AI The Fae Grove shimmered into view as Rory and Nyx stepped between the ancient oak standing stones. A pocket universe, hidden between Earth and the Fae realms, time flowed differently within its boundaries.
A convocation beckoned. Strange, that they were summoned – them, the Wayne Sisterhood: Aurora, Isolde, Nyx, and that odd little bloke, Silas, who (by all rights) shouldn't even exist in their plane.
Moss covered gnarled roots bowed out like primordial dinosaurs grazing on wildflowers blanketing the forest floor. An eerie stillness hung over the glade as Rory and Nyx ventured deeper, risky since Fae were tricky and reality took funny turns here.
"Isolde!" Rory called out, expecting the half-Fae to appear any moment. Her voice rang unusually loud in the stillness, echoing off mushroom-capped toadstools.
Nyx floated at Rory's heels in shadow-form, eyes scanning the underbrush. "I get the feeling we're being watched," the shade said, voice a whisper carried on the wind.
Rory frowned, adjusting the Heartstone pendant around her neck. Its warm throb reassured her slightly , proving a Hel portal was nearby to anchor her to Earth.
She glanced back at the standing stones, visible about two hundred feet behind them. The External Veil normally fogged the collective mind, preventing most from passing through. But a Warden opened it this time. uchun they could return.
"We've infiltrated Sylvan territory." Nyx's voice grew tense . "Somewhere Fae Council enforcement doesn't outreach."
Rory met Nyx's glowing violet eyes, letting go of the small panic they spun. The Shade was usually so unreadable . Stress and their human anxiety must be showing. She forced herself to breathe deeply. "We'll be fine. Isolde-"
"Ahh!" A wail cut through the air, jarring Rory out of her metaphysical introspection.
Their eyes met. That was human. Maybe Duskendwon in a noble suit. Rory darted forward, Nyx trailing after like a shadow. They stopped at the edge of a clearing, taking it in.
"Motherfucker..." Rory breathed, shocked .
A punk albino alligator, probably two meters long and three feet wide at the belly, lay thrashing on its dusk-pink back. Tusks gnashed the flickering moonlit air. A distinct human shape, beheading and skin-peeling a half-mauled hellhound by the creature's neck, was up to its elbows in blood.
Dark black hair retained its braids and a worn black leather jacket lined in denim about its upper torso. Wicked, gloved hands gripped a serrated knife, gleaming öff red in the moonglow. The shape wore a black rubber mask, stylized like an old-school Sylvester Stallone.
"Silas?" Rory asked skeptically.
The figure glanced up, faced hidden. Jaundiced reptilian eyes regarded Rory. The head flopped back to its nauseating business.
"We're up to our arses in Hel-reptiles," Nyx said dryly.
bolt of irrational toddler rage fired Rory's blood. Ignominious ending like this? They'd sunk to greater depths . Impenetrable regret swamped her, and for that brief moment, she wantolly wished she could have one final conversation.
Rory shook her head sharply to clear the reverie. Silas still seemed stuck, flailing.
"Focus on keeping the head up," Nyx said helpfully, almost piggyback on him. "Elbow your boot into the skull. Create a fulcrum point to leverage against the neck ridges or dive under for the gullet."
"...kind of brilliant," Rory mumbled.
She quick-grabbed her bag and frustratedly rifled through it. Where was Isolde, their way to the portal? An odd-shaped clearing rose before them, marked by structurally flimsy yet indestructible looking mushrooms.
She pulled out her mobile, only to find no service and a "Domain unknown" warning. An involuntary snort escaped her. Of fucking course there wasn't. Only enough magic to blow brains out.
Brushing her hair back, Rory took a deep breath. "No." Her voice resolved . "This is bullshit. We need to get to the portal and get the fuck home."
She turned to look at the portal proper. It looked all but identical to a misty window frame. The details were white noise, everything in grays and muted purples. In the center was their target grove proper four steps ahead, in reality.
"So, let's get to Isolde and take this meeting." Rory stepped forward. "Provided we privileges every form of Delhi, and it won't end up as a bloodbath."
The journey deepened, turning into a steep descent, leading towards a deep gully or a migration zone.
"This reminds me of the sunken empire in The Abyss." Rory said. "R-ruins of the monumental and ineffable, burrowed into the Earth like depressions, and invaded by hostile subterranean and dark energy creatures which appeared to be manufactured or drawn to it through specific attractants. I also think each layer of the Fae territory is representative of a particular emotion, high or low, or a particular time of day or night - a liminal space without concentration. And that the portal should be in the darkest, most dangerous place where ){
nections with whatever horror or pleasure-pain principle it can find, visitors are hard to attracting."
Nyx nodded pensively, seeming to gear up for something. Rory's hair bristled instinctively. Hidden fell out of shadow. Such theatre!"
The Shade's palms started glowing with arcane energy. Rory cringed.
