The Kiira Pendant

Library of Ivory Entry
There are many Kiira; I've been led to believe that before the Realms was what we knew it as today (or even a couple hundred years ago), elves and druids (and other powerful beings with a penchant for oral tradition) would give of their life and their souls to create a crystal. Within this crystal, when correctly accessed, was much information as the beings would put into it before their last breath. Some beings would even participate in rituals before their last days, or enter pacts, so when their lives were ended (either naturally or violently), their soul would actually become a part of the Kiira. In this way, a Kiira could also be considered to its carrier an intelligent/sentient object, but not like Ophelia (who has titles and is a weapon). The Kiira is also very fragile.

Kiira can come in a variety of colors, but the only ones I have seen myself are bright green and a blue hue. They can be different sizes, like a pendant for one's neck (so about the size of a rowen or bigger), or even slightly smaller than a human head (such a Kiira is filled, indeed!).

The plural of Kiira is Kiira, like sheep and sheep or deer and deer.

This particular Kiira that I am working with (and thus will be making postings to the Ivory Library on) seems to be tied somehow to Blackwood. You can continue reading to follow me on the journey as it happens, for this particular Kiira enjoys journal entries, as it were.

How Iawen Came Across a Kiira
Iawen dusted the light flakes from her hair as she ventured into the one-room house. The loud noises of cutting, hammering, and putting together log-type cabins was so far working to drown out Iawen's thoughts of recent. Also, the near-by druids understood Wendmor's plight and pointed out the fallen trees to take, so that the new colony didn't hurt Mother Gaia.

Of course, Iawen could give two flips about Gaia. All she knew about it was currently based off of the crazy cultists, the trouble-maker Twenaria, and the tree elf Liselle.

Shaking her head in disgust, she shuttered both of the windows, and brushed the bit of snow that blew in off the stone frame work. The fire had been going all day in the hearth. Iawen stoked it with an iron poker, and then sat on her cot, removing her wet boots and putting on her sandals. She then hung both boots and her black jacket by the hearth, watching them steam quietly. At her small table which only had one chair, there was paperwork spread out, barely legible and yet it seemed to be an original by its copy: the work transcribing into a book.

Iawen pursed her lips with a thought as she went through the ritual of lighting up a smoke, leaning her head against the wooden wall as she returned to her cot. There was a long, drawn-in breath from the knight as she enjoyed the smells that filled her nose: sandalwood and cedar and the general scent of burning wood. Within her exhalation, Iawen whispered into the quietness of her house. "Xaos, goddess of secrets, goddess of silence, goddess of the void... did that fellow who was transformed into a rodent against his will make it out of the caves alright?"

She stared into nothing, really, as the familiar 'feeling' of magic drifted easily into her, like the scents from her smoke. The caves she referred to were under Rhiassa, but she felt no need to add more words to her spell. "Either the gods know what you're talking about and will answer, or they know and don't care," Iawen once told a would-be Seer who sought her out to learn Fortune Tell. "You can't force a straight answer, so the best you can do is to ask as straight a question as you can."

The would-be Seer broke his restriction the next day. So much for the lesson.

Puffing away, Iawen mused on whether or not spells such as fortune tell were overrated. So much ritual, so many words to 'get around' the taboos that existed within the spell's creation. Never did make sense to her personally, not when the gods could answer in such vague ways to begin with. Her train of thought was broken, however, as a piece of paper on the table shimmered. Her eyes slid over to engage the table fully, as a hastily scrawled image of her house became apparent.

Intrigued (and with a whispered 'thank you' to the air), Iawen leaned forward and swung her feet around, as a line which looked almost like boot prints traced back from the house to a large black splotch of ink. Then there was another line, much smaller leading from the black to the top of the paper, where a large green splotch appeared.

Iawen had reached the table's edge by now and was peering intently as a straight tower was quickly sketched in the middle of the paper itself; the smaller line ending at the tower. She arched an eyebrow. She didn't own a green anything, let alone ink. A quicker skim of the paper also revealed that it was directly on the back of the Advocate letter she had been copying, and her brow furrowed with annoyance. She'd have to clean that up before sending it to the library in Ivory.

Her smoker's reed in clenched teeth, Iawen stretched in the privacy of her house, meandered around the table, and sat. "Is said fellow safe now?" was the next question to the open air.

The response was less than stellar as the page shimmered and burst into flames. Iawen flinched and quickly cleared some other paperwork away, then paused. The flames didn't seem to be burn anything except where the answer had been 'drawn'. Soon, it left no trace that there was a paper in the first place. 'Crap', thought Iawen with a scowl. At least she had another full copy of the Advocate letter ready to be sent to Folkestone, but seemed she would need that now to fill its place.

