to return, the Earth Wizard would be unmatched in power in Charagan?“You are generous beyond words,” is what he said.  “My daughter will blaze a trail for you through the centuries and return triumphant.”“Excellent.”   Naloric smiled, and Condor suspected then that the Emperor knew every thought in his head, and didn’t care.   “I see no further need for delay.  You are dismissed.”It took a little over a year for the completion of Condor's Plinths and what he called the "Diamond Keys."  Over forty slaves died during the construction, most from a combination of exhaustion and malnourishment, a few from being crushed beneath great masses of rock or collapsing scaffolds.  Naloric never once complained of the extended schedule, or offered Condor anything but his full support.Moirel was a formidable Earth Wizard in her own right, a 31-year-old woman on a career trajectory to someday match or exceed her father in arcane might.  She stoically accepted her role as guinea-pig and spent most of the year studying, questioning, readying.  She even assisted Condor in some of the more fiddly bits of the Diamond Keys' creation, and co-authored a spell of fusion that set the perfect spheres of jet in the very center of each otherwise-flawless gemstone.When the time came Moirel was confident of success.  She would take the seven Diamonds, stand in the center of the Plinths, and be transported some hundreds of years into the future.  She would only stay as long was necessary to ascertain the year, and then return.  (The journey back would require the casting of several complex spells, but nothing beyond her impressive talents.)Had anyone consulted Cranchus about all of this he would have suggested a Ring of Stability to prevent Moirel from losing her sanity during the excursion.  But no one did, and long after Moirel vanished from the center of the flashing Plinths, Condor and Naloric still waited.  The plan had been for Condor's daughter to return to a time only 5 minutes after she left, but Condor insisted that time travel was an inexact science at best and that it could be hours instead of minutes.  Naloric gave him one full day, during which Condor's thoughts transitioned from optimistic, to nervous, to an internal debate regarding whether he should resist the inevitable punishments or simply submit to them.  Already depressed by the apparent sacrifice of his only child, he settled on the latter when Naloric pronounced his judgment. "Condor, you have failed me.  Furthermore, your inner thoughts of sedition and treachery have not escaped my notice.  I am displeased but not surprised; I have had many servants reach heights of power that invited such ambitions.  "I will leave you your life, and will retain you in my court, albeit at a diminished position.  But your power must be culled -- it will be for your own good, in the long run."Condor bowed his head, and Naloric placed his hand upon it. Sometime later Condor regained consciousness.  He felt violated, angry, and in his mind and memories were now gaping holes that might never be refilled.  It was especially galling that he no longer possessed the knowledge to fully analyze his failure.  Still, possessed of a certainty that Moirel had traveled through time but was either unable or unwilling to return, he brooded over his daughter's fate.  Excluded now from Naloric’s inner circle he found himself with abundant time for bitter introspection. Years passed, but Condor gained scant perspective.  Only his indignation and shame increased with time.  Moirel had not returned, and his Plinths were long abandoned, monuments to his greatest mistake.  ‘Condor’s Folly,” they were now called by some.   Finally, heedless of the potential consequences should Naloric discover his plot, he gained a forbidden audience with one of Naloric's three Oracular Crones.  The Crone, named Tizha, sat him in a room thick with incense mingled with the reek of fresh entrails.  Like all the Crones, Tizha was Blood-touched, and her aura was so foul that Condor, no stranger to evil’s palpable aspects, squirmed in his chair.  He gave his gift of gold, and his gift of blood, and his gift of kin (a distant cousin, unlikely to be missed).  Tizha pronounced his fate."Your daughter is lost, but your legacy returns, and your Diamonds also.  One chance remains to you, in the half-moon light of Grenke's heavenly journey.  Muster what power remains to you, and take truth and gems from disjoint interlopers.  Should you survive – a thing by no means certain -- and present your proof, the Emperor will see you again with favor."Some months later Tizha's prophetic words came to fruition.  Condor waited on each night of the half-moon, heavily enchanted and watching with perfect perception from the secret safety of one of his Plinths.  And the interlopers came, just as the Crone had foretold....to be continued...</blockquote>

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