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From: stiltman@teleport.com (Stilt Man)
Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn
Subject: [Tor][AD] Blue Revelation
Date: 6 Aug 1995 19:36:25 -0700
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[ADMIN:  Well, it took us a while, due to my being both much more busy and
much more confused of late, but we got it done.  For those who haven't read
this in so long that they can't remember, Arcania is my character, Emrikol
belongs to Corey Venour, owner of one of the APDI home pages at the URL of
http://www.cit.gu.edu.au/~cvenour/dragons-inn, and Shifter the shapeshifter
(who has such a wonderfully creative name because he can't remember a better
one that belongs to him) belongs to Alex Young, the terrible Romulan super-spy.
(inside joke there).  Roll tape . . .]

Emrikol woke up with a start, leaping to his feet and prepared to fight on
the instant.  When he got the chance to notice that he was still imprisoned
inside a circle in the sanctum of Arcania Dorval, he calmed somewhat, but
not entirely.  He smiled at himself despite the peril of his situation:  even
though some aspect of his prison was keeping his runes dark and impotent, his
reflex and inner strength was not diminished.

Arcania looked up from her study of the mirror in which the shapeshifter was
still imprisoned at the sound of his sudden jump to motion, coming into a
defensive stance of her own at the abrupt interruption of the silence.  She
seemed not to even notice Shifter clawing away at the surface that looked like
glass only a few inches away from her own head.  She was attired in little more
than the loincloth he himself wore, merely a loose-fitting shirt to cover
herself.  It did little good for his senses once he laid eyes on her, and it
was not until he forced himself to look away that his pulse slowed.  Something
about her in this place was setting him at odds with the person he knew himself
to be, and it frustrated him.

The memory of the journey throughout numerous dimensions was still strong in
his mind.  His eyes had been opened quite a bit to the nature of this sultry
archfoe he had found for himself by that trip between worlds.  Before, it had
been easy to just ignore any virtues she may have had and just fight her as
a faceless enemy, no more worthy of his sympathies than the beasts he had
fought in the Labyrinth.  Now that he had seen a glimpse of some of the good
she had accomplished, of the immense perspective she had on the worlds of the
multiverse, he was no longer so easily visualizing her as an unquestionably
evil foe bent on conquest.

The fact that Kryalla had brought him to that conclusion also made him wonder
about just how much of what Kryalla had told him about herself and Arcania was
true.  Despite the fact that his instincts told him he should trust the
Shrouded One, Arcania had indeed given him far more reason to be trusted.  She
had bared a great deal to him, taken a great risk in bringing him unhindered
through numerous different worlds, a confrontation on any of which could have
resulted in both of them being stranded.  If he were a self-sacrificing sort,
she would have faced a real risk of losing all she had in guiding him on this
tour of universes.

Kryalla, on the other hand, risked nothing and told him less of her true
nature, her goals, or her motivations.  He had utterly no insight into her
psyche -- except that he knew that she was totally alone in the world, and
that she ached for the companionship of equals.  Ironically enough, Kryalla
in this way was virtually identical to her enemy.

He caught himself at that.  He had referred to Arcania as merely Kryalla's
enemy, no longer _their_ enemy.  He wondered . . . did he still think of
Arcania as an enemy?  He sure as hell didn't trust the woman, he knew that
much.  But a real enemy?

He certainly hadn't treated her as one when they got back from the tour, a
mischievous voice inside him spoke up.  He couldn't help but blush at the
thought.  That part of his memory was hazy, but not so hazy that he had any
doubts as to the . . . interesting nature of the journey's denouement.

"Thinking of taking a second thrust at it?" Arcania interrupted his thoughts.
His blush deepened.  Damn it, did _every_ woman he got involved with have the
power to read his mind?  Arcania smiled wickedly at the thorough decomposure
of his dignity.  "I fear that I cannot grant a second tryst just yet," she
cooed with pity dripping from her voice, "for it is time for your erstwhile
ally to have a turn."

