Ivy and Chrome: Chapter 111
Ivy and Chrome: Chapter 111
Chapter 111
Unlikely Alliance
There is a flash....
You all find yourselves standing in a very large room. With freshly painted white walls and a large oak door with a brass doorknob at the far end of the room. The ceiling is at least twice the height of a normal human structure. Each of you is surprised to be standing where you considering what was happening just beforehand. Something feels different, but you are unsure of what it could be. Thirteen individuals, all with enough gear to carry for each of themselves. Yet, an odd group. What seems even more odd is that there are no windows in the room. The floor seems like it could be made of linoleum, but it has the same cold feeling as metal.
The first woman, a blonde haired female with very attractive features and an air of arrogance about her. Wearing a cape and almost the traditional garb of a mage, most would know her as Mistress Silveldari, but she has been out on her own adventuring, or so she believes. Upon glancing to her left, she notices the teenage boy. She knows him.
Tyran Lockheed, the young mage with a gift, or could it be a curse? His shoulder length brown hair is pulled back in a short pony-tail, revealing a young, thin face with deep-set brown eyes. Standing at just over 4 feet, he doesn’t look to weigh much more than 100 pounds. A dirty leather tunic and pants appear under a dark sooty cloak, which appears to have been torn or slashed in a number of places. His face and arms are similarly smeared with dirt and soot, with the exception of the trails leading from his eyes down his cheeks, showing the path that his recent tears must have taken. In direct contrast to the dirt and filth on the boy, a polished gold chain hangs around his neck, with large silver cross dangling from it. On his left shoulder, perches a hawk, or could it be an eagle, but it seems quite protective of him. His pack seems to move as though something else were alive on his person...Looking across from Lori is another attractive, raven- green haired female who seems to have almost glowing green eyes that seem to search for her next challenge. Her lithe, slim figure easily can hold the tool belt and gear that she is currently holding. Kira Nightfeather, as Lori knows her. What is she doing here now? What happened?
The creak of armor and muscles is heard from next to Kira as an 8 ft tall goliath of a man stretches a few muscles. The last he knew, he was fighting men with swords and pikes. He looks confusedly around. Kira and Lori had encountered him before, Cirrus...
Next to Cirrus, what looks to be his comrade, stands a 6-8ft tall lizard with blood red scales and eyes. Similar to a Velocer Raptor, most remember Karak't from the travels of the past at least once. Upon the back of the great lizard is a large cannon of some sort.
Confused, yet blinking. Another very attractive blonde looks from Lori to the others, but mainly noticing Lori, she frowns. Holding a beer in one hand and looking confusedly around, Jenna Page remembers clearly who most of these people are.
Behind Cirrus and Karak't stands a four armed cyborg that actually seems to display a smirk for facial features. It’s been years since Lori, Kira and Tyran had seen him. To'Mas. The last they knew, Mors and To'Mas were rivals in helping Drake. Since then, Mors has only made one other appearance. To'Mas seems to have a gash or two in his armor.
A fairly large, handsome, dark haired and dark eyed individual stands confidently, holding what looks to be a rune weapon in one hand and wearing some odd looking armor. Next to him stands another individual, bristling with enough armaments for a small war. Gor and Milo look at each other momentarily and then back to the group. Last Gor knew, he was looking to kill a flying deer for supper. How'd he get here?
An attractive, yet shy woman, wearing buckskin leggings and a vest-like leather shirt, seems covered in tattoos and keeps her distance. No one really knows her, but the name Catori seems to come to mind to some of those present. How could anyone know her name if they had never met her before?
Next to To'Mas, another attractive blonde, with short hair looks around at everyone. Only a few here know her but her name is quite evident, Maranna. Catori thinks that she may have seen her before in the past, but she isn't sure.
Not far from Gor and Milo, stands a foreboding, quiet individual, with semi-torn clothing but enough to cover him. He isn’t particularly handsome, but not too bad of looking. There seems to be an air about him as though something wasn't quite right. Yet, he is probably harmless if unprovoked. Reaper comes to mind at times when looking at him. Jenna seems to get an uneasy feeling from him, however, she knows him. He was at the bar that day... With Alec... How did she get here?
Finally, not far from the door, stands a woman that Lori, Kira, Tyran and the rest haven't seen in years. Wearing her buckskins and carrying her rifle just like she always did, there was something different about her. Ricky. Ricky Williams. Tyran first met her with an individual, named Torch. Along with a large group of mercs trying to save a farm from the Coalition. It was also Tyran's first encounter with an individual named Jedite. Last he knew, Jedite had died in a battle with a witch close to the magic zone.
The teenage boy's mouth drops open in surprise. 'That's the third time this week, Tyran. You're missing out on whole chunks of your life ... maybe that Dimensional Storm affected you worse than you thought,’ he thinks silently to himself. Suddenly, with a wave of relief as if he had been blind for decades and could see once again, he becomes aware of the familiar weight on his right shoulder. 'Well ... at least you got Dirk back. That would have taken a few days at least; we must be missing almost a week,' he concludes. 'Now where was I?'
... Nxla ...
'Oh right ... the attack. No time to figure it out now, though ... we obviously survived. The more pertinent question ... where are we now?' Turning his attention to the room around him, he begins to survey his surroundings and companions. With a quiet muttering, he begins to refresh his usual array of spells as he does so.
To'Mas looks around the room and considers firing a shot into the door. Why? Because To'Mas has an issue with being teleported into strange rooms with closed doors. "Stand back, I'm going to shoot the door. Unless one of you has a better idea."
Jenna backs up and leans against the wall, looking around while getting out of To'Mas' way, not wanting to be caught in any possible back blast. Jenna plays with one of her knifes as she sets the beer down after taking one last drink.
Lori raises a hand to catch the Borg's attention, "Umm, To'Mas? Why don't we see if it's unlocked first?" So saying she walks over to the door and tries to open it. "Out of curiosity, where were all of you a few minutes ago? Kira and I were near Tolkeen." She pauses as a thought occurs to her. She curses in Elvin then says, "Whoever brought us here had better have grabbed my car or I'll be really pissed."
"Lori, where's the fun in that? We'll try it your way first, but if not I have my pair of NG7's ready to go!" To'Mas thinks to himself, always with the thinking and never with the shooting. How's a guy going to have any fun around here? Ooh, the big lizard is here, I can have some fun with him!
Lori walks over to the door and turns the brass doorknob; it turns, but doesn't open. She can see sunlight coming through the keyhole. So it obviously leads outside. It's an old skeleton key lock.
The young boy has aged well in the last few years, his 16-year old frame slightly taller and stronger looking than before; though still below average for his age. His clothing has come a far way from the torn rags he was originally found in, and is adorned with numerous trinkets and amulets. Those who can see the invisible may be able to perceive the long worm-like thing with an eye on the end of it peering over one shoulder, with the Falcon known as 'Dirk' perched on the other. Even as he casts, Tyran turns to each of his companions. He spares a smile and a nod for Lori and Kira, happy to see that no harm had come to them after his unplanned dimensional re-route. He also smiles at Jenna... but is quick to notice that Drake and Alec are not with her.
His eyes fall on Cirrus ... a face from long past. They called him a Blademaster, if he remembered correctly. However, his memories from that far back could be confused ... The borg was there too ... Thomas, if he remembered correct. The lizard was new, as were a couple of the other women in the room. Then another smile and nod for Gor and Milo ... with a mental note to ask how his other orders were coming along.
Then a dark glance for Reaper. Last time he had seen him, Reaper was strolling into the bar just before Tyran was pushed into the rift. His lip curls up in a sneer as he mentally adds 'Armour of Ithan' to the list of spells he's refreshing. He glares coldly for a moment, watching Reaper silently survey the room, just as Tyran is. However, his glare is replaced with a dumb-ass grin for just a brief second when he sees Ricky standing behind Reaper. While Tyran was surrounded by these allies, Reaper couldn't be that much of a threat.
Seeing Lori fail to open the lock, To'Mas walks over, gently pushes Lori out of the way, aims both NG7's at the lock at point blank range and fires.
Karakt looks around the strange gathering trying to remember those he has meet before and get a feel for those he has not, To’Mas' sudden opening fire startles him some and he swings the huge rifle around his body so its slung under him and easier to get at if needed, come to think of it he's not sure how it got up on his back in the first place, he remembers running in the sand and fighting some people but not a lot else.
Lori winces a bit as Tomas blasts the door. "You know, you probably could have just kicked it open. How can someone who's mostly metal have that much testosterone?"
Seeing Lori fail to open the lock, To'Mas walks over, gently pushes Lori out of the way, aims both NG7's at the lock at point blank range and fires. "Sure ... bring the building down on us," Tyran chuckles to himself, confident his armor spell will protect him as he finishes his casting and watches the others in the room with hints of amusement and curiosity
"Yeah, it's funny because I don't have the glands that produce testosterone anymore! Go on, make more jokes about the brain in a jar, I don't mind at all." To'Mas looks back at the door, thinking, ‘Did it work?’
Seeing how this bunch of kids suddenly popped up here. Reaper thinking how this is little better than being some lizards sacrifice... He steps back on to a corner stretches out and looks at the mass people... He recognizes some of the people but reframes from speaking a word... He rather watches how all these people react with each...
As Maranna looks around quite confused she doesn't understand what’s all going on. One minute several of whom she recognizes in the same room with her, are fighting... Lots of gun firing and killing... But now... Where the hell is she and why is everyone in the same room? Hmmm as she thinks to herself she just quietly observes to see what will happen next... kind of finding humor in watching everyone trying to figure out how to get out the blasted door, but she doesn’t say anything because she hasn't figured anything out as well.
Karakt looks at the man child curiously, wondering what language he is speaking and trying to recall where he has heard it before.
After Reaper sets back and watching everything, Reaper sees that a boy is mumbling up a storm, the lizard is going through a range of emotions, and notices a couple of morons trying to open a locked door. Reaper says in a loud voice, "Do you mind letting me try to open that door before you blow us all to hell?"
Gor looks around and says very loud "You stupid coward come out and fight me like a man and quit jerking me around! I'm getting tired of ending up in places I don't have a clue about." Then Gor will look at Milo and says, "I thought I left you in charge of Savage what are you doing here? Hey, it’s good to see you how are things going in Savage? Did you happen to see Carol there since the last time I was there?"
"Gor, I thought you left to go somewhere," he says, "and I left the next person in charge of savage so me and Tanya could have a trip.” Looking around, he says with a depressing look, "has anyone see her?"
"Let me take a look at that lock before To'Mas turns it into something mel..." Kira's voice trails off as she watches To'Mas shoot the door. "Oh well never mind but I might of been able to try and open that a bit more quietly." Kira smiles at To'Mas. As Kira gets to the door she turns to Lori. "Any idea at all how we all just seemed to for lack of any better word, just pop in here all of the sudden?"
To'Mas opens up with his pistols. The lasers burn 1 foot wide holes into the door. By the look of it, the door could easily be kicked in. There is a dark room on the other side of the door. Yet, upon looking under the door and the keyhole, there is daylight coming from there!
Tyran finishes his mumbling. To everyone else, he seems to looking around intently; in particularly at the door.
(He senses a little bit of evil in the area, nothing intense. He senses one source of supernatural evil, unearthly and powerful in nature. There WAS dimensional activity, but the traces are faint and there are no signs of a rift nearby. He senses a fading dimensional portal no more than a few yards from himself, but cannot directly see it! He also senses a form of dimensional maelstrom occurring in the weak dimensional fabric of this very room, as though this room is its own dimensional pocket, however, whatever is outside of the dimensional boundaries is dangerous to attempt traveling through. Deductive reasoning indicates that someone knows each of the people here and meant to bring them here via some form of powerful ritual.) The source of the dimensional portal comes strongly from the door that To'Mas just blasted two gaping holes into. It's fading fast.
After the blast of the guns, Reaper thought to himself, "oh well," so Reaper comes out of his corner of the room and walk into the next room seeing the door is no longer there and says to the others, "Any of you coming or are you all gonna just stand there like a pile of jackasses?"
The door is still there, it just has two gaping holes in it. Heck, a 12 year old could jump kick it down, it’s so badly damaged.
"Hmmm ... magic door ... dimensional portal ... fading fast."
"Congratulations, you just shot what could have been the only way back home, tin-man!" Tyran states with a frown.
Walking up to the door, he continues. "This room is a pocket dimension in and of itself ... which means it probably exists inside another dimension. I'm sure it wouldn't bother you," he adds, gesturing to To’Mas, "but we don't even know whether the parent dimension contains breathable air."
"Now judging from the size, I'd guess that this dimension was artificially created for the sole purpose of bringing us here. It must have taken an enormous amount of dimensional energy to do that... so we're probably dealing with someone extremely powerful. Of course, that means that on the plus side," he adds, again smiling at To’Mas, "we can assume that either there IS air, or they plan on eating us, and we won't need any."
Studying the door, he shares his findings. "There's something about this door ... it was probably magical, being tied to a dimensional portal like that. Probably enchanted ... but in that case, your gunshots wouldn't have affected it. Maybe it was some sort of advanced techno-wizardry ... and possibly the only way out of here ... but in any case, it's damaged now."
Tyran considers attempting to grip the remains of the dimensional portal and hold it open (i.e. the same way as a combat-oriented 'Dimension Sense' counter), but knows that he would not be strong enough to do it alone; and it would be dangerous with the Dimensional Maelstrom raging just outside the fabric of this dimension. Tyran takes a closer look at the door, reading the keyhole and the holes To’Mas just created, trying to learn whether they are two different dimensions, and getting a reading on it if one of the two is disappearing with the portal.
"Breathable Shmeathable, Tyran. I don't like hanging around all day while you magic types do stuff. If you felt you needed to do something, you should have spoke up, and faster." To'Mas gasps "Air... is getting thin....hard to breathe.... urk... ack....ssss..... Can’t breathe..... gggg..... Whoops! I don't need air, silly me, how _could_ I forget?"
Reaper sees what just happened and almost begins to laugh as he says to To’Mas, “hey tin man, if you don't need air, then maybe you won't need a body to boot? Shall we test that theory my good boy?" Reaper begins to give an evil smile as he looks around.
Catori keeps a constant eye on all of them, clearly keeping her distance as well as to herself, being as she isn't familiar to any of them. Most of her attention when not scanning the others is focused on the boy Tyran. Something familiar about him even though she knows she has never met him. She calmly brushes her fingers over one of her tattoo's as a precaution
Maranna just sits back and giggles to herself as she watches everyone trying to do something but making asses of them. But that’s ok we need humor we need laughter we need something to keep us going....We've been thru too much shit and now here’s another puzzle..We will get thru this one but why are there so many people, people I haven't seen before? She looks around the room and just takes in all she can sense from them, tries to figure out what purpose they have here. What all of us have.
Jenna watches all the action as her body tenses up a bit and she becomes ready to react should anything happen. She fiddles with her knife, though it looks more like she is testing the weight of it now, more than playing with it.
Ricky is startled by the amount of people in the room; last she knew she was alone. She looks at all the people recognizing Tyran she moves closer to the young one who fascinates her. Jumping at the blast and glaring at the idiot who couldn't wait, she stops. Hearing what Tyran says about dimensions, she nods at him. Saying aloud "I think before anything else is screwed up, *glaring at the tin box* we should get some more information here, who is everyone, where were you when you were pulled here? We need to figure out what the hell is going on before we walk into something possibly even an ambush. I'm Ricky; I am usually living in the forest until the coalition started their crap, now I am out for revenge." Looking around at the group, she states "Next?"
Cirrus nods in agreement and says, "My name is cirrus i am from lone star."
Reaper looks back at Ricky and says, "The name’s Daniel Manson. I’m from a place called the night lands... I’m the last of my kind." Reaper turns to Tyran and says, “I am what is called a night bane. Some of my kind has made it here to this world long ago. But as far as I know, I am the only one that’s left." He turns back to Ricky, “if any of you seriously want to know why I am this way. Maybe you should ask. I can tell you what I know of the hell I’m from ..."
Milo says with a smile, "hi. I’m Milo and I’m the chief of police of New Savage. Nice to meet you guys."
Gor looks around then says, “Greeting to you all I'm Gor. I am the owner of New Savage it lays at a nexus and since I went home to Tolkeen from a waypoint I have been jumped around from one world to the next and now here sorry for my outburst. I'm just getting tired and hungry anyone have any rations I might have? There are some of you I know and have dealt with and others that I consider to be friends. For you who hate the coalition I already consider an ally." then Gor will use his axe's invulnerability.
Karakt fishes around in one of the backpacks strapped to his legs and pulls out some beef jerky to offer to Gor, then makes a few strange noises in his usual attempt to pronounce his own name until it finally sounds right.
"I'm Maranna and I'm trying to figure out the same stuff as you guys are. Some of you I vaguely remember meeting or seeing but some of you I never met. So lets finish the intros and see what we can do to get out of here.”
Tyran is unable to figure out whether the door and the visible room beyond the door are separate dimensions. As everyone is giving introductions, Lori manages to get her vibro-blade into the right position and slices through the lock. The door opens with a creek. Bright light shines through the doorway as though it was daylight. What everyone sees continues to vary though, as though the fabric of reality isn't solid. At first it almost looks as though they are looking through a desert, and then rolling grass hills which fades to the snowy peaks of some mountains somewhere, then suddenly appearing to be the crater pocked landscape of some alien world, then a dense thicket of what looks to be alien-looking plant life. Tyran can sense the portal stabilize, but in its weakened state, what it is connected to is uncertain. He isn’t even sure if it’s a real dimension. Upon testing his senses of what he feels between the portal and the room behind the door, the room behind is stable and is again, another dimension. He also senses that something powerful is feeding off of the fabric of the dimension that was fading. A feeling of dread seems to wash over him, something quite evil and very familiar. A familiar voice seems to scream in his head, 'free me, boy!"
Jenna tosses her knife up, she reaches to catch it, testing its balance. She finds herself staring at empty space where the knife was just a moment ago. She hears screaming to her left and notices that she is standing amongst a pile of broken concrete slabs with twisted pipes and girders jutting from the rubble all around her. "Get them off me!" the voice continues screaming. She turns to look to find a man in his early twenties clawing at his face. Having already removed most of the right side of his face and his eyelid, he notices Jenna, his hair could have blonde, but the blood and pieces of skin have long since turned it a crimson brown. "They're eating me!" Jenna notices nothing on him; the man simply seems to be tearing his own skin off. Jenna blinks as the man begins pulling a piece of muscle that his fingernails manage to grasp. The tearing noise is awful sickly wet sound. His breath pushes out a spray of blood through his teeth on his lipless face. The knife drops next to her feet as she stands staring at the group, once again in the room where the other twelve are either introducing themselves, or working on figuring out the door. Jenna never really got to test the balance of her knife. Was it a vision or is her "problem" kicking in again?
A breeze passes through the door into the room with everyone. It almost sounds like a breath. Some can swear they can hear a word in the breath, "eaturnus..."
Focusing on the door, Tyran ignores the introductions around him. Mentally, he makes note of the various spells going off around him, but chalks it up to general nervousness and self-preservation. Tyran watches carefully as Lori opens the door, ready to attempt to slam it shut at the first sign of trouble.
The majority of his attention is on the door and shifting portal. "I've never really seen something like this before ..." he states, a little unsure of himself for the first time in years. "It almost appears as if this pocket dimension doesn't really exist inside another dimension ... rather, I think it may exist BETWEEN dimensions. And judging from the way this portal is shifting ... I'd be inclined to guess that the entire dimension is itself caught within a dimensional maelstrom." Oblivious to the fact that most people in the room probably don't have a clue what he is talking about, Tyran continues talking, trying to work things out for him as he does so.
"The inter-dimensional fabric surrounding this room is in a pure chaotic state, explains why it seems to be randomly changing dimensions. If they are indeed random, it's only a matter of time before ..." His voice trailing off, he looks to be deep in thought for a moment or two before continuing. "This dimension may not be artificial, but I suspect there definitely something un-natural affecting it. Chaotic shifting like this ... It's almost as if something is trying to control this dimension, and force a connection with it. But why would something try this? Perhaps to escape their own dimension... or a dimensional prison..." Tyran swallows nervously at this thought. "But if that's the case ... this is bad ... REALLY bad ... and I hope to hell I'm wrong." Lifting his backpack off his shoulder, he reaches into a side pocket to draw out a short iron frying pan with a long handle. Disconnecting the handle from the frying pan, he returns the backpack to his back, standing back up with the iron rod handle in one hand, and the fry pan in the other.
Starting at one side of the door, he runs the rod against the wall and traces around the walls of the room to the other side of the door (looking for illusions). Meanwhile, he continues to talk (but not really to anyone else in particular) in the room ... "I need more information ... and between the maelstrom and dimensional shifting, it's making things very difficult to read. If that portal is opening to different dimensions at random, walking through that door could be extremely dangerous. Of course, most significant dimensional portals are two ways, which means staying here is probably just as dangerous.
"Bill, I heard a story once of a psychic who bragged he could match any shifter in reading rifts or portals ... does such ability exist in the psychic world? I think I could really use some assistance with this little dimensional puzzle...”
Getting back to the door, he holds the frying pan out in front of him, and telekinetically floats it out the door and back in again, in order to test a couple of things:
Unlikely Alliance
There is a flash....
You all find yourselves standing in a very large room. With freshly painted white walls and a large oak door with a brass doorknob at the far end of the room. The ceiling is at least twice the height of a normal human structure. Each of you is surprised to be standing where you considering what was happening just beforehand. Something feels different, but you are unsure of what it could be. Thirteen individuals, all with enough gear to carry for each of themselves. Yet, an odd group. What seems even more odd is that there are no windows in the room. The floor seems like it could be made of linoleum, but it has the same cold feeling as metal.
The first woman, a blonde haired female with very attractive features and an air of arrogance about her. Wearing a cape and almost the traditional garb of a mage, most would know her as Mistress Silveldari, but she has been out on her own adventuring, or so she believes. Upon glancing to her left, she notices the teenage boy. She knows him.
Tyran Lockheed, the young mage with a gift, or could it be a curse? His shoulder length brown hair is pulled back in a short pony-tail, revealing a young, thin face with deep-set brown eyes. Standing at just over 4 feet, he doesn’t look to weigh much more than 100 pounds. A dirty leather tunic and pants appear under a dark sooty cloak, which appears to have been torn or slashed in a number of places. His face and arms are similarly smeared with dirt and soot, with the exception of the trails leading from his eyes down his cheeks, showing the path that his recent tears must have taken. In direct contrast to the dirt and filth on the boy, a polished gold chain hangs around his neck, with large silver cross dangling from it. On his left shoulder, perches a hawk, or could it be an eagle, but it seems quite protective of him. His pack seems to move as though something else were alive on his person...Looking across from Lori is another attractive, raven- green haired female who seems to have almost glowing green eyes that seem to search for her next challenge. Her lithe, slim figure easily can hold the tool belt and gear that she is currently holding. Kira Nightfeather, as Lori knows her. What is she doing here now? What happened?
The creak of armor and muscles is heard from next to Kira as an 8 ft tall goliath of a man stretches a few muscles. The last he knew, he was fighting men with swords and pikes. He looks confusedly around. Kira and Lori had encountered him before, Cirrus...
Next to Cirrus, what looks to be his comrade, stands a 6-8ft tall lizard with blood red scales and eyes. Similar to a Velocer Raptor, most remember Karak't from the travels of the past at least once. Upon the back of the great lizard is a large cannon of some sort.
Confused, yet blinking. Another very attractive blonde looks from Lori to the others, but mainly noticing Lori, she frowns. Holding a beer in one hand and looking confusedly around, Jenna Page remembers clearly who most of these people are.
Behind Cirrus and Karak't stands a four armed cyborg that actually seems to display a smirk for facial features. It’s been years since Lori, Kira and Tyran had seen him. To'Mas. The last they knew, Mors and To'Mas were rivals in helping Drake. Since then, Mors has only made one other appearance. To'Mas seems to have a gash or two in his armor.
A fairly large, handsome, dark haired and dark eyed individual stands confidently, holding what looks to be a rune weapon in one hand and wearing some odd looking armor. Next to him stands another individual, bristling with enough armaments for a small war. Gor and Milo look at each other momentarily and then back to the group. Last Gor knew, he was looking to kill a flying deer for supper. How'd he get here?
An attractive, yet shy woman, wearing buckskin leggings and a vest-like leather shirt, seems covered in tattoos and keeps her distance. No one really knows her, but the name Catori seems to come to mind to some of those present. How could anyone know her name if they had never met her before?
Next to To'Mas, another attractive blonde, with short hair looks around at everyone. Only a few here know her but her name is quite evident, Maranna. Catori thinks that she may have seen her before in the past, but she isn't sure.
Not far from Gor and Milo, stands a foreboding, quiet individual, with semi-torn clothing but enough to cover him. He isn’t particularly handsome, but not too bad of looking. There seems to be an air about him as though something wasn't quite right. Yet, he is probably harmless if unprovoked. Reaper comes to mind at times when looking at him. Jenna seems to get an uneasy feeling from him, however, she knows him. He was at the bar that day... With Alec... How did she get here?
Finally, not far from the door, stands a woman that Lori, Kira, Tyran and the rest haven't seen in years. Wearing her buckskins and carrying her rifle just like she always did, there was something different about her. Ricky. Ricky Williams. Tyran first met her with an individual, named Torch. Along with a large group of mercs trying to save a farm from the Coalition. It was also Tyran's first encounter with an individual named Jedite. Last he knew, Jedite had died in a battle with a witch close to the magic zone.
The teenage boy's mouth drops open in surprise. 'That's the third time this week, Tyran. You're missing out on whole chunks of your life ... maybe that Dimensional Storm affected you worse than you thought,’ he thinks silently to himself. Suddenly, with a wave of relief as if he had been blind for decades and could see once again, he becomes aware of the familiar weight on his right shoulder. 'Well ... at least you got Dirk back. That would have taken a few days at least; we must be missing almost a week,' he concludes. 'Now where was I?'
... Nxla ...
'Oh right ... the attack. No time to figure it out now, though ... we obviously survived. The more pertinent question ... where are we now?' Turning his attention to the room around him, he begins to survey his surroundings and companions. With a quiet muttering, he begins to refresh his usual array of spells as he does so.
To'Mas looks around the room and considers firing a shot into the door. Why? Because To'Mas has an issue with being teleported into strange rooms with closed doors. "Stand back, I'm going to shoot the door. Unless one of you has a better idea."
Jenna backs up and leans against the wall, looking around while getting out of To'Mas' way, not wanting to be caught in any possible back blast. Jenna plays with one of her knifes as she sets the beer down after taking one last drink.
Lori raises a hand to catch the Borg's attention, "Umm, To'Mas? Why don't we see if it's unlocked first?" So saying she walks over to the door and tries to open it. "Out of curiosity, where were all of you a few minutes ago? Kira and I were near Tolkeen." She pauses as a thought occurs to her. She curses in Elvin then says, "Whoever brought us here had better have grabbed my car or I'll be really pissed."
"Lori, where's the fun in that? We'll try it your way first, but if not I have my pair of NG7's ready to go!" To'Mas thinks to himself, always with the thinking and never with the shooting. How's a guy going to have any fun around here? Ooh, the big lizard is here, I can have some fun with him!
Lori walks over to the door and turns the brass doorknob; it turns, but doesn't open. She can see sunlight coming through the keyhole. So it obviously leads outside. It's an old skeleton key lock.
