Portal Space Sayings

Gharu'ndim

Sho

Viamontians

Ispar History

Auberean History

Texts

Rumors

Yalani Male

Your vision swims. For a moment, your vision dims. Great wooden doors, intricately carved and glowing faintly green, creak open before you. Before you is a long, wide hall, its cloistered ceilings lit by false stars that mime the constellations of the sky outside. Niches along both sides are lined with candles. No. not candles, but simple silver rods, tarnish blackening the hollows of their fine reliefs. Over the apex of each rod floats a waterdrop of arcane light, rippling as it spins in place. The light colors alternate, azure and violet, casting shadows as faint as wind.

Musical, incomprehensible speech calls your attention to the end of the great hall. A figure stands there, backlit by a roiling white inferno as blinding as the sun. A long shadow, unleavened by the waterlight from the silver rods, paints the marble at your feet. Like an echo, the meaning of the words comes back at you.

"Raen Ameranten. Chevaird of the Ialarchess. Child of Atermore, the Alabaster Fortress that Rises from the sea; the Rock which guards the eastern ways of the glorious Imperial Archipelago. You are here required to swear the Rule of Life. Will you walk upon the path of a righteous life, in fear of and in service to the clear Light? Or will you turn aside to darkness, as have others of your order? Speak now, and be cautious; for if an unworthy or insincere tongue dare speak the Rule of Life, it shall be burned from the mouth by the radiance of its holy truth."

Your vision swims. For a moment, you seem to be on the deck of a ship. A ship? There are no. Over the rail you can see docks carved from alabaster and chalcedony. Where? A crowd that roars. Shrill. The clouds recoil over the glittering spires of the city, and black rain descends on buzzing alien wings. The deck lurches - you find yourself clutching the wall of the dungeon.

Your vision swims. For a moment, you seem to stand in creaking jungle. You are running, swinging a sword wreathed in astral flames. A hundred men around you roar as one. There! At last, the ornate blue spires rise before you. Ridiculous lizard-men flap towards you, their eyes glowing. Women dressed in the skins of animals raise their hands, and the ground erupts. You swim forward, wading through a rain of earth and a razor wind of flying thorns. The noise of falling water becomes deafening.

Your vision swims. For a moment, you seem to be staggering up a flight of stairs. A fetor rises from the room below, the stink of the slaughterhouse. They never made a sound. None of them, not even once, not even when the blades began to hew. Men follow you up, slapping each other on the back, laughing too much as they adjust their campaign cloaks. The air is no cleaner above, though. Here the smell is of burning. You sidestep a fall of blue marble. A drunken warrior shouts apologies from the loft above, a purloined silver icon clutched in his stained fist.

Your vision swims. For a moment, you seem be running down stairs. Men lining the walls grin at you, bowing as you pass. They smell of sweat and blood, their white, star-branded campaign cloaks stained a lurid incarnadine. Their nostrils are flaring. Lips pull back from grey and brown teeth. You hold the torch above your head.

The women huddle together in the center of the blue stone room, watching the men with cool, detached defiance. Is that how it is? We'll see how long that detachment lasts. You nod to the men. One steps forward and wrenches a heretic girl out of the group, bending her arm a way it is not meant to go, driving her down to bruise her knees on the stones of the floor. She does not scream. The beads woven into her hair clack like teeth coming together. He grins, and rips away one sleeve of her vesture with a languid hand.

The room is silent but for the snapping of your torch. A lone bird cries in jungle outside.

Yalani Female

Your vision swims. For a moment, you seem to be sitting before an orb wreathed in sourceless, clean blue flame. Across from you sits a young man, his hands knotted in anguish, his golden eyes flaring with anger. He speaks, the words flowing like the musical speech of the sea peoples of Ispar. Like an afterimage, the words come again a moment later, in your own tongue. "Someone has to do something. They say we may only watch. But the things we see! You cannot believe what she subjects these people to. This mad queen should be cast down!"

You hear words, as if from your own mouth, saying, "But what can you do?"

"I can do what's right. I'm going back with the next study group," he says, looking at you carefully. "Maybe. for good."

"How could you stay without being found as something. other?"

The man laughs, a bitter thing. "The same way we take our smug notes. We don't hide away in hunting blinds, you know. The life masters create flesh glamors for us. I've strolled through the markets, smelling the crops." He rubs his head, chin ducking with some faint embarrassment. "Being that short takes some getting used to."

Your vision swims. A wall of arid heat slams into your face, nearly knocking you back. You blink, eyes dry and stinging.

You stand over a raw lava flow. The craggy walls are black stone, scarcely lit by the damask shadows from the liquid earth that rolls and flops beneath you. Down in the flow, figures are moving; constellations of stone, burning white from their inhospitable wading pool.

Your vision swims. For a moment, you stand upon a crest, a frigid wind blowing icy knives through you, the land dropping away from your toes. You stumble back a step back from the precipice, dazzled by the light that skitters and skips across the snowy ground. Squinting, you raise a hand against the light of the dying sun to see.

Mount Esper. But not as you know it. Heat haze causes the sun to dance a jig as the cinder cone's lake boils white. On all sides, people and golems move about. A floating stone pallet is loaded with bars of greenish gold metal; a white-hot golem illuminates the entry shaft it trundles out of, the the echo filling the crater with the sound of a mountain falling down.

