• Graded • The Choice.

[Pegasus]

120th Ashan, 719. Midnight

The Moment.

They fought every step to get there. To the edge of the world, it seemed, or the brink of sanity. Whatever it was ... wherever they were, it was no longer anything resembling the laws of physics. They walked upside down, things fell upwards and they tasted colours. There was no doubting it - this place did not conform to the waking world.

Not at all.

And they came here - all of them. From four directions. Yet, each of them suddenly found themselves stepping, or crawling, or somehow moving through an archway, or doorframe, or cave entrance. And somehow, though they had all come together - although those in the Waiting Place could see them in the groups they were - they all experienced it as being completely alone. They made their way along the bridge, and then at the final doorway, they just could not get through. There was a barrier, or there was a driving gale force wind, or falling rocks. Whatever it was, there was something stopping them. Until, the person stepped through and reached out to them - taking hold of their hand and pulling them, or assisting them, or just being with them. Individually, each of them; they stepped through the final doorway and found themselves in a vast chamber.

Hart and Karshe looked for Wren, but did not find anything. He used his ability, but it gave him no information. So, Karshe jumped, and Karshe fell, and nothing more happened. So, Hart got to the door and he had some dust. Meanwhile, as Tio's fingers closed around the coin, he found something odd. He found that he could see. If he lifted his hands to check, he would find that he still had no eye.Yet, he could see. As he explored this, he realised that, in fact, it was the fingers of the hand which held the coin. Eliza's words and touch were almost there - but they were rather like a ghostly whisper. Eliza, however, saw Tio literally disappear from in front of her - he slipped through her fingers after turning to liquid and he sloshed over the side. Wren looked at her and held her hand, tightly.

Maxine made her way, alone, and she found nothing on the way or in her way. Except for the ribbon which she noticed was tied, fluttering on her wrist. It was black, like it was stained in blood maybe, but it wasn't damp. Yet, should she try to remove it - it did not seem to want to go. Ari'sora, however, picked up the sword and dust and made her way. Alistair gathered his thoughts - and in doing that he got to see the two in front of him cease to be in his sights. They didn't disappear - more they sort of melted, like ice cream on a hot counter.

As Patrick stepped forward, he too got to see the others in his group literally melt away. For him, though, it was like they sunk into the mud. The Rharnian looked down and there, in his hand, was a dagger. It glowed with a bright, unrestrained light, like the light of Qylios pulled him. And pull him it did. Toraj, meanwhile, felt the soft fur of Spirit in his hands. The glowing intensified and Toraj and Patrick both experienced the soft glow wrapping around them. Rakvald, meanwhile, held on to his faith and belief and he made his way in.

Meanwhile, Nir'wei stepped forward. Somehow, with what had just happened, Nir'wei managed to keep going. Then, he reached down and his fingers found what he had looked for - the body of a small squirrel. Rabu, meanwhile, found Yah and his small hands felt the firmness of the green apple as he moved forward - and suddenly around him was a herd... a flock... a lot of bright red chickens. Everyone - literally everyone saw them. And they were gone as quickly as they'd arrived. Kesinder picked up the small pouch, and he wondered about the Mer. Then, he moved. Oluwanje, meanwhile, grabbed the mirror and a red apple.

And each one of them went through - into a room. A room with vast, high ceilings. Massive pillars and sloping stairs leading down. Down to a low pit, where there was a crypt. A sarcophagus-like thing and there, sitting cross-legged on it was a .... person. Red hair, red clothing, strange jewelry in front of their mouth. The floor around the sarcophagus was split into four quarters. The voice which echoed around the room spoke.

"Choose. Earth. Air. Fire. Water. Or leave."

There was no indication of which quarter was which. There was just The One, and The Question.

And therefore, there was The Choice.

Everybody's looking for something...

Objectives & Rules

You are alone - completely alone (or so you experience it)
You all see that there are a flock of red chickens.

!	Message from: MUST DO OBJECTIVES
	Describe the person you meet who brings you through - your Escord. It will be someone you know. Please explain who, try and give an IC explanation for why. It can be a PC or NPC. It's your version of them. Choose one element. Or choose to leave. Explain what you do with any items - even if it's just keep hold of them. Please post here entirely as an individual. Do not interact with anyone else.

