Quest [The Cytali] I Call You Back To Me

[Sybel]

Sybel stopped for a moment, drawn in by the radiant cluster of stars filling the sky. She smiled, breath still misting in the air before her. It was only then she realized the change; she kept on gliding, weight centered, aimless and yet totally secure. As her gaze dropped, she inhaled sharply. Where was she? And where was Vanator?

The woman turned, only to spot Caelum and Trelissa, the latter giving her a small wave. Giddy, she waved back and moved to skate in their direction. Sybel felt powerful, agile. So, after very brief consideration, she decided to move as she dared, thrusting forward on the ice, trying her best to imitate the two others. She found that her legs obeyed the command, carrying her along. How amazing! What else could she do, then?

Rather than continuing to venture forward, she veered to the side, skating in a circle, hoping to do a figure eight. Sybel wondered what it would be like to spin, or to skate backwards. She’d never heard of such things, never even seen them, but she felt the urge to do it in her bones, as if such things were possible in this world of make-believe. That was what it was, wasn’t it?

She tried a few things, here and there and after she’d satisfied herself, she moved toward the group, grinning. ”Hallo,” she called out, drawing near, eager to involve herself in their intimate discussion. ”Lovely night for a skate, isn’t it?”

”My name is Sybel,” she said finally, trying to fall in sync with the two other skaters. ”Though you might know that already. It’s nice to meet you,” she continued, uncertain of what else to say. The Benshira looked to Caelum for guidance. Her definitely seemed more at ease with the situation.

[Caelum]

“I’m ready,” Caelum assured Trelissa. The smile streaked across his face like a comet, reflected in a splash of color in the sky above. He was, that is, as ready as he was ever going to be. “What is it going to be? Is Nysel in need, Trelissa?” A shift of hips and redistribution of balance had him shooting into a spin around Trelissa. His head finished turning before the rest of him, collecting up Sybel in his regard. He watched the stunning Benshira for a long while, followed the flow her practice turns and the gentle, swooping glides. A hand reached out and he caught Trelissa’s own hand, tangling their fingers, before pushing off with his skates to propel them both around at surreal speed. He spun her in one full winding gyre, then a second, and finally a third before releasing her so that she had more than enough momentum to complete a fantastically high jump. “Welcome, Sybel.” Scraped to a razor halt, ice spraying, and color suffused his cheeks as he gave his friend a smile. “We’re just waiting on Vanator. It’s time. Nysel’s called us.” He raised his eyebrows to her, something sober and terribly serious behind all the light in his eyes. “This is Trelissa.” He gestured to Trelissa and then cast out a hand to Sybel. “Come skate with me.”

[Gossamer]

Vanator wobbled on his skates, giving it a go as he set out across the ice. There were marks in the newly laid ice from the other skates, but nothing that continued onward and noting that showed where any of them went. Vanator had an advantage though. He was trained as a warrior so unlike the women who could fight but hadn't fought their whole lives, his limbs were stronger. Sure he wobbled, but after a few steps, he grew more confident and was able to skate around a bit without the threat of weak ankles collapsing on him. Some in Avanthal said that men were built for skating, but women could do it if they tried hard enough. Vanator was one of those men.

After a round or two he was gliding out, pumping his arms and less walking on the ice and more moving his legs and sliding across it. There was a strength in his lean body and he could tell, regardless of what was happening here with his family and friends vanishing, that this would be something he could really learn to love... at least in the winter.

But like them, it happened once more. The world tilted at an odd angle and he seemed to slide down through layers of reality until he was again skating, but this time with more grace and poise than he'd ever had before. Sybel was there, skating with Caelum who seemed to be right at home... grinning like a fool, which was uncharacteristic of the rather moody Eth. The landscape around them had changed. Gone was The Sanctuary and its central grotto that surrounded the pool flanked by the healing clinic on one side, the half started greenhouse on another, and the college on a third. Instead, the ice stretched on forever, horizon to horizon, which blended perfectly in with the stars that seemed to fill the sky forever.

