[Winteria] Observing events

[aesandre]

*Aesandre stands in her throne room, gazing into what looks like a large crystal mirror. The mirror is, in fact, made of ice just like every other object in the room. The last while she has been doing this every single day, as there has been a lot of activity going on in the other realms. She recalls with amusement seeing a few strangers struggling through Winteria a month or so back. At this moment in time, she observes the Fortress of Doom, watching a snake-like creature and what looks like another evil sorcerer deal with a Geist*

"Ha! Well if this is my new enemy then he doesn't have a hope in conquering me! If he for one minute thinks he can take over my land then...."

*She draws a finger across her throat and makes a "death" sound. She continues to watch with amusement*

[ModNote: 'Winteria' added to title to make location obvious at a glance.]

[Aesandre]

[OOC: In the same location, but much later.]

A voice: Wake up!

*Aesandre stirs. She's talking in her sleep again.*

A voice: WAKE UP, AESANDRE!

*Aesandre opens her eyes. She stares at the woman standing before her, burned and bleeding. A familiar but expected visitor. She wants to know what the intrusion is about, but first, the necessary formalities.*

Reference?

Other woman: There's no time for that. You're lucky I got here at all.

*Aesandre frowns.*

Other woman: Don't look at me like that. I'm here to save you!

You're here to save YOU.

Other woman: Which is liable to be of some benefit to you, given that you are my past self!

Tell me what happened.

Future Aesandre: Someone, Lord Fear I am sure, sent a fireball straight for the palace. It's all but gone. What was left of the pool only had enough energy to send me back two minutes.

Lord Fear? Are you certain?

Future Aesandre: Does it matter? I'm certain about the fire! Now start preparing a defence!

*Aesandre rises from her couch and begins to cross her throne room. Her future self follows.*

I shall fight fire with fire. I trust you approve.

Future Aesandre: Not of your turn of phrase. Some past moments do not bear revisiting. *They reach the window.* But don't wait until you can see it. I suspect it is invisible.

*Aesandre frowns.*

Future Aesandre: I know you're suspicious but there really isn't time. I am drained so you must do this alone.

Repelling a fireball will weaken me. I can't risk this being a trap. We have rules. Reference.

Future Aesandre: THERE'S NO-

Reference.

Future Aesandre: 410. Guardian.

*Aesandre moves across the room, towards a lectern where a book sits.*

Future Aesandre: Hurry! If we survive this, it's time to end your "walking gracefully" nonsense.

*Aesandre consults the book. She is satisfied. Only a future version of herself would know her password for the day.

Turning sharply, she closes her eyes and cups her hands. Opening all at the same time, a ball of blue fire rests in her right palm. Sweeping it off with her left hand, it shoots out the window and climbs into the air, growing rapidly, seeking the alien heat of Lord Fear's unseen missile.

Future Aesandre holds her breath, preparing to suffer the same fate for the second time.

There is a great hissing sound from the sky above. The blue fireball is gone and three smaller orange fireballs appear. Deflected away from the palace, they bury themselves in the snow.

There is silence in the throne room. Aesandre sits in her throne, her hand to her brow, regaining her strength. When she looks up, her future self is standing before her.*

Future Aesandre: Let's get it over with.

You're not going to beg for your life? You have before.

Future Aesandre: I know. But my injuries are too great. I-

*Just then, the waters of the throne room's round stone pool begin to ripple. A figure rises from the pool and steps onto the edge. She looks like the women already occupying the room, only greyer-haired, more wrinkled and slightly breathless.*

Further Future Aesandre: Reference 410 Guardian. Know I shouldn't be here today but this couldn't wait. Today is when it starts. Unless you-

Aesandre and Future Aesandre: One day, one visitor!!

*Aesandre fires blue lightning across the chamber. Just before it hits, Further Future Aesandre slumps her shoulders in defeat. The bolt tears through her throat. She collapses and flakes away.*

Future Aesandre: She knew the rules, the dangers of creating two new timepaths in a single day, yet still she tried.

I wonder how much older she was.

*Given what Aesandre knew of her own health, she feared the answer was: not much older at all.*

Future Aesandre: Perhaps you'll find out one day. Now, my turn. Make it quick and painless if you please.