A new, blank piece of paper shimmered, directing Iawen's thoughts and gaze toward it. Another image came into being, drawn by unseen hands upon the parchment. It appear to be that of a house, with a small figure in blue and yellow smoking.

'Uh-oh.'

A second picture of a rat in a tower was followed by a third: a baby in a crib. A fourth was tacked on: a soldier fighting an orc. Iawen didn't bat an eye as a large gray question mark appeared on the page.

"You've got me," Iawen replied sarcastically to no one.

Slowly, the whole page began to fill with darkness from the edges inward, and then small flames followed suit until the whole piece of paper was covered in blackened fire. Iawen's lips curled into a grimace around her reed as she took her left arm and swept off the remaining paperwork, hoping that it wouldn't catch. "Friggin' Skew Divination!" Iawen grumbled. "I just wanted to know if he was safe," she complained to the air as she snatched the paper up, hurling it deftly into the fire. Her eyes however saw the black twirl and curl as it landed in the hearth, and the flames twisted into words: "What is safe?" before settling down to a more manageable size.

Grumpy, Iawen got up from her chair and got down on her knees. She liked things tidy, regardless of which god or force answered her spells. A moment later and Iawen's mood went from grumpy to annoyed: everything had returned to the table, rearranged as if nothing happened. She scowled as another image on a blank piece of paper appeared, this time with a small, elven message (along with the image of the tower). The tower doesn't always like prying people, sorry.

A small paw print was next to it.

"Guess he won't be dropping in for tea, after all," Iawen harrumphed, crumpling it up and tossing it into the fire. "See, this is why I'm not a mage," she spoke out loud, seemingly to no one as she approached the mantle and ran her fingers over the bars of a small cage. A serpentine head poked up from its coils in response, flickering its tongue. Iawen clicked twice at it, a trick she picked up from Sir Adara, to get it moving. Of course, that usually worked on horses, not snakes. The animal rested its head on its coils. With a sigh, Iawen started putting her paperwork inside a beat-up book.

"I don't have the thought process of my father, so I don't get puzzles and riddles and imagery," she continued, shoving the folded pile into the adventuring bag she used. Iawen then walked over to the mantle and opened the cage, offering her hand into it. Soon, she was pacing once more, around the table in a clock-wise circle, lightly petting the small serpent.

"I'm not a wizard, and you're not my intelligent familiar. You're the only thing I know that doesn't talk back to me. I don't know the magic ins and out of this land, but I attempt... I try." She held the snake up to her face, its dull colors gleaming from the firelight. "I don't know, Feets... The main reason I bought you is so I won't feel so insane talking to myself."

The snake blinked back at Iawen, clearly having no idea what she was saying.

She lowered the snake down and pet it slowly as it coiled around her left arm, tongue flicking. "I should get a friend..." she said quietly to the serpent, "but there's too much work undone. Besides, if the Realms has taught me anything, is that friendship is fleeting, and loyalty a fickle commodity. The good ones end up dead and the not-so-good crowd the way to the many levels of Hell." Iawen held up her snake once more in front of her. "You would think I'm joking, but it's ridiculous the amount of devils and demons that have been popping up in the north-east and the southern kingdoms. I practically prefer the undead. Sure, they were relentless, but you knew what you were getting into with a slow, stupid zombie. Slowness, and stupidity." Iawen lowered her arm and exhaled again. Her smoke was slowly dying, but she didn't feel like lighting a new one.

Her empty table shimmered for a few seconds and then the glow was gone. Where there was nothing, now there were three items on it. Iawen drew her snake close to her chest and shoulder; the animal slithered up around her neck as she warily eyed the newest change upon her table-top. 'Maybe I should learn from somebody how to ward my home from random objects', she thought as her mind identified each token: A small blue crystal, a half-burnt ticket and a folded piece of paper.

Arching an eyebrow, Iawen carefully returned her snake to its cage before engaging in any magic. Pushing the glasses up the bridge of her nose, she dragged the chair over to better face the items, and flexed her fingers. The subtle use of magic, in her opinion, was much easier than performance-based. As a former Channeler for a pantheon called The Five Ladies, Iawen had grown increasingly frustrated that when she would perform the ritual of Intervention to drag adventurers out of one jam or another, it tended to be ignored due to her quiet gestures and patience. Moreover, fellow Channelers who screamed, blew themselves up, lit things on fire, or sacked the nearest souls would get results. Messy, barbaric, and uncultured, and yet one couldn't deny that their gods answered, and how: dark transformations, unbreakable weapons, fireballs from their hands, sending healing waves after healing waves upon the dead in return for bits of their soul. Or maybe it was just that The Five Ladies weren't as powerful as Iawen thought them to be. Then again, that was a different time, and she very happily shed the path of a Channeler as soon as she could.

