The Crucible Campaign

4: The Great Bazaar

.^^ the Sturmhünd ^^

— Teagan —

When everyone else seemed put off by the woman's instantaneous appearance, I stepped forward, and smiled. "Hello! I am Teagan Skøll, this is my family... and we're in a bit of an odd predicament, which we are hoping you would be able to explain to us."

She blinked, looking between the four of us, (The Cloud guide had stayed outside, leaving us to our business,) and nodded. "Alright, I believe I can answer any questions you have? Would you like to sit and have some tea?" She asked, gesturing at a small sitting area.

"That would be lovely, yes, thank you." I sighed.

She smiled, and settled us in the seats, sitting in her own and pouring us all a cup of tea, adding honey to hers. She sipped it, and nodded. "Alright... now what might be your magical quorum?"

"Let me begin at the very beginning... we are all Human. Or, we were, two nights ago. We woke up in these bodies, which were not our own, and have found ourselves in a Realm not our own. We'd like to know how to get home, to Midgard. We were directed to you, for those answers." I said calmly.

She raised one red eyebrow, and hummed, walking over to a bookshelf and thumbing through one of them, muttering to herself. "Inter-Realm dreaming? No... you'd have been in your natural forms for that... ethereal manifestation? Possible, and seeing as the twins are the same race, possibly probable... Inter-Realm transfer? Unheard of since the Second Spark... but based in solid fact... interesting... Alright." She set the book back on the shelf, and grabbed another, sitting down in front of us again.

"So...?" Caroline asked slowly.

"I've a few ideas, and I'm going to test them. If you really were brought here from Midgard, and then Manifested, you will be stuck in these forms forever, without extremely powerful Changing Spells, but even then, these will be your true forms." She shook her head, and muttered an incantation in Latin.

Instantly, ethereal threads appeared around us, but none of them were attached to us, which made her gasp. She cast another spell, and a single thread drifted out from her form, touching us and turning a deep, burnished gold.

She hummed, and ended the spell, trying another. This one, as she finished it, made the room melt away, and we were suddenly sitting in the middle of our farm, the forge directly next to us, and the barn to our left. The sun was rising, and I could see Caroline walking down the road towards the porch, her sea-bag over one shoulder, and the girls playing in the field with the horses, while I sat on the porch, and read a book, keeping one eye on them, and another on my wife.

"Your Home is beautiful... I am sorry it was lost to you." She sighed, and the image faded.

"That's it? There's no way to get back?" I asked.

"There used to be Magic's that could travel between realms, but those were intentionally lost to time. They were too powerful, and in the hands of evil beings, they were used to slaughter tens of thousands of innocents. So no, I have no way of sending you home." She shook her head.

"What's about getting a message through?" I asked slowly.

She nodded. "That I can do, yes... but it's a very difficult spell."

Caroline chuckled. "Money is no object."

She flinched, and shook her head. "I would never charge money for something like this!" She snapped, sounding scandalized.

I nudged Caroline chidingly. "My wife apologizes, we are used to a different caliber of people, in positions of power."

She sniffed, and refused to look at Caroline. "Well, I suppose." Was all she replied.