Welcome to Gaia! ::

The surroundings were not the most comforting or welcoming, but she scarce registered the morbid sight. Not even when a breeze rattled a set of bones, the sound hollow and mocking. Her steps echoed as she drew closer to the wooden door, and she placed a hand on the cold iron that secured the old planks together. She pushed hard on the door, the insistent tugging from within not letting her stop for a mere closed door, and as it creaked open she entered the room beyond.

Sayuri pulled a drifting cobweb off her face, a tiny shudder tracing down her spine. Spiders didnt bother her, but the tickle of long vacated spiderweb was not a pleasant feeling. Free from the still clinging web, she walked into the room proper. She paused to examine some of the dusty apparatus but winced as she felt herself being pulled onwards. Gazing up, faint light filtered through the stained glass window. The deadly creature it pictured gave her a momentary pause but only that, and she was walking up the small set of stairs. Now she stood in front of it, and she held her hands up, the coloured light dancing over her skin as she moved them. She extended a hand, her fingers grazing the glass...

Her fingers left the window as if burned when the voice sounded inside her mind. Now she had to make her choice; give of herself so that another may be free. She nodded, finding her voice:
'Yes. I give it freely.'

Sayuri had watched, wide-eyed as the cocoon was weaved, the cocoons material flowing from the window. When it was formed, and then disappeared just as quick she went over to the child, kneeling down and helping her up.
'Hello,' was all she could say right now to this amazing child, smoothing the web like hair from the girls face.

A strange, strange missive was received by Angua von Uberwald, requesting her presence in an odd place. The ancient tower of the Silva Regia in the deep forests of Gaia would have been unfindable by normal folk. Only strict directions to its location could lead another there. And so it was that Angua arrived on the doorstep of Doctor Sajhiri Jihaar.

The doctor explained to the other woman about her possible fey blood, how if she was truly possessed of it she could cross through the fairy ring in the tower's center into Tir Nan Og, and follow the pull of her spirit towards the cursed child's prison whose family blood she descended from.

She told her of the sacrifice of a small bit of soul and a small bit of life essence to break the curse itself, and how should she choose to save them from their dreadful fate, that child would become her responsibility.

So it was that Angua crossed the threshold of the mushroom ring and appeared in the meadow of the Fey realm, and how her spirit was drawn towards the darker of the two castles, Castellum Umbra, the castle of the Moon Court.

From the shadows of the castle courtyard emerged a figure, pale of flesh and dark of hair, with the universe visible swirling in her ebon locks. Star-laden violet eyes looked over the new arrival and Sajhiri with a frightening sort of elation in their depths.

"Another in one day, dearest Sajhiri? Your skill in finding fey Kin is truly astounding." Her iridescent wings flickered behind her in the starlight.

Sajhiri bowed low to the fey woman. "Yes Majestrix...the lady Angua has come to seek her blood."

Nox turned her gaze to Angua and smiled, a cool smile reminiscent of an autumn night. "Then welcome, child. Follow the pull of your blood...it shall lead thee to the prison of thine ancestor."

Inside the long abandoned room, which thusfar had escaped the fervent cleaning of the Seneschal, Corvus, dust clung to the posts of iron beds, their linens and straw mattresses decayed away over the millenium.

Against the walls were fallen the metal heads of spears of many sizes and shapes, their wooden hafts having been eaten away by insects and small rodents over the centuries.

Moth eaten tapestries hung between each bunk, the vague depictions of war scenes almost discernible in the faded threads.

At the end of what was obviously an abandoned barracks of some sort stood a stained glass window, depicting the howling head of a dark furred wolf.



Something from within it seemed to beckon, and to demand to be touched.

As Angua touched the window with her fingertips, inside her head a strange, genderless voice, ethereal and cool, spoke.

"Do you, Angua von Uberwald, give freely of your spirit and essence, to free Lupinus, son of Dentatus and Specus, of his dread curse?"

With the words spoken and the will committed, a strange sensation could be felt by Angua...that of some part of her vacating her body and sinking instead into the stained glass of the window.

A black stain began to grow across the panels making up the wolf's head, which poured out onto the floor like an inky waterfall of thick, viscous liquid.

There it pooled, until from it's depths a hand emerged, then an arm, and slowly something crawled from the blackness onto the barracks floor. It was coated in the ichor as it knelt, panting, then in an instant the blackness was gone, leaving behind an exhausted fey child, a thick black wolf's tail curled about himself protectively.