"Is he going to enjoy it as much as I did?" he said sardonically.

Arcania screwed her face into an incredulous expression.  "You actively
believe I would willingly share my bedsheets with *that*?!" she said, spitting
the last word as her finger pointed at the amorphous thing that ferociously
attempted to escape its own cell.

The attempt to imagine such a collusion brought Emrikol to giggling.  Arcania
joined in with a short laugh herself, then shook her head and turned toward
the metamorph imprisoned behind the complex spells that disguised themselves
as a simple mirror.  "No, my little beastie," she addressed the unhearing
creature in a low tone, suddenly seeming oblivious to Emrikol's presence, "you
will indeed be tested in a world apart from this one.  Then we shall see just
what you can do . . ."

			=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Shifter wasn't sure where he was, or if he was going to be able to get out.
However, he had his suspicions that wherever he was, the woman who had
entrapped him here probably could see him, and thus he acted the part of the
vicious, stupid beast trying to fight his way out, hoping to lull that unseen
foe into complacency, to think that he would never rise above this state.

Indeed, a few pieces of his mind were beginning to come together for him,
and with them came a cunning born of centuries of scheming.  Some of those
memories seemed quite useful, explaining much of how he had arrived at this
state.  However, much of his past was still a black hole in his psyche.  It
was slowly coming back, but most of it was still gone.  He was aware enough
of himself to know that he would remember the rest in time, but time was
something he needed to play for here.  The woman had chosen not to try to
kill him -- indeed, she had seemed to take great care not to, more fool she --
and he suspected that so long as she believed him to be nothing more than a
mindless beast, she would continue to exhibit such mercy.

Perhaps even long enough for him to learn something of her weaknesses.

When the hole in space appeared, he recoiled back, sniffing at it as a hound
sniffs at an object cast to it.  He still could see nothing of the world
beyond this tiny prison, if indeed there was such to see, but he did not let
his facade down.

With a caution that at first was not truly feigned, he stepped through the
hole and found himself free.

			=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

The creature seemed nervous to approach the portal she opened for him, but
gingerly it made its way to the crevice and stepped from the mirror, taking
shape upon the world Arcania had chosen to free him upon.  The place was
barren, and much about it reminded her of Yathulas.  However, there was one
simple difference:  there was not a single living soul upon this plane.  The
reasons why were unknown, even to her; the place was quite capable of
sustaining life, barren though it was, and there were no true predators here
to hound any who might have once lived on this globe.  There were ruins
aplenty, leaving her to wonder what disaster had befallen the civilization
here long ere it had come to her notice.

The thing came down upon all sixes, forming an extra pair of hind legs to lend
extra leaping power to the claws on its forelegs.  The power of the super-
natural wafted from it as strongly as before, and Arcania found herself
marvelling at the thing despite herself.  She assumed a cloak of art, and was
instantly invisible to the naked eye.

The shapeshifter seemed to sniff at the air around it, effecting the appearance
of the blind thing that detects its enemies by scent alone.  Arcania took
note of the wind, and immediately she was down its path from the monstrosity.
This did not seem to discourage it, as slowly it began to shuffle in her
direction despite her position.

Then the thing halted.  It seemed to catch a scent that displeased it greatly.
Arcania frowned, for the shapechanger was not facing her when this expression
appeared.  Its eyes narrowed as it shifted forth and back, attempting to get
a better point of view to whatever it had spotted, until finally its blank
yellow eyes widened in shock.  Arcania turned the direction it faced, seeing
the ruins of what had once been a large city.  The architecture of this city
was strange in the extreme by human standards, but that was little new to
her.  What was new to her was that she could sense little of what the creature
seemed to notice.

There was an aura of magic to this place, perhaps one that was even somewhat
similar to that of the shapeshifter itself.  Arcania was not pleased by this.
Raising a hand, she gestured towards the creature.

