Qhila’s Nest

“Shazam!” John was standing in his best imitation of the posture Qhila had stood in when she vanished. He had tried to think all sorts of commands like ‘exit’ or ‘end encounter mode’ or ‘follow’, without success. Then he had tried to say them out loud. Now he had gone on to various pop culture references to do with teleportation or magic. He wasn’t really expecting the last bit to work, but it put thinking about the implications of being stranded here off for a few minutes. “Beam me up, Scotty.”

“What is ‘Scotty’?” Since he thought she had teleported somewhere, John nearly jumped out of his shoes upon hearing her speak from behind him. He turned to see her standing there, with a confused expression. At which point a thought hit him and caused his face to turn the approximate color of a tomato.

“Did you just turn invisible? Have you been standing here the entire time?”

“I left the barrier. Why did you not follow?” Qhila seemed somewhere between confused and irritated. Additionally, her RS was flipping between 53 and 33 as if 20 RP hung in the balance of his answer. That made him rather nervous, but he couldn’t really see any other options than telling the truth and hoping for the best.

“I don’t know how… I was thinking maybe I missed the magic word needed, and tried throwing out random things in the hope of getting it right.” John suppressed a sigh of relief when her RS settled on 53, despite her expression remaining unchanged.

Qhila shook her head. “No magic word. If you did not know how to leave, how did you enter?”

“Uh…” John scratched the back of his head. “I think I was pushed. Kind of. It’d take some time to explain, and you said we were in a hurry, right?”

“Yes.” Qhila frowned, but didn’t explain further. At least her RS didn’t drop. Then she grabbed his hand, held her other one up like before and then the world fell apart. Or at least it looked that way. More specifically, it looked like reality itself was a glass construct around Qhila and himself, that suddenly shattered into a million pieces and fell away. Behind it, the reality of the Recycling Center, as it had been when John went through it with Grandpa Sam, was waiting, complete with vehicles and people.

Strangely, nobody was looking at John and Qhila, despite the two having presumably just appeared out of nowhere. And despite Qhila being obviously not human. Additionally, John had gained a Buff just as the post apocalyptic ‘barrier’ fell apart and was replaced with normal reality. The Buff had a displayed countdown of 30 seconds directly on the icon. John opened the tooltip, but before he had time to read it, two things happened that shifted his attention and caused the window to fade to near-total transparency. One was Qhila very insistently tugging at his arm. The other was his phone vibrating and playing his message received tone twice back to back.

‘Grandpa must be wondering whe-’

His thought, and him reaching for his phone, was interrupted by another tug and Qhila hissing, “Hurry.” Her tone of urgency was much more intense than when she had talked about the arrival of the ‘others’ before. So much so that John just hurried to follow without objection.

‘Still, I’m gonna have to get in touch with grandpa soon and let him know I’m okay. But what the hell do I tell him…’

Qhila dragged him behind the administration building, raised her hand like when she left the barrier, then closed the hand as if grabbing something in the air. There was a small shift this time, much more subtle than when he had been pulled into the post apocalyptic barrier. It wasn’t a change of lighting or anything of the sort, things just looked very vaguely different in ways that were impossible to really pin down. Also, the Buff had vanished, despite having had 13 seconds left on the countdown. Annoyingly, the tooltip had vanished along with it.

“After we leave the barrier, for 30 seconds mundanes don’t notice. After that, mundanes notice me. If mundanes notice me, I die.” The 30 seconds of not being noticed made sense and fit with the Buff countdown. Probably the Buff was something to that effect. The part about Qhila dying if mundanes noticed her was a puzzler though. The confusion must have been evident in John’s face, as she preempted his question, “I will explain better in nest.”

“Okay…” John wasn’t sure why getting to her nest made a difference in explaining things, but it seemed there was only one way to find out. As they started moving, the thing that had made reality in this barrier look subtly wrong suddenly became very obvious in a way that was mildly disconcerting. It turned out, most of said reality wasn’t actually three dimensional. Rather, it was a corridor with walls, floor and ceiling showing a hyper realistic picture of John's surroundings, as they were when he entered.

