(Untitled)

[rowan_gods]

Above the ground, in the center of the city of Jhelbor, in a room that John has long since vacated, a twisted piece of shimmering metal and glass seems to shrink down down down until it's nothing more than a pinprick, and then the air around it explodes, and the ripples of that much magic being unmade travel out in all directions.

It's too much. Too

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[cassie_of_troy]

Cassandra had been cutting some fabric. She didn't know if she wanted to make herself a dress or a pair of trousers. Lately, she had become rather fond of her new clothing, so much so that she was constantly wearing her corset even when she wasn't out, practicing with her bow. Just as she was slipping the knife into a fold of red cloth, she felt it.

No, she didn't feel it. She saw it.

But it was like feeling a color or hearing a scent. Everything was jumbled, confused. And there was a painful, searing light that wracked her body. Her eyes saw nothing but light. She thought, perhaps, that she could feel tears sliding down her cheeks, but the light was so powerful that it overwhelmed all else.

And then it stopped.

She took a rasping, startled breath. She was somewhere else. Again. With people. People who scarcely tolerated her. Wonderful.

Slowly, she took a few halting steps away from the pack, trying to look around and gauge her bearings. Green afterimages swam in front of her eyes, but within them, other colors swirled. It was frighteningly beautiful, but horrifying too. She had to clench her hands to control the trembling. Her knuckles turned white around the knife. Cassandra was no fool. She immediately knew it would do her little good, where ever it was she found herself.

[rowantree_npcs]

Oh, and armed. Fantastic. Nestra had full confidence in their ability to stop the woman with the wild look in her eyes from hurting anyone. Still, having her go charging at the crowd had absolutely no up-side.

She looked over the other Gate Guardians ranged around the brand new tree and their looks of surprise and alarm. Not just alarm, something else. Fear, perhaps? Yes... fear. Not for the huddle of people that had appeared, but for what their presence implied.

A mistake.

She locked eyes with the man closest to Cassandra, and a moment of silent communication passed between them before he began moving forward, slowly and carefully, giving plenty of time for his approach to be noticed.

[cassie_of_troy]

Cassandra turned her head as she heard the man approaching. Though she had scarcely said a word, she could tell that she had already made a bad impression. Typical. Apollo's damn curse continued to haunt her, not in visions, but in the person that she had become because of it. At least now she understood that much. There was damn near nothing she could do about it, but understanding was something.

She supposed it was best not to say anything. It would probably be taken the wrong way. Cassandra rather doubted she could speak much anyway. Her entire body was still humming, vibrating from the force of her arrival. It was very likely she would soon be sick all over the ground. Doing her best to remain regal and serene, she turned fully to face the man, looking him in the eyes.

Her brother had once told her that the way to establish connection with a dog was to look it in the eyes. It was both how they established dominance and how they established trust. She knew her eyes were wild, but she also knew that a steady gaze meant control. She channeled her energy into control. No, she thought, as if willing her mind to him, I'm not going to hurt you. Not unless you attack me first.

Still, it was best to try and avoid dealing with the situation, if she could. Let Jack and the others handle him. And so, she sent out a tendril of energy, searching for a nearby bird in the hopes that it might squawk and draw the attention of the other worldwalkers to her little situation. Diplomacy was called for here. For now.

[rowantree_npcs]

Alastair didn't feel wonderful about approaching a woman with a white knuckle grip on a blade, but it was better than having her tearing off and doing serious damage. "I'm not going to hurt you," he said. "We don't want to have any trouble, do we?" He wasn't sure if he was trying to calm her or himself. "My name is Alastair. How should I address you?"

[cassie_of_troy]

She examined him a moment, hoping, perhaps to forestall answering. A mage of some kind, though the traces in his aura were faint. Certainly, he was nothing compared to Cris. That thought sent a slight pang through Cassandra, but she chose to ignore it. Deal with that later. Focus on the present. The present was what counted because it would give way to her future, which she rather hoped would be lasting.

Funny how that happened.

"Cassandra," she replied, and then, deciding to play a little bit, added, "daughter of King Priam."

[rowantree_npcs]

That made sense, but wasn't much of a comfort. The blade, her clothing, the wild look in her eyes and her unruly mane of hair. A warrior princess. Oh, Gods below, he was going to end up laid out in front of a Witch tonight, no question about it.

He pulled the water out of the air around him, letting it collect behind his back, and his aura flared brighter as he did. If she was going to attack him, and now he suspected there were few ways to avoid it, he could at least try to deflect the blow.

