IWUAaDNW: Initiative 6.2

“…I don’t think there’s anything this way,” Ulfric pointed out after the seventh empty room.

Karjn nodded. “A… I mean, alright.” She cleared her throat. “Alright. We’ll go after my boomerang, then.” She looked down at her glove, where the little wispy guide was pointing [ILLUSION]north[/ILLUSION]. She pointed to one of the paths. “It should be that way.”

Ulfric nodded and walked toward [ILLUSION]the only way through to the end of the path[/ILLUSION], the other three [ILLUSION]following Ulfric[/ILLUSION] down the winding path.

Over on the surface, a couple of people were actually laughing as they saw the party separate on the large screen, made more careless by the mounting stress.

“Druids, she actually got Ulfric with that?!”

“Oh man, this is going to get good.”

Their schadenfreude only grew when Eira, Karjn, [ILLUSION]Ulfric and Raffaa[/ILLUSION] came out of the path and ended up in one of my many, many identical clearings, while [ILLUSION]Eira, Karjn, Ulfric[/ILLUSION] and Raffaa followed [ILLUSION]the only way down the winding path[/ILLUSION] to end up in a completely different place.

Raffaa paused.

Ulfric paused.

At the same time, the two of them flicked their fingers to see if they were being faked out by my illusion pixies. I’d learned how to avoid that, though; instead of layering their entire vision with an illusion, the ‘visor’ I was putting over their eyes only contained the things I wanted to add to the scene. Anything I wanted to hide, I could hide by layering it with an illusion, which worked great if they were alone, or in small groups so long as the point of view didn't differ too much. This meant that when Raffaa and Ulfric checked their own hands and tried to outspeed my pixies, I didn’t have to worry about them spotting the delay in my reaction.

Still, though, neither of them were fooled for long.

Ulfric raised his battleaxe over his head, focused for a moment, then with a mighty roar, he pushed down with all his force. A mighty burst of wind erupted from him, circling around him twice before stopping. This was more than enough to blow my pixies away, revealing the fact that the ‘party’ he’d been venturing with down here with was an illusion.

Raffaa reached out to poke Karjn’s shoulder. His finger went right through.

[...]

Down on my bottom floor, both Raffaa and Ulfric reacted the same way, by turning around and retracing their steps. They once again followed [ILLUSION]the only available paths[/ILLUSION], and wound up in rooms that were identical to the previous ones… and also that neither of them had ever gone to before.

Karjn raised a hand. Eira, [ILLUSION]Raffaa, and Ulfric[/ILLUSION] stopped. She narrowed her eyes, then swatted her hand at Ulfric. When her hand went right through and I dissipated the illusion, she started cursing.

[...]

Eira clicked her tongue as my birds angled around, waiting for her wall to fall before they’d dive in again.

“Bring it down in three,” Karjn told Eira, then pointed behind them. “Into the woods!”

Eira nodded. They turned around and fled, and a count of three later, the firewall went down, which [ILLUSION]let my birds start to chase them[/ILLUSION]. My actual flock took to the skies and spread into two groups while another group of luminous pixies caught up to Karjn and layered an illusion over her eyes; following [ILLUSION]the only available path[/ILLUSION], Eira went right, while Karjn followed Eira down the left side.

And just like that, they were all separated.

Time for phase two.