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The Arboretum is ... a rather populous place tonight. The area around the tree has been situated with numerous cots for the astral travelers. The Sentinels are standing guard over the whole business, with Epiphanius, Balm, and Zadok all present in various advisory capacities. There's likely no place safer in the whole of the consilium than the Arboretum, and even so their dormant bodies will have the protection of the Sentinels and some of the Consilium's most elite practitioners.
As before, Kotahitanga is entrusted with the Astral Touchstone, and as before Balm gives the same cautionary advice, "Your goal is to reach the tree. Believe me when I tell you that I know how tempting it is to be led astray in the Anima Mundi. Do not give in to that temptation. Stay on your mission and reach the tree. If you become separated-- truly, hopelessly lost --follow your thread back to your body. Return to your own Oneiros and we'll wake you safely from here. I will be linking your minds with my own with telepathy so that I can monitor your progress and mental health. If anything happens here that you need to know about, I will alert you."
With that, Balm makes a little dismissive gesture with her hand, "Now. Lie down. Close your eyes. And if you have questions, make them quick. The clock is ticking."
Kotahitanga follows Balm's instructions silently, lying down on one of the cots, one hand curled around the touchstone.
Kay smiles at Balm and offer additional hugs before getting into bed. She's wearing something simple like jeans and a loose button-up, her gender indicating pin set to she today.
"Nothing on my end." Sirius replied, laying claim to one of the cots and getting comfortable.
"I think I am aware of what to keep in mind, thank you Elder." Alexis lays down, tucking her glasses away again.
seemed like she was already in mid trance and entering into astral space
Once everyone is relaxing on their cots, Balm enacts the telepathic link on the whole group. No one think anything embarrassing! Balm reaches out to brush each mind in the link with a comforting thought, as much to confirm the link is active as anything else. And once that is done, she uses a little dash of life magic to put the whole lot of you under. Sure, she could wait for you all to fall asleep on your own, but there's no way to guarantee everyone would arrive together in that case.
There's a brief period of insensate darkness between falling asleep in the fallen world and assuming consciousness in the Temenos. During which the artifact does whatever it is the artifact does. But it is... unpleasant, after a fashion. Rather like what most atheists imagine death to be like. Just nothing. Timeless nothing.
And then they are all standing around the Touchstone where it was set down in the Temenos.
There's a ... fairy? Resting in the air, her chubby cheek pillowed on the sleeve of her leather jacket. Her crimson mohawk is a little wilty from sleep, and her wings are all folded up, but she's otherwise none the worse for wear. She's snoring. It sounds like running a jingle bell over a cheese grater.
was already there, her form still resembled that of a Goddess, completely in tune with her own shadow name. If one didn't know that she was actually there, they could easily mistake her for Aletheia herself. She was still clad in a semi-sheer fabric white gown that hugs her form perfectly. A necklace of keys hangs from her neck with other golden jewelry hanging off her in various places.
Kotahitanga retrieves the astral version of the touchstone, tucking it into a pocket once more.
Diamond's Shadowname is empowered through her own work and the esoteric meanings she cultivated throughout the recent years. it is reflected in the Astral Her skin has a pure black coloring here, her nails, eyes, teeth and a shape of a diamond on her chest are glistening like the precious gemstone, regardless of lighting. her features however, are now concealed in some way beneath ripples of a water-like effect dancing around her like a soft, gray colored gleaming aura. She wills her dedicated tool into existence and with a few gesture, conjure a blessing on everyone else's when they manifest it. Also, shadows will coalesce defensively around her astral companion. "Awww." her voice even has some watery consonate to it when she react to the sleeping fairy.
Sirius' dream shape was a curious one for a Mastigos, his features sharpened and highly defined by the corona of light that radiated around him. A pair of markings on his shoulders glowed faintly on their own, the right a sigil of some sorts and the left a stylized starbust.
The Warlock took a moment to adjust as they came to in the Temeros, a small frown on his features as he shook his head as thought to clear it. "That was something..."
