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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sagiro" data-source="post: 461949" data-attributes="member: 726">Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 158 Aravis’ head tilts back and two jets of gray smoke blast out of the star-wells of his eyes.  Everyone leaps back, nearly knocking over tables of delicate lab equipment.   The smoke jets arc out and downward, striking the floor in the middle of the basement.  They quickly form into two strange vaporous creatures, mildly reminiscent of Null Shadows, though (thankfully) without the same emanating horror.  They’re not much larger than ordinary humans, but their arms end in solidly sharp claws.One Certain Step strides forward and swings with his flaming greatsword, but the blade goes right through the body of the beast.“Not again,” he grumbles.Kay discovers that, unlike Null Shadows, these things can be harmed by magical weapons.  Her warhammer discovers some solid skeleton within the smoke – crunch!  Grey Wolf decides this is a good time to try out his new magic gift from Kibi, and activates his vest of transparency.  He hears a sound in his head like rocks grinding together, and his body fades from sight.  He draws Bostock, who whispers gleefully that Grey Wolf should waste no time in attacking.Aravis executes an awkward crawl, his body controlled by Pewter.  With only a few bumps to the head, Pewter gets his master under one of the lab tables, with Step and Kay between him and the creatures.  But also wanting to contribute, Pewter thrashes Aravis’ arm around until it grabs the wand of magic missiles.  The creatures lash out with their claws, striking Kay and Step.  The touch causes their muscles to stiffen, effectively making them slowed.  Step slashes again, hoping to make contact, but the result is unfortunate.  Not only does the blade pass harmlessly through his foe’s body, but as he swings, everyone feels, just for a moment, the chill of Null Shadows.  Step’s flaming sword erupts in a fiery conflagration that catches on his arm and shirt.  Before he knows what’s happening, Step is on fire!Flicker, who’s been having no luck hitting the monsters with his own short-sword, deftly shrugs off his cloak and starts putting out the paladin.  Dranko whips the monsters with his newly-improved magical whip, tearing away chunks of strange smoky flesh.  Pewter concentrates as hard as he can, and just does manage to pronounce the command word for the wand of magic missiles.  With Aravis’ hand poking out from under the table, three magic missiles thunk into one of the monsters.   Extinguished by Flicker, Step drops his greatsword and draws his bastard sword, a weapon carrying a more potent enchantment.  To his satisfaction it cleaves effectively into his opponent.   Before too long, both of the monsters are efficiently dispatched by the present members of the Company.   A minute later Kay and Step’s muscles start to relax.  There is some grumbling directed toward Pewter, who crawls Aravis’ body out from under the table once it’s safe.   The cat arranges the wizard’s body in a comfortable sitting position.  Everyone else watches in silence, wondering to what ends the mind of their friend was voyaging…* *The Crosser’s Maze cannot be fully comprehended.  Any explanation must resort to simile and metaphor.Heretofore, most of Aravis’ manipulations of the Crosser’s Maze have been to use it like (in effect) an extraordinarily powerful telescope, mounted high up in the multiverse beyond most normal planar boundaries.  He could “pan and zoom” his point of view, and in some cases (most notably with Grey Wolf) direct elemental energy to affect what he has seen, by focusing that energy through the “lense(es)” of living beings nearby.  It’s as though there’s a laser beam mounted on the side of the telescope.  To extend this metaphor, Aravis has discovered that the telescope is mounted in the window of an impossibly huge and labyrinthine mansion.   He suspects that he can take his eye off the telescope, and go back in through that window, wherein lies the strange inner-world of the Maze.  He knows that, even with his newly expanded consciousness, only a being of intellect far exceeding his own could hope to understand what the Maze truly is.  But full understanding (he hopes) is not necessary.  He opens the window and casts his mind forward into the “Inner Maze.”(At this point there is a glitch.  Some creatures are waiting to jump through that window and out through Aravis into the real world.  There’s nothing he can do to stop them, but he figures that Pewter will warn his friends to beware.  Quickly he “closes the window,” and sees now that it should be easy to stop it from happening again.  He observes that the borders of the Maze are crawling with such creatures, looking for ways out.  He doesn’t know what they are, how they came to be there or what they want, but they’re not very intelligent.)They shy away from Aravis, seemingly afraid, and do not pursue him into the Interior.  Ah well.  On to more important business.One of the surprising things he learns early on is that “time travel” within the Maze is not only possible, but also intrinsic to the way the Maze is constructed.  