Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn From: hutch@hutch (Stephen Hutchison) Subject: Taking ...sage back to Generica the short way Message-ID: <1992Jul2.004834.13196@intelhf.hf.intel.com> References: <1992Jul1.111058.1@economics.adelaide.edu.au> Date: Thu, 2 Jul 92 00:48:34 GMT In article <1992Jul1.111058.1@economics.adelaide.edu.au> pcalvert@economics.adelaide.edu.au writes: >ADMIN : 'Raelf, could you pick up my pack by the table too, please :) > > ...sage You got it. Characters: ...sage, 'Raelf, Mother thread 'Raelf toyed with the crystalline shard of Truth, as ...sage wove his tale. OUCH - sharp truth, suddenly much sharper - magic surge. He had cut his thumb. FLICK. the wound was gone, along with the rune. "...sage? What's happening?" he started to ask, as his sense of reality suddenly skewed while the room convulsed around them. Thunder in the clouds overhead. Tingling coldness in the voice of the wind. "Magical discharges," ...sage commented, "and not the stuffy rituals that this world has. This could be disastrous if it goes off in the wrong place." He rose to his feet. "I must do something about it." He walked to the door, stepped out onto the entry walk. Lightning struck nearby, and the room shook. 'Raelf began muttering in 'kani to himself - <> and the room stopped swirling around him as the dimensional loci restabilized. "...sage?" He looked around. The door was open. Wind whipped in. "Ralph? Is something happening?" Debi called from the hallway door, holding her robe shut tightly against the sudden chill. "Nothing, I hope, just a storm. Mr. Sage has gone outside to see what it was just got hit. I'm going after him." 'Raelf reached over the back of the couch and picked up a shiny, wooden short-board, about six feet long and polished to a deep rosewood glow. The runes carved into the side flickered in the flux of otherworld magic. Debi stared, uncomprehending. "Debi, if I don't get back in time for tomorrow's contest, please let Ito-san know that I was called away on an emergency." He grabbed the pack next to the table, the one ...sage had left. The board twitched in his hand as a continuum wave brushed through the room. "Uh oh," he said, and sprinted out the door. Debi followed as far as the door, in time to see Mr. Sage on the front walk, transfixed. A continual bolt of lightning was playing across a building in the lee crescent of the hill, the Miskatonic University Library. Then with a blazing flash, it was arcing around Mr. Sage, silently - SILENTLY - holding him in place, one hand reaching spasmodically to Ralph. Who reached for him, FLICKER, then in a silent explosion of color, the lightning, and they were gone, both of them. Not even a scorched spot on the walk. She stared, numbly, for a minute, then walked to the phone and dialed 911. "Emergency operator? The Miskatonic Library just ate my houseguests." "Not again," came the voice from the other end. --------------------- Darkness. Light. smoke. Approaching clamor of bells barking receding fading. Oin. Ain. Aip. Paig. Pain. Yes. That was the word. Where is this place? Oh. This has to be the astral plane. The blue light. What was that tugging. Power trying to escape - mustn't let it go, not safe here. Shore up the wards, tighten the protections... Now, look around. They were on a rock, about a hundred feet in diameter, a small volcano steaming fitfully at his feet. A rose, under a glass dome, dormant right now. A sheep in a box nearby. And there was 'Raelf, tail bushed and ears flattented, flat on his back, being given a drink of water by a young boy, no more than eight, with red-gold hair. After a quiet word between them, the boy went over and sat down by the rose, watching quietly but not disturbing them. "...sage" 'Raelf said, rainbow eyes flickering as he suddenly consolidated himself and the human form of David Berensen stood up. He looked around, then walked over to the horizon, pulled his board out of a dormant volcano. Then the pack which had fallen at the base of the volcano. "'Raelf, I have to reach a higher-magic plane, so I can safely discharge this energy." ...sage twitched, inhaling in short breaths to keep from jarring loose the store of power. "I don't think this is a good place." "What is it?" 