Mindful of the danger from just touching things to bare flesh, Iawen wrapped a couple of strips of dark blue cloth around her hands. She grasped the half-burnt ticket firmly. She whispered, "Xaos, Goddess of Secrets, Goddess of Silence, Goddess of the Void, I need to know if this item I touch has any shred of mana within or without its shape."

Was it a trick of the light that made this ticket shake in her hand, or was her hand shaking already? Iawen made a quick mental note to eat soon when the ticket gave a tug under the tight grip of her fingers. "Where do you think you're going?" Iawen asked it, a smirk playing across her face.

The smirk changed to a grimace when Iawen realized she wasn't holding onto it. The ticket had her hand, stuck right in the air, elbow resting on the table. "Crap!" Iawen growled as she began to wrestle with her arm. "Sonuva--what next?!" she cried out as the blue crystal began to glow intensely bright, causing Iawen to cringe. A green sheen covered the ticket, her hand, and moved on to the rest of her. A random thought shot through Iawen's mind to shout for help, but was just as quickly silenced: who would she shout to?

The ticket's own sheen began to intensify and changed to blue to match the crystal; the desk soon was marked as well. Iawen tried to jump to her feet and straighten up, and slammed back into the table, an unseen force holding her in place. A groan escaped her throat as her reed was jostled out, the smoke stick falling unharmed to the floor. Pain apparent through her face, Iawen attempted to pace her breathing as a small wisp of blue ('magic? actual wind? what the hell is that?!') came through the walls. Iawen wanted to yell, to kick, to fight back, but she found she couldn't even muster a snarl; her muscles refused to obey. As the blue melted into the green before Iawen's eyes, the environmental reality around her shifted. Iawen's last thoughts were altogether mocking: rookie mistake. All that she knew about the Realms, and she still touched an unidentified object before securing any real protection for herself. Hopefully, her young (and impressionable) squire wouldn't find out. Crap, who would tell Indana?!

In Which One Was Teleported
The freedom of movement was the first thing to register with Iawen's mind. The knight had to catch herself from flailing down to the stones on the floor. The second thing was having found her voice once more as she audibly gasped. Twisting around this way and that to get a full view, Iawen found herself standing in an ante chamber: round and carved from stone. The green began to dissipate from her vision, giving way to a room with light shining down from an unknown source. Iawen dropped her view down, discovering a bright cobalt blue sigil glowing under her feet, larger than her head. The ticket in her hand had the matched blue but faded fast, as the tinged force that had held her in place moments before now seemed to be soaked up by the floor, rolling off her fabric and skin like water droplets.

Iawen took a moment to mentally calm down, attempting to apply the zen that the late Kellerburan had taught her. Also, green tended to equal goblins in her mind, or trolls, Chimeron; all things that usually weren't fond of her. To add more confusion to the situation, the sigil's light died down, sopping up the last of the green as the ticket stopped glowing.

'I'm screwed now,' thought Iawen, squatting down where she stood, grasping the ticket strongly and closing her eyes. Her mind and magic sought out the regionals of this place, and any regionalist worth his salt could usually tell within a few moments (in any given environment) what kind of power he would be wielding that day. Words came and went, heard through her good ear; textures were felt and scents were made known. The tingling taste of mana (a monster in Coventry claimed it tasted like mushrooms) skittered across her taste buds, and Iawen opened her eyes. The regionals were affirmed... and a little mundane. Iawen didn't hide her disappointment as she began to cast Repair Item upon the ticket via her fourth circle regional. "What does the Lady Tarnisha say?" she quipped to herself. "...ah yes. I think it's 'I bend thee, I break thee, I mend thee, I fix thee, I tear thee, I rend thee, I fix thee, I make thee'... or something like that."

The walls of the round room flickered with rainbow colors, rippling throughout through the walls as the ticket completed itself in Iawen's hands. The ticket was scrawled in elvish, but thanks to Sir Shean O'Quinnlin of Creathorne, she could read a couple of differing rune sets. The words read '''CAUTION: May cause disorientation. Extra-planar travel not recommended for mortals or those of lesser powers. Magic Users only recommended!'''

"I *hate* teleportation..." Iawen grumbled to herself as she stood up, glancing upwards towards the ceiling. 'Friggin' wizards. What did you get yourself into now--?' she thought as her eyes eventually landed back on the sigil, this time stepping off to get a better view.

The sigil wasn't one that she recognized from any library: from the bright halls of the City of Ivory, from the marbled columns within Chimeron, to the hidden tomes within the former Borderlands' Black Library. Casting her mind further back, she could find no records within the memories of her father nor her mother, and that puzzled Iawen. Both of her late parents had engaged in quite the array of adventures, but neither had come across anything like this. Iawen quietly rejoiced about finding something new, but rapidly focused on the task at hand: figuring out what happened so she could reverse it. In this case, it seemed like magical teleportation, and thus Iawen was at a 'Point B'. She needed to return to 'Point A', her house.

