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

[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."

[imeanforever]

"That's promising."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Indeed. I think we should try to figure out invisibility now."

Steel has become a decent sorcerer with good finesse, at least for someone who's only been at it for less than a year. It's unclear whether she'll be able to help Promise in figuring out invisibility, though - her magic scholarship is mostly bluestream.

[imeanforever]

Promise takes hours, but not days, to work out how to turn herself invisible. She cannot immediately turn Steel invisible, but she can describe the self-invisibling process for her.

[sturdycoldsteel]

Steel listens and watches the stream, noting the subtle effects active sorcery has. The major conceptual barrier for her seems to be the fact it doesn't take continuous effort to keep active, like almost every useful effect of bluestream.

She gets it eventually, though. After a sleep, but before she runs out of food.

"Nice! I think we can do this in anything but fog or dense tangles. Am I going to go scouting alone or do you want to come along this time?"

[imeanforever]

"If the area's safe I'll come along." Promise packs some food. "But not too close. I don't want to hear any names I don't need."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"I'll poke my head through and make sure the place is still abandoned."

She does that, and is back in about five minutes.

"The local area is still abandoned, though the harmonics are all fog. If the invisibility wears off, neither of us will stand out with the wings" (she still has hers) "except that everyone will assume we can use the bluestream. The roads are still in good condition, harmonically speaking, and the town is still intact as far as I could tell from a distance."

[imeanforever]

"It shouldn't wear off particularly quickly, although I don't know exactly since I wasn't working out of a book. Will you make a sound or a fairylight or something so I can follow you while you're invisible?"

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Alright, but clearing the fog enough to make a fairylight tolerate existing will make me a little slow and clumsy. I'll mark off every twenty feet or so."

[imeanforever]

"You could also just whistle occasionally. Or I could peek at the bluestream to see where you are."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Huh, are we invisible to bluestream-sight too? I'm going to try to look at you."

Nothing visible happens, then, "We're mostly invisible in the stream as well as physically, right now. You can still see the eddies we're giving off, but it looks like we're - ghosts, or something. You wouldn't be able to find me in the fog, so I'll just stick with occasional lights."

[imeanforever]

"Okay."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"I'm going through the gate now."

So she goes through the gate, and walks down a steep slope covered in shrubs, trailing the occasional fairylight that sticks around for a few seconds before disappearing. A few of the shrubs rustle. Some berries on them float and then disappear, presumably invisibility extends to them once they're eaten.

Steel's chosen path takes them downhill for a while, and then to a small road made of dirt and barely holding its flight-friendly harmonics together. She makes an arrow pointing north from fairylights and a sort of fluttering wings-shape - 'Time to fly, speed up'

[imeanforever]

Promise follows her, looking at the world around them curiously. Even the presence of the road is peculiar and interesting.

[sturdycoldsteel]

So far it seems to be mostly uninhabited wilderness. There are some animals around. Small rodents on the ground and in trees, birds flying through the air, a bear making its way up a hill half a mile or so off from their path. And she may be unpleasantly surprised by the number of insects - you tend to run into them when flying at speed.

They don't see any people for about twenty minutes. Then, Steel's lights spell out 'HIDE'.

In about twenty seconds, the shape of a sizable group of humans approaching along the road starts to be visible in the bluestream. They're still on the other side of a little hillock, physically.

[imeanforever]

Animals are definitely peculiar and interesting.

Promise flings herself into a densely-branched tree and crouches invisibly there.