Dizziness, confusion, and fear cycled over his face. Everything felt bad. He was cold, and there were others making... sounds near him. He looked around and could see many more others, walking above and all around them. The strange figure with the changing colored body was directly talking to him.
It was too much for him, and for a moment he backed away from everyone.
"Grrr." he growled at them all... but there was no real anger, malice, or force behind it. His skin was pale, his expression nearly blank. His gaze was hallow, and any drive was gone. The fire that defined him had been extinguished when he had fallen into the river of Styx, he now looked much like the zombies they had faced.
Vance held his head, shaking off the cobwebs in his mind. "If nothing like that ever happens again, that would be great."
As the speaking began, the glowing man smiled. His voice sounded like it echoed, giving it a strange dualistic quality. "I wasn't told what happened. I understand that some of you have damage that is beyond our ability to heal here at the Temple, but the Tower may have more luck. The city takes care of it's own. Is anyone still in pain, or afflicted with something? If you like, I would love to hear what happened to you."
Thedra's voice came from the doorway, her heeled boots clicking on the glass floor as she came in. She was clean, focused, and did not look at all like she'd just been to hell and back. "You know better, Pherryn. Missions that involve Non-Prime planes are always classified until the after-action briefing is finished. They're going to need a guide once they get turned loose. I'll make sure it's you."
The glowing man laughed and raised a clear, hairless eyebrow. "Don't think I didn't notice that you just tried to slip babysitting past me as something that sounds like a reward." He smiled. "I'd be happy to."
"Everyone up." Thedra said like a military sergeant. "We have things to take care of."
Garridan sat up suddenly with a start, gazing around he was confused for a brief moment. 'Was is it all just a dream? Or we they just all dead?' Obviously Garridan did not have much of a grasp in the ways of religion and planar structure, because obviously this was not the Boneyard. His gaze drifted around, taking it all in with a sweeping glance. 'This must be the city.' And then he caught sight of the crystal and the... glass-man. He stared in awe at him? Her? Until suddenly Thedra was there once more, directing their attention back to the task at hand.
Garridan wearily got to his feet, despite his wounds being healed... He was not so sure this was the best decision he'd ever made. He had questions and wanted answers. If being sent to the lowest level of the Abyss was a normal occurrence... then perhaps he'd best be in the next portal back home. He walked up to Thedra with a nod. "Now that we've seen there, do we get to see the other?"
Turning her head to look at Thedra, Ariela nods, getting up and walking over to their recruiter almost mechanically.
Talas groggily rolled onto his feet, having to clutch at the surface he'd been lying on for balance. He stared down at his hand as if he wasn't sure who it belonged to, and then at his legs, his torso. Gingerly, he patted at his own body, as if trying to confirm with touch what his other senses were telling him: he was all here, in one... piece. Even if it didn't quite... feel like it.
Garridan's voice was grounding: the one really familiar thing in all of this. Talas made his way over to Garridan and Thedra, and gave the other Varisian a weak clap on the shoulder, a wordless well... we're still here.
"Can the 'things to take care of' be a long nap on a beach?" he said. "You know, Thedra, when you said 'we get to go to a marvelous city' you neglected to mention the detour to the hell jungle and then to, you know... hell."
He smiled weakly.
Teral rolled a shoulder, reaching down with his other hand to stroke his hedgehog's head. He absently dodged the little monster's attempt to bite his fingers as he looked to Eythil thoughtfully. "Looks like our Forest native friend didn't make it back all the way. We could use some help escorting him from here peacefully."
"The Abyss." Thedra corrected Talas with a small smirk. "Technically, the Nine Hells are a different place. A nicer one too, from what I hear."
"The Abyss?" the glowing man called Pherryn said, impressed. "Well that explains some things."
Thedra rolled her eyes. "That's enough gossip for you, you old biddy. You shouldn't have even heard that much. They just don't know better yet. Except Teral. He should know better, I just don't think he cares." She paused and glanced at Teral. "You do remember that much, right?"