!	Message from: CAN DO OBJECTIVES
	Describe your reaction to the chickens.

Dates & Deadlines

I will post on Friday 24th May .

[Rei'sari]

Location: ---



If Ari'sora had needed any proof that the tear in reality that had shattered the cathedral had caused even more serious damage than could be easily seen, she had it now. Colors that she couldn't even begin to describe let alone name impinged on her awareness as a symphony of sounds and flavors that were equally alien to her. She found herself walking upside down, and that told her that the rules of gravity were flexible at best here. Adding to that realization was that things fell upwards one trill, and sideways the next. And she was completely, and utterly alone. Although she had not been the first person to enter the archway, there was no trace of the woman who had gone before her. Ari'sora gripped the sword tightly in her hand. She wanted to return the sword to its owner. But to do that, the woman who owned it need to be alive. Perhaps if she ever made it out of here...whatever "here" was...the woman would be there, too.

After a while, it became too much for her. Ari'sora closed her eyes, and tried to shut out some of the insanity. It did nothing to eliminate the strange sounds and flavors of the colors in this place, but it allowed her to think a bit easier. Without her sight, she was deeply anxious as she edged along, but she never stopped moving forward.

Until she had no choice but to stop. There was a doorway. But it was blocked by a wind so strong that its incredible force was more than enough to prevent Ari'sora from going any further. It didn't matter what angle she tried to approach it from; the result was the same. Not that there were many angles she could come at it since she was standing upside down on a bridge that was unstable at best. There was no going back...but there was no going forward either.

Then without warning, Mi'zuri stepped through the wind from the doorway she had been trying to get through. Before Ari'sora could do more than recognize her sister, Mi'zuri had grabbed her arms, and yanked her off balance. As a result, she fell through the gale force wind that had been barring her way, and into a vast chamber.

Shadow...?

Ari'sora looked around, but Shadow wasn't there. Mi'zuri was, though. Ari'sora stared at her in confusion, but didn't say anything. Why was Mi'zuri there? Why did she pull her through the wind barrier? Had she been trying to help her? Or was this a trap of some kind? How had Mi'zuri even gotten there at all? Wasn't she supposed to be asleep somewhere with the rest of Idalos? Maybe...just maybe...her sister was a figment of her imagination. She had been thinking about Mi'zuri a lot lately, after all. After the events of last Cylus, their relationship had started to get a little better, but there was a lot of anger, bitterness, and distrust there still. And fury. But the latter had been sacrificed, so Ari'sora was uncertain that she actually felt that still. Maybe it was just the memory of fury that she felt. But maybe it was because she had been thinking about her a lot lately that Mi'zuri...or some image of her was here now.

Ari'sora didn't have much time to think about it before she was distracted by the sudden appearance of a huge flock of chickens. Chickens? Bright red chickens to be exact. Ari'sora stared at them in confused shock, reaching out to the one closest to her automatically. But it vanished again before she could actually touch it. Had it...they...ever been real at all? Or had the insanity of the last place she had been in driven her insane? Either scenario seemed equally likely to her.

"Did you see that, Mi'zuri?" she muttered.

If Mi'zuri heard her...if she was real at all...she didn't answer. Ari'sora looked around the chamber, and realized that it was a crypt. She had read enough books where ancient tombs and crypts were part of magical quests that she recognized what she was seeing despite having never seen one personally before. A person sat cross legged on top of a sarcophagus. Because really...why not? It made about as much sense as anything else did in this strange place. He...or she? It was impossible to tell which. They had red hair, red clothing, and strange jewelry in front of their mouth. Or was the jewelry their mouth? Ari'sora blinked as she tried to make sense of it all. Her hand gripped the sword she had found tightly, as if it could somehow protect her. Not that she would be able to use it if the person attacked her. And fortunately, the person made no move to do so.

Choose. Fire, water, earth, or air. Or to leave. That was the choice the person had given her. The elements told her that she would almost certainly have to make yet another sacrifice. Four elements, four suits...eight people demanding sacrifices if the two people per element rule held up. Or...she could leave. But that was no real choice, was it? Leave where? Back the way she had come? That was no real choice, even if by leaving, everything she had done and sacrificed until now would have been in vain. Shadow's death would have been for nothing. No. Leaving wasn't an option she could live with.

