We Split in Two
Steven and my other three siblings walked to the end of the trail leading to the ley lines that would portal them closer to where they needed to find a portal to the realm that held the entry to the prison world. Steven planned on going and looking around that hill side for any clues that might lead to who created the prison realm or how it might have been created. Even a trace of essence could help lead us to who created it. Any rune or sigil could help us understand how it works. We knew for sure that who or what made this realm had to be powerful, making a realm that big out of nothing took a great deal of energy and knowledge.
As they approached the lay line the group winked out of place. Lay lines were an amazing way to travel. The convergence of energies creates natural doorways from one cluster to another. Everyone has different ways to travel through them, some beings use mirrors or crystals. Some beings like our family wedge the passage open with our essence, we nudge it just far enough to pull us through it, like a vacuum tube. The feeling was like a vacuum tube too. First everything around you bends and rushes past, a sensation of being pulled backward follows. Then, the world comes back into view and the scenery is replaced with a new place. In this case they would come out in the basement of a church outside of France. Ley lines can be felt even by mundane humans, as a result important buildings or religious centers are often built at places where three or more lines overlap. The result was that when traveling through the energy system, the end of a journey often ended in basements of important human places. We had to install Fey born blood lines in places as receptionists or door men, janitors or superintendents and repair workers. It was handy to have the human born blood lines, they kept the secrets of the magical world. They acted as a buffer for places where our interests and those of humans overlap. The rest of us followed to the same spot our siblings had been and I wedged some essence in aiming that energy in the direction we needed to and the same vacuum force ran over us and we popped out standing under an arch of an ancient tomb.
"This tomb will protect us from any eyes that might be watching and are far enough away from our land that even if something goes wrong Balisted and the others won't be implicated in this step of our journey." I said to my brothers as I walked out into the tomb. Looking up I saw the underside of a giant hill. In a lot of ways the tomb of this king was like our old homes. Early in the Eskimo history we built our homes under mounds of Earth. The Irish thought that it was a way to honor their royals for all time, this group of lines didn't need someone to oversee it from the inside, these tombs were never touched and the only hill open to the public is a kilometer away. Some of the local fey watch over the tomb and use scare tactics to keep humans away. A little moan and some screeching was enough to scare anyone off. All except the humans that practice blood magic, they sought out ways to invade the magical world at every chance and they understood the Tombs of Kings held special properties that they hoped to bend to their will. For now this tomb was safe, it was nestled in with hundreds of others and each had old celtic and druidic spells placed on them to bind them closed to interference, for now. It was a large tomb, bigger than most of the hills in the area. From the outside it looked like a small bump in the landscape, the men and women who made it dug deep and put up large logs to support the tremendous amount of weight pressing down and in. Stone walls lined all sides except where the entry once was. Máel Sechnaill I, was the name in this tomb, what he looked like was a mystery. He had been dead so long and none of us had known him in life. We walked around looking the walls over, we left a loaf of bread on the sarcophagus of the dead king as our offering for disturbing his rest. We spent time thinking about what we were about to undertake and all stepped into the middle of the hollow hill. I handed out pearls to each brother. "One, two, three!" I counted down and we threw our pearls at our feet. No fan fair, no light or bubble of energy we just floated down and landed at the feet of a giant monument, the world around us was dark, black, and the air was filled with sulfur. The rocks around us were chard black and covered in ash and soot. We were in a portion of the underworld. Before anything else happened I wondered where our other siblings might be and what was happening with them. I sent a stream of thought through our connection and saw the world around them, in a first person view but much shorter than I was accustomed to. It was my sister's eyes.