Such travel is difficult, tedious and extremely limited, but necessary for his journeys.  The Maze contains all things at all times, and with some work Aravis learns to shift his own frame of reference to any of them.  (It's still not clear to him whether he’d actually be visiting other space-times, or if he'd be exploring a recreation generated by the Maze, or simply just witnessing a very elaborate and accurate illusion. Sure feels real to him, though.  He decides to assume that it’s either a real or semi-sentient recreation that acts in enough respects like reality that he can learn what he needs from it.  If he starts doubting what he sees and learns… down that path madness lies, and not just figuratively.)This still leaves Aravis with a “needle-in-a-haystack” problem – where (and when) in all the vast expanse of the Maze are its former owners?  This would have been an impossible task, save for the fact that Aravis has met a former owner before, not including Solomea (whom he had met before acquiring the Maze himself).  >> In an undocumented side-adventure run by Piratecat earlier this year, the Company was drawn into the Maze by a villainous mirror-master named Paulos.  In the course of extricating themselves, the Company had a brief visit with an old Keeper of the Maze from Kivia.Aravis is able to recognize a type of mental energy signature unique to former Keepers, and he begins to concentrate, casting his mind deeper into the heart of the Maze.  Right away he notes that the Inner Maze is a veritable minefield.  Some of the danger is "physical" – magic vortices that could suck him in and spit him out into distant planes; eddies of magical force that could crush him into paste; energy storms raining down acid or ice in huge quantities -- that sort of thing.   But stretching through the general maelstrom is a connected lower-case-"m" maze of "constructed" bits -- like what Solomea had built for himself, or the mirror-master.If he can find one of these “safe places," he can use it as a jumping-off point for nearby space-times.  Want to go back 3000 years to a Djinn kingdom in the Elemental Plane of Air? Find a safe spot built in approximately the correct time and place, go there, and start using the Maze to move yourself through the dimensions.After some time (and he has no way of knowing how long, measured in the real world), Aravis’ concentration and mental exploration reveals several dozen “homes” of former Keepers of the Maze.  They are mostly concentrated in various times and places in Kivia, but a few are scattered throughout various Outer Planes, and two or three are in other Primes. One -- the oldest -- is in the Ethereal Plane.  The most recent is the "place" built by Solomea Pirenne -- it's already beginning to suffer from entropic breakdown.   Aravis realizes that one of the Primes could be Volpos, where Naradawk presently resides.  That could offer some possibilities…  but alas, it is not to be.  He still has to do this the hard way.With a start, he realizes something else – that if he wanted to spend a few decades at it, he could build himself a place of his own in the Inner Maze.  Maybe a good lab, or study, or library, or……must… concentrate…Shaking his mind loose of stray thoughts, Aravis decides to start with the eldest of the various Keepers.  This is the one in the Ethereal Plane, a place which should be easy enough to navigate, as the mind-based method of traveling the Ethereal is similar to how one voyages in the Maze.  His destination – the home of the Keeper – is not difficult to find, but is extremely well protected by its owner.  The Keeper lives in a semi-solid floating fortress, constructed from adamant and congealed thoughts.  Swaths of sucking void swirl around its perimeter, and it takes great skill and concentration for Aravis to avoid them as he approaches.  And when he arrives at what look like the gates, he is bombarded with distracting thoughts.  For a moment he forgets why he is even here -- more important matters await him back on Charagan.  Or perhaps he should further explore the Ethereal Plane, or even the Astral.  Pewter is hungry; he should make sure his familiar is properly fed.  Wait! His parents are in danger! He must go to them! He must…  he must…But Aravis’ concentration holds, and the gates become as mist to him, and he recalls his errand, and he goes in.The Keeper, oldest that survives, calls itself Ascending. It has no form, no gender, but it is all around Aravis within the fortress.  Its thoughts form in his mind, all at once, and it takes grueling concentration to sort them out."Another has come.""I am no longer concerned with your universe, Keeper.""I sense your need.""You are lucky to have survived this journey.""Vhadish knows. Long after me he shared your purpose.""I dislike disturbance. It draws me back.""Return to your world, Keeper. Your answers are there.""Leave me.""Vhadish knows."And then he finds himself miles away from the place, still in the Ethereal. The fortress of the Ascending is a mote at the edge of his perception within the Ethereal, and then it winks out, gone. He feels weak.  Even by Crosser's Maze standards it has been a surreal experience....to be continued...</blockquote>

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