Five hundred years have passed since last the doorways between worlds were first opened. The Rifts. They have lied silent and dead so long, so many might have forgotten them. But they aren't to be silent and dead forever: somewhere, somehow, it begins again. The Rifts return. In myriad planes of desert or swamp or ashen canyon, there is a sudden sound and a sudden flash, a wavering, a tearing open of time and space, an act of magic that rips through the extraplanar realms and defies the powers of gods- and then only a steady green light.
The Rifts return. No magi nor saint could tell you how, but there they stand, a portal to countless other Planes. Who will enter them?
What will they find?
------~-( )-~------
Lost somewhere within the myriad extraplanar realms is a small, dark world called the Hallow, and within that is a large, dark city called Daithe, and outside that is a poor, young woman about to start crying with joy.
Her name is Aila. She was the only one near the Rift when it happened- nobody else likes to venture that far outside the city. But she likes to get away from it all. She likes, when she can, to escape the city. Get out of the cramped stone alleyways, the constant fighting and threat of war, the politicking and arguing and clan feuds. It's dangerous to walk in the Hallow alone, they say, and they might be right. But Aila realized a long time ago that there are some days she'd rather risk death than stay in Daithe a second longer.
That led her out of the main gate, going an afternoon's walk or so along the main body of the Screaming Canyon, to a place marked by a large stone arch. She ran her fingers along it. Touched the stones, the engravings. She came here often: the place where the Rift used to be. All her life she's heard about it, but it's so much myth and history, nobody bothers to come here in person anymore. Why risk the Abomination striking you down? She was there alone. As she often had before, she took the private time to say a small prayer to The Teinn:
King of Worlds, God of Many Bodies, could today be the day you forgive us? Like the other times before, nothing answered her. She turned to face the long walk back home, just when a sound grabbed her attention. Turned back around, she saw a flash of light deep in the stone arch.
And then it flickered. Likes sparks in a torch.
And then it shook. And the air wavered, a feeling like the vibration of a string ran through her body and before her in a storm of green light, suddenly, was the Rift. Alive again. A prayer answered.
She feels her face to make sure she's not dreaming. Then she decides that it would be better not to wake up from this, and runs back to the city to tell the others. It isn't long before a massive crowd of soldiers, officials and onlookers has gathered around the Rift like there hasn't been in centuries- even amidst all their natural fear and suspicious, the mounting joy is more than could be described. It's back, it's back.
We're not alone, we're not alone, we're not trapped any more. The news is put through all the cities, by drakin and fast-footed messenger, all the way back to the King himself.
------~-( )-~------
But above all those poisonous Things, something else was reacting to the news. It did not hear it, did not see it, but knew it, as a divine knows. It had been so close. Five centuries of time as a mortal Thing renders it is not five centuries of time to the Abomination, but more and less. It worms through the place that it should have been free to fly- Eternity, where everything is always happening- but it is chained, by little green chains that flicker against the towers that Things shaped out of its bones.
It had been so close. So much planning, so much work. And then it feels the Wound tear itself back open, brighter than the torch chains the Things use, a sun in its belly. It screeches like a beast in agony. It is dragged down forever. It howls with yellow flicks of lightening arcing through it like nerves misfiring. Somewhere below, a little girl and an old man and a horse and a drakin who were travelling from one city to another drop dead. But they weren't its targets, they're collateral. Without eyes it spots its real quarry, the pin to it all. It will lash out blindly.
------~-( )-~------
"Stand firm!" calls the captain.
The men, captain included, stand strong in a fifteen-foot radius around a fragile leader. They walk in a slow circle, one left step at a time, rotating around the center. They are dressed light and leathery, better not to sink into the mud. In their left hands are thick, steel kite shields; a bright feytorch occupies their right.
"Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving..." narrates the captain. They felt the sense of impending doom, a dread like a stone dropping in your stomach, that always warns the Abomination is about to pull something. Nobody could guess what it will be. Hence the readied shields, the magic torches, the frantic eyes darting all around for an attack that they know is coming but they don't know the shape of. Will it be panic this time, or despair, monsters, earthquake, lighting? They have to be ready. "Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving..." The Captain narrates unnecessarily. These are the best of both the armies, they know what to do, but he's got his job too. They're all here to make sure that poor thing in between them doesn't die tonight. Or ever, if the Kirk's thaumaturges have their way. All their hopes rest on a sick man's immortality.
What a joke, the Royal Guard Captain thinks, bitterly and privately.
Behind him, in the the center of his protective circle, in a colorful tent all the colors of royalty (purple, scarlet, blue), with two advisors fretting over him, sits the man they protect. King Broccán: blind in one eye, half-blind in the other, unable to walk without help from two men, unable to fly despite the little butterfly wings that flit comically out of his back. "Why is the ground shaking?" the king of two kingdoms asks. It wasn't, until a second after he spoke.
Well, that is one gift he has.
"Shhh," calms his handler, a Royal Advisor thrice-blessed by the Kirk, whose name is Alasdair. "The soldiers are here to protect you."
"Mudquake manuevers!" they hear the Captain call outside. The soldiers throw their heavy shields to the ground and- they must look a little ridiculous now- hop from one foot to the other to stop from sinking. They keep the torches firmly grasped: the one thing that's important in this world. Inside the kingly tent, both the advisors breathe a sigh of relief.
"It could have been much worse," says Alasdair.
"Don't dare declare it!" answers the other attendant, a fairy named Tule who handles humans better than most of his kind. "It could always be worse here! The air will hear you and whisper it back up to the Murderer."