*Aesandre stands and places her hand on Future Aesandre's chest. Stroking it slightly, positioning her fingers. Future Aesandre gives a final gasp and she too collapses and turns to flakes. Aesandre stands over them for a moment, looking. Then she casually kicks them aside as she walks back to the window.

She watches the plume of smoke that rises from the snow where one of the fireball fragments hit. It gives her a hunger but she ignores it. Her isolation has been broken and she must consider whether threats from without are even more urgent than those from within.

And yet it is hard to imagine that anything could be more pressing than her personal concerns. For she feels tired again. Even though nightfall is some way off, she knows she must sleep now.

Returning to the book, Aesandre closes it and lets it fall open. It gives her one its the many blank pages so she tries again. She is greeted by the tale of a team of boys who reached the third level of the Dungeons but perished at a Wall of Jericho shortly before the Phase of Adventuring ended. Choosing a word, she uses a quill to add it, and the page number, to a list of hers at the back of the book: 108 Sniff. Tomorrow's reference, the password for any future selves who might come visiting, has been set. She also crosses out today's reference, indicating that any further trips back to this day are strictly forbidden. Aesandre wonders, as she always does, whether Treguard ever suspected that his original Book of Quests had found its way into her possession.

Moments later, Aesandre is on her couch, where she takes most of her rest nowadays. She fully expects a nightmare or two: it's difficult to commit murder-suicide twice in one day without one's subsconscious screaming in the dark a bit. All their yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. But as long as she can retain the throne - her throne - the price is worth paying. The usurper Queen of Winteria melts into slumber, advancing towards her tomorrow.*

[Aesandre]

*The next day, Aesandre decides to investigate goings-on in her kingdom. There was a time when, aside from the odd white wolf's howl, nothing happened in Winteria unless Aesandre was making it happen. She preferred it that way.

Using her mirror, she watches the chaotic events at Daenary's Shar's hunting lodge, trying to work out who is who and what is what. Her disdain grows.*

Self-important petty politics. I'd wager they've forgotten their queen even exists. I think it's my duty to remind them and give them plenty of time to think on it.

*Aesandre spends an hour preparing her spells and summoning her strength. Extending her hands, she sends her magic thundering through the mirror.

She is spent. She rings a bell, calling for refreshments from one of her courtiers. A short time later, a portly Atlantean woman trundles into the throne room, pushing a tea trolley.

Atlantean: Nice hot cup of teaness, Your Ladyship.

How many times, woman? This is Winteria!

*The Atlantean, Phybia, looks utterly confused. Yet again, Aesandre rues the political favours that have forced her to employ this creature: the wife of one of her supporters in the aristocracy, without whom her grip on the crown would be much weaker. Phybia is wealthy. She doesn't need to work and she shows precious little evidence of knowing what she's doing when she's not serving as food taster. Why is she even here?*

Phybia: Well I'll leave it in case you change your mindness.

I'm the Winterian queen! My mind is always the same. Just go. Hiss off.

*Phybia leaves, appearing not to have got the veiled insult, and unlikely to remember it in ten minutes' time anyway. As Phybia's footfalls recede, Aesandre curses and hisses loudly in irritation, spit flying out of her mouth.

Still sneering, Aesandre goes over to the trolley and looks down at the steaming cup. Reaching out a finger, she touches the surface of the tea. She feels the heat biting into her skin. She doesn't withdraw. She plunges her hand into the cup, splashing tea over the rim, and holds it there as long as she can. She pulls it out and staggers backwards, gasping.

How she misses the heat.

Giving herself a few moments for the trembling to subside, Aesandre eats the fish salad also left for her on the trolley before returning to her mirror. In due course, she alights upon the forest where a hunt is taking place.*

The egotism of it. It beggars belief. They only get to lark about in this manner because I allow it. They've not the courtesy to ask. There-

*Aesandre is interrupted by the sound of footsteps. Urgent and growing closer. She sighs.*

Not again.

*The noise isn't coming from the main corridor outside. Aesandre turns to face a side door in the throne room. A concealed side door that only she knows about.

The door flies open and a woman bursts in. Amidst the rags, the bruises, the caked blood and the missing toes, the face is familiar enough.*

A Future Aesandre: YOU B****!!!

That much I know.

Future Aesandre: I came back to help you and you do this to me!!

