The half-orc awoke violently, jerking upwards into a sitting position. Cold sweat poured from her olive skin and her thick, dark hair was messily pasted to the back of her neck and sides of her face. Frantically, she scanned her room for the signs of danger that her body was screaming were present, only to find that she was no longer in her room at the Redwood Inn. She was lying on the floor of a cave, surrounded by cold, damp stone.
At first, the half-orc believed she was within a dream. She dropped her head into her hands and tried to shake her mind awake. Snatches of the night before flashed through her memory. She remembered being handed a flagon of ale by a young, red-haired barmaid. She could still hear the music being played by the bard near the fireplace. The brief scent of slow-cooked meat tingled in her nostrils, then vanished. For a moment, the image of a green dragonblood rose to the forefront of her mind’s eye; blood poured from his nose and he was laughing in vicious delight at the brawl he was engaged in.
She opened her eyes. This was no dream — she was still in the cave. The half-orc stood slowly, reaching for one of the throwing axes strapped to her hip. She was unsure as to her surroundings, but she was not going to be caught unawares.
A rustling noise sounded behind her. She pulled her axe from her side and turned around in one fluid motion. She was poised to throw the weapon when she caught side of the noise’s source: a young boy dressed in dark-colored robes.
The boy exclaimed in surprise, raising his arms in earnest. “Wait!” he cried. “Don’t!”
“Who are you?” the half-orc asked cautiously, her axe still at the ready.
“My name is Kafir,” the boy began. “I’m a student at the Academia Mystick.”
“Academia what? Where is that? Where am I?”
Kafir dropped his hands to his sides. “What do you mean, ‘Academia what?’ It’s only the most prestigious magic school on the ventral plane!” He crossed his arms, a look of disbelief in his eyes.
“Child, I don’t care what school you go to. You’re not answering my question. Now, why am I on the ventral plane?” the half-orc asked, her voice dropping to a dangerous calm.
“Ah… to be honest, I’m not quite sure,” Kafir admitted. “I was actually trying to summon a djinn, but you guys showed up instead.”
“‘Guys?’ As in plural?”
“Yes,” a new voice said from behind the boy. “As in plural.”
The half-orc looked around the child. She had been so absorbed by her new surroundings that she had neglected to notice the presence of three others in the cave with her and the boy.
A tall theosian clad in black plate armor stepped out from the shadows behind Kafir. She approached the half-orc and bowed deeply. “Vice Rein,” she said. “Servant of the Crow. May they be slow to fetch you.”
The half-orc lowered her axe and returned it to her side. She stuck out a hand to the paladin and said, “Captain Asvix. But I guess you can just call me Farrah.”
Hesitantly, Vice took Farrah's outstretched hand. It was clear to Farrah that the theosian was uncomfortable with physical touch. At first, she took offense to this, assuming that Vice had some sort of issue with the gesture Farrah had extended. However, this thought was dispelled when the paladin said, “You must excuse my reluctance; I am still trying to acclimate myself to the customs of the world outside my temple. Touch is frowned upon except in certain situations, but I find that you outsiders do not share this sentiment.”
Farrah ignored the condescending undertone hidden in the theosian's voice, choosing instead to accept the apology at face value. “Aye,” she began, “I have heard the world is different where your kind come from.”
Vice refrained from acknowledging Farrah's underhanded comment. The paladin turned to the two others behind her and waved a gesture of beckoning. “Come. Introduce yourselves,” she said.
A violet daímona and blue dragonblood came forth from a corner of the cavern. The daímona had a look of annoyance on her face, presumably due to the commands issued her by the theosian. The dragonblood trailed behind the daímona, glancing about the cave with an ill look in her eyes.
“I am not some dog for you to command, theosian,” the daímona sneered as she approached. “I have half a mind not to introduce myself out of sheer principle, but that would be discourteous to the newcomer.”
She turned and flashed a dazzling smile at Farrah, who could feel the slight inauthenticity to it. The daímona curtsied. “Aveline, of the Bloodvines,” she said. “I’m sure you’ve heard of us.”
Farrah was loathe to admit that she had. Bloodvine Vineyard was one of the foremost wine suppliers in Talamh — one she had enjoyed many times over. Farrah assumed that the girl before her must be the company’s heiress. “Enchanted,” the half-orc replied, bowing her head.
The group turned their eyes to the dragonblood, whose gaze immediately fell to the floor. After a few seconds, a small, shrill voice mumbled, “I’m Karina.”
“Do you need to sit down, Karina?” Farrah asked, leaning her head down in an attempt to make eye contact with the dragonblood.
Karina shook her head, her eyes still planted on the cave floor, whispering, “No, thank you, I’m okay.”
Farrah’s gaze moved to Vice. “Is it safe to assume that you three found yourselves here just as suddenly as I did?” she asked.
“Indeed. Aveline and I arrived at the same time. Karina was first, but when we got here, she was unconscious on the floor. I was sure the Crow had come to fetch her, but she soon woke after I offered my medical services.”
