Dream March
GAME: Telamon rolls Will+6: (12)+12+6: 30
GAME: Ravenstongue rolls Will: (8)+14: 22
The dream begins on the moon. Which is precisely where Telamon wants to be. It's... not a terribly exciting landscape being gray, and marked by large craters. There's nothing for miles in any direction save featureful gray landmasses and black starry sky. The couple stands amid this uneven surface with Tanith clinging to Telamon's forearm like a brace. Her wings are half-open, her golden eyes wide and searching. She seems at a glance - nervous. In his other hand the totem. Already dreamed into existence as intended.
Telamon can't help it. He grins hugely. "It worked! I mean... of course it did." He looks around at the fairly unimpressive landscape, and shrugs with a smile. "Well... if you're going to invoke Ni'essa, this seems to be a good place to do it." Lifting the arm that Tanith is clinging to, he smiles at her. "I don't know how long we have, though. So we probably should get this caravan on the road." Carefully, he shifts Tanith onto his shoulder, so his hands are free. He reaches down to draw his knife, looking to Cor'lana to make sure she's all right.
Cor'lana looks around the featureless dreamscape, her violet eyes taking in the sort of limitless potential for a few seconds as Telamon talks next to her. Then she seems to realize where she is and what's happening--and she turns to Telamon and Tanith, nodding. "Go ahead," she says. "I can help you. Remember--positive thoughts and intentions, plus your will."
She reaches over and pats Tanith while she's at it. "We'll have plenty of fish after this, I promise," she reassures Tanith.
The golden dragon dutifully climbs onto Telamon's shoulder, eyeing the knife in his hand, but the totem itself more uncertainly. She seems comforted by Cor'lana's pettings though, and relaxes into them. "Fish." She purrs happily, already eagerly awaiting the completion of the task here.
Telamon doesn't waste time. He deftly cuts his palm, a brief hiss of pain, and then resheathes the knife before holding the totem in one hand, and dripping his blood onto it from the other. His brow furrows, as he focuses, and an image pops into his head: the avatar of Eluna, standing before them when they awakened her. Her smile, her gentle words. The blessing she bestowed on him. "Ni'essa," he murmurs.
Cor'lana, too, focuses on the blood as it's poured onto the totem. She thinks of Grandfather, her own blood pact, the positive changes that she has noted in her life since the pact came to pass. The happiness she's had since then. The power she's obtained and used for good. She thinks of Telamon and how he is inextricably linked, in her mind, with Ni'essa's stars. While She is not the goddess who Cor'lana venerates, the Skysinger still holds a position of high import in her head as the deity to whom her beloved praises.
"Skysinger, heed his call," she murmurs in kind.
The totem draws the drips of blood into itself. Soaking them up and devouring them. From the sky-singer... there seems to be no response. Tanith huffs in Telamon's ear, watching him intently. She is in fact leaning far enough forward to give him one big golden eye to eye moment. Which... really doesn't make it easy to focus on the image of Eluna as he's seen her in the past. Still, his will is solid, and yet... nothing has changed. Nothing visible at least.
GAME: Telamon rolls detectbs: aliased to sense motive+3: (14)+20+3: 37
At first, nothing. But Telamon closes his eyes, and opens them again, and his eyes shimmer with distant stars. "I... hm." He tilts his head, looking around. "A bit barren," he admits. "Let's go someplace a little more interesting." He takes Lana's hand, cradling the totem in the other, and then the world--
Flickers.
The trio now stand on a windswept hill, short blue grasses waving in the breeze. Here and there pillars wrought of mirror-fragments meshed together jut from the earth, like bizarre vegetation. Two suns blaze in the sky, and a strange, four-winged bird soars overhead, singing.
"Binding to the totem in the dream with blood... strengthens your ability to manipulate the dream." Telamon says slowly.
Cor'lana blinks more than a few times as the world is there--and then is there again. Even for all of their experience with dreams, some things can never really be prepared for--such as someone's whole world /turning/.
Her violet eyes behold the strange place, and she takes a moment before she asks Telamon, "Where... /is/ this place, exactly?" Then she shakes her head. "No, it... isn't really anywhere, is it. Besides here. Somewhere in dreaming. Somewhere in our heads and... not." She arrives at the conclusion so easily, the sort of dreamlike statement that can only slip from the mouth of a poet.
Tanith sits more properly on Telamon's shoulder, looking out on the beautiful landscape with a bit of interest. "Are there fish here?" Clearly curious she tampers her hind legs down as if considering a leap to look for herself.
"Probably. They may not look like normal fish though," Telamon warns. He turns in a slow circle. "But this has all sorts of interesting prospects. Explains a bit, too." He reaches up to scratch Tanith's chin. "Tanith, if I imagined... oh, say, a pair of boots here. Could I bring them out of the dream? What -else- could be brought forth?" He pauses, then his eyes narrow. Then he laughs softly. "Oh -ho-. Silly, silly villains. This may be the realm of dreams, but I'm a -big- dreamer."
