[KQ] What Lies Beneath

Jigano, in the book:

As you disappear it isn’t painful. No vertigo. No dizziness. You’re just...gone, and suddenly you’re in...well. It’s hard to describe. You look around and it’s sort of white and cloudy for miles and miles, though you get the distinct impression you can’t actually walk for all those miles. It only looks like it goes on forever. Next to you is a signpost with dozens of arrows pointing in dozens of directions, though as if in a dream, your eyes can’t quite make out what the words say.

Deimos? Kiada? Jigano called into the mists along the Attuned bond, worried that he couldn’t see his friends nearby. The signpost was the only clue, and Jigano squinted at it, attempting to make out the words in spite of the difficulty in getting his eyes to focus on them. After a few moments’ study, he pulled his Broken Spectacles out of his sleeve and slipped them on, attempting to read the signpost through the uncracked lens.

Normally speaking through the attuned bond is a little like speaking normally; there is a small amount of an echo, an atmospheric sort of resonance. Here though, there seems to be nothing. Your mental voice falls flat.

Looking up at the words—whether because of the spectacles or simply proximity—you find you can now read three of them. They say: the Spire, Mathair, and the Citadel.

So it was like the portal control place that Safrin’s books had mentioned. Given the book’s title that made sense, and Jigano studied the words that he could make out with a faint frown. The Spire was only to be expected. The serpent was there… but likely still wouldn’t use the portal there to leave. The Mathair was unexpected, fascinating and curious… but again, a place Jigano knew. But ‘the Citadel’ held the allure of the unknown. If Deimos and Kiada had already left, seeking someplace new, that would be it.

Besides, it was called ‘the Citadel.’ It was practically made for Deimos.

Shifting his senses to his vulpine eyes and ears, Jigano closed his eyes and focused on the words of the signpost, thinking of how he had once created short portals in Numeria. Will it, hold the desire to travel there firmly in mind, and then…

Open his eyes and begin walking where the Citadel arrow indicated, because this wasn’t Numeria. But he still focused his thoughts on arriving at ‘the Citadel,’ whatever it was. And whatever new dangers it might bring.

No, not Numeria indeed. Still, the bard is clever enough not to let his mind wander too loftily. Indeed it is his steps that cause him to move. Suddenly Jigano is...elsewhere. The same cloudy vista, the same strange signpost and though it is all exactly the same, he has travelled. There is a mirror-like surface that bends as if made of water and air. Through it a vast world of snow and ice can be seen below in sparse detail. It looks frigid and sparse, great glacial mountains enclosing everything within, a massive frozen lake, a city sparkling in the distance.

A reflection of reality? Jigano paused, studying the landscape as if to memorize it. If he stepped through would he be able to step back? The goddess and he were not as close as the spirit guide was, but this seemed to be more her place than theirs. And calling out for help hopefully wouldn’t hurt, at the very least. Composing himself, the bard tilted his head up and called: ”Safrin? Are you there? Is anyone there?” Maybe he’d get lucky and Kiada or Deimos would answer, even if the goddess couldn’t hear him here.

Once again as the bard calls out his voice falls flatter than it ought to; the physics of this place somehow impossibly bent. Then again, it is a book after all. Regardless, no one answers his call.

Once he went through there was a good chance he couldn’t go back, he suspected grimly. At least there was no guarantee of it. He had begged Amalia not to do something similar mere moments (minutes, hours, days?) ago. Before he went too far down a road he could not return from, it was better to check the other paths for his wayward friends. As silence continued to wrap around him (disturbing, distressing silence for a man who loved the sound of his own voice) he checked the signpost again, pulled in a breath, and focused on the Spire. He turned his feet in the direction of that arrow and stepped back into the mists.

Indeed that strange feeling of vast movement that somehow occurred within just a few steps would settle upon the Sage. The glacial expanses disappeared behind him into the cloudy-mists, and he would find yet another mirror-like portal before him of the basement in the Spire. Rocks had fallen, walls crumbled, items scattered; it was on the opposite wall from where the bard had last been, and yet the chaos and clutter was much the same. A wishing well with a stream of blue light glimmered through the strange window before Jigano.