'Raelf asked him, unclipping his belt pouch. He opened the compartment, pulled out a fist-sized amulet, and stripped off his clothes. "It's a seeking spell, I think, and I may have cast it myself inadvertently." The pale pink eyes narrowed momentarily as ...sage set his will to holding the power in check. Good. So far, it had quieted. "I don't think so, I'd have seen it form on our end. The Truth rune, remember. And besides, you don't just accidentally cast something with that much power. I bet it's something that the being we were talking about was sending, and you just caught its attention." 'Raelf folded his clothes up and somehow got them to fit into the small pouch. He touched the amulet and muttered in 'kani, <>. It slumped into a rubbery mass, which 'Raelf unfolded to reveal a black bodysuit, brightly trimmed in animal patterns. He began, quickly but deliberately, putting it on and closing the seals. ...sage pondered the thought - had "Mother" been looking for him, she'd doubtless have sent him something fatal, but it might well have been stripped of lethality by the hundreds of realities between them. Still, his words had called it. "All the more reason not to let it go - it might lead the being to us." "Fine. Then let's return the favor. How well do you handle raw chaos?" "Well enough, I suppose. As long as it doesn't touch me too long." "OK, I'll avoid the Egger route." The board drifted, slowly, towards 'Raelf. He snapped a tether line between his ankle and the board, then fastened a second one to ...sage. "Hold onto your pack and sit here between these two runes." ...sage complied, sitting in a loose half-lotus position on the board. A faerie-fire glow arose, covering him protectively. 'Raelf stood on the board, one leg to ...sage's left, the other planted on the board behind him. He took a last glance around them for anything they might have forgotten, then pulled an amber shield down across his eyes. "You might not want to look too closely at any one thing. Just watch our bow crest and you should avoid getting reality-sick." He waved at the young boy. "Thank you, your Highness. Hope the Rose is doing well." Without any sense of motion the rock receded. The pale blue astral took on the color of iron around them. A sort of ripple was forming at the point of the board, but it stopped before it hit the ring of runes. ...sage sat, focussing on holding in the charge of magic, while 'Raelf shifted around on the board above him. There was a flash of flame, of cold, a sudden sense of weightless vertigo - they were in a reality, in the trackless void of space, and before them was blazing smoke-ring sun, which collapsed around them as they headed for its interior. A wormhole rip formed in front of them, and somehow they were inside it... Darkness, then Colors shifted around them and ::LURCH:: a sense of timeless and impending evil, a graveyard stench, no motion, 'Raelf frantically paddling along the energy trace of the spell, then calling out, <> and flames blazed around them and the evil was gone as they skipped off the top of the Darken Realm, 'Raelf shouting << Sorry, I'm following the spell back to its source>> and ringing flatly the sound of bells followed as the music of the spheres receded behind them, another Astral plane, a timelessness, a ring of flame then flashing fire all around, slipping, sliding, cresting towards a darkness then arcing out of the incindiary blast of the burning forest, over the top of the mountain, through the contrail of the flying lizard, slipping sideways as the red-flaming eye turned, FLICK ::LURCH:: <> FLICK the bow wave showed DOWN and in the sudden calm, ...sage looked around them. They were in a tube, 'Raelf crouched low, weight shifting back and forth as he worked them up and down the sparkling trail of energy that was ravelling around them, trying to join with the rest of itself which ...sage held within himself, but the power was held off by the sphere of reality around the board. A curious sense of timelessness held him - was it eons, or seconds, that passed? <> and 'Raelf grinned and ducked as a pocket reality crested and vanished over his head. He shook droplets of water from his hair, which burst into ice and vanished as flame. ...sage wondered briefly what would happen if they were to stop suddenly. <> and 'Raelf indicated the accumulated arcs of magical power, <>> Ahead of them the sparkling trail ran into a solid rock wall. 'Raelf kicked them forward into the wall, and ... Reality crashed over them and in a meteoric blaze, they came into phase between the two towers guarding the bay. [ADMIN] : OK, ...sage, your turn. All this is by permission. Don't use ...sage without first contacting pcalvert, please don't use 'Raelf without first contacting me, and I don't know where he's going to end up wiping out.