She blinked in realization and looked around. "How the heck did I end up with three recruits with memory damage? What are the odds of that?" She gave Teral a stink eye. "This is why Spectrum doesn't like going on missions with you, you know. It always gets weird."
She shrugged to Garridan, finally answering his question. "What you see today will definitely be other."
Vance and Kestrel moved with Ariela, noticing that she wasn't her usual vibrant self at all. "Are you alright?" they asked her.
A few of the recruits were having difficulty getting moving. Thedra sighed. "Help them up, please. We need to get moving."
Eythil still did not move. His gaze vacantly, yet quickly, shifting at them all depending on who was talking, dull instincts taking over him as his footing began switching to a more even stance.
Garridan nods at Thedra and Talas, still too weary to continue the witty banter that had been part of this trio since they had agreed to escort Thedra and Spectrum into those gnoll infested ruins...
He does turn to look over at Eythil when Teral mentions something about him. He immediately recognized the animal instinct ingrained into all living creatures. "Something is very wrong with him. He's in fight or flight mode; we need to calm him down somehow before either instinct takes over."
Garridan's words made Talas glance up from his own hands (they didn't feel right) to look at the other man. "...you're right." Another nod at Teral's own observation.
Talas took a careful step towards Eythil, his hands raised and empty. "Hello there," he said, tone rather than words being the thing, as gentle as he could, with his eyes down towards the ground rather than trying for eye contact. The man had spoken Orc-tongue back in the jungle, so...
Thedra rolled her eyes. "That's enough gossip for you, you old biddy. You shouldn't have even heard that much. They just don't know better yet. Except Teral. He should know better, I just don't think he cares." She paused and glanced at Teral. "You do remember that much, right?"
She blinked in realization and looked around. "How the heck did I end up with three recruits with memory damage? What are the odds of that?" She gave Teral a stink eye. "This is why Spectrum doesn't like going on missions with you, you know. It always gets weird."
Teral shrugged, a glimmer of his usual nonchalant humor reappaearing in his eyes. "What fun would life be without a little touch of weird?" His face fell again, though, as he looked back to poor Abyss-touched Eythil. "But then...sometimes, some normal might be nice too."
He stepped toward the incoherent man along with Talas, also raising his hands placantly, his voice low and soothing. "Alright, friend. Just come along with us and we'll get your brain all nice and fixed up." He glanced at Thedra and muttered, "Right?"
"I'm alive. Better than could be expected." Ariela replies with as much energy as replying to what day it was.
"Uhhhg" Grunted Dolgrin as he rolled out of the bed onto the floor at Thedra's command. Normally he wouldn't be so dramatic about it, but the fact that he was decapitated by an orc, crushed by a towering lizard's head, injected with eel/worm like things that eat him alive, and attacked by undead and his own personal sin monster while having surgery... Can make him a little grumpy.
He stood up and took the first look of his surroundings. "By the Gods..." he said dumbstruck with awe. "Who... who built such an... place?"
Pherryn smiled. "The Elves of this city are quite industrious with glassteel. I too was quite surprised when I first saw the temple. It reminded me of home."
"The temple was their gift to the city when they were recognized as their own House, rather than being vassals of House Solar."
Thedra sighed. "The history lesson will have to wait. What's wrong with Eythil?"
"And Ari?" Kestrel echoed, worried about her friend.
Pherryn shook his head. "I don't know. Afflictions of the mind are not my area of expertise."
"He looks like he doesn't recognize anything. He can't even speak." Thedra said, frustrated and worried. "We have a debriefing to get to, and he can't even... dammmit. I was really hoping the complications were over. Alright. Any of you any good with animals? Maybe try that?"
Pherryn cleared his throat and cast a spell. "Just because he cannot speak does not mean he has no capacity for language. He is not stupid."
"Damn it Elves!" He shouted while stamping his foot. "They should be working with wood and stuff! Not glass or steel! That's Dwarf territory! By the Gods I'll never see the end of it..."
