[Kingdoms of the Fae] The Mirrored Lands

[Grey]

Aether suffuses your being like soft silver light. As it should be, in its proper, balanced amount.


Yet something is imbalanced. You can feel it, here in your inner sanctum. Something is wrong.


You wake as if from a nightmare with the knowledge that Order and Chaos face grave days ahead, though the details are occluded. A war is brewing in the world of men, too, you can feel the pull and twist of fracturing treaties as political balance is strained.

 

[Atrius Night]

Balance sits with a disquieted mind. He surveys his court and the lesser fae beings and mirrored mortal souls that filled it. A place of balance, of what he might humbly call perfection. Right down to those minor imperfections which prevent the likes of Stasis from setting in.. It was a constant struggle, balancing perfectly matched Courtesans with lone Dopplegangers or monsterous Misbegotten, yet he maintained year by year and that gave him a sense of pride in his accomplishments...


But even the solace of his home was denied him this night as his mind wonders again to that world. The land of mortals, the source of power, and home of the weakest beings in the cosmos. A Balance?


Even Equilibrium was uncertain.


Even so.


Here... Now... he sensed in that far off world only a step away... Trouble brewing, times readying to change, War, Chaos, an end to order for a generation, such things happened in their time, but now.... did not seem that time. Balance was askew.


He inhales, then exhales slowly, thinking. "There is disrest in the mortal realm." He says just as slowly. Action was neccesary, but not rash, never Rash Action. Planned Balanced Action, that was the way, The chaos of battle met with the order of strategy.


"That world spins, it's balance more precarious than the mirrored lands upon the Spire. Entropy and Stasis in constant struggle, though more oft than not, entropy winning... I.... " He pauses deliberating... "shall go there... To see what occurs first hand..." As he speaks his form shifts, Growing thinner and shorter, the quartet of blades at his waist flow together and seemingly leap up and around, his, now her neck, A pendant supporting an Ocarina.


"Maintain the land as I would, I will return, but how soon depends upon what I find in the land of mortals." she says, her voice lighter, melodious, as one would expect of a performer. She looks to the Vizier of her lands, a tall thin misbegotten, His third arm was barely functional, but able to hold the mirrored Scepter that marked his position. The other two arms held quill and scroll, constantly at the ready to record what was said in court, "Vizier, bring forth the Aether Stores. I shall ready for the journey to come."

 

[Grey]

The vizier bows low, and shuffles from the room quietly.


Moments later the shimmering mass of raw Aether is disgorged from the floor itself, balanced precariously on a tall spike in a glittering simulacrum of your Realm.

 

[Atrius Night]

Balance moves forward, her heels clacking upon the mirrored floor as though it were marble. She extends one hand into the the shimmering effigy, pulling forth a hand mirror, she tucks it away. The mirrored model having shrunk in scale as she did, she reaches out a second time and pulls out an identical mirror, it to is slid within her belt,


Pausing in thought... She leans forward touching the center of her head likewise to the raw Aether, and, shaping it with her will alone as a final mirrored pendant falls upon her head and down around her throat... She nods to herself... The mirrored map seeming reduced simply in scale but otherwise unchanged for the withdrawals...


She nods to herself and then to those present of her court, ready and prepared, she stands tall, and takes a step, between her domain and the mortal realms representation of it, a place where balance is found, where the unlawful meet the law, a point where the society of mortals meets equilibrium.


She aims for a populous city, a busy court, a throng of mortals in which she could blend, A mere performer upon the street....

 

[Grey]

Within a moment, you stand to the rear of a large muttering crowd in a stinking urban centre, all filth and illness.


At the head of the crowd is a gibbet, an official, and a figure in a black hood, their hands bound.


"...And for the crimes of treason and murder, you are sentenced to death. In the name of the His Majesty Svarton Farridane, Third of his name, Lord of the Kelenes, the Fracos, and the Laterlans, King of Kelen and Defender of the Faith; may Degra Veen have mercy on your soul."