IWUAaDNW: Party 5.6, 5.9

Finally, everything was assembled. The villager group stopped at a dead-end spot deep in the Lost Woods, and I used a good two dozen illusion pixies to morph the entire clearing into a replica of the ritual room of Fort Duvos. I saw Tyr’s jaw drop and Karjn’s eyes widen in surprise while Ulfric just raised an eyebrow. Kamella smiled.

“Ooh, this will do quite well, thank you dear,” Kamella told me. She paused a moment to stretch her arms and legs, then took position in the center of the room. I moved my pixie over to its position over the ritual circle. Red Staff reacted with alarm, but Fiolla was quick to bring him back to order.

Kamella’s arms rose to the sky, crossing at the wrists over her head. Red Staff did the same.

I instructed my pixie to start flaring its light, to serve as a metronome for both ritualists. Red Staff’s arms started going down a fraction of a second before Kamella’s, and the ritual began.

“Spirits of knowledge, listen to the words of one who shares your will. Heed my wishes and deliver them to the Mother of all Life. I beg her attention. Listen to these children’s humble request. Grant us an audience with this wild Filter, so that we may help it in its purpose. Accept our gifts, our will and our love, for You are the mother of life and we are your loyal children. This filter has outgrown its area, and requires another access point elsewhere on your shell, where” and here the two incantations differed, with Kamella saying “another of your children is pleading,” and Red Staff saying “I am standing.”

While they chanted, they danced in near-perfect synchronicity; not with the same motions, I realized after the first few moments, but with movements that completed the motions of the other; when Kamella’s arms went over her head and down until her hands were about a foot in front of her hips, Red Staff’s hands went from that same spot to his sides, then up above his head. Somehow, though, the two dances undeniably worked together. I knew nothing about dancing, really, but I’d heard people refer to it as a language of the body; if that was the case, then the ritual’s two messages were telling the same story.

The circles of gold began to glow with a silver-white light, soon growing far past the level of light my luminous pixies were able to create. The glow flowed inwards, drawing the heptagram’s shape on the ground. The light climbed up in the air, drawing a set of illusory walls around Red Staff, then rising up into the air until it touched the ceiling.

“Looks like it’s working,” Karjn muttered to herself at the same time as Fiolla gave a satisfied nod.

“The planet is watching us,” Tyr agreed.

Kamella was too busy to react, but I saw her eyes shine with joy. Red Staff’s own eyes were wide, but his eyebrows were raised in sheer shock, not revelry.

On my end, I felt an uncomfortable sort of tingle, like a blast of cold air against the back of my neck, if that cold air was also a pair of clammy hands poking around toward my back. It wasn’t the most unpleasant thing I’d ever felt even as a dungeon, but it was up there, and I had no body to squirm uncomfortably with.

They continued to chant.

“Connect the filter to this space, allow your Children to enter this filter through this space on your shell, according to the rules and agreements we have made with one another. May your life essence provide to the children on this end of the Filter, and to the other. Mother of all life, grant us this gift!”

The two diverged again as the ritual reached its zenith.

Kamella raised her arms up as a golden heptagram drew itself in the sky over her head and the branches of my pixie floor shifted out of the way. “Create an entrance from this floor of this Filter to where the Other is on your shell!”

Red Staff lowered his arms toward my pixie and declared, “Create an entrance from this place of your shell to the Filter!”

Notice! ⊂(・▽・)⊃
Wild Humans want to create a new entrance to [Floor 2]! Do you accept?
[Y/N]


I hesitated for the slightest moment. Something was telling me that I wasn’t supposed to do that.

“Filter, by the covenant that created you, we comm––”

I chalked it up to the dungeon system fucking with me again and hit yes with a vengeance. I wasn’t going to get cold feet now.

There was a sharp, instantaneous pain, like I’d just simultaneously taken a shock and had my flanks pinched hard by something.

“––an––uh? What the––“

”––an––Oh dear!”

The heptagram flared brighter, and Red Staff made a startled noise as he was bodily lifted into the air and dropped outside of the circle’s area, along with my pixie. He fell on his butt as his knees failed him. The raw bedrock inside the golden circle morphed into a circle of flattened stone, and an instant later it broke into triangular sections which started sinking downward. Within moments, the structure became recognizable as a flight of spiraling stairs.

On my second floor, Kamella yelped as she was moved out of the way, an instant before the heptagram fell down where she’d been. The golden light materialized in a massive tree, similar to the one that led up to my first floor. An opening broke through its bark with a thunderous wooden crack, revealing the base of that spiraling staircase just as it finished forming.

A moment later, a shimmering blue barrier appeared at the top of the stairs and completely covered them.

There was a moment of tense silence in both ends of the brand new entrance. The leftover echoes of the pain faded away and were replaced instead with a sort of warm fuzziness that wasn’t altogether unpleasant.

Red Staff was the first to actually react. Kind of.

“It just… on the first try… and we didn’t… we didn’t even have time to finish the whole thing…” He blabbered to himself.

Then, my pixie decided to celebrate in its own way. It shrilled a powerful “BLEEEEK!!!” that startled everyone involved, and dove straight through the barrier and down the staircase.

—IWUAaDNW: Party 5.6



“Some of you might have heard that both of them came out of Taylor, and that is, in fact, correct; as of this morning, Taylor now possesses a secondary entrance that leads directly to Fort Duvos, all the way across Central.”

Mutters, mutters. Someone spoke up. “Wait, isn’t that a really long way, though?!”

“You’d think so, but not really,” Kamella replied with a smile. “It’s as easy as climbing up a flight of stairs.”

—IWUAaDNW: Party 5.9