Iawen crouched down again to see if the stone upon which the sigil was engraved could be removed. It could not. Glancing about the room once more revealed no doors, but furniture: a book case, a desk with a wing-backed chair, and a window. Iawen blinked a few times, for there was no 'view' other than the stone behind it. Nothing in this place suggested a natural light fixture of any sort: torch, candles, sunlight, crystals, nothing.

The knight tentatively began walking to the desk, now quiet in voice but a dozen thoughts clamoring to be sorted within her mind. 'Alright, think...What was the last thing you ate before succumbing to the weirdness of Life?... The roast beef and horse-radish rolls from Chimeron. And then did I eat after that? ...not really. I rode straight to Wendmor and returned the mount, paying out some coin as a thank-you. This is clearly something to do with what I've been asking about... but it could just be Disk-gah!'

Iawen was startled out of her reverie as a plate laden with rolls appeared on the desk. They were sliced neatly in half, revealing meat, and the pungent smell of horseradish tickled Iawen's nostrils. 'Crap... they always say don't eat the food in Faerie, but never once is there a don't eat the food anywhere else... Well, I haven't eaten yet... and if I just pick it up and eat it, whoever or whatever might think me rude... or worse, they *want* me to eat it so I become sick. I wonder if--' Iawen's stomach growled loudly at that point, and the knight shook her head, pursing her lips together in finality. 'I think too much.'

"Le hannon," Iawen called out quietly to the room. The walls glimmered a split second in the same rainbow of colors. 'Like it heard me', thought Iawen. '  'Don't let them know you're afraid' is the only thing Vawn ever taught me...' Iawen continued on in a lighter tone, struggling a bit with the elvish... "Iston aníral maded, ae anírach..." and waited to see if the room would stop her from devouring the rolls. After a minute or two with no response in any form, Iawen descended upon the food, hungrier than she previously thought. And it was exactly the same food: stuffed with meaty goodness and fresh ingredients, everyone who ate them at the Black & White praised the Lady Lindsay of Pax Tharkus that evening. Iawen was sure it could reduce her uncle Cain, lord of Ivory, to tears at the simplicity of size and the powerful, rich taste that came with it. As she finished off the last roll, her eyes shifted back and forth beneath the glass spectacles. Some adventurers treat objects as though they were intelligent, but a room is actually not an object. In fact, her late father Nero used to have a sentient place like this in the Neo-Hellenic Isles...Iawen briefly indulged in the memory before addressing the room again. "Man eneth lín? Room?" asks Iawen in halting elvish, and scowls. 'The phrasing is a bit off. Don't annoy the Room, for it is bigger than you think and more magical then you can comprehend at the moment...' Her senses gave Iawen pause as the room's presence loomed ever larger: the desk farther away from her standing point as was the chair.

She arched an eyebrow, focusing slightly upward as to impart politeness to the grand place. 'Is this Nero's brownie magic that he spoke of? Was that in the food? Crap, I don't have a cantrip to spare on an immunity to poisons of that type!' A couple of disjointed thoughts went through Iawen's mind as she turned her back on the furniture. 'No, be sensible --. Experimentation is needed if you are to understand this. Some things that you have thought about have literally come about. The room seems to be reading thoughts, and thus can bend the reality here to its will... only testing will tell.'

Looking around the room once more, Iawen sent out a clear thought: 'I'm practically the size of a child's doll in this room.'

When nothing happened, Iawen allowed herself a relieved smile. 'Excellent. Now that I've got a feeling that I won't screw up something heinous...' "Room, I'd like to sit and think a while, if that is alright. Heniach nin?" Perhaps it dealt better in Common than Elvish, but Iawen was getting to the point where she knew she was much better at reading than speaking the dialects.

A second chair appeared slightly behind the knight, over-sized with much stuffing. Iawen turned her head slightly, a bit wary but also pleased. A room that responded to thoughts? Or worded requests? Uncanny. And amazing! "Le hannon," Iawen responded, perching her back side on the edge, leaning her elbows on her legs as she leaned forward. 'What is that rune for? I dare not disenchant it. Not that I really could, anyway. I don't have the spell in my repertoire, nor do I have a weapon that could do so. Also, I do not want to break the hospitality shown to me... Wait.' Iawen straightened up. 'That's an avenue I haven't explored yet.' "Room, man anírach cerin an le?"

In response to Iawen's request to help it out, an archway opened. Iawen saw a set of stairs leading upwards. 'Not surprising.' thought Iawen. 'This must be the tower depicted in all that imagery... but *where* in the tower? And where *is* the tower?'