Would you have preferred to be in the commoners' dungeon?

Future Aesandre: A month! A month of imprisonment, torture, experiments...

You'd have done the same thing, given the opportunity. We had to probe the roots of this illness.

Future Aesandre: I HATE YOU!!

Oh that is a shame. I was hoping Stockholm Syndrome would have set in.

Future Aesandre: I killed the other two. They were too far gone to do it themselves. There are none of us down there now. And no more will be stupid enough to come back and risk this, now that you've seen what you've seen. You've learnt nothing from us except how to screw yourself up. And funnily enough, my dear, that's not going to help you.

Anything else?

Future Aesandre: I hope you burn. No, you'd like that, wouldn't you? I hope you freeze!!

*Aesandre gets ready to silence her counterpart.*

Future Aesandre: Oh no. No you don't.

*The Future Aesandre holds up a jagged piece of metal - and does it herself. Aesandre is left to clean up. An avenue has closed and she is worried. But she will not think about that now. She secures the side door and walks back to the mirror as if nothing had happened, looking again at the hunters in the forest.*

The egotism of it. It beggars belief. They only get to lark about in this manner because I allow it. They've not the courtesy to ask. There are not worlds within Winteria. There is only mine. And if my dominion isn't relevant to them, it soon will be.

And more magic is sent through the mirror. Satisfied, Aesandre settles on her couch and rests, hoping that Phybia will be blockheaded enough to bring her more hot drinks.*

[Aesandre]

*The days pass. Aside from Phybia waddling in and out, Aesandre has had no visitors. That is to say, no visits from herself. She knows that she would try to capture and probe any visiting future Aesandres to experiment on, so her future selves will know it too.

Eventually, the waiting gets too much.*

Alright! I won't experiment on myself ever again. I'm not lying to myself. I know I'm not.

*She looks at her pool, waiting for a visit. Nothing.

She needs to do more to make herself worthy of visits. She still doesn't trust herself. Because she is still in denial about her illness.*

It is winter. I am of summer. I have made it work. But I cannot make it work forever.

*She doesn't know how long she has. Her future selves would never tell her, and she knows it would only panic her. But to come so far and give up is unacceptable. It is many years since Aesandre launched her ice attack [OOC: end of Series 5] and dissociated Winteria from the other Knightmare lands, lest any outsiders got too close and discovered her secret (as the dungeoneer Ben almost did), and she has grown accustomed to looking inwards. But she must now accept that-*

-I cannot find the answers I need in my magic, in this land's magic. I must look elsewhere.

*She briefly imagines capturing Merlin, Hordriss or Malice, sitting them down with a nice cup of tea and talking it over with them. The impossibility makes her laugh. Yet where can she get magic and knowledge of it, if not from people?*

Books.

*But from where? Her land has no texts ancient enough. Any from before the current Winterian age have been lost or destroyed. She saw to that. Merlin kept books in the Hall of Folly; Treguard is rumoured to have a collection of tomes (notwithstanding the Book of Quests that Aesandre acquired); Hordriss must have a well-stocked study. Would any of these be unprotected?

*The pool ripples. A figure rises from the pool and steps onto the edge.*

Future Aesandre: Reference: 315. Trinket.

Accepted. Thank you for coming. I wasn't sure I'd see you, me, again.

Future Aesandre: You'd have done the same for me. You were on the way to working it out; I worked it out; I am saving you some time.

Books.

Future Aesandre: Another of our selves wasted so much time searching in vain for Merlin's books that she barely made it back alive to warn me. There is no timepoint you can travel to in which Treguard and Hordriss's rooms can be penetrated. But there is somewhere else.

Where?

Future Aesandre: I learned that beyond Wolfenden there is a school. A school with a library. Many of its books cannot be found elsewhere, and apparently there are spellbooks among them.

Who told you?

Future Aesandre: Phybia. I know, I know. But even she can't be wrong about a school library.

So how do you suggest I get in there? Tie my hair in pigtails, skip down the corridor and tell the librarian I'm tall for my age?

Future Aesandre: Don't ask me. I hadn't worked that bit out. I-

Useless.