The young boy has aged well in the last few years, his 16-year old frame slightly taller and stronger looking than before; though still below average for his age. His clothing has come a far way from the torn rags he was originally found in, and is adorned with numerous trinkets and amulets. Those who can see the invisible may be able to perceive the long worm-like thing with an eye on the end of it peering over one shoulder, with the Falcon known as 'Dirk' perched on the other. Even as he casts, Tyran turns to each of his companions. He spares a smile and a nod for Lori and Kira, happy to see that no harm had come to them after his unplanned dimensional re-route. He also smiles at Jenna... but is quick to notice that Drake and Alec are not with her.
His eyes fall on Cirrus ... a face from long past. They called him a Blademaster, if he remembered correctly. However, his memories from that far back could be confused ... The borg was there too ... Thomas, if he remembered correct. The lizard was new, as were a couple of the other women in the room. Then another smile and nod for Gor and Milo ... with a mental note to ask how his other orders were coming along.
Then a dark glance for Reaper. Last time he had seen him, Reaper was strolling into the bar just before Tyran was pushed into the rift. His lip curls up in a sneer as he mentally adds 'Armour of Ithan' to the list of spells he's refreshing. He glares coldly for a moment, watching Reaper silently survey the room, just as Tyran is. However, his glare is replaced with a dumb-ass grin for just a brief second when he sees Ricky standing behind Reaper. While Tyran was surrounded by these allies, Reaper couldn't be that much of a threat.
Seeing Lori fail to open the lock, To'Mas walks over, gently pushes Lori out of the way, aims both NG7's at the lock at point blank range and fires.
Karakt looks around the strange gathering trying to remember those he has meet before and get a feel for those he has not, To’Mas' sudden opening fire startles him some and he swings the huge rifle around his body so its slung under him and easier to get at if needed, come to think of it he's not sure how it got up on his back in the first place, he remembers running in the sand and fighting some people but not a lot else.
Lori winces a bit as Tomas blasts the door. "You know, you probably could have just kicked it open. How can someone who's mostly metal have that much testosterone?"
Seeing Lori fail to open the lock, To'Mas walks over, gently pushes Lori out of the way, aims both NG7's at the lock at point blank range and fires. "Sure ... bring the building down on us," Tyran chuckles to himself, confident his armor spell will protect him as he finishes his casting and watches the others in the room with hints of amusement and curiosity
"Yeah, it's funny because I don't have the glands that produce testosterone anymore! Go on, make more jokes about the brain in a jar, I don't mind at all." To'Mas looks back at the door, thinking, ‘Did it work?’
Seeing how this bunch of kids suddenly popped up here. Reaper thinking how this is little better than being some lizards sacrifice... He steps back on to a corner stretches out and looks at the mass people... He recognizes some of the people but reframes from speaking a word... He rather watches how all these people react with each...
As Maranna looks around quite confused she doesn't understand what’s all going on. One minute several of whom she recognizes in the same room with her, are fighting... Lots of gun firing and killing... But now... Where the hell is she and why is everyone in the same room? Hmmm as she thinks to herself she just quietly observes to see what will happen next... kind of finding humor in watching everyone trying to figure out how to get out the blasted door, but she doesn’t say anything because she hasn't figured anything out as well.
Karakt looks at the man child curiously, wondering what language he is speaking and trying to recall where he has heard it before.
After Reaper sets back and watching everything, Reaper sees that a boy is mumbling up a storm, the lizard is going through a range of emotions, and notices a couple of morons trying to open a locked door. Reaper says in a loud voice, "Do you mind letting me try to open that door before you blow us all to hell?"
Gor looks around and says very loud "You stupid coward come out and fight me like a man and quit jerking me around! I'm getting tired of ending up in places I don't have a clue about." Then Gor will look at Milo and says, "I thought I left you in charge of Savage what are you doing here? Hey, it’s good to see you how are things going in Savage? Did you happen to see Carol there since the last time I was there?"
"Gor, I thought you left to go somewhere," he says, "and I left the next person in charge of savage so me and Tanya could have a trip.” Looking around, he says with a depressing look, "has anyone see her?"
"Let me take a look at that lock before To'Mas turns it into something mel..." Kira's voice trails off as she watches To'Mas shoot the door. "Oh well never mind but I might of been able to try and open that a bit more quietly." Kira smiles at To'Mas. As Kira gets to the door she turns to Lori. "Any idea at all how we all just seemed to for lack of any better word, just pop in here all of the sudden?"
To'Mas opens up with his pistols. The lasers burn 1 foot wide holes into the door. By the look of it, the door could easily be kicked in. There is a dark room on the other side of the door. Yet, upon looking under the door and the keyhole, there is daylight coming from there!
Tyran finishes his mumbling. To everyone else, he seems to looking around intently; in particularly at the door.
(He senses a little bit of evil in the area, nothing intense. He senses one source of supernatural evil, unearthly and powerful in nature. There WAS dimensional activity, but the traces are faint and there are no signs of a rift nearby. He senses a fading dimensional portal no more than a few yards from himself, but cannot directly see it! He also senses a form of dimensional maelstrom occurring in the weak dimensional fabric of this very room, as though this room is its own dimensional pocket, however, whatever is outside of the dimensional boundaries is dangerous to attempt traveling through. Deductive reasoning indicates that someone knows each of the people here and meant to bring them here via some form of powerful ritual.) The source of the dimensional portal comes strongly from the door that To'Mas just blasted two gaping holes into. It's fading fast.
After the blast of the guns, Reaper thought to himself, "oh well," so Reaper comes out of his corner of the room and walk into the next room seeing the door is no longer there and says to the others, "Any of you coming or are you all gonna just stand there like a pile of jackasses?"
The door is still there, it just has two gaping holes in it. Heck, a 12 year old could jump kick it down, it’s so badly damaged.
"Hmmm ... magic door ... dimensional portal ... fading fast."
"Congratulations, you just shot what could have been the only way back home, tin-man!" Tyran states with a frown.
Walking up to the door, he continues. "This room is a pocket dimension in and of itself ... which means it probably exists inside another dimension. I'm sure it wouldn't bother you," he adds, gesturing to To’Mas, "but we don't even know whether the parent dimension contains breathable air."
"Now judging from the size, I'd guess that this dimension was artificially created for the sole purpose of bringing us here. It must have taken an enormous amount of dimensional energy to do that... so we're probably dealing with someone extremely powerful. Of course, that means that on the plus side," he adds, again smiling at To’Mas, "we can assume that either there IS air, or they plan on eating us, and we won't need any."
Studying the door, he shares his findings. "There's something about this door ... it was probably magical, being tied to a dimensional portal like that. Probably enchanted ... but in that case, your gunshots wouldn't have affected it. Maybe it was some sort of advanced techno-wizardry ... and possibly the only way out of here ... but in any case, it's damaged now."
Tyran considers attempting to grip the remains of the dimensional portal and hold it open (i.e. the same way as a combat-oriented 'Dimension Sense' counter), but knows that he would not be strong enough to do it alone; and it would be dangerous with the Dimensional Maelstrom raging just outside the fabric of this dimension. Tyran takes a closer look at the door, reading the keyhole and the holes To’Mas just created, trying to learn whether they are two different dimensions, and getting a reading on it if one of the two is disappearing with the portal.
"Breathable Shmeathable, Tyran. I don't like hanging around all day while you magic types do stuff. If you felt you needed to do something, you should have spoke up, and faster." To'Mas gasps "Air... is getting thin....hard to breathe.... urk... ack....ssss..... Can’t breathe..... gggg..... Whoops! I don't need air, silly me, how _could_ I forget?"
Reaper sees what just happened and almost begins to laugh as he says to To’Mas, “hey tin man, if you don't need air, then maybe you won't need a body to boot? Shall we test that theory my good boy?" Reaper begins to give an evil smile as he looks around.
Catori keeps a constant eye on all of them, clearly keeping her distance as well as to herself, being as she isn't familiar to any of them. Most of her attention when not scanning the others is focused on the boy Tyran. Something familiar about him even though she knows she has never met him. She calmly brushes her fingers over one of her tattoo's as a precaution
Maranna just sits back and giggles to herself as she watches everyone trying to do something but making asses of them. But that’s ok we need humor we need laughter we need something to keep us going....We've been thru too much shit and now here’s another puzzle..We will get thru this one but why are there so many people, people I haven't seen before? She looks around the room and just takes in all she can sense from them, tries to figure out what purpose they have here. What all of us have.
Jenna watches all the action as her body tenses up a bit and she becomes ready to react should anything happen. She fiddles with her knife, though it looks more like she is testing the weight of it now, more than playing with it.
Ricky is startled by the amount of people in the room; last she knew she was alone. She looks at all the people recognizing Tyran she moves closer to the young one who fascinates her. Jumping at the blast and glaring at the idiot who couldn't wait, she stops. Hearing what Tyran says about dimensions, she nods at him. Saying aloud "I think before anything else is screwed up, *glaring at the tin box* we should get some more information here, who is everyone, where were you when you were pulled here? We need to figure out what the hell is going on before we walk into something possibly even an ambush. I'm Ricky; I am usually living in the forest until the coalition started their crap, now I am out for revenge." Looking around at the group, she states "Next?"
Cirrus nods in agreement and says, "My name is cirrus i am from lone star."
Reaper looks back at Ricky and says, "The name’s Daniel Manson. I’m from a place called the night lands... I’m the last of my kind." Reaper turns to Tyran and says, “I am what is called a night bane. Some of my kind has made it here to this world long ago. But as far as I know, I am the only one that’s left." He turns back to Ricky, “if any of you seriously want to know why I am this way. Maybe you should ask. I can tell you what I know of the hell I’m from ..."
Milo says with a smile, "hi. I’m Milo and I’m the chief of police of New Savage. Nice to meet you guys."
Gor looks around then says, “Greeting to you all I'm Gor. I am the owner of New Savage it lays at a nexus and since I went home to Tolkeen from a waypoint I have been jumped around from one world to the next and now here sorry for my outburst. I'm just getting tired and hungry anyone have any rations I might have? There are some of you I know and have dealt with and others that I consider to be friends. For you who hate the coalition I already consider an ally." then Gor will use his axe's invulnerability.
Karakt fishes around in one of the backpacks strapped to his legs and pulls out some beef jerky to offer to Gor, then makes a few strange noises in his usual attempt to pronounce his own name until it finally sounds right.
"I'm Maranna and I'm trying to figure out the same stuff as you guys are. Some of you I vaguely remember meeting or seeing but some of you I never met. So lets finish the intros and see what we can do to get out of here.”
Tyran is unable to figure out whether the door and the visible room beyond the door are separate dimensions. As everyone is giving introductions, Lori manages to get her vibro-blade into the right position and slices through the lock. The door opens with a creek. Bright light shines through the doorway as though it was daylight. What everyone sees continues to vary though, as though the fabric of reality isn't solid. At first it almost looks as though they are looking through a desert, and then rolling grass hills which fades to the snowy peaks of some mountains somewhere, then suddenly appearing to be the crater pocked landscape of some alien world, then a dense thicket of what looks to be alien-looking plant life. Tyran can sense the portal stabilize, but in its weakened state, what it is connected to is uncertain. He isn’t even sure if it’s a real dimension. Upon testing his senses of what he feels between the portal and the room behind the door, the room behind is stable and is again, another dimension. He also senses that something powerful is feeding off of the fabric of the dimension that was fading. A feeling of dread seems to wash over him, something quite evil and very familiar. A familiar voice seems to scream in his head, 'free me, boy!"
Jenna tosses her knife up, she reaches to catch it, testing its balance. She finds herself staring at empty space where the knife was just a moment ago. She hears screaming to her left and notices that she is standing amongst a pile of broken concrete slabs with twisted pipes and girders jutting from the rubble all around her. "Get them off me!" the voice continues screaming. She turns to look to find a man in his early twenties clawing at his face. Having already removed most of the right side of his face and his eyelid, he notices Jenna, his hair could have blonde, but the blood and pieces of skin have long since turned it a crimson brown. "They're eating me!" Jenna notices nothing on him; the man simply seems to be tearing his own skin off. Jenna blinks as the man begins pulling a piece of muscle that his fingernails manage to grasp. The tearing noise is awful sickly wet sound. His breath pushes out a spray of blood through his teeth on his lipless face. The knife drops next to her feet as she stands staring at the group, once again in the room where the other twelve are either introducing themselves, or working on figuring out the door. Jenna never really got to test the balance of her knife. Was it a vision or is her "problem" kicking in again?
A breeze passes through the door into the room with everyone. It almost sounds like a breath. Some can swear they can hear a word in the breath, "eaturnus..."
Focusing on the door, Tyran ignores the introductions around him. Mentally, he makes note of the various spells going off around him, but chalks it up to general nervousness and self-preservation. Tyran watches carefully as Lori opens the door, ready to attempt to slam it shut at the first sign of trouble.
The majority of his attention is on the door and shifting portal. "I've never really seen something like this before ..." he states, a little unsure of himself for the first time in years. "It almost appears as if this pocket dimension doesn't really exist inside another dimension ... rather, I think it may exist BETWEEN dimensions. And judging from the way this portal is shifting ... I'd be inclined to guess that the entire dimension is itself caught within a dimensional maelstrom." Oblivious to the fact that most people in the room probably don't have a clue what he is talking about, Tyran continues talking, trying to work things out for him as he does so.
"The inter-dimensional fabric surrounding this room is in a pure chaotic state, explains why it seems to be randomly changing dimensions. If they are indeed random, it's only a matter of time before ..." His voice trailing off, he looks to be deep in thought for a moment or two before continuing. "This dimension may not be artificial, but I suspect there definitely something un-natural affecting it. Chaotic shifting like this ... It's almost as if something is trying to control this dimension, and force a connection with it. But why would something try this? Perhaps to escape their own dimension... or a dimensional prison..." Tyran swallows nervously at this thought. "But if that's the case ... this is bad ... REALLY bad ... and I hope to hell I'm wrong." Lifting his backpack off his shoulder, he reaches into a side pocket to draw out a short iron frying pan with a long handle. Disconnecting the handle from the frying pan, he returns the backpack to his back, standing back up with the iron rod handle in one hand, and the fry pan in the other.
Starting at one side of the door, he runs the rod against the wall and traces around the walls of the room to the other side of the door (looking for illusions). Meanwhile, he continues to talk (but not really to anyone else in particular) in the room ... "I need more information ... and between the maelstrom and dimensional shifting, it's making things very difficult to read. If that portal is opening to different dimensions at random, walking through that door could be extremely dangerous. Of course, most significant dimensional portals are two ways, which means staying here is probably just as dangerous.
"Bill, I heard a story once of a psychic who bragged he could match any shifter in reading rifts or portals ... does such ability exist in the psychic world? I think I could really use some assistance with this little dimensional puzzle...”
Getting back to the door, he holds the frying pan out in front of him, and telekinetically floats it out the door and back in again, in order to test a couple of things:
"I plan to live forever. Or die trying..." Vila - Blakes 7
Re: Ivy and Chrome: Chapter 111
1. If the dimension shifting is an illusion, plunging something made of iron into it should dispel the illusion.
2. If he can float the pot out and then back in again, the dimensional portal is two-way.
"Something was drawing off the last dimension this doorway was connected to, if it is indeed connected to another dimension. We’re dealing with powers way beyond any of us ..." he states ominously. Feeling the breeze as the door opens, Tyran is sure to glance down at one of his amulets, to check for the presence of spirits or entities.
Reaper walks up to Tyran says in his ear, “If you want something a bit stronger to test this little doorway. Then just let me know kid. You have no idea of what I could assist in here." Reaper backs off a bit and waits to see what the pot does.
Lori looks away from the door and studies the group as she introduces herself. "My name is Lorianna Silveldari, though most people just call me Lori. I'm a mage so I don't exactly get along with the CS either. Last I knew, Kira and I were talking with an old friend in a town outside Tolkeen." Since she doesn't really know several of these people, Lori feels it's better not to specify who the friend was or exactly which town they were in. She then goes back to examining the doorway and the rest of the room, half listening to Tyran. She knows he's knows more about dimensional travel than she does. "I wonder if it was shifting between locations before the door was damaged?" she wonders, shooting an annoyed look towards To'Mas.
Jenna looks down at the knife on the floor and shivers slightly as she bends at her knees, reaching down for the knife. She blinks several times as her mind tries to deal with what it just saw. She quietly says "I'm Jenna", deciding that is all she is going to say until she figures out what in the world is going on. She listens to the kid explain what he thinks is going on with the door and shakes her head 0O dang portals.. O0 She stares off into space deep in thought about what she just saw, trying to make sense of it.
"Hello my name is Kira and Lori has just stated what we were doing before we ended up in this strange place." Hearing what a few of the others are saying about this place and most if not all of it sounding above her capabilities, Kira will take a quick inventory of her things. Kira will also take a look around to see if any of her areas of expertise might be of any help.
"Back off, nightfreak," Tyran whispers back without turning around. "Your theatrics bore me. Unless you're trying to convince me that you were the one responsible for ambushing me in Ishpeming, get the fuck out of my space." The falcon's head turns to keep an eye on Reaper as the teenager begins to mumble to himself yet again.
Maranna hears something strange but can't quite figure it out, its muffled but by the looks of some in the room they heard something too. "Did you guys hear that?" Everyone just kind of looks around puzzled because did we hear something or are we freaking out? Hmm. ”Okay I'll put my foot in my mouth and say I DID hear something...like at-ur atrun ..."OH FUCK! aeturnus..That’s what it is!" Now some are starting to say the same thing.
Reaper looks at him, “I ambush you, funny how the demon showed his face after you got thrown. It threw me into another rifts, I ended up almost being raptor food and a lizard men’s sacrifice. You think maybe you can give me some lead way kid. I could possible help get us all out of here. But you will have to do something for me later on ... we could very well work well together." Reaper steps back and says aloud, “Possible does anyone have a mirror? If you do then maybe we can get outta here if things work right."
At the "you will have to do something for me later on", Tyran stops, turns, and faces Reaper head-on. "You want some leeway from me now, and in exchange I have to do something for you later? Listen, freak, that's not how I work.
"You want a mirror? Sure, I got a mirror. But why should I give it to you? So you can mirror-walk your happy little masked face elsewhere? I don't know who you are, but that's not going to happen right now ... cause you and I both know damn well that while you might be able to dance your way out of here through a mirror, there's no way in hell you are powerful enough to carry the weight of 12 other people and a borg with you. Besides ... when you shut up long enough for me to figure out just how to get us out of here SAFELY, I'm going to need a little something from YOU. So sit tight."
After a cold stare, Tyran softens and continues in a less hostile tone. "Now we're all friends here. If you have any more brilliant ideas, by all means, let's hear them. But in the future, share your thoughts from where you're standing. I don't take kindly to strangers whispering in my ear; there’s way too much power in a whispered word for me to trust ANYONE that close to me, least of all you." With that, Tyran turns back to the door, the hawk watching Reaper even more intently.
“Now listen you bloody puke stain. I can mirror walk 1 person out of here. If you want to get out of here, let’s aim for the night lands. You create a damn rift to here and we can get all these people out of here, or I can just turn into a dozen or so bats and test this fucking door way out ... either way. We all are fucked, or I can make a dark whip and we can test this doorway out and see how far any of you can make of this," Reaper says to the whole group standing there in a extremely cold voice. Reaper looks at Tyran, "what demon do you know has daggers for teeth and are covered in little gadgets like what you are not wearing?"
Jenna watches the interaction between the kid and the thing calling itself Reaper and giggles slightly. She shakes her head a little and looks around at the rest of the room wondering if they are ever going to get out of this room.
Tyran, frustrated with the continued outburst, takes on a mocking tone. "Look at me! I can turn into bats. I can make dark whips. I can turn into a demon with daggers for teeth!"
"Your kind are all the same, aren't you. Don't think for a second that just because I'm a kid, you can try and scare me or push me around. I've dealt with much worse maggots than you."
"Oh ... And I thought you were going to get us ALL out of here ... so now it's just me? Funny how quickly the story changes."
Tyran reaches inside his cloak, and grabs hold of something; but does not reveal it quite yet. "Number one, I don't take orders from your ilk. Number two, there's no way I'm going to try and open a rift to a pocket dimension in the middle of a dimensional maelstrom, especially when. Number three, you want to test the doorway, feel free to step through at any time. I'd be happy to be rid of you." With that, Tyran steps aside and gestures for Reaper to go ahead and step through the doorway. "Number four ... to do what I'm doing, I need to be able to concentrate. So if you don't mind, kindly shut the fuck up and back off for thirty seconds, before I have to do it for you." With that, standing at the side of the door, he once again begins to levitate the pot, intending to test the portal with it, like he was trying before he was so rudely interrupted; his hand still clasping something underneath his cloak.
Reaper tells Tyran, "Save your mana kid," Reaper shifts into his morphus and creates a whip using little energy as possible. Reaper tells Tyran again, "now as soon as i let this whip goes out of my hand, it disappears. Now as for the mirror, I could mirror walk you into possible the night lands, from there you could make a rift for everyone else to get out, Or play the guessing game with this suicide idea ... like I said I AM the last of my kind ... if you know anything of the night lords ... they have demons do their bidding, now I am trying to give you a way out.. All of you… Now if you need the mana to get all of these people out. I have plenty to spare. So what is it gonna be kid?"
Tyran lets the pan drop loudly to the floor, so he can turn and face Reaper again. "ENOUGH INTERRUPTIONS, ALREADY! Not too fucking bright, are you!
"Well, let me spell it out to you. If you open a connection to the night lands here, it will have to pass through a dimensional maelstrom. That's a bad thing.
"To open a rift to here from the Night lands, it too will have to pass through a dimensional maelstrom. That, too, is a bad thing.
"If you open any rifts while whoever or whatever it is, is trying to track down this little pocket dimension, that just might be the beacon it needs to lock on to and come find us. That is a bad thing.
"You're brilliant idea about a way out ... that is a bad thing.
"A freak like you trying to tell me what I need to do ... that is a bad thing.
"You interrupting me YET AGAIN ... that is a VERY bad thing.
"You sitting back, closing your trap long enough for me to figure out what's going on here, and then lending me some energy when I require it, which would be a GOOD thing.
"Now bugger off ... your constant interruptions are just delaying our exit from this godforsaken room ... and I will not take any more of it. Now don't you say another word until I'm done investigating this portal, you hear?
"Oh ... and as for your 'night lords' ... I too, have demons do my bidding. Push me any further, and I'll let you experience the feeling first-hand." Tyran then picks up the pot, and yet AGAIN tries to concentrate long enough to float it through the rift and back ... without interruptions.
Reaper smiles and sees what Tyran is tempting to do and laughs, "hey boy watch. Keep your frying pan where it should be." Reaper tosses the end of his dark whip into the opening and watches what it does. If it disappears, then he will let go. But if it stays solid and nothing else happens, then he will then look at Tyran with a look of "what’s next?"
Tyran laughs. "Oh, and I suppose that little trick of yours works to dispel illusions, now, does it?
"Don't pretend to know what I'm thinking, fool. NOW GET THE HELL OUT OF MY WAY!" Tyran's yell fades off into an incomprehensible mumble as he reaches around and loosens a patterned bedroll from his backpack, spreading it out next to the door.
“Dispel illusions? No, just to test if something wanted to hop in here and then you could see why my whips do what I tell them," Reaper snaps the whips back and has them lay at Tyran’s feet with a smile on his face, "do you think something made this place to help us or amuse themselves? Trick is to figure what’s what. How do we all know you didn't put us all here kid? Damn I miss the old days."
As Reaper shifts to his morphus form, Kira, Maranna and Ricky all find themselves overwhelmed with fear as they look upon what Daniel has become. The being dubbed as Reaper becomes a corpselike human with giant bat wings and a spiked tail. His green sunken eyes are almost lifeless. A whip of blackness grows out from him and enters the doorway and disappears into the terrain. Reaper instantly feels a surge of energy come up the whip. (-20 MDC)
Bill answers Tyran, oO(A demon was the last to pass through this portal. It leads back home, but the reality of our world is constantly changing, as though the maelstrom is erasing parts of the known megaverse available to us. This is a single cell to a prison and we are here. There are two portals in the door. I do not understand it. The creator... The only name that comes to mind is someone known as Stavros)Oo Which Tyran finds hard to hear even in his mind with the conversation currently ensuing as he lies the blanket down, pushing magic into it.
Reaper finds he is unable to move any closer to Tyran and finds himself stepping back 10 paces, standing almost next to Milo and Gor.
Milo pulls out two k-1000's out of his pack and sets them to attack anyone that attacks them and put his extra clips in his pack. He then goes to the farthest corner away from every one and sits down on a pillow. After putting down his rifles and launcher and watches everyone and smiles if they stop and stare.
Karakt lays down on the floor and attempts to take a nap while all the arguing is going on, since it seems obvious that they will be bitching at each other for a long time instead of working out what’s going on, ponders just stepping thru the doorway but its currently too crowded on that side of the room, most of what is being said makes no sense to the blood lizard anyway so sleep seems to be the best option for now. Well if the two at the door can quiet their pissing contest at least.
Thinks to himself, ‘Gee these magic types get really tetchy when they haven't had their coffee, ‘ and says out loud "Okay, enough with the swears you demon loving magic users from beyond. I'm going to have to go with the mostly human one here and ask Reaper to please be quiet." Click goes the NG7's again. "Tyran, would you be as kind as to get a move on? I'd appreciate it ever so much." Continuing thinking; if nothing interesting happens soon, I'm going to have to jump through the doorway.
Maranna had just begun to think what these two strangers arguing quietly but loud several times, but not understanding anything they were saying just that they were making asses out of themselves and trying to prove to each other that was or is stronger etc. Then all Maranna could say to herself was "Holy Shit!!!!!!!!!What the hell is happening?" She notices the other 2 girls nearby are just as much in awe as her and just out of fear she stays with them so that the power of 3 could possibly fight this off or die coming close to trying. They look at her strangely because who is what in this room? What IS everyone capable of? What are the deep secrets and who should you stay close to and who should you avoid? Her mind starts spinning trying to get her head straight to figure a way out in case what everyone else is doing doesn't work but she is literally spinning in her mind... She’s feeling a little strange but just brushes it off as being scared...Hungry...Thirsty...Tired...
"Now STAY!" Tyran states to Reaper.
He then tries to sort out everything he's being told. "This room is a prison cell, and there are two portals in the door. That could be what's making it so hard to read ... outside of the more obvious distractions." He then finishes testing what happens when he telekinetically passes the fry pan through the portal. "It's as if the maelstrom is erasing parts of the universe available to us ... What do you mean by two portals, Bill. Two at the same time, or one leading into another? When you say 'erasing', are we running out of time?
"Aeturnus ... Stavros ... Anyone know anything of these names?"
The frying pan disappears into the portal. Tyran loses his ability to hold it and it disappears into a terrain of drifting sand. Meanwhile, Bill answers in his usual telepathy, "There are two portals in the same door, beyond either of the first portals, I have no idea if there are more. And for erasing, I’m not even sure myself. I tried reading the dimension that I was viewing and it would fade as it disappeared into the next place. Have you ever heard of imaginary dimensions? Said to be a myth but I believe that they are real. Aeturnus is a human Latin word for "Eternity" and Stavros... the name is familiar but I don’t remember who he is."
After being zapped by the doorway reaper asks, "isn't there just a damn button here within the walls or something shit. I hate these puzzle games. Damn where is a good video game when I need one... at least then I could figure it out before I die 20 thousand times over." reaper then heads for the ceiling and starts to hunt for a place to sit in.. He looks back at Tyran, "what you lose your skillet kid?"