Fire...she had sacrificed enough of fire. Besides, wasn't choosing fire going backwards? That didn't seem right. If this was to end, then she had to move forward. Ari'sora fingered the dust she held in the hand that wasn't holding the sword. She paid close attention to the way it felt in her hand, buying time for herself as she thought. Was it really the remains of Stasis? If so, then maybe their guide could guide her decision somehow...not that he had been much of a guide, really. His answers had made little sense for the most part.

Water was the opposite of fire. Did that mean that choosing that element next would cancel out the sacrifices she had already made, rendering them useless? Better not to risk it. That left two possible choices.

As she thought about the choice she had to make, Ari'sora noticed that the floor around the sarcophagus was divided into four quarters. Four quarters, and four elements. Four elements, and four suits. Was it a coincidence? It seemed unlikely. But those thoughts were distracting her from the choice she had to make.

She liked the air. Loved it, really. She loved to fly, and the sense of freedom that it gave her. To be forced to sacrifice something of air would hurt her worse than having to sacrifice something from earth. Probably. She wasn't sure what a sacrifice of earth would entail, so she couldn't be certain of that. Decision made, she looked at the person who was waiting for her answer.

"Earth." she said softly, almost inaudibly.

Then she repeated herself a little more loudly.

"I choose earth." she said.

!	Message from: Peg
	As Ari'sora made her choice, she feels something against her legs. Shadow is there with her.

[Hart]

"Speaking in Rakahi"
"Speaking in Common"
"Speaking in Common sign"

extra line here
They were gone. Eliza was gone. Eberhardt was gone. The masked man was gone. The fox was gone. Gem was gone.

Karshe said, "I'm going," and leapt.

Hart took the door. He stepped towards it and as he did, he saw that he was at the door without having crossed the space in between. He wavered, and saw --as if in delay-- each step he had taken to get to where he was.

He saw it all.

He saw his dream and the Waiting Place. The tunnel and the Nightmare. The dark, dead land. The room with the book of dreams. The bridge and the cathedral. He saw it all as if in reverse, or perhaps he saw it in the right order and he was looking back.

Somewhere in it he saw Wren leaping with his little cherub's wings. He saw Wren smile.

Hart stopped in front of the door.

"Why?" he whispered. He saw it all.

He saw himself holding Wren's hand. He saw himself tying the string to Wren's wrist.

"Have you not sacrificed enough, Edashason?"

"Why?" he asked again, and then, "Will it ever end?"

"No," he said. "No."

He saw himself kneel in front of Wren and just look at him.

It seemed to hold him in place.

"Why?" he asked, and then again, "Why?"

A man reached through the door.

The man's eyes were crystalline as if they held back tears, a pure shining blue; they were several shades lighter than Wren's. He had long hair, white and fine, lighter than Wren's though only through age. He was pale and solemn, and as he reached through the dark of the door and the stars, immense white wings reached with him, too many to count, surrounding him as if a halo.

"Anthropos Apteros," Hart said, and stepped through the door.

There was no wingless man. There were only stairs, and as Hart stepped towards them he saw that he was at the bottom of the staircase without having crossed the space in between. He saw himself walking down the stairs as if in delay.

Halfway down, a flurry of red chickens flitted onto the staircase and one leapt for Hart, wings fluttering. He put out an arm and the chicken landed on it. And then it was gone and he was at the bottom of the staircase.

Hart looked towards the Being.

It was sitting on some sort of stone coffin, and Hart looked at It with fury and grief and anger, such anger, but all at himself. He had tried to stop the mortalborn from hurting Anthropos Apteros and he had hurt the world.

"Why?" he asked.

"Where is Eliza, where is the man with the mask? Where is Gem?" Hart demanded. "Where is Eberhardt, where is the fox?"

Karshe had leapt. Auya had died.

"Where is Wren?"

"Fire," Hart said, when the Being asked. His hands were fists and the cut on his palm stung. There was grit in the cut and Hart held out his hand to the Being. If It would accept, Hart would step forward and turn his hand and dust would fall from it into the Being's grasp.