Vanator, Sybel and Caelum all found themselves perfectly suited to the task, their skates fit perfectly and their abilities well beyond master level. Trelissa executed a perfect triple and came down gently by Vanator, offering him a grin and a wave. She took his hand and pumped her feet, speeding them up until they were racing along the ice. "This is the Ukalas, Vanator. You will remember in time, but until then get reacquainted. It is an old friend." She said, finally releasing him when the world was slipping by at a whirl and he felt like he was flying over the glassy ice. She doubled back, letting the others skate their fill.

Bells seem to pass, but they neither got cold nor tired. However, they could grow bored, restless, or wondering what was next. And when that point happened and the mood shifted, Trelissa called them over.

"Nysel bids you welcome to his realm. He requests your audience in his citadel. Your first task is to find it and present yourselves. He will be there waiting, ready to talk to you about the future if that is what you want. If at any time you wish to give up, all you need to do is remove your skates, and use one of the blades to nick your skin. A single drop of blood on the ice will send you home." Trelissa said, smiling. "Good luck to all of you. This is your first test, and one you have passed many times before." And then she skated backwards a step or two, spun, and vanished.

[Vanator]

The alarm at the disappearance of the skater and his friends was momentarily supplanted by the effort to stay upright on the blades of the skates. Stunted faux-walking smoothed out a little as balance was achieved. Soon, Van discovered the motion required was not stepping but pushing off with one skate and gliding with the other. Wobbling aside, he found it possible to follow some of the skate marks still in the ice. The Drykas allowed himself to experiment, with no eyes watching. He could see how, with some practice, it could be entertaining, like dancing or racing, but with graceful lack of jolting movement.

The transition was sudden and without warning. Vanator felt a moment of failed equilibrium, though he never stumbled or fell. Ticks after it happened, he wondered if it had happened at all. He seemed to be there one moment, here the next. but here, there was no more wobbling, no waving of arms to maintain balance, just the ease of fluid motion. Sybel and Caelum were there, skating as if there was nothing else in the world. Looking around, Vanator realized that there wasn't. Just ice and starlit sky.

And Trelissa. The whimiscal woman appeared beside him, beaming smile greeting him and a small hand clutching his. She drove them forward effortlessly along the pristine ice, building speed along a surface as smooth as glass. Such was the marvel that Vanator experienced, that he readily believed the skater, that this was indeed the Ukalas. Perhaps buried memory allowed Van to look past his usual earthy skepticism, to accept that he could indeed be in the mystical realm of energy, home of the gods, that lies beyond mortal eyes.

Van's heart swelled as they picked up speed, and when Trelissa slung him away, like a slingshot, he laughed loudly and without restraint. It was like riding a speeding Strider without the bouncing of its gait. No, it was like an arrow from a taut bow, straight and smooth gliding through cold winter air. It seemed as if he would never stop, but eventually, Van turned his skates, the blades kicking up sheets of ice crystals as he skidded to a halt. Then, under his own power this time, he drove himself back towards the others, building speed and laughing at the sheer thrill of freedom.

Destiny loomed over the Sanctuarians, the joy of skating soon waning as they realized a greater purpose in their unexpected transportation. Telissa deemed it time to gather them, and see to the matters at hand. Vanator listened, amazed. This had been his prayer, his hope. Divine purpose, he believed, was being offered. But it was not given easily. Find Nysel's Citadel. You have passed this test before. It was true, what Kavala and Caelum had told him, he had been there before, he belonged there.

Vanator, scanned the horizon first for any signs or clues. It would not be as simple as a spire rising from the ice, starkly contrasted with the deep night sky, certainly. But it was his habit, decades of scanning the grasslands for danger. He looked to Sybel and Caelum.

"This is the Ukalas, and certainly we aren't restricted to the laws of the mortal world." He looked up into the sky, and down at the ice. Digging the heel of one skate into the surface. "I imagine there is no true up or down, or cardinal direction." He found himself struggling to loose himself from the bounds of the physical world, to see his surroundings in a more esoteric way.

[Sybel]

Her heart was full at the sight of Vanator, as if the puzzle was finally complete. She moved toward him with powerful strides, ready to intercept him if need be. But the man too had become a master and she shrieked in delight as he incidentally sprayed her with a wave of ice. ”You bastard!” She exclaimed jokingly, skating up to plant a kiss upon his lips before bounding off once more.

