My father said in his diaries that if Dworkin didn't want to be found then you couldn't find him. Given my experience over the last 10 days I'd go so far as to add even if he wants you to find him its nigh on impossible to find him.
Deirdre's tentacle deposited me outside the walls of the tower. The sensations it generated as it resonated against my pattern imprints proved interesting and I had to fight to control the almost overriding subconscious command to raise a pattern defense. In addition controlling the urge to fight as you're slammed into what appears to be a solid and unyielding crystal wall requires extensive effort and discerpline.
The wall itself generates yet another set of sensations, both resonating with and against your own psyche. Then comes freedom as you're deposited on a stone tower several hundred meters above a dull grey plain set against a dull black sky.
The interesting aspect of the Tower is on the opposite side to the normal point of approach, or West assuming that normal approach is from the East and the entrance way is in the South Wall. Here the plain is cloven by a blackness reminiscent of that which borders the Courts of Chaos on its Western side. This blackness is the Abyss, an intrusion into shadow of some other reality. Why the tears in the fabric of shadow occur at these two points and not at Carnelian or Amber is a question I'll leave for others to answer.
The edge of the tower which surrounds the crystal walls is exited either by a 400m fall off the edge or the set of stairs cut into one edge which turn into the tower after descending 30 ft and a quarter of the circumference. At this point the light levels drop radically and continue to do so until the base is reached, some 400m below.
Having made the descent the question was, where to go next. A examination of shadow revealed no disturbance indicative of a shadow walker, or at least none I could detect. I walked the Carnelian pattern and used it to indicate its direction from here. I then repeated the process with the Amber pattern. Splitting the difference between the Carnelian pattern and the reverse of the Amber pattern, indicating the Courts, I set off. If Dworkin was going anywhere it was likely to be away from Brand, and Brand was most likely still in Amber.
I walked for several hours before locating a horse, and then rode on for several more, before happening upon a suitable ryobi(Japenese Inn) in which to rest. After eating and bathing, I retired to the shrine. This time I'd use the Pattern to search shadow for Dworkin's psychic signature in an attempt to get a bearing on him. Now that I was away from the tower there might be a chance I'd succeed. I set myself a 12 hour limit and walked the pattern.
By the sixth day I was getting frustrated with the whole process and complete lack of any progress. Surely, given he had the book and knew we needed it, he couldn't be this difficult to locate. In frustration I started doing a little probability manipulation, picking up an assortment of gems of given values to make travel more interesting. It then occurred to me that perhaps I was going about locating him the wrong way. Perhaps I needed to manipulate probability to increase my chances of locating him.
I set off again. Traveling in this manner became like a Hellride in slow motion, with shadow changing extensively between one step and the next. Nearly 10 hours passed before I decided to stop and rest. Whilst not as tiring as hellriding it was significantly more so than normal shadow walking. I ate, rested, ate, bathed and then tried the pattern search again. This time I got lucky, within the hour I had a firm direction if not a firm idea of distance.
With a definite goal I set off again. After a couple of hours I started to come across shadows that showed signs of having been manipulated, along with signs that both conjuration and sorcery had been used recently - the open gate to the elemental realm from which lava still poured added a significant delay.
From there onwards things got significantly more difficult and I began to find blood pools and reptilian scales. What ever had happened here was no minor event. It took nearly two more days for me to pick my way through the carnage and torn shadows before coming across what appeared to be a ghostly apparition of Dworkin. It was gathering reptilian scales and tossing them into another open gate from which intense heat radiated. When it realized I was watching it stopped, put the scales it was holding down on the smoking ground, and crossed the 200 yards to where I was. It seemed to ignore the fact that the ground shimmered, smouldered, and issued gusts of smoke, steam, or flames at random. I steadied my horse which balked at his approach. The proximity to the dodgy ground ahead didn't help.
"Well now. Not who I was expecting. Must admit haven't really been keeping a close enough eye on your generation. Got a bit distracted with the games with Merlin. Not a shape shifter are you? No. Didn't think so. Shapeshifter's what's required. Kill them otherwise. Nice to have met you. Meet again soon. Come find me in Undershadow. Now off you go. Got work to finish. Oh nearly forgot. You'll need this"
With that he threw me a trump, turned and retraced his steps, leaving me somewhat perplexed. I was about to dismount and start forward when the ground seemed to find a new lease of energy, and erupted gouts of smoke and fire, expanding several feet towards me. This was more than my horse could stand and it dumped me unceremoniously out of the saddle as it turned and bolted.
