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Session 7.5: Mel

Started by Dray, September 25, 2005, 11:16:54 AM

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Dray

Mel found himself standing with his eyes closed and his lips and tongue lightly caressing those of another. Startled, he snapped open his eyes and pulled away from the woman who embraced him. He immediately recognized Trinity, who looked considerably older, and shorter. Her dark black hair was streaked with grey, her face was mapped with light wrinkles. He became alarmed as he realized that she wasn?t so much shorter as he was taller.

?What the heck was that about?? Trinity asked. She appeared slighted from him brushing her away and stepping back.

?Um?.? Mel said, as he held up a finger to request her patience as he looked at everything around him at once. Questions flooded his mind as his head almost spun off his shoulders trying to look around the vast chamber in which they stood alone. ?Where the heck am I? For that matter where the heck was I before this? Why is Trinity so old and short? Why is she kissing me? What is this place? Will she try to kiss me again? What the hell is that thing? Why is the hair on my feet grey?

They stood within a vast chamber. Its? walls, in the distant shadows, were made of polished black marble, veined with gold. There were no windows, and for all Mel knew, they were deep in an underground complex. There was a lone pair of massive stone doors which stood closed behind him. Each door, carved from a single piece of dark granite, was arched to peak at the center of the blocked opening. The opening appeared to be thirty feet across. Mel hoped that there wasn?t a creature that just ?fit? through that door. Large bands of what appeared to be mithral spanned across the doors at the bottom, center and top. The bands were engraved with multiple runes and symbols, and Mel would make a safe bet that they were magical.

The marble floor they stood upon only stretched thirty from the outer wall. More like a platform, the center of the rooms? floor was cored away. A mithral rail stopped pedestrians from falling over its edge. The rails artistic detail resembling that of cat-of-nine tail reeds, with the top rail resembling that of a long tree root.

Equally spaced around the circumference of the platform, chain hung large fiery braziers, lighting the chamber.

Hanging in the middle of the floors opening was what held Mel?s attention.

Dray

Mel looked at her as if seeing her for the first time. ?Time had not taken away her innocence, or her youth? he thought. He smiled at her and suddenly wondered why she was shorter than he.

?So what am I anyway?? he asked her as he looked around at himself. ?This must be a dream,? he thought. ?Nothing else could explain it?

?And don?t tell me I have been here all along. Last thing I remember,? he stopped short. ?What was the last thing I remember?? he asked himself.

??was that I was sitting on Grushnek?s shoulders as he was taking me to the Dwarven Keep.? He finished. ?Good enough, probably close to the truth too,? he convinced himself.

Trinity waited for more. He didn?t offer any.

?That?s it?? she asked.

?Yup.? Mel said.

?You?re not going to string twelve questions together until I get lost as to what you really wanted in the first place?? she asked with a sly smile.

?Nope. Too important.? Mel said abruptly, but he couldn?t help surpress a smile.

?Well then,? she paused making herself ready. ?In answer to your question, I can?t tell you what you are.?

Before she even finished the last word of her sentence Mel went into a tirade, ?Of course you can?t tell me! Why in all that is holy beyond and above the fake pantheons of the Lords of Greyhawk would I be able to expect you too, after all, although I can be perplexed at the blasted Wizard?s Time Machine of Cosmic Wonder in a room that defies all known laws of physics and construction just after kissing a woman that has aged forty years in the last forty minutes would I expect that same woman who probably is my wife I might add and should be able to trust the Halfling she married and tolerated as he grew into something completely different would I even dare to think that the very same wife who has bore my children three times over to actually tell me the one and truly only thing I really wanted to know from this entire dream sequence which better not get me killed at the end!?

?That was impressive, even for you.? She grinned playfully at him.

He simply stared at her.

?You told me I couldn?t tell you.? She said flatly.

?NO!? Mel screamed in mock anguish as he went to his knees and shook his fists at the heavens.

?This is such a bad turn of events!? Mel said to her. ?It?s like a play, written in a hurry by a playwright who has run out of time the night before the big show!?