Karina’s head snapped up. “Medical services?” she exclaimed. “You can’t possibly consider slapping me across the face multiple times to be ‘medical services!’”
The daímona roared with laughter. Karina’s eyes flashed with lightning as sparks popped around her snout. “You think it’s funny? I’ll give you something to laugh at, fiend,” she said.
Aveline drew her dagger and pointed it at the dragonblood, all traces of mirth gone from her face. “Try it and die, serpent.”
“Girls,” Vice interrupted. “Calm yourselves.”
The sparks disappeared from Karina’s mouth as Aveline shoved her dagger back into its sheath. Both looked in the opposite direction, begrudgingly acceding to Vice’s command.
Farrah cleared her throat. “Do we know why we are here?” she asked, attempting to diffuse the tension surrounding them.
“I already told you!” Kafir cried out. The group turned to look at the boy, evidently forgetting - at least momentarily - that he was even there.
“You claim you were summoning a djinn,” Vice began. “There had to be a purpose for that, child. No one summons a djinn merely for the conversation.”
Kafir’s face reddened as his expression grew into a scowl. “Listen here - ”
“No, child. You will listen to me.”
An inexplicable force pushed the words into the boy and silenced him. Farrah could sense the power within the theosian; it was palpable even to a non-magic user such as herself. But there was something foreign in its nature. Farrah tried to find the words for the energy that the paladin emitted. As she looked into Vice’s black, pupiless eyes, it hit her: Justice. Impartial, unfeeling justice. It was the blessing of the Crow, as her mother had once told her.
Farrah’s thoughts were halted by the paladin’s cool, even voice. “Instead of a djinn, you summoned us. There must be a reason behind this, one beyond a simple mispronunciation in a spell. All things have a divine purpose, as I’m sure even a child such as you must know. This is a sign. A djinn would have torn you apart; we are the ones you needed. There is no other explanation.”
“I don’t think I would go that far,” Farrah said. “There’s a chance you could be right and fate or whatever sent us here. But this whole thing could have just been an accident. Either way, you” — she turned abruptly to Kafir — “need to find a way to get us back to our homes.”
Fear spread across the boy’s face as his mouth opened and closed soundlessly. “I - I don’t know how,” he admitted.
“Okay, I must have misheard you,” Farrah began, “because it sounded like you were saying you can’t put us back. I’m going to give you another try, child. You’re going to start doing whatever hoodoo you need to at the count of three. One… two — ”
“Stop it!” Karina exclaimed, wedging her body between Farrah and the boy. “It’s not as easy as that. Magic takes a lot more than random words. You need the right ones, and if he doesn’t have them, we can’t hurt him because of it.”
Farrah’s cheeks burned with a mixture of anger and embarrassment. “I wasn’t going to hurt him,” she muttered. “I just wanted to scare him a bit, maybe jog his memory.” She looked at Kafir, who was huddled behind the dragonblood. “Sorry,” she finished.
The boy poked his head around Karina’s armor. “S’okay,” he whispered. “Uh, I was going to say that my master can send you guys back. But…” he trailed off. “That’s why I was trying to summon the djinn.”
Aveline groaned loudly. “He’s missing, isn’t he?”
Kafir nodded, his eyes planted on the ground. “He’s been gone for a week now. He said he was going to research some planar anomalies close to the Path of Iris, but I stopped hearing from him four days ago. He always checks in with me, but then he…”
The boy’s voice was choked with emotion. Karina knelt down and pulled him to her, hugging him while his shoulders heaved with sobs. After a few moments, she pulled away from him, holding him at arm’s length to look into his eyes.
Kafir’s face was streaked with tears and his eyes were puffy and red. He sniffled as he met Karina’s reptilian gaze. “I’m sorry,” he managed. “He’s just never been gone for this long without letting me know first.”
Gently, Karina wiped a tear from the boy’s face with a thumb. “Never apologize for caring about someone,” she told him, her voice soft and comforting. “Now, it seems to me that you’re going to want us to find your master. Is that right?”
“We’ll have to find him,” Farrah interrupted. “He’s apparently the only one around these parts who can get us back home.”
“Which is curious,” Vice added, “considering that there is an entire mage school a couple of miles away just filled with magic users. Why can’t any of them send us back? We wouldn’t have to worry about finding a missing person if we just went there instead.”
Karina glared at the theosian. “You want us to abandon the child and his master? What if he’s in danger or hurt? What if he’s” — she covered Kafir’s ears — “dead?” The last word came out in a whisper.
“He’s not dead, I know that much,” Kafir said, his face squished between Karina’s hands. “He’s alive, I can feel it. And really, my master is the only wizard able to send you back home. There are no other planar specialists at the school. He’s the best in his field across the entirety of the ventral plane - and the only planeseeker at the Academia.”
Farrah sighed, running a hand through her hair. She asked, “So there’s no one else nearby?”
