The Next Leap

(Last big block of text, I swear- we're about to leap again!)

Vasht is silent for a very long time. It moves to Gordra's ashes, and stands still, examining Amaruve's runes with a blank expression on its face. Its glass shard "wings" have returned to the sky above you, slowly swirling in a galaxy pattern. When he finally looks up at you, Perspicacious, his face is streaming with softly glowing tears.

It speaks, and for the first time since you have known it, Vasht sounds... normal. Instead of a ringing, angelic voice, his tone is much like that of a human man. "I am so, so sorry. You all have been through such hardship, and I am as much to blame for it as any of you." He looks again at the soot-stained rooftop. "The professor was presented with a choice. He elected not to take it. I don't know how he did it, but he took on the divine power of his ancient forbears to defeat our foe. It... Such a thing should not have been possible"

Vast looks back to you all. "Do you not realize it yet, Perspicacious? You are home. This is the Tower of the Intervexus Academy, or at least a mundane reflection of it. As to whether you may return to your lives as they once were... I truly do not know. The future I knew stretched onward into the infinite horizon, and your travels and my imprisonment lasted for all of that timeline. What the professor accomplished here changed everything. With the Pretender vanquished, the knowledge I could share with you is now utterly pointless. It is as though I am the preeminent scholar in a field that does not exist."

Vasht gestures outward, as though he will demonstrate something... but nothing happens. It frowns, then raises an outstretched hand, then two. Beads of sweat form on its brow and it begins to gasp with exertion. Then slowly, so slowly, the fantastic cityscape that surrounds your tower begins to shift. It takes quite some time, and you are naturally terrified at first, but after a few minutes of shifting your rooftop still feels quite stable. The beautiful buildings, roads, and parks of this massive city begin to flow upward and move overhead, forming a concave bubble of metal, glass, and concrete. You realize that you have been here once before, immediately after the explosion in Gordra's lab. This is the inverted space that once was the Intervexus Academy. Once its task is completed, Vasht collapses on the ground, chest heaving. 

After a few more moments, perhaps with the help of one or more of you, it rises to a sitting position and gestures for you to join it. It sounds duller, and its skin has begun to fade from a bright blue of new morning to something more like a dusky shade of twilight. It speaks softly now. "My power is fading, but I have altered this space between such that you may navigate it without my assistance. Painful though they were to bear, the bonds you severed tied me to your fate. I am afraid that our time together is drawing to a close. I wish... I wish I could do more." The orange tabby and comes up to Vasht. Purring, it curls itself in the angel's lap. Vasht smiles. "The Tower discovered such truths, but at a terrible price. The worlds you will visit from this point on have been freed of the Pretender's influence, but they are not whole. We took so, so much from the people of those worlds." It looks to you each in turn and says with a soft smile, "You have a chance to put things right. Sometimes significantly, sometimes in the smallest of ways. You will leap from world to world and make right what the Tower has wronged. I do not know with certainty whether that will untangle the Tower and return you to your old lives..." As it speaks, you realize with a start that the rooftop has been overtaken by wildflowers. "...But I believe that it will."

The small human sits there head hanging low. Cordelia stopped noticing the people around her as gray colors took over the world. She recalled her faith in Gordra. That damned dragonborn. His brilliance unparalleled, Gordra could have brought many wonderful discoveries to light, but he always needed Cordelia to deal with the day-to-day tasks. The small stuff. He was completely lost without her, always in his own world filled with arcane wonder. A smile played on her lips in memory of their time together. Gordra always needed Cordelia to watch over him. 

Her vision blurred as a whisper came to her ear. He always needed you. It never occurred to Cordelia that, perhaps, she needed him too. 

Cordelia absentmindedly pets the gray kitten while the others talk, but she stays ever silent. One would think that she should be the one to give a eulogy, but she stays quiet. The cool air clashed against the heat of her wet face. Aside from the repetitive motion of petting the little cat, Cordelia sat perfectly still in her monochrome world.