They played until Trelissa was content to move on. Or perhaps, it was simply her reacting to their collective state of mind. She explained their situation, to which Sybel nodded, as if this made sense. They had to find Nysel. And it stood to reason then that even in the Ukalas, this dimension too, was structured like a dream. ”You’re right,” she replied. ”Perhaps the trick of it is, that it is somewhere in the ice. Like a hole that we can’t see. Or maybe it is activated by something, like when we put on the skates?” She turned to Caelum, as if to confirm this.

She began skating around the endless rink, crouching down. The woman ran a hand along the ice, carried only by the very slight momentum she allowed herself. Hopefully, the boys would have theories of their own. After all, she’d look rather silly brushing a hand along the ground while everyone else just stood about. And while the ground was cold, it didn’t bother her. She enjoyed the flawless texture of the rink as it slid beneath her fingers. It was as if this place was made for them, having never been touched before.

If no progress had been made, she’d stop to make further consideration. Perhaps then it’d be something like lying down, falling asleep? It couldn’t be so simple, could it? She turned to the others, to see what they were doing.

[Caelum]

Caelum skated an idle loop around Vanator and Sybel when Trelissa disappeared. The glass like ice whitened in thin strips in his wake, razor thin scars left on the world by the blades of his skates. Velvet dark eyes roamed over his friends, considering their words, their sober ideas. They were not bad ideas, but the ethaefal found them to be terribly cautious. This, after all, was the Ukalas. He was back in the place he had spent the past decade attempting to suss out from the secrets littering the world. It was not Syna and Leths' conjoined realms, of course, but at the moment he could not bring himself to care. It hardly mattered. He was practically home. In their different ways, both Syna and Nysel had summoned him to homes. Syna had sent out her call, whistling it on Zulrav's wind to chase him north to Denval before it was lost. While Denval was not Caelum's home, it was also one of them after a fashion. He had died there, and that left an indelible mark on his chavi. Afterwards, the Dream Lord had beckoned him to Riverfall which also was not home. Yet it had become one, hadn't it? Beneath the canopy of stars gracing this frozen piece of the heavens, the little light that had begun to pulse hot in his chest upon waking expanded and threatened to consume. Caelum prayed it would. His smile was loose and easy as he ripped a sudden stop near his friends, ice chips piling about the blades of his skates. "You're not wrong," he told them. Though he spoke levelly, the endless expanse of night surrounding them caused his words to carry and boom. For the first time since he had fallen to Mizahar, the outlander accent that skewed all of the mortal languages he spoke did not sound so out of place. It belonged in the Ukalas, after all, for it was an echo of the celestial language he had spoken in Syna's realm. The language remained fluent and clear in his mind, same as did his true name, but was of course unspeakable. It had yet to occur to him to try to speak it here in the Ukalas. That was probably a good thing. "There are no directions but that you set for yourself, and there is for certain something in the ice." His smile grew into a wolfish grin that flashed like the stars above. He could not possibly know what he was talking about, but he was going off of gut feeling. This was an hour it was best, he decided, to let instinct rule. "Probably a lot of things." He held out his hands to them, fingers curving in invitation or plea. "Come on. Lend me a hand --" He paused to laugh, a daylit sound amid all this night. "Or rather your feet. It's about perspective, isn't it? It's about seeking and building and knowing." He flung his arms out as if to try and encompass the whole of these heavens. "This is still real. We are already Cytali. Our hearts know how to find our dream lord. It's the rest of us that needs to remember." If they rose and approached at his beckon, he would swing around to shove off in a wide, looping pattern on the ice. One hand gestured upwards, though he was taking cues from his own knowledge of astronomy and star navigation as well. "I know the stars. I know the sky. The changes it undertakes is something the whole of me knows and understands at the deepest levels," he continued to try and explain, to try and instruct and guide even if he did not yet quite know where all he was going. "You need to do the same, use what the very bottom of you best understands." He continued to skate as he did so, shifting in a few sharp turns as he drew the shapes of constellations, mirroring below was shining above. His eyes roamed up and then dropped down again, over and over, and when he did not want to mess up what he considered to be a perfect line in the ice, he leaped into the air and performed a double somersault, knees tucked to his chest, to land with brilliant strength well on the other side of the line. Only, this time, he intended for his skates not to land on the ice, but to land on nothing. To land on the air, instead, still creating his own ladder to the stars. Higher and higher.