How what happened next happened I don't know. I felt shadow blur and shift and I landed on the slope of a soft sand dune, sinking several inches into it due to my momentum. As I scanned the environment to determine where I was and what properties this shadow had it became apparent that I'd traveled quite a long way. For me to have hellridden that distance would have taken several days. Somehow I must have fallen through some sort of shadow gate or tunnel.
The shadow I found myself in was about equidistance from the Courts, Carnelian, and Ygg. Whilst the atmosphere was basic O/N there were numerous peculiarities. I stood up, sinking up to my calves in the soft sand. I pictured somewhere with firmer ground, a little less sun, a tea house, gentle stream, and flowing woodland and began to walk.
I put down the tea, and drew the trump the ghost had thrown me from my pocket. It showed a hunched, dwarvish looking figure in some sort of scaley armour. Behind it was some sort of laboratory. On the back was the outline of some sort of nighmarish black single horned horse. I flipped the card over and gently tested it parameters. It was definitely trump and it had the same psychic signature as Deirdre had shown me for Dworkin. The problem was the card didn't respond properly. It neither registered as dead, not responding, jammed, nor alive. I put it back in the pocket with the rest of my trumps.
The question was where to go next. Dworkin wanted me to go and find him in Undershadow but I hadn't a clue on how to get there, where ever there was. That meant either returning to the Tower and talking to Deirdre or traveling to Carnelian and asking Llewella or Fiona. Then there was the problem of the Herrigburn and Mikato. Since he hadn't shown up, he either couldn't find me, was dead, or they were currently not in any great danger. That didn't really say much given I'd kidnapped them from a nice two day sail down the coast into a rather extended leave of absence. I supposed I'd better go find out what was happening. I did some calculations. The next 13th Hour was about 43 hours away. At a push I could probably turn my pencil sketches into a trump in that time and the ambiance of the tea house provided an setting in which to work. I bought the pattern to mind and did a little manipulation. Now I had a room in which to sleep and a meals and refreshment on tap. I unpacked my things and began to draw.
My appearance out of thin air in his cabin in the dead of night did little to improve my standing with Captain Haron, although both he and Mikato were glad to see me. They'd been left languishing in the port by Charity and the others about three days ago. Neither Llewella nor Benedict seemed to care that they could not find there way to their home shadow from there nor that the denizens were not particularly friendly nor human. There had been one or two incidents but for the most part they'd been left alone. In addition to the other problems, they were now running low on dried provisions and water, and were out of fresh fruit and vegetables. I told Haron we'd sail at first light and would be somewhere he could re-provision the ship by midday.
I was actually a little off in my estimate but then I did a little more manipulation than I'd initially estimated. Still it did mean the crew spent a relaxing evening being entertained at a Geisha house, whilst the ship had some of its minor faults fixed, provisions restocked, and a cargo of silks, spices, weapons, and armour loaded.
It had been my intention for us to sail on the morning tide, but as with the best laid plans things didn't happen that way - mainly because the crew were too hung over or tired through lack of sleep. In fact we barely limped out on the evening tide. That meant they'd pay later since I'd now have to Hellride, and that meant a storm - even if I did chose to generate one without the torrential rain.
So it was 5 days later that we rolled into the port of Granshulth, where I'd first recruited the Herrigburn and her crew several weeks earlier. There was the usual response to the reappearance of a ship thought lost a sea followed, and Mikato and I had to stand by whilst the crew held emotional reunions with their loved ones, and Captain Haron answered a barrage of questions from port officials and the local lord's steward.
Mikato and I spent the night as the guests of his family, which caused me to have to hastily acquire an evening dress - even if it was of a style they were not familiar with. The evening passed pleasantly enough, although I got interesting reactions from both him and his wife when I suggested that next time I came to stay a house more appropriate to their new status would be in order. When Haron wanted an explanation I said that that would have to wait until the morning.
Whilst I had invitations to stay and to the welcome home ball, I left the following evening. It was a simple enough matter to find myself in an alley as the 13th Hour arrived, pull Deirdre's trump from the deck in my pocket and vanish from sight.