"What's wrong? Well we been to hell and back and worse. How can you go through that and not change? Leave 'er be for now. We're gonna need time to think things out."
"From what I gather, they used to." Pherryn shrugged at Dolgren's outburst. "Then they ended up here. There aren't any trees, so they adapted and started making this. It isn't really glass, or steel. It's just what people started calling it. The dwarves here don't really deal in glass. Rock and steel, yes, but glass takes sand. There's no sand here either."
Eythil fliched as Pherryn's spell landed but he did not look as though he would run any longer.
A wave of confusion followed by understanding washed over his face as he began to slowly speak. "Wha... what happened? Where is this? Who are all of you? What was that river?"
His voice was clear but lackluster.
Ariela looks at Kestrel noting the difference in her tone. She was concerned. Ariela vaguely remembered a sensation like concern before.
Shrugging she responds to her friend's question. "As far as I'm aware my body is just recovering from the shock. I.....feel different.........I'm not sure feel is the right word though." she says, her tone flat and emotionless.
"We'll tell you all of that in a few minutes." Thedra said gently. "Follow me."
Thedra moved the group through the winding halls of the temple. The walls were inscribed with pictograms and tableaus that were etched into the glass. They caught the multicolored light to display bas reliefs and rows of graceful lettering in a slowly shifting rainbow. Navigating the place was incredibly disorienting. How anyone could avoid getting lost was hard to imagine, but Thedra knew the way.
Eventually they went up a flight of stairs and were suddenly in a massive church hall. There were hundreds of glass pews and a balcony full of amphitheater seats. Where the altar should have been on the raised platform at the head of the space was the Stone in all it's scintillating glory.
It was huge. It was set into the floor at it's widest point so that it tapered, sloping up a good ten feet above them, and down into the floor below. The healing chamber they had awakened in must have been directly below this. Looking down, they could still see the purple and gold glow of pherryn as he cleaned.
The stone was surrounded by three rings etched into the glass and surrounded by people on simple robes who sat in quiet contemplation. Nearby, a pair of priests watched.
As they passed by the outermost ring of the stone chamber, Dolgrin was suddenly stricken with crippling nausea. The things inside him writhed and churned with such force that when he spasmodically pulled off his breastplate and wrestled his shirt up, the others around him could see things moving beneath his skin.
Garridan stared in awe at the temple, unable to even come up with the appropriate words for such a phenomenal... place. He turned to sharply rebuke Dolgrin's heretical noise when he suddenly spotted--- 'By the Gods, what was that?!' His eyes widened as he stared at the sight, rooted in place by the horror he had witnessed. "Thedra! What do we do?!" He pointed at Dolgrin.
Through the entire walk through the temple, Eythil quietly asked the others what they were and then who. He was quite captivated by the entirety of the sights around them and even though he'd been told by Thedra that all would be revealed in time he asked if anyone knew what they were looking at.
While Dolgrin began removing his armor, Eyrhil merely watched then rather than being alarmed, he stepped closer to look at the worms.
"Hmm. Is this a... change from... hell?"
"We need a cleric!" Thedra shouted down the hall. Heads turned. The two priests minding the worshipers int he circles came running.
Then suddenly Dolgren vomited. Then vomited again. And again. It was a horrific spew full of writhing black worms which were spasming and dying. They shrieked and battered their white thorn-like heads against the impenetrable glass trying to burrow away from the light. Unable to escape, they shriveled and dissolved into hideous smelling smoke.
Dolgren was white as a sheet and panting, but somehow he was feeling much better.
"I'm done" He grunted as he knelt
"Cleric? What is that? They came, are they clerics?" Eythil's gaze swept around at the room. The sounds coming out of his mouth were not actual words but grunts and slurs.
Teral, more or less calm despite the incident, walks up and lays a hand on Dolgrin's shoulder. "Not pleasant, is it? Pretty sure that's happened to me once or twice. You'll be fine, now." He paused. "Probably."
Ariela watched as Dolgrin suffers through the agony of vomiting up masses of vile worms. That wasn't good. Something was very wrong with him and someone needed to do something for him.