[Gossamer]

Vanator wasn’t far from the truth. There were parts of him that absolutely had set memories of the Ukalas and what was possible there. And as soon as he figured out that there might be no bonds to the physical world, suddenly gravity didn’t exist for him. There was nothing holding him down. There was no up, no down, and the horizon slipped sideways as easily as it became the sky or the ground. It would have been a dizzying sensation on the material plane, but here it was just uplifting and freeing.

When Sybel dipped her hand to the ice it seemed to grow more solid. It did so because her belief in it being a real thing reinforced its existence. And so while Vanator was busy dissolving his belief, Sybel was making material things more real in a plane they did not belong in. Her will made it cold and hard, giving it temperature and texture it really didn’t need to have where it existed.

Caelum was speaking the truth when he spoke of the directions they set for themselves and things being in the ice. Of course there were things in the ice if they wanted things to be in the ice. That’s how the Ukalas manifested itself at times. It bent to the wills of people within it, especially if they were borrowing Nysel’s realm therein.

And like Vanator, Caelum explained how to break loose of the boundaries their minds set in the material world and transferred to here where no such things existed. Even as Vanator had found that there was no need for ‘ground’ to skate where he wanted, Caelum took to the skies as well, his blades leaving thin trails of white on the very air, like tiny streaks of fading light fireflies left in the wake of their nuptial flights.

There was no up, no down, and only a sea of stars to skate through as Caelum became airborne. Vanator joined him there, already having loosened his mind of its Mizahar-bound chains. And while Caelum’s head sung with the music of his celestial language, Vanator’s filled with the rich raw power of djed. It thrummed through his body as if it had been confined for years without end and filled him to every corner of his form, causing him to almost ignite with an unearthly glow in the starfield they skated across.

Sybel was left watching, getting a front row seat to the men coming into their own.

[Vanator]

Vanator had reached beyond the chains of his stauch material thinking. Always a man of earth and sky, up and down east and west, the earthbound soul. But he had not always been that way, and now, he was finding the man who had once knew no bounds. Caelum began to make sense. Van continued to mentally shred the fabric of his mortal paradigm as his friend spoke of things that made both sense and none at all. But Van was grasping it, by letting go.

He could not say whether he lifted from the ice, or that the universe shifted, leaving him hanging where he once stood. The thing was, he didn't care. Vanator navigated the space between ice and sky by not navigating, simply moving in a dimension he barely remembered. With idle interest he watched Sybel with her hand on the ice. He watched her grow smaller as he turned to see Caelum rising above him skating on ether. As they danced through the sky, Vanator found grace, his movements fluid, his body beginning to scintillate with the presence of Djed. It seemed to replace, or join, his blood as it coursed through him, making nerves sing and his being hum with the glory of it.

He again remembered Trelissa's words, find the citadel. Vanator looked around as he sailed and danced without direction or unease. "It is not so much as in a 'place' is it Caelum? Nysel's Citadel, I mean. It just is...there."

[Caelum]

The music that made up the celestial language was like a cry to the gods. It thrummed relentlessly within Caelum, wafting straight of memory to reform itself with a diamond clarity and an almost overwhelming sense of kinship. It troubled his tongue almost as if it wanted to be spat out and the ethaefal twisted in his figure skating, turning the sky inside out because there was meaning to direction save that which he delivered. Interested eyes watched as Vanator flared, shining with a density of djed that shimmered and raveled into complex patterns; and Caelum understood then that half of what he was seeing was an imagining of his friend’s chavi, superimposed and peeking out of the edges of him. The seeker smiled. “I believe you’re right,” he told Vanator. The very rightness of Vanator’s words reverberated through him, braiding in with the hymn the celestial language was tapping against the inside of his skin. He cast his eyes over the curving bowl of the sky that surrounded them and reached out his hand toward the distant horizon. His fingers pinched upon it, grabbing hold, and he reeled the horizon in. Closer and closer, stars growing brighter and brighter until their traveling light began to diffuse the night they floated amid and blur the borders of their world. Caelum’s eyes narrowed with concentration and he focused his energy into pairing the crystalline words of the celestial language up with the building blocks of what he did not quite remember so much as he imagined Nysel’s citadel to be. It was an inspiring power, humbling and energizing at once, to wield such astonishing control over this piece of the Ukalas, over this particular perception of reality. It should not have been possible and, indeed, Caelum never would have dreamed it to be so did not the very soul of him seem to understand that this is what it had done for lives upon lives in service to the dream god. This is what dreamwalkers did. He built the citadel around them with his mind, layering bricks atop of bricks. They glittered with mica and spiderwebbing strips of silver and gold, reflecting the moonlight back at itself. The stars were strung from the ceiling like flowers left to dry and little by little, bit by bit, it came together, waiting for Vanator to join in.