Lori ponders the two 'names' that Tyran mentions as she observes his experiment. "Did you lose your 'grip' on it went thru the portal?" She pulls out an arrow from her quiver (just a regular one instead of one of the special ones) and tries to hook and drag the pan back thru the portal. And if the portal shifts they'll have an idea what happens to objects that are part way through the portal.
Gor grabs the jerky and says, "Thanks," then walks up to the door and says to Tyran, "you need anything? I'll go through if it’s safe you can fallow if not I'll be dead and this nightmare will be over." then Gor takes a bite of the jerky then says, "My last meal" then starts laughing.
Cirrus starts to put his vibro knives away and ready his JA-11 juicer assassin rifle, while looking around for some kind of control panel or keypad. Using Telepathy, he asks Karak't and Maranna if they see a keypad or console of some sorts.
Karakt opens an eye and glances around, not exactly sure what a keypad is, or a console for that matter, he just flashes images of anything that looks interesting or out of place to Cirrus, of course a lot of those images are probably items that other people in the room are wearing or carrying, including the control panel on the k-1000.
"Not quite sure yet," Tyran responds. "But if we do go through, we should go through together, holding on to each other ... otherwise there's a pretty good chance we'll be separated." Tyran watches as Lori tests with the arrow. "Be careful ... there could be some feedback from the maelstrom," he warns.
Catori just sits back, watching with amusement, not saying a word. As she doesn't know any of them she keeps to herself. She keeps back and out of the way wondering if they will even make it out of this room alive. She can't help but think of her lost friends, and where she was and doing before here. She mostly keeps her attention on Lori and the boy Tyran, if only she could remember just why her attention seems to be drawn to them.
Maranna looks around with every precaution to see if there’s anything remotely close to a control panel or keypad. She sees nothing. Nothing at all! But WAIT!!! What is this strange little box next to these tow that were arguing...Maranna is still trying to figure that whole situation but puts it aside and says to these self ego’ed creatures.. "Hey, instead of trying to see who’s got the better abilities or better strange stuff your performing, why don't you guys look right next to ya and see what that strange looking small box is and figure out if that’s a possibility of our way out." Maranna would rather do this herself but she just isn't quite sure about these two. Maybe she can trust them to do one thing right at this point in time and forget whatever’s going on between them and look out for the safety of the rest of us in this hellhole. They do all have to stay together so there is no separation and they can fight together whatever they come across, at least as long as EV.
Lori smiles and says, "That's why I'm using a regular arrow and not one of my explosive tipped ones. Frankly I'm more worried that a shift might sever the arrow, which would indicate the need to cross the threshold as quickly as possible."
Tyran watches Lori's experiment with interest, while sharing the information he's getting from Bill. "Imaginary dimension ... that's an interesting thought. That would also explain why it seems to have only a tentative link to other dimensions ... Aeturnus means eternity, which would support the concept of a permanent prison...
"Perhaps that's it! Whoever was imprisoned here was surrounded by the dimensional maelstrom, which is what kept them imprisoned here. But, being a rather powerful being, they were able to create an imaginary dimension within their prison ... that imaginary dimension being this room; with a portal to other worlds. Quite ingenious, really...
"But that would mean that they were already free, and there would be no reason to bring us here ... There's still something more to this picture. Why us? What is it that we all have in common?
"And do we dare jump through the portal, which leads to another portal, which could in turn lead to many more? Who knows where we could end up?" Tyran's lips curl in a bit of a sinister grin, as his latest question actually sounds somewhat intriguing to his shifter self...
Reaper looks at Tyran, “ok boy genius, let’s just say for a split second. You might just be right, and then raises the questions. 1. Who was prisoner here? 2. How did they escape? And three, look at us all. A shifter, couple of borgs , a few humans , and a blood lizard and a night bane, so what all do we all have in common? Can someone give an answer?" Reaper looks around the room at everyone for an answer.
"You want to know what we all have in common. You scream, I scream, we all scream for Ice Cream! That's what.
"Otherwise, will someone wake me when we find a way out of this room or if we need to shoot something? Ta.” And then To'Mas proceeds to extend and retract all four of his vibro-blades in order, round and round. It's just like tapping your fingers on the desk during a test at school, only much more deadly.
"Who was prisoner here? Stavros, if it was the one who created this portal.
"How did he escape? By creating an imaginary dimension containing a portal within their prison cell dimension.
"What do we have in common? First, we're all here ... and second, I already asked that.
"There are your answers ... now do I need to throw down a silence spell too?"
“Well only really two of us are talking here boy ... Seriously what’s the one thing we all share, I mean besides the breathing and 6 foot above here. half of all us are users of magic in one way shape or form ... others are just metal men ... now here would be the question Tyran .. Who has enough power to dump all of us here and keep us here? I know the night lords need help to do that but they are powerful beings ... how about that demon that chucked both of us into the rifts to begin with? I already describe him to you." Reaper looks around the room for the others to answer." I don't think a vampire or a dragon could do this but things changed since my time."
Lori launches her arrow at the doorway that opens inward. She can no longer see the frying pan, however, her arrow makes it back in. Then, the image shifts again, this time it looks like a landscape made of nothing but eyeballs, the landscape changes again to that of rolling green hills with an actual intact castle in the background.
Jenna seems quiet, yet shaken as she stands up and puts her knife away. Gor can feel the energy from the open doorway. He can feel the danger in his bones. Something ancient, yet powerful, as though a simple whim of this being or entity could change reality as everyone knew it. Milo's K-1000 sentries take position on either side of him as he rests, and then begin scanning the room. They seem to focus on the door, mostly.
Maranna, Karak't and Cirrus notice nothing out of the ordinary about the room, other than the door. Upon looking through the holes in the door, Cirrus swears he spots a blinking light in the darkness at the back of the hallway, or maybe even the reflection of one off of the wall from around a corner. It seems very faint and red in color.
Finally, Tyran senses an emotion from Dirk. Oddly enough, it seems like the predatory instinct to run or protect himself. At the same moment, Bill adds, oO(Drake... everyone has met or at least had something affect them because of Drake's actions. The demon mentions, the other demon, Dro'Lazz. Obviously, there must be a connection.)Oo
Lori vaguely remembers the name Stavros from something her parents had once talked about, long ago. But cannot place the name in relation to anything.
As Cirrus continues to look up the hallway through the hole in the door, he spots something dark move swiftly across the floor, but too hard to see in the already dark room. It disappears almost as fast as it appeared. Cirrus feels a chill run down his spine.
The name suddenly hits her. Stavros was once very powerful Elvin wizard, almost deemed a god from her parent's home world. He simply appeared for quite a time, and then disappeared. Many believe that he may have died. Also revered even by powerful beings such as the Asgardians and dragons, many called him Stavros, The Black, because of his pitch black skin. Thinking of it almost reminds her of Camozotz, but she knows that Camozotz couldn’t be him.
For a split second, Jenna catches glimpses of people frozen solid, as though frozen in place instantly, much show the final pains of death within the instant that they were frozen, and then she finds herself once again watching Tyran, Lori, Gor and Reaper babbling away and examining the portal.
With everyone focused on the portal Kira looks over at Milo. "Nice gun bots, where were you able to pick up a set in such good condition? Very interesting technology if I do say so myself. Mind if I take a closer look at one? I'll let the others figure out this portal stuff as they know much more about it than I do."
Jenna looks at the sight of all those faces frozen in horror and pain and screams as she backs away from them. She is shivering and her eyes are blinking rapidly, trying to erase what she is seeing from her eyes. When the image fades, she looks around and slides to the floor. She is deeply shaken and wraps her arms around herself as she looks up at the people around her... "Am I the only one who saw that?" Jenna shivers again.
Reaper looks at Tyran and everyone else in the room, “Ok so who is this Stavros? If he was imprisoned here, then why and how?" Reaper notices Cirrus isn't looking right. Reaper walks over to him with his wings folded around his body and his tail corkscrews around his leg to keep out the way, "what’s wrong with you metal man?”
"Drake ... Or Dro'Lazz. That's the link." Trusting in the bird's instincts, Tyran jumps to action. He first uses his medallion to cast armor spell around Dirk, and quickly gathers his equipment and backpack; his voice taking on a new urgency. "Look alive, people ... I've got a suspicious feeling that we may have just overstayed our welcome." Glancing out the door at the rolling fields and castle, he adds, "And this here looks like as friendly a stop as we're going to get ...
"I can't guarantee it's safe to jump, but I've got a strong hunch that it isn't safe to stay here any longer. Any objections?"
“Any objections? Nope but one question, anyone got a rope? Or would we all use a dark whip? Besides that I’m ready to go," Reaper gets up off the wall and walks up to Tyran, "Choice be yours kid unless things get another shock?"
Maranna looks around and tries to figure out what if they jump thru this portal. What will it lead them to next? She starts to get anxious because it’s another adventure for her and she thrives on this but she has to be calm so that she holds on to her composure to think clearly and keep anyone else who starts to freak out calm. She’s getting more excited and looks intently to what these two are deciding. "Have you guys decided what is best for us to do or what?"
She can't help but get the look of a deer in headlights at the mention of those names; everything comes rushing back to her. For the first time since arriving in this room she has a look of fear on her face. She quickly gathers herself and her belongings and moves closer to the door not caring what anyone is doing at this very moment, all she knows is her mission, her purpose is right here. But clearly it isn't the right time or place to carry it out, not with everyone being on such high guard. She calms herself some but she still seems a bit shaken. She only adds one thing, "I'm game, ready to go."
Cirrus says out loud, "I just saw something move in the shadows and I had a cold chill up my spine... I don’t like this," he then points in the direction of where he saw it using his free hand.
Karakt rolls back onto his feet and after a quick check to make sure he didn't drop anything he heads over to get a look thru the door; hmm I guess fields are kind of like plans, and at the first chance just bounds on thru the door.
Gor looks at Milo and says "grab your toys and let’s get the hell out of here! Tyran that not who I think it is that spider things Friend? Dam it just my luck a new enemy why. Milo hurry?"
"Well, it looks like we’re all on the same page here. What about the rest of you?" Suddenly Maranna hears another strange sound but not quite sure where it was coming from and shouts "We don't have much time people!! Come on!"
Ricky comes out a trance-like remembrance. Hearing something about rope she hunts through her pack, finding her nylon rope she states: "Would 150ft be enough?"
Milo gathers up his stuff and puts the k-1000's back in his pack and moves toward the door getting ready.
Karak't quickly leaps into action and begins bound for the doorway. At that moment, two more figures appear as though they are coming out of a fade. One of the individuals is a medium height, medium build man with almond shaped eyes, wearing a strange looking body armor that mainly Gor and Milo recognize: Camouflage variable armor.
The other looks to be an obvious doctor of some sort.
Both Galen and Raven appear in a room with white walls, similar to an office building of some sort, with no windows, just a door with two holes blown through it. The oddest thing is that the door is open and leads out into grassland of bright green with a picturesque looking castle in the background. Through the holes, he sees another room. The two couldn’t possibly coexist. Raven seems to get a grave look upon his face while. Galen notices 13 other individuals standing in the room. And a large looking dinosaur like lizard heading for the door.
Maranna has been waiting to jump and now with what she is seeing, anticipation and awe excite her. She's waiting for the decisions of everyone else and waits patiently to see what happens next.
Kira looks over to Lori, "Well Lori what do you think? Seems some are looking to jump into that doorway there. Should we join them and yes I'm asking you as you understand this magical stuff much better than I do. And right now, everything is really strange."
"GO! NOW!" Tyran shouts, as he grabs his blanket and jumps through the door. Once through, he'll turn around to see if the portal is a two-way portal. If so, he'll spread his blanket out to one side of the portal, open his pack, and grab for a 'close rift' scroll.
Reaper jumps in after Tyran in hopes that he makes it and so does the others. As he jumps in the rift he hollers back, "Come on let’s go!”
Maranna has been waiting for this moment but a sudden fear overtakes her. She’s almost in a frozen state, but she continues to hear the voices say "come on, let’s go!" She snaps out of it and looks at those who aren't quite sure and reaches out to whoever will take her hand and jump in with her.
"Why not, me too," and To’Mas heads through the doorway.
As Kira is looking at Lori to see how she answers, she hears Tyran. "Well in that case here goes!" Kira smiles and jumps hoping to end up with whoever else jumps to whatever the other side is.
Catori grabs Maranna's hand and pulls her thru the doorway with her, not even a word spoken. She just hopes they make it safely to the other side of whatever it is.
Jenna pulls herself up off the ground and does a quick check that she has everything, slinging her backpack over her shoulder, she takes a deep breath and runs and jumps through the portal before she has a chance to think about what she is doing.
Looking a bit stunned and more than a little confused, Galen looks around at his new surroundings to get his bearings. Seeing virtually no faces he recognizes, and everyone rapidly departing through the gateway, he just assumes that this is a new part of the resistance force from Atlantis. He mentally shrugs his shoulders and takes his turn leaping through. While he's waiting, he asks whoever is standing close how their part of the war went. "Our end could have gone better, but at least most of us got out alive." he adds.
Milo makes sure he’s got everything and jumps through seeing if Gor follows. Gor will wait for Milo to jump then fallow. Once out he will say "everybody ok"
Everyone leaps through the doorway. Luckily, the portal doesn't shift or trap anyone within. Upon jumping through, everyone looks back to notice that there is no portal back. They stare across thick, green grass and rolling hills. An old looking castle, hidden in vines and greenish gray in tint looms on the horizon of a hill to what seems to be the north. The area is obviously rich with magic and the welcoming sound of bird chirping as they flutter from tree to tree in this sparsely treed area. All of trees are leaved and not pine and the area seems to be a moist cold climate. A recent rainfall has the ground sluggish as To'Mas, Cirrus, Karak't and anyone else weighing more than 250lbs begins to sink in a bit of mud.
Lori notices, the newcomer, Raven, is rich with PPE and seems to have leadership look to him, yet distant. Raven seems to look around and then to each person in the group and shrugs. "Well, Galen. Another unknown place. Seems to never end, doesn't it?" He takes out two pistols and checks them over quickly and returns them to hip holsters, belted to his armor.
Tyran stands with his blanket and lays it out. Once again, Reaper is forced to begin backing up. Oddly enough, Maranna follows with him, as though the trip through had done something to her.
Jenna continues seeing things out of the corners of her eyes, yet, upon looking, there is nothing there. It could be just the jitters from the strange place they were just in. At that moment, she keeps seeing a vision of a circle of stones. They look ancient and worn, but something seems to beckon to her from them. Her vision clears as she continues to look upon the group adjusting to their new surroundings. Catori finds herself feeling strangely uneasy as she stands there.
To Kira, this place seems alien without something close to the semblance of technology without just guns and a wisecracking borg around. Milo's sentry guns look interesting; if Milo would let her just look at them. To Abigail, this place seems more like home. Enough around to live off of the land and it seems oddly peaceful.
Jenna looks around and gets her bearings, slightly shaken from all the visions and stress of the portal jump on her psyche. She runs her hands down her clothing, smoothing things out and dusting herself off, also checking all the weapons strapped to her, finally pulling out one of her knifes just in case. She kneels down to check her pack while she finishes getting her bearings and looking to see if there is anything to fear.. Or if the circle of stones might be real, and not a vision.
Reaper looks around and sees the stone circle and remembers it from his time in high school. He says loud and clear, "now I know we can't be here ... I know this rock design ... And if I am guessing right, we ain't in Kansas anymore kid..." reaper looks around this new place and has to wonder...
"Look at all of this greenery, this peaceful tranquility. It makes me sick. Where's a guy meant to charge his weapons around here, huh? There aren't any fast food joints." And starts flicking his vibro-blades in and out again in the usual bored way.
Seeing that the portal appears to be one-way, Tyran relaxes somewhat. "Sorry for the rushed exit, folks ... but if I'm right, we were about to have company ... and I don't mean these two. If I had to guess, I'd say that you two were the last of us that the demon was trying to gather; and as soon as you arrived, he was on his way as well. Now obviously, this doesn't look much like earth ... it's probably best if we try and avoid being noticed for a while, until we understand where we are ... chances are, whoever's in that castle hasn't seen a group like us before; and there is no telling how they might react to someone like To'Mas here," he adds with a smile. "Give me a couple minutes, and don't interrupt me ... I'll see if I can figure out where we are." Sitting down on the blanket, he attempts to get a reading of this dimension. Tyran senses that this is his home dimension, however, something is wrong. It's been altered somehow. Even Bill comments, oO(Something's different... I don’t feel right)Oo
Maranna straightens her clothing up as well as she sees the other girls do and notices Jenna looking at something but before she can ask any questions she is in awe where they landed. There’s beauty around them and a castle which fascinates her for some odd reason. There’s so much to investigate and yet she knows they don't have the time. They have to work together to stay out of danger and be ready for anything at all times. She’s quite distracted at this point though. Since they have gone thru this portal she feels some things changing with her. She tries to shrug it off...it ain't no big thing. "Maybe I need to eat something or get some sleep, I feel so exhausted", she says to herself. She seems to follow Reaper since the portal. Her fears from before are gone so she introduces herself to him. "Well we made it... My name’s Maranna. Looks like we have some investigating to do around here to see what and what we’re doing." Even with his glared look at her, she doesn't flinch, she’s no
"Actually Tyran, while this doesn't look like the North American wilderness I'm familiar with, there's plenty of other places on the planet I haven't seen." comments Lori as she looks around. Lori closes her eyes and opens her mystical sense to scan for ley lines and active Rifts. After that, she'll move around the area and examine the in an attempt to determine if the group is still on Earth.
Reaper walks over to Tyran, "kid this might be North America, but long before rifts showed up. I know because I was born before the coming of rifts." Reaper looks around the area and says out load, “I know a lot about this planet before the rifts.”
Gor looks at the guys in the phase armor and says, "Where did you get that armor? I know what it does; I sell them and most of the weapons from the same company. As you can tell from Milo over there he has an obsession with guns." then Gor will turn to Milo and say "Milo get a perimeter set up I don't want any surprises." then Gor will just wait and see what’s to come.
Raven turns to Gor after giving a curious glance to Galen. "Im from all over. You could say that I come from every form of reality that I can think of. It might give an idea how I got this armor. Do they still call it Naruni Variable Camo? Who is everyone here?" Raven looks around to each person; he seems unphased that there is a demonic looking creature and a giant lizard amongst the group. "And where did Cereth and Kila disappear to?" he frowns as thoughts race through his head, oO(And the Soulless Ones...)Oo
Karak't shifts his weight from foot to foot trying not to sink and gets a "eewww" kind of look on his face from the mud getting between his toes, but once he starts to get use to the mud he goes for a run around the area, just in a circle and not going too far away from the group, keeping them in sight. Karak't makes it to the top of the hill adjacent from the castle. Off into the next valley, he sees two ley lines faintly glowing off in the distance. What's more interesting is the skeleton some great creature lying amongst the ruins of some large, stone structure. Just above the skeleton of the lizard like creature, this looks to be a dragon but much larger, is the silhouette of what looks like a giant tree in the distant horizon. It could be 20 miles away, maybe more. The tree must be enormous!
Cirrus stands close to To'Mas and Ricky, when both To'Mas and Ricky notice Cirrus's skin begin to very faintly glow, as it looks like static electricity is arcing from his hair, fingertips and shoulders and in between his legs. Cirrus doesn't look as though he can feel it.
"As we are not sure where we are, is everyone ok with food and water? We might want to gather up some essentials while we are here as we decide our nest move. I also have a strange feeling about this place, not exactly sure why but it seems… Different. Different but not like that room we were just in either....." Kira's voice trails off as she waits to hear what the others have to say.
Karakt stops in his tracks at the sight of the huge skeleton and ponders the magnitude of the meal he missed out on before giving a few squawks to try and get the attention of the others, he also gets a sudden idea as to where they might be but can't work out how to convey his thoughts to the others, especially after all the difficulties he has had making himself understood in the past, pets his cannon and feels forlorn.
Maranna shakes off the weird feeling and grabs up something out of her pocket, just a part of a candy bar and munches on it quickly so she can get some senses back. She watches what the others are doing and waits on what each person is doing. Hopefully someone will find some real food. It looks like there should be plenty because of the trees with fruit for the birds, flowers and vegetation. Surely there should be something for us and it will be found soon. She doesn't get a comment from Reaper, so she starts to go introduce herself to Tyran but she can't move. She feels like an idiot because everyone else can move around but every time she makes a move towards Tyran she can't. She looks over at Reaper and notices that he’s having the same problem, like there’s invisible bars around Tyran preventing either one of them going near him, but why? Some other strange things are starting to happen but this "barring" from Tyran has her puzzled and she doesn't know who to really ask.
"You may be right, Lori ..." Tyran responds. "It is definitely our dimension ... but reality has been altered. Somehow, something has changed something in history, and what we see before us is the result." Dirk takes to the air to scan the area, while Tyran turns his attention to Bill. "I agree ... it feels different ... are you all right?" he asks the invisible companion, casting See Aura so that he can scan his companions for any 'abnormalities’. Dirk climbs quickly, scanning the area for potential threats, landmarks, and to provide a better sense of the surroundings that they cannot see.
Milo looks toward Kira and asks, "Kira was it? Sure you can look at this." Reaching into his pack he pulls out one both of the k-1000'sand hands one to her smiling. Then he starts to set the other one to make a perimeter patrol. Then, looking at Gor, he says, "Anything else Gor?"
2. If he can float the pot out and then back in again, the dimensional portal is two-way.
"Something was drawing off the last dimension this doorway was connected to, if it is indeed connected to another dimension. We’re dealing with powers way beyond any of us ..." he states ominously. Feeling the breeze as the door opens, Tyran is sure to glance down at one of his amulets, to check for the presence of spirits or entities.
Reaper walks up to Tyran says in his ear, “If you want something a bit stronger to test this little doorway. Then just let me know kid. You have no idea of what I could assist in here." Reaper backs off a bit and waits to see what the pot does.
Lori looks away from the door and studies the group as she introduces herself. "My name is Lorianna Silveldari, though most people just call me Lori. I'm a mage so I don't exactly get along with the CS either. Last I knew, Kira and I were talking with an old friend in a town outside Tolkeen." Since she doesn't really know several of these people, Lori feels it's better not to specify who the friend was or exactly which town they were in. She then goes back to examining the doorway and the rest of the room, half listening to Tyran. She knows he's knows more about dimensional travel than she does. "I wonder if it was shifting between locations before the door was damaged?" she wonders, shooting an annoyed look towards To'Mas.
Jenna looks down at the knife on the floor and shivers slightly as she bends at her knees, reaching down for the knife. She blinks several times as her mind tries to deal with what it just saw. She quietly says "I'm Jenna", deciding that is all she is going to say until she figures out what in the world is going on. She listens to the kid explain what he thinks is going on with the door and shakes her head 0O dang portals.. O0 She stares off into space deep in thought about what she just saw, trying to make sense of it.
"Hello my name is Kira and Lori has just stated what we were doing before we ended up in this strange place." Hearing what a few of the others are saying about this place and most if not all of it sounding above her capabilities, Kira will take a quick inventory of her things. Kira will also take a look around to see if any of her areas of expertise might be of any help.
"Back off, nightfreak," Tyran whispers back without turning around. "Your theatrics bore me. Unless you're trying to convince me that you were the one responsible for ambushing me in Ishpeming, get the fuck out of my space." The falcon's head turns to keep an eye on Reaper as the teenager begins to mumble to himself yet again.
Maranna hears something strange but can't quite figure it out, its muffled but by the looks of some in the room they heard something too. "Did you guys hear that?" Everyone just kind of looks around puzzled because did we hear something or are we freaking out? Hmm. ”Okay I'll put my foot in my mouth and say I DID hear something...like at-ur atrun ..."OH FUCK! aeturnus..That’s what it is!" Now some are starting to say the same thing.
Reaper looks at him, “I ambush you, funny how the demon showed his face after you got thrown. It threw me into another rifts, I ended up almost being raptor food and a lizard men’s sacrifice. You think maybe you can give me some lead way kid. I could possible help get us all out of here. But you will have to do something for me later on ... we could very well work well together." Reaper steps back and says aloud, “Possible does anyone have a mirror? If you do then maybe we can get outta here if things work right."
At the "you will have to do something for me later on", Tyran stops, turns, and faces Reaper head-on. "You want some leeway from me now, and in exchange I have to do something for you later? Listen, freak, that's not how I work.
"You want a mirror? Sure, I got a mirror. But why should I give it to you? So you can mirror-walk your happy little masked face elsewhere? I don't know who you are, but that's not going to happen right now ... cause you and I both know damn well that while you might be able to dance your way out of here through a mirror, there's no way in hell you are powerful enough to carry the weight of 12 other people and a borg with you. Besides ... when you shut up long enough for me to figure out just how to get us out of here SAFELY, I'm going to need a little something from YOU. So sit tight."
After a cold stare, Tyran softens and continues in a less hostile tone. "Now we're all friends here. If you have any more brilliant ideas, by all means, let's hear them. But in the future, share your thoughts from where you're standing. I don't take kindly to strangers whispering in my ear; there’s way too much power in a whispered word for me to trust ANYONE that close to me, least of all you." With that, Tyran turns back to the door, the hawk watching Reaper even more intently.
“Now listen you bloody puke stain. I can mirror walk 1 person out of here. If you want to get out of here, let’s aim for the night lands. You create a damn rift to here and we can get all these people out of here, or I can just turn into a dozen or so bats and test this fucking door way out ... either way. We all are fucked, or I can make a dark whip and we can test this doorway out and see how far any of you can make of this," Reaper says to the whole group standing there in a extremely cold voice. Reaper looks at Tyran, "what demon do you know has daggers for teeth and are covered in little gadgets like what you are not wearing?"
Jenna watches the interaction between the kid and the thing calling itself Reaper and giggles slightly. She shakes her head a little and looks around at the rest of the room wondering if they are ever going to get out of this room.
Tyran, frustrated with the continued outburst, takes on a mocking tone. "Look at me! I can turn into bats. I can make dark whips. I can turn into a demon with daggers for teeth!"
"Your kind are all the same, aren't you. Don't think for a second that just because I'm a kid, you can try and scare me or push me around. I've dealt with much worse maggots than you."
"Oh ... And I thought you were going to get us ALL out of here ... so now it's just me? Funny how quickly the story changes."
Tyran reaches inside his cloak, and grabs hold of something; but does not reveal it quite yet. "Number one, I don't take orders from your ilk. Number two, there's no way I'm going to try and open a rift to a pocket dimension in the middle of a dimensional maelstrom, especially when. Number three, you want to test the doorway, feel free to step through at any time. I'd be happy to be rid of you." With that, Tyran steps aside and gestures for Reaper to go ahead and step through the doorway. "Number four ... to do what I'm doing, I need to be able to concentrate. So if you don't mind, kindly shut the fuck up and back off for thirty seconds, before I have to do it for you." With that, standing at the side of the door, he once again begins to levitate the pot, intending to test the portal with it, like he was trying before he was so rudely interrupted; his hand still clasping something underneath his cloak.
Reaper tells Tyran, "Save your mana kid," Reaper shifts into his morphus and creates a whip using little energy as possible. Reaper tells Tyran again, "now as soon as i let this whip goes out of my hand, it disappears. Now as for the mirror, I could mirror walk you into possible the night lands, from there you could make a rift for everyone else to get out, Or play the guessing game with this suicide idea ... like I said I AM the last of my kind ... if you know anything of the night lords ... they have demons do their bidding, now I am trying to give you a way out.. All of you… Now if you need the mana to get all of these people out. I have plenty to spare. So what is it gonna be kid?"