*A dose of blue lightning and Aesandre is alone again.*

Clearly I went too soft. So. School library. Protected now, protected from day one. And if I don't know what I'm looking for, I'll need time to browse. I could do with stealing all the books, but I'd probably get hit by 500 library fine spells the moment I did. *Quietly* And I don't know what that would do to me.

Any help?

*Not today. As per the "one day, one visitor" rule, Aesandre will not hear from any future selves until tomorrow morning at the earliest. She spends the remainder of the day cultivating ideas. As night falls, she grows agitated, and creates a marble of red fire that she rolls around in her hand. She knows she shouldn't - the more times she reverts to Summerean magic, the harder it is to command the Winterian magic which she must be seen using - but the heat calms her. Aesandre falls asleep with small burns on her palm.*

[Aesandre]

*The following morning, Aesandre watches as a future self climbs out of the pool. She is holding a bag.*

Future Aesandre: I remember this day. Your burns are still fresh. I envy you.

Reference, please.

Future Aesandre: 501. Gelt.

*Aesandre nods.*

Future Aesandre: The plan is well developed. I know you wouldn't stand for anything less.

Quite so. You've worked out how I can freely access the library?

Future Aesandre: I said "fully developed", did I not? You'll need these.

*From her bag, Future Aesandre produces a torn scroll, written in elvish. In it, the builders of the Knightmare Boarding School ask for the People of Danu's blessing to remove an area of woodland for the school grounds.*

Future Aesandre: No further details of the school could be procured without drawing unwanted attention. I'm told we are lucky even to have this.

*The other item in the bag is a blue egg with an icicle protruding from it. Aesandre recognises this: she created it.

Although Aesandre's heart belongs with creatures of summer, she learned to love the death dragons of Winteria and was upset to discover that the conflicting magic of the realm had rendered them unable to reproduce. With a combination of magical and scientific means, she bred Winterian cuckoos to lay a type of egg that could be placed with the dragons, would absorb their essence as it grew and would hatch into a death dragon, as if the egg had been one of their eggs all along. She called it, with no hint of shame, a plagiaricer.*

Future Aesandre: A number of our late, later selves worked on... will have worked on... recrafting this, testing it and finding it to work on inanimate objects. On a large scale too. Plant it in the library, leave it to copy all the books, retrieve it before it hatches and you will have your own version of the library here in the palace.

Even if I get it into the school, it will be detected before it's finished.

Future Aesandre: Travel back to the earliest point you can in the school's history and plant the plagiaricer then. You'll have your pick of nooks and crannies.

*Future Aesandre gives further information about the egg: how it may hatch prematurely as a dragon with an in-built urge to get closer to books, only to 'forget' that it's a dragon and regress to a plagiaricer to fulfil its purpose. Even in its dragon phase, Aesandre claims, it will grow no larger than a "hill giant", a slightly oversized breed of wild Winterian ferret. Aesandre sneers at these complexities.*

Future Aesandre: I assure you, it's our best plan. Now please, I'm very tired and you don't realise how boring it is talking to a less advanced version of yourself who expects the world on a plate, so if you wouldn't mind...

Fine. Bye-bye.

*Aesandre zaps her future self into oblivion. She pauses.*

BUT WILL IT WORK?

*A day later, she still has no answer from the future. She will have to find out for herself. There is a knock at the door. In comes Phybia with her trolley. On it is a platter on which morsels of food have been arranged to look like fields, hills, lakes and buildings, including the palace.*

Phybia: Lunch...er, supper... oh, er, mealtime! Your favourite: world on a plate.

One day, your head.

Phybia: Pardon, Ladyship?

Something something your head, something something you can go.

Phybia: Oh.

*Aesandre watches Phybia leave, glad that the plagiaricer was nowhere near her. After breakfast, it's off to school.*

[OOC: Continued in Frost in the Forest.]

[Aesandre]

[OOC: Continued from Early for School.]

*Upon her return from the present, Aesandre goes immediately to the secret dungeon where she kept her future selves. By the time she has cleared it, it is spacious enough to hold dozens of bookshelves and surely as many books as the plagiaricer can reproduce.

