Backdated to December 21, 2017


The calling wasn't there. There wasn't the whisper in the breeze or the sense that something lingered just beyond her peripheral vision. Everything was silent. Normal. Nothing haunted her or sought her out.

It was a hunger in her blood that drove her back. Screaming out for something that she wanted, pulling and clawing and struggling inside her chest and throat. Yet she could find no words for it. Each time she gazed at the crystal, she... she could only stare in confusion at it. In wonder at it.

It still functioned. That was the.... sense, she'd had of it, right? It's what that sense had said. What those voices in her head had whispered and echoed.

The silence of the world as she stepped back there, of her own violation, of her own will, and she could feel it as if all of the eyes of the stones and winds and waves and flora focused on her. A startled people who couldn't place why this stranger would enter so brazenly into their space. Their world. Even the twilight near darkness of the world seemed frozen.

The starlight and fading sunlight dazzled off the fractured portion of the crystal, splattering prisms across the dark stones and bog flora. She came unsummoned, unwanted. Yet she did not balk away from the substance that swirled ink and dark within the gateway beneath her gaze, beneath the veil of roots and stems and leaves.

"Some things are best left behind closed doors. Some things are best never hidden away."

"I never feared them. I merely waited."

"For what?"

"For them to open the gate for themselves."

"They would be unable to, m'lady. It is not their place. It would... be ineffective. Destructive."

Laughter. How long since she had laughed so freely? "Not if they were meant to open that door. The gateways only open when they are meant to. That is the way of things. None may change this. Not even I."

This time as her feet began to move towards the gateway, it was of her own will. The flats of her boots pressed the peat bog down against rocks buried beneath, water swelling up around her feet with each step. The grey-purple crystal sat warm in her palm, the darker points pressing against her skin. Something in it began to thrum against her pulse. An energy uncurling inside it as she drew nearer to the gateway. It still functioned.

The darkness swirled, and again she was hit with the sense of being watched. The weighted feeling of eyes upon her, of judgment being cast where no words could defend her. Actions, however...

Morgan lifted the crystal, the jagged end at her palm, and she felt something shift in the world around her. Something was poised, a hairline trigger. The hairs at her nape stood on end, and she forced her gaze to remain even on the mass within the gateway. It gazed back. The beast within the unknown. There were no notches for a crystal. No keyholes waiting for the right key to unlock the door. The mass swirled, and she let that sense pull her.

Gnarled hands stretched forward, pressing the crystal into the shifting depths. As her skin pressed into the surface, it bent around her like the unbroken surface of water, cool and smooth and drawing up along her as she moved. Her fingers unfurled, and the crystal drifted away from her digits, the heat increasing as the cool substance pulled it along. Away. Into itself. Merged with the contents of the crystal and expanded the warmth outward. Through the expanse of the cool substance.

Merging, swirling, shifting. Reforming. Notches on a key shifting into place to unlock the door it was meant for, to open it to the location both were designed and specified for.

She watched as the darkness shifted and pulled away. Heat flared, and she winced as the flora hanging before the gateway began to singe and burn, curling away from the gateway as it awoke.

A shaky breath, her hand up to her wrist taken by the now heated substance, Morgan began to press into the gateway. Began to walk. Each step stronger, each step surer. Something told her this was right. Take a breath. And walk through. Exhale once you're out.

It was as familiar as walking the street to work, yet as alien as plotting a course through the stars. She tried to keep her eyes open. But the warmth burned her eyes, and she closed them, even as she pushed through, feeling as if something lay just beyond the small bubble she stood in in that brief moment. Something watched her, skimmed just beneath the surface. She stood in a domain she could not fathom. A place she could not thrive or comprehend.

The Senshi of Gateways was but a visitor in their domain.

It took less than a second. Not even. A step through a doorframe. A step through a threshold. The place between felt like it could extend for eternity, but the gateway itself, that tunnel it formed, she passed through before her pulse even finished its beat.

Her breath exited her lips in a spiraling cavern. A grand hall. Morgan opened her eyes, and she stared in wonder at the countless gateways. No stairways connected the floors. Pillars stood with empty archways atop them, ruins fractured and shattered yet she could still see a sense of order to it all.

Each gateway stood, inky substance swirling within the dark depths. Waiting. Watching. The Senshi of Gateways stood in wonder as she beheld them, and realized with growing awe, that this was not the only place such collections stood.

Yet the crystal...

She turned, looking at the gateway she's stepped through, still shimmering with the same energy and colors brought in by the crystal key she'd placed into it. Reaching into the gateway, she didn't feel the crystal. She felt the colder air of the land she left behind. Frowning, Morgan withdrew her hand, waited, and then submerged it again.

But it again only passed through the gateway without pause. She could not retrieve the key.

She tried. Again. And again. And again. Cussing and cursing, even kicking the gateway at one point, ignoring the bits of rock and dust that dribbled down around her at the contact. Or the throbbing in her foot. She didn't need it to leave--her phone enabled her to return to Earth finally--but she cussed. Was that the only key? Was it a one time ********. How'd she even figure this one out?


"" - Crone

"" - Aid / Mother

"" - Aid / Maiden

"" - PL!Rigel



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