Tyran lets the pan drop loudly to the floor, so he can turn and face Reaper again. "ENOUGH INTERRUPTIONS, ALREADY! Not too fucking bright, are you!
"Well, let me spell it out to you. If you open a connection to the night lands here, it will have to pass through a dimensional maelstrom. That's a bad thing.
"To open a rift to here from the Night lands, it too will have to pass through a dimensional maelstrom. That, too, is a bad thing.
"If you open any rifts while whoever or whatever it is, is trying to track down this little pocket dimension, that just might be the beacon it needs to lock on to and come find us. That is a bad thing.
"You're brilliant idea about a way out ... that is a bad thing.
"A freak like you trying to tell me what I need to do ... that is a bad thing.
"You interrupting me YET AGAIN ... that is a VERY bad thing.
"You sitting back, closing your trap long enough for me to figure out what's going on here, and then lending me some energy when I require it, which would be a GOOD thing.
"Now bugger off ... your constant interruptions are just delaying our exit from this godforsaken room ... and I will not take any more of it. Now don't you say another word until I'm done investigating this portal, you hear?
"Oh ... and as for your 'night lords' ... I too, have demons do my bidding. Push me any further, and I'll let you experience the feeling first-hand." Tyran then picks up the pot, and yet AGAIN tries to concentrate long enough to float it through the rift and back ... without interruptions.
Reaper smiles and sees what Tyran is tempting to do and laughs, "hey boy watch. Keep your frying pan where it should be." Reaper tosses the end of his dark whip into the opening and watches what it does. If it disappears, then he will let go. But if it stays solid and nothing else happens, then he will then look at Tyran with a look of "what’s next?"
Tyran laughs. "Oh, and I suppose that little trick of yours works to dispel illusions, now, does it?
"Don't pretend to know what I'm thinking, fool. NOW GET THE HELL OUT OF MY WAY!" Tyran's yell fades off into an incomprehensible mumble as he reaches around and loosens a patterned bedroll from his backpack, spreading it out next to the door.
“Dispel illusions? No, just to test if something wanted to hop in here and then you could see why my whips do what I tell them," Reaper snaps the whips back and has them lay at Tyran’s feet with a smile on his face, "do you think something made this place to help us or amuse themselves? Trick is to figure what’s what. How do we all know you didn't put us all here kid? Damn I miss the old days."
As Reaper shifts to his morphus form, Kira, Maranna and Ricky all find themselves overwhelmed with fear as they look upon what Daniel has become. The being dubbed as Reaper becomes a corpselike human with giant bat wings and a spiked tail. His green sunken eyes are almost lifeless. A whip of blackness grows out from him and enters the doorway and disappears into the terrain. Reaper instantly feels a surge of energy come up the whip. (-20 MDC)
Bill answers Tyran, oO(A demon was the last to pass through this portal. It leads back home, but the reality of our world is constantly changing, as though the maelstrom is erasing parts of the known megaverse available to us. This is a single cell to a prison and we are here. There are two portals in the door. I do not understand it. The creator... The only name that comes to mind is someone known as Stavros)Oo Which Tyran finds hard to hear even in his mind with the conversation currently ensuing as he lies the blanket down, pushing magic into it.
Reaper finds he is unable to move any closer to Tyran and finds himself stepping back 10 paces, standing almost next to Milo and Gor.
Milo pulls out two k-1000's out of his pack and sets them to attack anyone that attacks them and put his extra clips in his pack. He then goes to the farthest corner away from every one and sits down on a pillow. After putting down his rifles and launcher and watches everyone and smiles if they stop and stare.
Karakt lays down on the floor and attempts to take a nap while all the arguing is going on, since it seems obvious that they will be bitching at each other for a long time instead of working out what’s going on, ponders just stepping thru the doorway but its currently too crowded on that side of the room, most of what is being said makes no sense to the blood lizard anyway so sleep seems to be the best option for now. Well if the two at the door can quiet their pissing contest at least.
Thinks to himself, ‘Gee these magic types get really tetchy when they haven't had their coffee, ‘ and says out loud "Okay, enough with the swears you demon loving magic users from beyond. I'm going to have to go with the mostly human one here and ask Reaper to please be quiet." Click goes the NG7's again. "Tyran, would you be as kind as to get a move on? I'd appreciate it ever so much." Continuing thinking; if nothing interesting happens soon, I'm going to have to jump through the doorway.
Maranna had just begun to think what these two strangers arguing quietly but loud several times, but not understanding anything they were saying just that they were making asses out of themselves and trying to prove to each other that was or is stronger etc. Then all Maranna could say to herself was "Holy Shit!!!!!!!!!What the hell is happening?" She notices the other 2 girls nearby are just as much in awe as her and just out of fear she stays with them so that the power of 3 could possibly fight this off or die coming close to trying. They look at her strangely because who is what in this room? What IS everyone capable of? What are the deep secrets and who should you stay close to and who should you avoid? Her mind starts spinning trying to get her head straight to figure a way out in case what everyone else is doing doesn't work but she is literally spinning in her mind... She’s feeling a little strange but just brushes it off as being scared...Hungry...Thirsty...Tired...
"Now STAY!" Tyran states to Reaper.
He then tries to sort out everything he's being told. "This room is a prison cell, and there are two portals in the door. That could be what's making it so hard to read ... outside of the more obvious distractions." He then finishes testing what happens when he telekinetically passes the fry pan through the portal. "It's as if the maelstrom is erasing parts of the universe available to us ... What do you mean by two portals, Bill. Two at the same time, or one leading into another? When you say 'erasing', are we running out of time?
"Aeturnus ... Stavros ... Anyone know anything of these names?"
The frying pan disappears into the portal. Tyran loses his ability to hold it and it disappears into a terrain of drifting sand. Meanwhile, Bill answers in his usual telepathy, "There are two portals in the same door, beyond either of the first portals, I have no idea if there are more. And for erasing, I’m not even sure myself. I tried reading the dimension that I was viewing and it would fade as it disappeared into the next place. Have you ever heard of imaginary dimensions? Said to be a myth but I believe that they are real. Aeturnus is a human Latin word for "Eternity" and Stavros... the name is familiar but I don’t remember who he is."
After being zapped by the doorway reaper asks, "isn't there just a damn button here within the walls or something shit. I hate these puzzle games. Damn where is a good video game when I need one... at least then I could figure it out before I die 20 thousand times over." reaper then heads for the ceiling and starts to hunt for a place to sit in.. He looks back at Tyran, "what you lose your skillet kid?"
Lori ponders the two 'names' that Tyran mentions as she observes his experiment. "Did you lose your 'grip' on it went thru the portal?" She pulls out an arrow from her quiver (just a regular one instead of one of the special ones) and tries to hook and drag the pan back thru the portal. And if the portal shifts they'll have an idea what happens to objects that are part way through the portal.
Gor grabs the jerky and says, "Thanks," then walks up to the door and says to Tyran, "you need anything? I'll go through if it’s safe you can fallow if not I'll be dead and this nightmare will be over." then Gor takes a bite of the jerky then says, "My last meal" then starts laughing.
Cirrus starts to put his vibro knives away and ready his JA-11 juicer assassin rifle, while looking around for some kind of control panel or keypad. Using Telepathy, he asks Karak't and Maranna if they see a keypad or console of some sorts.
Karakt opens an eye and glances around, not exactly sure what a keypad is, or a console for that matter, he just flashes images of anything that looks interesting or out of place to Cirrus, of course a lot of those images are probably items that other people in the room are wearing or carrying, including the control panel on the k-1000.
"Not quite sure yet," Tyran responds. "But if we do go through, we should go through together, holding on to each other ... otherwise there's a pretty good chance we'll be separated." Tyran watches as Lori tests with the arrow. "Be careful ... there could be some feedback from the maelstrom," he warns.
Catori just sits back, watching with amusement, not saying a word. As she doesn't know any of them she keeps to herself. She keeps back and out of the way wondering if they will even make it out of this room alive. She can't help but think of her lost friends, and where she was and doing before here. She mostly keeps her attention on Lori and the boy Tyran, if only she could remember just why her attention seems to be drawn to them.
Maranna looks around with every precaution to see if there’s anything remotely close to a control panel or keypad. She sees nothing. Nothing at all! But WAIT!!! What is this strange little box next to these tow that were arguing...Maranna is still trying to figure that whole situation but puts it aside and says to these self ego’ed creatures.. "Hey, instead of trying to see who’s got the better abilities or better strange stuff your performing, why don't you guys look right next to ya and see what that strange looking small box is and figure out if that’s a possibility of our way out." Maranna would rather do this herself but she just isn't quite sure about these two. Maybe she can trust them to do one thing right at this point in time and forget whatever’s going on between them and look out for the safety of the rest of us in this hellhole. They do all have to stay together so there is no separation and they can fight together whatever they come across, at least as long as EV.
Lori smiles and says, "That's why I'm using a regular arrow and not one of my explosive tipped ones. Frankly I'm more worried that a shift might sever the arrow, which would indicate the need to cross the threshold as quickly as possible."
Tyran watches Lori's experiment with interest, while sharing the information he's getting from Bill. "Imaginary dimension ... that's an interesting thought. That would also explain why it seems to have only a tentative link to other dimensions ... Aeturnus means eternity, which would support the concept of a permanent prison...
"Perhaps that's it! Whoever was imprisoned here was surrounded by the dimensional maelstrom, which is what kept them imprisoned here. But, being a rather powerful being, they were able to create an imaginary dimension within their prison ... that imaginary dimension being this room; with a portal to other worlds. Quite ingenious, really...
"But that would mean that they were already free, and there would be no reason to bring us here ... There's still something more to this picture. Why us? What is it that we all have in common?
"And do we dare jump through the portal, which leads to another portal, which could in turn lead to many more? Who knows where we could end up?" Tyran's lips curl in a bit of a sinister grin, as his latest question actually sounds somewhat intriguing to his shifter self...
Reaper looks at Tyran, “ok boy genius, let’s just say for a split second. You might just be right, and then raises the questions. 1. Who was prisoner here? 2. How did they escape? And three, look at us all. A shifter, couple of borgs , a few humans , and a blood lizard and a night bane, so what all do we all have in common? Can someone give an answer?" Reaper looks around the room at everyone for an answer.
"You want to know what we all have in common. You scream, I scream, we all scream for Ice Cream! That's what.
"Otherwise, will someone wake me when we find a way out of this room or if we need to shoot something? Ta.” And then To'Mas proceeds to extend and retract all four of his vibro-blades in order, round and round. It's just like tapping your fingers on the desk during a test at school, only much more deadly.
"Who was prisoner here? Stavros, if it was the one who created this portal.
"How did he escape? By creating an imaginary dimension containing a portal within their prison cell dimension.
"What do we have in common? First, we're all here ... and second, I already asked that.
"There are your answers ... now do I need to throw down a silence spell too?"
“Well only really two of us are talking here boy ... Seriously what’s the one thing we all share, I mean besides the breathing and 6 foot above here. half of all us are users of magic in one way shape or form ... others are just metal men ... now here would be the question Tyran .. Who has enough power to dump all of us here and keep us here? I know the night lords need help to do that but they are powerful beings ... how about that demon that chucked both of us into the rifts to begin with? I already describe him to you." Reaper looks around the room for the others to answer." I don't think a vampire or a dragon could do this but things changed since my time."
Lori launches her arrow at the doorway that opens inward. She can no longer see the frying pan, however, her arrow makes it back in. Then, the image shifts again, this time it looks like a landscape made of nothing but eyeballs, the landscape changes again to that of rolling green hills with an actual intact castle in the background.
Jenna seems quiet, yet shaken as she stands up and puts her knife away. Gor can feel the energy from the open doorway. He can feel the danger in his bones. Something ancient, yet powerful, as though a simple whim of this being or entity could change reality as everyone knew it. Milo's K-1000 sentries take position on either side of him as he rests, and then begin scanning the room. They seem to focus on the door, mostly.
Maranna, Karak't and Cirrus notice nothing out of the ordinary about the room, other than the door. Upon looking through the holes in the door, Cirrus swears he spots a blinking light in the darkness at the back of the hallway, or maybe even the reflection of one off of the wall from around a corner. It seems very faint and red in color.
Finally, Tyran senses an emotion from Dirk. Oddly enough, it seems like the predatory instinct to run or protect himself. At the same moment, Bill adds, oO(Drake... everyone has met or at least had something affect them because of Drake's actions. The demon mentions, the other demon, Dro'Lazz. Obviously, there must be a connection.)Oo
Lori vaguely remembers the name Stavros from something her parents had once talked about, long ago. But cannot place the name in relation to anything.
As Cirrus continues to look up the hallway through the hole in the door, he spots something dark move swiftly across the floor, but too hard to see in the already dark room. It disappears almost as fast as it appeared. Cirrus feels a chill run down his spine.
The name suddenly hits her. Stavros was once very powerful Elvin wizard, almost deemed a god from her parent's home world. He simply appeared for quite a time, and then disappeared. Many believe that he may have died. Also revered even by powerful beings such as the Asgardians and dragons, many called him Stavros, The Black, because of his pitch black skin. Thinking of it almost reminds her of Camozotz, but she knows that Camozotz couldn’t be him.
For a split second, Jenna catches glimpses of people frozen solid, as though frozen in place instantly, much show the final pains of death within the instant that they were frozen, and then she finds herself once again watching Tyran, Lori, Gor and Reaper babbling away and examining the portal.
With everyone focused on the portal Kira looks over at Milo. "Nice gun bots, where were you able to pick up a set in such good condition? Very interesting technology if I do say so myself. Mind if I take a closer look at one? I'll let the others figure out this portal stuff as they know much more about it than I do."
Jenna looks at the sight of all those faces frozen in horror and pain and screams as she backs away from them. She is shivering and her eyes are blinking rapidly, trying to erase what she is seeing from her eyes. When the image fades, she looks around and slides to the floor. She is deeply shaken and wraps her arms around herself as she looks up at the people around her... "Am I the only one who saw that?" Jenna shivers again.
Reaper looks at Tyran and everyone else in the room, “Ok so who is this Stavros? If he was imprisoned here, then why and how?" Reaper notices Cirrus isn't looking right. Reaper walks over to him with his wings folded around his body and his tail corkscrews around his leg to keep out the way, "what’s wrong with you metal man?”
"Drake ... Or Dro'Lazz. That's the link." Trusting in the bird's instincts, Tyran jumps to action. He first uses his medallion to cast armor spell around Dirk, and quickly gathers his equipment and backpack; his voice taking on a new urgency. "Look alive, people ... I've got a suspicious feeling that we may have just overstayed our welcome." Glancing out the door at the rolling fields and castle, he adds, "And this here looks like as friendly a stop as we're going to get ...
"I can't guarantee it's safe to jump, but I've got a strong hunch that it isn't safe to stay here any longer. Any objections?"
“Any objections? Nope but one question, anyone got a rope? Or would we all use a dark whip? Besides that I’m ready to go," Reaper gets up off the wall and walks up to Tyran, "Choice be yours kid unless things get another shock?"
Maranna looks around and tries to figure out what if they jump thru this portal. What will it lead them to next? She starts to get anxious because it’s another adventure for her and she thrives on this but she has to be calm so that she holds on to her composure to think clearly and keep anyone else who starts to freak out calm. She’s getting more excited and looks intently to what these two are deciding. "Have you guys decided what is best for us to do or what?"
She can't help but get the look of a deer in headlights at the mention of those names; everything comes rushing back to her. For the first time since arriving in this room she has a look of fear on her face. She quickly gathers herself and her belongings and moves closer to the door not caring what anyone is doing at this very moment, all she knows is her mission, her purpose is right here. But clearly it isn't the right time or place to carry it out, not with everyone being on such high guard. She calms herself some but she still seems a bit shaken. She only adds one thing, "I'm game, ready to go."
Cirrus says out loud, "I just saw something move in the shadows and I had a cold chill up my spine... I don’t like this," he then points in the direction of where he saw it using his free hand.
Karakt rolls back onto his feet and after a quick check to make sure he didn't drop anything he heads over to get a look thru the door; hmm I guess fields are kind of like plans, and at the first chance just bounds on thru the door.
Gor looks at Milo and says "grab your toys and let’s get the hell out of here! Tyran that not who I think it is that spider things Friend? Dam it just my luck a new enemy why. Milo hurry?"
"Well, it looks like we’re all on the same page here. What about the rest of you?" Suddenly Maranna hears another strange sound but not quite sure where it was coming from and shouts "We don't have much time people!! Come on!"
Ricky comes out a trance-like remembrance. Hearing something about rope she hunts through her pack, finding her nylon rope she states: "Would 150ft be enough?"
Milo gathers up his stuff and puts the k-1000's back in his pack and moves toward the door getting ready.
Karak't quickly leaps into action and begins bound for the doorway. At that moment, two more figures appear as though they are coming out of a fade. One of the individuals is a medium height, medium build man with almond shaped eyes, wearing a strange looking body armor that mainly Gor and Milo recognize: Camouflage variable armor.
The other looks to be an obvious doctor of some sort.
Both Galen and Raven appear in a room with white walls, similar to an office building of some sort, with no windows, just a door with two holes blown through it. The oddest thing is that the door is open and leads out into grassland of bright green with a picturesque looking castle in the background. Through the holes, he sees another room. The two couldn’t possibly coexist. Raven seems to get a grave look upon his face while. Galen notices 13 other individuals standing in the room. And a large looking dinosaur like lizard heading for the door.
Maranna has been waiting to jump and now with what she is seeing, anticipation and awe excite her. She's waiting for the decisions of everyone else and waits patiently to see what happens next.
Kira looks over to Lori, "Well Lori what do you think? Seems some are looking to jump into that doorway there. Should we join them and yes I'm asking you as you understand this magical stuff much better than I do. And right now, everything is really strange."
"GO! NOW!" Tyran shouts, as he grabs his blanket and jumps through the door. Once through, he'll turn around to see if the portal is a two-way portal. If so, he'll spread his blanket out to one side of the portal, open his pack, and grab for a 'close rift' scroll.
Reaper jumps in after Tyran in hopes that he makes it and so does the others. As he jumps in the rift he hollers back, "Come on let’s go!”
Maranna has been waiting for this moment but a sudden fear overtakes her. She’s almost in a frozen state, but she continues to hear the voices say "come on, let’s go!" She snaps out of it and looks at those who aren't quite sure and reaches out to whoever will take her hand and jump in with her.
"Why not, me too," and To’Mas heads through the doorway.
As Kira is looking at Lori to see how she answers, she hears Tyran. "Well in that case here goes!" Kira smiles and jumps hoping to end up with whoever else jumps to whatever the other side is.
Catori grabs Maranna's hand and pulls her thru the doorway with her, not even a word spoken. She just hopes they make it safely to the other side of whatever it is.
Jenna pulls herself up off the ground and does a quick check that she has everything, slinging her backpack over her shoulder, she takes a deep breath and runs and jumps through the portal before she has a chance to think about what she is doing.
Looking a bit stunned and more than a little confused, Galen looks around at his new surroundings to get his bearings. Seeing virtually no faces he recognizes, and everyone rapidly departing through the gateway, he just assumes that this is a new part of the resistance force from Atlantis. He mentally shrugs his shoulders and takes his turn leaping through. While he's waiting, he asks whoever is standing close how their part of the war went. "Our end could have gone better, but at least most of us got out alive." he adds.
Milo makes sure he’s got everything and jumps through seeing if Gor follows. Gor will wait for Milo to jump then fallow. Once out he will say "everybody ok"
Everyone leaps through the doorway. Luckily, the portal doesn't shift or trap anyone within. Upon jumping through, everyone looks back to notice that there is no portal back. They stare across thick, green grass and rolling hills. An old looking castle, hidden in vines and greenish gray in tint looms on the horizon of a hill to what seems to be the north. The area is obviously rich with magic and the welcoming sound of bird chirping as they flutter from tree to tree in this sparsely treed area. All of trees are leaved and not pine and the area seems to be a moist cold climate. A recent rainfall has the ground sluggish as To'Mas, Cirrus, Karak't and anyone else weighing more than 250lbs begins to sink in a bit of mud.
Lori notices, the newcomer, Raven, is rich with PPE and seems to have leadership look to him, yet distant. Raven seems to look around and then to each person in the group and shrugs. "Well, Galen. Another unknown place. Seems to never end, doesn't it?" He takes out two pistols and checks them over quickly and returns them to hip holsters, belted to his armor.
Tyran stands with his blanket and lays it out. Once again, Reaper is forced to begin backing up. Oddly enough, Maranna follows with him, as though the trip through had done something to her.
Jenna continues seeing things out of the corners of her eyes, yet, upon looking, there is nothing there. It could be just the jitters from the strange place they were just in. At that moment, she keeps seeing a vision of a circle of stones. They look ancient and worn, but something seems to beckon to her from them. Her vision clears as she continues to look upon the group adjusting to their new surroundings. Catori finds herself feeling strangely uneasy as she stands there.
To Kira, this place seems alien without something close to the semblance of technology without just guns and a wisecracking borg around. Milo's sentry guns look interesting; if Milo would let her just look at them. To Abigail, this place seems more like home. Enough around to live off of the land and it seems oddly peaceful.
Jenna looks around and gets her bearings, slightly shaken from all the visions and stress of the portal jump on her psyche. She runs her hands down her clothing, smoothing things out and dusting herself off, also checking all the weapons strapped to her, finally pulling out one of her knifes just in case. She kneels down to check her pack while she finishes getting her bearings and looking to see if there is anything to fear.. Or if the circle of stones might be real, and not a vision.
Reaper looks around and sees the stone circle and remembers it from his time in high school. He says loud and clear, "now I know we can't be here ... I know this rock design ... And if I am guessing right, we ain't in Kansas anymore kid..." reaper looks around this new place and has to wonder...
"Look at all of this greenery, this peaceful tranquility. It makes me sick. Where's a guy meant to charge his weapons around here, huh? There aren't any fast food joints." And starts flicking his vibro-blades in and out again in the usual bored way.
Seeing that the portal appears to be one-way, Tyran relaxes somewhat. "Sorry for the rushed exit, folks ... but if I'm right, we were about to have company ... and I don't mean these two. If I had to guess, I'd say that you two were the last of us that the demon was trying to gather; and as soon as you arrived, he was on his way as well. Now obviously, this doesn't look much like earth ... it's probably best if we try and avoid being noticed for a while, until we understand where we are ... chances are, whoever's in that castle hasn't seen a group like us before; and there is no telling how they might react to someone like To'Mas here," he adds with a smile. "Give me a couple minutes, and don't interrupt me ... I'll see if I can figure out where we are." Sitting down on the blanket, he attempts to get a reading of this dimension. Tyran senses that this is his home dimension, however, something is wrong. It's been altered somehow. Even Bill comments, oO(Something's different... I don’t feel right)Oo
Maranna straightens her clothing up as well as she sees the other girls do and notices Jenna looking at something but before she can ask any questions she is in awe where they landed. There’s beauty around them and a castle which fascinates her for some odd reason. There’s so much to investigate and yet she knows they don't have the time. They have to work together to stay out of danger and be ready for anything at all times. She’s quite distracted at this point though. Since they have gone thru this portal she feels some things changing with her. She tries to shrug it off...it ain't no big thing. "Maybe I need to eat something or get some sleep, I feel so exhausted", she says to herself. She seems to follow Reaper since the portal. Her fears from before are gone so she introduces herself to him. "Well we made it... My name’s Maranna. Looks like we have some investigating to do around here to see what and what we’re doing." Even with his glared look at her, she doesn't flinch, she’s no
"Actually Tyran, while this doesn't look like the North American wilderness I'm familiar with, there's plenty of other places on the planet I haven't seen." comments Lori as she looks around. Lori closes her eyes and opens her mystical sense to scan for ley lines and active Rifts. After that, she'll move around the area and examine the in an attempt to determine if the group is still on Earth.
Reaper walks over to Tyran, "kid this might be North America, but long before rifts showed up. I know because I was born before the coming of rifts." Reaper looks around the area and says out load, “I know a lot about this planet before the rifts.”
Gor looks at the guys in the phase armor and says, "Where did you get that armor? I know what it does; I sell them and most of the weapons from the same company. As you can tell from Milo over there he has an obsession with guns." then Gor will turn to Milo and say "Milo get a perimeter set up I don't want any surprises." then Gor will just wait and see what’s to come.
Raven turns to Gor after giving a curious glance to Galen. "Im from all over. You could say that I come from every form of reality that I can think of. It might give an idea how I got this armor. Do they still call it Naruni Variable Camo? Who is everyone here?" Raven looks around to each person; he seems unphased that there is a demonic looking creature and a giant lizard amongst the group. "And where did Cereth and Kila disappear to?" he frowns as thoughts race through his head, oO(And the Soulless Ones...)Oo
Karak't shifts his weight from foot to foot trying not to sink and gets a "eewww" kind of look on his face from the mud getting between his toes, but once he starts to get use to the mud he goes for a run around the area, just in a circle and not going too far away from the group, keeping them in sight. Karak't makes it to the top of the hill adjacent from the castle. Off into the next valley, he sees two ley lines faintly glowing off in the distance. What's more interesting is the skeleton some great creature lying amongst the ruins of some large, stone structure. Just above the skeleton of the lizard like creature, this looks to be a dragon but much larger, is the silhouette of what looks like a giant tree in the distant horizon. It could be 20 miles away, maybe more. The tree must be enormous!
Cirrus stands close to To'Mas and Ricky, when both To'Mas and Ricky notice Cirrus's skin begin to very faintly glow, as it looks like static electricity is arcing from his hair, fingertips and shoulders and in between his legs. Cirrus doesn't look as though he can feel it.
"As we are not sure where we are, is everyone ok with food and water? We might want to gather up some essentials while we are here as we decide our nest move. I also have a strange feeling about this place, not exactly sure why but it seems… Different. Different but not like that room we were just in either....." Kira's voice trails off as she waits to hear what the others have to say.
Karakt stops in his tracks at the sight of the huge skeleton and ponders the magnitude of the meal he missed out on before giving a few squawks to try and get the attention of the others, he also gets a sudden idea as to where they might be but can't work out how to convey his thoughts to the others, especially after all the difficulties he has had making himself understood in the past, pets his cannon and feels forlorn.
Maranna shakes off the weird feeling and grabs up something out of her pocket, just a part of a candy bar and munches on it quickly so she can get some senses back. She watches what the others are doing and waits on what each person is doing. Hopefully someone will find some real food. It looks like there should be plenty because of the trees with fruit for the birds, flowers and vegetation. Surely there should be something for us and it will be found soon. She doesn't get a comment from Reaper, so she starts to go introduce herself to Tyran but she can't move. She feels like an idiot because everyone else can move around but every time she makes a move towards Tyran she can't. She looks over at Reaper and notices that he’s having the same problem, like there’s invisible bars around Tyran preventing either one of them going near him, but why? Some other strange things are starting to happen but this "barring" from Tyran has her puzzled and she doesn't know who to really ask.
"You may be right, Lori ..." Tyran responds. "It is definitely our dimension ... but reality has been altered. Somehow, something has changed something in history, and what we see before us is the result." Dirk takes to the air to scan the area, while Tyran turns his attention to Bill. "I agree ... it feels different ... are you all right?" he asks the invisible companion, casting See Aura so that he can scan his companions for any 'abnormalities’. Dirk climbs quickly, scanning the area for potential threats, landmarks, and to provide a better sense of the surroundings that they cannot see.
Milo looks toward Kira and asks, "Kira was it? Sure you can look at this." Reaching into his pack he pulls out one both of the k-1000'sand hands one to her smiling. Then he starts to set the other one to make a perimeter patrol. Then, looking at Gor, he says, "Anything else Gor?"
