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Old 10-11-2020, 02:16 PM   #28
Stomoxys
 
Join Date: Jun 2020
Default Day 178 since leaving The Homeland

We continued on our way in our little bubble of star light with the silhouettes of rocks and trees shifting around against the night sky. After ten minutes, Nuur-Karif suddenly stopped and pointed into the darkness ahead. About 50 meters in front of us, I could barely make out the outline of a tower. While everything else shifted around, the tower stayed put. Rearranging the rope, Nuur-Karif approached carefully while Grogg and I was ready to pull them back if they yanked the rope twice. While everything around them shifted around, Nuur-Karif stayed firm and soon returned. A bit further ahead and to the left they had spotted another tower but had not seen anything else of interest. Grogg wanted to test the integrity of the tower and threw a rock towards it. It looked like it should have hit, but we never heard any sounds of impact. There was little else to see and we approached the tower with Nuur-Karif at a rope length ahead. When they were about 10 meters from the tower, they shouted for us to stop and said they saw a door. From our position, the tower wall looked solid. Grogg has about the same level of concern for Nuur-Karif's well being as Nuur-Karif has for Grogg and lobbed another rock in the direction of the tower. I shouted a warning to Nuur-Karif making them duck and the rock flew towards the tower. Again we heard no sound of impact. Nuur-Karif also experimented with some rocks and with more careful observation, it looked like they vanished just as they were about to hit the wall.

Wolfram transformed back into a human and started erecting their totem pole. The range of their ritual is about 200 meters, so it should cover the tower and a large area behind it. To see any spirits if they appeared, the incense was lit, but like the lantern, it seemed to attract shadows and I was uncertain if it would do more harm than good. While Wolfram were still performing the ritual, I took up position on a grassy knoll behind them and readied arrows and the bottle of spirit poison. However, we waited for several minutes after the ritual and nothing seemed to happen. Coming down to the others, Wolfram almost sounded like they doubted Amna. Again we were interrupted by Grogg before I could ask them what was going on. The troll had started to stroll towards the tower and we shouted for them to come back. They shouted something about investigating the tower, but was interrupted by a voice from somewhere beyond the tower saying 'come'. In Gritt's crypt, a voice had also told me to come. However, that voice had been accompanied by the shivers of death magic, but I felt nothing this time. Grogg shouted back to the voice, telling it to come to us, but the only answer was another 'come'. Wofram sounded like they had serious doubts about their ritual and wanted to try another one. Back at the evening fortress, they said they had exhausted Amna, as if that was possible, and had also met a spirit that had refused to be banished. Now they wanted to see if they could detect traces of spirits instead of luring the spirits to them. They claimed the ritual had worked, but there had not been any spirits near us for the last 24 hours. This made sense if all the spirits were down in the crypt with the wraith. More importantly, they claimed that Amna had gone away for awhile, but had now returned. While Amna was veiled by the clouds, I could tell where they were and had not noticed any changes, so I do not know what Wolfram meant. I guess it is possible that the illusions here are affecting Wolfram differently than the rest of us. Either way, they had regained their confidence and wanted to lure the spirits one more time. I went back to the knoll again and waited while Wolfram performed the ritual and then turned into their bear form. No spirits appeared, but after a few minutes, I felt a burst of malevolent power from the area the voice had come from. Meeting the gaze of the bear, it was clear Wolfram had felt it too.

For a moment, a door appeared on the tower, but it vanished almost as soon as it had appeared. After ten minutes, Wolfram turned into human form and proclaimed that the ritual had not worked. The wraith must have had stronger control of the spirits than Wolfram's ritual. It seemed we would have to enter the crypt proper and we approached the tower. Grogg got me to tie a coin with some string and threw it towards the tower, holding on to the string. The coin and string went straight through the wall and Grogg said it felt like the coin fell down on the inside. Closing in on the tower, a door appeared again, but it was not possible to see anything through the pitch black aperture. Fetching a branch, I prodded the walls and met no resistance and could not feel any floor inside either. I could not feel anything with the tip of my tail either, so I decided to stick my head through the wall while Grogg held me. From the inside, I saw that it was not a tower at all, but a pit. At the bottom, I could see piles of gold and jewels. Clearly, this was a trap meant for mammals. While Wolfram, Nuur-Karif and Grogg are relatively resistant to the mammal's gold lust, it was better to not tempt them and I did not mention the gold. Krupik or Lunari would have insisted on climbing in.

Walking past the fake tower, I could make out the silhouette of another tower off to our left. The shifting of our surroundings intensified as we walked on until suddenly they stopped. Instead of the grasslands and stone desert we were in, we now saw a sand desert stretching out in all directions under a clear night sky. Right ahead of us was a calm oasis with a shimmering lake surrounded by palm trees. Not wanting to get lost in the illusions, we quickly stepped back and after walking a few meters found ourselves back behind the tower in the shifting landscape. Nuur-Karif said they could make out a total of four towers forming a square with two of the corners on the boundary between the grass and desert and one tower on each side. To investigate further, they tied the rope around their waist and borrowed Grogg's string coin before stepping about five meters forward. While we could clearly see them standing there and throwing the coin around, we could not hear anything from them. They eventually returned and said that their clothing had changed while they were in there. Even more concerning, the rope around their waist and even the string in their hand had vanished after a while. Before the string vanished, it had felt wet when they threw it in the lake. Now, both their clothing, the string and the rope were back and the string felt completely dry. They also estimated that the oasis were in the center of the square formed by the towers.

While we were standing there, a cry for help came from the desert to our right. It did not sound like the voice that told us to come, but we assumed it was a trap and ignored it. While Grogg and Nuur-Karif prepared to enter the oasis again, I tried to investigate the magic in the area. Unfortunately, I could detect little beyond the presence of magic in the ground here and it was not star energy. In the oasis, Grogg and Nuur-Karif were staring at each other for a bit before Grogg suddenly picked up Nuur-Karif and ran out. Inside, Nuur-Karif's clothing had changed to something that looked like what they wear in Amrosh and beyond and they had looked like another human. Their daggers had also disappeared and I suspect even their fangs were gone, judging by how shaken they were. Grogg's skin colour had changed from the normal bluish grey to a reddish brown and their hardened skin had become soft. When anchored in Monike, I spotted trolls like that working in the harbor. It seems like the image of the oasis is from somewhere far to the south. Wanting to investigate myself, I tied myself with the rope and entered the oasis. The first thing I noticed was that the stars were unchanged. Clearly, the oasis was just an image and we were not transported anywhere. Looking down on myself, I was horrified. I had expected to become one of the Small People and had braced myself for that, but instead, I was covered in fur and my feet had turned into paws like Nujan's. I immediately jumped back and ran out, breathing a sigh of relief when I saw that my scales were back. While Nujan and the other's like them I have seen are tawny with lighter patches on the belly, my fur had been striped in black and gold with lighter parts on the front. Perhaps the talking jaguars look like that further south than Kajar. At least I didn't look like an ape. Grogg was still standing by the oasis and looked confused, shouting at something off in the distance. They then started walking in the direction of whatever they were shouting at. Luckily, it took them out of the oasis and they came back when they saw me.

Last edited by Stomoxys; 10-12-2020 at 03:13 PM.
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