"Where are Jesine and Kielik?" Hart said.

!	Message from: Peg
	The One looks at you and blinks. "They are where you put them"

[Alistair]

He was exhausted with it all.

All of the challenges. All of the choices. All of the things he had been tasked with surrendering of himself in order to carry on -- and towards what? Towards two Mortalborn that had likely gotten themselves into the mess he and the others had been forced to clean. Some had likely already died for all of this -- he'd not seen Nightshade again, or that man from the Calling, or the woman from Scalvoris, or so many others. Always, mankind was tasked with facing the ire of the divine and equally serving their will when the time came.

In the face of all of this, Alistair carried on not through any particular interest in the wellbeing of the twins, but for the others across Idalos who had been endangered. And so he wandered, aimlessly through an endless darkness that even he could not peer through. And in his fatigue, of a mental and spiritual sort rather than the physical, Alistair gave in for a trill as the darkness gathered even nearer around him to the point where he could not see a single inch before his radiant form.

Until his child - Asher - appeared in his arms, a beacon and a light that shone through the shroud of darkness. Perhaps it was symbolic of everything he'd lost, that it wasn't some other source of strength. Fridgar and Zarik had left him, Kleine had nearly died and Damien began to lose faith in who he was. Alistair had failed the many others around him, but his love for his child was beyond that of any other. Asher was the reason he continued to carry forward, his light in the dark. He was the person still alive on Idalos that Alistair wished would awaken from his dreaming.

And so he carried him, and the shroud unveiled. Ari'sora and Maxine stepped before him - though not far away - until eventually they appeared to melt into nothing.

He felt a great anxiety in that moment, wondering if he would be next to endure that fate -- if Asher would. But he continued to step forward, even worrying that he was the only one left of all who had initially gathered in the Waiting Place... and Alistair held his child even closer to his form. Eventually, he stepped through a door that had appeared through the black haze. One that brought him into a room of high ceilings, of pillars and stairs and crypts. It reminded him of one of the darkly, old castles of home that had been broken by war or wear -- or simply left behind to become relics. But within the crypt was no skeleton greeting him, nor old tomes covered in dust.

Instead, it was a vibrantly colored red woman. Her voice echoed, and she asked for Alistair to decide between four elements. Elements... he wondered why? None of this had anything to do with Defiance, and in Alistair's limited perspective he related those four things almost solely to the arcane. He thought of which element he was most drawn to; the thing that had followed him the most throughout life. The thing he'd loved enough to chase after, with his sails or the wanderlust of his form... which he had only just sacrificed.

"Air," he replied. Alistair had always loved the wind, though the question of why he'd been tasked in choosing rung through his mind.

"Is this the end of our journey?" he asked. "What fate befell Jesine and Kielik to bring them to this point?"

!

Message from: Peg

"Yes," the One says when Alistair asks if it's the end of the journey. When he then asked what fate befell the twins? "Hart, son of Edasha, used his ability on them and forced them into dreamless sleep. This is what happens when Dream die. You have been asked to sacrifice those things which may tie you to the waking world in the hope that you will, all of you combined, be able to give them a piece of a dream and force them to dream again. To shape their Dreamscape. "

[Pegasus]

Quick Mod-Bomb!

As Alistair asks his question - everyone sees him do so. All other players see and hear his question and The One's answer.

Alistair - you, suddenly, can see everyone in all these threads (Prison, Waiting Place and here) and you can communicate with them all. That communication, however, is one way (except with the Waiting Place people, you and they now have open lines of telepathy) and is limited to twelve words, should you wish to use it.

[Alistair]

So now, he knew.

He knew everything that he needed to. He knew that the twins were asleep - and who had put them there. Another Mortalborn... of course, it was another Mortalborn. Alistair would have scoffed if he'd had less restraint, for it was always the Immortals and their children that had led to every foul event across time. The more and more he'd gotten closer to understanding magic and its history, the more he had learned that its painful divergences into madness had all unilaterally been caused by the divinity and their kin. Sheor and its fall; the long war before the oath, and some alleged even the great deathly blight that had overcome Hiladrith. The darkness that had led them to where they were now, hating magic rather than the rightful source of their pain.

