Legend of Ransera

Glade 10, 123 following The Growing Storm

The Journey Thus Far A few hours after the Senate meeting, Norani had been outfitted with some basic warrior leathers befitting her rank of soldier in the Ecithian military. They were some minor enchantments on them, what few could be conjured in the rather short amount of time. The main enchantment was that the armor was elementally adaptable, so it would shift into the elemental that Norani could become if so needed, at the cost of no longer providing physical armor protection. This was so that she could wear it without it hindering her magic or movements.

Norani waited up in the seats of the Senate as Senators, researchers and the like were studying her still open portal. She had asked her family to leave her be for now, needing to focus on the task ahead. She looked at the Horn of the Warchief that lay across her lap, wondering if she had the strength to blow it when needed. After all, to do so would mean summoning an army of Orkhan, dragons, and many other Ecithians, all coming to aid in her fight. It also meant every death was on her hands too.

But to do nothing meant death and destruction would continue to spread across the world.

Every passing moment of delay and indecision would add to the list of deaths that could be prevented. She sighed, wondering how it was she could find the strength to be a leader. The thought of facing the monster alone was less terrifying than asking people to die for her. But if asking them to die so as to save others? Was that better? Is this what being a military leader meant? Weighing the values and risks of deaths?

It made her want to vomit, but she hadn't eaten all day, so a boon perhaps.

Next to the horn, she saw a pouch with the sorcerer sands she requested. On such short notice, they could only come up with enough for a single use. The trip home, for the entire army, once they won. The pouch was the same materials and enchantment as her armor, so she wouldn't lose it when transforming.

The Great Doors to the Senate opened once more and she saw the soldier that had been sent to fetch and outfit Imogen Ward. Norani rose from her seat, heading down to meet with the elder witch once more. Once they were close, Norani lunged forward, pulling Imogen into a tight embrace. After a moment, she stepped back, "They've agreed. Sending the full force and might of the Commonwealth. We're to travel to Agst'rasera immediately and summon them in three days. Destyn should already be there waiting for us." A pause, "I'll be traveling as lightning so as to not waste time. Can you keep up?"

Norani assumed the witch could, as wise and ancient as she was.

The Senate chamber of Drathera was spacious and impersonal; imperious, perhaps. Large enough to seat even a dragon (and she suspected the occasion had arisen betimes) and sparsely decorated, meant to fit the jostling legislature of Drathera easily but not comfortably. That, too, might have been intentional. She wondered if that was the choice of the architect or some command of the Three when first the capitol had been selected.

Imogen was well and truly recovered from the escapade of a week prior. Norani's spell had drained her aether dry in a matter of moments, but her body and spirit had been only lightly singed by the battle in the Expanse, so it had not taken long to build back strength. She descended the steps of the Senate Chamber at a leisurely pace, wearing tunic and pants, a small satchel slung over her shoulder. They'd offered her armor, but she'd begged off. To her mind, armor sufficient to stop a killing blow would weigh her down enough to get her killed either way; and besides, she would almost certainly end up losing it before then.

(Another pang of regret that she hadn't gotten around to completing Avamande's enchantment. If she lived through this, she resolved to finally make the necessary preparations.)

The witch didn't draw a lot of attention as she went, as the senators were mostly absorbed in discussing what they'd seen and what the next steps were. She'd caught only snippets of Norani's impassioned speech from the heavily-trafficked walkways ringing the chamber, but it certainly seemed that she'd captured the attention of the legislators.

She nearly stumbled, however, when Norani leapt from her seat and flung herself into her arms. She blinked, reflexively grabbing the other girl, as Norani exclaimed:

"They've agreed. Sending the full force and might of the Commonwealth. We're to travel to Agst'rasera immediately and summon them in three days. Destyn should already be there waiting for us. I'll be traveling as lightning so as to not waste time. Can you keep up?"

Well, that was unexpected- both that they should so readily believe Norani and that they should act with such dispatch. But then, perhaps one necessitated the other. If you could accept that this girl had truly discovered the gaol of the seasons, then could you afford to waste time gathering forces? Who could say how much damage the world had already suffered in this endless chill?