Everything was angled, and perspective distorted, so that it looked like a near perfect replica of said surroundings from where he first entered the place, even though the corridor walls didn’t line up with anything and, in fact, led straight through an apparent fence. As soon as he moved, however, everything started to distort as his viewing angle became ‘wrong’, and after a handful of steps, everything was basically an abstract mess of dots and lines of color.

“What is this place?” John couldn’t help asking. Not that he tried very hard. Worst thing that could happen was he told him to wait, and that hadn’t cost RP yet.

“Barrier alleys. 12 in Springfield. Don’t know who made them,” Qhila answered without turning or slowing down. Very convenient when it was apparently of literally vital importance that mundanes didn’t see Qhila. After a minute or so of walking in silence, John remembered that he was supposed to Observe magical phenomena that he didn’t cause and gave the barrier wall a shot.

Springfield Barrier Alley 7
Springfield Recycling Center - Chestnut Drive/Oak Street - Old Springfield Park - The Inferno

So that looked more like a bus route than the name of an alley. Also, the ‘stops’ were all over the place. At least the three he knew were. John didn’t know about ‘The Inferno’, but it seemed unlikely to be in the biblical sense and he did know of 2 fictional nightclubs with that name. If this ‘Inferno’ was a real nightclub, it was probably in one of two particular downtown areas, which would make this ‘alley’ four for four on ‘all over the place’. Another mystery for the heap.

A few minutes later, the abstract color soup of the barrier walls started gaining a bit more shape, and in another dozen steps a picture had formed of a part of the same system of pathways that John had used to stop by his grandparents’ house this morning. “If we left the barrier now, would we come out on the pathways between the Chestnut Drive and Oak Street cul de sacs?”

“Yes.” She didn’t elaborate, but to be fair, the question itself was a yes or no one. The space for elaboration was mostly in the implications of it. Mainly the bit where the distance they had covered on foot in a few minutes had taken 20 in a car. Even with the barrier alley exit being more or less in the other end of the pathway system from John’s house and from his grandparents’, the trip on foot via alley was still faster than driving.

“What?”

John hadn’t realized he’d whistled quietly until now. “Uh, just thinking about how convenient these alleys are.”

“Ah. Yes.” They continued in silence. John considered taking a look at his notification stack, which had jumped from 3 up to a whopping 10 since he interrupted the rat ogre. He also considered looking at the messages on his phone. Both came with the issue that he would slow down and pay less attention, and he did need to stick with Qhila if he wanted answers. Not to mention that she was his only way to leave the barrier alley.

All in all, getting to Qhila’s ‘nest’ took about 15 minutes and 2 barrier changes. One from Alley 7 to Alley 4 in the park, and another from that alley to a barrier with a name written in a script John didn’t recognize. However, the way Qhila took a quick look around and then visibly relaxed, John guessed it was her nest. Visually, it was the least impressive one. It looked like they were standing in the same back alley in Springfield’s industrial district that they had entered from, only now a glass box separated them from all but a small section of bare concrete wall.

Having expected her to open a secret door in said wall next, John was less than thrilled when she opened the manhole, that he hadn’t really consciously noticed until then, instead. Fortunately, no stench of sewage emerged from within. When John had reluctantly followed her down the ladder, he understood why: there was no sewage sludge in the canal where it normally went. In fact, John had to somewhat ashamedly admit that the concrete basin looked cleaner than the floor in his own room.

Just descending the ladder wasn’t quite enough to reach Qhila’s nest, though. Sticking to the walkways, they took three rights through doors that Qhila unlocked. If John’s spatial intelligence wasn’t being toyed with somehow, starting out with taking a left would’ve been quicker. When he looked back towards said door, the reason why they hadn’t was apparent. Sticks, duct tape and string had been used to rig the door to no less than two vials, two lumpy packages of indiscernible content and a frag grenade.

That seemed like overkill for home protection. Then again, John wasn’t sure a frag grenade would do much more to a rat ogre than piss it off, unless you somehow got the beast to swallow the grenade before it detonated. And John really didn’t know what else was out there. ‘I really need to know more about what I’m dealing with.’