The odd thing was that seeing the look of horror on Ketrel and Vance's faces, she couldn't quite grasp why it seemed to bother her so much less than it did them. She'd known Dolgrim just as long.
"Bloody gods," Talas muttered, staring in horrified fascination.
"...er... you alright there?" he asked gingerly when the dwarf was done.... purging. He reached down and offered a hand up to Dolgrin, not without some wariness, and looked over at Eythil who still seemed not fully coherent.
"Yes, pretty sure he didn't have those before the Pit. I think."
Talas takes a breath and looks around. "No one else feeling sick?"
The pair of priests arrived just in time to see the last of the worms dissolve. They looked at each other a moment and got to work without a word.
One's eyes glowed softly and he scanned the group. The other said a quiet prayer and looked over the smoking remains to the worms.
Then they made up for their earlier silence in a barrage of discussion.
"Definitely unholy."
"Abyssal Parasites?"
"Quippoth larvae."
"Must have been bit."
"The rest are clear."
"The dwarf seems clean too."
"How'd he get in here carrying those?"
They paused their rapid-fire commentary to each other and thought a moment before looking to Thedra.
"Did you bring him though the Godstone chamber on the way in?"
She shook her head. "No."
They nodded and started up again.
"This area is Consecrated and warded against servants of the outer planes."
"Against most magics they would only read as a part of the host, so they slipped through the Temple's primary wards."
"I do not think they were able to trick the Godstone wards so easily. They were banished."
"It is good you took this way out. The back way would not have brought you though this chamber."
"They might have continued to gestate."
They smiled.
"Don't worry about the mess."
"That's what acolytes are for."
Dolgrin stood up wearily "So... They're all gone right? All of em?"
"I do not believe they can survive here."
"In addition to the Consecration and Bamishment ward, the Godstone Chamber creates a Planar Breach."
"You and I don't feel it because it is aligned with our own planar resonance."
"To the parasites, it would be like you going to the Elemental Plane of Fire."
"Simply existing here is deadly to them."
"We cannot detect them within you."
"You might want to check at the Tower to be sure."
"Their divinations are much stronger than the ones we had prepared."
Talas's gaze ping-ponged back and forth between the priests. Everything felt as if it were coming from too many directions at once. Or like his ears weren't... right where they should be. He grunted and rubbed at them.
"Well... good then. Glad they're destroyed. Don't want anyone's... flesh getting eaten, eh," he mumbled vaguely.
"Oh, they don't do that."
"They aren't really corporeal."
"Unless they are on a Spiritual plane."
"Of course."
"Here they should be intangible."
"So they wouldn't be feeding on flesh."
"Though I've been told a host can feel them anyway."
"What they are actually feeling is the worms moving around inside the soul.
"They feed on sin."
"Eventually, they become a manifestation of a person's worst deeds and regrets."
"A personalized demon, of sorts."
"It's good they were purged before that occurred."
Thedra blinked and held a hand up, silencing the two talkative priests for a moment.
"Uh... Dolgrin? That thing in the... place. The bad place we aren't supposed to talk about right now... didn't it say something to you?"
"Uhhhh..." Dolgrin blundered. "I'm trying not to think about it. There was one that knew my name."
Thedra sighed. "Another thing to add to the list of stuff to cover at the debriefing today."
Then she got kind of a quizzical look on her face and stared at the two priests. "Don't I know you two?"
They looked at each other, wordlessly deciding something and then one brought his finger to his lips.
"Yes. We're in disguise."
Thedra raised an eyebrow. Then slow dawning horror washed over her. She took a deep breath. "What. Are you two. Doing. Here." she said very slowly.
"Studying the Godstone."
"We wanted to get a good look at it."
"We're taking the test."
"We're still on the third ring though. It's a tricky question."
Thedra let out a breath. "Ohthankthemakers."
The two priests smiled.
"We slipped our handlers."
"Please don't tell anyone."