Cor'lana gasps a little at Tanith's query in the way that she gasps when Pothy asks for certain things in that very endearing Pothy-manner of his. "Tel! You /have/ to dream some fish for her!"
The remark about the villains reminds Cor'lana that they are here on a mission, however, and she says, "So long as you maintain some sort of protective wall--say, simply thinking and willing, 'None but myself, my bride, Tanith, and all who I allow to enter may reside here'--I think things will be fine."
Tanith purrs happily, pleased with the thought of fish. "I don't mind. Fish are fish." She replies easily. Then Telamon asks his question of her and she hums. "You would have to try very hard I think. You would know that the boots aren't real, so would they work like real boots? Or would they make your feet wet?" This seems rhetorical.
Telamon takes a deep breath, grinning at Tanith. "Hm. Point. I wonder if it's like shadow conjuration? If you can convince yourself it's real, well..." He mulls it over, before nodding to Lana. "Correct. Time to start crafting an outpost." He furrows his brow, thinking, before he nods. "I fix my will to this place. Let none who mean me or my bride and companions harm be able to approach." Holding the totem in one hand, he gestures, chanting. "Irhandi, mul dag zir, zigara!" The air ripples outward from him, a shimmering pattern of magic.
GAME: Telamon casts Repulsion. Caster Level: 13 DC: 23
Cor'lana observes Telamon as he casts the spell and fixes it into place, the pride in her eyes evident as she smiles at him brightly. "I don't know," she says, "but perhaps feeding more of the blood might suffice. That... might be somewhat dangerous, though."
She considers for a moment. "I wonder. I think... Do you suppose the reason that Eluna isn't coming is because--you're faithful, but you don't have a /divine/ connection to Her?"
And then she thinks some more. "What if she hasn't arrived because we haven't made the dream palatable enough for Her? I know you've said something about blue roses before..."
Tanith seems like she's about to say something irritable to Cor'lana, and then she's ducking down. Hiding amid Telamon's longish locks. She hums something under her breath, and at that point a voice is heard from behind Telamon.
It's the same man as before. He stands there, empty-handed seemingly and looking the pair over with interest. "Back again I see. Little bird and pretty boy. Your friend made a mess last time."
Telamon turns slowly, staring with cool contempt at the man. "He doesn't think like we do, to be honest. He's nice enough -- but he definitely doesn't have the same point of view as a person." Tel tilts his head, continuing to regard the man with that same chilly glare. "Do you have the same problem, perhaps? Because I'm busy right now. You'll have to take a number."
Cor'lana turns to face the man. Right now, there's the feeling of being on edge, and the feeling of something like a bird preparing to take flight crosses her heart and through the link she has with Telamon--but...
She tilts her head in curiosity, a little like a raven. Somehow, this feels a little different. Maybe it's that feytouched nature of hers. Maybe it's the fact he hasn't made a demand yet for the totem.
"He is pretty," Cor'lana says. "At least we can agree on that. If you're here for the totem in any way, shape, or form, the answer is a no... But it doesn't have to be all wolves growling and teeth gnashing, all the time, now does it?"
She smiles brightly. "There are strange dreams where even enemies work together, are there not? This could be one of them."
The man tilts his head and eyes Cor'lana. "Perhaps. I do want the totem, and I see that you're feeding it finally. Good for you." He flashes his teeth. "But I'm willing to entertain the thought of you working with me. What did you have in mind exactly?"
"I'm sure you do," Telamon replies. "I mean, you poured all that money into Zalgiman's little shenanigans, I expect you'd like a return on investment." He snorts. "But I admit I'm curious to see where my wife is going with this." Idly, his fingers trace across the totem, shifting it from hand to hand.
Cor'lana's violet eyes twinkle. There is the full feeling of fey whim and mischief rising within her and through the connection she has with Telamon. "To be honest," she admits, "I was sort of hoping we'd play a game. Maybe a game of cards. The wager being information. Pieces about ourselves that must be true. It's true, you want the totem, and while I'm not willing to wager the totem, and while I imagine you're not about to reveal your grand ambitions for what you want to do with the totem... Information about ourselves is a pretty /revealing/ thing. It could be used against us."
(And information he divulges could be used against him,) Cor'lana thinks through the bond she has with Telamon. (And if you and I are playing against him, we both are able to feed information about our hands to each other.) It's... an idea. One that can only be born of fey whim. And fey trickery.
"You are connected through-" He stops halfway through his statement and his eyes light. "But you're not are you? Poor things. You know _nothing_, and if pretty boy is here all by himself... I'd wager on me against him."
The man pulls his own totem out of thin air, a cut appearing on his finger as if by magic and the drip of blood quickly forms from the totem to the cut. "Besides your little game wouldn't earn me anything I don't already know. You two are adventurers. Your whole lives are spoken about in Alexandria."
He begins to grow black fur all over and his voice deepens. "As I said before. My God is with me, and yours is just a dream!"
