It was a common thing for Jack to run into dangerous people. People who wanted him dead mostly because of things he’d done to them. People he’d robbed, cheated out of a priceless object or left for dead. Or even worse. Jack had lived his life like the protagonist of an endless storybook, always going from one chapter to another, never stopping for a moment. When others started families and bought a house, Jack plotted  courses through regions of the cosmos no sapient being had ever been to. By the time others were normally raising kids, he was living out an absurd tale very few would believe.

And now that he had a kid of his own, Jack needed to impart lessons into her. In a world where people like them could exist, there was danger around every corner. And where danger lurked…

[color=6644ff]”…One must learn to avoid it.”[/color]

They stood outside the house, where a normal house would have a front lawn. It was just stones and a gate of pale iron for them. They didn’t have neighbors in the Everdark, but there were countless spells protecting this space from the natural denizens that meant the gate could’ve been anything.

[color=6644ff]”You command the same forces that I do, Annika. The forces of space itself, the Veil. Between all worlds, it exists as a barrier to prevent them from coalescing into one. On the day you and I first crossed paths, it had fallen to tatters. Now, it stands tall as it always should.”[/color]

Jack took a few steps to Annika’s left, and suddenly he was behind her in the blink of an eye.

[color=6644ff]”Here in this place, the Veil is an afterthought. The multiverse bleeds through like countless rivers,”[/color] he continued. This was nothing new to her. [color=6644ff]”In the greater cosmology of existence, you and I wield the exception to a common rule: One must always contend with the Veil when they with to travel between worlds.”[/color]

The Everdark was a place virtually no one in all of eternity had ever gone. Less than a hundred, if any, had willingly set foot in this land. The Veil was the product of the world’s people, and so it could scarcely reach here. [color=6644ff]”You will always have a home here, but there will come a day when you must learn to step between spaces that are not your home. Today, you will learn to circumvent the Veil, and arrive in a place that is not the Everdark, but another place entirely.”[/color]