Interlude: Of Shrines and Roads
“Huh. Well.” You speak out loud, not sure if it was just to you or your familiar. Looking down at the slender grey cat sitting next to your feet, she didn’t seem at all frightened. But her ears were perked forward and her tail was twitching as if in deep thought.
*Pain. Me you here.* her thoughts send down the familiar's bond to you. You feel a bit of uncertainty, and just a hint of irritation. She looks up at you expectantly with her little golden eyes. A little glimmer of hope resides therein before she looks back to the little roadside shrine in front of you.
"I'm not sure where we are Furbutt," you say to your companion. "I'm a little fuzzy on the details too." Absentmindedly you grasp the end of your ponytail and give it a few small tugs. Apparently your nervous habits followed you into, well wherever this is. You unstring your long brown hair and retie it back up.
She barres her teeth in an overlong yawn and stretches nimbly as only cats do. *No smells. You me shrine grass road.* She sniffs the road, blinks and gives a little sneeze. *Snack?* she queries to you. Somethings never change, you grin wryly at your friend. We could have been teleported to the Plane of Fire and she would have asked for marshmallows. Cats are cats.
You give a little shrug and sit down on the dirt road you find yourself on. Checking your hip pouch you find a few morsels of jerky and hold them out for her. She sniffs daintily at them before choosing her prize and plucks it from your hand with nimble teeth. She casually jumps on your lap, marching and finally laying down. Absentmindedly you scratch behind her ears. What she said was right. Where you were moments ago is not here. There was a battle, you remember. Just not the outcome. Or what happened to bring you here. Glancing over to the shrine again, hoping to find some clue to where you are or at least what you two are doing there.
It was a small stone version, the kind set up by wayside resting places on your world. Carvings of your goddess Bastet and her symbols for decorations. A small offering bowl on top made of a light colored wood. A few coins of unknown origin lay inside. A handful of other offerings lay by the bowl. A small rag doll, a few feathers tied together with string, a small block of incense. No insight forthcoming from those trinkets, you let out a sigh.
Turning your attention to the road it only leads two ways. Both looked identical in outcome. Just stretching onward until the horizon, splitting the green flat fields on each side. The sky itself was nearing nighttime, but just light enough still to read and make out details. It wasn't cold, or warm. It just seemed like everything else around you, not in a hurry to move or give up it's secrets easily. It felt like being in a moment of hesitation, that pause before you take a breath to respond.
After a moment of trying to dislodge you cat from your lap with no luck, you settle on a modified crab shuffle to the side of the road. Her snickering could be heard as well as felt through the bond. The things you do to accommodate your cat, you think to yourself. After you stop and sit back down again she gracefully jumps off your lap and saunters over to the shrine. The urge to give your cat the finger is your response through the bond. More snickering from her returned.
"Gods your a pain in the ass sometimes, Lliandra." you mutter to her as you kneel on the ground and remove your backpack. Weather beaten, worn, and patched from a thousand campaigns you've had this thing ever since you fought in your first skirmish with the undead. You even have had it longer than your feline familiar, but not too much longer. You run your hand lightly over the top of it in an affectionate rub. 'Here's hoping the magic still works in it' you think to yourself. To your surprise and luck it still does.
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The backpack itself could hold quite a few things, but the magic infused inside of it could shrink objects going in, and returning them to their normal size when you remove them. You had a panicked moment once when your cat decided to jump into it for a nap one day, but it only worked on things, not living animals or people as far as you could tell. Removing a few stones and your cooking pot, deciding that camping here for the day or night would be fine. Tomorrow you could head down one direction of the road in an attempt to find out where you were.
Setting the stones on the ground in a circle, you place your finger on each rune one at a time tracing their patterns. They start to glow with a faint blue aura before turning a darker shade of blue. Grabbing the rest of the ingredients from your backpack you hastily make a camp stew with the few errant vegetables in your pack. You still have a couple of waterskins as well so for now you should be okay. And even a little mead, for when you get out of this place you can celebrate with a drink.
Looking up from your dinner preparations you watch a wooden door materialize not too far above you. A simple thing with a brass doorknob. As the doorknob starts to turn to turn you stand up and trace a sigil in the air for protection. A faint glow of magic surrounds your cat as she works her own magics and vanishes. The door opens up and a dark blue figure steps through. Floating on the air with her wings outstretched before you she looks down at you with a quizzical look. Her main and tail shift and sway on their own accord. A darker patch near her end on each side shows a bright crescent moon. She slowly descends from the sky to land near your camp. Her horn catches the light and a faint dark nimbus appears around it.