You turn to your left. An distinguished elderly woman looks to the west, the clean white light of the sun sharpening the crags of her cheeks. One hand rests on a platinum cane inscribed with fine, elegant calligraphy. Impossibly, you know her friend Ejan made it for her. And impossibly, you find yourself speaking words you cannot guess the meanings of; and you seem to hear it in Roulean. "Shaura... All these things... the great books, the monuments... The Cathedral that stood for eight millenia. What will happen to our works? They'll fall to dust if we're away so long."

"Time will come when these things will be again," the old woman smiles, her silver hair glinting in the waning sun. "Don't worry, my dear. When all has fallen down, you and I will be there to rebuild it, won't we?"

Her storm-grey eyes turn away to the west again, like ship sailing over sea. Distantly, she murmurs, "He's a good boy, Resanne. I believe in him. Unlike that daft Emperor who has us make him coins as the olthoi approach."

Your vision swims. For a moment, you see a group of men and women in white and purple. Somehow, you recognize the pattern of the robes; the colors of the Knorr Lyceum. The fabric is torn, sweat-stained, the anonymous faces floating above them white with fatigue. You are jostled and shoved into a group. You blink into the shadows. What.? The adepts raise their hands. Their eyes fill with radiance, growing blinding, growing until you can see the shadow of their skulls.

You fall into the silvered tube of portalspace. It snakes and writhes, following safe courses through dimensions no eye can see, and magic can scarcely chart. And then...

The tunnel does not collapse as it always does. It peels open. You are weightless, formless, tumbling through an empty violet abyss. So tired. Sleep.

And something, somewhere, tears a little more.

Your vision swims.
Violet light.
Violet light.
Violet light.
Crackflash.
Violet light.
Violet light.
A column of blue light, vague as smoke, shimmers briefly in the distance.
Violet light.
Violet light.
Violet light.
Am I awake? He said we would -
Violet light.
Crackflash.
There's something moving in the light.
Violet light.
Violet light.
Violet light.
SLAMRIPTEARINGSHUDDER-
BLEEDBLEEDAWFULOHSWEET-
LIGHTITHURSTOPITSTOPIT-MOTHERSTOPITSTOPIT-STOPITSTOPITSTOPITSTOPIT-PUTMEBACKINTHEAIRLIKE-KNIVESFORGOTHOW-TOBREATHEVERYTOUCH-
BRUISESLIGHTLIGHTBURNING-THROUGHMEBURNINGTHROUGH-EYELIDSMOTHERSTOPITSTOP-ITSTOPITSTOPITSTOPIT-STOPITSTOPITSTOPITSTOPIT-

The vision releases you abruptly, leaving you trembling and breathless.

Lilitha

Lilitha tells you, "Does that one see the hand? It is not the box's hand. They took that. They put it in a glass bubble and it turned into fog. They attached the box to this one later. Sometimes the hand talks to the box."
Lilitha reaches toward you, and absently gropes her own face. She seems confused.

Lilitha tells you, "That one is... The box hasn't seen flesh poison in... in a long time."
Lilitha tells you, "Person. The box meant person."

Lilitha tells you, "They took the box outside in a cloud. It's nothing but purple. You could fall forever, and everything was bent this way and that. But in some places there were blue ribbons that crackled and danced."
Lilitha tells you, "There were things around the ribbons. They looked like glowing water and trailed strings of jelly. They turned as the box went by and poked each other with the jelly-strings. They were the size of houses. Maybe. Size doesn't work right outside."

Lilitha tells you, "Temenua. That one caught the box as it slept. It brought the box to a child, and the child gave it to these things."
An angry blush colors Lilitha's cheeks, and an unexpected gleam rises in her eyes...
Lilitha tells you, "It BOUND me. No one EVER --"
... but a faint, glissando shriek comes from her head. She flinches, and the gleam dies as quickly as it came.
Lilitha tells you, "The box attends the master."
Lilitha tells you, "Attentive."

Lilitha blinks at you uncomprehendingly. Lilitha inclines her head toward you and waits, numbly expectant.
Lilitha tells you, "They took the box apart twice. First they looked for what was inside the box, but they said it was empty. Then they wanted to know what made the box go."

Lilitha tells you, "They did it with blue lights. They drew lines on the box and it fell to pieces."
Lilitha tells you, "They wouldn't let the box move. The box watched it happen, until the light reached its eyes."
Lilitha tells you, "It... hurt me..."
Lilitha abruptly falls to her knees and begins to retch, hugging herself tightly.

Lilitha tells you, "Does that one see the hand? It is not the box's hand. They took that. They put it in a glass bubble and it turned into fog. They attached the box to this one later. Sometimes the hand talks to the box."

Lilitha tells you, "Why is that one on the other side of the wall?"

Lilitha tells you, "They brought a man here once. They split him open and scooped out his insides. They made a pile, like sticky fruit. Then they put other things inside him that glowed red and purple."
Lilitha tells you, "One of the Masters said they learned how to do it by studying the box. It said the man's name was Martine."

Captured Yalaini Female - thanks to Jaguar of LC

Lilitha Captured - thanks to Confucious of FF