And now, in what could have become a final event that risked the death of their waking world, a dreamless sleep. Not only for the twins -- no, they were far too grand upon their scale to sleep only among one another. They condemned Idalos to the same fate; over a hundred million souls to join them. Why had they been given such power over everything, he wondered, merely as a circumstance of their birth?

This is what happens when Dreams die.

He had been tasked with sacrificing the things that connected him to his world, only to tether these beings to their own; to reshape a Dreamscape they had lost at the hands of this... cousin of theirs. Alistair understood now. His vengeance and his wanderlust had been given to repaint their own bleak landscape; the colorful canvas that had been painted black, only for colors to rejoin with its frame. And as he asked and as he understood, he could see everyone. They had all rejoined him, even those that had melted before his very eyes. He could see the Waiting Place again, and a bleak prison, and the many souls standing beside him. And yet, as they peered aimlessly forward, Alistair knew that they could not see him.

And he wondered -- if the twins were asleep, truly asleep with no chance at waking, what did that mean for a man like him? For a mage?

He had always been told of the commodity of a divine spark. Mortalborns were a feast for his kind; souls that would touch his palate with the taste of a million. And these Mortalborn were stronger than the rest. They were powerful, and not only powerful, but they were enriched in the ether of Emea. They had been given providence over things that even their parents did not have. Within their sleep, Alistair saw an opportunity. A golden one that would never present itself to any other mage -- not in his lifetime, at least.

And so, the thought filled his head. And as it filled his head... he could see their faces within the sarcophagi. Jesine and Kielik, sleeping, directly before him.

Alistair stepped forward. Before him was Kielik, the Nightmare King, asleep and bereft within the chaos that must have surely consumed his mind. Perhaps as what could as well have been the Lord’s final act, he spared Jesine for within her soul was a far less significant degree of evil.

And then, Alistair glanced for a moment at the One. Perhaps she would disturb him, perhaps she would not. If she did, he would have to fight her off. He understood the risks of what he was now to do, and could barely even conceive of the rewards.

But he did it -- he reached into Kielik’s very being with his palm, pressing it against his pale and frigid forehead as the mage channeled the divine ether from the twin’s soul. Alistair gripped his divine spark firmly with all of his will, siphoning the ether of what he would call its outer shell until it was exposed to him, raw and plain. He was glad to have been such a skilled Transmuter, or the raw ether may have killed him already. As the process drew on, the mage grew bewildered, weakened with his own skin growing fair and covered with signs of fatigue. The dreams that everyone had given the Nightmare King had now begun to flow into him, or so it felt, and Alistair was overcome with a flurry of emotions as everyone’s love, sorrow, devotion and fury all funneled into him all at once.

And then, he took a hold of it. Within his hand, pulled from the soul of the now-dead Kielik, was a true spark of divinity. Alistair clenched it within his palm, the ethereal vestige pulsating within his grip, drew it to his lips… and devoured it. Just like that... without a shred of remorse for what he had done.

Twelve words, to everyone.

Twelve bloody words.

"I have eaten the Nightmare King, and relish in his divine taste."

Off Topic

All things were discussed with Pegasus before they occurred in my post.

[Pegasus]

ANOTHER Quick Mod-Bomb!

You all hear the twelve words spoken by Alistair. To the rest of you, nothing else seems to happen.

[Tio Silver]

Things were getting weirder again. Much weirder.

For a brief moment Tio could have sworn he'd heard Eliza saying something in the distance and felt the touch of a hand on his back, yet when he reached blindly into the space behind him there was nobody there. Had it been his imagination? Or was Emea playing tricks on him? Without his sight there was no way to tell.

Fortunately that problem happened to resolve itself, as the moment his fingers curled around the coin he'd found Tio's sight returned to him! His eye was still gone unfortunately, yet somehow he was able to see from the hand that he held the coin in as it were an eye! Experimentally he passed the coin back and forth between his hands, marveling at how his sight shifted with it. Had his sacrificed eye been stored in the coin? That was a pretty handy turn of events.

"Yes! I can see again!" He roared triumphantly, scrambling to his feet and yelling his glee into the storm. "I can see! I can..."

