Unto Reflection

You purse your lips and regard the naiad through the fog. This side? But before you can ask her what she means, your pixie servant comes buzzing down from her perch in the Holly tree. But something is wrong—her appearance is muted, almost colorless. Even her wings, normally vibrant and cacophonous, are a dull arrangement of near-greys.

"My lord!" she calls, but her voice, too, is muted. Muffled, really, as if you're hearing it from the other side of a wall. Her head is darting around the clearing, as if you were not there—as if it were empty.

You reach for her, grasping for her arm, but they slip through. your fingers pass through her as though she was nothing but air. Nevertheless she recoils, flinching away from you, shivering as she does. Confusion finds its way onto her face.

"I'm sorry," you hear the Naiad say behind you, "you won't be able to reach her."

You grimace. That's what she thinks, is it?

You take a moment to calm yourself, to breathe, and to look at the person in front of you. This is not just any person. This is your vassal, your sworn servant. Moreover, the first ever to swear themselves to you. For a creature such as you, that means something.

Gently, you clasp both your hands around one of hers. She shivers again, and moves to pull away. But you can feel the oath binding you together, wrapped around your soul like golden thread, and you pull instead. You cannot see them, but your eyes glow just a little brighter.

Her head snaps up to look at you—but, no, she isn't. It's like she can't quite focus on you. Her whole body flushes with a little more color, and when she speaks her voice is a little more clear.

"My lord? What's going on?"

"I am suffering from some sort of... displacement," you say. "It will prove temporary, I'm sure, but the situation may take some time to rectify. Until it has been, I need you to keep your eyes open and to lay low here, alright?"

She gives you a shaky nod. "I understand, and I will."

After a few moments, she flutters her way back up into the holly tree.

"So, uh." You turn to look at Wylahael. "What's actually going on?"

But the naiad could explain the matter, or you could giver your thoughts, it's actually Ievos who speaks first.

"I'm pretty sure it's some sort of spiritstride," he says. When all of you give him a look of surprise, his face turns sheepish. "It's, ah, part of a specialization path for Rangers that I've been looking into. Basically, we were shifted along a sort of spiritual axis."

Ladrieth's face scrunches. "How many axes are we going to have to deal with here? I get enough of that at college."

College? You thought a sorcerer's power came from heritage and instinct, rather than study. But why she had to deal with a college was a question that would have to wait.

"I don't know a whole lot about it," says Ievos, "but it's more art than science."

The naiad chooses this moment to interject. "It goes back to the Shattering," she says. "When Arkus was broken up into Shards, there were also a multitude of more subtle forms of damage. You're currently experiencing one of them. Think of it like scar tissue where the world was shifted and torn."

That hit on something in your memory, from conversations with Gromgol, Holly, and the naiad herself. "The place where we are is the same," you said, "but now we relate to it in a different way. The only real consistent element is the landscape."

The naiad nods. "Because we nymphs bond with part of the landscape, we can also touch on this, though we can't reach very far."

That helps click what happened into place for you, but you need to talk to one more person to be sure. You say as much, and turn back into your lair. The sconces are still blazing bright blue, and you walk around the pool to reach the roots of the elder holly tree climbing up the back wall.

You lean against the wall. "Holly," you say softly, "can we talk?"

The roots rustle against the wall, with no apparent cause.

"How are you feeling?" you ask.

"A bit better," you hear her whisper. "I don't know where you found this magic, but it's helping a lot."

"I built a ley focus," you say simply. She's quiet for a while.

"That explains a lot," she finally says. "You do realize you pulled me into that big oath you just did, right?"

Because she was drawing directly from the focus when you swore over it. You silently curse your recklessness. "Sorry," you say, "it wasn't what I intended."

"I don't mind. Just," she pauses for a moment. "Could you just wait a while on your next one. It'll take me a bit before I'll have a handle on this, and even after that it'll probably take some practice to handle surges of energy like that one."

"How long do you think it'll take?"

She takes a moment to think. "Give me a couple hours. I'll need to rest more afterwards, but I'll be fine"

You touch one of the roots gingerly. "Don't push yourself, Holly. Take as long as you need."

You wish her well before turning back to the others, and summarize what she told you. "Essentially." you say at last, "our oath pulled on her, but we couldn't actually move her, so we got pulled in instead."

"But," the naiad says, "you couldn't actually enter the tree."

"So," Ladrieth says slowly, "we just sorta bounced off of her."

The naiad nods. "That's about it. I'll go let that pixie know what's going on."

You thank her, and she's out the door.

"If any of you have something that you want to do while we're like this," you say, leaning back against the wall, "now would probably be a good time to bring it up."

You'd meant it as a joke, but judging from the looks the three heroes give you, they're taking the idea very seriously.

"Actually," Ievos says, "didn't one of the Aldermen say something that sounded a bit like this?"

"Yeah!" says Wylahael. "They haven't been able to connect with their spiritual defenses since something was damaged during the goblin raid. Some kinda orb, I think."

Now that is interesting. The walls of Thaeldir's Crossing are impressive, and that probably means its other defenses are also considerable. But if the raid damaged them...

"It could be risky if they're still working," you say, "or even only partly-damaged. But it's definitely worth taking a look."

As soon as you say that, you feel a small, unfamiliar twinge somewhere inside you, and three screens snap into the air, one for each hero. You peer over to look at Ladrieth's, and–

Quest Available! Scouting the Damage

Accompany Squire Merovon to investigate the situation surrounding the spiritual defenses of Thaeldir's Crossing.

Rewards: Unknown Experience/Unknown Gold(?)/Unknown Treasure (?)

Accept/Refuse?

...Since when could you hand out quests?