“Not with that kind of power,” Kafir replied as Karina removed her hands from his face. “It takes a lot to open a rift in the planes and still be able to control it. Lots of people have died in the process because they weren’t strong enough.
The half-orc glanced at the others about her. Karina was still beside the boy, her hands on her hips with determination in her eyes. Vice was staring at the boy, looking him up and down as if she was searching for the answer to a question in her mind. Aveline just looked exasperated with the entire situation.
“Are we going to do this, then? I do take it that you lot want to get back home,” Farrah grumbled.
Aveline crossed her arms over her chest, saying, “I suppose we have to. Theosian, what do you think?”
The paladin did not answer for a moment. Instead, she closed her eyes and lifted her face toward the sky. A purple glow surrounded her face as her lips began to move wordlessly. The others watched, afraid to interrupt whatever was happening.
A few minutes passed, then the glow vanished. Vice turned to the others and opened her eyes, revealing a violet light that was quickly dissipating. “The Crow wills it,” she said. “We must find the boy’s master.”
Farrah nodded her head, unable to find words to address the paladin’s divine claim. “Oh… okay. Well, child, what is your master’s name? And where was he the last time you two spoke?” she asked.
“His name is Torsten Raghnall. But he never goes by his last name. I think the only reason that he’s even okay with being called ‘master’ is because the Academia requires it — ”
“Child, we have not the time for idle chatter,” Vice interrupted. “Where was he when last you spoke?”
Kafir stuck his lip out, angry at being cut off. “I ought not tell you now,” he muttered.
Vice began to cross the floor to the boy, pulling an armored glove off her hand. Farrah stuck her arm out to hold the paladin back. The two began to grapple each other. “Vice, this is a child,” Farrah whispered. “Force will do no good, it will only frighten him. Perhaps let the dragonblood speak to him; he seems to like her.”
The paladin stopped pushing against Farrah and took a step back, putting the glove back on her hand. She turned her head and nodded, refusing to meet the half-orc’s gaze.
“Karina,” Farrah called out. “Would you be so kind as to speak to our friend?”
The dragonblood looked like a deer in the torchlights. “I… uh, I don’t really do the speaking thing very well,” she stammered. “Wouldn’t one of you others be better suited for that?”
Farrah moved towards Karina and leaned into her. “The boy will listen to you. He will talk to you. He most likely won’t do that for any of us. Just try, okay? One of us can see what we can do if you’re unable to have him talk.”
Karina gulped. She inched toward the boy, kneeling down to eye level with him. “Kafir,” she began softly, “you want your master to be found, don’t you? I can tell you love him very much and want him back home.”
The boy nodded, his eyes misting over with tears. “Yes ma’am,” he murmured.
“Okay. Well, if you want us to find him, we need to know where he was. We have to look there first.”
Kafir wiped an eye with his sleeve. “He was studying a soft spot that led into the incendiary plane. The last time we talked, he said that he was going to cross over into the plane to observe it from the other side.” His voice was soft, just above a whisper. Farrah was sure that she and the dragonblood were the only ones who could hear the boy.
“And how will we get there?” Karina asked gently.
The boy thought for a moment. “We are near the Path of Iris,” he said. “It’s the Planesrunner’s gateway to the four physical planes. Students of hers use the gate sometimes to cross into other planes. Well” - Kafir hesitated - “they *try* to use it. It’s the Planesrunner’s gate, so she only opens it when she wants to. It doesn’t work all the time.”
“That’s as good a lead as any,” Karina responded, turning to Farrah. “Satisfied?”
“Yes. Thank you, Karina,” she said. The half-orc shifted her attention to Kafir. “Do you know how to get her to listen?”
“I can try. She might help if she knows what’s going on. I’m pretty sure she will, though. I’ve heard about her kindness from others who have seen her.” The boy noticed Vice’s eyes on him. “But yes, I can try,” he hurried. “Come on!”
Kafir began to walk towards the mouth of the cave. The others followed, shielding their eyes from the newfound sunlight. As they approached the exit of the cave, the landscape opened before them, revealing that they were situated atop a cliff overlooking an endless sea.
Farrah’s gaze traced the coastline, eventually landing upon a swath of buildings made of ivory stone. She surmised that this was the Academia Mystick, and she was impressed by the amount of ground Kafir had covered between here and the school, as well as the height he had to scale in order to reach the cave. Tough kid, she thought. Reminds me a bit of me as a child.
“There,” Kafir said, pointing into the distance. “There’s the Path.”
The half-orc’s eyes followed Kafir’s gesture, soon running into a colossal set of iron doors across a nearby expanse. She wondered how she did not notice the doors sooner, considering how enormous they were. But it seemed that the only path that led to the doors was over a narrow rock bridge that crossed the large expanse. A wave of nausea crashed over her, but she quickly shoved it down. You’ve been in worse situations, she told herself. A quick walk won’t kill you. Just do what must be done.
Farrah rubbed her hands together and began walking towards the doors. “Okay, people,” she said. “Let’s go find us a wizard.”