"Destyn? Wh- oh, Destynrael." naturally, she had recruited the fairy boy to her cause also. Well, if the Commonwealth was truly sending an army, it probably didn't matter much whether one additional fae'ethalan (or 'ancient witch', for that matter) was absent or present, "Keep up?"

It took Imogen a moment to realize what Norani was asking. She'd seen the other woman use Elementalism (or perhaps some admixture of that with Animism) to assume elemental form before and travel as wind, so it was only natural that she could mantle other forms of elemental. But lightning...? No bird could possibly keep up with that. No cat or horse or any other mammal, for that matter. Not one of her totems could manage it.

A tempting answer was simply to use Norani as a focus, let her travel alone, and Traverse to her destination. The distance was greater than the witch could manage with a single gate, but she could manage one way or another. Let the other girl do the travel and show up at her leisure?

It only took her a moment of reflection upon their disastrous trip into the desert of Ataraxia to realize that this was a bad idea. Norani was certainly powerful enough to look out for herself, but she hadn't the sense the Gods gave a kitten. And what would have been the point of all this if Norani managed to get herself killed before she could summon the Commonwealth's legion?

"...yes, I can." the witch admitted reluctantly, "Nothing in the world is truly impossible. Let me borrow your spell."

Rather than simply explaining her plan, Imogen held out a hand, palm facing the marble ceiling high above. Silver fire kindled above her fingers, elemental light rapidly running along an invisible circuit to form the ghostly outline of an eight foot long spear. The weapon faded into being, a polearm of brass and gold and polished steel lacking for decoration but not ostentation.

The witch had previously explained to Norani that the Pact Weapons were, in fact, materialized portions of the caster's own soul. Where her Pact sword was unadorned steel, signifying nothing outside herself, she fancied the spear captured something of her many hours of lessons with Master Gerhard; it was, after all, his weapon of choice. An elegant, precise thing, nobility and quiet killing power evident at a glance... She offered it to the other woman, though it was still floating above her hand rather than cradled in it.

"Lay hands on this and try to transfigure it into fulgarite energy, as if it were part of you. Don't worry if nothing seems to happen, the steel simply needs to feel the spell and understand it."

Norani knew not what fulgarite meant, but to make something else a part of herself? Norani understood that in spades. It was fascinating, she didn't know that Reavers could borrow spells from other mages, though to be fair, Imogen was the only Reaver that she knew and hadn't learned much of anything from her yet. In time, perhaps. Norani looked around her, feeling the eyes of many a Senator and onlooker upon her. Their eyes were those of scrutiny and curiosity, of delight and wonder, without thoughts of judgment and assumption.

A lesser version of how Yeva looked at her upon the beach before they parted ways last and Norani felt seen once more.

A nod was given and she began pulling aether through her soul, through her rune, and the air in the Senate began building a charge. Hair began to float and stand on end, and other elementalists in the room were looking at each other. Norani placed her hands upon the spear, and pushed her aether into it. Thunder cracked loudly, echoing around the chamber and turning what heads hadn't been paying attention. Lightning coursed through the spear, enveloping it, integrating within it, becoming as much a part of the weapon as it was a part of Norani, and was a fairly negligible use of her power.

A pair of elementalists nearby were speaking with crossed arms, "She didn't even need to mix wind and fire..," one man uttered to another. His companion nodded, "Is she arched to lightning then?" The first shook his head, "Surely not. I thought she was arched to wind?" The latter shrugged, "It feels like I was just initiated again and understand nothing." His friend mhmmed in agreement.

Norani looked at Imogen, "Is that good enough?"

Once Imogen was decidedly ready, "Shall we?"

With a nod, the air cracked loudly once more, and Norani's body shifted into a Prescient state of lightning, the shape of a woman in a small cyclone, all made of lightning, blinding and hot. When she spoke, her voice boomed as thunder, "Let's go."