"Everyone always seems to get nervous when we come here."
"Yeah." Thedra said sternly. "This is the heart of the city. Literally everything is riding on this one place, and you two have a history of destroying everything you come across."
"That is hyperbole."
"And a bit rude."
"We just want to see if we can pass the test."
"And to touch it."
"And to see if it will give one of us a shard."
"That's all."
"That's enough." Thedra hissed. "You two are going straight back to your handlers right now. If you want access to the Godstone, you'll file a request and let the Oracle do a full Divination on what the outcomes could be. Then, if the future possibilities don't include total catastrophe, you'll be allowed to come back here and take the tests."
The pair looked crestfallen.
"That isn't fair at all."
"The future possibilities always include total catastrophe."
"Especially where you two are concerned." Thedra glared. "Go."
The pair of priests glumly walked out of the temple, their forms changing as they dismissed their illusions and pulled off the mundane disguises they wore. They were elves. Twins from the look of it.
Thedra glared at Teral. "What are the odds?"
Thedra shook her head rubbed her temples.
"You know what recruitment missions are usually like for me? I go to some fairly place where the city has set up a temple or orphanage that looks for kids with the traits we're looking for. Then I take an hour to go get some local food, and come home with a handful of wily urchins who are all way too impressive for their own good. I drop them off at the Academy, and then go get a drink."
"You lot took me to my least favorite place in the whole planarverse, and then showed me a new least favorite place that I had been, until today, blissfully unfamiliar with."
She looked balefully at Eythil. "When you grow a brain again, you owe me a drink. Make that drinks. For life."
She handed Dolgren a waterskin to wash his mouth out with and started walking again. "Let's go." she said wistfully.
The group exited the temple through a large open archway in the shape of the city's crest. A portcullis was lifted to the top of the archway, and a row of very thick pointed bars pointed down at them as they passed beneath. The bars were made of an inky black metal streaked with spiderwebs of silvery reflection, and each one was as thick as a dwarf's thigh.
That's Adamantine. A lot of it.
The temple courtyard was half garden and half training ground. There were dozens of people, all wearing the heaviest-looking armor any of the Recruits had ever seen. Their tabbards were all temple white, or black with the symbol of a silhouetted lock on the breast.
While the warriors trained and drilled, young acolytes scurried about running messages and cleaning. Priests sat on benches discussing spiritual issues or scribing their sermons and thoughts on strange glass tablets.
The temple was a fortress. It's design was a classic castle. Siege weapons of varying kinds lined the thick outer walls that enclosed the courtyard. There were four tall towers at the corners, each topped with a different kind of strange turret. The walls were thick enough that two carriages could easily pass each other and tall enough that Dolgren wondered how the heck they managed to stack the stone that straight and that high and still maintain the integrity. It was a marvel of engineering.
Thedra stopped and let the group look around.
"Orientation begins now. This is the Temple. If you need patched up, or, need a curse broken, or need to know if you've been corrupted by demons, or if you just need to talk to someone about some awful thing you went through on a mission, you come here."
"Good to know." Ariela says without emotion.
Garridan jumped back as Dolgrin suddenly began vomiting the strange, black worm creatures; however, before he could even begin to comprehend what in the Nine-Hells was going on a pair of priests appeared. Like Talas, Garridan's head bounced back and forth as the pair rapidly fired questions and statements at each other. By the time Thedra had ushered the pair of priests... no wait they were elves... what is--- Garridan sighed. He looked at Talas with a skeptical glance. "What just happened back there?"
And then they were at the Temple. Garridan stared in awe at the massive structure. Being a well-traveled Varisian, Garridan had seen some impressive sights and some even larger than this, but those had been abandoned giant dwellings. This was not giant castle, this was built by people. "How was this built? It is astounding!"
Thedra sounded a bit like a history teacher as she answered Garridan.