The creature stopped short in its tracks, cringing for a moment as pain and
fear broke through its body.  Its shape lost cohesion, flowing and twisting
in an attempt to find a material that could resist this attack, to little
avail.  This was an attack of the mind, and no shape of matter could make up
for the simple strength of will to resist such.

The monster completely turned to a heap of goo in its attempts to resist,
instinct forcing it into shape after shape in its futile attempt to end the
pain in its skull.  It racked its pained mind to find a way to resist . . .
and then something came to it.  It resumed a humanoid shape, not greatly
different from that of the man that had helped restore him to sentience.
The runes on his flesh were jumbled, and would have seemed incomprehensible
to the man.  The individual marks were as those on Emrikol's skin, Arcania
observed, but they formed no true pattern.  It was as if a child attempting
to write had simply assembled letters in a random order in a search for a
word.  However, some of the chaotic patterns around the beast's head lit up,
and much of his mystical resistance seemed to focus around that part of its
form.  The pain cleared, subsided.

The azure eyes of Arcania Dorval narrowed.  Her mystical sight peered at the
creature anew, trying to learn the extent of this protection.  She turned
her assault upon it into a more physical one, divining that this shield it
seemed to have formed for itself only protected the head.  A brilliant jolt
of energy lanced it in the heart, blowing a great hole in its chest.  Its
form seemed to loosen around the wounded part, ere it slithered back into a
whole.  The flesh seemed to shift slightly in color, Arcania saw.  She struck
with a second, identical blow, and this time its stance seemed to hold more
solidly, the substance of its shape giving less over to the attack.  The
creature seemed to completely ignore the third.

"I do say, dear madame, might I request that you cease blasting me, so that
we might get to know each other better?" the creature that now looked like
Emrikol with a motley polyglot of runes scribed on his flesh said to her.

She did not even seem to hear him.  She looked at him for a second, then
brought a fourth blast to bear upon him, this time turning it upon the gut
when she saw that the runes on his chest, not his head, were now glowing.
The blast was different in color, different in nature, and different in the
manner of its attack.  The first had been direct force, this was more
lightning-like in its way.  The energy crackled into the body of the
shapechanger, jolting it from its feet.

It seemed to give a half-human roar.  "How can we make peace if you don't
stop SHOOTING me?!"  The humanoid thing advanced on her, then stopped as
she moved suddenly, her cloak of art protecting the site of her sudden
transportation to a position almost directly behind it.

She held the cloak as long as she could, as the creature sniffed away at the
air again, eventually returning his facing to her exact spot.  Arcania looked
more closely at the way he sniffed this time.  It was as though he were not
truly smelling the air in the normal sense of the words . . . he was smelling
at something more profound, as though he could "smell" the way reality really
was.

Arcania walked towards Shifter, a glint of light appearing in her eyes.
Shifter caught sight of her as she dropped the spells that were not fully
concealing her, and his beady eyes met hers.  She bore down into his vision
with the spells of gaze assault, the color of the glint in her eyes shifting
quickly.  Pain began to show on its face as it attempted to turn its defenses
to resist one attack, only to see the method of attack shift, the spell and
the forces it called upon change.  One would cause fatigue, the next would
case pain, a third threatened to turn him to stone (this was one of the least
effective, Arcania noted), a fourth assailed the soul in an attempt to slowly
snuff out the life within, a fifth brought itching, a seventh was pain again,
only more of a dull ache than the stabbing agony that appeared before.  From
green to red to pink to blue the color of the glint associated with each spell
appeared in her eyes, and Shifter was finally forced to shift to a shape that
possessed no eyes, relying on his strange "smell" to keep aware of his enemy
once more.

Shifter, by this point, was less than thrilled with his situation.  He could
keep track of his enemy well enough, and could probably even survive her
attacks for quite some time.  However, he was completely on the defensive,
and he was quickly realizing that defensive shapeshifting such as this was
dangerous to his mental faculties.  He had just begun to recover some of his
memory, and he was not interested in losing it shortly afterward.  This place
was strong with the Power, something that had jolted more of his true self
back to the fore.  He had to use it, or this woman would slowly wear him down.