"...that is the most adorable metalhead I've ever seen." Alexis scratches some of the now peeling and sunburnt skin off the bridge of her nose, idly wondering how much meditation and mental conditioning it would take for her to not manifest glasses on her astral body.
"It's nice to see that she stuck around and waited for us to come back, though I suppose if she hadn't she wouldn't get to come to the party." a smile and shake of her head "Hey Eyebleach, time to wake up we're all set to keep going."
The pixie startles awake at the sudden noise the group are now making. She lets out a high pitched shriek that would probably have dogs barking if there were any around. He stubby little limbs flail in the air as she cartwheels and spins and gravity suddenly remembers it should pay attention to her. Her wings flip open and she begins flying again, amid a shower of sparkles. "JIMINY JEEPERS! Warn a girl, wouldja? I'm awake. I'm awake. Oh! You brought friends!" She flutters over towards Sirius, circles him once, then around Kay likewise, sizing the pair of them up. "Hi! I'm Eyebleach." She offers a wiggly-fingered wave to each in turns, then points off into the distance, "I got bored and flew over there to confirm: Definitely the Omphalos. No idea which hole that is or where it spits out, though. But there is one! If we get moving we can be there in no time! Faster if you all learn to fly. You should, by the way. Walking sucks."
"Unfortunately that is out of my reach still." Diamond announces to the Pixie, smiling at her (?). Then her gaze goes to Aletheia with a very pointed questioning look about the nature of the being greeting them. Then her gaze turn toward Kotahitanga. "I'm not sure if turning us into birds would help with flight?"
She looks back to Diamond "She agreed to be our guide for this trip as long as she got to party in my Onirios for a night."
"I could do that. It'd be risky, casting on such a large group, though, so." Kotahitanga shrugs one shoulder. "That's probably not a great idea."
"Given that at least one of us has never flown before, I think its best to save learning for another time in any case." Alexis waves at the wall, "We have thought-puzzles to solve and the mysteries of linguistics and consciousness to surmount. Shall we be about it?"
"Hey there." Sirius offered Eyebleach a smirk as she buzzed around him, giving a little finger-wave in return before looking back to the others. "Flying would be a new thing for me, too."
"Well, I'm not walking. I just woke up and haven't had breakfast! Anyway. Lets get moving, the Omphalos won't read itself." Eyebleach winds up her arms and legs like a cartoon character about to take off at a run, and then shoots forward in the direction of the looming stone monolith that dominates the horizon.
The realm here is very similar to what Earth must have looked like many hundreds of millions of year ago. Jagged basalt stone, mosses and lichens, small plants, and very little else. The sky overhead is streaked with unfamiliar constellations and belted with the great bright band of the Milky Way slowly spinning across the heavens.
Reaching the Omphalos is really just a matter of time and caution. The ground is rather perilous the whole way, save when they reach a lava flow that's cut across the land and cooled. That's flat and easy going, thankfully.
Once the Omphalos is reached, the stone dominates the landscape. Quite literally. It is truly massive, an upright megalith of truly awe inspiring proportions, ringed in mist and so tall it disappears from view overhead. The stone's appearance depends on the cultural perceptions of the viewer. To some, it's little more than a celtic plinth. To others, a Viking rune stone. Others still may see Maori stone carvings. The upshot is, however, culturally universal. This thing is ancient. The ur-stone from which all other such megaliths derive their ancestry.
And it is lousy with high speech, each rune softly glowing in the misty night air. Two holes have been drilled through it some distance up. Ostensibly, those should be the gateways to the Anima Mundi.
Eyebleach stops well short of the stone and bobs in the air uncertainly. "Once we're through, I'm going to skedaddle. Communing with the soul of creation creeps me out. I'mma stick to the rivers and the lakes that I'm used to."
"Anything we should know before we dive through the holes? Protection we should be wearing?" A little cheeky grin from Kay, the choice of word is anything but incidental given how... purposefully phallic this thing looks to her. She looks up to the holes and considers possible ways to reach them.