Norani cast her attention the portal, on the roots at the base of the corridor, seeing the lightning paths leading the way. She decided to try something new. In her state, she reached out, touching that trail marking spark. As she did, she could feel the entire course of it, from here to the destination in her heart, Agst'rasera. She cast a lightning tendril back to touch onto Imogen's spear, a holding of hands so none would be lost in what she suspected was going to be a very quick journey.

And thunder cracked once more as Norani let it loose.

The last time they took this path, the elemental planes whirled by in a display of pretty sceneries, accompanied by the sounds of Norani's wind and the ambient sounds coming out of the planes, the sloshing of blood, the creaking of metal, the cracking of inferno. This time, however, it was entirely silent as they left the sound barrier far behind. The planes went by so far that their perception of them was so heavily delayed that Norani couldn't have been distracted and taken a wrong turn even if she wanted to do so.

Moments after they left, they exited a portal spat out onto a beach. Where Norani fell, sand exploded and much of it crystallized before she managed to turn off her Prescience. She cast her gaze upwards to see the massive world tree of Agst'rasera and the smile that had been growing on her face dropped, her face paling in horror. The beach they were on was still pristine and beautiful, with large dragonshards of the many elemental types jutting out in rocky crags, with motes of raw energy floating about, with flowers and birds with symbiotic bodies wielding these motes fluttered about, but there was an air of wrongness.

In the distance, the tree was darker, ill, dying. Norani could feel it from here. Panic set in on her heart, and as always, she started to act first, think second. But Aetu appeared before her, smacking her in the face with a fireball, stopping her. It didn't hurt, but it served the purpose of getting her attention. He glared at her and she nodded. She took a deep breath, turning to Imogen, "Find Destyn and Ruvaf please, they must be here somewhere. I need to find Astrid." She spoke to Aetu in their shared tongue, "Can you call together the spirits to help Imogen and Destyn come together?"

Aetu gave a nod, and with that, Norani blinked herself into Wind Form and raced toward the tree.

It wasn't especially easy to Varnish a pact weapon with a magic you didn't know. Animus helped, in this instance; she understood at a very basic level what it took to transform one type of matter to another. Lacking Elementalism, though, the secret of generating and controlling lightning was totally foreign to the witch's spirit. She could no more fire a lightning bolt than she could undo the skein of time.

These were the concerns which haunted a noviate, who could not possibly imagine a path to overcoming them. The world knew how to transform her spear into lightning, and Imogen allowed Norani to impress the knowledge upon her fragmented self. The floating spear became momentarily translucent in the other girl's hands, rippling as the spiritual mass of the Pact weapon altered in response to the aetheric motion of her spell. For a fraction of a second, it seemed as though Norani could see herself in the gleaming metal of the partisan, a fractured reflection shattering into a thousand motes of lightning.

Then it was done, and the Sunsinger took the weapon back from Norani, satisfied. That was the easy part done with.

The hard part remained. Varnishing the weapon would permit her to transmute the weapon. No amount of Reaving would suffice to transfer that charm from the steel to her flesh. No, she was simply going to have to hold on.




The witch perceived the trip only as a spiral of light.

When Norani disappeared into lightning, her Pact Spear went with her... mostly. She spared a middle length from transfiguration, a couple of hands-breadths of brass attached to whirling electric energies at both ends, an impossible construct of metal and lightning held together by its essential spiritual nature. Onto this perch, Imogen clung helplessly.

No chimera of her making could breathe and hear and see at such speeds--any fleshly face would have been flayed by the winds alone--but the witch was not in the habit of letting trivial things like that throw off her plans. Instead, she simply dematerialized the most vulnerable parts of her little monkey body, letting the infinite thinness of the veil shelter her head from the destructive wind of their passage, as though she had dunked her head underwater.

(She had, of course, returned to lemur form for the trip. Somehow, this never failed to feature in her stupidest plans.)