[Gossamer]

When Caelum reached out to pinch the horizon and draw it towards him, the world shuddered and rippled about him. Like a circus sideshow backdrop, the starry sky rippled and turned into a blanket of stars that Caelum drew towards him. Some of the stars floated away like dust motes upon sunbeams, but others seem to cling to Caelum like glitter. The horizon, taking on a life of its own, rippled flag-like and then settled about his shoulders like a cloak of stars. It warmed him from the sudden cold that flooded his system.

Power had a cost.

And it was with power that Caelum built the temple. The stones were crude and almost seemed out of focus. But when he turned his attention from them, they clarified as they solidified and manifested into what Caelum desired. Nysel's realm was flexible, dependent upon mood and visitor. It could be woven like rugs or spread thin like paint on a canvas. It's Lord rarely minded the manipulation.

And so Caelum wove until he built an antechamber around himself. It was not exactly a throne room nor was it something so simple as a couple of chairs by the hearth. The stone glittered, dark and murky, but alight with its own kind of fire. They reflected Caelum's soul. But the room was stark and empty, devoid of imagination or true class.

The second occupant scowled at this, glancing around, and seemingly not too appreciative.

"Once, you built finer creations full of inspiration and light. With you it was always the light. Now you seem to be enjoying some sort of dark repressive period in your creativity.... or is something else wrong....? What do you go by these days? I haven't been paying enough attention. You came back into the living faster this time than the last or I would have known." The man said, approaching. He had an intense dangerous look about him. He was tall, though not so much big as he was sculpted, and moved like an animal. The man was obviously light footed and had a sort of arrogant confidence that he wore around him like the starry cloak Caelum now wore.

He was shirtless with only a pair of sleek leather pants that hugged his calves and outlined his features. They looked tight and had a slickness that almost made one think they were soaked. His hair was long and would have been full, but it was plastered to his face and wet, like he'd just been swimming. Lines were etched in his skin, too faint to truly focus on. They looked like chavi twisting about his body, or perhaps his form was completely and utterly transparent and to look at him was to look through a window and directly into the Chavena. His eyes were dark, cold, and held no expression save for the impression that they could soften at any moment and light with warmth.

He seemed to wait for Caelum to answer and then he moved on. "You've taken your time coming back to me this round. You look, even in that immortal guise, like you've walked the world in ignorance way too long. A blind man in this world is a dead man. So too is a Dreamwalker with no access to their power. You see, you always know more than anyone else, but when that knowledge is trapped inside your head and not accessible to you, that knowing becomes a liability. It hinges on a set of hunches and half remembered truths. Your mind has been a weapon without an edge swung bluntly with your eyes clamped tightly shut. Come... kneel before me. We need to rectify this situation quickly before our enemies find you and interrupt your natural cycle again. They've killed you once before, you know... the last life in fact when you fell and they fished you out of the sea. Syna took you back even though you were in a fury for a while there, let you rest, and then sent you on your way again. I suspect she was in a charitable mood that day." He speculated, then paced closer to Caelum, watching to see his response. His tone seemed to be half amused and half bemused, as if he had no idea what Caelum saw in Syna.

The shadowy god rippled as he folded his arms over his chest, leaned back slightly, and spent a moment as if in study. The God could have met Caelum's eyes but instead he looked right through Caelum as if he could see into the Chavena and was watching every single moment of time on Caelum's Chavi.