GAME: Aftershock rolls 1d20+23: (8)+23: 31
"You are -seriously- starting to irritate me," Telamon snarls, his eyes starting to flare again. "Maybe you need a time out first." He raises his hand, and snaps his fingers. There's a ripple in the air around the man, like a shimmer, or the surface of a lake when a rock is dropped into it, and it pulls at him -- before stopping. "Oh gods damn it," Telamon growls. "Guess it's the hard way."
GAME: Ravenstongue casts Dimension Door. Caster Level: 13 DC: 21
Cor'lana sees the man grow black fur and boom his voice, and then she sees Telamon's attempt to cast something at him. When that fails, she gives a tiny sigh. "I think playing cards would have been fun," she says. "Shame."
She grabs Telamon by the arm and with an incantation from her lips... They disappear, reappearing some distance away. Still in the dream, but what does distance mean in a realm of dreams? Either way, she turns to Telamon. "Do not despair," she says calmly. "You are my starborn king, and you hold a totem with a connection to the Skysinger. It is a tool that only you can use--not I. What you dream can be willed, remember? If your will is unbending as the stars are bright, you can do more than we could ever do in the waking world."
She gives him a kiss on the cheek. "So--let's either wake up and escape, or give it all you have. All your courage, all your love, all your warmth to drive you on. I'm here by your side, after all. Would that I could feed the totem, I could, but I cannot. /You/ must do it."
In the distance the wolf howls and begins its pursuit. You know in the way that dreams have that it will be upon you all too soon. Tanith nuzzles at Telamon's cheek, reminding him that she is there. "I don't like him." She mutters.
GAME: Telamon rolls fortitude: (20)+6: 26 (CRITICAL SUCCESS) GAME: Telamon rolls will+6: (12)+12+6: 30
Telamon is still gritting his teeth as Cor'lana yanks him away with a dimension door. "I know, but damn it, we can't keep -running- from him. We can't keep wasting time like this, and I thought he couldn't follow us through -space- -- this world isn't anywhere -close- to Ea. But..."
He pauses suddenly. "Wait. Time... space... -those- I know how to use. Tiny fragments in time, to speed up a spell. Manipulate space, for teleportation. If I just..." He tears the wound on his palm again, bleeding on the totem, as he takes hold of the dream again.
As the wolf comes over the furthest hill, the world -ripples- again, like heat waves on a summer day. This time the ripple doesn't relent, though, and the wolf's movement grinds to a halt, the air around it glimmering, like a crystalline orb.
Cor'lana's violet eyes twinkle. "You can do more than you ever thought you could, darling," she says with a smile, bright and full of joy. "I think that'll buy us time for a moment. But I don't think it'll hold forever."
She kisses Telamon's cheek. "We came here to see what the totem could do once you bled on it in the dream. And it turns out that you can do so much--but also only so much. I think... If we're going to 'win', we need all totem-bearers on our side, all in the dream, all feeding blood, all unified in thoughts and desires."
There's a note of sadness in her eyes. "I don't think I can help you in that--as Vaire never made a totem--but I will always be here to help you. Just as I did before. Now, let's awaken and leave him behind."
The wolf hovers in midair, but the leap that carried it into the bubble is slowly... slowly descending. Soon enough the wolf will probably free itself of the languor, but not yet. Tanith meanwhile huddles close to Telamon's shoulder. "I don't like him." She murmurs again, this time more plaintively.
GAME: Telamon casts Teleport. Caster Level: 13 DC: 22 GAME: Telamon rolls 1d100: (65): 65
Telamon glares at the wolf, his fingers curling. Wanting to do more. But then he looks at Lana, then at Tanith, and he nods slowly. "You'll always be with me, by my side, Lana. But you're right. This isn't something we can resolve alone, or even together. We need the others." He touches Tanith reassuringly. "And I have a responsibility here, too. Not to throw myself into a hopeless fight. Work smarter, not harder, as father told me."
He fixes the wolf with one last glare. "My goddess is a dream, is it? And yet, dreaming is how we make things -real-." With that, he gestures elegantly, straightening up. "Kaskal, nu siten, ula'ulla!" The sphere of light wraps around Tel, Lana, and Tanith, and then they are gone.
The world resolves around the couple and their dragon-companion. It's... more uncomfortable than it usually is. As if something's not quite right. And then suddenly the revolution comes to an abrupt halt and they find themselves outside the city. It's the closest location to their house as being outside the city allows, but still... distinctly outside. In the winter. With nothing but bedclothes on.
It's... a bit draftier than she expected, to wake up. But she's /wide/ awake now, thanks to the chill of winter blowing through her.
Cor'lana just looks down, slowly, at herself. Just as slowly, she looks back up.
"I'm sure glad I wore my wool nightgown to bed," she dryly comments. "If it was summer, that wouldn't be the case."
Cor'lana just looks at Telamon in his cotton pajamas. "And you've inadvertently saved the city from 'Alexandria's ass' on total display," she comments with a wide grin. "I /really/ hope the pixies haven't popularized that nickname for you yet. Shall we head home?"
-End