Elfborn

Dream World Romis

As the Dolphin was plowing through heavy seas on its way out of Caminor, Naneen was carefully making her way through the Vestican half a world away in the Dolphin's destination, the Holy City of Romis.

Glancing down at the map she held gingerly in her hands, taken from a priest's quarters while he slept, she walked across a massive square filled with graceful fountains of marble and granite, silently sending their eruptions of cool water into the air. That could only mean that the fountains were run day and night, the jetting water itself becoming so much a feature of the square, that it was now reflected in the dream world.

Yet, as Naneen stepped close to one of the fountains, she could see that the water wasn't flowing smoothly, as it would have been in the real world. Instead, it seemed to move in spurts and starts, fitful at best, reluctant at most. Almost as if it was unwilling to spray at all!

After a moment of watching the water's strange behavior, Naneen dismissed it and went on. There was no telling when the priest would wake up and pick up his map, making it unavailable for Naneen to use. So the young Hybernian had to work fast. She had already spent considerable time making her way through the city after hopping to its main gates, a massive and ornate sculpture in granite, steel and marble, warding the city's northern entrance called Hedrian's Way, after the emperor that commissioned its construction.

It had taken literally hours to weave her way through the maze-like streets, each more narrow and constricting than the last as they wound their way away from the main streets which, ironically enough, were the straightest and widest in all of Evindel. But the side streets ... yes, the side streets were another matter altogether. No wonder a cliché for being lost told of 'finding yourself in the middle of Romis'.

With a hiss of frustration, Naneen shook the map to straighten it enough to make out the name of the plaza she had stepped into. It was called 'Grattia Homi', the Plaza of the Thousand Fountains. But, even though the map indicated that it should have led into the Vestican, the very heart of the gilded city, she couldn't see any way in.

"Burn me, not another dead end!" she hissed tightly in frustration, nearly throwing the map away. It took a map to navigate the narrow, winding streets of the city, yet even the maps themselves were often wrong in a place with buildings from thousands of years ago still standing in the dream world.

Streets disappeared behind plazas, or new buildings as the inhabitants were continually building over the ruins of the original city. So massive were the ongoing renovations that little of the grand capital of a vast empire was left. Only things that couldn't be built over, like Hedrian's Way and the larger plazas in the city remained, reminders of the once great city designed by civil engineers whose works still stood to this day despite the test of time.

Of course Naneen doubted that the actual city was this confusing, or convoluted. But since the dream world reflected accumulated history, it showed all of Romis, both old and new, whether the old had been knocked down to make room for the new or not. And thus made things all that much more confusing. Her first dead end had been attempting to follow what should have been the main thoroughfare into the Vestican, called the Bishop's Road, a broad and paved highway in the real world.

Here, however, it had been a building-clogged passageway, forcing Naneen to make several detours before finally giving up when she found her way completely blocked by what looked like a Romis-styled aqueduct, the structure towering several stories over her head.

Staring up at this newest barrier to her passage through to the Vestican, Naneen grimaced. 'I'm half way tempted to blast a way through, Mist men, Dark Companions and Romis ruins be damned!' she thought darkly, 'and make my own passage. At least I could be assured of reaching the place!'