She giggled. ?Still can?t tell you, you forbade it?

?Do you always listen to me, do you always do what your told?? he asked her. Getting up from his knees, he found it amusing how far his head was from the floor. He bobbed his head up and down as he watched the floor.

?I do when magic is concerned. Everyone does,? she said.

?Why?? he asked.

?Because you are the Sorcerer Zarchon Blacklock,? as she said it, she walked at him in a sultrous manner that seemingly would have been familiar to him if he spent the last forty years with her. She laid a hand upon his chest and stared into his eyes. ?Zarchon has helped thousands of people from dieing. Zarchon has saved the Outpost a dozen times over.? She leaned her face into his. ?Zarchon still knows how to make me gasp for air in my bed at night?

Mel jumped back. ?Alrighty then, um, I huh?.? At a loss for words his cheeks flushed. Trinity giggled at him, delighted in his discomfort.

?So um, I huh. Did I have anything else to say to me? What am I doing here?? he asked, regaining some of his composure. He felt the stirring of arousal, even though Trinity was well into middle age, she was still quite beautiful. He either needed a quick distraction or he would soon have to sit on the floor.

Trinity giggled but answered him. ?Only that the password is in your dagger at your belt. The gate has been programmed for where it is to take you. Whatever that means.? She said.

Mel looked down at the dagger that he knew all too well. ?Toasted toads, you have to  kidding me??

?Nope, you also told me to convey that you had no time to waste. As much as I hate to say this, you  should get going, you have already stayed too long,? she said. Mel detected real worry touch in her eyes and somehow knew this was something she was used too. Him going away and leaving her here.

It was against his nature, but something in him knew he needed to go, and not ask the dozens of more questions in his head.

He leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. ?I won?t be long.? As he turned away from her he walked over to the opening in the rail. ?That was really easy to do, weird.? He thought.

As he pulled the dagger from its scabbard he marveled at it. It was different. Cleaned up and sharpened to a fine edge. The hilt had been redressed with a fine mithral mesh. A very small diamond had been placed in a beautifully fashioned relief carved within the base of the blade. The compartment was still there, he opened it and pulled out the slip of paper. It was far more warn than he remembered it.

He unrolled it and read the words as well as he remembered them being spoken to him.

Everything around the archway disappeared. The steel egg frames, the comets, the web and its spiders, the non-descript steel balls, all of it. In its place was the gateway which now had an opague rippling energy curtain of dark blue within it. It still stood upon the marble slab, but now that slab had a flat marble bridge that connected to the platform at his feet.

?Playwright of this dream is getting lazy,? Mel thought.

He looked over his shoulder to see Trinity watching him from behind. She gave him a sad wave goodbye.

With a deep breath, Mel placed the dagger back in its scabbard and walked on to the gateway. Something inside him compelled him to it. He sensed that his time here was at an end. He would learn no more from the journey and it was time to move on.

Moments later he reached the curtain, without missing a stride he stepped on through.

Dray

[color=green:d60c15c13a]It has recently come to my attention that the above post is more confusing than Mel's banter at beachstock. I will be revising the post as soon as I can.

Thank you for your patience during construction.

Also note that my Avatar has returned, he went missing for a bit as he needed to get a new pair of glasses. (Web Page's doing, not mine)[/color]

Dray

A great, steel framed, open, egg-shaped structure hung by impossibly large chains. Each wrought-iron chain?s link was taller than a man. The chains, attached to the steel frame both above and below the structure, were stretched taught, the ends captured by massive wrought-iron eye-hooks embedded within the cavernous rooms? walls. The entire monstrosity suspended at the center of the hole in the floor, its? midpoint level with it.