It should have been impossible for a monkey to cling to a smooth brass missile moving at such speeds, of course, but something about holding on to one's own soul was intuitively easy, and at any rate Imogen had reshaped the clever little hands into virtually-immobile metal claws. Thus protected and secured, she clung for dear life as her perch rocketed through the rootway, spiraling madly. Nausea was instantaneous, but her stomach was blessedly empty and she avoided vomiting into the slipspace.

Norani's route lasted only seconds, but they were the longest of the poor witch's life. It was utterly impossible to control her direction or speed, none of the ordinary physics of motion to which Imogen was accustomed seemed to apply at all, and she was uncomfortably aware that if her grip loosened for even a second she would be dashed against the roots so hard that the bloodstain would not even be visible. All in all, this was easily the third or fourth dumbest thing she'd ever done.




Then, with savage suddenness, it was over. Lemurgen found herself ejected from the tunnel, sent tumbling end-over-end into the sand. Her momentum died quickly, but the impact was still sufficient to fill her vision with stars and drive the breath from her lungs before she even realized she was on solid ground. By the time she'd realigned each part of her body with regular space and begun gasping for breath, Norani was towering over her, talking.

More than just Norani, though. Agst'rasera menaced the sky, branches filling her vision in every direction, larger than a mountain. And it did not look good.

Shadow and illness filled the canopy above her, sending dark streamers through the atmosphere. Though the surroundings seemed clear and only clean salt smells tickled her nose, the distant corruption was unmistakable in aspect. She groaned as she pushed herself up to a seated position, the distant darkness mercifully replaced by the sight of beach and tide.

"Find... Destyn...?" she repeated stupidly, ears still ringing from the sudden changes in pressure and speed she'd subjected them to. But there was no time for questions, apparently- a moment later, Norani was tearing off towards the forest, clearly on the verge of tears.

"Urrgh." she commented to herself and the incomprehensible spirits. "Find Destyn. Right." Did she have a way to do that?

Whatever, first thing was first. Finding herself blessedly alone, she reverted from lemurform to her natural body, shivering with relief as the change wiped away the cramps left in her hands and arms from the whirlwind ride. Kitty was there a moment later, holding in his mouth the light satchel she'd entrusted him with, and she took the opportunity to dress and wipe some (some!) of the sand from her hair.

She took a moment to survey the beach, squinting at the sight of the floating Dragonshards and motes of energy. They gave her the all-too-familiar feeling that if she knew more of harvesting, she could make a fortune here... but perhaps it was better that she did not. After all, if this was the source of elemental flow throughout the realm, fiddling too much with the tap could only lead to disaster.

Twinkles in the air caught her eye as the spirits Norani had begged for aid manifest signs; little dust-devils and flashes of smoke and flame, sudden frosts and so forth. She began to follow, resigned to yet another grand expedition where she wasn't going to understand anything which was going on. It seemed to be Fate's favorite joke.

"Destynrael!" she called across the beach and into the woods, "Anybody there?"

Without much in the way of instruction to go on, Destyn had consented to join the quest of Norani Windwalker. Their meeting had felt portentous enough and he was not, at the best of times, averse to making rash, bold decisions on a whim. At first, this had been that. He'd obliged Norani's request that he follow Ruvaf to Agst'rasera, without really knowing where that was or what it meant... nor even how long he would be expected to wait, whilst Norani completed tasks that he also didn't fully comprehend.

He wasn't expecting anything in particular, though that didn't mean he didn't have mid-flight daydreams about beautiful, potent vistas with new flora and fauna to meet. Whatever he might have conjured up as he and his fancy flew at high altitudes, what he found was a far cry from anything he might have imagined. Potent, it was, and beautiful after a fashion, but what he was entirely ill-prepared for was how pendulously pernicious it felt there.

Without knowing why, his impulse was to weep as soon as he got there. To explore the area was to better get a grasp on the wherefore... He lingered for a day, though it pained him to remain. It felt like familiar grief in alien environs. On the second day, he needed distance and flew afield of the fell place out of sight of that misery tree that loomed like a cursed titan over the landscape. Worried that he might miss his cue, Destyn would sweep frequently the beach upon which they'd first landed every few hours to see whether Norani had yet arrived.