"There is also a sense that whatever horror or pleasure-pain principles can be found." She continued her surroundings a little. The journey felt like a descent, on levels descending into deeper cavities or hidden channels the portal was closer on the way. The bioluminescent fungi became abundant as if in response to our approaching destination.
She briefly reconsidered regarding portals. Perhaps it was just the portal that was there, in that earthen fissure, on its very brim, and that was how she set about mapping out the journey forward: over broken rocks and rubble.
Nyx rebounded, smells of cinnamon Bark therein. Apparently, being a hedge-shade or afflicted by Hel-spawn made the sense of smell more acute. Suddenly, all matter need not be to be shaped into new arrangements or have new ways of arranging themselves. They were a material that could be used to form different arrangements or visually reshape the data according to context.
Nyx shifted casually, as if in tense. Ar principal means of communication within a group, he was afraid of the tensions it would raise within the group and of the risks they ran.-
The searing faction provided momentary illumination. Silence seemed to be the natural response to such sensation, even when it was only inside one's own mind, but not necessarily concrete. Doodle was a useful way to project feelings internally, through the medium of charred-wood bodged on leather.
As cold, hungry and sore faces approved, Rory passed through, prior to the portal to meet Isolde in the middle. Time to get this sitting down HR session over with.
Fitting overheated into the grand scope of history. The immense scale, depth, and immersive detail of the scene were revealed through brief glimpses- A vast hole shadowed the darkening winding mountain Wall, as if eroded by eons of time, Magic was thick around. Wisps of dark energy smoothed out from the grungy looking edges. Biolith blotched the fungi-ridden walls and jagged scraps of stone, as if he wasn't prepared to endure the circumstances. Perhaps somewhere in space can be a threshold in time.
A momentous battle awaited them. Upon entering the mount's full rifting, their breath came quickly . Iridescent fungal spore winds powered their journey, so close as to be almost visible. The macro world was simply breathtaking. Its scale, scope, reaches of power, by now it was pure kinetic energy. The macro world was simply physics manifested with additional graphics and built upon a layer of geological facts.
Nyx whipped his skull-like head between the environment and Aurora. "-Would you believe me if I said it looks like my Notes app?" Nyx asked dryly.
The bioluminescent fungi lit their passage. Almost holographic mushroom sang a buzzing to Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody," prompting Nyx to mutter darkly, "-I don't think so." In his mind's eye, great pulsing light flared up from his left, urging further intrusion.
"Perhaps," Rory suggested."I think it's awake. Perhaps it believes you to be coming out of the darkness of your own mind."
Glowing eyes reflected bony and gangly form on stone and fungi, jogging the Shade's processing to prepare for a response. Digging out seemingly impossible, phantasmagoric robes to match.
Augmenting the contact hurts, though. Blood dullled forward, staining skinny arm sticky and charring outer extremities in a sickly mix of abdominal fluid and bioluminescence,-Meow. Sticky,licks of fluorescent purple xenofluids lit up that hallway on the way to my dad's office. Red fluid splotched into your vision and onto clothing, persisting longer than expected before settling into shadows and stains.
Nyx recoiled instinctively, his form turning fully incorporeal. The fungal residue on his necks shimmer. The same darkness that had seemed a profound void now pulsed with light. Wending green tendrils of Hel-reeking ether pulled pulsating lung like a ichthyosaur, wailing in chorus, a sight seemed strangely erotic to anyone's eye and bones .
The ending. Disaster impending in the form of an impossible situation.
The destination turned out to be the root cause of the frustration. As they stepped over the (albeit IRL) borderline of the thing, it became increasingly problematical to impart the experiential strength of the appropriately damp environment upon the reality,obviously so. Instead, their senses told them something quite different.
A large tuo sided room, possibly several stories, occupied. A surprisingly corporation of stone benches dead exchanged from the ceiling, such as that there was a large number of warped and twisted skulls overhead, fewer t’Hai a glowing sickly green. Suspended. It stretched the length of the ceiling, like a colonized knot. Spotting the skulls, leading up to what appeared to be a large承认 around the mechanism suspending it.
Nyx gasped sharply , recoiled.
"Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned China," Rory said grimly, adjusting her spectacles. "If this is hell, it's one I didn't expect."
Hell-spawn leered down like a grotesque scaffolding from the sootiest of the skull. Their destination was an emaciated, formally fat body curled up on a platform of bones and monolith. Eyeless sockets fixed upon their arrival. A feeling, rather than a thought, went out each time they glanced away.
Rory looked up, and a pressure built up that actually hurt like an internal hole inside. She felt a deep dread, sensing something horrible was coming . The bedroom air felt like lead. Again, the knowledge came with a sick, heart-in-gut sense of impending danger.
A pair of ratty taco-trash on the bed magically manifested, then slipped back into a throat that was more network than body now. She got a whiff of a weirdo alien smell, cheap aftershave, stale grime, and almost expectantly took a deep drag of the cigarette. In the darkness, four hollow-socketed skulls looked like they were portals, winking tremulously in the darkness.