times call for dangerous ideas.

Initiating Stellar Dive ~ Eden
-Processing Insubstantial Parameters-
-Loading Parse Template-
-Applying Reality Fabrication-
-Dimensional Replica Stabilized-

The air around John's fingers rippled as he cast the spell, resulting in a translucent surface in the rough shape of a doorway. He touched it cautiously. The gateway rippled, as though made of flowing water, and felt like an airy gelatinous mess. Tangible... but only just physical enough to make you uncertain if you touched anything at all. The best metaphor he could think of was 'like a spiderweb', though not sticky and far less gross.

John placed a hand against the Barrier's surface and pushed on it gently. If he was being entirely honest, John had no idea if his plan would work. He hadn't been presented with any options regarding the Barrier; for all he knew, it could deposit them in the middle of the ocean or halfway across the world. That was assuming it wasn't filled with dragons or something else unreasonably dangerous. Yet... this was their way out. He turned and looked at Erica, forcing a confident smile.

"You ready to go home?" John asked.

Erica returned his grin, "More than you can imagine."

Stepping into the ethereal gateway, John found himself in a place that was simultaneously familiar and strange. He stood on the sidewalk of a street, specifically the street he lived on, but in place of the small garden trees that normally lined the road, there were tall banyans and the gnarled foliage of the cavern. A sign stuck halfway out of the leaves of a fig tree, and ferns sprouted up through the concrete. Everything was quiet, dark, lit only by a distant crescent moon in the sky.

"Alright," John turned to his companion, who had appeared beside him. There was a faint outline of the Barrier's entrance behind her. "Your turn, get us out of here."

Erica nodded and knelt on the roadside, running a hand through her loose hair before rummaging around in her armor. "Sure, but I need something to write with... where did my feathers go?"

He winced. When he'd washed her hair clean at the lake, John had assumed the crow feathers she wore were decorative and tossed them. He pulled up his inventory, digging around in it. Hopefully he hadn't ditched all his writing utensils for hydra parts... there! Pulling out a ball-point pen, he offered it to Erica.

"That'll work. Now just give me a second..." she said, tracing a glowing rune on the pavement.

Something pulled at John's instincts, a sense of sound in the silence, something that wasn't there... and yet... He looked around nervously.

At the end of the road, the air rippled as the front end of a motorcycle emerged from it. He looked away from the blinding flash of a headlight and only caught the silhouette of its helmeted rider as they sped towards them. There was something in the rider's hands, but he couldn't make out what it was with the glare of the approaching light in his eyes.

"For the Lady!" yelled an unfamiliar female voice.

John took a step to the side and felt a pull on the back of his armor. Thrown off balance, he tumbled to the ground as something blurred past overhead. The biker whipped their tires sideways, screeching to a halt further down the street. John pulled himself up, brushing off the dirt, and looked at the person who had just attacked them.

In one hand, the biker held a massive warhammer; it was on par with the size of Erica's greataxe. She, for the silhouette could only belong to a woman, wore a black helmet with a tinted visor and dark burgundy catsuit with a small golden badge on the right chest. It was too far away for him to make out the details. The metal head of the hammer drew sparks from the road as she came to a complete stop and hit the kickstand. She dismounted her bike, then ran towards them way faster than anyone carrying such a weapon had any right to.

"Face Her judgement!" she yelled, her hammer glowing with golden light.

John tensed, his fingers curled, and one of his knives appeared in his right palm.. He really did not want to do this. Whoever the biker was, she seemed human, and after everything in the cavern, he was worn out, not physically, but mentally. The weight of what he'd been through felt heavier every second. Yet... if he had to fight, if he had to kill to go home... he would. The dagger spun between his fingertips into a throwing position. Just as he whipped his arm back, Erica intervened.

"Moira! Calm down!" the berserker shouted as she threw herself in the way of the attacker. John panicked, the dagger in his hand vanishing as he reached forward to pull her out of the way. The deadly hammer came crashing down to their side, landing with cracks in the sidewalk and staying there. He stared at it as the biker reached back to pull off her helmet. Underneath was a mass of red curls and two very, very angry emerald eyes. He knew those eyes.

Lady Moira Brighton
Level 17 Paladin
<Warden of the Golden Rose>
Relationship: -200

Holy shit, what the fuck did I do?

"Erica! Do you have any idea how much of a headache you've caused? First you cozy up to a rogue mage, then you both vanish for hours, without even a report! Where were you?" Moira glared at John, who stared at the weapon embedded in the concrete a foot to his left, "And you! Don't even think about running off."

John nodded, at least she wasn't trying to kill them anymore. A step in the right direction at least... He eyed the warhammer nervously.

"The Gorbachev 'politely requested' we bring your..." she scowled and spat the word, "companion in for questioning." Moira reached past Erica and grabbed the handle of her weapon, effortlessly pulling it from the rubble of the sidewalk. "So, both of you are going to tell me everything I want to know, and then you," she pointed the weapon at John, "are coming with me."

Moira's tone was starting to push his buttons, but rational thought kept him from doing anything stupid. She was over twice his level, almost three times it. This was not the time to pick a fight, not if he wanted to keep his head attached to his body.

Erica winced and looked apologetically at John, before awkwardly starting to explain their adventure

Moira listened with skepticism but managed to approximate patience while the story was retold. She didn't believe them at first, skeptical of John's powers and motivations, constantly accusing him of instigating events to endanger Erica. The production of several hundred pounds of hydra bones shut her up temporarily... and, by the end, the paladin's fury had cooled to a simmer. Her relationship score had even jumped up to a less drastic -92! John still kept his distance.