Then Aesandre feels compelled to rest, but her thoughts of the plagiaricer make her restless. Even after so many years, she reasons that the plagiaricer has not been discovered and investigated. Because if it had then news would surely have been waiting for her, given the device's obviously Winterian origins. The plagiaricer must now be ready, full of the school's library books and awaiting a prompt from Aesandre to begin hatching. Rather than making another trip out of Winteria to retrieve the plagiaricer, she has decided it is safest to bring it to her remotely. First, though, she must determine the library's exact location in order to home in on it. She has not fully regained her strength but cannot stand to wait any longer. Heading towards her mirror, she conjures up an image of the present-day Knightmare Boarding School.

And promptly screams. It's in ruins. Built and then destroyed in the intervening years. Aesandre has paid the price for not doing her research. Given the damage to the school, and the library in particular, the plagiaricer is too fragile to have survived.

Aesandre hurries to her pool to warn her past self. Then she stops. She would end up crossing over with the previous future self who gave her past self the plagiaricer, and her past self wouldn't tolerate two future selves visiting on the same day, but if she visited an earlier past self she might overwrite her timepath and lose the plagiaricer from it altogether, and... or...*

Cursed blasted time travel!!

*It is still too risky for her to return to the school in person. But there is one other option. One final hope.

Aesandre touches the surface of the pool. Closing her eyes, she searches back through the past, rolling up the parchment of the years until she finds what she is seeking: the moment when calamity befell the school. Now she knows when it happened, she can bring the plagiaricer to her from just before it happened. It may not have had long enough to absorb the entire library, but it's better than nothing. She feels an aching in her bones, she almost hears them calling her to give up and sleep forever, but she must do this.

She concentrates.

In her mind's eye, the image of the plagiaricer becomes obscured, as if something else is anchoring it. She fights to hold on to it. The school's miasma of magicks is more potent than she anticipated. She imagines herself tearing through it like a white wolf attacking a slow Atlantean. She's meeting resistance. She won't be stopped. The image of the plagiaricer fades from her mind. It's on its way. Through space, whipping through space, then plunging through time.

Aesandre feels water splashing over her hand. She opens her eyes and staggers backwards.

She was not expecting that.*

[Callimpsest]

*As he left the library, he felt air rushing past him, saw trees, frost, felt icy water engulf him. Then darkness. Now, as Callimpsest's vision clears, he realises he is bone dry, standing on the stone rim of a pool.

A woman dressed as a greenwarden stares up at a man dressed as a cook, who is holding her magic egg.*

[OOC: To be continued.]

[Aesandre]

*More precisely: a summer sorceress posing as a winter queen dressed as a greenwarden stares up at a librarian dressed as a cook, who is holding her magic replicating egg. Things could not be more serious.

Aesandre finds her footing. The man must have been holding the plagiaricer when she brought it through time. He looks suitably terrified and she has no intention of wasting time with reproaches or explanations.*

That is mine.

*She steps forward to take the plagiaricer. The man has stretched out his hand. But before she can grab it, it starts to glow. Sensing her presence, it has entered its final phase before hatching. Aesandre gasps. The plagiaricer is at its most fragile, and if it is mishandled now, everything could be ruined.*

Don't move! Don't move.

*The man must be kept still. Gritting her teeth, Aesandre summons up magic and points at his feet, encasing them in ice that extends up his legs. If she freezes him entirely, the plagiaricer may be damaged. Even this small spell takes its toll. She steps back to catch her breath. Then she approaches, very slowly.*

[Callimpsest]

*Callimpsest is indeed terrified, having guessed where he is and who he is with. He doesn't understand any of what is happening beyond the bone-deep horror of knowing that life is about to end. His mouth has bolted shut: from a life of words to a death in silence. The dual chill of fear and ice sets him trembling. His legs quiver; his arms tremble; his teeth chatter.

They chatter so hard that they break the vial of Fast Backwards that is still in his mouth. The liquid runs down his throat...

The ice recedes down Callimpsest's legs and disappears from his feet in a trice. He is pulled back onto the surface of the water and down. Through blackness, then up into the forest for the briefest of moments before it becomes a green-white blur. Callimpsest is carried in complete awareness, total awe, full reverse...*

[Aesandre]

Dec 26, 2015 19:45:06 GMT Aesandre said:

*Aesandre touches the surface of the pool. Closing her eyes, she searches back through the past, rolling up the parchment of the years until she finds what she is seeking: the moment when calamity befell the school. Now she knows when it happened, she can bring the plagiaricer to her from just before it happened. It may not have had long enough to absorb the entire library, but it's better than nothing. She feels an aching in her bones, she almost hears them calling her to give up and sleep forever, but she must do this.

