>>6186977“We’re stuck, then,” Anya says.
“For the duration,” you confirm, slumping in your chair as the wish claims its price and a wave of fatigue settles in. “I will begin devising rituals to probe the properties of this realm, but I suspect we will need to find the way home the hard way.”
Anya’s jaw clenches as her shoulders tremble. “Fucking… fuck!”
“Quite.” You look to Emíl. “Well? Was a wish everything you imagined?”
The bard looks sheepish. “I wish I could say so, but in truth, I felt only the passing of a powerful spell, and saw nothing at all.”
“Such are the grandest of spells.”
By the time you’ve cast your mansion and Anya returns with Soren, Senna, and Lukas, you find you’re feeling rather subdued. Even the familiar comfort of your mansion, alive with greenery, made all of wood and dripping in vines and leafy potted plants, with false windows letting in a facsimile of moonlight and the smells of flowers, sap, and moss on the air does little to help your mood. Never in your long life have your knowledge or spellcraft failed quite so thoroughly.
All things considered the others take the news better than one might expect; but even so, you know that the reality of the situation will take a while to sink in.
“What are we supposed to do, then?” Soren asks, outwardly casual. In the time you’ve known him, he’s always projected an air of easy confidence, shrugging off terrible danger like it’s nothing, but it’s not hard to see now that his demeanour is less than natural.
“We fight,” Anya says firmly. “Those Nightrunner bastards may have agents here, and if there are any, we will hunt them down and kill them, but not before forcing a way home out of their heads.”
It’s times like these you most appreciate her decisiveness. It’s not for nothing that you’ve spent so much of your life following her lead despite being the older twin.
Senna, seeming like nothing so much as a wet cat freshly fished from a river, is less impressed. “This isn’t what I signed up for,” she mutters.
“Duty is duty,” Soren replies, giving an unconvincing shrug. “We go where it carries us. I did not offer you this path because it was the easy way. You may always return to your old life, if you wish.”
Senna only glares daggers back at him. The form she wears most days has tan skin, dark hair, lamplike yellow-brown eyes, accentuating the impression of an affronted feline, especially with the contrast of size between her and her mentor.
Lukas for his part seems to take the matter in stride, though the shock on his face is plain enough. “You did promise new and exciting opportunities,” he says to Emíl. “Exotic lands on stranger tides, yes?”
“That I did, that I did,” Emíl admits. “I am sorry, my friend.”