"This was the original fortress the city was built around. This site was originally a very important pass between a number of warring kingdoms. After a lot of wars, a treaty was eventually signed that had the castle built. Each kingdom sent two nobles and their families to live here and act as hostages. Those families were all sworn to protect the fortress against all assailants, including their own kingdoms. The pass was too important to fall into the hands of any one nation, so it became a neutral ground. In my opinion, it was a very risky plan, but it worked."
"It held until the end of the world. Then it was destroyed after the Exodus, during the Godswar, but it was rebuilt when the second treaty was signed. I guess they figured that it had worked so well the first time, they might as well try again."
"This fortress was built by the original heads of the Great Houses. They survived the Godswar and managed to negotiate the forces of the Heavens and Hells into a treaty where none of them got what they wanted. It is one of the marvels of the planarverse, and it contains our most sacred relics."
"It has survived assaults from an Ifrit warlord, a lizardman demigod, and two rogue Dragons."
"I think those two could destroy it in an afternoon. By accident."
Without elaborating further she continued her whirlwind tour, pointing at each of the castle's towers. They all had classic windows and balconies on the higher levels and pennants dropped from the battlements, but were each drastically different in the details of their appearance.
The first tower was accented with slowly pulsing runes and topped with a turret that looked like a giant disassembled spyglass, or perhaps a jeweler's eyepiece. It was series of seven lenses arrayed in sequence that looked like it was designed to be quickly rearranged for different levels of focus. From the center of the tower's ramparts a glowing beam of light rose from it into the sky.
"That is the Tower of the Mind. It is our center of arcane research. It's also the headquarters of Tower Laboratories, which is the city's business enterprise focusing on enchanted goods. Most people just call it the Lab."
The second tower was crowned with what looked like fangs or tusks and was covered with some kind of crawling vegetation, like ivy. It was bright green. White monkeys crawled around on the outside of it eating the vine's fruit. It's turret looked more like a cluster of large mortars.
"That is the Tower of the Heart. It's... I suppose you could call it a Druid's tower, but our druids are a bit different than the ones you're probably used to. It's also the headquarters of the Cerberus Project, which is the city's, uh, animal husbandry institute. We call it the Zoo."
The third tower looked like it had amethyst for mortar between the bricks. It's turret was just three glowing crystals strapped together and aimed outward on a pivot mechanism. Another crystal hung in the air above the tower, slowly morphing between geometric shapes.
"That is the Tower of the Soul. They do weird stuff there. Experimental magics that break or bend what we know of the existing magical laws. Hedge magics. Outer plane magics. Occultism. Psionics. Alchemy. I don't understand much of it, to be honest. It's also where the Experience Vaults are. The Mind Tower started calling them the Madhouse and the name kinda stuck. Now they wear it like a badge of honor."
The last tower was the tallest of the four. The top of it had four sides, each with a massive clock face. Instead of numbers, the clock faces had thirteen symbols arranged in a circle. Each symbol glowed with different levels of intensity. The longer hand clicked forward a small increment as they watched. There was also a third hand to the clock, set behind the main two. It was red and was slowly moving backwards against the direction of time.
"And that's the Harbinger. It's complicated. They study time, and possible futures, and probability manipulation, and all kinds of divination and oracular stuff. If you sign on to become an Operative like me, that's where you'll be working."
Eythil examined the towers and pointed at them after Thedra had finished offering her explanation. He began reiterating what she had told them. "Towers. Mind, enterprising on enchanted goods, tower laboratories, the Lab. Heart, Druid's tower... Cerebrus project, animal husbandry institute, the Zoo. Soul, experimental magics, Hedge magics, outer planes magics, Occultism, Psionics, Alchemy, the Experience Vaults. The Madhouse. Harbinger, time, futures, probability manipulation, divination." He then pointed at her. "Operative. How?" he asked.
Teral watched the scene with the two 'priests' with a wry sort of amusement for a while, until Thedra seemed to come to a realization about their identity. After a few moments of looking back and forth between Thedra and the pair, he too suddenly gained an expression of dawning horror on his face.
Dragons below, was that - Forgotten gods. In the Temple, yet! Whoever let them slip the leash this time is getting a hell of a shakedown later.