Iawen didn't get a chance to ask the room through thought or vocalization, as a grayish elf hurriedly walked down the stairs and through the archway. As soon as he stepped on the room's floor, the archway disappeared, leaving but a solid wall once more. The elf took no notice of Iawen, rapidly speaking in Elvish. It took a second to catch up in the translation: "What do you mean something magic tried to get in here? What have you been up to NOW?!"

Iawen skimmed the floor once more, maybe tapping the sigil could get her out. But it was neither under chair nor desk from what she could see: the sigil was gone.

'Oh, bollocks!' thought Iawen in a panic.

In Which the Rat is Revealed
Iawen wished she really was the size of a small doll, if not to be detected by the elf! Instead, she placed her arms inside her sleeves, folding them across her chest (Teng Huanese-dress style), and simply waited to see what sort of response the elf is going to have with her presence. Nervously she drummed her fingers on her arm, making a note on whether or not she had a weapon available (none other than fists). 'If only I could hide behind something without drawing notice in the first place.'

A small glimmer caught Iawen off-guard, positioned directly in front of her face. A quick, translucent wall coalesced from the air, and then disappeared. Iawen's mouth hung open a tiny bit as she expressed a silent 'thank you'. The elf, however, pulled a book out from within the folds of his robe, and continued to a hole in the floor ('Was it there before?') and down another set of stairs. His speech was going too fast for Iawen to translate, and the opening swallowed the elf up once his head lowered out of sight. The room resumed its silent nature, with the second chair now missing.

Iawen narrowed her eyes at the floor, turning her head slightly toward where the elf had been. "Gray robes... mark of mage... maybe he was the ArchMage, which means *he* would be the rat from below Rhiassa! Sarlys *is* alive!" 'Well, that's a friggin' over-the-top performance answer, just to find out if some elf is alright. Thanks a billion, Eris... or Diskordia, whoever likes screwing with me today. Usually Diskordia.'

Just then, the tower rumbled as if a giant had leaned against the walls. Iawen reflectively ducked as a booming voice reached her good ear. "WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU SENT SOMETHING THERE?! WHERE DID YOU PUT THAT CRYSTAL?!"

It was the rat turned elf. Sarlys the ArchMage. And he sounded pretty pissed.

Iawen cursed out loud as she now frantically began searching for a way out, running towards the walls to perhaps find a frame or a crack to indicate a door. 'ABORT ABORT ABORT Go back home, get the crystal, make it into a necklace, find the letter ABORT ABORT ABORT' With no luck, Iawen dashed back to the area where the sigil was. 'Come on, come on, which rock was it?!' The familiar glimmering of magic used was noticed out of the corner of her eye, and Iawen faced it to see another archway appear in the wall.

Sarlys' voice echoed throughout the room, causing Iawen to dart her head this way and that. "What do you mean she is still here? Look, you, I'm going to straighten this all out anyway... Take me to the top of the tower this instant or I swear, I'll turn your stones to Jelly Beans!"

'How rude.' was Iawen's first thought, followed by 'What the hell is a Jelly Bean?' She turns her eyes skyward and address her silent host. "Le hannon, Room, but I must away for now. Drego!"

'Wendmor. Home. What is home? Is that home? Well, it's got my house in it. A house I had to pay for. I'm all out of money. Figures Chimeron starts actually paying people after I leave the kingdom. Some days, it doesn't pay to be me. But who else would I be? Well, if I could have just been a good omega then I could have been in the militia. Ugh...' Iawen peers down the archway, seeing nothing there, and looks behind her one last time into the room. 'So where is home? Home is where the heart is? My heart has been spurned a lucky three times now. So where do I keep my heart? In my chest. Is home in my chest? Does that make me a contortionist? Dammit, faerie curse! Could you focus for one friggin' second--!'

Lost in her thoughts, Iawen steps forward only to slam into the elf she had been avoiding. Sarlys was a frail mage and fell back onto his rump. He cringed from the impact. "OH..."

Instinctively, Iawen offered a hand to help the elf up, and then stepped past him to figure where a hallway might be. Instead, it was as if she had walked from one room to another adjoining, and where the other was rather sparse this room was smaller and yet practically filled to the brim with books, crystals, vials, bubbling beakers, and scrolls. Pendants hung from hooks, a couple of pendulums sat un-used in a small, sand-filled tray. Green glass bottles sat in a line with different colors of beads on each other, a metal disc sealed in with a symbol on each. A quick skim brought air, fire, earth, water, and aether to mind, but Iawen could not identify the rest. Papers written in elvish script were strewn everywhere, as if someone was researching a spell. Two head-sized orbs sat in one corner and a crystal ball in another, polished perfectly.