Arcania saw the new energy being emitted from Shifter, and for a moment she
stopped, not sure what it was.  Before, the creature had relied solely on
focusing its innate defenses to serve itself, by disrupting magic enough so
that it was less harmful or by shapeshifting to a form that was immune to it.
However, this was something completely different.  It was almost as if Shifter
was casting a spell, but Arcania knew of most every method for doing so used
in the multiverse, and this somehow did not seem like magic to her.

She did not like this at all.

She began to conjure the necessary portal through which the Geyser of Death
would flow.

Arcania felt the portal she was conjuring lurch and twist.  Instinctively,
she effected a defensive transport spell just before the acid she had intended
to use as a weapon exploded through the wild portal in all directions.  Shifter
shrieked as the acid splashed all over him, a high-pitched noise that caused
Arcania to cover her ears the moment she reappeared in a safer place.

Her jaw dropped when she looked at the shapeshifter.

He was still there.  The entire area around him was seared and melted, but
the shapeshifter himself was still standing, with only a small hunk of him that
had been struck by the acid first having disentigrated when the fountain had
splashed him.  The rest of him had taken on a discolored shape, a sickening
green, that had somehow managed to resist the acid.  Arcania's mind worked
furiously.  This was something she had not encountered before.  She had
destroyed demon lords whole with the Geyser of Death.  The only time before
that she had seen anything survive it was by transporting themself away before
it struck them.  Never had anything she had ever seen taken the acid and
survived.

Her eyes were narrowed to slits, her body becoming transparent in an attempt
to conceal herself.  She wanted out of here.  Now.  But she dared not attempt
a portal to escape this barren world if the creature was disrupting such
things with its own conjuring.  And if it could survive the Geyser of Death,
fighting would be futile unless a new method could be devised, she knew.

For the first time in centuries, Arcania Dorval actually knew fear.  The
situation had escaped her control, gotten out of hand, and she liked it not
at all.

Shifter completed his own portal.  Arcania threw up a hand to shield her eyes
as a blinding blue gash opened in reality.

Arcania stepped back from the shapechanger, working her concealment spells
to their most potent extent and covering that with the strongest magical
shield she could conjure without ruining her concealment spells.  It was
at that point that she lowered her hand and gazed out at what Shifter was
doing.

He had opened a Vortex.

Her mouth opened, agape at the realization of what the shapeshifter had
done.  It was smaller, not as wild as the one K'al controlled on Tor'el,
but the thing was indeed a small Vortex.  Shifter himself seemed surprised
at what he had done, for an instinctive action it had been, but he quickly
recognized that this gave him an offense that might allow him to do more
against Arcania than merely take her blows as she chose.

The Vortex brightened, a terrible wind rising to draw up dust and small
rocks, sucking them into the weeping wound in the world, causing it to
pulse and glow brighter.  Shifter's eyes glittered with the same blue light,
as he moved the new Vortex's energy through himself and into a lance of
azure power straight at Arcania.

The bolt launched the nymph from her feet, knocking her back but failing
to otherwise penetrate her defenses.  Arcania saw the creature sniffing at
the air again, sniffing at reality that it seemed to know and be able to
rend asunder at will, seeking her out despite her concealment spells.  Her
mind raced for an answer to this question.

She began to conjure a portal.  The Vortex was disrupting her attempts on this
side, which meant that she would need aid from the other side.  The only place
she could get that aid in a manner potent enough to succeed in opening it was
to open one to her own sanctum, where she controlled virtually all magic that
existed.