The little gray kitten looks up at Cordelia and lets out a tiny mew. 

Vasht is not in immediate danger of fading away, but he is too weak to do more than speak quietly to you (Feel free to ask him anything you like- by his estimates, he has some hours yet before he is pulled away again. That said, he is not currently the quasi-omnipotent being he once was). You set up a camp of sorts on the rooftop of the tower in this inverted world. This building is not alone in its new-found verdant additions. You see that many of the buildings around you are covered in young growth.

Meanwhile, the wildflowers that have grown around the radio spire's base are particularly bright and colorful. Maybe due to the power of Amaruve's ceremony, or maybe in deference to Gordra's sacrifice, but the circle of ashes that marked the dragonborn's ascension are now overgrown with a riot of red poppies

You share stories about Gordra. His distraction, his wit, his bravery... There is no day and no night in this space, but the galaxy of building lights around you and chill in the air prompt you to create a small fire in the center of camp. 

Amaruve lumbers about the field gathering sticks and wood for a fire then gives it a quick light Acoof! before he sits and listens to the other's stories.

Amaruve steps up to Cordelia and licks her face then goes over to Vasht and lays in his lap, like a Great Dane who doesn't know he's not a lap dog.

After a long period of silence Jean spoke up. "So... Has the Tower really done so much wrong, then?"

Vasht looks at you for a moment, Jean. He speaks slowly, almost as though he is unsure of what he is going to say (a first for him). "That... is not entirely correct. Gordra could have told you as much as I, if not more. He and the Archmage founded the Planar Well, after all. That more than anything allowed the Tower to accomplish what it did." He pauses, then looks to the tiefling. "Surely you knew some of this, Perspicacious. Your role was key to the administration of the Archmage's vision. I do not blame you, for you had no way of seeing the entirety of these works."

He looks to the rest of you, "But many worlds were broken by the Tower in the name of discovery. That, more than anything, was our great Sin."

Seeing Amaruve's head in Vasht's lap, the grey kitten bounds over to the pair. It clambers on top of the bear's head, curls up, and falls asleep. 

"We never thought exploration and research would be harmful. We took steps to avoid upsetting any of the places we opened up portals to. In hindsight, I'm sure even the smallest incursion could have a snowball effect.  But we were too excited about the possibilities for expanding knowledge and understanding... we overlooked it. I made sure the Archmage had all that he needed, so I wasn't exactly paying close attention to the ramifications of their actions." Perspicacious hangs her head a little bit, realizing the full weight of the situation and every little thing that led up to it. She was a far cry away from dreaming about planar travel as a little girl. 

Jean, having nothing else to offer, pulled Perspicacious into a hug.

Vasht has nothing to say in response, Perspicacious. He simply sits, absently stroking the grey kitten and staring into the campfire.

(Last chance for a post- the scene ends in ~5 hours when I update again!)

Cordelia is more or less like a stone in place. Even the bear lick did nothing to stir her from her stoic trance.

What passes for night comes on quickly in this strange silent world. You spend the ensuing hours resting, conversing quietly, and taking stock of the supplies that you have gathered in your leaps (including a hefty supply of cheese, berries and acorns that followed you from the island of the Mouse Guard). You also note with some surprise that you have amassed a fair amount of gold: 1000 GP apiece. 

As the fire dies down, you all awaken to discover that Vasht has become translucent, like a dense purple haze in the shape of a man. Amaruve, you and the two cats curled up a foot or two away before settling down for the night. Vasht lost the ability to speak perhaps an hour ago, but it lowers his hand to the rooftop. The grey kitten bounds up to the angel, sky-blue eyes sparkling. A shadow of a smile plays across what you can see of Vasht’s face as the kitten curls up in the palm of its hand. The orange tabby stares intensely at the pair of them, tail lashing.