By the third day, he wanted greater distance still and put his Amulet of Wandering to use, that he might return to placed that felt safe and familiar for breaks from the grim energies of Agst'rasera. This was the eight day, and Destyn was nowhere to be seen, though there may have been clues of his recent presence for those adept at seeing such signs.

The Fae was, as Imogen called out to him, quite some distance from this place in the midst of a nap, when he was nudged awake. Groaning, he rolled over to look at the source of the noise that had roused him.

"Glorbp Glorbp? What are you-... Oh! It is time, then." Splashing some water on his face, Destyn clutched his amulet and urged it toward the beacon stone he'd planted at the tree line above the dunes of that strange beach. Instantly assailed by the usual discomfort, he only had a moment to register it before an unexpected sight distracted him from the full breadth of the anguish.

"Imogen? What are you doing here, though?"

Though Norani had seemed certain enough, the witch was still startled to find Destyn on this eldritch shore. He might have looked in place in the isle's heyday, the fae lad limned with elemental light and all the strange glories of nature. Now, though? There was something incongruous about him, standing against the sight of the shadow-blighted forests beyond.

Also he did sort of pop up out of nowhere. That was somewhat startling.

"Destynrael," she repeated, blinking, "Oh, you are here. Norani told me to go find you, and then turned into wind and flew off-"

Imogen waved vaguely in the direction of the great tree behind Destyn, giving it a suspicious look. She had no particular gift of Semblance, nor indeed gift for mundane perception, but it didn't take a prodigy to understand that it shouldn't be leaking shadow like that. Even Kitty didn't seem terribly thrilled about it, and he was some manner of umbral critter- though perhaps it wasn't so surprising, given how badly the Eclipse had afflicted his whole race.

The juvenile jaguar was peeking out from behind her legs now, eyes fixed on the boy; it occurred to her that Kitty had probably never seen a non-Orkhan humanoid up close. He'd kept himself hidden during her stay in the Commonwealth's capitol city, and while Drathera was cosmopolitan enough, there just weren't that many non-natives wandering the enormous streets. The witch crouched, hiking her bag up one shoulder in order to scoop up her familiar in the other arm before standing again.

"I told Norani months ago that if she ran into any dangerous monsters, she should call on me." Imogen told Destyn, by way of answer, "It seemed like a reasonable thing to say. I am a pretty good monster-killer, and Ecith has many large and violent creatures. Hydras, lava-beasts, tyrant lizards, liar-beasts, incarnate river-spirits, giant birds, ancient dragons, mutants, ghosts..." Actually, when she said it all at once, it seemed less like boasting and more like something laughably false, but Destyn wasn't the sort of person to doubt an earnest explaination, she thought.

"But then she showed up and told me about a monster here in that tree, who has stolen all the seasons, and since I told her I would help, I've got to do it. That's on me."

The witch stroked Kitty's head, the small large cat closing his eyes and leaning into the pet. The longer she looked at the tree--and it must be Agst'rasera, there was no denying it--the more sour her mood grew. It was reminiscent, a little, of her encounter with Koid a year past. She'd carried the sacred nova-fire within her breast for so long it had been almost impossible to envision a corruption so vast and thorough that she couldn't cleanse it, but in the face of that power darkening the sky...? Well, it felt a lot like being a child again, following her family through the streets of Zaichaer, aware of the potential doom at every turn but utterly unable to do anything about it.

"Can't quite see how a sword is going to work here. I could try becoming a huge snake. D'you think that would help?"

With that last inane question, however, some sense returned, and Imogen realized she'd been babbling. She forced herself to look away from the great Tree, turning to focus on Destyn. "Sorry, never mind that. What are you doing here? Have you brought help from Kalzasi?"

