Fable - Ask As above, so below

[Clementine]

Oh no, oh no.. Clementine had definitely not meant to end up here! A painful grimace stretched across her face as she traced her hand along the ley line that had just spit her out. That had never happened to her before. She hadn’t seriously injured anything, but she felt sore and bruised - especially her wings felt heavy. Pixie dust highlighted where she had hit the ground, confirming her thoughts that something had impacted her ability of ley line travel somehow.

Well, traveling onward or back though this ley line would not work. She’d have to find the next one, and hope that that one wouldn’t be.. Faulty? Clementine once again let her hand rest upon the ground, reading the ley’s energy. It buzzed, where normally it hummed, and she could feel it pushing back at her, zapping her almost. There was something going on, for sure. Something had interfered with it’s magic, maybe? Clem eyerolled at her surroundings. She wouldn’t expect anything different so nearby the creepy Crossroad Mire. She avoided this place like the plague, knowing damn well what kind of business was being done here. If she wasn’t careful, her wings would be cut off to be used in some potion of sorts!

Though a disturbance in the leys was her responsibility to fix, so she couldn’t just fly away and leave it for what it was. Well, she needed a rest anyways, with her body as painful as it was. Her eyes darted around the swamplands surrounding her, looking for a place to set up camp. A shiver ran along her spine - gahh, it was wet and cold here in comparison to Elbion. With her arms crossed before her chest she started walking towards a fallen tree-trunk, conveniently hollow. She inspected the place, but it seemed empty of critters, and good enough for a resting place. Well, first a nap, then she’d tackle all.. whatever this was.

Beatrix​

 

[Beatrix]

Clementine's disrupted travel was of course not just by random chance, there was a very real reason for the disturbance in the ley line and it had to do with a nearby witch of the bayou...

For a few days now Beatrix had been researching a topic of importance to her and it had to mainly do with the 'veins' of the world and portal stones. The bayou itself had no known portal stones and so she had the intent to see if the construction of one would be possible. The witch was cautious when it came to unexplored fields of magic however, and so most of her time had simply been spent with her nose buried in old tomes and examining other already known stones.

She knew that there was some kind of tangible link between the various portal stones but she wanted to know exactly what that was. There had to be some kind of channel, some kind of path between them all that formed their connection. The stones themselves had runes upon them and being quite the adept of runic magic herself she felt she had a better chance on unravelling the mystery than most.

The last few days the witch had been drawing runes of her own in various points through the bayou, their purpose was simple; to detect strong currents of latent or passive forms of magic. Her theory was that these connection points between the stones must be somewhere deep beneath the earth and so she had started to comb the bayou in search for one of these passing currents. If she could find one and isolate it, then maybe she could make some real progress.

Whether it was one of these 'paths' she had found or not was undecided, it was possible after all that portal stones used an entire system separate from ley lines but she had in fact found just that. The rune at her feet was about a meter across in diameter, etched into the damp soil beneath her, the grooves filled with powdered gems and the blood of a mage.

Her arm extended over the circle, her hand still dripping crimson. Thankfully these runes didn't ask for much of a price for their purpose was simple, but this rune unlike the others seemed to have found something. It thrummed and pulsed with energy as the cold gaze of the witch peered down curiously towards it.

The power of the rune itself seemed to have increased, no doubt draining magic from the ley line, not that she knew it was a ley line. Such things she believed to be the fancy of folktales, stories from elden times where magic was less understood, but if they were real and one could harvest the energy from them? It could prove to be a very potent source for the price, the magic she could wield with that would be catastrophic indeed...

It was this very disruption of the ley line energies however that had caused Clementine's journey to be cut short, and while the witch wasn't yet aware of her presence it would surely be made clear what the cause of the disruption was if the Pixie followed the line just a little further...

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Clementine