Then a look to the Pixie. "Aww, so soon? Hopefully I'll get to know you better another time."
"Also, anyone wants to maybe boost up Occult knowledge? I'm not confident."
"That's fine, Eyebleach," Kotahitanga says, glancing at the pixie. "Thanks for bringing us this far."
One by one the mages associate the runes of High Speech, drawing connections between high concepts and esoteric objects, tracing lines of Prime-infused light along the stone's channels and cuts. It doesn't take altogether long for the game of it to become well understood by the mages playing at it. And once the portal is reached and ringed with light, a shimmering field flashes into being in the stone's eye.
The mist at the base of the stone begins to collect around the mages, lifting them one by one towards the waiting portal's entry field.
It is at this point that Balm's voice breaks into the moment, coming from nowhere in particular:
Aletheia, your body is taking damage. Are you in the Sidereal Wastes? If it gets worse, we're pulling you out.
It took a moment for the fairy's reference to click, likely thanks to the marvelous sight of the Omphalos, but when it did Sirius smirked a touch, offering Eyebleach a fistbump if she was so inclined. "Waterfalls...bit of a throwback, but got to appreciate it."
As the message came through from Balm the Warlock frowned, looking Aletheia over. "You alright?"
"I'm fine, ignore it. It was backlash." her voice is one that is simply explaining what happened, not really coming across as curt or anything. She would smile towards Sirius and offer a simple nod
Diamond looks a bit amused as she grows closer to the gigantic megalith that resemble the ones from her ancestral homeland, though she can hardly stop giggling, she worries for a moment when Balm's voice come through the Astral and when she explains what happened, she seems to settle down, ripples of water dance about her a bit further. "Should we call on our Amnion here?" she asks, barely pronouncing the word properly.
Alexis blinks and focuses for a moment, iron spikes forcing themselves out all over her body to anchor futuristic looking armor made of gleaming, black stone, its planes and edges outlined in tron lines formed from rippling cascades of golden letters, words, and symbols in over half a dozen languages, "We should invoke our Amnion yes, since we're just about to cross over. Hopefully the wind won't be too strong"
"Its a double edged sword, it will protect us but also limit our understanding. I will proceed a little bit without it."
"If you're sure," Kotahitanga says, manifesting her own Amnion, suddenly seeming to be clad in polished wood.
"I'll handle the double edge sword." As she makes her way into the the little hole. The silver-gray aura that previously danced gently with little waves around the water-like effect around herself now grow brighter, her hair and eyebrow now glisten with the same diamon like glisten as the other features and the ripples of water are more frequent, much like under a heavy rain (Amnion rating of 5, active)
Eyebleach does indeed return Jeremiah's fist bump, baking a little explosion sound with her mouth as she spreads her little tiny fingers wide in the wake of it. Tiniest fist bump! "It's been real, y'all. I'll be waiting in my realm for when y'all want to party again!" And with that, she flies into the portal to return to her own little pocket of unreality.
As the Amnions are raised (or not), the portal stands ready to receive them. Leading to who knows what.
"Your call." Sirius nodded to Aletheia, taking a moment to call up his own. The light about him fractured into a rainbow of colors, some beyond the normal range seen in the Fallen World, that wrapped protectively around him. (Rating of 3) Seeing Rashida's form up he allowed himself a small smirk, nodding to her and saying a quiet "Shepard" towards her before looking to the portal. "Shall we?"
"Let's," Kotahitanga nods, moving to enter the portal.
Kay enters the portal
"Wrex." Alexis follows Kay through
"Onward, upward, and all that!" Said Sirius
It's a bit like the gate travel sequence from Stargate: SG1, or maybe heading to the Gamma Quadrant via the Denorius Belt's wormhole in DS9. Or maybe the opening credits to Doctor Who? Point is, they are shunted through a portal between what mankind's imagination hath wrought and what slumbered in the universe before mankind ever arrived to fuck things up so royally.
When they reappear on the other side, the world is impossibly and irrevocably changed.