"But, you know Norani? Do all of Orcs know each other, or is this mere coincidence?" His eyes widened, “Or perchance, you know, destiny?” Which sounded annoyingly similar to his name in Common, unless one used the long form as Imogen just had. Perhaps she wouldn’t draw that vexing connection... Which reminded him of how Vhexur sounded like “Vexer” which was sort of his reputation. He wondered whether the trickster god found that as confounding as the Destyn/Destiny connection. Perhaps that was why he identified as Captain Kynne when he’d met him. But then Kynne sounded rather like Kin…

“Oh, hello!” Destyn’s inward musings were interrupted by the sight of Kitty, at whom he smiled and waved delightedly. As Imogen rattled off a litany of Ecithian monsters, Destyn was quick to add:

“Also fire monkeys and the ocean!” His gaze followed hers to the grim sight of that afflicted tree,

“So, that is what has been hurting the world of Ransera? Then Norani’s task is, you know, very important and good. I am happy to help with fixing the world…” Though he wasn’t altogether sure which of his skills might be valuable to such an endeavour. Norani, or at least her spirits, seemed to have seen something in him, so maybe they knew better.

“Becoming a large snake might scare the kitty cat, because kitty cats are afraid of snakes and sometimes, you know, even objects that sort of look like snakes such as cucumbers. I would not want the kitty cat to be scared and also can I pet the kitty cat?” Destyn made puppy-dog eyes to emphasise his kitty cat plea, and held his hands together prayerfully.

“Uhh… I have not brought help, unless I am the help? I can go back and get my friends, maybe… My friend Laurevere who is also my lover is very good at war, I think. He is from, you know, Sol’Valen and he is a knight with a K that you do not say. Also a G and an H that you do not say, but the other night with the stars has those also.”

Lauevere... Lauevere...

The name rattled about in Imogen's skull for a moment, but ultimately failed to set neurons a-sparking. Understandable, perhaps; their only encounter had been very brief, and nearly two years ago. It occasioned no further comment from the ork, who set about dutifully answering the fae lad's flurry of confusing questions and remarks.

"Of course," she said, bringing the feline in question closer to Destyn's waiting arms, "His name's Kitty. Or, well, he has another name, but I think I'm not meant to use it? I'm not entirely up on the particulars of how they do names here. I call him Kitty."



He was, plainly, a juvenile- and just as obviously, from some species of large cat, being already bigger than the domestic sorts usually spotted around and about the towns up North. Sporting jet-black fur, and pale golden eyes which did not blink or look away from the fae'thalan lad as he was brought closer, the cat made no sound at all.

"Don't know exactly what you'd call the breed." the witch admitted, tickling Kitty on the head to no reaction at all, "Picked him up a few days north of that beach we met on. Sometime 'round when the Eclipse happened, some sort of shadow spirit drove all his kind into a killing frenzy, so I got hired to take care of it. Wasn't sure how I was meant to fight something in a different world at first, but then I remembered; anything you touch with your power, it's also touching you, see? A spirit's never really safe from their own works. So I rounded up the cats and got them to hunt and kill the spirit themselves. Reckon his mama didn't make it."

The cat finally moved as she reached Destyn, extending his head with clear intention to sniff him.

"Now, he mostly eats shadows, so keep an eye out or he might take a bite out of yours. It's weird."

The important stuff out of the way, the witch returned her attention to the distant sight of ailing Agst'rasera. The thought of trying to cleanse it with a purifying flame persisted, but she discarded the notion as impractical, even if it made any sense. It had taken everything out of both her and Norani to rip the mists away from the spirit in the Expanse; she had no doubt that the tree could absorb every ounce of aether from every Sunsinger alive without showing the least change.

But maybe that was looking at things the wrong way? Every organism had a means to heal itself, to recover from disease. Perhaps if they killed the beast which Norani had spoken of, within the bark and wood, the tree could recover. That was a task which the Sunsinger felt much more comfortable with.

(In either event, she suspected that becoming a giant snake would not help. It never seemed to.)