She punched the hole in reality, trying to just get the slightest pin prick
through to the Great Tower in her capital.  She gasped with exertion, and
dropped her futile concealment spells in order to conserve energy for this
spell.  She moved her shielding spells so that they only covered the side that
was toward the shapeshifter, straining her conjuring to her sanctum as hard as
she could.  She knew she risked opening a wild gate that might prove even more
destructive to this world than the Vortex, but she cared not.  The only things
here to destroy were herself and Shifter, and she was most probably dead if she
failed anyway.

She managed to puncture a small gate to her sanctum.  She saw that much, and
relaxed.  The sanctum's spells sensed that their mistress was calling upon
them, and answered.  The disruption of the Vortex on her side of the gate was
paltry compared to the local mastery spells that kept solid control of the
magic on the other side.  The gate opened, and her sanctum beckoned.

She looked back at Shifter.  There was no way she could allow this thing to
keep control of the Vortex on this side, simply leave him running loose here.
Having one Vortex to potentially deal with, on Tor'el, was bad enough.  She
was damned if she would tolerate a second.

But what to conjure through to close it?  She had only two things that might
possibly contain the force or the knowledge to aid her in this situation.
The Necklace contained the force, but it was not in her sanctum, hidden away
instead in vaults beneath the city.

All of which left her only one option.

			=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Emrikol sighed as he pondered the fate he expected he would meet at Arcania's
hands soon.  He sat dejected in the circle of green light, scriped on the
floor, that she had imprisoned him in, frustrated at again knowing the feeling
of helplessness whenever she had him ensnared like this.  How to escape?

He saw the portal open, chuckling as he expected to see Arcania dragging the
broken, bloodied shapeshifter back to her sanctum, to be returned to the
mirror where he had been imprisoned before.  That was, of course, assuming
she had left enough of him to bother putting back.

He was quite unprepared when the circle around vanished as though it had
never existed, and he was wrenched from the floor as though a giant had
roughly picked him up and had thrown him through the portal.

He landed on dusty, bleak gray soil, with a tinge of blue from some bright
light that was shining on it.

Emrikol turned to wonder what was happening, and was astounded to see a
vaguely humanoid shape, covered in dark green flesh with glowing blue eyes,
wielding the force granted him by a thing that he could only describe as a
Vortex, only smaller than the one he had known on his shattered world, to
pummel Arcania with the Vortex motion through his hands.  He watched as the
creature took a strike from a lance of energy from his enemy, and a hole
opened in his chest where his heart should have been.  The hole widened for
a moment, then closed in an almost liquid fashion.

It was at this point that Emrikol realized he was looking at Shifter.

Emrikol looked, stunned, at the blue tear in reality the shapeshifter was
using as his weapon.  His view was obstructed occasionally when Arcania
attempted to fight back, but as ever, the shapeshifter was taking the blows,
shunting the energy into displacement of parts of his shape, and reforming
while fighting back.

That Shifter used this force so casually, as though he was born to it, opened
up a great range of questions that Emrikol did not like whatsoever.  Emotion
at what the first Vortex had done to his world finally found a vent, against
this inhuman thing that had dropped into his life but recently.

Shifter caught the "scent" of the new arrival, but dismissed him quickly as
a tactical concern after seeing that it was only the man he had known before.
The runes leapt from Emrikol's skin, duplicating themselves into patterns of
light in the air, and twisting the probabilities as they hurtled at Shifter.
But the crazed warp of probability created by the Vortex caused the runes to
crumble as they approached the polymorph, sucking them in with the rest of the
dust.

Emrikol refused to stop, refused to allow for any thoughts of defeat in his
mind.  His runes took shape around himself, invoked the possibility that the
Vortex would answer to his commands much like his power font back home.  The
runes strained at first, then a green light mixed with them and strengthened
them.  The twin magicks of Emrikol and Arcania merged, turning Emrikol's
runes in the air to a blue-green color that swirled into a pattern around
him, twisting probability in his favor.