"I plan to live forever. Or die trying..." Vila - Blakes 7
Re: Ivy and Chrome: Chapter 111
"What's your point Tyran?" Completely missing the obvious fact of a 6Foot borg in a medieval setting is odd.
"Well ... let's just say that it's possible they have never seen a borg before ... and humans tend to fear the unknown. They might decide to shoot first, and ask questions later."
Galen looks around with a “what now” expression on his face that slowly changes to a look of concern as he realizes that none of the freedom army he was fighting with are here except Cirrus. “Hey Cirrus, you know what’s going on? Last I knew we were in retreat.” As Galen turns and looks at Cirrus he notices the blue glow. “Dude you’re glowing Galen says a little louder and higher pitched than his previous comment; the surprise obvious on his face.
"Tyran I think I would have to agree with you on that one” reaper shifts back to his human form and rigs up something to make his jeans stay up and covered in the back.
Catori wraps her arms around her as if cold as she backs up towards where Tyran is sitting on his carpet. "I really hate to sound like a pain but something isn't right here, I'm getting a really bad vibe here." She keeps scanning the area hoping it isn't what she thinks it is. She stops on the glowing person and blinks in hopes it’s just her eyes playing tricks on her before speaking up, "Uhm dude do you normally glow like that?"
Maranna looks at Reaper with some confusion about his comment on knowing the planet before the rifts but holds off on asking any questions for the moment. She looks over at the glowing and wonders the same as everyone else. "Why is he glowing and what’s causing it and what should we do." She attempts to ask Tyran if hes found anything yet. ”Hey, Tyran have you figured anything out yet? What should be our next step? Do we know anything more about our surroundings and the castle?" But something’s weird. Is he hearing me? I still can't move towards him and I still don't feel right. What’s going on? She waits and observes what is going on.
"Tyran, really? You think so? Well if these medieval farmers want to fire some of their medieval arrows at me, I'll pick them up and return them by hand. Maybe one in each eye socket."
"Reaper, it looks like your g-string is showing, you'd better pull up those jeans. Just say NO to crack, okay?"
Reaper looks at To’Mas , "you think you could help , like maybe some rope or you wanna tangle with my darker side and see how good you can fall ? " reaper laughs and jokes with To’Mas .
Reaper looks toward the castle, "I’m gonna make a half ass tempt to make it to the castle. What do you all think?"
"While I don't have any rope right now, if we have some I'm ready to cut it." And then proceeds to demonstrate the ejection of all four wrist vibroblades with all four blades running "Speaking of falling, if you fall I'll be ready to catch you. As for the castle, let’s go see if they have Beer, Pizza and Wenches!"
"You really don't want to know.", Tyran mumbles under his breath, while silently scanning the area with Dirk.
As Galen hears bits and pieces of the surrounding conversations and mutterings he is rapidly getting the impression that nobody knows what's going on, where we are, or how we got here. Plopping down on the ground ungracefully he puts his head in his hands and mutters about how he'll never free Orald now and he should just find some quiet corner of the world to set up shop. He begins playing with some of the plant life on the ground around him; examining them [Identify Plants: 30%] to try to determine anything about what/when we are.
Galen finds that most of the plants are very indigenous to wet, cold climates and many of the nettles are a bit more potent than the ones he is used to seeing. They seem to be of a type that has a form of venom that is not lethal, but quite painful if it touches skin. If he had to guess, after looking around, they aren't even on the same continent as Atlantis or North America.
Ricky looks around and relaxes slightly. Anything that looks like home can't be that bad. However she keeps her guard up and starts looking around. (Identify Plant: 45+5%, Track Animals: 45+5% & Wilderness Survival: 55%+5% (checking to see if there is anything edible, usable ect))
Ricky, like Galen, finds the same results, except that through her learnings that they are obviously in the northern hemisphere of the planet. The bird berries are edible, but they bring a terrible stomachache if too many are eaten. Thre are wild potatoes growing here or there and water isnt a problem to find if they are desperate enough to scoop the water from the nettleleaves, which are of a rare breed that actually has a pain inducing venom. She spots a few deer and squirrel tracks and even tiny feet, which she could swear have toes like a human. The flowers in the area are beautiful, but some she has never seen before. She is surprised to find no pinewood in the area, it looks to be all hardwood trees and she seems to get a sense that this place is very easy to adapt to, as though it was made for people of her profession.
Gor will say to Raven "Ya but on earth its call savage arms my own company it helps me make more money and keeps it low key from the coalition. They don't like alien weapons." then will tell Milo "get me some fruit off the trees I'm still hungry."
Raven nods absently as he looks around, "Have you ever heard of New Memphis?" he asks as he turns to Gor.
Cirrus, not knowing himself why he is starting to emit bluish electricity, he starts to do a Psychic Diagnosis on himself to try and figure out why he is glowing. and asks anyone if the have a multi frequency radio.
Cirrus finds that something in the area is causing his neurons to fire signals more than normal, to the point of paranormal activity. Something he despises as much as magic and d-bees, not understanding why. He looks down to notice his hands feel warm. Upon looking down, he notices that his hands are beginning to glow bluish-white and visible electricity begins arcing between his hands.
Raven jumps back, "Cirrus, the mystical energies in the area are gravitating towards you!"
Lori notices the PPE of the area seems to become visible closer to him and gather on him. If she didn’t know any better, if too much gathers in him, it will either kill him, or discharge somehow.
As others make comments towards Cirrus, Kira looks him over from where she is standing to see if she can make anything of what's going on with him and the blue glow. "I don't think I have that kind of radio but I'll see if I have anything close to it. As a lot of my things are in my ATV, I'll see what I can MacGyver (sorry couldn't resist) together as it's not here with us." Kira also takes a look at the ground and close surrounding area to see if it's affected at all by the strange blue glow. Kira will also look around to see if anything looks/seems familiar at all to her.
Nothing seems to look familiar to Kira, except the people around her. She, and everyone present, notices that Cirrus' hands are getting brighter and brighter with each counting second.
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Karak't stops in his tracks at the sight of the huge skeleton and ponders the magnitude of the meal he missed out on before giving a few squawks to try and get the attention of the others, he also gets a sudden idea as to where they might be but can't work out how to convey his thoughts to the others, especially after all the difficulties he has had making himself understood in the past, pets his cannon and feels forlorn.
Karak't notices Tyran's hawk, Dirk, fly past him and up. It seems to circle and scan the area.
Tyran inspects each person for abnormalities:
Cirrus is a human, but with many altercations that seem to make him superhuman. Tyran isn’t sure but the man is building so much magical energy that it should have killed any normal human by now. By the look of it, he has no idea how it’s happening, it could be an innate, unknown ability of the man's.
Reaper seems like a normal human, but something about him is off. Not possessing entity or abnormalities otherwise.
Maranna almost seems the same as Reaper.
Raven is a normal human mage. Something about him seems off also. Almost as though not all of his soul is there.
Upon seeing what Dirk sees, Tyran looks down and sees Karak't down below as Dirk buzzes past him. Giving a screech of glee at the fresh, cool air. Dirk begins to climb higher, letting the air glide around and under him as he soars higher, catching a warm current. Off in the distance, over the horizon, Dirk catches sight of what could be the largest tree either he or Tyran had ever seen or will ever see. It has to be at least 1/2 mile high!
Dirk circles around and continues observing the landscape; his keen eyesight catches 6 men on horseback about two miles away. They seem to be wearing gleaming, silverish, knight's armor of the old tale. The armor is much more ornate than Crusader body armor and all six carry fancy looking long swords. They seem to be chasing someone.
Dirk begins to try and do a gliding hover, riding another warm air current, rising slowly in altitude. Dirk looks down and back and notices the group are nothing more than small specks, like ants, standing where they appeared in the open area of a random speck of wilderness. Forests and wet grasslands stretch as far as Dirk's site can see. Far to the south, the occasional small cottage seems to plume chimney smoke up. The smoke slowly fades as it climbs from its source. Dirk looks back towards the knights, who are just now riding out of view, obscured by a line of tall hills. A man with dark hair and eyes and rather tall comes bounding over the crest of the same hills. He seems to be desperate to get away from the knights.
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Cereth has no idea what is going on. The last he knew, he was preparing to mass together a force to fight back against the ice queen. Splynn compatriots all gathered together with their equipment, ready to go the next morning. Cereth finds himself awaking in a puddle of water with rain pouring down on him. As he stood up, he found that he was in a small village of small houses, huts and cottages where the technology level was fairly low, like that of the barbarians of Rifts Earth. How did he get here.
Upon walking through the small village, many of the people, upon not recognizing him, seemed very suspicious and start trying to talk to him. Strange American accents and a pitch fork or two pointed at him inspires Cereth to try and reason with them, eventually they do. Cereth spends part of a day helping some of the village folk with daily tasks. This is when the knights show up. A dozen of the "kings" men arrive and confront Cereth on whether he has paid his dues. A bullying lieutenant of the knights instigates a fight where Cereth ends up quite injured and having injured or killed five of the knights. Cereth manages to sneak out of town and head north.
An hour after the encounter, Cereth finds himself trying to do his best to outrun six of the knights. Where was the leader? At the crest of a hill, Cereth spots a tree to the north. The thing must be enormous cus it rises above the horizon. He can hear the taunts and yells behind him, "That's right, outsider! Tire yourself out! That way we can draw and quarter you quickly!"
These knights are something else though, one took a grenade square in the chest, nearly shredding his armor, and stood right back up. Their swords actually slice into his god-like flesh and his magical abilities made him a match for all twelve, but their combat tactics are much better with sword play and close quarter fighting. His laser sword and CS vibro-sword only frightening a few of the knights for a moment, it wasnt enough to get a jump on them, but enough to get away.
Now Cereth runs, starting to tire. All of this gear seems to get heavier with each step.
Karakt is not with the main group, neither is Cereth, so the things that they have seen and the things Dirk has seen, no one else has. I omitted most of Milo's post because neither Gor nor Milo has seen the humongous tree.
Reaper uses his skills to see about this area as he starts to look around. Reaper looks back at the rest of this group and thinks out loud, "a couple of tin men, a street junkie, a punkass kid and who knows what else is here. I know someone is gonna bite it soon." Reaper starts to walk around and towards the treeline and hunts for some food alone. To'Mas follows Reaper to see what he's up to.
Reaper searches but is unable to see any fresh tracks, the recent rains have made it too difficult to track anything large.
Maranna gets a little ticked off with Tyran because hes not answering her questions and she know he hears her, he's just ignoring her. "Well, thats one hell of a way to treat someone whos trying to find out some answers here not just for me but for everyone else in the group!!" She gets a glare from him but what else is new. First its this Reaper character and now this one! What is it with them, they think women are to beneathe them to give an anwer to or what?!! She walks over to Galen and Ricky and introduces herself and asks about the berries. She kinda hesitates at the thought of a stomach ache but eats just a few to satisfy the hunger pains then grabs up a potatoe and munches it down. Ah, much better and so she suggests to the others to do the same as long as they don't eat alot of berries. Now to figure out how to get the water because she surely doesn't want bad results from the nettle leaves..She searches around looking for something to scoop up the water but at the same time shes looking at the flowers, so pretty but they also could be deadly. She too can't help but also notice this glow getting brighter and brighter. It's scary and thoughts and questions flood her mind. She just hopes Cirrus will be ok. She notices the bird in the sky, soaring freely, but hes noticing something, and since Tyran won't answer any of her questions theres no reason to ask, just wait for him to volunteer information. Thats a tough one because they all need answers and prepare for whatever danger might come their way but she shrugs her shoulders and mutters to herself "Well, that's how men are" and attempts to help find some different food with the others.
Galen greets Maranna politely and takes the opportunity to catch up on the events that led up to the time that he joined the group. Galen stands up and joins her as they explore the surrounding area. While they walk he eyes more of the plants for potential uses. (He mentally makes a note to try using the nettles to distill a poison from them when he has the chance...never know when that might come in handy.)
As they walk, Galen talks a little about his past and gives his opinion that he is nolonger in North America or Atlantis. "...so, long story short, I was in Atlantis trying to free my teacher from the slavers and stop some army. I stepped through a portal to follow the rest of the retreating freedom fighters and wound up in that strange house instead. I'm just a simple doctor so I don't know if I have any business out adventuring like this. Maybe my skills will come in handy at some point, though."
Maranna is relieved and comforted that at least someone is talking to her and trying to help her out. As they walk along she too tries to see if theres anyway at all to get the water but listening intently to Galen. "Theres nothing wrong with you adventuring out like this as you put it. You will be and are a great help to all of us. We're all here for some reason and we're all here to help each other in ways we may not understand or even like. Hell, you've already helped me just by talking to me!! I was beginning to wonder what was going on with no responses back there. Your skills will be needed, I'm sure of that so no worries, ok?" Maranna walks along toward a plant that looks odd as Galen goes with her and they both try to figure out what it is and if it will be beneficial at all.
"Ahh, your words of kindness are greatly appreciated. " Galen bows slightly to Maranna to underscore the gratitude and looks at her with a warm smile. "Maybe I'll find the strength to go on after all." As you look more closely at him you would estimate that he is in his mid to late twenties. He's just below average height for a human male; maybe 5'6" or so. Slightly stocky in build although it's hard to tell exactly how stocky with the body armor on. He's definitely not going to win any beauty contests with his square set jaw and permanent bags under his eyes. The lack of hair on his scalp doesn't seem to help matters either.
After their brief walk Galen feels more at center and at peace with himself. "Thank you Maranna for your company. I think I maybe I should go check on our human light bulb over there. Ummm... He is human isn't he? I hope we can chat some more later." Walking briskly up to Cirrus, Galen asks him if this is normal and is he in any pain. "I could get out my medical kit and take a closer look; I've never seen anything like this before, though, so I don't know if that will be of any help.
Maranna feels good about herself that her meaningful and truthful words meant something to Galen. She doesn’t quite know whether to do the courtesy thing or what but it doesn’t matter> "You’re welcome Galen and I mean what I said. Maybe I should go over to the others and see what they have discovered on the food around here and see if I can be of any help. And thank you for listening to me." Maranna wanders over, passing the bright glow from Cirrus and approaches Catori. "Hi, I'm Maranna. It looks like you are trying to figure out the glowing too. Have you been able to figure out where we are for sure and maybe why?" She knows she’s asking too many questions but that’s the only way to get any answers and some are not answering and some are being at least kind. She hopes she can help Catori, being as she’s huddled down and wrapped up looking a little scared.
Galen quickly deducts that Cirrus isn't in any pain.
Karakt watches the bird for a moment then looks back to the others and sees they aren't paying any attention, obviously they don't hear too well, then again cirrus is kind of distracting at the moment, so he runs back to them and gives Tyran a nudge, since he seems to be the one in charge, if you can really call anyone in charge of this weird group, then fishes out a note pad, points at the castle and writes "cam u lot", motions at the general area and writes "in gland" and hopes that Tyran knows what he is on about because explaining these things is going to be really hard.
Raven laughs, "Check that out! A dinosaur, using a notebook like it's supposed to be used!"
Seeing the Lizard-like fellow's difficulty in getting his point across, Lori walks over to him and says "Calm yourself, and give me a moment to prepare." She then casts the Tongues spell upon herself, allowing her to understand (and speak) any spoken language. "Now then, start over, I and feel free to use your native language, my spell should compensate." She'll translate what Karakt says into plain American for the benefit of the others. [Spell will last 21 minutes, Afterwards, she'll use Lore: Magic(73%) and Lore: Faeries & Creatures of Magic(73%) to see if she recalls anything about this 'Camelot' place or the giant tree.]
Lori has heard stories from her parents of a place known as England, where giant trees, known as Millenium Trees stand. These trees are nmysterious, but very magical in nature. She watches as the magical energies gathering around Cirrus are almost blinding.
karakt proceeds to bombard lori with mental images of a himself laying next to fire with a beutiful young woman laying aganst him, across from them is a middle aged man who seems to be talking but instead of sound images appear above the mans head, images of a big fort, a man who looks like some kind of high chief sitting on a big chair, a finely crafted sword with gems on the hilt and cross guard, strange humanoid figures that seem to be make of the night sky, all black with stars twinkling on them, rideing horses, a woman half imersed in a lake, some old guy in robes with a staff, a golden cup with gems imbedded all over it, hundreds of the black humanoids fighting each other, a round table, and dozens of other images flashing about too quickly to get a clear idea what they are meant to be.
Gor will say "I think I've been here befor I just can't place it."then gor will sit down and use (total recall) to see if he can remember were there at. Gor remembers the entire scene of when they had fought around Bathe, England when traveling with Dellian and a necromancer who had a sadistic nature when he had healed Milo's broken back after fighting some nasty supernatural creatures in the woods.
milo reaching into his duffle bag will pull out one of his canteens to get a drink then turning to the closest group to him saying with a smile, "would any of you like some water or a canteen?"
As Kira waits for someone to tell them a bit about where they possibly are she will activate her sixth sense ability and see aura. Kira will also take a look around from where she's standing and see if she sees or hears anything out of the ordinary.
Tyran looks to Cirrus, in an attempt to figure out what might be causing the mystic energy in the area to draw towards them. He'll check his amulet to see if there are any potential spirits or entities in the area, while quickly pondering what, if anything, he can figure out regarding Cirrus and the gathering energy. (Lore: Geomancy)
Somehow, Cirrus could be a medium for magical energies. This could be the only explanation. The question is, can his body handle that much mystical energy going into it? Most creatures that can absorb that much without trying either die, or become creatures of magic.
Guarding against a potential energy discharge, he places his hand on the long rod concealed beneath his cloak, and activates the device's energy feature. Seeing the energy continue to build up around Cirrus, he makes an attempt to draw some of the energy off of Cirrus, in an attempt to control it, weave it, and channel it into a powerful (and less destructive) result instead of a potential life-threatening discharge (ie. A high PPE spell). While doing this, he will watch carefully for any signs of dimensional disturbance; suspecting that perhaps the demon they had just left behind might have something to do with this activity. "Looks like a local law enforcement is headed this way ... they're chasing some tall guy in this general direction. They’re that way," he adds, pointing. "In case anyone is looking for a little more action, that is ..." he smiles. "Or ... we could head towards the other item of interest ... the mile high tree just over that ridge. Anyone ever heard of anything like that?" Responding to Karakt's nudge, he looks at what the lizard has written. "Cam u lot? In Gland? Sorry, I'm not really clear on what you're saying."
Tyran senses nothing out of the ordinary besides what they have already experienced. However, the fella running from the men on horseback has disappeared from view, via running into a thick grove of trees.
Cirrus tells Tyran, "do not draw any off yet cause I may need to use it somehow, I’m just not sure how i am drawing it?" cirrus looks at Milo and says" I will take a drink " not knowing if i can use this energy as a weapon or just what it will do.
Milo hands cirrus one then reaches for another and asks, "Anyone else"
"Of course," Tyran nods. "Only trying to help ... it appeared that you weren't sure what was happening, and I thought perhaps I could help diffuse it safely. Can I ask, however ... what exactly are you doing?" Subconsciously, he continues to hold on to the rod concealed beneath his cloak, still not sure he trusts the sudden buildup of energy. "So ... Cam u lot, In gland, a castle, a gigantic tree, and medieval knights chasing a tall, dark haired someone in this general direction... any theories?"
Ricky looks to Tyran knowing if anyone would know anything about the place it would be him. She heads over to him hoping he will share some thoughts with her on the place and perhaps compare notes against what each know. Hoping that he finds comfort in someone he knows and maybe trusts a little to not treat him like a child. She tells the group about the berries gathers some and puts it into her bag for an emergency. She gathers some wild potatoes, and also fills her canteen. Talking to Tyran, she explains about the tiny tracks she sees and waits to see what his thoughts are on the strangeness of this place.
Maranna asks Catori and the others if they want her to get canteens for them all since she’s going over to get one for herself. She had one but somehow with all that was going on its nowhere to be found and this will just provide an extra one just in case she finds her own. She sees one person gathering up some potatoes and berries for later and decides she will gather enough for everyone else but asks "Would anyone like to come with me to get the canteens and gather some berries and potatoes for everyone for their supplies?"
As the images deluge her mind Lori blinks rapidly, "Okay, that wasn't quite what I was expecting. A natural telepath, eh?" she asks of Karakt. She takes a moment to interpret the images then speaks to the group standing around. "First of all, he believes we are in England, which as I recall is an island or peninsula in Europe. I think he is correct, my parents told me of gigantic trees called Millennium Trees that grow in England. Secondly, he indicates that this 'Camelot' place is some sort of castle or fortress ruled by a king. I'm not sure what all the images he showed me are supposed to mean, a old mage of some sort, a woman standing in a lake, and several images of black warriors on horseback and in battle. I believe he was told of this 'Camelot' by a friend rather than being here previously." At first she tries not to look towards the brightly glowing (to her eyes) form of Cirrus, but after a while she decides to simply turn off her PPE vision. "Personally, I'd like to find shelter before nightfall, so shall we pick a destination?"
Gor will stand up and say "shit I know where we are we are in England son of a bitch I hate this place! The tree you are seeing is a millennium tree dam I hate fairs!" then Gor will turn to Milo and say "I'm not going to wormwood again." and reach for the next canteen.
At this point, Lori cannot even look in Cirrus's general direction. As Milo hands Cirrus the canteen, the canteen stays fine as Cirrus grabs it, but Milo's armored glove began to melt! Everyone then notices that Cirrus's feet are no longer touching the ground and that the ground is actually melting beneath him and waves of heat are coming off of him. A sphere of energy seems to pulsate around him as though it may burst.
Reaper turns around and sees To’Mas following him, he asks, "what you like my company or you looking to take me out? Gauging from this place I could probable guess we're not in Kansas anymore Toto." Reaper and To'Mas look back down into the valley, only to notice that Cirrus isn't hard to miss. The energy surrounding him looks very unstable.
Karak’t seeing that cirrus is becoming uncomfortably warm to be around, and also looks like he is about to explode, Karak’t decides it would be best to move away from him, and given that someone is hinting the group should choose a better place to camp when night comes the blood lizard runs off 100 feet or so towards the castle and waits there to see what everyone else decides to do.
Tyran looks towards Cirrus, with a sense of panic. "Cirrus ... WHAT ARE YOU DOING! Nobody can channel that much energy safely ... you've got enough there to level a city, and you aren't doing a very good job of controlling it. Let me disperse it, before you kill us all!" Not waiting for a response, suspecting that Cirrus's mind is already drunk with the power flowing through him, Tyran springs into action. "HE'S GONNA BLOW! Quick ... everyone place a hand on this!" Tyran pulls the lightning rod out from under his cloak, and stretches it out in front of him for other to place a hand on in order to benefit from the rod's 'impervious to energy' property. "Bill ... can you do anything to neutralize the explosion?" he asks. (OOC: I believe he should know the 'implosion neutralizer' spell). Tyran attempts to draw from Cirrus once again ... if he is not able, he will turn to the ambient energy from any nearby ley lines to gather energy for a spell. If that doesn't provide enough, he'll mention, "Casters, I may need a little boost here ..." before he begins muttering his next spell...
oO(Ill try)Oo Bill replies in Tyran's head.
Kira attention is brought back to Tyran after looking around at the area they are standing. "Oh my god...Cirrus. .." Kira runs over to where Tyran is and puts a hand on the lightning rod. "This is getting crazier by the second...new people to meet...one glowing like a second sun...talk about adventure... " Kira's voice trails off as she waits to see what happens and hopes all will be ok.
With his other hand, Tyran reaches into a concealed pocket, and pulls out a small crystal figurine. Casting his spell, he concentrates on the figurine, and then tells it to go feed on the explosion that is about to be loosed around Cirrus. Once done that, he begins drawing again, and starts preparing to teleport them out of the area of the pending explosion ... picking a destination via Dirk's vision, somewhere in the valley not too far (or close) to the tree.
Milo puts a hand on the rod then looks at Gor and yells, "so help me if you try to take me to that hell again i leave you to go by yourself. People are still after me there. i want to go less than you do." then examining his glove says "man I’m gunna have to get a new one again sixth one this month. Oh well."
Maranna already has enough of supplies and because Cirrus looks like he's going to blow up any minute she runs off as fast as she can. Anything to save her own life is all that matters. Let everyone else stay behind if they want but she’s not going to blow up with everyone else if that happens!
To'Mas shoots at Cirrus. Both guns, 4 shots each. "Let’s see some pretty lights" To'Mas thinks...
Reaper looks back to talk to To’Mas and that cirrus guy is about to nuke the area. Reaper tells To’Mas, "hey To’Mas, what you say we better get outta the area soon before he goes off? And how are you on emp damage?"
"Sir, that sounds like a champion idea. Lead on old chap." To'Mas replies.
"Did somebody say EMP?" Galen's alarmed voice sounds out across the general din of conversations around him. "As in 'electro-magnetic pulse'? That'll ruin my medical equipment. Wait for me; I'm coming with you" He says as he searches for the source of the voice that brought up the EMP.
Jenna runs over to Tyran and grabs a hold of the rod and closes her eyes, waiting for the explosion.
Reaper looks at To’Mas and smiles, "ok To’Mas. But I have a feeling someone there will need our help in surviving this. How fast can you run?"
"Lead on McDuff, the trees won't come to Dunsinane by themselves. Which way?"
Reaper replies and points in the direction we were headed, "that way now go I will catch up with you, i have a feeling we gonna have a third party member!" reaper looks back towards the group looking for Maranna.
Milo looking at Tyran asks, "so what exactly does this rod do that’s going to stop him." nodding over toward cirrus.
Maranna runs as fast as she can, hoping to escape before any explosions or whatever’s going to happen back there. All she knows is that she needs to keep running and notices two figures not far off from her. Now she seems to find the power to run even faster to get to them.
As the two that Galen overheard talking about EMP's take off running he decides that that might be a good idea. Hoisting his pack more firmly over both shoulders he runs to catch up to them and sees Maranna out of the corner of his eyes.
Gor will cast Impervious to Energy 40 PPE on Milo then grab his nunchaku and teleport to the top of the castle and will watch from there.
Not knowing what is going on cirrus decides to allow Tyran to do what he can to help.
Raven frowns as he looks at his options and reaches over and grabs the bottom of Tyran's lightning rod. "If that's what I think it is, what’s going to save us from the concussion of the blast?" Raven begins speaking in an arcane tongue, casting a spell at him. Right afterwards, as Tyran begins chanting in an ancient tongue, Raven channels some of his PPE to the pool to help with the ritual. Tyran seems to be chanting something. Gor touches Milo and then grabs a set of nunchucks and then simply isn’t there.
Galen seems to catch up to and start to pass Maranna as Reaper arrives to come to the rescue, halfway down the hill from where he was at.
Meanwhile, Cirrus finishes telling Tyran that he will accept the help. He begins to feel pain behind his eyes and his arms feel super cold. Upon looking down, Cirrus notices that his whole body is glowing bright. The wet grass which is a few feet underneath his feet is blackened and all of the vegetation within three feet of him is either burnt or smoldering. He notices that he is suspended in the air by sheer force of the energy coursing through him. He feels good, but at the same time he now realizes that he can now feel the magical energies coursing through him and threatening to tear him apart. Suddenly his vision flashes, as though he was in a dream.
The doctor stares at Cirrus and grins, "The tests went well with you today. Thank you for volunteering with this program. The steroids and the metabolic stabilizers have done their job and after a few more tests, you will be able to surpass the strength of the Kingsdale Titan Juicers and out power some mages with this new technology that we've been working with." The doctor, who looks to be in his early middle ages, late twenties, and then shines a lamp in Cirrus' eyes, "How are you feeling, Rand?"