The landscape is reminiscent of the Hebrides. Lush green grasses and mosses on islands of hard stone. All gathered close together in an archipelago that looks more like strewn rubble than the work of stone, water, wind, and time. And given the giant finger of stone and crystal that juts up from the largest of the islands, that would tend to make sense. Tilted at an odd angle, evidencing the work of a thousand laborers, still bearing the facade of the Celestial Ladder; it is the Axis Mundi. The spine of the world. The fabled heart of Atlantis. The center of creation. A monument to humanity's hubris. The ground is littered here with fallen stone and crumbled steel, bleached bones lie in the mossy earth, some covered in moss themselves. And all the while, the spire perilous bends towards the heavens, and the Dreaming Earth.
Here the ecstatic winds billow through like a sea breeze, carrying with them the promise of glory and power, newfound understanding, oneness with creation, and all the treasures of the Gods' storehouses. All one need do is climb.
Aletheia is lashed by them the moment she sets foot into Anima Mundi. It's not an unpleasant experience at all, really. Sure, the integrity of her dream self is being eroded away bit by bit, pieces of her flaking off and carrying away on the wind to join with all creation? But it feels great! Nothing to concern herself with! This is the path to ascension. Just relax and let it happen, girl!
"I wish that I could have the time to conjure and speak to the owners of these bones over there. that would be an enlightening experience, I'm sure." The shining Diamond with the water rippling through to her mind. "But right now, we need to reach the tree..." she takes a deep, deep breath and then roll her shoulders "How do we do that? Sould I make a shadow boat out with sails that could use these winds as some form of guidance? Or is there something more appropriate to do?"
"In a fit of irony....we need to go where that tower used to." Alexis waves at the broken shards of hubris and regret, "The hard way. Which means we need to overcome the barrier between here and the Dreaming Earth."
It wasn't often that Sirius was stunned into silence, but the sight of the broken lands before them managed to do just that. He looked over it for a long moment, his features solemn, eventually nodding at Alexis' comment.
Even if this was the path to ascension having pieces of yourself pulled from you hurt, she raised a hand to shield herself a little. Even if it was pointless, Aletheia sighs: "Last time I wasn't hit right out the gate." and with that Aletheia caves and summons her Amnion which is quite honestly a little bit bazar a circle of . . . keys? Yeah keys, form a protective circle around her. They seem to move towards whatever heads towards Aletheia's body and "intercept" them before they can actually hit her. Or at the very least do their best to do so. Rating 5:
"We'd best get to it, then," Kotahitanga says after a moment. "No time to waste, after all."
They take their tame picking their way across the broken landscape, stepping past the final resting places of the fools who came before them, mindful of the rubble of the fallen ladder so as not to disturb it and potentially unleash who knows what ancient spell held dormant all these millennia.
What is striking is how long it takes. The spire looked almost near enough to touch before, and it just keeps getting larger. The Omphalos was huge. The Spire Perilous is unfathomably, truly, and in all ways enormous. And as they near it, at last, they can see the damage up close. Some, from the picks and artifice of man's hands, some from the ravages of time, and still more damage from the fiery maws of the Typhonids which scutter across its surface like termites, gnawing at the workings of man's hubris, excising the tumor of their intrusion from the spire piece by piece. Great abscesses have formed in the stone, black and pitted, where their work has been most recently exposed to air.
The creatures are strange looking things, like tangles of black serpents, or great oozing roils of smoke and oil. At present they seem to have no particular interest in the party of mages approaching the spire. Given how many they are-- and the general writhing of the surface of the spire, like a cake that's been left out for days and discovered by numerous colonies of ants --keeping it that way could be a bit of a trick.
"Hmmm... All of you grab onto me and don't physically let go until we reach. I have an idea of how to get past them without getting noticed." Diamond mentions, extending her arms outward, speaking as soft as possible, and in the telepathy bond linking them if possible. "Unless we want to get noticed." (Plan: using Empty Presence (Death 5) as a dome around the group to avoid their notice and not forget each others)
"I think I could probably just teleport us over there, that might be easier. Which ever works quickest."