"Good evening, traveler" she says to you. Her tone is pleasant and you can see no malice in her eyes or her posture.
" Fair night to you, daughter of the air." you respond not sure if the title is correct. A unicorn with wings? A small black pegasus with a horn? "Pointing to the cooking pot, you resume "Join us in peace if you wish."
"I thank you for your hospitality." She tilts her head for a moment before walking over to you. Her hooves make no sound as she walks, but your not sure if it's because of some magics she has, or because of this place. Sniffing toward the cooking pot she gives a little smile and sits down. "I am Luna. Alicorn Princess of Equestria and sister of Celestia". Her head held in regal bearing she gives you a slow graceful nod.
You give her your name and continue. "apprentice to Gimble the Wary, and occasional sellsword." you give her a quick bow. Your not sure what else to say at the moment so you busy yourself with the dinner. Retrieving three small bowls and spoons from your backpack, you serve your guest first, leave a bowl near the fire for your cat, and a half a bowl for yourself.
"Do all your dreams have such detail?" she asks you when sit back down. Her spoon glowing the same color as the aura around her horn she starts to eat.
You give a little frown. "Dream? No, I don't remember many of my dreams. That's part of the training. This however, is not one. At least none I've had before or know. You raise your hand with your spoon in and give a little shrug. "I'm not sure exactly where we are, but it's not a dream as far as I can tell." Eating at least didn't feel like a dream. The stew was hot, and just spiced enough to give the vegetables some extra flavor. Well considering how indifferent you are as a cook, maybe this was a dream.
"We?" She asks you politely. "Are you royalty, or is there perhaps someone else here I can not see?" Her eyes narrow for a bit as if in concentration for a spell. At that moment your familiar decides to drop her spell and appear sitting at her bowl. She looks at your guest with big, wide eyes and gives the most pathetic mewl you've ever heard her voice.
Luna blinks a couple of times and smiles at the grey feline. "A pleasure to meet you, too" she says playfully. Your cat nods at her with the regal bearing that all cats display, and begins to eat.
*Smells like alfalfa. Old Magic. Moon dust?* Lliandra thinks to you, looking confused at your equine guest. Tilting her head she lets out a dainty little sneeze. Shrugging she continues to eat.
"She says greetings" You tell Luna between bites of dinner. " So what brings you to this whatever place this is?"
Giving a sidelong look at your cat she responds. "Dreams are my domain. I noticed some rather strong emotions coming from this place" She looks around again before continuing. "Mostly confusion. So I came in to investigate."
"Honestly, I appreciate it. I have no idea in where in the realms I am." you tell your dinner guest. "This isn't anyplace I have seen on the maps or read about before." Taking the bowls, you clean up dinner and put a kettle on the hook to boil some water for tea. "Admittedly though, my lack of the realms outside of my own is clearly lacking."
"I can tell you that you are somewhere in Equestria." She says after a few minutes of silence. She graciously accepts the cup of tea you place before her. "When I leave here I can inform the guards to look for you, and we can wake you up." She bows her head "Though it may take a while to find you."
"I appreciate it". You tell your guest. A comfortable silence envelopes the camp.
Well. Day three is coming to a close and your still sitting in the way area you set up by the shrine. You've meditated. You've prayed. You've almost thrown your familiar through the air at great speed after she scared the gods out of you in a stew pot prank. She looks over her shoulder at you, the normal dismissive cat look replaced by one of extra dismissive posture. Turning back to her task at hand, she uses her magic to clean up the mess she just created. You hope quick enough since you don't want Luna to come visit you in the midst of a mess.
Luna, thank goodness has been back every night to check up on you, and update you on the search for your bodies. So far no luck, but she's told you a few leads they got were promising. She seemed a little upset, it was hard to tell with her. She'd make a great card player. But whatever it was, your gentle questioning wouldn't get it out of her. Nothing to concern yourself with anyway just yet.
"Yet" he muttered to himself. Anytime someone in the temple say 'Yet' it meant they had a good idea of what was going on. And how bad it was going to get. But they weren't sharing it yet. You pause and realize something. You haven't given much thought to anyone back on your world since you got here. It's not like you had a family to worry over you. It was just the temple and the teachers. But you were curious. Time to do a little more digging yourself.
You move closer to the fire and sit down. "Lliandra. Spell". you intone to your cat. With a sigh of happiness she walks to the opposite side of the fire to face you and sits down. You raise your right hand, she raises her right paw. A faint shimmer of white surrounds you two as your souls stretch out of their fleshy confines to meet in the Aether. Well that was the plan anyway.