A flock of bright red chickens hurtled past him, screeching with panic as the storm whisked them off into the distance. Tio watched them go past in stunned silence. It took him a dozen or so trills to process what he'd just seen, and then the masked mage shook his head.

"Oh great. This bloody coin must be defective or something. Just my luck."

Still now that he could see he stood a much better chance of getting the heck out of here alive. Now able to run, Tio sprinted down the bridge towards the doorway he could see in the distance. But just before he could reach it the bridge before him crumbled away, creating a gap just a bit too big for him to jump across. A quick glance behind him showed that the bridge behind him had collapsed as well, and that the section he stood on now was soon to follow. He was trapped, and a few moments away from certain death.

"Tio! Jump!"

Tio whipped around to look at the doorway, where a figure he'd never expected to see again stood crouched by the edge of the gap with an arm outstretched towards him. Her dirty black hair blew about wildly in the stormy winds, but despite it he could make out enough of her face to tell who it was.

"Kitty! You're alive!" He exclaimed.

"Oh no, I am still very much dead!" She shouted back. "As you'll be if you don't hurry up and jump already! Come on!"

The bridge began to crack beneath his feet. It was now or never. With as much energy as he could gather Tio jumped towards her, reaching out his hand as his chest smacked brutally into the other side. Kitty grabbed hold of it and heaved him up before he could fall, pulling both of them back through the doorway.



"Oh man, I can't believe you're here! I've got so much to tell you."

Kitty watched with the same exasperated amusement one might watch a small child playing in a puddle of mud with as Tio spewed forth a verbal waterfall of words, not pausing for a second to catch his breath as he quickly recapped everything that had happened to him since the expedition to the Immortal's Tongue. Joelle, Cassion's Game, his curses; a summary of all of his great adventures cut down to a single lungful of air.

"... And then I was turned into a human, and Syroa said..."

"Actually Tio I know, I was th-..."

"... And then I got shipwrecked on by way to Yaralon, and had to..."

"I know Tio. I'm trying to tell you I've been..."

"... And then my eye somehow ended up in this gold coin, so I..."

"TIO!"

Tio stopped his tirade of words as Kitty snapped at him, finally noticing that she was trying to tell him something.

"Like I was trying to say, I know. I've been following you the whole time. After I died I became a ghost, and I've been by your side the whole time."

Tio looked at her silently, his mask perfectly reflecting the blank expression he wore behind it. Eventually though he spoke.

"You've been stalking me?"

Kitty flushed at the insinuation. "Not stalking you, no! I've been watching out for you, trying to protect you from the terrible future that-..."

"You've been haunting me?! That's even worse!"

"Damn it Tio, be serious!"

Tio backed off a few steps from her, chuckling quietly in a way that betrayed the fact that he'd been having a little fun at her expense. But the laughter dried up as a serious thought crossed his mind. "Why did you refuse to go on to the next life just to stick with me? We'd only met for about half a trial before you died. You should have chosen to be at peace!"

"I... I wanted to repay you." Kitty replied sombrely, glancing away from him. "You showed me kindness nobody else had. But upon my death I was able to read the future fate has in store for you; see the monster you are doomed to become if you stay on your current path. I thought I could help you steer away from that terrible destiny, but I..."

"Choose. Earth. Air. Fire. Water. Or leave."

Tio looked towards the source of the voice, at last noticing The One. A part of him thought she looked oddly familiar, but he had no recollection of ever meeting her before. Before he could figure out where they'd met another voice filled the air, that of a man, although the owner of it was nowhere to be seen. Apparently he'd eaten someone. Good for him?

"Hello there, Ms..." He paused, hoping the red haired woman would supply a name. "Have we met before? I get the feeling I know you from somewhere, but can't quite recall where that might be. We didn't date once did we?"

As for her elemental choice, Tio had absolutely no idea what the correct answer was supposed to be. He did however notice that, due to her sparse choice of wording, the lady had not specified that only one option could be chosen. That gave him an idea. "I choose earth, air, fire and water! Whatever they're supposed to mean let's do them all!"

Kitty sighed, not able to put into words how terrible of an idea that sounded.

[Pegasus]

You People!