You watch in silence as Vasht’s form loses all cohesion, its body moves swiftly yet gently outward in a brightly shining nebula, enveloping you all in a sea of sparkling motes of light. In your minds, you hear the angel one final time, “I love you, my Lost ones.” And with that, the haze of stardust that was Vasht leaves your side for the last time, moving outside of your reality and into the silence between the planes.

Cordelia, the stardust (your stardust) begins to beep. A gate is about to form. Before it does, however, you notice a dark shape lying curled on the ground where Vasht was sitting. It's the grey kitten, but something is decidedly odd about its appearance. It seems to have grown- in fact, it now appears to be an incredibly large, sleek, full grown cat. It rises to stand on its hind legs at roughly the height of a child and opens its sky-blue eyes; eyes the color of Vasht...

Cordelia wipes her face with a sleeve as the Stardust beeps. A gate. She looks over at the former kitten curiously. She approaches it and looks down at them. Without thinking, she picks them up and holds the cat. 

"Cute." This is probably the first thing Cordelia has said the past couple hours.

The gold was a welcome surprise, but Jean almost forgot it entirely when she saw something else: Cheese! She instantly grabbed for a small wheel of what on Faerun would be called Waterdhavian and on some worlds called Swiss and began to tear into it as if she had been starving for months. Nutty yellow goodness was devoured with near-orgasmic bliss untill Jean was sated and she lay back in a mess of cheese crumbs and wax wrapper pieces.

When Cordelia commented about the cat, apparently Vasht's new form, Jean gave her a warm smile and stood up. "Well, friends, I have no idea where we're going or even if our task is accomplish-able at all, but she we go and roll the dice anyway?" She said with a mix of wry humour and resolve.

Amaruve rocks side to side a couple times before managing the momentum to gain his feat. He stands up onto his hind legs and spits fire holding the ball in the claw of his right paw like a torch toward Treasure. Taking a look at the mysterious cat. He steps close and gives the kitten a meaningful sniff. (Insight: (1)22) Anything familiar, strange, or unexpected?

Everything about this cat is strange and unexpected. That said, it's pretty familiar, as well. It is now more sleek than poofy, but it's still slate grey with eyes the color of a clear winter sky.  There is also a keen intelligence in the creature's expression that wasn't there before. It has clearly undergone some kind of magical metamorphosis. (With a 21...) You also have a distinct memory of your first interaction with this creature in the cave on the island of mice. Vasht spoke through it to warn you about the Pretender's impending ambush. Something about this animal made it possible for Vasht to use it as a vessel. 

The cat stands up on in its two back feet, taking a moment to get used to this new way of walking. When he gets the hang of it he smiles, proud of himself for figuring it out. "Hel....Hellooo.."  he says. 

You can all see that he has changed a bit from his original form. Now slightly longer in his torso with feet that are somewhere between paws and feet, and hands somewhere between paws and hands. He's about the size of a small child now, and he seems to have aquired clothes from somewhere as well.

"Well, where do you think we'll go from here?"

"Oh.. a cute, talking cat," Cordelia comments simply as she blinks. "Wait. Are you still the same cat?"

(Filling in for Shaz this week while he's out. I'm going to avoid posting dialogue for the cat and simply describe his actions instead)

The cat introduces itself as Kyo. It has only foggy memories of its life as a kitten, and it isn't sure why or how it found itself in this new form. It remembers Vasht, however, and is happy to share his affection for the blue angel. It also remembers it's mother, the orange tabby. The two experience a sort of celebration when he first rose onto his hind limbs, jabbering at one another in yowling cat speech and butting their heads together.

Suddenly, Kyo stops talking. He walks over to the patch of red poppies that marks Gordra's grave and, reaching into the thicket, pulls out the dragonborn's amber-topped white staff. As he does so, the portal appears in the center of the tower's rooftop. The orange tabby darts toward it, mewing at your group before she leaps inside. Kyo is close behind. The wildflowers bend gently in a warm breeze which, until a few moments ago, didn't exist in this strange place between the worlds...