applesaucedream | The Fortress of Many Turnings [open]

Current Music: March 22, 2013

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The Fortress of Many Turnings [open]

Welcome to Caerdroia. Though at first glance this world seems calm, even idyllic, closer inspection will reveal a startling lack of linearity. A doorway in one place can suddenly lead to another entirely, the locals going about their business seem totally unaware of your presence, and you may find reminders of home that are less than welcome -- and less than safe.

The countryside seems almost designed to set one at one's ease. Gentle, rolling hills overlook a town in the near distance, and herds of friendly cows cluster here and there (~~with unknown intent~~).

The Garden of Curiosities is a walled-off park. Inside, streams and paths wind through beautiful landscaping, and animals can be found on the loose everywhere. For the most part, these creatures are friendly (or at least indifferent) toward visitors, though their appearance might perturb. One might see an animal one has never encountered before, or one might find the garden inhabited by creatures from one's own world that are somehow changed, whether in size, color, or behavior. And, of course, one might find something rather more predatory has taken up residence….

The town hall never seems to be in the same place twice. Finding your way through the streets to any one particular building is an exercise in frustration, as the town seems to shift and change whenever part of it is out of your sight. The hall itself isn't much better once you get inside; stairwells have a habit of appearing on the ceiling, hallways turn into dead ends while your back is turned, and floors are liable to open up into fathomless pits.

The Labyrinth is where many journeys seem destined to end. The way out is, more often than not, the way in. Try to leave one part of Caerdroia, and the doorway might very well open into the labyrinth. And, like any good labyrinth, this one is home to a Minotaur. And, like any good Minotaur, this one would be more than happy to tear you to pieces.

[OOC: Once again, the shared dream is open to all characters, including those not currently in the game and those belonging to players who are not currently members. Once again, too, players are free to choose whether their characters see the dream for what it is, whether they are forced to abide by its rules, and whether they will remember this in the morning.]

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Handrew nods. "I'm wondering if it's truly universal," he explains. "Well, inter-universal. Pan-universal." There, he's found a term that satisfies him. He'd also like to have the TARDIS scan both Daine and Edgar -- and possibly Almondine -- but the point right now is not to annoy Daine.

He turns his head to glance at the gaping distance before them, only to find that the wall of the garden is suddenly looming just ten feet away. Breaking into a grin, he says, "We're here."

"It could be," Daine says with a nod. "I wouldn't be surprised if animals all have it, anyway, never mind what realm they're from. I'm not sure if every universe has two-leggers with wild magic, though." After all, the reason she has so much is because her da's a god. If other realms don't have gods like hers, they'd have to have some other way for wild magic to make that jump into two-leggers... elsewise, no wild mages.

She blinks in surprise at the wall's sudden appearance, but then her face quickly splits into a grin. "I s'pose we'll soon find out if alien creatures have wild magic."

"Oh!" Andrew looks at Daine with new understanding. "So the animals themselves have it." He's been thinking of it the wrong way, he realizes, and rearranges his understanding of the matter accordingly. "I thought it was all something you did."

Daine blinks, not realizing she hadn't explained that part. Or had she? Well, if she did, it's been some time. "It's something I can do because me and the People have the same sort of magic," she confirms. "But most folk with magic have the Gift, and that doesn't apply to animals."

And speaking of animals, Daine is just going to head along the wall in search of an entrance, tugging Andrew along after her.

"Shared interface," murmurs Andrew thoughtfully. It's a crude metaphor, but it jogs his mind into a new viewpoint effectively enough. He trods after her, content for the moment to be led. It's not as though he has anywhere else to go. "It's like having the same operating system," he tells her brightly, though he ought to know better.

Fortunately for Andrew, Daine's distracted enough by the strange sensation of new and unfamiliar creatures' minds brushing against her own to not be put off by his nattering. She does give him a brief, exasperated glance, though. It's not his need to make comparisons to things he's more familiar with that really irks her so much as the fact that he's always comparing her magic to things she knows nothing about, so she can't correct him if he's misunderstood.

"I wouldn't know," she says simply. And therefore, neither would he, is heavily implied.

A door appears before her mood has a chance to really sour, though, and her face splits into an eager smile as she heads inside.

But making analogies is what Andrews do best! "Or like you're one of those computers that runs both side by side," he adds, not to be deterred. Maybe if she'd let him teach her all about computer science, she'd know what he was talking about and agree with him. Of course, he'd no doubt get bored with teaching her after ten minutes and run off after something else.