This he recognized, and while he first looked for Kiada and Deimos both in the mists nearby and through the mirror itself, his second look was to try and find the serpent he had spoken to before, looking for the flash of pale stone scales and leviathan coils in the mirror’s depths. This portal, at least, he knew he could return from (or at least, so Roana’s return would indicate), but with the rocks still caved in between the portal room and the stairs it was unlikely he would be able to leave that place except to return here. Still, it was worth taking a step through if he couldn’t find his friends right away…

But first, check for them, and for the serpent. More decisions could be made after that.

And suddenly Jigano's progress is halted by an invisible barrier. It's all still there; the dark, the dust, the pillar of light, but you are no closer. You are in a book after all. There might be more to this than simply strolling about.

Should you look behind you, you’ll see the indescribable wash of cloudiness that was there all along; the nondescript landscape, the strange sign-post. To turn again puts it all in perspective; you’re looking through a window. Or, is it a portal in its own right? A window into this world? A clear door?

Stretch your hands around and you’ll feel it, though it has no real shape or demonstrable properties.

His head bounced off the - glass? Crystal? Stone? - and he shook his head as he pulled it back from his attempt to peer through, his assumptions shattered and leaving him frowning as he rubbed the spot on his forehead and frowned at the not-portal to the Spire. Exploring it cautiously with his hands yielded little but an inability to pass through it, and his frown deepened. Was this some sort of illusion of the portal control plane the book had described? A sort of… of how-to guide on how to use it if he ever found himself there for real?

For the moment there was still one path left to check for his wayward companions, though, and he pondered as he turned to check the sign and then strode off towards the Mathair. He couldn’t think of why Deimos and Kiada might have gone there, but for the moment he didn’t have any other legible directions to check. So, off to the goddess-tree he tried to go.

As Jigano steps forward he will feel the same momentous crossing of vast distances and there before himin the same portal-like vista, is the Greatwood. Much more familiar, he can smell the woods, hear the nattering of various woodland creatures as they scurry about, each preparing for LongNight in their own way. Again though, there is that barrier should he try and move forward. The portrait seems to focus on the great tree, guarded as it is by the fae. They stand around it lined with spears and torches in various states of readiness. Some  sleep, some are at the ready.

What were the Fae doing surrounding the Mathair? Alas, the barrier prevented him from asking - if they would even answer him. They looked ready for war, a state he found alarming, and something Adam said tickled at the back of his mind. Lucas, killed by a tree? Doing something for the Voice? Gods least fortunate, what was the goddess doing in the Greatwood now? He grimaced, but could see no sign of his friends among the winged folk and after a moment’s hesitation he stepped back, returning to stand beneath the signpost and think.

Sentient Books had stories to tell. Places they wanted you to go, characters to interact with. Was the book blocking the Spire and the Mathair because that wasn’t the direction the tale ahead was meant to take? He’d run into that before, with Sam in their first journey. The book had a way of herding them along down the preferred path. He had been unable to pass through two of the three portals, so that left the third… And hoping to Mort that he was guessing right and it was just a story. That he’d be able to return to Amalia and Rory and the rest before LongNight.

Squaring his shoulders he focused on the Citadel, heading in that direction once more and this time attempting to push through the the mirror-portal between the Between Place and the world beyond the glass.

Oh, he could push all he liked. Luckily there was a strange sort of resistance that wouldn’t result in bruised shoulders, but it was as sturdy as it was fixed firmly in this metaphysical space. How long, how hard did Jigano push? Irrelevant; here, such things hardly mattered. Their efficacy somehow lacking. Still, the nearer to the barrier the Sage found himself, the different the view: The Citadel landscape shifts bringing the portal-viewing range inside a castle of ice and over the top decorations. It is medieval but almost garish, with everything finery draped like clumps of tinsel. It is blurrier here than the outside vista, but clear enough to make out figures hustling and bustling within the castle, running from room to room.

Alright, he’d guessed wrong. He could live with that, thankfully, since getting it wrong didn’t involve claws or swords or grinding gears or sharks with pointy teeth. He took the time to study the Citadel first, though, looking at the people who bustled about to try and get a sense for their racial mix through the blurriness. When he’d looked as much as he could he stepped back, tilting his head to the side and tapping a finger against his pouch, trying to decide where Deimos and Kiada had gone. If not through any of these windows, then perhaps… back to the beginning? Unsure of what to do next, but desperately hoping that his next few steps would take him to them he stepped backwards, focusing on where it had all begun.

The step backwards would take the bard back into the strange underground cavern, as if having stepped back from a curtain. The book is before him, closed neatly on the ground.