"Let's do the one that avoids us getting noticed by several anthills worth of hungry maws." Alexis keeps her eyes peeled for a sign of the way upwards into the Dreaming.
"Agreed..." Sirius nodded, eyeing the beasties in kind. "Don't see getting their attention going particularly well."
"What they said," Kotahitanga agrees, taking Diamond's hand. "Let us know when you're ready, Sister?"
Diamond weaves magic around the group with a with wave of her arms and the diamond shaped wooden diamond and a dome of strange effect around and then proceeds to explains the effect. "Alright, no one stray beyond this far, no one attacks or act violently and the spell will protect us. we dont exist for them right now."
Once the effect is set down, the group has the reassurance that the Typhonids will keep their focus solely on eroding the spire rather than trying to eat the faces of the Mages. Not that the typhonids ever expressed any particular interest in face-eating, but it does make the travel much easier.
Climbing the spire is tiring work, though not particularly dangerous. The frequent cracks and gnawed away sections provide numerous platforms upon which to rest and recover before continuing the upward climb. And what a climb it is! Along the way they pass pieces of the ladder that still cling to the exterior of the spire, as yet undestroyed by the Typhonids who scour the surface for just such remnants of the Fall.
Every so often they will pass a Typhonid that turns its alien head their way and seems to stare right at them as they pass, effect or no effect; clearly some of them see with more than their eyes. But even these leave the mages well enough alone, consumed with their desire to destroy the Spire and nothing more.
The climb takes hours, and as they climb the winds begin to grow more forceful, straining the amnions of even the most powerful of the mages present.
Diamond moves about as she can, carefully navigating around the Typhonoid, rolling her shoulder, the water ripples effect around her ripples a little heavier now as she moves further and she takes in a deep breath again. She makes sure her ascenscion doesn't leave someone out of the dome.
Sirius kept close to Diamond as they moved upward, standing up a little straighter on reflex as threads of the wind passed through the prism of light that surrounded him. Nonetheless he pressed on, watching the Typhonids as they went with a note of wariness in his features.
Aletheia keeps close towards the end, bringing up the rear this time to make sure that everyone else was alright
Kotahitanga sticks next to Diamond as they climb, on the opposite side to Sirius.
The climb takes them into the clouds, or the idea of clouds in any case. The ground turns misty, then washed out, then disappears entirely. To fall from this height would take quite some time indeed to hit ground. With fatal results, given the givens.
The climb through the clouds likewise takes hours, but eventually the mist begins to fade away and, through the magic of metaphysics, they find themselves on new ground. As though the spire were jutting up through a cavern in the world up through which they had just processed.
They emerge into a domain of the Keb, the ground all around them rich and black and untouched by plant or tree. Virgin soil, interspersed with rocks and boulders of every conceivable variety. Gemstones, too, litter the ground at points. The terrain is otherwise featureless and flat, and stretches out in all directions. Seemingly forever.
"Welp, that's cute. Where are we?" A tilt of her head and she looks back to wait for the others to join her. She briefly considers the area around them, trying to notice if anything is hiding or looming.
"Oh, the dreaming earth... I wish we had a bit more time here, oh well, maybe another time!" she looks around and get ready to move on or gets pulled back.
"We can come back, yes," Kotahitanga grins, retrieving the touchstone from her pocket. "I think we should pause here for now, though. Any objections?" She glances between the other four.
"...this place is no less contradictory than it was when it was first described to me." Alexis glances at the Moros beside her, "This is certainly more your place than mine."
Once the stone is set down and the team rests their hands on it for the appointed time, they are shunted back to their bodies in a process remarkably like the one that took them here in the first place. Momentary flashes of 'unbeing' and then the dim awareness of a waking mind, as various members of the Consilium council and Order leaders tend their corporeal forms and help them all to sit up again.
The sun is streaking in through the arboretum's perfected glass roof, and another day has begun. "The rest of you, get some rest," Balm advises from her wheelchair, "tomorrow they cross the wastes and will need us most."
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