Alasdair rolls his eyes, then smiles triumphantly.
"Oh, I don't care what it hears me say," he says. "I'll be home in Gaia soon, and the Abomination can stay here and have its ugly mud and its darkness. When we're gone? It can
wallow in it."
"Because the door is opened does not mean we're prepared to enter into it," says the fae.
"So you have heard the news?"
"How else would I know of it?"
Alasdair scratches his graying beard. Outside, the soldiers are still hopping around the shifting ground. "Do you think we're going home soon, then? Back to the motherland?"
"A house that others hold is not ours."
"...meaning?"
"Meaning, a house that others hold is not ours." The fae looks, sees the human's uncomprehending expression, and sighs with a kind of sigh that sounds like centuries. "Put plainly: other Planes perhaps have opened. Nations not native to the Hallow, not knowing our suffering, not needing our help, get there first. We are trapped in this nightmare if we don't rush to the quick. I say, with all the most foolish of men and the desperate of fae: send an army."
"An army," repeats Alasdair slowly.
The fairy nods. "I live in a madhouse."
"We can't. Be serious. You have to know that. If there are other refugees still alive, if anyone else survived the Cataclysm and their Planes have reopened too- do we really want to start a war with them? No, five or six scouts, maybe, then they come back and tell us what they find."
"A finger in the door, bruised when it gets slammed shut."
"Stop speaking in riddles, for five seconds, please."
"Do my ears hear a Deal?"
"Alright, alright," says Alasdair. "Sure, deal."
Tule counted aloud for five seconds, smiles benignly, and says: "Now, what will you give me in return? I like your name. And your eyes."
Alasdair's thick eyebrows are suddenly furious. "
Give you? I'll not give you a fucking-"
"-Here it comes!" the king cries out, interrupting, bolting up in his soft silken bed like he's about to make a run for it.
Ha, as if he could do that, the human Advisor thinks, getting up to guide him back down into his sheet with the firm hand of authority. "But it's coming, it's coming, he- it's coming!" Little King Broccán yelps in protest, even without fighting him.
And come it does. A surge of lighting brighter than the lost sun of Gaia pours down on them from above, cackling first in the far-off sulfurous clouds over their heads, shooting like tree-branches from one dark cloud to another, gathering power, convalescing in the center and- it seems to hang there for a second- shooting down in a direct line for the tent.
"Raise!" Another unneeded order from the Captain. All the Royal Guard have already lifted their feytorches, angled them slightly inwards towards the middle of the circle, so that when the lightning touches against the light-
It all happens in less than a second. The lightning is redirected from the tent and the men, curving in an sweeping motion away from the green fires and into the ground around them. Arcs of electricity frame their little bubble of light. For a moment, they are trapped in a perfect yellow birdcage.
A gilded cage- a poet might appreciate the irony, but these firm men of steel do not. They hold their torches high until the storm passes. Still circling. The King of Daithe and the Torlands gets to keep breathing, clutching Alasdair's hand, in small frightened sobs into his pillow.
The discussion about the Rift will have to wait until later.
------~-( )-~------
Later happens, eventually. And then later than that happens, and now Aaron stands in front of a glistening Rift. It's massive, green in hue like the feytorches, but so much stronger- you can feel the power coming off of it. A gaping tear in reality. Large enough to march an army through.
He was told to check for that feature specifically.
He makes a mental note: if it came to it, war could be conducted from here. Assuming the soldiers would survive the transportation. That, he supposes, is his job to discover. They picked him for this job based entirely on his connections: a High Clansmen and distant relative of the King, important enough for diplomatic matters but not important enough to be missed if the Rift shreds him to pieces. Who knows how stable it is? Him and the other four scouts coming with- all riding drakin, prepared for flight or walking- are about to find out. With a shaking of his steed's reins, he drives it forward, despite its natural hesitation to walk into the portal, despite his hesitation, forward and forward into the unnatural light...
For a second, he thinks he's floating.
It is difficult to describe what he experiences. When a person makes contact with the Rift, there is a flashing of images and sensations, like little snippets of each place the Rift could lead them to. And with it, there is a feeling of choice, that one can will himself to be in any of these Planes, like magic. It must be magic, of course, but Aaron has never done any before. And yet, he just knows. As soon as he makes contact, the Rift itself empowers him to use it.
He tries to concentrate on what he's seeing. A world of massive flowers and grass the size of castle towers, and then a different world of floating islands, and then grim-faced imperial soldiers and then serpents and then- are those bird people?- and then a clay head sits under a waterfall- he's shocked to see that sight- and then the Abomination is again waiting for him but then there's a dragon's maw and it's roaring and, no, he doesn't know what he's seeing anymore, he feels like he's losing concentration, he doesn't know which world is supposed to be Gaia and in panic he picks at random and-
His drakin's claws break into soft earth. Behind him, the others emerge the same, walking slowly out of the Rift. Their dragon-like steeds sniff the air curiously. (Later, he will talk with the others and discover that they never had the same experience he did; the Rift seems to offer the choice to the first person in a group.) They have all arrived... somewhere. He lifts his head to see a bright light he doesn't recognize. He has to shield his eyes from it, it hurts so bad to look at. It illuminates everything: the green grass, the trees in the distance, the occasional rock. It would be unremarkable to someone from somewhere other than the Hallow- but to Aaron and his companions, it is bizarre, too bright. They don't know yet that the light overhead is the lost sun of Gaia, and that they have found home.
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