"The odds? Ah. Apparently, getting worse all the time."
He leaned in toward Garridan conspiratorially, responding to the man's question despite it being asked of someone else. "If I don't miss my guess, you don't want to see that pair anywhere without at least ten solid feet of glassteel between you. Preferably adamantine." He shuddered. "I've messed with some idiotic things in my time, but those two...They've done a hell of a lot of good over the years, but they just don't know where to draw the line. Trust me, you're better off not knowing more, at least not until you've gotten a proper run through the Academy."
He nodded along to the rundown of the cities' facilities, finding it all gave him a very strange sort of deja vu. He knew these things, knew the whole city like the back of his hand, but often these days it was like recalling a book he read as a child; the knowledge was all there, but he couldn't find it until someone else brought it up.
As the Recruits gazed around the Temple courtyard and up at the towers, they couldn't help but look up.
More than any of the wonders they had seen so far, the sky above floored them.
There was no sun. There were no stars. No moons.
Instead, there was a huge mandala that hung in the air and poured light down through it. It was glass, and most of it was clear. The city's crest was lit in pale blue. In thirteen smaller rings around the crest were symbols. They were vibrantly lit that threw streaks of colored light down through the air. All around it humanoid figures flew on great feathered wings.
Above the mandala was a dome of sky-blue lines that created a honeycomb pattern.
Beyond that was empty blackness punctuated by occasional bursts of color, like very distant fireworks going off in slow motion, or blooming nebula that lived and died over the course of minutes.
Across the sky sailed two strange ships who's masts and sails rose from the top deck, and from beneath. It looked like a boat who's reflection in the water had become part of it.
Talas moved through it all in a half-daze. The sensory assault between the world as he knew it, and this place, was vast. Varisia, its forests and mountains, its coastline... the grandest city he'd ever been to before now had been Magnimar, with its crumbling Irespan a breathtaking sight... Varisia was a land where the earth was dotted with marvels of long ago.
In this place, the marvels were shiny and new, in regular use, and not artifacts of a time so far back as to be mythical. This place dwarfed Magnimar.
Unconsciously, he hovered close to Garridan, as the most familiar touchstone in this parade of the incredible. Maybe when he'd been pulled part and put back together, he thought, maybe the pieces hadn't fit right. Maybe his mind was a little cracked. Lots of maybes there.
He heard the others speaking but Talas just continued stare and soak in what he could, trying to keep his mind processing and making notes.
"Fascinating."
Dolgrin walked through it all, but was completely overwhelmed. The sheer difference in technology compared to his people was beyond staggering. Furthermore, it seemed to Dolgrin that the elves had taken the lead in their ancient technology race, which he couldn't help but feel ruffled by. He tried to pay attention, but soon the complex words took their toll and went right over his head.
Thedra stopped walking after a few paces when she realized no one was following her. She smiled wryly when she saw them all gaping at the sky. They were late, but a few more moments wouldn't hurt.
When she stopped long enough to think about it, she had to admit that it really was impressive.
"That's Skyhome. The elves live there. It looks like a pretty circle from down here, but the whole thing's a big... commune."
"It reminds me of...something." Ariela says frowning as if experiencing a headache.
"If some flying glass and pretty lights are enough to Feeblemind the lot of you, we really aren't going to make it through the day..." Thedra said wryly.
"I know I'm pushing kinda hard right now, and you've all been through a lot, but we have to keep going."
She pointed to the clock tower she'd called the Harbinger.
"That's where we're headed. Think we can make it that far before your jaws try to fall off again?"
Eythil looked mildly concerned at Ariela's discomfort before Thedra's voice snapped him back to the direction she was indicating.
He nodded uncertainly and fell back into step behind her.
Talas's face scrunched up at Thedra's dry words, and he absently touched at his jaw.
"...don't joke about body parts falling off," he muttered. "I'm not sure mine are all firmly attached..."
Still, he squinted towards the Harbinger tower. "Right, then. Let's go..."