Qhila’s nest turned out to be situated in a pump room. It was as oddly clean as everything else in the sewer barrier, but also very cluttered. Between a half dozen books, at least twice as many chunks of quartz, some decorative knick-knacks with a bee and honeycomb theme, two laundry baskets, holding neatly folded clothes and bunched up clothing respectively, a clothesline hung between two pipes, and what was probably a sleeping area comprised of a bean bag chair and some blankets, the free space that had already been fairly sparse to begin with was thoroughly cramped. There was still space enough for the kobold girl to move about easily enough, but John had to be careful to get anywhere without knocking things over, stepping on things or otherwise making a mess.

While another notification popped onto John’s pending pile, Qhila’s purposeful demeanor from before took a turn towards nervous energy, or something like that at least. She scurried about with a hint of a blush, moving things around. John wasn’t sure if she was tidying up, getting things out of the way so he had space to move or a bit of both. She didn’t look like she was entirely sure which it was either.

After a short while of her doing that while John sheepishly stood around, she bunched up the blankets on the bean bag chair and stuffed them under a pump. Then she gestured John over. “Sit. Please.”

John did so, after which she started scurrying off, then turned, holding up one finger. “A minute. Moment. Thing. Err. Please wait.”

“Uh, sure…” John responded, still feeling rather sheepish. It appeared to be good enough for her, though, as she left through a door opposite the one they had entered through. By the glimpse John caught before she closed the door, it was probably her workshop. Or laboratory. Whatever the proper term for an alchemist’s workspace, he’d spotted glassware similar to the beakers and other sundry that was used in chemistry classes at Ashcroft.

Well, while he waited he could take a look at his notifications.

Achievement Unlocked: Not in Kansas Anymore
Enter an illusion barrier for the first time.
Or a Kingdom, I suppose, but if you manage to skip ahead to that, you’re in deep shit, boy.
+20 EXP, Escape Rope, Barrier Basics skill.

The EXP reward reminded him that he got two Levels from the rat ogre. That wasn’t normally something he would forget easily, but at the time he’d evidently been both so exhausted and so relieved to have survived that the Level ups slipped his mind.

The Escape Rope turned out to be a black nylon rope. It looked unremarkable, but Observe revealed some more. Presumably, the tooltip in his inventory would have told him the same, but he’d figured that this would count as a magical object for his Skill Quest.

Presumably, the ‘Exit Barrier’ spell had something to do with Barrier Basics, since it didn’t make much sense to give an item in the achievement that he couldn’t use yet. Which in turn meant that he hadn’t been as stuck in the barrier as he’d thought, if he had just looked in his notifications. But rather than speculate whether the spell came with the skill, he could just take a look.

John was about to take a look at the nested tooltips for the Create Barrier option, when the sound of Qhila clearing her throat in front of him made him jump from the surprise. And hit his head on a pipe.

2 damage.

“Sorry. I spaced out.” As he spoke, John raised his hand to rub his head where he hit it. The pain was gone before he got his hand there to rub anything, leaving him holding his hand in the air awkwardly for a moment before letting it drop again. He was pretty sure he was red from embarrassment. Again.

Qhila, on the other hand, seemed to have gotten whatever sparked her fit of nervous energy back under control. Whether that was because she had taken a moment to deal with it when she was in her workshop, because John had embarrassed himself by spacing out, or a mix or the two was unclear.

In any case, she was sitting on a folding stool sized for her, with a brass censer placed between John and herself. Judging by the thin lines of smoke rising out of it, she had lit the incense inside already. “This will help talking.”

That didn’t make much sense to John, so there was probably something magical going on. Asking her what it was probably wouldn’t yield an answer before whatever it was supposed to do had started, so he tried Observe. The censer itself turned out to be non magical and uninteresting. The smoke on the other hand…

Smoke of Babel Incense
Primary Effect: people who breathe the same smoke cloud understand each other regardless of language barrier.
Side Effects: Mildly increases the users’ need for sleep the following days, proportionally to length of exposure.
Attributes: Mind Altering, Alchemical