Fantasy RPG Forum - Standing Trials

The moment Elowen touched the crystal on the wall, she felt her vision warp and twist. Almost like the distortion of looking through a body of water, deeper than it appeared. Her mind raced through that distortion now. As if through a sieve or funnel, her mind moved through the tense membrane of whatever it was the Creeksong apparition wanted to show her. Or had warned against.

Elowen felt what she felt, and besides that she saw things that weren't present in her current incarnation. A view of a distant past, it was certain. She saw a bald-headed man, standing in front of a red-haired dapper fellow, wearing a pair of spectacles. The man with the spectacles appeared unthreatening in the extreme. The aura of a librarian or scholar wafted around him. Yet there was a quiet menace that rose up in Elowen on seeing him, as if through the perspective of man with the shaved head.

"You've planted your seed then?" The man said. "The Purveyor will happy to hear it, when you tell them where to find the mother."

"I won't. She's already beyond your reach."

The bespectacled man gave a demure smile. "She's harboring in Mistral? Surely she can't stay there forever, nor can the child when it's born."

"At any rate, we know where she is. That'll be enough from you. The advent of the Underchildren is unavoidable. And we have more where she came from."

The bald man drew a blade then, burning with green light. The bespectacled man smiled again, and waved a hand. Then the bald man was descended upon by many flamernickels, which consumed him even as he burst into inferno. As Elowen watched the carnage from her strange place between now and then, she would know, it was her blood that was being spilt and scorching the ground. It was her father.

The next vision she was treated to was one of utter darkness, yet a voice spoke to her. The voice was at once young like the small child that had retreated into the cave, and also cruel and hardened by age. "Interesting, we have an experimental specimen in our hands. I must admit, when I'd heard of the child with aukari blood sheltering in the Mistral, I didn't expect a connection to Rhaum." The voice chuckled, "What did they have planned for you before their demise? And what will happen now, that you're free to operate independently of that devil?"

"Perhaps there are answers deeper into this Creeksong Cavern. Or you could turn away now?" The voice said as she felt her connection to this vision weaken, as gravity pulled her away from the crystal. She heard no more from the voice for now, and found herself back in her own head, with the ferret, Winston.

Winston managed to push the negative thoughts and feelings and urges that were brought about by his memory of the pirates. The cavern, whatever force was insinuating itself into the travelers' minds seemed to prod at them. Poking and teasing out the weak points in their nature. The blind spots that simultaneously maintained a high degree of passion.

Yet Winston was disciplined, and suppressed the meddling spirits or magic, or whatever was causing it.

She fell against the crystal, and seemed to stand stock still, rather than crumbling to the ground. Winston maintained his perch on her shoulder with ease. For a few moments, just a manner of trills, he spoke to her. And as he did, it seemed to draw her out of whatever preternatural reverie had gripped her. Whatever the crystal had done to her, was undone in the moment she let go, and Winston's voice guided her back to herself.

Thus, they were there, in the middle of a darkened cave. The crystals that had lit their way disappeared, and only glowing fungi and lichen, besides the few rays of daylight that shone through fissures in the chasm. Still they would be able to navigate their way, and find the way the child and 'false' Meira had gone, if they wanted to continue.


Azrael:

"Oh, how intriguing you are." A voice called, this one sounding much like the young child and an older voice transposed above it. "You want something to want. But at your heart, the place where that intangible 'something' would be, is empty. You are a vacuum of desire. The utter death of hope and verve. Despair is what you engender."

So saying, as he followed toward the light, and touched the blinding light as it surrounded him, he saw less and less. Until he saw nothing, and from that, shadows burst out of his body, weaving their way in and out of him. His constitution was strong enough to stay on his feet, yet he felt pulled to the ground by a heavy gravity.

His inability to envision what he wanted manifested in a spirit of Anguish, which darted toward the mouth of the cavern. There, it escaped, moving at the speed of shadow, through the darkened boughgs of the trees, back toward Mistral Village.

Once it'd left Azrael, he felt better, but perhaps confused as to what happened. The sensation of desire had left him for now, the one that had drawn him down this path. Yet there was still the mysterious child and his trinket, and the others to wonder about. What would Azrael do about that?

The Creeksong Cavern might've been large, long, short or narrow, anyone of those things. But Azrael only reckoned that his feet seemed to take him as his desire wound his way back toward the duo of Winston and Elowen. He found himself nonchalantly jogging in step with their company, easily keeping pace with Elowen and even able to outrun her if he wished. But for the moment he kept pace with her and Winston who bobbed up and down on her shoulder with the pumping of her feet, jostling him from the uneven gait forced by the jutting rocks and slippery stones.

Nevertheless, they eventually found their way to an end of sorts. WIth the back of a man to them, an old man judging by the white hairs on his head. He was crouched over some source of light, that gave off a brilliant yellow glow. His silhouette cast a darkness back on them as they encroached on his space. They'd followed the trail of the boy and girl, Winston and even Azrael would be able to tell from their knowledge of tracking. Even Elowen from her wilderness life would've noted the signs of their passage. But they were nowhere to be found.

Then they heard a whisper, issuing not from the man crouched over the light, but from all around them in echoes and shadows.

"One can but walk through time, always forward but never backward. But with the right lens..."

"One can see back and forward, to wherever they wish."

Then the old man's decrepit voice uttered, in a hoarse fashion, "If I can see it, I can go there, or bring it here. That's the answer!"

So saying, he began lifting the yellow crystal above his head, and a nimbus of blinding light flashed before Azrael, Winston, and Elowen.

They'd be treated to a moment of a fondly remembered past, of their own, or even imagined. Before coming back to the present, when he lowered the stone back to his lap. And began chuckling.

"I can only walk through time, feeble as my legs have become."

"Will you help me find Perfection in what time we have?" He said, looking over his shoulder toward the three. Winston would recognize the Warlock, although this version was much older than the one he'd seen, by at least two decades.