My reappearance at the tower caused something of a stir, not least because I was carrying the first part of the Book of Selheim. The fact that I had found Dworkin, well at least something that appeared to be a ghost of Dworkin, and had a trump of him - there are no known trumps of Dworkin as far as I'm aware, did little to defuse the situation.
After everybody calmed down I managed to find out what had happened to them. Under Benedict's and Llewella's instruction Charity had taken them to Jithrikl where they'd abandoned the ship and walked in land. As they'd walked she'd manipulated shadow so that they entered Carnelian via the tunnel. After the reunion with Fiona and Vialle, it had been decided that the four of them were free to pursue what ever line of investigation they chose, whilst Benedict took over running the defenses at Carnelian.
Three of them Charity, Alfred, and Allagahn had then walked the pattern with the intention that they'd link together in the middle and teleport to Deirdre's tower. It seems that Allagahn changed his mind and went elsewhere and Fiona suggested they take Sorcha with them by trumping her to the center of the pattern. How fluffy!
Deirdre couldn't help directly with a solution to the problem of finding Dworkin since she didn't actually know what or where Undershadow was. However it seems that her tower, this tower in fact, the Tower of Elysium by another name, exists somehow in both realities simultaneously, and using some kind of portal inscribed on the roof of the crystal a sufficiently powerful and knowledgeable person can move between the realms.
This partially solved one problem, how to get there. What it didn't answer was did I or any of the others have sufficient power to use the portal.
Deirdre did her transforming trick and shoved us through the walls and onto the roof. The roof was in many respects a duplicate of the floor below. The same runically inscribed concentric circles and pentagram stood out in relief against the faintly glowing floor. What was interesting was that we could walk on the crystal here - where as touching the side walls was like sticking your hand onto power transmission line. What was more interesting was that the symbols were readable. They seamed to be some kind of sorcery based translation ritual. from what Deirdre had taught me about magic this was not a ritual to be undertaken lightly - once started you had to finish or die in the process. It also appeared that it translated anyone standing in the pentagram with the reciter. What happened should they fail I chose not to think about.
I was about to explain what I'd found when Alfred ordered everyone into the middle explaining that this was a translation ritual that would take us to Undershadow and that he was sure he could execute the spell correctly. I thought differently. At least if he was going to try I could ensure that the rest of us made it one way. I moved to the center and extended my senses.
He began the first phrases and I felt the power surge. This was one hell of a draw and he was never going to be able to sustain it unless I was very wrong in my assessment of his capabilities. By the fourth phrase he was starting to struggle and by the sixth it was obvious he was going to need help. I told him to stop whilst I organized the others into a power supply. I would draw energy from them and feed it to him. The question was did I have the ability to handle this.
There have only been two occasions when I've been this tired - both after walking primal patterns for the first time. As Alfred spoke the last phrase, and the world shimmered and lurched about us, it was a relief to stop feeding him. I'd tried to balance things so that each of us would be equally drained, but it seemed to be more draining on us than on either Sorcha or Charity, and I couldn't help but fall to the ground and rest for several minutes. It wasn't until I stood up that I realized I had a feather in my hand - one that seemed somehow familiar, as if I'd held it recently. Charity noticed it first and asked me about it. It did remind me of the feather I was trying to catch after my meeting with the Phoenix, in fact the more I thought about it I realized it was the same feather, and I had caught it just at the point I woke up. The question was why did I have it now and where did it come from? As I studied the environment I kept half an eye on the others.
Charity seemed to be staring off into space, Alfred appeared to be wandering about aimlessly and Sorcha was watching the three of us.
As I concentrated I realized that I'd been here before. Somehow my encounter with my fathers ghost on the pattern at Carnelian had sent my consciousness to Undershadow, where I'd encountered the Phoenix. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Charity sail into the air and glide to the ground some distance away. The problem was we appeared to be as high above the ground here as we'd been in shadow, so by rights she should be either in some residual primal form or a splat on the ground. Since neither of these occurred there must be something else at work or our perception of physical reality wasn't real. I carefully went back through my memories and replayed chasing the feather analysing what had happened. If I was right, then reality here was determined by perception, and thus I could simply dive off the roof and float to what I perceived as the ground unharmed.
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| Supporting Cast - Cordelia | The Keep of the Thirteenth Hour |