He glances up at the sign near the door -- "Garden of Curiosities, that was it!" -- and looks at Daine with an ambivalent look. He's glad she's happy, but he doesn't think she realizes just how dangerous all of this may well be.

Honestly, why does he even need to compare her magic to computers? She's already explained it as clearly as she can. He's just making things needlessly complicated.

And he'll have to forgive her cheerfulness. She's come across dangerous immortals before, and she's confident in her own abilities to handle herself. It's what she does.

A few steps in, she stops, listening hard. Oh, but this is interesting. And amidst all the strangeness, she realizes with a jolt of pleasure that there's a chiming note she recognizes.

"This way," she tells Andrew as she hauls him off to the left and through an ivy-draped archway. On the other side is a smooth expanse of manicured lawn. And sunning itself in the middle of said lawn is an enormous creature that certainly isn't native to New York. Sitting up on its haunches, it's a good six feet tall at the shoulder. Its body is like a cat's, feathered in brown and gold. The feathers help the feline features blend seamlessly with its eagle-shaped head, and its huge wings are spread to catch the sun.

"That," Daine says with a grin, "is a griffin."

But has she ever encountered an obelat? No one can handle the obelat, or so Handy has been told. He hasn't exactly encountered one himself, and despite his residual curiosity from all those lifetimes ago, he still remembers C'rizz's insistence that he really ought not to seek out an encounter. He's watching for anything familiar as they go, and for anything dangerously unfamiliar. It's not that he's not interested, but this is an illusion of an illusion of a dangerous place, and it's been constructed for unknown purposes.

His mouth drops open at the sight Daine brings him to. "Yes," he says, awed. Then he frowns. "...I meant to say 'no.'"

Daine has enough time to give Handrew an amused look before the griffin blinks its eyes open - his eyes, presuming all males have the same coloring. The female griffins she's seen are a bit less flashy, the better to blend in with the rocks they nest upon. She holds her breath as the creature's alien gaze sweeps over them. There's a ripple of movement at his haunches, as if he's considering launching himself into the air.

"Sorry to intrude," Daine says, not wanting it to leave just yet. It's not very often she gets to see creatures from home, after all. Guessing that this griffin might be as susceptible to flattery as the last one she met, she tries, "We only wanted to admire you. My friend's never seen a griffin before."

It was the right thing to say. The griffin folds his wings neatly and preens his chest feathers.

"One of the few things I haven't," agrees Andrew, the words tripping off his tongue. He gazes in a suitably admiring fashion at the creature, hazarding a few steps forward. "But you're gorgeous! Much better than the giant rabbit I saw here last time, don't you think, Daine? I haven't told you about the rabbit, have I? Did you hatch from an egg?"

That last question is directed back at the griffin. Handrew listens expectantly, eyes shining.

"You haven't mentioned any giant rabbits, no," Daine replies to his second question. She can't help but grimace a little as the griffin replies to the third. She'd forgotten how loud they are, and she can guess how well it would go over if she asked him to lower his voice a bit. It takes her a few moments to get ahold of the translation, and the griffin repeats himself insistently.

"Okay," she says, lifting a hand, "I understand." To Andrew, she says, "He wants to know why you're asking. Griffins are very protective of their young." The creature's manner has changed; he's no longer preening himself, and is staring at Andrew intently while he waits for an answer.

Ah, and he's already managed to annoy it. Time to go on about how he's a scientifically-minded individual out to learn about the universe and use that knowledge for good.

"Because I'm nosy," he blurts.

Daine bites back a grin. Griffin expressions aren't the easiest thing to read, but if she were to hazard a guess, she'd say the creature looked just a little bit taken aback. He recovers himself quickly enough, reassured by the response (it is honest, after all). A few notes chime in her mind, and Daine nods.

"They do, he says. They like to nest on cliffs along the sea, where it's harder for any predators to reach them." And by 'predators,' she mostly means humans. Even the nastiest immortals she knows probably wouldn't risk tangling with two furious adult griffins just to make a meal out of a young one. But griffin feathers are valuable things - so much so that a human might venture to rob a nest if they were greedy or desperate enough.

"Predators?" Andrew looks back and forth between Daine and his new best friend disbelievingly. "Maybe for eggs," he allows dubiously, "But I'd expect Mum to have something to say about that. Predators, really? Are there things bigger than you, then? I mean, 'course there are, but things that go after eggs?"