A cave mouth sitting between two giant boulders was looking back into our eyes, through our essence filled sight we could see the draw and seduction the cave produces, to fool anybeing into entering was just a matter of making them walk in front of it. "What a strange trap?" Karens even and calm voice broke the silence as the group looked around the entry. They were looking for any sign of magic, Karen had her sketchbook out ready to capture what she found. "You know, sis. You can just use your phone!" David called out to her and laughed. Magic brought us away from the technological world. We as a family used magic for so many things that technology is capable of, and we lived for so long before computers and laptops that we had grown accustomed to sketching and keeping books and journals of what we found, things we see. We had scores of books with ledgers in them about artifacts we have found on expeditions, Robbie and Karen kept books about research they have done and experiments they have performed. Text, books, and tombs have been a part of our lives until the last century. Some of our books are linked to master text in other communities allowing them to access the research and to keep their books updated. We kept cell phones for the benefit of our human friends and government officials. We didn't need them to communicate with one another and we have witches' glass to keep in touch with other beings, there is also just plain telepathy if it was needed. Karen pulled out her phone and took pictures of some scratches she had found. They looked like everyday marks to the naked eye but to someone with magical senses, she was able to see more than your average archeologist or detective. I wasn't able to see what she had seen. I ended my observation and focused on our task at hand and left them to theirs. Karen continued to look for clues, David, and Matt looked around checking on their surroundings, looking for any signs of danger. Other than a few animal prints and some broken branches down what looked like a creature's trail in the underbrush. Steven looked into the opening mouth of the cave, on its surface it had all the signs of a cave. The rocks, the mushrooms growing on the rocks and walls, the grass and plants around it, even the sapling growing in the shadow the hill cast this time of day. It all looked right, it all looked as if it had been there from the beginning of time. It was strange that everything was too correct, as if a hand was behind the placement of each item in and around the cave. It was that strangeness that brought it to Steven's attention. The strangeness of the area around the cave gave away the fact that none of it had been there for thousands upon thousands of years. It was made, everything was placed with reason, and that reason was a trap. The grounds wouldn't be alarming if anyone suddenly woke up in them or came up on them after being "lost" in the woods surrounding the cave. In fact after being lost in the woods, this space would seem like the perfect place to camp for the night. Which is how our brother ended up in front of the cave, he fell asleep and woke up in the woods. He wasn't alarmed, the woods were beautiful and peaceful, full of wildlife both magical and mundane. When night came he realized that he had been walking in circles the entire day, his sense of direction seemed thrown off by the new woods. It came to his attention that the woods had been moving, shifting and changing, it wasn't a spell that changed the forest, the forest itself was changing. It changed so slightly that at first even Steven hadn't noticed, the woods and the rocks shifted slightly. The stones rolled over or and moved from one place to another, tree roots took steps and crawled into new positions, and bushes grew larger or smaller and they moved around with their tiny feet made of roots and lower branches. Some shed their leaves while others grew taller and bigger greens. It was beautiful in its own right. At the same time it was wrong, the stars that danced through the sky at night told our brother that the part of the world he was on had no registered or mapped living forests. By the time he noticed the changes, it was too late. He had found himself in front of this cave. He noticed the energy right away, with essence sight and hearing he saw the draw of the cave and the calling, the seduction the mouth of the cave produced. It promised an answer to every problem a being might have, the cave could show your hopes and dreams being answered. Both sight and sound promised you these things if only you entered, if only you found your way far enough inside. It was a whisper and felt like the memory of a dream. The draw was intense, bringing anyone in this spot inside. After entering it was easy to deposit any being in the prison world and erase their memories, replaced with visions of the promised vision, the promised answer to all their problems. For a brief moment Steven's guard fell and he gave into the pull of the call. He was saved by the nature of our magic and guarded by our life experience. Steven was brought out of his memory by David's voice as he spoke. "There has been someone here, there is a trace of someone's footprints. I see the outline of the essence they left behind. It's faint and well covered, a veil of secrets has been laid over them but they are here!" His voice, full of excitement as he spoke. The twin like brothers pointed to the ground at their feet as they stood above the cave, the top of the hill flattened by time, eroded by countless creatures passing and the trampling of many beings' feet over the ground. Steven and Karen jumped to join our brothers. As they landed Karen called out an expression, the small statue of lady justice stood in her hand. Her blindfold wrapped tightly blinding her eyes, the sword in one hand and scales in the other, both dangled as she quickly grasped the statute in her fist. She applied the smallest pulse of essence into her fingers and touched the binding around the lady's eyes. As the magic flowed from her index finger into the stone cloth it fell away.