Cirrus finds himself answering but it sounds muffled. He isn’t even sure what he said. It seems so confusing. "Just remember, Rand, if the energy that your body gathers becomes too great, then you’re near one of the recorded dangers. The Coalition Database is stored in your brain so it has a meter that reads your geological location through your natural sense of balance and your ears. If that happens, the energy will build and you will need to release that energy before it kills you, alright? There are several ways to do it. First you can..." and the doctor's voice seems to trail off. Cirrus can feel the hospital bed underneath of him and he notices the bloodied surgical tools no more than three feet away. This all seems so familiar, he remembers it somehow... Rand/Cirrus cannot keep his eyes open... sleep... zzz
Cirrus vision comes back too as he notices all of the worried looks from everyone around. They seem so bright colored, and they look as though they are staring into the sun when they look at him. Cirrus has never felt so good, as though the energy coursing through his body makes him feel like a god. The memory still lingers though, oO(you will need to release that energy before it kills you)Oo.
Cirrus is unaware that one of the blasts from To'Mas guns tore into his shoulder, but didn’t kill him! The second blast horribly missed, almost striking Lori.
Gor ends up on top of the castle, getting a good view of the carnage down below. Even at this stage, one look at Cirrus makes it apparent to Gor that even he might not be safe if Cirrus overloads and bursts. Looking down at the group is like trying to look at an oncoming hover hauler with floodlights at night. He watches as Maranna and Galen make a break for it as Reaper runs down to help them. He sees To'Mas take a few potshots at Cirrus with his guns and then turns to take off. The hill that To'Mas is on seems steep on the far side. Beyond that, it looks to be about 300 yards to the tree line of a fairly beautiful looking forest. Then the blast of heat from the valley, where Cirrus is at, seems to wash over Gor. It isn’t especially hot; more of soothing warmth, however, Gor is at least 400 yards away from the group. The heat must be almost unbearable down there.
"Aww gee, he didn't explode. Hey Reaper, do you think I should shoot again?" To'Mas smirks.
Karak’t decides that 100 feet might not be enough distance (especially if Gor can still feel something from where he is) and beats a hasty retreat, hoping to get to the far side of the castle and use it for cover, preferably before anything explodes.
"Shoot again, sure To’Mas go for it. Aim little better and this time." reaper looks on with a smile.
Lori stares at the brightly glowing Cirrus in amazement for several minutes, her mind racing as she tries to determine what is happening to him. To'Mas' stray blast shocks her back to reality. Since Cirrus seems willing to allow the use of his PPE, Lori tries to drain off 30 PPE as she casts Invincible Armor upon herself. If successful, she'll continue to draw from Cirrus as she casts 3 Energy Shield spells (10PPE each), which combined with Raven's spell will form a box around Cirrus. After that, she'll see what her options are. Unfortunately her only really PPE intensive spells require the presence of a leyline.
Milo looking at his equipment sighs and says, "I probably shouldn’t be saying this now but if this rod doesn’t work and one of my rockets go we all just might die even if we survive the blast he’s going to give off. Sorry"
Tyran continues to mumble frantically, using the power of the gathered circle of people and drawing from Cirrus in an attempt to complete his spells.
Gor will get ready to teleport again as far as he can see to a safe place if the explosion happens. (up to 20 miles even if it’s on top of a tree.)
Maranna hears something of rustling behind her and looks back to see Galen trying to catch up to her. "Hurry Galen! I don't know when its gona happen but I want to be as far away from that group as possible. I see two figures just over here when you get here and catch your breathe a little lets run to them, ok?" As soon as Galen reaches Maranna, he gets a short deep breath and they start off to the other two. There not that far off now. ”Oh great!!" she mutters for she now recognizes who the larger figure is. Well, maybe this time he will be of more use than he was back there or we just have to deal with his attitude problem. Either way, Maranna looks at it that there are now four of them and they are getting further away from that glow. Maranna yells over to Reaper "Hey! It's getting a whole lot hotter and he’s looking more and more like he’s going to blow and take everyone with him! I wasn't going to stay around and I guess neither was Galen to watch the fireworks up close and personal. I saw two figures and just ran like hell to get to you. I think we should get a little further away because it looks like it’s going to take down everything in sight for miles and I just want to be sure to be far enough away. What do you two think?" Maranna tries to catch her breath and gear up for another fast run if Reaper says they need to get further away. She just awaits an answer, panting and thirsty.
Raven, Tyran, Lori and even Bill draw massive amounts of PPE from Cirrus, when suddenly, Cirrus and his glowing body seems to invert upon himself and wink out of sight. There is a slight wind, which seems to almost echo a distant laughter. Lori watches as the remaining ambient energy seems to dissipate. Raven frowns and looks around.
Reaper, To'Mas, Maranna, Galen and Karak't all feel the heat dissipate and then notice from their point of view the 30 ft wide area of vegetation which has been dried and browned from the amount of heat and energy gathered. The vegetation from where Cirrus was standing is withered to almost black, and smoldering. Gor watches from the castle top as he prepares to teleport, but nothing substantial enough happens for him to activate the ability.
Galen stumbles and then skids to a halt as he realizes that the glowing image of Cirrus is now no more than a burned image on his retinas. “Hmm... Well, that was a bit anti-climactic. I wonder where he went. Would have been nice if he’d warned us that he was planning to do some hocus pocus stuff and scare everybody out of their wits.” Turning to Maranna he says, "Now that we've had our exercise for the day maybe we should go see if anybody's home." If Marana's willing, Galen starts heading for the castle.
Still waiting for a reply from Reaper, she ponders over the thought of going into the castle. It’s so...intriguing. .enticing. .but she has somewhat of a hesitation and turns to Galen "Galen hold on a minute. I just have an odd feeling about this castle and part of me wants to jump right in with you and see if there’s anyone there and explore, but the other part of me is stronger holding me back and giving a warning if you will. Please don't think I'm crazy or tripping but with all that’s just happened with the group over there, I just don't want to jump into anything too quick. We don't know what other things are going to happen and I think we should take this slow, ok?" Maranna doesn't care if everyone thinks she’s crazy but something is actually holding her back. Is this a warning not to go in to the castle or is her mind just playing tricks with her? She’s never felt this way before. Maranna just feels that after they entered this new world she has a stronger sense of danger, different changes that are starting that she can't understand nor can she talk to anyone about. After all she’s only a city rat, maybe she is going crazy. She looks over at Reaper still waiting for a response but nothing yet. "REAPER, HELLLLOOOO!! !! Dammit would you answer me for once and pull your head out of your ass and lets figure this situation out!!!!" She gets that look from him again and she boldly tells him "Look, don't start thinking that look is going to shut me up or intimidate me. You seem to know a lot more about what’s going on then you're leading on, so help us out here!" Maranna then turns to To'Mas "It’s kinda hard to shot at something that’s not there so why don't you put that thing away and make better use of it when we really need ya to." Maranna just waits now as she takes a drink of water and nibbles on some of the food she packed up earlier and just looks at the group.
Galen turns and gives Maranna an inquisitive look with as lightly raised eyebrow and then rocks back on his heels a bit at her tirade. He can understand her frustration with this Reaper character. He seems to be a bit odd. Galen stands and waits to see how things unfold between Maranna and Reaper.
Reaper sees the light of cirrus die out and hears To’Mas ask for another shot. he sees Maranna and Galen running up, he turns toward Maranna and says to them all, "To’Mas take another shot and Maranna i have a feeling i know where we are at , but i don't think it be a good place to stay. Anyone here hurt?" reaper looks toward the castle and thinks, maybe this Maranna can be helpful if she plays her cards right.
"I'm ok and I think you are too, right Galen? Just tired and thirsty. What happened back there..he just ......vanished? ! If YOU think you know where we are then let’s get outta here before something else explodes, vanishes or whatever. Should we go to the castle still, as Galen and I were heading in the direction?' Maranna is exhausted, leaning over grabbing her knees trying to catch her breath and looks at Galen and asks if he’s ok.
"I'm fine. Don't know what happened to that Cirrus fellow either. Damned odd if you ask me." Galen hardly looks winded although he is still breathing harder than normal. This doctor fellow seems to be in better shape than he looks. Turning to the one called Reaper; Galen states flatly "What do you think you were doing shooting at him? As far as I can tell we're all on the same side of whatever trouble we've been dumped into. Even if you had managed to hit him, how do you know that the released energy he was building up wouldn't have leveled this whole damned valley?"
karakt stops running when he notices the change in temperature and looks around trying to work out where cirrus has gone, oh well they don't seem to be in danger anymore ... well not immediate danger at least, he notices Galen seeming to be heading in his direction so lays down and waits for the others to get to him.
Running up to Maranna says, "I think I heard you say you were thirsty," then reaching into his pack hands Maranna a canteen and says, "Anyone else thirsty?” Maranna looks up, thoroughly exhausted and still waiting on what to do, "Sure, And thanks" She drinks enough to satisfy her thirst but being careful not to drink it all in case they need some later. She looks around at all the disarray and ponders over what is happening.
Milo, Maranna, Reaper, To'Mas and Galen eventually reach where Karak't is lying. A slight breeze blows through the few trees, which are sparsely space throughout the grassy hill. The rustling of the wind in the leaves seems to almost sound like whispering laughter as the group down below seems to be relaxing a bit.
"Well ... let's just say that it's possible they have never seen a borg before ... and humans tend to fear the unknown. They might decide to shoot first, and ask questions later."
Galen looks around with a “what now” expression on his face that slowly changes to a look of concern as he realizes that none of the freedom army he was fighting with are here except Cirrus. “Hey Cirrus, you know what’s going on? Last I knew we were in retreat.” As Galen turns and looks at Cirrus he notices the blue glow. “Dude you’re glowing Galen says a little louder and higher pitched than his previous comment; the surprise obvious on his face.
"Tyran I think I would have to agree with you on that one” reaper shifts back to his human form and rigs up something to make his jeans stay up and covered in the back.
Catori wraps her arms around her as if cold as she backs up towards where Tyran is sitting on his carpet. "I really hate to sound like a pain but something isn't right here, I'm getting a really bad vibe here." She keeps scanning the area hoping it isn't what she thinks it is. She stops on the glowing person and blinks in hopes it’s just her eyes playing tricks on her before speaking up, "Uhm dude do you normally glow like that?"
Maranna looks at Reaper with some confusion about his comment on knowing the planet before the rifts but holds off on asking any questions for the moment. She looks over at the glowing and wonders the same as everyone else. "Why is he glowing and what’s causing it and what should we do." She attempts to ask Tyran if hes found anything yet. ”Hey, Tyran have you figured anything out yet? What should be our next step? Do we know anything more about our surroundings and the castle?" But something’s weird. Is he hearing me? I still can't move towards him and I still don't feel right. What’s going on? She waits and observes what is going on.
"Tyran, really? You think so? Well if these medieval farmers want to fire some of their medieval arrows at me, I'll pick them up and return them by hand. Maybe one in each eye socket."
"Reaper, it looks like your g-string is showing, you'd better pull up those jeans. Just say NO to crack, okay?"
Reaper looks at To’Mas , "you think you could help , like maybe some rope or you wanna tangle with my darker side and see how good you can fall ? " reaper laughs and jokes with To’Mas .
Reaper looks toward the castle, "I’m gonna make a half ass tempt to make it to the castle. What do you all think?"
"While I don't have any rope right now, if we have some I'm ready to cut it." And then proceeds to demonstrate the ejection of all four wrist vibroblades with all four blades running "Speaking of falling, if you fall I'll be ready to catch you. As for the castle, let’s go see if they have Beer, Pizza and Wenches!"
"You really don't want to know.", Tyran mumbles under his breath, while silently scanning the area with Dirk.
As Galen hears bits and pieces of the surrounding conversations and mutterings he is rapidly getting the impression that nobody knows what's going on, where we are, or how we got here. Plopping down on the ground ungracefully he puts his head in his hands and mutters about how he'll never free Orald now and he should just find some quiet corner of the world to set up shop. He begins playing with some of the plant life on the ground around him; examining them [Identify Plants: 30%] to try to determine anything about what/when we are.
Galen finds that most of the plants are very indigenous to wet, cold climates and many of the nettles are a bit more potent than the ones he is used to seeing. They seem to be of a type that has a form of venom that is not lethal, but quite painful if it touches skin. If he had to guess, after looking around, they aren't even on the same continent as Atlantis or North America.
Ricky looks around and relaxes slightly. Anything that looks like home can't be that bad. However she keeps her guard up and starts looking around. (Identify Plant: 45+5%, Track Animals: 45+5% & Wilderness Survival: 55%+5% (checking to see if there is anything edible, usable ect))
Ricky, like Galen, finds the same results, except that through her learnings that they are obviously in the northern hemisphere of the planet. The bird berries are edible, but they bring a terrible stomachache if too many are eaten. Thre are wild potatoes growing here or there and water isnt a problem to find if they are desperate enough to scoop the water from the nettleleaves, which are of a rare breed that actually has a pain inducing venom. She spots a few deer and squirrel tracks and even tiny feet, which she could swear have toes like a human. The flowers in the area are beautiful, but some she has never seen before. She is surprised to find no pinewood in the area, it looks to be all hardwood trees and she seems to get a sense that this place is very easy to adapt to, as though it was made for people of her profession.
Gor will say to Raven "Ya but on earth its call savage arms my own company it helps me make more money and keeps it low key from the coalition. They don't like alien weapons." then will tell Milo "get me some fruit off the trees I'm still hungry."
Raven nods absently as he looks around, "Have you ever heard of New Memphis?" he asks as he turns to Gor.
Cirrus, not knowing himself why he is starting to emit bluish electricity, he starts to do a Psychic Diagnosis on himself to try and figure out why he is glowing. and asks anyone if the have a multi frequency radio.
Cirrus finds that something in the area is causing his neurons to fire signals more than normal, to the point of paranormal activity. Something he despises as much as magic and d-bees, not understanding why. He looks down to notice his hands feel warm. Upon looking down, he notices that his hands are beginning to glow bluish-white and visible electricity begins arcing between his hands.
Raven jumps back, "Cirrus, the mystical energies in the area are gravitating towards you!"
Lori notices the PPE of the area seems to become visible closer to him and gather on him. If she didn’t know any better, if too much gathers in him, it will either kill him, or discharge somehow.
As others make comments towards Cirrus, Kira looks him over from where she is standing to see if she can make anything of what's going on with him and the blue glow. "I don't think I have that kind of radio but I'll see if I have anything close to it. As a lot of my things are in my ATV, I'll see what I can MacGyver (sorry couldn't resist) together as it's not here with us." Kira also takes a look at the ground and close surrounding area to see if it's affected at all by the strange blue glow. Kira will also look around to see if anything looks/seems familiar at all to her.
Nothing seems to look familiar to Kira, except the people around her. She, and everyone present, notices that Cirrus' hands are getting brighter and brighter with each counting second.
*********************************************
Karak't stops in his tracks at the sight of the huge skeleton and ponders the magnitude of the meal he missed out on before giving a few squawks to try and get the attention of the others, he also gets a sudden idea as to where they might be but can't work out how to convey his thoughts to the others, especially after all the difficulties he has had making himself understood in the past, pets his cannon and feels forlorn.
Karak't notices Tyran's hawk, Dirk, fly past him and up. It seems to circle and scan the area.
Tyran inspects each person for abnormalities:
Cirrus is a human, but with many altercations that seem to make him superhuman. Tyran isn’t sure but the man is building so much magical energy that it should have killed any normal human by now. By the look of it, he has no idea how it’s happening, it could be an innate, unknown ability of the man's.
Reaper seems like a normal human, but something about him is off. Not possessing entity or abnormalities otherwise.
Maranna almost seems the same as Reaper.
Raven is a normal human mage. Something about him seems off also. Almost as though not all of his soul is there.
Upon seeing what Dirk sees, Tyran looks down and sees Karak't down below as Dirk buzzes past him. Giving a screech of glee at the fresh, cool air. Dirk begins to climb higher, letting the air glide around and under him as he soars higher, catching a warm current. Off in the distance, over the horizon, Dirk catches sight of what could be the largest tree either he or Tyran had ever seen or will ever see. It has to be at least 1/2 mile high!
Dirk circles around and continues observing the landscape; his keen eyesight catches 6 men on horseback about two miles away. They seem to be wearing gleaming, silverish, knight's armor of the old tale. The armor is much more ornate than Crusader body armor and all six carry fancy looking long swords. They seem to be chasing someone.
Dirk begins to try and do a gliding hover, riding another warm air current, rising slowly in altitude. Dirk looks down and back and notices the group are nothing more than small specks, like ants, standing where they appeared in the open area of a random speck of wilderness. Forests and wet grasslands stretch as far as Dirk's site can see. Far to the south, the occasional small cottage seems to plume chimney smoke up. The smoke slowly fades as it climbs from its source. Dirk looks back towards the knights, who are just now riding out of view, obscured by a line of tall hills. A man with dark hair and eyes and rather tall comes bounding over the crest of the same hills. He seems to be desperate to get away from the knights.
***************************************************************
Cereth has no idea what is going on. The last he knew, he was preparing to mass together a force to fight back against the ice queen. Splynn compatriots all gathered together with their equipment, ready to go the next morning. Cereth finds himself awaking in a puddle of water with rain pouring down on him. As he stood up, he found that he was in a small village of small houses, huts and cottages where the technology level was fairly low, like that of the barbarians of Rifts Earth. How did he get here.
Upon walking through the small village, many of the people, upon not recognizing him, seemed very suspicious and start trying to talk to him. Strange American accents and a pitch fork or two pointed at him inspires Cereth to try and reason with them, eventually they do. Cereth spends part of a day helping some of the village folk with daily tasks. This is when the knights show up. A dozen of the "kings" men arrive and confront Cereth on whether he has paid his dues. A bullying lieutenant of the knights instigates a fight where Cereth ends up quite injured and having injured or killed five of the knights. Cereth manages to sneak out of town and head north.
An hour after the encounter, Cereth finds himself trying to do his best to outrun six of the knights. Where was the leader? At the crest of a hill, Cereth spots a tree to the north. The thing must be enormous cus it rises above the horizon. He can hear the taunts and yells behind him, "That's right, outsider! Tire yourself out! That way we can draw and quarter you quickly!"
These knights are something else though, one took a grenade square in the chest, nearly shredding his armor, and stood right back up. Their swords actually slice into his god-like flesh and his magical abilities made him a match for all twelve, but their combat tactics are much better with sword play and close quarter fighting. His laser sword and CS vibro-sword only frightening a few of the knights for a moment, it wasnt enough to get a jump on them, but enough to get away.
Now Cereth runs, starting to tire. All of this gear seems to get heavier with each step.
Karakt is not with the main group, neither is Cereth, so the things that they have seen and the things Dirk has seen, no one else has. I omitted most of Milo's post because neither Gor nor Milo has seen the humongous tree.
Reaper uses his skills to see about this area as he starts to look around. Reaper looks back at the rest of this group and thinks out loud, "a couple of tin men, a street junkie, a punkass kid and who knows what else is here. I know someone is gonna bite it soon." Reaper starts to walk around and towards the treeline and hunts for some food alone. To'Mas follows Reaper to see what he's up to.
Reaper searches but is unable to see any fresh tracks, the recent rains have made it too difficult to track anything large.
Maranna gets a little ticked off with Tyran because hes not answering her questions and she know he hears her, he's just ignoring her. "Well, thats one hell of a way to treat someone whos trying to find out some answers here not just for me but for everyone else in the group!!" She gets a glare from him but what else is new. First its this Reaper character and now this one! What is it with them, they think women are to beneathe them to give an anwer to or what?!! She walks over to Galen and Ricky and introduces herself and asks about the berries. She kinda hesitates at the thought of a stomach ache but eats just a few to satisfy the hunger pains then grabs up a potatoe and munches it down. Ah, much better and so she suggests to the others to do the same as long as they don't eat alot of berries. Now to figure out how to get the water because she surely doesn't want bad results from the nettle leaves..She searches around looking for something to scoop up the water but at the same time shes looking at the flowers, so pretty but they also could be deadly. She too can't help but also notice this glow getting brighter and brighter. It's scary and thoughts and questions flood her mind. She just hopes Cirrus will be ok. She notices the bird in the sky, soaring freely, but hes noticing something, and since Tyran won't answer any of her questions theres no reason to ask, just wait for him to volunteer information. Thats a tough one because they all need answers and prepare for whatever danger might come their way but she shrugs her shoulders and mutters to herself "Well, that's how men are" and attempts to help find some different food with the others.
Galen greets Maranna politely and takes the opportunity to catch up on the events that led up to the time that he joined the group. Galen stands up and joins her as they explore the surrounding area. While they walk he eyes more of the plants for potential uses. (He mentally makes a note to try using the nettles to distill a poison from them when he has the chance...never know when that might come in handy.)
As they walk, Galen talks a little about his past and gives his opinion that he is nolonger in North America or Atlantis. "...so, long story short, I was in Atlantis trying to free my teacher from the slavers and stop some army. I stepped through a portal to follow the rest of the retreating freedom fighters and wound up in that strange house instead. I'm just a simple doctor so I don't know if I have any business out adventuring like this. Maybe my skills will come in handy at some point, though."
Maranna is relieved and comforted that at least someone is talking to her and trying to help her out. As they walk along she too tries to see if theres anyway at all to get the water but listening intently to Galen. "Theres nothing wrong with you adventuring out like this as you put it. You will be and are a great help to all of us. We're all here for some reason and we're all here to help each other in ways we may not understand or even like. Hell, you've already helped me just by talking to me!! I was beginning to wonder what was going on with no responses back there. Your skills will be needed, I'm sure of that so no worries, ok?" Maranna walks along toward a plant that looks odd as Galen goes with her and they both try to figure out what it is and if it will be beneficial at all.
"Ahh, your words of kindness are greatly appreciated. " Galen bows slightly to Maranna to underscore the gratitude and looks at her with a warm smile. "Maybe I'll find the strength to go on after all." As you look more closely at him you would estimate that he is in his mid to late twenties. He's just below average height for a human male; maybe 5'6" or so. Slightly stocky in build although it's hard to tell exactly how stocky with the body armor on. He's definitely not going to win any beauty contests with his square set jaw and permanent bags under his eyes. The lack of hair on his scalp doesn't seem to help matters either.
After their brief walk Galen feels more at center and at peace with himself. "Thank you Maranna for your company. I think I maybe I should go check on our human light bulb over there. Ummm... He is human isn't he? I hope we can chat some more later." Walking briskly up to Cirrus, Galen asks him if this is normal and is he in any pain. "I could get out my medical kit and take a closer look; I've never seen anything like this before, though, so I don't know if that will be of any help.
Maranna feels good about herself that her meaningful and truthful words meant something to Galen. She doesn’t quite know whether to do the courtesy thing or what but it doesn’t matter> "You’re welcome Galen and I mean what I said. Maybe I should go over to the others and see what they have discovered on the food around here and see if I can be of any help. And thank you for listening to me." Maranna wanders over, passing the bright glow from Cirrus and approaches Catori. "Hi, I'm Maranna. It looks like you are trying to figure out the glowing too. Have you been able to figure out where we are for sure and maybe why?" She knows she’s asking too many questions but that’s the only way to get any answers and some are not answering and some are being at least kind. She hopes she can help Catori, being as she’s huddled down and wrapped up looking a little scared.
Galen quickly deducts that Cirrus isn't in any pain.
Karakt watches the bird for a moment then looks back to the others and sees they aren't paying any attention, obviously they don't hear too well, then again cirrus is kind of distracting at the moment, so he runs back to them and gives Tyran a nudge, since he seems to be the one in charge, if you can really call anyone in charge of this weird group, then fishes out a note pad, points at the castle and writes "cam u lot", motions at the general area and writes "in gland" and hopes that Tyran knows what he is on about because explaining these things is going to be really hard.
Raven laughs, "Check that out! A dinosaur, using a notebook like it's supposed to be used!"
Seeing the Lizard-like fellow's difficulty in getting his point across, Lori walks over to him and says "Calm yourself, and give me a moment to prepare." She then casts the Tongues spell upon herself, allowing her to understand (and speak) any spoken language. "Now then, start over, I and feel free to use your native language, my spell should compensate." She'll translate what Karakt says into plain American for the benefit of the others. [Spell will last 21 minutes, Afterwards, she'll use Lore: Magic(73%) and Lore: Faeries & Creatures of Magic(73%) to see if she recalls anything about this 'Camelot' place or the giant tree.]
Lori has heard stories from her parents of a place known as England, where giant trees, known as Millenium Trees stand. These trees are nmysterious, but very magical in nature. She watches as the magical energies gathering around Cirrus are almost blinding.
karakt proceeds to bombard lori with mental images of a himself laying next to fire with a beutiful young woman laying aganst him, across from them is a middle aged man who seems to be talking but instead of sound images appear above the mans head, images of a big fort, a man who looks like some kind of high chief sitting on a big chair, a finely crafted sword with gems on the hilt and cross guard, strange humanoid figures that seem to be make of the night sky, all black with stars twinkling on them, rideing horses, a woman half imersed in a lake, some old guy in robes with a staff, a golden cup with gems imbedded all over it, hundreds of the black humanoids fighting each other, a round table, and dozens of other images flashing about too quickly to get a clear idea what they are meant to be.
Gor will say "I think I've been here befor I just can't place it."then gor will sit down and use (total recall) to see if he can remember were there at. Gor remembers the entire scene of when they had fought around Bathe, England when traveling with Dellian and a necromancer who had a sadistic nature when he had healed Milo's broken back after fighting some nasty supernatural creatures in the woods.
milo reaching into his duffle bag will pull out one of his canteens to get a drink then turning to the closest group to him saying with a smile, "would any of you like some water or a canteen?"
As Kira waits for someone to tell them a bit about where they possibly are she will activate her sixth sense ability and see aura. Kira will also take a look around from where she's standing and see if she sees or hears anything out of the ordinary.
Tyran looks to Cirrus, in an attempt to figure out what might be causing the mystic energy in the area to draw towards them. He'll check his amulet to see if there are any potential spirits or entities in the area, while quickly pondering what, if anything, he can figure out regarding Cirrus and the gathering energy. (Lore: Geomancy)
Somehow, Cirrus could be a medium for magical energies. This could be the only explanation. The question is, can his body handle that much mystical energy going into it? Most creatures that can absorb that much without trying either die, or become creatures of magic.
Guarding against a potential energy discharge, he places his hand on the long rod concealed beneath his cloak, and activates the device's energy feature. Seeing the energy continue to build up around Cirrus, he makes an attempt to draw some of the energy off of Cirrus, in an attempt to control it, weave it, and channel it into a powerful (and less destructive) result instead of a potential life-threatening discharge (ie. A high PPE spell). While doing this, he will watch carefully for any signs of dimensional disturbance; suspecting that perhaps the demon they had just left behind might have something to do with this activity. "Looks like a local law enforcement is headed this way ... they're chasing some tall guy in this general direction. They’re that way," he adds, pointing. "In case anyone is looking for a little more action, that is ..." he smiles. "Or ... we could head towards the other item of interest ... the mile high tree just over that ridge. Anyone ever heard of anything like that?" Responding to Karakt's nudge, he looks at what the lizard has written. "Cam u lot? In Gland? Sorry, I'm not really clear on what you're saying."
Tyran senses nothing out of the ordinary besides what they have already experienced. However, the fella running from the men on horseback has disappeared from view, via running into a thick grove of trees.