He couldn't burn her - it wouldn't be right. If she didn't know what was happening, then she must be frightened. It wasn't her fault that she'd been trained to respond to uncertainty with violence. That didn't mean it would hurt him any less, but it was still enough of a reason to not be the one doing the attacking.

[cassie_of_troy]

If there was a prize for rotten judgment, Cassandra was definitely a forerunner to in it. Faint aura? She might blame that mistake on the teleportation later. Assuming there was a later. She didn't really like the looks of this fellow and his glimmering aura.

She reached out with several tendrils of power, this time, her mind screaming out to all of the animals within range. Make noise, she told them fiercely. Draw attention.

She was sick and tired of dying alone.

"We were brought here against our will," she said icily to Alastair. "Why?"

[rowantree_npcs]

Suddenly the wilderness seemed to leap into action around him. Birds erupted in a riot of sound and he could hear howling behind him. "Against your will? I don't know. The Sealing was supposed to make travel impossible." The animals were still uneasy, and amid a wild chattering noise, something small and furry jumped up and bit him. With a shout of surprise he snatched his hand away, some of the water from behind his back shooting forward to encase the raccoon and pull him away.

"Did you do that?" Alastair asked, holding his arm. Some of the attention attracted had been that of his fellow Guardians. He felt more than heard Gorn's hand move to his sword, and he shook his head at the older man. "That's not really fair, you know," he quipped with a strained smile. "You can't make me think you're going to stab me and then bite me by proxy. That's definitely fighting dirty."

Right about then a gurgle alerted him to the fact that he was drowning a woodland creature. Shit. Alastair quickly pulled the water from around the head, and then focused on drawing it out of the tiny lungs. Those beady little eyes looked pissed, but he was breathing.

[cassie_of_troy]

"I have been mistaken for many things before," Cassandra said evenly. "This is the first time I've ever been accused of being a raccoon." She flashed a slightly savage smile. "Believe me, if I wanted to bite you, I'd do it myself."

She turned to look over at the tree. "Sealing," she repeated quietly. "Sealing off the gate, preventing travel." She was lost in a world of her own for a moment. "Rusoren said the gate was closed off a long time ago. Which means now is not now." She mused over this revelation for a moment, completely forgetting about Alastair.

Unsure, she sent out a thought into the universe. Rusoren?

For a moment, she was completely still, almost trance-like. Her willowy body remained stiff however, her hand still holding the knife so tightly that her fingers trembled. When she blinked, it was abrupt and unsettling, her wild eyes coming alive without warning. She turned her full attention back on Alastair. "Clearly, your sealing process didn't work. We should not be here and we must be returned to when we came from."

[rowantree_npcs]

"Well I've never been bitten before. Gate Guardians usually exist very much in harmony with nature, which means someone prompted him to take a chunk." She was a surly one, wasn't she? "Rusoren? You've come from Rowan." That made him feel much better. "Rusoren is mistaken." At least they hadn't failed, there were just some... side effects.

Though, the fact that she was in contact with Rusoren of all Gods made him even more nervous about the knife she was holding. Cassandra, daughter of Priam. He would have to check the records and see when she'd come through the Gate. "Has anyone ever told you that you'll catch more flies with honey?"

In response to Cassandra's silent query, there came a faint brush at the back of her mind, feather light. 'You are not of mine.' A faint trace of surprise.

[cassie_of_troy]

Cassandra touched her temple lightly. None of this was making any sense, but she realized with a measure of disappointment, that she'd simply have to leave it to Jack and the others. She would learn nothing like this. It was a terrible realization, but didn't make it less true.

"I don't know why you'd want to catch flies," she muttered. "They're actually quite dirty little things." Cassandra sighed. "We came from Rowan, yes. But obviously something is amiss as we were all previously in the city of Jhelbor, which should be right over there." Her hand fluttered in the direction of where the city should have been. "Which implies to me that the time dialations have brought us out of our time."

To reply, or not to reply?

There were some curiosities Cassandra couldn't resist. You came to me in my dreams, she thought. But it was in another lifetime.

[rowantree_npcs]

At Cassandra's explanation, a few of the Gate Guardians peeled away from the group and headed for the village. No doubt they were thinking the same thing he was - the Gate had never had an impact on the flow of time, for everything it could do. Something else might be at work here.

"It's an expression," Alstair explained. "It means you get more by being nice than you do by being confrontational." His arm was starting to really sting. "I have never heard of Jhelbor. We are on the edge of Borheth. I should be heading in to find a Witch. If you give me the knife, I'd be happy to show you around once I stop bleeding."

