random pointless swirls

[sturdycoldsteel]

The shaper known as Steel is flying down the right side of a road, shoring up the edges of the bluestream that lets her lift herself off the ground as she goes. Sure, she'll be a bit clumsy and weak when she gets to Opri, but she's not planning on doing much more stream-shaping today, so might as well.

She glances at the bluestream (the magical vision blinds her physical vision for a short moment, but not long enough to crash into anything) and determines that this next crossroads is where she needs to turn. She tilts to the right...

...And lands on a patch of orange grass in a forest clearing. This is not the town of Opri. She opens her eyes and ears to the bluestream, trying to figure out what the hell is going on.

The bluestream here isn't a nice, orderly, useful pattern like on the roads, or the formless fog that it usually decays to after a while. Instead it's a riot of random patterns swirling around, wispy and confused and obviously not designed to do anything useful.

Steel, deaf and blind for a few seconds thanks to her peek at the bluestream, stands very still and is very confused.

Comments

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Nah, just some scrapes and burning."

[imeanforever]

Promise has a look at the injuries, and fixes them, one by one.

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Thanks. Ugh. I want to try to learn sorcererous invisibility. If it makes me unnoticable enough, I'm gonna make a scouting run, try to see if Link and Morn are alright. Those are their trade names, not their real names, by the way."

[imeanforever]

"Good. When we've found someplace to plant my tree I'll get to work reverse-engineering invisibility so I can tell you how to do it."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"So for now, close the gate and keep looking? Alright, let's go." Steel picks up the stuff.

[imeanforever]

Gate: closed and hidden under rock. Expedition: resumed.

Promise is kind of picky.

[sturdycoldsteel]

Steel flies fast enough to be discomfiting, and urges Promise to do the same.

If this lasts more than another two days, she'll say something.

[imeanforever]

It lasts that long. Promise may live in her next home for thousands or tens of thousands of years and wants it to be the right place and to know what she's putting it near.

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Can you not move again once I find my friends and try to deal with what is likely to be hundreds or thousands of people dying in my world?"

[imeanforever]

"Once I plant my branch it will need to grow a while before I can take another cutting and expect that to work. It needs to be good enough for at least a few years, and I don't want to leave a clear trail with a lot of abandoned trees if someone decides to see why I wanted to suddenly move."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"I'm dangerously low on food and I refuse to eat anything local. Very soon you are going have to continue your search alone, carrying all your things, while I try to figure out gates and then survive in the middle of a war."

[imeanforever]

"If we haven't found something better by tomorrow we can go back to the place that had too many preexisting trees and clear some away."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Thank you. I can do rapid forestry if you want to thin the rest of the forest out. I experimented a bit back home, and it turns out bluestream and basic sorcery combined are highly effective at physical tasks."

[imeanforever]

"The problem is only partly that there are too many trees, it's also that they'll keep trying to grow back and it will be annoying to cultivate my own plants and I have less information than I did where I started about what's edible in the uncultivated wilderness. But it's the best we've seen so far."

[sturdycoldsteel]

She nods, and levitates the stuff, and follows when Promise lifts off.

[imeanforever]

They do find something Promise likes better: a harmonic tangle by a river, showing signs of a nearby large court that recently moved, probably due to insufficient carrying capacity for so many fairies. It will suit Promise to a T. She plants her branch, waters it generously, has a look at the mess of harmonics and grows the tree through them rather than smoothing them out.

"Where do you want the next gate to lead?"

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Someone's probably using my house by now. I've been thinking that a set of hills near the mouth of the river that runs through Opri would work. Let me draw another map. Actually, I have an atlas."

The atlas is produced from the pile of stuff and opened to a reasonably small-scaled geographic map. A spot on it is marked. "I want to learn gates myself sometime, but not when getting it right is particularly important."

[imeanforever]

"Right."

Promise likes the natural tangle around her new tree, considering she can see it, so she moves away a bit to flatten a space for the gate.

There it goes.

"Here you are."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Here we go. If I'm not back in three hours, assume something bad has happened to me."

[imeanforever]

"And do what about it? Wander the war-torn mortal realm?"

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Close the gate is what I was thinking, lest the war come through and spill into fairyland. If you abandon me to the ravages of my world and don't let fairies get involved, it can't get much worse."

[imeanforever]

"Noted. I might open the gate sometimes when I happen to be able to keep an eye on it, in case."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Noted in return." She stands still and silent for a minute.

A sigh. "War is dangerous. I won't go looking for trouble, but I need to figure out what's going on." Without waiting for a reply, she steps through the gate.

She's back in two and a half hours.

[imeanforever]

Promise is waiting for her. "Do you need healing again? What's going on?"

[sturdycoldsteel]

"I'm fine this time. There wasn't anybody in the area where the gate leads, but one of the sides has set up extensive fortifications and patrols in the farming area to the north. The town goes by the name of Teth. I listened to a pair of travelers, they wanted to enter Teth as refugees. The patrol that approached them acted friendly, and they set off for the town together, so I have hopes that this faction is somewhat friendly."