Cirrus tells Tyran, "do not draw any off yet cause I may need to use it somehow, I’m just not sure how i am drawing it?" cirrus looks at Milo and says" I will take a drink " not knowing if i can use this energy as a weapon or just what it will do.
Milo hands cirrus one then reaches for another and asks, "Anyone else"
"Of course," Tyran nods. "Only trying to help ... it appeared that you weren't sure what was happening, and I thought perhaps I could help diffuse it safely. Can I ask, however ... what exactly are you doing?" Subconsciously, he continues to hold on to the rod concealed beneath his cloak, still not sure he trusts the sudden buildup of energy. "So ... Cam u lot, In gland, a castle, a gigantic tree, and medieval knights chasing a tall, dark haired someone in this general direction... any theories?"
Ricky looks to Tyran knowing if anyone would know anything about the place it would be him. She heads over to him hoping he will share some thoughts with her on the place and perhaps compare notes against what each know. Hoping that he finds comfort in someone he knows and maybe trusts a little to not treat him like a child. She tells the group about the berries gathers some and puts it into her bag for an emergency. She gathers some wild potatoes, and also fills her canteen. Talking to Tyran, she explains about the tiny tracks she sees and waits to see what his thoughts are on the strangeness of this place.
Maranna asks Catori and the others if they want her to get canteens for them all since she’s going over to get one for herself. She had one but somehow with all that was going on its nowhere to be found and this will just provide an extra one just in case she finds her own. She sees one person gathering up some potatoes and berries for later and decides she will gather enough for everyone else but asks "Would anyone like to come with me to get the canteens and gather some berries and potatoes for everyone for their supplies?"
As the images deluge her mind Lori blinks rapidly, "Okay, that wasn't quite what I was expecting. A natural telepath, eh?" she asks of Karakt. She takes a moment to interpret the images then speaks to the group standing around. "First of all, he believes we are in England, which as I recall is an island or peninsula in Europe. I think he is correct, my parents told me of gigantic trees called Millennium Trees that grow in England. Secondly, he indicates that this 'Camelot' place is some sort of castle or fortress ruled by a king. I'm not sure what all the images he showed me are supposed to mean, a old mage of some sort, a woman standing in a lake, and several images of black warriors on horseback and in battle. I believe he was told of this 'Camelot' by a friend rather than being here previously." At first she tries not to look towards the brightly glowing (to her eyes) form of Cirrus, but after a while she decides to simply turn off her PPE vision. "Personally, I'd like to find shelter before nightfall, so shall we pick a destination?"
Gor will stand up and say "shit I know where we are we are in England son of a bitch I hate this place! The tree you are seeing is a millennium tree dam I hate fairs!" then Gor will turn to Milo and say "I'm not going to wormwood again." and reach for the next canteen.
At this point, Lori cannot even look in Cirrus's general direction. As Milo hands Cirrus the canteen, the canteen stays fine as Cirrus grabs it, but Milo's armored glove began to melt! Everyone then notices that Cirrus's feet are no longer touching the ground and that the ground is actually melting beneath him and waves of heat are coming off of him. A sphere of energy seems to pulsate around him as though it may burst.
Reaper turns around and sees To’Mas following him, he asks, "what you like my company or you looking to take me out? Gauging from this place I could probable guess we're not in Kansas anymore Toto." Reaper and To'Mas look back down into the valley, only to notice that Cirrus isn't hard to miss. The energy surrounding him looks very unstable.
Karak’t seeing that cirrus is becoming uncomfortably warm to be around, and also looks like he is about to explode, Karak’t decides it would be best to move away from him, and given that someone is hinting the group should choose a better place to camp when night comes the blood lizard runs off 100 feet or so towards the castle and waits there to see what everyone else decides to do.
Tyran looks towards Cirrus, with a sense of panic. "Cirrus ... WHAT ARE YOU DOING! Nobody can channel that much energy safely ... you've got enough there to level a city, and you aren't doing a very good job of controlling it. Let me disperse it, before you kill us all!" Not waiting for a response, suspecting that Cirrus's mind is already drunk with the power flowing through him, Tyran springs into action. "HE'S GONNA BLOW! Quick ... everyone place a hand on this!" Tyran pulls the lightning rod out from under his cloak, and stretches it out in front of him for other to place a hand on in order to benefit from the rod's 'impervious to energy' property. "Bill ... can you do anything to neutralize the explosion?" he asks. (OOC: I believe he should know the 'implosion neutralizer' spell). Tyran attempts to draw from Cirrus once again ... if he is not able, he will turn to the ambient energy from any nearby ley lines to gather energy for a spell. If that doesn't provide enough, he'll mention, "Casters, I may need a little boost here ..." before he begins muttering his next spell...
oO(Ill try)Oo Bill replies in Tyran's head.
Kira attention is brought back to Tyran after looking around at the area they are standing. "Oh my god...Cirrus. .." Kira runs over to where Tyran is and puts a hand on the lightning rod. "This is getting crazier by the second...new people to meet...one glowing like a second sun...talk about adventure... " Kira's voice trails off as she waits to see what happens and hopes all will be ok.
With his other hand, Tyran reaches into a concealed pocket, and pulls out a small crystal figurine. Casting his spell, he concentrates on the figurine, and then tells it to go feed on the explosion that is about to be loosed around Cirrus. Once done that, he begins drawing again, and starts preparing to teleport them out of the area of the pending explosion ... picking a destination via Dirk's vision, somewhere in the valley not too far (or close) to the tree.
Milo puts a hand on the rod then looks at Gor and yells, "so help me if you try to take me to that hell again i leave you to go by yourself. People are still after me there. i want to go less than you do." then examining his glove says "man I’m gunna have to get a new one again sixth one this month. Oh well."
Maranna already has enough of supplies and because Cirrus looks like he's going to blow up any minute she runs off as fast as she can. Anything to save her own life is all that matters. Let everyone else stay behind if they want but she’s not going to blow up with everyone else if that happens!
To'Mas shoots at Cirrus. Both guns, 4 shots each. "Let’s see some pretty lights" To'Mas thinks...
Reaper looks back to talk to To’Mas and that cirrus guy is about to nuke the area. Reaper tells To’Mas, "hey To’Mas, what you say we better get outta the area soon before he goes off? And how are you on emp damage?"
"Sir, that sounds like a champion idea. Lead on old chap." To'Mas replies.
"Did somebody say EMP?" Galen's alarmed voice sounds out across the general din of conversations around him. "As in 'electro-magnetic pulse'? That'll ruin my medical equipment. Wait for me; I'm coming with you" He says as he searches for the source of the voice that brought up the EMP.
Jenna runs over to Tyran and grabs a hold of the rod and closes her eyes, waiting for the explosion.
Reaper looks at To’Mas and smiles, "ok To’Mas. But I have a feeling someone there will need our help in surviving this. How fast can you run?"
"Lead on McDuff, the trees won't come to Dunsinane by themselves. Which way?"
Reaper replies and points in the direction we were headed, "that way now go I will catch up with you, i have a feeling we gonna have a third party member!" reaper looks back towards the group looking for Maranna.
Milo looking at Tyran asks, "so what exactly does this rod do that’s going to stop him." nodding over toward cirrus.
Maranna runs as fast as she can, hoping to escape before any explosions or whatever’s going to happen back there. All she knows is that she needs to keep running and notices two figures not far off from her. Now she seems to find the power to run even faster to get to them.
As the two that Galen overheard talking about EMP's take off running he decides that that might be a good idea. Hoisting his pack more firmly over both shoulders he runs to catch up to them and sees Maranna out of the corner of his eyes.
Gor will cast Impervious to Energy 40 PPE on Milo then grab his nunchaku and teleport to the top of the castle and will watch from there.
Not knowing what is going on cirrus decides to allow Tyran to do what he can to help.
Raven frowns as he looks at his options and reaches over and grabs the bottom of Tyran's lightning rod. "If that's what I think it is, what’s going to save us from the concussion of the blast?" Raven begins speaking in an arcane tongue, casting a spell at him. Right afterwards, as Tyran begins chanting in an ancient tongue, Raven channels some of his PPE to the pool to help with the ritual. Tyran seems to be chanting something. Gor touches Milo and then grabs a set of nunchucks and then simply isn’t there.
Galen seems to catch up to and start to pass Maranna as Reaper arrives to come to the rescue, halfway down the hill from where he was at.
Meanwhile, Cirrus finishes telling Tyran that he will accept the help. He begins to feel pain behind his eyes and his arms feel super cold. Upon looking down, Cirrus notices that his whole body is glowing bright. The wet grass which is a few feet underneath his feet is blackened and all of the vegetation within three feet of him is either burnt or smoldering. He notices that he is suspended in the air by sheer force of the energy coursing through him. He feels good, but at the same time he now realizes that he can now feel the magical energies coursing through him and threatening to tear him apart. Suddenly his vision flashes, as though he was in a dream.
The doctor stares at Cirrus and grins, "The tests went well with you today. Thank you for volunteering with this program. The steroids and the metabolic stabilizers have done their job and after a few more tests, you will be able to surpass the strength of the Kingsdale Titan Juicers and out power some mages with this new technology that we've been working with." The doctor, who looks to be in his early middle ages, late twenties, and then shines a lamp in Cirrus' eyes, "How are you feeling, Rand?"
Cirrus finds himself answering but it sounds muffled. He isn’t even sure what he said. It seems so confusing. "Just remember, Rand, if the energy that your body gathers becomes too great, then you’re near one of the recorded dangers. The Coalition Database is stored in your brain so it has a meter that reads your geological location through your natural sense of balance and your ears. If that happens, the energy will build and you will need to release that energy before it kills you, alright? There are several ways to do it. First you can..." and the doctor's voice seems to trail off. Cirrus can feel the hospital bed underneath of him and he notices the bloodied surgical tools no more than three feet away. This all seems so familiar, he remembers it somehow... Rand/Cirrus cannot keep his eyes open... sleep... zzz
Cirrus vision comes back too as he notices all of the worried looks from everyone around. They seem so bright colored, and they look as though they are staring into the sun when they look at him. Cirrus has never felt so good, as though the energy coursing through his body makes him feel like a god. The memory still lingers though, oO(you will need to release that energy before it kills you)Oo.
Cirrus is unaware that one of the blasts from To'Mas guns tore into his shoulder, but didn’t kill him! The second blast horribly missed, almost striking Lori.
Gor ends up on top of the castle, getting a good view of the carnage down below. Even at this stage, one look at Cirrus makes it apparent to Gor that even he might not be safe if Cirrus overloads and bursts. Looking down at the group is like trying to look at an oncoming hover hauler with floodlights at night. He watches as Maranna and Galen make a break for it as Reaper runs down to help them. He sees To'Mas take a few potshots at Cirrus with his guns and then turns to take off. The hill that To'Mas is on seems steep on the far side. Beyond that, it looks to be about 300 yards to the tree line of a fairly beautiful looking forest. Then the blast of heat from the valley, where Cirrus is at, seems to wash over Gor. It isn’t especially hot; more of soothing warmth, however, Gor is at least 400 yards away from the group. The heat must be almost unbearable down there.
"Aww gee, he didn't explode. Hey Reaper, do you think I should shoot again?" To'Mas smirks.
Karak’t decides that 100 feet might not be enough distance (especially if Gor can still feel something from where he is) and beats a hasty retreat, hoping to get to the far side of the castle and use it for cover, preferably before anything explodes.
"Shoot again, sure To’Mas go for it. Aim little better and this time." reaper looks on with a smile.
Lori stares at the brightly glowing Cirrus in amazement for several minutes, her mind racing as she tries to determine what is happening to him. To'Mas' stray blast shocks her back to reality. Since Cirrus seems willing to allow the use of his PPE, Lori tries to drain off 30 PPE as she casts Invincible Armor upon herself. If successful, she'll continue to draw from Cirrus as she casts 3 Energy Shield spells (10PPE each), which combined with Raven's spell will form a box around Cirrus. After that, she'll see what her options are. Unfortunately her only really PPE intensive spells require the presence of a leyline.
Milo looking at his equipment sighs and says, "I probably shouldn’t be saying this now but if this rod doesn’t work and one of my rockets go we all just might die even if we survive the blast he’s going to give off. Sorry"
Tyran continues to mumble frantically, using the power of the gathered circle of people and drawing from Cirrus in an attempt to complete his spells.
Gor will get ready to teleport again as far as he can see to a safe place if the explosion happens. (up to 20 miles even if it’s on top of a tree.)
Maranna hears something of rustling behind her and looks back to see Galen trying to catch up to her. "Hurry Galen! I don't know when its gona happen but I want to be as far away from that group as possible. I see two figures just over here when you get here and catch your breathe a little lets run to them, ok?" As soon as Galen reaches Maranna, he gets a short deep breath and they start off to the other two. There not that far off now. ”Oh great!!" she mutters for she now recognizes who the larger figure is. Well, maybe this time he will be of more use than he was back there or we just have to deal with his attitude problem. Either way, Maranna looks at it that there are now four of them and they are getting further away from that glow. Maranna yells over to Reaper "Hey! It's getting a whole lot hotter and he’s looking more and more like he’s going to blow and take everyone with him! I wasn't going to stay around and I guess neither was Galen to watch the fireworks up close and personal. I saw two figures and just ran like hell to get to you. I think we should get a little further away because it looks like it’s going to take down everything in sight for miles and I just want to be sure to be far enough away. What do you two think?" Maranna tries to catch her breath and gear up for another fast run if Reaper says they need to get further away. She just awaits an answer, panting and thirsty.
Raven, Tyran, Lori and even Bill draw massive amounts of PPE from Cirrus, when suddenly, Cirrus and his glowing body seems to invert upon himself and wink out of sight. There is a slight wind, which seems to almost echo a distant laughter. Lori watches as the remaining ambient energy seems to dissipate. Raven frowns and looks around.
Reaper, To'Mas, Maranna, Galen and Karak't all feel the heat dissipate and then notice from their point of view the 30 ft wide area of vegetation which has been dried and browned from the amount of heat and energy gathered. The vegetation from where Cirrus was standing is withered to almost black, and smoldering. Gor watches from the castle top as he prepares to teleport, but nothing substantial enough happens for him to activate the ability.
Galen stumbles and then skids to a halt as he realizes that the glowing image of Cirrus is now no more than a burned image on his retinas. “Hmm... Well, that was a bit anti-climactic. I wonder where he went. Would have been nice if he’d warned us that he was planning to do some hocus pocus stuff and scare everybody out of their wits.” Turning to Maranna he says, "Now that we've had our exercise for the day maybe we should go see if anybody's home." If Marana's willing, Galen starts heading for the castle.
Still waiting for a reply from Reaper, she ponders over the thought of going into the castle. It’s so...intriguing. .enticing. .but she has somewhat of a hesitation and turns to Galen "Galen hold on a minute. I just have an odd feeling about this castle and part of me wants to jump right in with you and see if there’s anyone there and explore, but the other part of me is stronger holding me back and giving a warning if you will. Please don't think I'm crazy or tripping but with all that’s just happened with the group over there, I just don't want to jump into anything too quick. We don't know what other things are going to happen and I think we should take this slow, ok?" Maranna doesn't care if everyone thinks she’s crazy but something is actually holding her back. Is this a warning not to go in to the castle or is her mind just playing tricks with her? She’s never felt this way before. Maranna just feels that after they entered this new world she has a stronger sense of danger, different changes that are starting that she can't understand nor can she talk to anyone about. After all she’s only a city rat, maybe she is going crazy. She looks over at Reaper still waiting for a response but nothing yet. "REAPER, HELLLLOOOO!! !! Dammit would you answer me for once and pull your head out of your ass and lets figure this situation out!!!!" She gets that look from him again and she boldly tells him "Look, don't start thinking that look is going to shut me up or intimidate me. You seem to know a lot more about what’s going on then you're leading on, so help us out here!" Maranna then turns to To'Mas "It’s kinda hard to shot at something that’s not there so why don't you put that thing away and make better use of it when we really need ya to." Maranna just waits now as she takes a drink of water and nibbles on some of the food she packed up earlier and just looks at the group.
Galen turns and gives Maranna an inquisitive look with as lightly raised eyebrow and then rocks back on his heels a bit at her tirade. He can understand her frustration with this Reaper character. He seems to be a bit odd. Galen stands and waits to see how things unfold between Maranna and Reaper.
Reaper sees the light of cirrus die out and hears To’Mas ask for another shot. he sees Maranna and Galen running up, he turns toward Maranna and says to them all, "To’Mas take another shot and Maranna i have a feeling i know where we are at , but i don't think it be a good place to stay. Anyone here hurt?" reaper looks toward the castle and thinks, maybe this Maranna can be helpful if she plays her cards right.
"I'm ok and I think you are too, right Galen? Just tired and thirsty. What happened back there..he just ......vanished? ! If YOU think you know where we are then let’s get outta here before something else explodes, vanishes or whatever. Should we go to the castle still, as Galen and I were heading in the direction?' Maranna is exhausted, leaning over grabbing her knees trying to catch her breath and looks at Galen and asks if he’s ok.
"I'm fine. Don't know what happened to that Cirrus fellow either. Damned odd if you ask me." Galen hardly looks winded although he is still breathing harder than normal. This doctor fellow seems to be in better shape than he looks. Turning to the one called Reaper; Galen states flatly "What do you think you were doing shooting at him? As far as I can tell we're all on the same side of whatever trouble we've been dumped into. Even if you had managed to hit him, how do you know that the released energy he was building up wouldn't have leveled this whole damned valley?"
karakt stops running when he notices the change in temperature and looks around trying to work out where cirrus has gone, oh well they don't seem to be in danger anymore ... well not immediate danger at least, he notices Galen seeming to be heading in his direction so lays down and waits for the others to get to him.
Running up to Maranna says, "I think I heard you say you were thirsty," then reaching into his pack hands Maranna a canteen and says, "Anyone else thirsty?” Maranna looks up, thoroughly exhausted and still waiting on what to do, "Sure, And thanks" She drinks enough to satisfy her thirst but being careful not to drink it all in case they need some later. She looks around at all the disarray and ponders over what is happening.
Milo, Maranna, Reaper, To'Mas and Galen eventually reach where Karak't is lying. A slight breeze blows through the few trees, which are sparsely space throughout the grassy hill. The rustling of the wind in the leaves seems to almost sound like whispering laughter as the group down below seems to be relaxing a bit.
"I plan to live forever. Or die trying..." Vila - Blakes 7
Re: Ivy and Chrome: Chapter 111
At the bottom of the valley, Jenna looks at the space previously occupied by Cirrus and blinks repeatedly.. . she stares, wondering, o0where did he go... why does this stuff keep happening around me.. kind of hard to stay sane and in the present when people keep frickin disappearing! !!0o She wavers where she stands a bit, feeling dehydrated and weak from the heat wave that hit, she pulls water out of her pack and takes a long drink.
After shielding her eyes with her free hand and seeing what happened and the aftermath, Kira shakes her head. "What exactly happened and um where did he go? All this energy stuff is a bit confusing to me at times.... Why can't it just be some robot or something mechanical to work on? At least then I could feel like I had a clue about what was going on and possibly help out a bit more." Kira smiles. "Is everyone alright? Oh and do we want to stand out here in the clearing incase others come to investigate the 2nd sun that was just here, or go find some cover?"
Lori sighed in relief when Cirrus disappeared, she had nothing against him as a person, but she was opposed to being blown to bits. Looking around at the others she comments, "Well, that was a surprise. I'm not sure what's going on around here, but I think we should get going. Let's check out the castle. I want a roof over my head tonight. I hear it rains a lot in England, assuming that's where we are."
Raven nods, "Good idea." he says to either both Lori and Kira, or neither at all. He gives a suspicious eye towards Jenna, but seems to shake off an unknown thought as he nods to Tyran, "For a kid, you are a gem of safety. Got anymore tricks up your sleeve?"
Tyran can almost sense Bill smiling. From above, through Dirk's eyes, Tyran loses track of what is going on with the man being chased through the woods. It looks as though everyone is headed up towards the castle. Upon looking around again, Tyran notices that both Ricky and Catori are no where to be seen also.
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Gor will start to look around the castle on his way down checking to see if anyone is home. keeping his hand on the nunchaku just in case well he poles out his sun glasses and expend magical energy (4 PPE) to See Invisible then will put his other hand on his axe in case of trouble.
Upon walking down the spiralling steps down the castle southwest tower, with only the occasional porthole to look out on his way down, he spots faeries flying around the castle, but not close enough to be much harm. Upon making it down to what looks as though it could have been a guards' chambers, Gor notices that this castle had to have been nearly a millenia old. The stone is corroded, to nothing more gravel, along the floor. There lies the skeletal remains of a knight, still in some strange knightlike armor. If Gor remembers right, there were knights in Anglo Land. Could this still be the fabled land of faeries and knights? The very same place that Milo was using the landscape as target practice while Dilly and Dominique enter a fierce battle over Milo's strange behavior back then? How long ago was that? Years? After years of wear and tear, would his travel circles still exist? He tried to maintain them, but life gets busy and things tend to stack up on Gor's plate.
Business, survival, life in general, running from the Coalition and Splugorth at the same time? Working with the Splynn Underground through the dinosaur infested swamps of the south eastern part of the main continent. That doesn't even include a god of darkness that has been chasing him, trying to find the whereabouts of Magdalen. These thoughts seem to well up in Gor's head, as though something were to try and instill some doubt or even anxiety in his mind. What about New Savage? Dimensional travel tends to be tricky, how long was he REALLY gone for? And what about Memory and Carol? Are they alive? Did the demon from the rift catch them? If so, are they alive?
In the far corner of the guards' chamber, Gor notices a mirror, which seems rather clean. With his glasses on, he sees someone standing behind him. The man has pale skin and black hair. His eyes are wide in horror, yet the man is grinning directly at Gor through the reflection from directly behind Gor's left shoulder. That is the moment that the man reaches for Gor's neck as though he means to choke him.
To'Mas begins to circle the perimeter of the group, looking outward for signs of trouble and yet grumbling to himself. "To'Mas takes another shot...."
"To'Mas eat all of your vegetables...”
"To'Mas It’s kinda hard to shoot at something that’s not there...."
"To'Mas don't do that to the dog....."
"To'Mas put that thing away......."
"To'Mas stop playing with those matches..... .."
"To'Mas do this, To'Mas don't do that, To'Mas To'Mas To'Mas...."
All of these people who don't know what they want, I do but can't have it.... Sigh....
Karakt gets back to his feet when Galen’s group gets to him and makes ready to continue on to the castle then notices that the others seem to be planning to join them as well so he pulls out some beef jerky from a backpack strapped to his thigh and munches while waiting, is amused by To’Mas' monolog, figures he must be use to being treated like a child. As Karakt starts getting up off the ground Galen watches him to see if he shows any signs of injury. If he can't get up on his own then helping him up might cause more harm. "Are you alright?" he asks. "You weren't injured by Cirrus were you?"
Reaper meets up with the lizard and the others, “if I happen to remember right. We are in England. And I rather not be here .. And that castle looks like from my history books, Camelot." reaper looks back at the castle and stretch out his wings then shifts back to human .. " any of you know what happened to glitter boy there ? if not then lets meet up with the others and get going," reaper starts back towards Tyran and the others.
Maranna catches her breathe and follows the group but she still has second thoughts about this castle. She is however ready to get inside some kind of shelter and possibly a good night’s sleep. "Well, let's get the others and start are way in, I guess. Galen, is everything ok there?" She as well as everyone else makes sure all is well and begin the journey. "To'Mas come on let’s get going" as she reaches out for him. She catches the wonderful breeze and glances at it flow through the trees. Who knows, this might be the last for awhile and it’s unlike the city. The freshness and coolness... But she snaps out of her little daydream and readies for reality.
Karakt shakes his head at Galen and jumps 10 feet straight up to demonstrate that he is fine. At that moment, there is a thunderous boom that originates from the castle.
Jenna looks at the others standing near her "Anyone thirsty?" She offers her canteen to anyone needing to wet their throat. She starts to dig in her pack, taking inventory of her belongings, making sure everything is ok and nothing suffered from the heat wave. She looks up at Kira and Lori and nods, "Yes, I agree a roof and possibly a defensible position would be ideal." She stands back up slipping her pack back onto her shoulder and adjusts the straps so it sits right and waits for the others to get situated.
"Well lets get going then if everyone is fit to travel. Anyone have any idea what direction the ones that ran off went? I think it would be a good idea for all of us to stay together until we got a bit more information on exactly where the heck we are. Also anyone have any injuries that need looking at? If so I can see if I can help." Kira situates her pack and things and gets ready to move with the others.
Lori pulls off her cloak and casts Fly on it (15PPE), turning it into an improvised flying carpet. She hops onto it and looks over at Kira. "Want a lift?"
Turning to Raven and Tyran, she adds, "Sorry boys, there's not that much room on here and you can cast your own travel spells."
Taking a small glass statuette out of his pocket, Tyran focuses on it slightly ... satisfied that the occupant is safely stored and under his command, he quietly states "No feeding without my permission" and tucks it back into a pocket. Turning back to the group, he addresses Raven. "Tricks, yes ... I have many ... but I believe the credit for this one lies elsewhere ... "
"Bill, was that you?"
Bill replies, oO(No, quite curious, though)Oo
Turning his attention back to the discussion at hand, he directs Dirk to take a closer look at the castle, swinging lower over the forest to try and locate the riders and their quarry. "It appears we've lost some of our party ..." he adds. "I'm not certain, but I believe someone was using Cirrus as a bit of a distraction in order to take a pot shot at us. Until I know who I can trust, I think I'd prefer a more cautious approach at the moment. There's no telling who's in that castle, and there were a number of riders headed in this direction from there ... chasing a unusually quick man on foot. I lost them in the forest, but I'd like to learn a little more about where we are before a run-in with the local militia. After the light show, they're probably already headed in this direction."
"As for myself, I've seen plenty of castles in my lifetime. I'm more interested in checking out the mile-high tree in the valley that's just over the next ridge - now that's something you don't see every dimension. In any case, I'd suggest we move fast."
Tyran senses a bit of dimensional feedback, as though something is still connected to another dimension, but the signal is fading. It was hard to detect earlier considering the magnitude of magical disturbance radiating from Cirrus only a minute before. Upon looking through Dirk's eyes, Tyran spots the skeletal remains of a larger than normal dragon, then tries to locate the riders. They are still about a mile away, seemingly searching for the man they were chasing. They are mostly obscured from sight within a thick forest.
Everyone hears a thunderous boom from the castle as Raven begins casting a spell. He then replies with, "you know, I can run. I need the exercise anyways."
Gor spins around with his axe brandish and swings simultaneous with near lightning reflexes, splitting the air and striking the ground in front of him. A thunderous boom reverberates through the walls of the castle. Upon looking back through the mirror, the figure is still there, horrifically smiling at him, as though taunting him.
Reaper heads back to the rest of the group and sees where they are going and asks, “what happen to the glitter boy there ? One second he was there and the next he's gone. I think it’s rather odd." reaper looks for reactions...
Maranna still feels uneasy about the castle but if the group goes she will stay with them, but now it seems there being torn into a different direction. "It is odd but I don't think we have a lot of time to worry about him now, I think we have another problem we need to worry about." She looks in the direction of all the activity as well as everyone else. "But whatever were going to do us better do it fast. Got any ideas anyone? Reaper. .Galen.. To'Mas?"
"Can we shoot something?" asks To'Mas.