Your two souls circle around and entwine in and ethereal dance for a few moments before moving down opposite directions down the road at a speed your meat bodies could only dream of. You could do this through a chain of doorway spells, but this would be quicker, and less strain.
The pain of it was everything looked the same. The only difference in the miles and miles your soulself has traveled was the camp you made, so far behind you. Miles of light green fauna below, electric blue above. And the ever brown line of the road. Your about to recall back when you get an image from your bond. A sleeping cat. She's found nothing either. You make a sign with your hand and return to your body.
A strange 'Click' greets you as you return your body. That odd sensation of coming back to the world, reverberating through your bones a little. Your cat looks over at you and stretches before sauntering over to you, sitting in your lap. You rest your hand on her head and give it a little shake. *Irritant* comes through the bond. With affection, and just a hint of apprehension.
"It was worth a try" you say to your feline friend.
She marches a little and lowers her head to take a nap. *Maybe* she returns. *Rabbit tonight?* she asks before nodding off.
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Luna appears to you in much of the same fashion. Although she does seem to walk a little quicker to the fire this time around. You exchange greetings and pleasantries. She sits and you make her some tea. Graciously she bows her head and accepts her cup. Little wisps of magic floating off the bottom as she sets it down in front of her. She looks excited about something.
"I do not bandy words this evening. I come to tell you that we have indeed, found your bodies." You feel a moment of elation. "However" she continues, frowning while holding up a hoof "There is a bit of a complication." She looks down at her cup. "Have you ever heard of beings called Dryads?"
You blink. "Ah. Yes." You clear your throat. "We have them on our world, if the meaning of the word is the same. Lives in a tree? Tends to snag unwary travelers in the forests..." you trail off. "Shit."
"Indeed" she says. "As far as we can tell she found you by her tree and took you two in. There is some strange magics at play here, it's an odd thing, but a strong one. There's a kind of, barrier separating her tree from our world. We can't seem to breech it, and she hasn't come out yet". She looks up at you again, finally. "I am sorry, but there may not be much we can do. This magical shield seems to be on par with mine and my sisters' magics. All we can tell is that you were alive when she took you in."
You scratch your cat on the top of her head to wake her up. She yawns and looks at you sleepily. You update her through your bond as to what has transpired. She gives you a little smile and winks a golden yellow eye at you. *Wake up* she says. You nod and agree. Looking back up to Luna you lay out your plan.
She listens politely. A small frown forms on her face that grows larger near the end of the telling. "Are you sure it will work?" she inquires.
"Not really? But what other choice do we have?" giving a little snort of frustration you continue "Stay here for how long? Forever? If there's a chance out, I think have to take it." Lliandra looks at the Alicorn and gives her a slow nod. Luna blinks slowly looking back over your cat once again.
"When we meet on my world next, tell me all about her?" she asks you.
You snort, barely containing a chuckle. " When we meet on your world, She'll tell you all about herself, herself. She's got the gift of gab". lowering your hand to her rising head she meets your hand for a few ear skritches.
"I have a spell to awaken stubborn or stuck dreamers in certain situations" she tells you. "It might work in this circumstance. I am not sure though. It has not been tried on a situation such as this. I don't know all of the adverse things that could happen. Nothing could happen. Or it could work but only wake you up here? Or you could slam right into the shield and have your entire beings disintegrated...."
You raise your hand, palm out in a gesture of stop, please. "I get the hint" you say dryly. "It may end unwell. Whatever the outcome we appreciate your help" you tell her, smiling. Hoping your pulling off looking confident. Inside your starting to get that 'this campaign is going sideways' kinda feeling.
"I see then. Very well. It's a date." She smiles at you. You never thought an equine could have a radiant smile. But there it is. Almost as bright as the moon on her sides. You compose yourself.
"Thank you for everything, Princess Luna". You tell her while standing up. You give her a courtly bow, and she dips her head to you once, slowly. You gather your things and prepare yourselves while Luna sets up for her spell.
With your preparations complete, cat snug and nervous in your backpack you nod once to Luna. She nods back.
"See you soon, over there." She starts to intone her spell.
The noise of her somatic components are almost deafening. You hear your cat howl in pain. You feel yourself, your being dislodged. You feel the remnants of lunch on your chest in a hot mess. You open your eyes.
You see the inside of an ancient oak tree. A little space made as a home. A being swirls and forms through the wood from the floor behind you. oozing like an liquid being, she forms mere paces from you. Two brilliant glowing emerald eyes greet you as the Dryad appears to you in her full pony form.
*Ah shit*
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