The elf finished dusting himself off and gave a polite thanks to Iawen. Then he paused. "Wait. Aren't you... don't I know you?"

'REALLY bollocks!' thought Iawen as she tucked the ticket away into her shelving unit, keeping her hands free from the sleeves. 'Act natural...if that's possible,' she mentally warned herself, and so she began to skim book titles and visually picking things up as best she could. 'Trapped now, might as well make the best of it.'

"Where do you think you are...?" the elf asked, after getting no response to his first question. The knight lightly placed a hand on top of a book so she could lean non-chalantly, but it went right through: the book was an illusion.

He smirked. "Umm, excuse me, miss... but what are you doing?" The elf walked further into the room to join her, and squarely looked into her face. "...Iawen, isn't it?"

The female frowned, backing up a step. Not only did he not respect personal space, but the elf's smirk reminded her of Gryf, Chimeron's Champion, and one of the romantic battles she had lost to him. Fine. If the elf was going to start off being a prat, Iawen could certainly play along. "Tancave," she replied evenly in Middle-Earth elvish, to see if he knew it. She only knew a couple of words from there: "Yes", "no", and "I'm wounded". Turns out the last one was particularly helpful, but she never experienced that war: only her mother did, and it was only the last three battles.

The elf snorted with Iawen's response. "Oh, please!" he exclaimed, rolling his eyes. "Granted, languages are complex things outside the tower, but everything in here translates to the native speaker's tongue! Well, once I think about it, it does." He shook his head, turning away and shuffling some papers together, placing them on a shelf. "I'm sorry for your 'kidnapping'; the tower apparently decided you were interesting enough to bring here." He faced Iawen again, hands folded behind his back. "The tower has been alone for some time and developed some very rude habits..." his eyes look all about the room as if appraising it briefly. "I will need to correct that."

Iawen's frown deepened. "If the Tower wishes to have guests, is that not a small whim that should be respected?" '...you pompous asshole? After all that happened under Rhiassa, all that we did to get you fixed or un-cursed? I thought we could be friends but sod it.' Iawen breezed past him in a dismissive step, heading out the way she came in. 'Tower. Exit.'

No entry came forth from the floor, the walls, nor even the ceiling. Iawen halted before a bookcase, stifling the new feeling of fear and stoking the annoyance factor as the elf casually responded, "Yes, it is okay for the tower to have guests, but not without first warning a person properly. I mean, snatching people from their homes in trickery isn't very pleasant."

'Arch.' Nothing. 'To the parlor room...?' Still nothing. Iawen cursed in her mind as she snapped, "Why should it warn thee? It's not like the Tower doesn't like you, correct?" 'Please, let me out, Tower.'

He laughed. "No, no, no, not me! Well, warning *me* would be nice. There are dangerous things in this tower that people should not have. However, warning the person who is being snatched..." he paused and tilted his head back, as if listening. "From what she tells me; she didn't exactly tell you she was taking you. "Oh, by all means," he added, "please sit if you wish." He lowered his head and snapped his fingers. Iawen whirled about and stumbled forward a couple of steps as a chair appeared behind her.

"I'd rather not sit, and I'll tell you why," Iawen's annoyance turning to anger. "Because I thought you were dead. You ARE Sarlys. I worried about your safety! Instead, I get an arrogant bastard filled with powers that I cannot hope to comprehend. You remind me of someone who loathes me, who hurts me, who makes me feel this big," Iawen gestures with her hand, "and had a hand in me having to leave a kingdom. I invited you to safety and tea because I thought there might be a kinship. Clearly, I thought wrong, for what could a powerful being such as yourself want for a dour friendship with a mortal?"

Inside, Iawen's heart felt emotionally drained. Too many times in this situation was she reminded of the South. She wanted to remember the good things: like Sir Cecil (just became Knight Commander of the Knights of the Realms) or all the bar(n)s in Qua Terreth Nuuna, or the smiles of Azure Guard when she had worked with them once. Instead, all she got was Nero's memories, Bouquet's memories, and the negative ones of her own.

'Trapped again.' thought Iawen, balling up here fists to fight. 'Held to somebody else's whim until they tire of me. It's the Dark Carnival all over again. Well, I won't be a bloody ring again, I won't! It's Nero and Faerie and Chimeron and Aurora and Xaos. Fuck this!'

The elf seemed surprised by Iawen's reaction, then gave a look of hurt. "I'm sorry... I didn't know you were waiting for me for tea. I'm not sure what you have been through..." he avoided her steel gaze, "or what you are thinking of me now. I guess that doesn't mean much."

The silence was overwhelming, and the elf gave a dejected sigh. "You have to say 'Balor Anon' to get a door way out of the tower," he spoke quietly, "or I could send you back if you have the token the Tower brought you here with." He turns away, and Iawen felt a twinge of guilt for being riled up.