"Destiny... I don't know. I expect Norani asked us for help because we were nearby, but we were nearby because Vhexur put us there, and I think the games of the gods are often called destiny. He might have thought we could help. Or perhaps simply that we would offer amusing commentary while events transpire." If that was the case, it was a dirty trick, to get her to perform yet another job without pay. If that golden city he'd promised didn't pan out, she was going to file a complaint with somebody.

"No use hanging about the beach, I suppose. Have you looked about this forest already? Anything worth taking a gander at?"

"Yay!!!" Destyn exclaimed, extending his arms and clenching his fingers in the universal gesture for 'gimme' until 'Kitty' the kitty cat was delivered into his embrace. He leaned to put his face very close to the wide-eyed visage of the feline as his fingers kneaded into his fur.

"I do not know breeds anyhow. I just know that he is cute and I like him." His voice was softer and his manner less frenzied as he naturally transitioned into a more calming demeanour as not to startle Kitty. As Imogen elaborated upon the origin story of her relationship with the cub, his expression darkened... That happened a lot in this grim place. He met Kitty's gaze and spoke with quiet candour,

"My mama, also, did not make it, Kitty." He whispered. "But Imogen is, I think, a good companion for you." He handed Kitty back on that note, perhaps for emphasis.

"Vexing Vhexur determines Destyn's destiny..." The Fae quipped, "...annnnd also Imogen's." He added, as not to exclude her even if he hadn't come up with a florid alliteration to complement her name as he had for himself and their deity in common.

"I... do not like it here, so I did not tarry long. I am sorry. This was, perhaps, not what I was supposed to do, but this place is, for me, daunting. Even now I wish to go, but with you and Kitty here I have the, uhm... Cad é an focal Béarla? Willpower? Willpower to remain." He nodded, sagely.

"I have looked from above, so I know where there are, you know, osbicles in the way." He gestured forward, "Come." His wings twitched to the side slightly, as he trudged up the dune toward the tree line.

The ork carefully retrieved her cat, who was by that point attempting to lick various parts of the Fae lad's body, and almost immediately stooped down to release him. Instead of dropping to the ground, Kitty dropped into it, black fur at first indistinguishable from the shadows, then suddenly one with them. In the span of a second, the little big cat had vanished almost entirely- except for his pale golden eyes, which still peered upwards from the depths of the witch's own outline.

He usually liked to roam a bit more before returning to his supernal hidey-hole; Imogen could only assume that the young cat liked his surrounds no better than did Destyn. Not that she was particularly enthusiastic about the place herself. The immediate environment seemed whole and elementally-rich, but she trusted their instincts. Whatever afflicted the great tree would hardly stop there.

"Just a moment-" she instructed her companion.

Imogen extended an opal-scaled arm--more scaled than usual, she noted, which was a typical fear response for her kind--and conjured her staff from the empty air. An eight foot long length of brass and wood fell into her hand without fanfare, almost identical to the last time Destyn had seen it (and she'd nearly drowned him by mistake), except that the illumite inset at one end had been joined to a bright cut of pyrolith, the twinned stones glowing softly in the staff's head.

Where the Sunsinger's hand touched the shaft, subtle silver fire emerged, and ran in flickering spirals up into the dragonshard-studded head. The witch swung her staff upright, perpendicular to her own body, and closed her eyes, laying another hand upon the inset Dawnstone. It began to slowly brighten, sunlight and fire and nova-fire diluting into little more than particularly bright silvery rays, which washed out some of the riotous elemental colors surrounding them.

This accomplished, the ork let her left hand fall away from the staff and reopened her eyes. She gave Destyn an apologetic look.

"Just in case there is some manner of invisible corruption." she explained, "This will burn up the rainbow mists, if there are any, or at least reveal any shadow-things skulking around."

Kitty released a chiming mewl from beneath his master's feet, looking distinctly annoyed that she'd just burnt up his hiding place, and the ork snorted, leaning down to pick him up again with her left arm and cradling him in the crook. All this accomplished, she set out in the direction Destyn had originally indicating, climbing up the dunes and towards the forest of strange and ominous wonders at the far side of the shore.