A field of white light took shape, forming a sphere around the Vortex that
floated near Shifter's head.  The winds that told of the dimensional hole's
hunger subsided, as the flow of energy and matter into it was cut off.
Arcania saw that this was proving effective, and continuted to lend Emrikol
the strength of her own magic, not caring what happened so long as the man
succeeded in saving them both.  She began to feel faint, a haze of red creeping
into her vision from the blows she had taken, before in the Inferno and now
here.  She gritted her teeth, knowing that if she allowed oblivion to claim
her now, she would never escape its embrace.  Emrikol could not do this
alone, and neither could she.

But it was too late.  She felt the blood trickle into her right eye, and knew
that she was bleeding in the head beyond her spells' ability to heal without
her concentration.  But she needed her concentration to assist Emrikol's
spell.

She cast the green light away, giving it the command to take on its own life
without her assistance, and clutched her hand to the wound above her eye,
sinking to her knees.  The spell took hold, but its healing power so near
her mind took its toll, and she fell into a healing sleep.

Emrikol did not notice.  Nor did he notice that the blue runes on his flesh
were now becoming blue-green, as the spell that had been commanded to support
itself did so in its own way, irrespective of Arcania's priorities.  The runes
took on a new life of their own, clamping their hold on the Vortex tightly,
starving it of the matter and energy it needed to survive.  The glow of light
dimmed and began to subside, finally closing away completely.  The Vortex was
sealed.

Emrikol looked around, trying to find Shifter in all of this.  The polymorph
was nowhere to be found, for which Emrikol found himself almost half-glad.  He
turned to see Arcania, quite unconscious nearby.

Part of him was quite tempted to slit her throat and end her scourge upon the
multiverse right then and there.  Part of him realized she had saved his life,
only to be reminded by the first part that she had brought him to danger in the
first place.  The part of him that wanted to spare her pointed out that if she
had not done so, he very possibly would have never known the threat that
Shifter posed to him, that Shifter very possibly was behind the Vortex on
Tor'el as well as this one here on whatever rock Arcania had brought them to,
if Arcania had not summoned him here.  The part of him that wanted to kill her
began to run down a list of the evils he knew that this woman had committed,
and several more that he could only imagine from what Kryalla had told him.
The part of him that wanted to spare her reminded him that he had only
Kryalla's word on this, and that Kryalla was not exactly the fountain of
information and enlightenment in the world.  The part that wanted to kill her
pointed out that he was only in love with Kryalla.  The part that wanted to
spare Arcania asked rhetorically, are you sure?  Some of the acts he had
partaken of in Arcania's bed did not suggest that his heart was particularly
attached to Kryalla.

The shame of the thought stayed his hand.  Perhaps even greater was his shame
that it had taken him this long to even remember that Kryalla existed.  His
mother had looked at the Shrouded One as a future daughter-in-law, and attitude
that seemed to be shared by the rest of his family's household.  What would
they think if they learned that he had slept with the woman who had slaughtered
most of his people, and in doing so betrayed the love of the woman who had
faithfully presented her aid?  Presented her aid, indeed, to the likely
detriment of her own schemes?

He wondered if Arcania had ensorceled him, to bring him to her bed while
driving all these simple considerations that came so naturally now that he
was merely looking at her unconscious at his feet.

Then a horrible thought occurred to him.  Suppose Kryalla had done the same?

He did not wish to think of it.  He half cried out, in an effort to shut all
the guilt from his mind.  "Never get involved with two arch-magesses who happen
to be worst enemies," he muttered to himself.  "Like that shouldn't have been
obvious all along . . ."

Not knowing whether to kill Arcania or spare her, Emrikol simply picked her
up off the ground.  His blue-green runes reached out again.  The sanctum sensed
Arcania's magic in his, and answered once more.  The portal to her chambers
opened, and he stepped through with her in his arms, and with both of them
burning in his mind.

+=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=+
+	Arcania Dorval, returned from exile		  +
+=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=+
+       . . . scribed by the Stilt Man,			  +
+		stiltman@teleport.com			  +
+=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=+