>>5811471“It doesn’t matter who… or what… I am,” she told you, “because whatever the answer is, I don’t belong in this world.”
For a moment, you feared the worst. The declaration almost sounded… Well, suicidal. But you knew this Izirina, recognized her. This was the Izirina of your vision: alien face clouded in a darkness beyond darkness, alien of form, her bones bare and wounded, poisoned heart and womb exposed. Somehow, though, you felt more akin to THIS Izirina than to any other aspect of her, because this was her soul… And you understood then what her soul yearned for, what HER truth was.
“Dimension Door,” you murmured.
“What?” Zith-Zi barked.
You waved the goblin off, as the pieces fell together. Izirina studied so many spells related to travel, transportation… To summoning and the other planes. She read books about hypothetical worlds, and nonfiction works about far-flung, foreign lands. She was never so excited as when you told her about your visit to the fairy court on Old Maple Hill—a realm beyond the material, just beyond reach.
“I don’t care about my body,” Izirina told you quietly but quickly, the words pouring out as if she could not control their flow, “because I’m going to leave it… Leave all of this… Behind. Hawksong, and my mother… And these lizard-people, and the Tower, and ALL of it.”
She stretched out her arm then, like a falconer, and Hershy jumped from her outstretched hand. He flew an orbit around your head, and then once again returned to land upon Zith-Zi’s leather pauldron. The goblin-girl breathed a sigh of relief, scratching under his chin, but then she turned back to Izirina as well.
“Where are you going to go?” you asked.
Izirina shook her head. She had no answer, or none with a name.
“I’ve seen it in my dreams,” she said quietly. “It’s hazy, but I’ve… I’ve seen it! There’s a world beyond this… Somewhere where I belong. I know it!”
And then, she asked you the question that would forever change your life:
“Do you want to come with me?”
>Yes[You will follow Izirina Henzler's Path of Transcendence, forsaking material reality and mundane society, and even most other mages; you and Izirina will grow closer once more]
>No[You will reject her path, embracing the mortal and material world even as you pursued hidden truths; you and Izirina will remain at odds, becoming rivals in your approach to the Esoteric]
>You don’t know [You will chart your own path into the Esoteric, though you found that it intersected and converged upon hers at times; you and Izirina will have a complicated relationship]
[No write-ins this time, except to add dialogue or fine details to one of these above options. Choose only one, please, and backlink 1post votes.]
