Shiva feels her shoulders shrug involuntarily and sees the reflection of her other self do the same. Something inside her wants to reach out and touch it.

Entirely out of her depth, she trusts her instincts and reaches out towards the reflection of her Other.

As Shiva's fingertips make contact with the water's surface, her head abruptly spins with a wave of vertigo. Droplets flow along the length of the tiefling's azure fingers, as though up is down and down is up. Then, before Shiva can form a coherent thought, she topples forwards into the brook, which suddenly seems impossibly deep. Still falling, she leaves the icy water behind with a gasp and her chest thumps against the hard earth of the riverbank.

When Shiva's heart finally begins to slow and she raises her head to look around, she finds herself on the opposite side of the stream. However, the carriage and her friends are nowhere to be seen. The trees seem somehow larger and are draped thickly in ivy and thorns. To the north a raven caws at her from its position perched amongst the branches.

Shiva grunts in profound discomfort as she waits for the disorientation to pass. Eventually rising to her feet, she takes in her strange surroundings with a mélange of panic and wonder. She looks up at the altered trees and scans over to where the raven sits on its branch. "You wouldn't happen to talk, would you?" With a nervous laugh she walks away from the stream into the treeline, hoping to find anyone that could explain her situation.

The raven squawks at Shiva and takes off north, flitting between the trees. It goes just as far as Shiva can see, before looking back at her and squawking again.

"Ok, that's good enough for me." Shiva acquiesces, following the corvid through the trees. 

This routine continues for some distance, until Shiva stumbles upon a small, grassy clearing with a ring of white mushrooms in the middle. The raven lands in the middle and looks back at her once more, tilting its head to one side inquisitively.

Meanwhile, Alaris wakes for the dawn watch to find that Shiva is missing from her bedroll.

Shiva approaches the ring of white mushrooms tentatively, keeping her eyes on the raven. "Into the circle?" She steps into the ring and sits beside her guide. 

"Caio..." Alaris asks in a low voice. "Where's Shiva?"

The moment that Shiva steps into the circle, the entire world seems to stretch vertically, before snapping back. When it returns, she is faced with two spiral staircases within the circle of mushrooms. One leads down into the earth and the other is woven of vines and leads up into the sky. The raven caws at her again, still watching the tiefling with marked interest.

The moment of disorientation is as brief as a single breath, leaving Shiva staring at the two spiral staircases. Completely unsure of what to do or what was waiting at the ends of these stairs, she looks to the raven. She found its expectant gaze unnerving, and looked back to the stairs before her. "**** it." Going with her gut, she stood and began the descent down into the earth.

The stair is dark and winding with stone walls and stone floors. Shiva walks for what feels like an eternity. She walks until her legs ache and she longs to sit, but something drives her on. Ever on and downwards. She's made her choice and she knows in her heart that there is no turning back now.

Just when it seems like her legs have grown so numb that her feet will fall off, the spiral staircase comes to an end. Set into the wall at the foot of the stairs is an arched wooden door with a cast iron ring for a handle. Reaching for it with a tired hand, Shiva pushes the door open and steps through.

The earth outside is dusty and grey, spattered with sparse, ashen grass. Twisted, black trees rise high around the clearing into a starless night's sky. For somebody who's lived their whole life beneath Arden's vast, silver moon, the darkness is truly profound. The door swings shut behind Shiva with a clatter and, when she looks around, she can see a stone tower rising behind her. A raven caws at her from its perch atop the battlements.

The moment that she has the opportunity, Shiva falls to the ground to rest. Breathing heavily, she lifts her head and looks for anything that would distinguish the sky or give some sign of where she was. But the darkness was uniform and without a blemish of any kind. "Well, can't wait to meet whoever lives in this colorful place." 

"So just to clarify, this was a bad choice, right?"  "Yes, *******. This was probably a bad choice."

When the ache in her legs begins to lessen, she stands and looks to the raven atop the battlements of the tower. "Lead the way."

The raven caws at Shiva once more, before taking flight over the trees and out of sight. A bestial growl can be heard from the tree line surrounding the clearing.

Shiva's claws extend from her fingernails as the growl reverberates out, her eyes darkening as she prepares for violent confrontation. Taking heavy steps towards the tree line, she stops just feet away from the black, contorting bark of the forest before her.  She steadies herself and reaches into the depths of her person for the strength of the demon, rearing back and unleashing a thunderous roar.

Silence thick enough to cut with a knife hangs in the air in the wake of the roar's echoes. Nothing moves. Not even the wind.

Shiva's brow furrows at the complete absence of a response. Straightening up, she begins to walk into the forest on the path taken by the raven. "That's unsettling..."

The forest distorts Shiva's sense of time and space, such that she cannot tell if she has been walking for a minute or an hour when she stumbles upon another clearing amongst the trees. Spread out before the tiefling are the grounds of an expansive manor house, all in greyscale like the rest of her surroundings. The forest borders on a paddock attached to the house's stables and a black horse stands in the middle besides a humanoid figure. The man, if you could call it a man, appears to be a corporeal shadow with points of white where his eyes would be. He leans his head close to the horse, patting its neck affectionately.

The strange nature of this place begins to wear on Shiva's psyche as she finds herself unable to recall just how long she had travelled before reaching the clearing. Cautiously, she begins approaching the figure and his horse and raises her hand. Almost an afterthought, she retracts her claws before calling out. "Excuse me, could you help me? I don't know where I am." 

"...and where would you like to go, Shiva?" The man asks, cracking a smile that is only a narrow curve of white in the void of his face.