But twinges can be easily worked out.

"No, thank you!" she snapped, refusing his offer as she rummaged through her garb. "Tea. Tomorrow afternoon, second bell. And Sarlys? Try to act like a wise elf instead of a wise ass." She tossed him a tin full of her smokes, and he caught them with a perplexed look. "So you can track me more easily; you seemed to be bad at that under Rhiassa. Balor Anon!" Iawen stated the last two words tersely, folding her hands over her chest and glaring as she faded from view.

At the base of a tower, Iawen looked all around her to see forest. The air and the trees felt... off to Iawen, but she chalked it up to enjoying the Nothing more than Gaia's groves at work. She turned to the tower, craning her neck to see how far into the sky it reached, and then sighed. Still angered, Iawen placed a hand on the Tower's outside wall and spoke to it quietly. "I'm sorry... I was not the most useful nor entertaining guest. I am honored that I got to visit you, however. Maybe next time, I'll understand a bit more, and we might... interact for a longer period of time?"

The stone warmed a bit under her touch, then faded. 'Well, at least the Tower isn't an ass,' Iawen thought as she picked a direction and began to walk. 'If there is a next time...at the very least, I can't be too lost.' Iawen halted at the forest's edge, and pulled the strip of cloth off her right hand, stretching it from end to end. "Find the Path to Wendmor," she spoke to the air quietly, a magical echo lying underneath each word. "Find the path to Wendmor, so I might walk it straight and true. Show me the way, using small lines of blue..."

In Iawen's eyes, small sparkles of magical energy swirled off the strip and onto the ground, showing a direction through her spectacles. She sighed and rummaged around for her smokes, then harrumphed. That's right, Iawen had tossed them to Sarlys. She strode into the tree line and followed the blue lines directly. After a few hours, Iawen made it into a large clearing, and couldn't help the audible "Whoa" that came forth as she tilted her head back.

A giant arch, bigger than any tower in Achoria, sat on a stone dais as wide as the feast hall in Chimeron. Iawen tentatively stepped onto it, running a hand against the rough stonework. All around the dais were broken ruins; whether statues or tablets or columns, Iawen couldn't tell. While there wasn't any dust or signs of natural age (moss or lichen upon stone, the rocks sinking into the earth), Iawen looked once more into the sky and came to the conclusion that she wasn't anywhere close to the Realms she knew. Specifically peering within her spectacles once again, the blue lines stopped at a pedestal not far from the dais. She dropped her hand to her side as she looked over the flat top. There was a perfectly round recess into the pedestal. Perhaps one of those orbs from Sarlys might have done the trick.

Iawen stood at the pedestal silently, her thoughts her own. Not a creature stirred around here, no singing birds, no predators or prey, nothing. Iawen let down her guard a bit, slumping over the top portion of the pedestal. She understood the Nothing, the Void... but for her, it was worse to be surrounded by THINGS and no heart-beat other than her own. Being alone was truly awful to Iawen. She'd much rather feel Nothing, know Nothing, then be alone, be abandoned or left behind. That's usually why she didn't leave Quazar behind if she could help it. She never wanted Quazar to feel like Iawen did as a ring, or as a construct. To Iawen, being left behind seemed unbearable.

Interrupting her thoughts, the hair on the back of Iawen's neck rose slightly. She raised her eyes above the pedestal's edge, scanning the tree line. She was certain she wasn't alone any longer. Someone or something from the shadows was watching her, paying attention. Iawen began to straighten up slowly.

Suddenly, there was a loud burst of noise next to Iawen, and she threw herself down to the ground, covering her head defensively. A familiar voice sounded over her thudding heart-beat: "Sorry, but if you want tea tomorrow; you'll forgive me for not waiting until later."

'Sarlys!'

A shadow moved from behind a tree and and the elf pointed at it, releasing a large fire ball from one of his rings. In a whoosh of flame, the tree was incinerated. Iawen laid there, shocked as a blackened branch fell to the forest floor. Such power, indeed.

"Forgot about those," Sarlys casually remarked as he swirled his right hand in a circle. One of the orbs from his room came into being, and he offered his other hand to Iawen to help her up. "Take this," he said, "and place it in the recess here. You can then walk through the gate. It will put you as close as it can to where you want to go."

Iawen rolled over to face Sarlys, completely and utterly at a lost.

"Hurry, there are more than just one of those things around! Talk about it over tea, yes?" Sarlys dragged her to her feet and placed the orb in her hands. Iawen reflectively did as told, and the orb glowed. Iawen's eyes glazed over as she stared into the orb, and her hands seemed to work on their own, spinning the orb this way and that. Sarlys smiled but Iawen couldn't question him, couldn't ask a thing. The orb's color changed to scarlet as Iawen worked faster, and finally was able to think 'it's a key'.