Although the object had many mechanical elements, it was obviously magical in nature. Mel immediate felt insignificant as he stared at the complex behemoth. Beyond the steel frame shell many wondrous things were happening. At the core of the shell was what could only be a magical gateway. Composed mainly of a large archway, which dwarfed the door behind him, it had nothing but twinkling starlight beyond. The jet black stone of the arch was aglow in a soft dark blue energy. He couldn?t make out the detail of the carvings upon it, but judging from the silhouettes of the projections coming from it, he was not sure he wanted to. From here it appeared barbed and taloned, resembling some really bad paintings of Hell that Mel had once seen. The archway sat on a polished black marble floor, upon which nothing else sat. The floor was level with the outside platform he stood upon.

Around the magic gate, a smaller version of the outer steel frame protected the gateway, dividing the entire structure into two distinct egg-shaped chambers, one inside the other. The inner chamber held nothing but the magical gateway and the marble floor, the floor being the base structure for all the attachment points of the encompassing elliptical beams of the inner steel frame. The outer chamber, the area from the inner frame to the outer frame, was where chaos reigned.

Nothing appeared to support the inner frame from the outer frame, instead, many of the arms and gears of the mechanical devices spun in orbiting patterns between the two. Although slower than a man could run, the flight paths of the mechanics were so complex, that the view of the inner chamber was sometimes blocked. Most were stone globes of various sizes, grasped by dark metallic claws which extending from dark cast iron metal arms. Each arm?s other end was attached to a complex system of wire that surrounded the inner chamber like a web. Although this web was a myriad of strands crisscrossing over the steel inner chamber, they were remarkably translucent and almost undetectable. The arms? method of attachment to the web was a chaotic mess of wires and pulleys which moved with the arm, boggling the mind to how it was built. Small steel objects that looked like mechanical spiders ran over the web by the hundreds. Each ?spider? manipulated the web and maintained the attachments to keep them floating across the surface.

Working concurrently with the web system that allowed these arms to carry the orbs through the outer chamber, were three other distinct systems.

The first was purely magical in nature. Mel doubted it could be otherwise. For flying around the orbs in orbit of the inner chamber were a dozen comets of white fire. Moving at various speeds through the entire chamber, they danced with the orbs in their path and then continued on another direction.

The second system was more complicated but still magical. What appeared to be four flat circular compasses floated just inside the outer frame wall, away from the chaos of the other systems. Each compass faced the outside frame of the structure, as if they were devices for those outside to decipher. These elaborate gold devices slowly orbited the interior at a point near the midpoint between the platform and the top of the structure. Circling slowly at a path level with the platform. Each was very complicated in design.

The outer frame of each compass was a flat ring of gold, this is what faced the outside vertically. Mel could barely make out engravings that occurred in nine equidistant sections around this flat ring. In the opening of the ring were many elements that took a moment of watching before Mel understood at least the pattern of what was happening within. Driven obviously by yet another unknown magical source, inside each compass were two gold metal rings, one just inside the other. They spun in opposing directions, around the center of a cavity that contained a slightly transparent glowing blue line. This line, just ending at the center point at one end and at the edge of the flat ring on the other, was slowly rotating clockwise, pointing at each engraved section in turn. Orbiting tightly around each compass in blurring speeds were crystals. When the blue needle pointed at the center of a new section upon the flat ring,  the crystals would dive into the cavity of the two interior rotating rings. The crystals, which Mel guessed to be diamonds, were pie-shaped. For a few moments the crystals would connect into a complete flat circular diamond, its? flat surface parallel with the flat outer ring. The blue glowing line, lost within the diamond would illuminate that section of nine in a brilliant refracted glow. Then, with the same quickness, the pieces would disperse back into their frenzied orbit.

As if all this were not complicated enough, the entire outer chamber was filled with a purple gas that seemed to sparkle in the paths where the mechanical objects passed through it.

There appeared to be no way to get to the magical gateway, not that Mel had any intention whatsoever in attempting too. Although he did note that the rail on the platform did have a wide break [30?] in front of him and directly across from the door.

?Ah, you said that you would forget yourself on the platform,? Trinity said. With a giggle she added, ?and here I thought my kiss could keep your mind here.?