She concentrates.

In her mind's eye, the image of the plagiaricer becomes obscured, as if something else is anchoring it. She fights to hold on to it. The school's miasma of magicks is more potent than she anticipated. She imagines herself tearing through it like a white wolf attacking a slow Atlantean. She's meeting resistance. She-

-can't picture the plagiaricer in her mind anymore. It's nowhere to be seen. She casts her mind around the library. If it were there but being hidden from her, protected by the some sorcerous subterfuge of the school, she'd know. But no. It's not there. How can it not be there? She starts surveying the rest of the school, even though the exertion is making her ill. Still nothing. She pulls her hand away from the pool and roars in pain and frustation.*

[OOC: Unbeknownst to Aesandre, she is now in a rewritten timeline as a result of Callimpsest rewinding to the KMBS library and escaping with the plagiaricer before she could retrieve it.]

Where is it? Who has taken it? Why?

When...

*With no Phase of Adventuring in progress and no dungeoneers being brought in, Aesandre would like to believe that it is only she who swims the channels of time. But if there are others then her plagiaricer, an artefact already out of its time, would be a fine prize indeed.

Reconnecting with the pool, she searches anew for the plagiaricer, listening for its resonance, hoping that she is not too late.*

[Aesandre]

*Aesandre grows frustrated at the slow search. In a fit of impatience, she wastes precious magic turning her greenwarden disguise back into her royal garments. Wincing in pain, she perseveres.

And then she sees it. Within the ruined school, the library restored. The plagiaricer expended. Her access to the spells that could have sustained the summer sorceress' winter charade, lost forever.

She howls as only a thwarted schemer and a dying witch could.

As the nausea of defeat takes hold, her magical vitality falters. Hair goes grey, skin wrinkles, chest tightens. Her eyesight blurs and her head spins, as if the entire palace is collapsing around her. She must go back, while the pool will still take her, while she still has strength to survive the journey. Her mind fogged, she can only think of one day, and a dangerous day at that. One last chance to tread another timepath.

And if that fails, at least Aesandre will know why. She was her own worst enemy.

Drawing herself up, the once queen steps into the pool, falling from her throne room.*

[OOC: Perhaps Aesandre makes it back, becoming the Further Future Aesandre seen here and creating a time loop. Perhaps she doesn't. Either way, this is intended as the conclusion of her story.]

[Young Grimwold]

[ModNote: There has been no activity from any characters other than mine for well over a year. In these circumstances, it is hard not to class other characters as abandoned.

Non-abandonment of characters is a Surrounds rule that was in place when the forum started, and a rule I've always strongly supported. If a story is worth starting, isn't it worth finishing? That, if at all possible, is what's fair for the characters and fair for the forum.

As both the only active roleplayer remaining on this forum, and the only active moderator remaining on this forum, I feel the time is right to declare it closed - with much gratitude for the past 14 years. But I cannot do that with storylines indefinitely unresolved.

I would never presume to dictate the specific fate of another user's character. But for my own peace of mind, and within my licence as a senior moderator/rep, I can imply some kind of general conclusion for the characters left hanging in Winteria and possibly beyond. Can, and have to.

If those of you with abandoned characters do miraculously become able and willing to recommit to posting regularly (with a view to concluding your characters' stories personally), I would welcome that as a dream come true and undo this post. But I don't expect that to happen.

Thank you.]

*Something is wrong with the pool. Maybe Aesandre's ailment has infected it; maybe one of her enemies has got to it; maybe its time-crossing magic was never safe. Slowly, ever so slowly, dark wisps are seeping from the tainted waters, creeping across the throne room, making their way out into Winteria. Taking their time, and something worse: taking others' time. This seemingly unstoppable poison, born of a voracious past, is attacking the present and preventing the future. Everyone and everything in its path will, eventually, have no more paths of their own.

Maybe the dark magic will fade before it leaves this land, or maybe powers beyond Winteria will make sure it does. It may even consume itself. But for those within Winteria, unless they take steps to travel elsewhere, it would seem to be the end.*