The shifting sound of wings unfurling in her mind. 'Why would I do that?' If he was put off by her riddle, he didn't sound it.

[cassie_of_troy]

Cassandra glanced down at the knife, looking slightly amused. So that's what it was all about. "Did you think I was going to start a massacre?" she asked quietly, her dark eyes dancing with secretive delight. "If so, you might take some of our own advice. I wasn't being confrontational until you confronted me."

Nevertheless, Cassandra slowly leaned over, slipping the blade of the knife into her boot. It seemed only fair she should be allowed to keep it. After all, Alastair kept his weapon with him at all time. Shamanism did not afford Cassandra the same protection as a mage. "I'll have you know," she continued softly, surprisingly gently for such a fierce woman, "That I have never used a weapon against a living person in my life. You made some assumptions."

There was something about Alastair that was still bothering her. She examined him quickly with a flick of her gaze and decided it was his hair. Once that decision was made, her clenched fists finally managed to relax. Lightly, she gestured over to the group. "That man over there is Jack, he's the leader of the worldwalkers. You should probably tell him what you've told me."

She could almost feel Rusoren in her mind. It brought her despair to realize that he truly did not know her. Apparently, the gods themselves, in this world, were slaves to the singleness of time. I don't know, her mind whispered back to him. You never truly told me. But you gave me guidance to this world when I was new and afraid.

[rowantree_npcs]

"Leader?" Alastair tilted his head to the side and examined the man. "I wasn't aware we had one," he said, relaxing now that she'd sheathed her weapon. He very firmly believed that keeping a white knuckle grip on a weapon from the moment you appeared constituted a form of confrontation, but he also got the sense that it would do no good to argue with her. She'd put the knife away. That was what he'd wanted in the first place.

Alastair followed her gesture and saw that she meant a man whose attention he already very clearly had. "He's already heard me, haven't you?"

He received a stiff nod from Jack, who still had one hand under his greatcoat near his hip.

"I imagine he would have been one step behind you had you moved to attack me." Which would have been bad for Alastair if he was the leader of the group. People did not become lasting leaders because of generous dispositions. He might not have ended the evening with a Witch, but with a Fire Mage.

Alastair raised his voice, giving the benefit of the doubt that perhaps they truly did not know the situation. "And no, not start a massacre, but perhaps continue the one that has already begun. I make many assumptions. We've just finished driving the last of those who wish to slaughter us because they do not understand our gifts back through the Gate into the World Beyond. If you make no assumptions, you die. Better to apologize for thinking a friend an enemy, than to rise up to the Land of the Dead for thinking an enemy a friend."

Rusoren was curious now - curious enough to continue to watch, even though she was not his. 'You are still new and afraid.' He was not usually the one to whom the riddlemakers spoke. They chose Brisa, for her soft spot and curiosity.

[cassie_of_troy]

Either journey to this time and place was beginning to get the better of her, or else Cassandra was perhaps more emotionally vulnerable than she wanted to allow herself to be. Or perhaps it was both. Either way and regardless, her head was starting to spin. Alastair suddenly wasn't making much sense to her now. No more than Rusoren was. Cassandra felt dizzy. She couldn't focus.

"Well," she said thickly, flicking her gaze between Jack and Alastair. "I suppose there are a lot of problems to be cleared up then. Rest assured, massacre shouldn't be one of them. At least, you needn't worry about me." She made a vague gesture. "I'll let you get to it."

She lowered her head, suddenly aware of how much effort it was taking to hold it up. Her hand found a tree branch which managed to keep her from falling over. What was wrong with her? She tried to take inventory of her senses and, for the first time, she realized that there was a throbbing pain in her side. Lightly, she touched it. At first, she only felt the rough leather of the corset. But then she felt something beneath the surface. Oh no.

[rowantree_npcs]

Alastair moved forward and reached Cassandra just after Jack did. "What's wrong?" he asked, his gaze flickering between the two of them. "Oh, you-- you don't look well." Had she fallen? He couldn't remember. The first he'd seen of her she'd been coiled tightly and ready to strike. But she couldn't have come through like that. The travel was always a bit disorienting, and surely it would be worse as the Gate itself shifted its form and reality.

The man called Jack already had one hand on her back and the other hovering and ready to catch her if she fell. Whatever weapon he'd been reaching for was obviously forgotten now. Alastair felt like a third wheel, and while logically he knew that whatever was wrong wasn't his fault, he still felt bad for her. "Do you need a Witch?"