Sarlys conjured his staff and spoke words unknown to Iawen. An arcane shield raised around him as the giant stone arch charged with a thunderous energy. "That's your way out! Take this!" The elf removed the orb and stuffed it into Iawen's hands. "*Go!*" He prodded her forward, breaking her out of her trance-like state. Iawen shook her head and saw that creatures cloaked in shadow were heading toward her and Sarlys. Sarlys, however, prodded her again and she dashed for the dais, hesitating at the stone arch. "What about you?! I won't leave you behind!" she shouted to him.

Sarlys planted his staff and a large blue orb enveloped his general area. The creatures of shadows crashed against it, pounding on the outside of the shield. All the while, Sarlys had on the same smirk. Iawen, completely bewildered, spent no more time on Sarlys, and jogged under the arch way.

"May I help you, miss...? My, you look a mess!"

"I just need to know where I am, not a quip on my current fashion state," came the flat reply.

The woman's face blushed almost as red as her tabbard. "You're on the northern border of Rhiassa... if you don't mind me asking miss, *where* did you come from?"

Iawen was leaning on a dilapidated pedestal, overgrown with briars and weeds. She looked over her shoulder, seeing nothing but a spotty tree line, and some fields beyond. There was no dais here, no arch. No tracks or prints or signs to show that Iawen had ever been there.

As she liked it.

Usually.

"Miss?" the woman's voice was full of concern. "You look rather unwell."

Iawen glared at her. "I'm fine." Her eyes scanned down by her feet, a dull-looking spheroid had gotten loose. She picked it up and stared at her reflection. Gray, much like the orb itself. Iawen frowned. "Are you militia, then?" she asked the woman, who snapped to attention.

"Yes, miss."

"Lead me to a safe road out of Rhiassa. I'm traveling north-west."

"As you wish..." the woman offered her shoulder, but Iawen refused.

As Iawen crested the last hill, she paused to catch her breath, gazing down into the small valley. For whatever reason, rain and snow didn't completely bury the ruined village from before, and with all the re-building weather in general wasn't a problem. Maybe Gaia wasn't a bad choice to thank after all for watching over Wendmor.

Iawen leaned on the a branch she had wrestled out of a tree; with no jacket and no winter gear she felt practically undead, or like one of the Rhymer's frozen constructs. She had stopped bitching to herself about the cold the second day out and kept plodding through. It was what she had to do during the day. Thankfully a white belt got her floor space at night: once at a farmstead, and once in a tavern. The tavern was the worst sleep, however, with common room revelry reaching a high peak. She smelled like soured beer from the wench who had accidentally dropped a tray on her. Iawen couldn't even muster up the energy to care at that point, for the next day; today, she was overlooking the place she wished to rebuild.

After all of that adventure, Iawen had a lot of time to think of different questions. Why would the tower wants guests? Why was it alone for so long? Where exactly was it? Another plane? On the prime material or mortal plane here, just far away? Was releasing Sarlys from his transmogrification curse a good idea? What the hell was that arch, and why was an abandoned pedestal at Rhiassa connected to it?

Iawen pulled out the orb again, and sneezed. She was already fending off a cold well enough before she decided to be 'adventurous'. Now it seemed that eve when she got home and would be warmed, she would be reaping the repercussions soon enough. It was in her nature to be adventurous on her lonesome, however. What else was she going to do, lead a village?

...

Iawen took a few steps under the pine trees, and rested her arm on the trunk. Placing her forehead atop, she allowed herself a good, emotional cry. Confusion, bewilderment, stress, and anger all seemed to drip down into the ground with her tears, until she was left with the calm that Kellerburan taught her about. That, and exhaustion. Wiping her face hastily, Iawen made the final trek down into Wendmor. A mid-wife scolded her for being out in the snow dressed like *that*, and the baker gave her a fresh loaf on the house seeing as she needed some food.

With a slam, Iawen pushed open her door with the butt end of her stick, then tossed the branch aside before entering the home. The fire had gone out completely. Feets was curled up in its cage, but raised its head at the noise. Iawen reached into her shelving unit to view the complete ticket as she placed the orb on the floor; it rolled into a corner. The blue crystal, bereft of light, was still sitting on the table. The folded piece of paper was replaced by the papers that had burned up, but they bore no evidence of fortune telling upon them.

The knight shut the door, stripped down and grabbed her one chemise. She then took her spectacles and placed them on the table as she passed by, walking to her cot. Rolling into it, she pulled the blanket she had up to her chin, and place one arm behind her head on the pillow.

Iawen promptly passed out.