"We'll probably end up shooting something, but how 'bout we hold off until we know if they're on our side or not." Galen intones dryly to To'Mas. To Maranna and the rest Galen "I'm all in favor of getting some shelter and a more defensible position; and since that castle seems to be the closest feature, I think we should go check it out."
(***********************************
Lori perks up a bit at the mention of the Tree. She hovers up until she can see it then comes back down. "If that's a Millennium Tree from my parent's stories, then I'm definitely interested in checking it out. Plus they are supposed to be sanctuaries of the Light, so it should be a safe place to rest."
Raven smiles, "I'm game. I’d love to check one out."
Gor flips the mirror down against the floor and simply jumps up and down on the back of it, shattering it as much into dust as he can, then walks out of the room. Reaper looks at the rest of the group, “hey guys why don't we go play catch up with the rest and go together. Best chances are together." reaper will start to head up to the others.
Maranna kind of gives a sigh of relief for now. As she starts to go away from the castle with the others the odd feelings go away for now. "I agree with you Reaper, our chances are alot better if we stay together as a group. And it seems that a couple of people in this group know a little something about this "tree" and for one I would like to see what mysteries it holds and why we ended up so close to it. Its there for us to check out and find out what is going on and if it has any potential help to get and keep us outta danger." She moves forward to catch up with everyone and is getting a little excited..a new adventure.
Galen shrugs his shoulders and follows along towards the tree. "I'm out of my element here so whatever you guys think is best." Karak’t seeing as everyone seems to be heading back to the others karak't looks over the castle one last time, still wondering what caused the thunder clap and starts down the hill towards the rest of the group.
Tree still sounds like a good place to go since everyone else seems to be heading that direction. "Shall we head for the tree then?" Galen offers Maranna his arm in a moment of chivalry as they start walking towards the tree.=
Maranna looks at Galen and takes his arm .."Why, thank you!" She keeps up with his pace as they all try to meet up with the other group nearing the tree. "It appears that once we get to that millennium tree, we will be able to get some rest and shelter for awhile. Then maybe you can tell us a little something about what you said back there about knowing about this tree, Reaper" He looks back but is also keeping an eye on the other group, since he moves faster and sees whats going on around us, she doesn't expect an answer.
Maranna, Galen, Reaper, Karak't, Milo and To'Mas head back towards Lori, Tyran, Jenna, Raven and the others as they look to be heading in the direction of the enormous tree.
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Jenna looks up at Lori as she speaks and nods, "Yes, I think that might be the best place to head currently."
Raven nods towards the others, who are now coming back down from the hill to the castle. “Looks like they finally decided to come join us.”
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Gor will head for the front door to see if the rest of the group is coming. Upon looking out of the door, Gor notices that everyone is gathering back together and their gestures seem to hint that they plan to head towards the enormous tree off in the distance.
_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*
A short time later, everyone is back together as one group. Maranna and Reaper find that they still cannot go anywhere near Tyran. The grass is still smoldering. The aroma of burnt plant life and cooked earth seems to permeate the area all around. On the horizon, towards the tree, small bug like creatures seem to be fluttering in small groups. Some even stop to observe the group gathering. Raven frowns, “That's not good. I bet those are faeries... They spell trouble. I've had a few run ins with them.” He glances towards Galen, “Remember?”
"Yeah, I remember" Galen responds with a sour face. "Obnoxious little monstrosities. Can't reason with them. Their logic defies all normal thought. So, are we still headed that way or should we try the castle? I know nothing of this area but I know enough to avoid Fairies."
Jenna rubs her temples as her head starts to hurt, shaking it slightly as the pain subsides o0 that was wierd0o She looks up at the fairies gathered and looks around to see if anyone has any knowledge about them..
Reaper looks at Jenna, karakt and notices they be gettin a headache. "Jenna you ok? Looks like you got yourself a headache. Maybe you should find something to relax yourself better then rubbing your temples."
Jenna glances in Reaper's direction and shakes her head, "I'm fine, and it was just a twinge."
"A twinge? You got any ideas on what’s going on around here? Besides someone’s sick idea of a prank?"
Jenna shakes her head, "Nope, not a clue."
Maranna looks around, trying to figure out where all the fairies came from and why are they here. As she starts to ask someone, she notices several holding there heads." Are you guys ok..whats happening?" As she looks around, she hears somewhat of a laughter but not really sure if shes hearing it or imagining it or what. She hears about Jennas "twinge" and Reapers asking if this is all a prank and tries to put this altogether. Why is some of this group not like fairies? "Theres so many questions and we need these answered right away but I guess we wait and figure each one out one by one, huh?" She looks around and tries to ask Tyran but she still can't get close to him..hmm another puzzle. She looks over to Galen and asks "Can I help you with seeing if everyones ok? Looks like you might need a little help yourself..you ok?"
Raven pulls up a pair of binoculars and ganders at the hill, "Hmmm, mostly plain pixies and faeries. There's a few wind puffs in there." He hangs the binoculars around his neck and groans, "The worst part is that they are actually gathering in a fairly large group. Kila and a few others were caught in their obnoxious faerie dance. Mostly harmless unless they actually want a fight or someone else wants to fight us."
Raven turns and looks at everyone present, "Do not eat anything that you see as appetizing along the way. Their magic is based around cursing random available foods. Keep your food out of sight of them." Raven grumbles. "Can anyone think of a fast way to get past them?"
Jenna looks at Raven and smart alecly replies... "Um... Run?"
Raven shrugs unsurely, "It might work if we were fast enough..."
To'Mas grins, "Well, my ideas wouldn't exclude shooting them all. But I'm not sure how much attention that would draw to us. There's the chance we could simply walk by and hopefully they ignore us. Or there's also the chance that pigs might fly"
Raven smiles as he looks back up the hill at the gathering mass, "Well, Id almost adopt that theory except that they are tough... usually." Raven looks towards Tyran, "Well, you seem to have a bag full of tricks. Got any ideas?"
"I certainly agree, my friend," he says quietly. "Ignorant, aggressive, and stupid. A lethal combination. I think disassociation would be most prudent." Slowly, he lets himself fall back from the others, attempting to catch Lori and Kira's attention as he does so. Once behind the others, he changes direction and angles off at about 45 degrees, in an attempt to separate himself from the 'newcomers' as well as avoid the gathering fairy crowd.
Gor says "I hate fairies" "if they get close I'm killing them all."
Bill's voice rings in Tyran's head, "I have a bad feeling about the common mentality amongst the current company."
karakt wonders why everyone seems so worried about these tiny little creatures, they are obviously too small to be predators of any kind, all the same he was getting somewhat impatient with the time it was taking everyone to decide where they were heading and starts pacing around the group.
"So, we're alone in a strange land brought her by who knows what" Galen looks at Gor dryly "and you want to start a war with the local fairies? Doesn't sound like the best plan in the world to me. Does somebody feel up to going and talking to them face to face and see what they want? I don't speak fairy and my last run in with them didn't go so well."
"Ookkayy..I am totally in the dark here and why is everyone so damn uptight about theses fairies and Pixies..fairies they don"t seem to be harmful and they look to be friendly so why do you want to shoot them or destroy them? Speak fairy, what are you talking about?" Maranna is just a little annoyed that questions are being asked but no one answers they have their minds set on destroying these poor little creatures. Speaking fairy..hrumphh! !! ridiculous!! She being ignored anyway by the group starts to go over to a few of the fairies in a small area. "Maybe their friendly and want to help us and theres only one way to find out." As she gets close to the little group she kinda feels wierd..hard to explain but entranced? Shes drawn closer to the bigger part of the group and notices their little dance. She feels like she’s in her own little world with these tiny creatures but doesn’t know if there here to help or harm.. But she doesn’t care at this point..she just feels odd, unexplainable strange and out of it.
Raven turns to Maranna, "Ma'am, faeries are creatures of magic and tend to have a mischievous streak in them. More often than not, it usually ends up with the victim of their mischief being robbed or killed. In our current situation, I would rather not be stuck in that position. They seem friendly, but they are about having fun or greed, depending on the race and/or individual faerie," Raven frowns as he looks throughout the group.
Galen watches the flighty beings nervously as Maranna walks towards them. He half expects to see her flit out of existence the way the kids did.
"As I don't totally understand all this fancy magic and magic tree stuff can someone give me the quick rundown possibly? As I stated before we should pick a direction and move as we seem to be attracting attention in growing numbers. Can anyone converse with them or should I say want to or is it too much of a problem? Also would we be better off closer to that huge tree? Sorry just not liking sitting out here in the open."
gor will say to Galen "The last time I came in contact with a group of fairies people in the group started to dance and could not stop till we killed the fairy that cast the spell is that a good enough reason?" then Gor will start playing with his ring.
Galen looks at Gor with a slightly raised eyebrow but says nothing and then goes back to watching Maranna.
Raven thinks to himself for the moment and then grumbles, "Well, can't do anything standing here staring and complaining about them." He brandishes and odd-looking pistol, which Gor recognizes as an NE4 plasma pistol. Raven grins at the group, "Last one there gets to see the rest of us dance till we drop!" and takes off at a full sprint across the grassy slopes trying to get past the group of faeries. He is surprisingly fast on his feet.
Tyran grins slightly as he watches the unexpected diversion take shape. "Hmmm ... I wonder if that's the best idea... but if they want to keep the fairies distracted, I won't complain - as long as they don't try anything stupid like starting a fight with them."
OOC: A series of unfortunate mishaps, including a stolen jump drive. Someone formatting my home hard drive to be “nice”. And the birth of my daughter, Memory pretty much brought this campaign to a screeching halt.
After shielding her eyes with her free hand and seeing what happened and the aftermath, Kira shakes her head. "What exactly happened and um where did he go? All this energy stuff is a bit confusing to me at times.... Why can't it just be some robot or something mechanical to work on? At least then I could feel like I had a clue about what was going on and possibly help out a bit more." Kira smiles. "Is everyone alright? Oh and do we want to stand out here in the clearing incase others come to investigate the 2nd sun that was just here, or go find some cover?"
Lori sighed in relief when Cirrus disappeared, she had nothing against him as a person, but she was opposed to being blown to bits. Looking around at the others she comments, "Well, that was a surprise. I'm not sure what's going on around here, but I think we should get going. Let's check out the castle. I want a roof over my head tonight. I hear it rains a lot in England, assuming that's where we are."
Raven nods, "Good idea." he says to either both Lori and Kira, or neither at all. He gives a suspicious eye towards Jenna, but seems to shake off an unknown thought as he nods to Tyran, "For a kid, you are a gem of safety. Got anymore tricks up your sleeve?"
Tyran can almost sense Bill smiling. From above, through Dirk's eyes, Tyran loses track of what is going on with the man being chased through the woods. It looks as though everyone is headed up towards the castle. Upon looking around again, Tyran notices that both Ricky and Catori are no where to be seen also.
***************************
Gor will start to look around the castle on his way down checking to see if anyone is home. keeping his hand on the nunchaku just in case well he poles out his sun glasses and expend magical energy (4 PPE) to See Invisible then will put his other hand on his axe in case of trouble.
Upon walking down the spiralling steps down the castle southwest tower, with only the occasional porthole to look out on his way down, he spots faeries flying around the castle, but not close enough to be much harm. Upon making it down to what looks as though it could have been a guards' chambers, Gor notices that this castle had to have been nearly a millenia old. The stone is corroded, to nothing more gravel, along the floor. There lies the skeletal remains of a knight, still in some strange knightlike armor. If Gor remembers right, there were knights in Anglo Land. Could this still be the fabled land of faeries and knights? The very same place that Milo was using the landscape as target practice while Dilly and Dominique enter a fierce battle over Milo's strange behavior back then? How long ago was that? Years? After years of wear and tear, would his travel circles still exist? He tried to maintain them, but life gets busy and things tend to stack up on Gor's plate.
Business, survival, life in general, running from the Coalition and Splugorth at the same time? Working with the Splynn Underground through the dinosaur infested swamps of the south eastern part of the main continent. That doesn't even include a god of darkness that has been chasing him, trying to find the whereabouts of Magdalen. These thoughts seem to well up in Gor's head, as though something were to try and instill some doubt or even anxiety in his mind. What about New Savage? Dimensional travel tends to be tricky, how long was he REALLY gone for? And what about Memory and Carol? Are they alive? Did the demon from the rift catch them? If so, are they alive?
In the far corner of the guards' chamber, Gor notices a mirror, which seems rather clean. With his glasses on, he sees someone standing behind him. The man has pale skin and black hair. His eyes are wide in horror, yet the man is grinning directly at Gor through the reflection from directly behind Gor's left shoulder. That is the moment that the man reaches for Gor's neck as though he means to choke him.
To'Mas begins to circle the perimeter of the group, looking outward for signs of trouble and yet grumbling to himself. "To'Mas takes another shot...."
"To'Mas eat all of your vegetables...”
"To'Mas It’s kinda hard to shoot at something that’s not there...."
"To'Mas don't do that to the dog....."
"To'Mas put that thing away......."
"To'Mas stop playing with those matches..... .."
"To'Mas do this, To'Mas don't do that, To'Mas To'Mas To'Mas...."
All of these people who don't know what they want, I do but can't have it.... Sigh....
Karakt gets back to his feet when Galen’s group gets to him and makes ready to continue on to the castle then notices that the others seem to be planning to join them as well so he pulls out some beef jerky from a backpack strapped to his thigh and munches while waiting, is amused by To’Mas' monolog, figures he must be use to being treated like a child. As Karakt starts getting up off the ground Galen watches him to see if he shows any signs of injury. If he can't get up on his own then helping him up might cause more harm. "Are you alright?" he asks. "You weren't injured by Cirrus were you?"
Reaper meets up with the lizard and the others, “if I happen to remember right. We are in England. And I rather not be here .. And that castle looks like from my history books, Camelot." reaper looks back at the castle and stretch out his wings then shifts back to human .. " any of you know what happened to glitter boy there ? if not then lets meet up with the others and get going," reaper starts back towards Tyran and the others.
Maranna catches her breathe and follows the group but she still has second thoughts about this castle. She is however ready to get inside some kind of shelter and possibly a good night’s sleep. "Well, let's get the others and start are way in, I guess. Galen, is everything ok there?" She as well as everyone else makes sure all is well and begin the journey. "To'Mas come on let’s get going" as she reaches out for him. She catches the wonderful breeze and glances at it flow through the trees. Who knows, this might be the last for awhile and it’s unlike the city. The freshness and coolness... But she snaps out of her little daydream and readies for reality.
Karakt shakes his head at Galen and jumps 10 feet straight up to demonstrate that he is fine. At that moment, there is a thunderous boom that originates from the castle.
Jenna looks at the others standing near her "Anyone thirsty?" She offers her canteen to anyone needing to wet their throat. She starts to dig in her pack, taking inventory of her belongings, making sure everything is ok and nothing suffered from the heat wave. She looks up at Kira and Lori and nods, "Yes, I agree a roof and possibly a defensible position would be ideal." She stands back up slipping her pack back onto her shoulder and adjusts the straps so it sits right and waits for the others to get situated.
"Well lets get going then if everyone is fit to travel. Anyone have any idea what direction the ones that ran off went? I think it would be a good idea for all of us to stay together until we got a bit more information on exactly where the heck we are. Also anyone have any injuries that need looking at? If so I can see if I can help." Kira situates her pack and things and gets ready to move with the others.
Lori pulls off her cloak and casts Fly on it (15PPE), turning it into an improvised flying carpet. She hops onto it and looks over at Kira. "Want a lift?"
Turning to Raven and Tyran, she adds, "Sorry boys, there's not that much room on here and you can cast your own travel spells."
Taking a small glass statuette out of his pocket, Tyran focuses on it slightly ... satisfied that the occupant is safely stored and under his command, he quietly states "No feeding without my permission" and tucks it back into a pocket. Turning back to the group, he addresses Raven. "Tricks, yes ... I have many ... but I believe the credit for this one lies elsewhere ... "
"Bill, was that you?"
Bill replies, oO(No, quite curious, though)Oo
Turning his attention back to the discussion at hand, he directs Dirk to take a closer look at the castle, swinging lower over the forest to try and locate the riders and their quarry. "It appears we've lost some of our party ..." he adds. "I'm not certain, but I believe someone was using Cirrus as a bit of a distraction in order to take a pot shot at us. Until I know who I can trust, I think I'd prefer a more cautious approach at the moment. There's no telling who's in that castle, and there were a number of riders headed in this direction from there ... chasing a unusually quick man on foot. I lost them in the forest, but I'd like to learn a little more about where we are before a run-in with the local militia. After the light show, they're probably already headed in this direction."
"As for myself, I've seen plenty of castles in my lifetime. I'm more interested in checking out the mile-high tree in the valley that's just over the next ridge - now that's something you don't see every dimension. In any case, I'd suggest we move fast."
Tyran senses a bit of dimensional feedback, as though something is still connected to another dimension, but the signal is fading. It was hard to detect earlier considering the magnitude of magical disturbance radiating from Cirrus only a minute before. Upon looking through Dirk's eyes, Tyran spots the skeletal remains of a larger than normal dragon, then tries to locate the riders. They are still about a mile away, seemingly searching for the man they were chasing. They are mostly obscured from sight within a thick forest.
Everyone hears a thunderous boom from the castle as Raven begins casting a spell. He then replies with, "you know, I can run. I need the exercise anyways."
Gor spins around with his axe brandish and swings simultaneous with near lightning reflexes, splitting the air and striking the ground in front of him. A thunderous boom reverberates through the walls of the castle. Upon looking back through the mirror, the figure is still there, horrifically smiling at him, as though taunting him.
Reaper heads back to the rest of the group and sees where they are going and asks, “what happen to the glitter boy there ? One second he was there and the next he's gone. I think it’s rather odd." reaper looks for reactions...
Maranna still feels uneasy about the castle but if the group goes she will stay with them, but now it seems there being torn into a different direction. "It is odd but I don't think we have a lot of time to worry about him now, I think we have another problem we need to worry about." She looks in the direction of all the activity as well as everyone else. "But whatever were going to do us better do it fast. Got any ideas anyone? Reaper. .Galen.. To'Mas?"
"Can we shoot something?" asks To'Mas.
"We'll probably end up shooting something, but how 'bout we hold off until we know if they're on our side or not." Galen intones dryly to To'Mas. To Maranna and the rest Galen "I'm all in favor of getting some shelter and a more defensible position; and since that castle seems to be the closest feature, I think we should go check it out."
(***********************************
Lori perks up a bit at the mention of the Tree. She hovers up until she can see it then comes back down. "If that's a Millennium Tree from my parent's stories, then I'm definitely interested in checking it out. Plus they are supposed to be sanctuaries of the Light, so it should be a safe place to rest."
Raven smiles, "I'm game. I’d love to check one out."
Gor flips the mirror down against the floor and simply jumps up and down on the back of it, shattering it as much into dust as he can, then walks out of the room. Reaper looks at the rest of the group, “hey guys why don't we go play catch up with the rest and go together. Best chances are together." reaper will start to head up to the others.
Maranna kind of gives a sigh of relief for now. As she starts to go away from the castle with the others the odd feelings go away for now. "I agree with you Reaper, our chances are alot better if we stay together as a group. And it seems that a couple of people in this group know a little something about this "tree" and for one I would like to see what mysteries it holds and why we ended up so close to it. Its there for us to check out and find out what is going on and if it has any potential help to get and keep us outta danger." She moves forward to catch up with everyone and is getting a little excited..a new adventure.
Galen shrugs his shoulders and follows along towards the tree. "I'm out of my element here so whatever you guys think is best." Karak’t seeing as everyone seems to be heading back to the others karak't looks over the castle one last time, still wondering what caused the thunder clap and starts down the hill towards the rest of the group.
Tree still sounds like a good place to go since everyone else seems to be heading that direction. "Shall we head for the tree then?" Galen offers Maranna his arm in a moment of chivalry as they start walking towards the tree.=
Maranna looks at Galen and takes his arm .."Why, thank you!" She keeps up with his pace as they all try to meet up with the other group nearing the tree. "It appears that once we get to that millennium tree, we will be able to get some rest and shelter for awhile. Then maybe you can tell us a little something about what you said back there about knowing about this tree, Reaper" He looks back but is also keeping an eye on the other group, since he moves faster and sees whats going on around us, she doesn't expect an answer.
Maranna, Galen, Reaper, Karak't, Milo and To'Mas head back towards Lori, Tyran, Jenna, Raven and the others as they look to be heading in the direction of the enormous tree.
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Jenna looks up at Lori as she speaks and nods, "Yes, I think that might be the best place to head currently."
Raven nods towards the others, who are now coming back down from the hill to the castle. “Looks like they finally decided to come join us.”
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Gor will head for the front door to see if the rest of the group is coming. Upon looking out of the door, Gor notices that everyone is gathering back together and their gestures seem to hint that they plan to head towards the enormous tree off in the distance.
_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*
A short time later, everyone is back together as one group. Maranna and Reaper find that they still cannot go anywhere near Tyran. The grass is still smoldering. The aroma of burnt plant life and cooked earth seems to permeate the area all around. On the horizon, towards the tree, small bug like creatures seem to be fluttering in small groups. Some even stop to observe the group gathering. Raven frowns, “That's not good. I bet those are faeries... They spell trouble. I've had a few run ins with them.” He glances towards Galen, “Remember?”
"Yeah, I remember" Galen responds with a sour face. "Obnoxious little monstrosities. Can't reason with them. Their logic defies all normal thought. So, are we still headed that way or should we try the castle? I know nothing of this area but I know enough to avoid Fairies."
Jenna rubs her temples as her head starts to hurt, shaking it slightly as the pain subsides o0 that was wierd0o She looks up at the fairies gathered and looks around to see if anyone has any knowledge about them..
Reaper looks at Jenna, karakt and notices they be gettin a headache. "Jenna you ok? Looks like you got yourself a headache. Maybe you should find something to relax yourself better then rubbing your temples."
Jenna glances in Reaper's direction and shakes her head, "I'm fine, and it was just a twinge."
"A twinge? You got any ideas on what’s going on around here? Besides someone’s sick idea of a prank?"
Jenna shakes her head, "Nope, not a clue."
Maranna looks around, trying to figure out where all the fairies came from and why are they here. As she starts to ask someone, she notices several holding there heads." Are you guys ok..whats happening?" As she looks around, she hears somewhat of a laughter but not really sure if shes hearing it or imagining it or what. She hears about Jennas "twinge" and Reapers asking if this is all a prank and tries to put this altogether. Why is some of this group not like fairies? "Theres so many questions and we need these answered right away but I guess we wait and figure each one out one by one, huh?" She looks around and tries to ask Tyran but she still can't get close to him..hmm another puzzle. She looks over to Galen and asks "Can I help you with seeing if everyones ok? Looks like you might need a little help yourself..you ok?"
Raven pulls up a pair of binoculars and ganders at the hill, "Hmmm, mostly plain pixies and faeries. There's a few wind puffs in there." He hangs the binoculars around his neck and groans, "The worst part is that they are actually gathering in a fairly large group. Kila and a few others were caught in their obnoxious faerie dance. Mostly harmless unless they actually want a fight or someone else wants to fight us."
Raven turns and looks at everyone present, "Do not eat anything that you see as appetizing along the way. Their magic is based around cursing random available foods. Keep your food out of sight of them." Raven grumbles. "Can anyone think of a fast way to get past them?"
Jenna looks at Raven and smart alecly replies... "Um... Run?"
Raven shrugs unsurely, "It might work if we were fast enough..."
To'Mas grins, "Well, my ideas wouldn't exclude shooting them all. But I'm not sure how much attention that would draw to us. There's the chance we could simply walk by and hopefully they ignore us. Or there's also the chance that pigs might fly"
Raven smiles as he looks back up the hill at the gathering mass, "Well, Id almost adopt that theory except that they are tough... usually." Raven looks towards Tyran, "Well, you seem to have a bag full of tricks. Got any ideas?"
"I certainly agree, my friend," he says quietly. "Ignorant, aggressive, and stupid. A lethal combination. I think disassociation would be most prudent." Slowly, he lets himself fall back from the others, attempting to catch Lori and Kira's attention as he does so. Once behind the others, he changes direction and angles off at about 45 degrees, in an attempt to separate himself from the 'newcomers' as well as avoid the gathering fairy crowd.
Gor says "I hate fairies" "if they get close I'm killing them all."
Bill's voice rings in Tyran's head, "I have a bad feeling about the common mentality amongst the current company."
karakt wonders why everyone seems so worried about these tiny little creatures, they are obviously too small to be predators of any kind, all the same he was getting somewhat impatient with the time it was taking everyone to decide where they were heading and starts pacing around the group.
"So, we're alone in a strange land brought her by who knows what" Galen looks at Gor dryly "and you want to start a war with the local fairies? Doesn't sound like the best plan in the world to me. Does somebody feel up to going and talking to them face to face and see what they want? I don't speak fairy and my last run in with them didn't go so well."
"Ookkayy..I am totally in the dark here and why is everyone so damn uptight about theses fairies and Pixies..fairies they don"t seem to be harmful and they look to be friendly so why do you want to shoot them or destroy them? Speak fairy, what are you talking about?" Maranna is just a little annoyed that questions are being asked but no one answers they have their minds set on destroying these poor little creatures. Speaking fairy..hrumphh! !! ridiculous!! She being ignored anyway by the group starts to go over to a few of the fairies in a small area. "Maybe their friendly and want to help us and theres only one way to find out." As she gets close to the little group she kinda feels wierd..hard to explain but entranced? Shes drawn closer to the bigger part of the group and notices their little dance. She feels like she’s in her own little world with these tiny creatures but doesn’t know if there here to help or harm.. But she doesn’t care at this point..she just feels odd, unexplainable strange and out of it.
Raven turns to Maranna, "Ma'am, faeries are creatures of magic and tend to have a mischievous streak in them. More often than not, it usually ends up with the victim of their mischief being robbed or killed. In our current situation, I would rather not be stuck in that position. They seem friendly, but they are about having fun or greed, depending on the race and/or individual faerie," Raven frowns as he looks throughout the group.
Galen watches the flighty beings nervously as Maranna walks towards them. He half expects to see her flit out of existence the way the kids did.
"As I don't totally understand all this fancy magic and magic tree stuff can someone give me the quick rundown possibly? As I stated before we should pick a direction and move as we seem to be attracting attention in growing numbers. Can anyone converse with them or should I say want to or is it too much of a problem? Also would we be better off closer to that huge tree? Sorry just not liking sitting out here in the open."
gor will say to Galen "The last time I came in contact with a group of fairies people in the group started to dance and could not stop till we killed the fairy that cast the spell is that a good enough reason?" then Gor will start playing with his ring.
Galen looks at Gor with a slightly raised eyebrow but says nothing and then goes back to watching Maranna.
Raven thinks to himself for the moment and then grumbles, "Well, can't do anything standing here staring and complaining about them." He brandishes and odd-looking pistol, which Gor recognizes as an NE4 plasma pistol. Raven grins at the group, "Last one there gets to see the rest of us dance till we drop!" and takes off at a full sprint across the grassy slopes trying to get past the group of faeries. He is surprisingly fast on his feet.
Tyran grins slightly as he watches the unexpected diversion take shape. "Hmmm ... I wonder if that's the best idea... but if they want to keep the fairies distracted, I won't complain - as long as they don't try anything stupid like starting a fight with them."
OOC: A series of unfortunate mishaps, including a stolen jump drive. Someone formatting my home hard drive to be “nice”. And the birth of my daughter, Memory pretty much brought this campaign to a screeching halt.
"I plan to live forever. Or die trying..." Vila - Blakes 7