Daine suppresses another wince as the griffin replies. "Every creature has predators," Daine informs him; the griffin needn't trouble himself explaining that much. "But it's humans that are most likely to try and rob a griffin's nest. This one says that humans used to steal their young for shields."

Andrew would reply that he doesn't have any predators, but he's aware he'd spew a series of qualifications afterward -- assuming he could get it out at all.

"I'd like to say I'm surprised," he sighs. How did he manage to turn this conversation to the topic of kidnapping? "I'm not entirely human, if that helps," he adds, going right ahead and throwing Daine and the rest of her species under the bus.

Daine wrinkles her nose, not appreciating being tossed under said bus - though not for the reason he thinks. "Neither am I," she says before she can think to stop herself. After a few ringing notes from the griffin, she adds, "Not that he cares about particulars. He says you look and sound human." The griffin ruffles its feathers distastefully, and Daine adds, "Hurts his ears, he says."

"Well, I'm not," says Andrew sharply, feelings a bit hurt. "I could say you look like a big cat-bird, but I didn't until just now because I wasn't deliberately trying to insult you yet."

He scowls, having meant to say 'because I have something called tact.'

Oh, good - Andrew's distracted enough by the griffin's insult to have missed her little slip. Her relief is short-lived, though, as the griffin's response is loud enough to hurt. Gritting her teeth until the pain passes, she debates whether or not to translate it. Her hesitation earns her a haughty look from the creature, and she sighs. Andrew really isn't going to like this, is he?

"He says the real insult would be the idea that we're his friends," she says, cheeks reddening. As the griffin looks down its beak at Andrew, it occurs to her that maybe she should have mentioned earlier that griffins can be snobs.

Can be? Andrew is unpleasantly reminded of certain Time Lords he's known, though the addition of the beak is more or less an improvement. He reddens as well, wounded despite himself. "Who'd want to be his friend?" he asks bitterly, then deliberately words the next part as a question as well to be sure he'll be able to say it. "Do you use a litterbox?" he asks the griffin. "Do you need friends to come scoop it clean for you, is that why you brought it up?"

If the griffin had only understood Andrew's words, the insult might have escaped him. It's not as if he knows what 'litterbox' means, after all. But he understands the ideas behind Andrew's words well enough, and before Daine can get a word in, the griffin lets out a furious shriek. Huge wings snap open, and the creature rears onto his hind legs, drawing back a taloned foreleg in readiness to strike.

"No!" Daine throws herself between the griffin and Andrew. She plants one hand on Andrew's chest and pushes him back, the other is raised toward the griffin in appeasement - and warning. "Stop it!" she orders the creature, underscoring the words with her magic. The griffin refrains from lashing out at her, but she's still buffeted by the wind his wings create as he heaves himself back a few paces. Glancing reproachfully back at Andrew, she adds, "Both of you! We don't have to be friends, but we don't need to fight, either."

Andrew doesn't put up any resistance to being pushed back -- indeed, he's already stumbling backwards, his stricken expression revealing his surprise at the severity of the upcoming consequences to his words. He grabs at Daine, instinctively wanting to take her by the hand and run, but the moment of danger passes before he can get a good 'run!' out.

Mouth flapping like that of a fish, Andrew looks between Daine and the griffin that almost eviscerated him a moment ago. "He started it!"

And look at that, it's even the truth...from Andrew's perspective, anyhow.

The griffin hisses, feathers literally and metaphorically ruffled. Daine's mental apology does little to appease it, and it chimes a huffy farewell before taking off over the wall. She watches the creature go, pressing her lips together into a thin line. All right, so she shouldn't have expected much better from a griffin. Perhaps she shouldn't have expected much better from Andrew, either. At the moment, though, what strikes her most is that she finally got to see another creature from her realm - a bit of home - and Andrew chased it off.

"Well, I hope you're pleased," she says, crossing her arms tightly.

"Me?" Andrew is incredulous as only Andrew can be. "What did I do?"

While he knows full well that he didn't handle that as maturely as he might have, it does not occur to him to think that Daine is actually all that broken up about losing the griffin's company. The creature didn't exactly seem overfond of her, either.

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wildmage_daine - 2013-10-05 16:24 (UTC) - Expand

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bluesuit_handy - 2013-10-06 07:40 (UTC) - Expand

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