Tio, upon choosing all four elements is immediately visible to all of you. You all see him get literally torn into four pieces and, as far as you all see, his dismembered corpse stays there. Blood. Gore. It be nasty

......

Succession Package Info for Tio

You appear in the Waiting Place. Feel free to post again, and assume that you have the same restrictions / rules etc as everyone else in there

[Eliza Soule]

One trill Eliza was on hands and knees, Eberhardt and the coin tangled up in her dark hair, her hand wrapped round Tio's foot in an effort to help guide him safely across. The next, without any fanfare, Tio melted away and dripped right out of her grasp. And then the next, before she could begin to grasp what was happening, Wren was there, holding tight to her hand.

It was all happening at once and too fast, and she felt a wave of nausea and panic washing over her, and she could hardly catch her breath. Squeezing Wren's hand in hers, she rasped, "It's ok. We'll be ok." She was trying to convince herself. Never mind Wren.

She'd only just begun to make her way across the arch. But there she was. Just her, Eberhardt with the two faced coin clutched in her tiny fingers, and Wren, in front of the door. The wind was still whipping around them and no matter how hard she pulled on the door, it wouldn't budge. "Hart! Tio! Gem?" she called out. "Karshe?" Then in spite of all its resistence, the door opened, and there stood, "Poppy?" she breathed, surprised, but suddenly calmer in spite of it all.

The most loved of all her relations. Her beloved grandfather Poppy. She'd never even known whether they were related by blood or not. But it had never mattered. He was just as she remembered him. Tall and lanky but bent a little with age. White haired and bearded, deep crow's feet at the corners of his smiling blue eyes. He'd always been the calm in whatever storms had surrounded her, he'd always made her feel safe and as he smiled and without a word extended his hand, Eliza took it and followed him through the door. Until he was gone again.

Chickens? Why were there chickens? Red ones too and as one of them cackled and waddled past her, Eliza yelped and jumped aside. She never had cared much for chickens. They in fact were the stuff of nightmares. So was the redheaded one with a jewel for a mouth. But she was alone, her and Wren and Eberhardt..."I choose water," she said, before everything changed again.

She could hear it. Someone else was here, and then she saw him but not the others. Asking questions that she already knew the answers to, mostly. Eliza didn't know him. It wasn't Hart, or Tio or Gem. Had she seen him in the waiting place? She couldn't be sure. Then there were those twelve words. Eliza's breath caught in her throat before she rasped out, "What are you doing?! No!"

Too late? She had no idea. Was the man some sort of weirdo and simply had a macabre way with words. Or, had he somehow killed Kielik? "Please, no," Eliza whispered. But if he was true, then it could only have been magic, couldn't it?

Even she knew that magic wasn't to be used in Emea. Bad things happened. Very bad things. And Jesine without Kielik? She couldn't see. It was only the words. But bad or good, it was the balance that mattered. Like darkness and light, good and evil, without balance there could only be chaos. At the very least in this case, killing and devouring was not waking.

Because of this one man's actions; mortal, mortalborn, Immortal or mage, Eliza didn't care: Had they come all this way for nothing? All their sacrifices, Auya's sacrifice? Hot tears streamed down the mortalborn's face. What of all those innocent souls? The millions of them?

She was exhausted, bruised and battered, her emotions were raw. Eliza wanted nothing more at that moment than to punch the man who'd done it in the throat, if he'd done what his words implied he had. Eliza didn't care about Kielik, or Jesine. Their treatment of Anthropos made them both jerks in Eliza's opinion. But the possible consequences of it. It made Hart's supposed transgressions seem like child's play in the scheme of things. Hart had only touched another mortalborn and look what had happened. "What have you done?' she whispered, the tears still wet on her face, Eberhardt still on her shoulder, and Wren's hand wrapped up in her own.

And if it wasn't enough, suddenly she could see and hear Tio throwing all sense and caution to the wind. The results were what Eliza had come to expect of this place. Swift, nonsensical and at times barbaric. Her hand flinched tighter on Wren's, she turned him to face her, away from the carnage, squeezed her eyes shut in the wake and fought a new wave of nausea. "Stop. Please. Enough," she said to the One, to the woman with the jewel for a mouth. "Haven't you taken enough already? What else can you want?" she asked, her voice, her whole body shaking.