When she was satisfied with their evidence, Moira pulled Erica aside to discuss things privately. They walked off down the road and left John alone. He sat on the side of the road, trying to ignore the paladin as she pointed in his direction. With nothing else to do... he pulled out his phone. To his surprise, he had a signal, the clock instantly correcting to the current time. It was 8:03 PM. He unlocked the phone and twenty-two unread message notifications appeared.

Apparently, they'd been gone for seven and a half hours! He'd missed both his appointments, of course. Fuck. Worse, if he remembered what Moira said correctly, it sounded like Danielle had made good on her threats. John wasn't sure what that meant... but it couldn't be good. Browsing his missed communications only reinforced that idea.

There were six from Danielle, each of which got increasingly terse and... angry? It was hard to tell. The girl wrote like a robot, sterile and emotionless.

Four were from a new number that John guessed was Moira, by the way the sender's outrage overflowed in unnecessary caps-lock. Her threats were more direct than Danielle's, including: 'IF YOU DO ANYTHING TO HER I WILL CASTRATE YOU'. John looked over at Erica's leg and swallowed. Just in case, he checked his Character Sheet... yeah, casting Hearth or Stellar Dive wasn't possible. Could he even open a Barrier inside another Barrier? Questions for later.

The rest of the messages were his mother. Ashcroft had contacted her after he'd missed half the day, so she was predictably freaking out. John had no idea what to say to her; no excuse would explain his absence, let alone the fact that his uniform was now in tatters, or any number of other things! He put his phone away and lied to himself that he'd be able to come up with an excuse... any second now... yep...

"Newman, you're coming with me," Moira tersely called across the street, crossing back towards him.

The paladin pulled off her brooch, which began to grow until he could barely see her behind it. She picked up her hammer and shoved the entire thing into the back of her shield, before pulling something else out. John was stunned, until he realized it could work similarly to his inventory. It felt a bit silly. In a world of paladins, hydras and whatever else... was he really that surprised by a 'shield of holding'?

Moira's shield shrank back to the point she could store it away. When it vanished, she offered John a cyclist's helmet identical to her own, "Come on. We haven't got all night."

"Hold on a minute. Where are we going?" he looked back and forth between Erica and Moira, the former giving him an apologetic smile.

The paladin shoved the helmet into his hands, "To meet my father, like you were supposed to three hours ago."

Right.

That didn't sound too bad, but John didn't trust the paladin. He looked to Erica for guidance; she was the one person he trusted in this mess.

She nodded, "Go ahead, I'll head back on my own. I know a shortcut." When John looked down at her leg, Erica winked at him, "I'll be fine, dude. Promise."

John reluctantly took the helmet, then was nearly pulled off balance as the paladin forcefully grabbed his wrist and yanked him forward. He stumbled and almost fell on his face, "I'm coming! Relax..." The paladin's grip loosened slightly, but she continued to drag him towards the bike. John considered resisting or protesting further... but he was already in enough trouble as it was. Adding to that by resisting arrest probably wouldn't help. When they reached Moira's bike, he sat behind her, awkwardly wrapping his arms around her midsection and pretending to ignore the way it made her flinch.

From where she knelt at the roadside, Erica gave them a thumbs up, tracing the final rune and shattering the Barrier around them. Trees evaporated into thin air, replaced by streetlights, and the moon flickered into fullness in the sky above. John didn't have time to take in their surroundings before he felt pulled backwards by the inertia of Moira speeding down the street.

She was... to put it nicely, a reckless driver, and John was grateful for the helmet. Moira constantly switched lanes and jumped in and out of the bike lane in a definitely illegal fashion, never once dropping below sixty. Fortunately, there weren't too many cars to dodge. When they turned onto the main highway towards Chinatown and only sped up further along the empty lanes, John's insides started to feel like jelly.

Moira slowed somewhat after they pulled off at the Boothe Heights exit and dipped off onto one of the private roads. While it wasn't as ritzy as Northland, several wealthy families owned large properties along the east Heights, and Moira's family was one. Tall, lantern-topped streetlights lined the road as it cut through a dense forest, leading them eventually to a clearing of open sky and...

The Brighton Estate would have been imposing and grand during the day, but the effect was multiplied in the dark of night. The manor itself was huge, easily four stories tall and over twice as wide. Lights shone in at least three dozen windows with a golden glow that burned away any shadows from the ring of gravel they halted in before the steps. Visible, half as a silhouette, in the doorway was an elderly man dressed in a precise suit and white gloves. John remembered a rumor that the family had imported their home from England... seeing it, he could believe they had.

While his insides reorganized and allowed John to walk towards the open threshold, he marveled at the size of the estate. The... parking lot, if you could call it that, was large enough to hold most of his entire house, and the British-style manor loomed over it. He felt uncomfortably small in its shadow.

"I see you've found him, milady. Welcome home," the butler greeted them as John followed Moira up the steps to the porch that wrapped around the manor's front. "Master Brighton is waiting for you both in the north study."

They have more than one study? What do you even do with two studies?

John stepped through the manor's doorway and was almost stunned by the display of wealth. In the front hall alone, a massive room that had two stairwells leading to the second-floor landing, there were suits of armor, paintings, statues, expensive-looking weapons and a gigantic chandelier. The sparkling crystals of the hanging ornament glittered and refracted a silvery glow across the expensive rugs. John had felt rich, with a few thousand bucks in his inventory... but in the face of Moira's home he was an utter peasant.

Said 'princess' gestured impatiently from the foot of the stairs, leading him up and to the left. From there... John got lost.

He walked down a dozen hallways and past a hundred doors. The place was a maze, and there was no doubt that without Moira to guide him he'd be lost forever. Eventually they reached the end of a hallway that terminated not in more branching paths but a single dark oak door. She knocked and opened it.