Okay, here’s where it gets odd. Chapter six was where I lost the plot, because I tried to write stuff set in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. This didn’t work, so I gave up on chapter nine before anything really happened, and tried to write the ending (Put in the archive as Chapter 10)
h3. Prologue
And so it was that the Portal Stone lay within the Guild of Bequestments not inconsiderable archives for millenia, carefully recharging from the very air itself, and beyond the circle and within the circle generations were born, studied, propergated and died without giving a single glance that this most magificant piece of craftwork.
It came to pass in the Guild of Researchers that it’s latest member for the blue, studier of all items not of this world, took an interest in this Stone, and removed it from the archives for further study. His observations were never documented, for events overtook before he began the essay, but he was heard to say to his fellow researchers that the observations of the Guild long ago were inaccurate, for the flaw in the center did not resemble the closed portal it was named for, but a door that seemed to be open. This had to be an inaccuracy in the anchient text because the alternive was that the flaw in a stone had changed – albit in several thousand years – which was unlikly.
And thus did the Researcher for the Blue study the gemstone for many years, noting that the flaw changed subtly very slowly, and that the “doorway” appeared to be opening wider.
One night, while the researcher was late to bed, studying a work on an unrelated object, the Portal-stone sudernly let out a high pitched noise and started glowing as white as the sun. After a few minutes this glow faded, but the stone was no longer the saphirre it had been for countless centuries, but a grass-green emerald, glowing softly, which pulsated and swirled seemingly just under the surface. The stone was cool to the touch and the image of the now fully open door clearly visible within the stone.
The portal stone was immediatly placed in a room of observation, where a Guild Member stood watching at every moment. It was an early morning when a novice arrived to relive the night’s watch and found the observer dead his post, The researcher on the floor of the room with a leg-wound and the Portal-stone gone.
For reasons unknown, Eriond himself took a and in the matter and summond two Dalsians, both still in training, to recover the stone. A few days after they had left (under the cover of a Research Mission) the Researcher, Aquarion De’Blue, who had been studying the stone also dissappeared. It is assumed that he followed the recovery party. Meanwhile, Dalsia was having problems of a spiritual nature.
h3. Chapter 9 A Whole New World
Jascain, Aquarion and Krydis stepped through the door.
Inky blackness surrounded them. Most doors led where they were supposed to, but this was a door with a sense of drama.
Pinpricks of white light surrounded them, the darkness was almost opressive until Jascain noticed something
Khrys? The word floated soundlessly across the mind link, echoing within the junior Seeress’ head like a hail in a cave. Since they had left there own home world the background murmmer of thoughts and history had vanished, like the ticking clock you only notice when it stops. The silence was maddening.
Yes Jasc? If he was going to start shortening names, he wasn’t going to be alone.
Look down, can you see something? They were formless, bodyless, just strands of consiousness drifting though the space. There was no Up, No Down, nor even a Sex Appeal or a Peppermint. Where did that thought come from? she asked herself. And even if there was a down to look at, it wasn’t special, just more stars, more inky blackness it was…
…the gulf between universes, the chill deeps of space that contain nothing but the occasionall random molecule, a few lost comets and…
…but a circle of blackness shifts slightly, the eye reconsiders perspective, and what was apparently the awesome distance of intersteller wossname becomes a world under darkness, it’s stars the lights of what will chartitably be called civilization.
For, as the world tumbles lazily, it is reveals as the Discworld – flat, circular, and carried though space on the back of four giant elephants who stand on the back of the Great A’tuin, the only turtle ever to feature on the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, a turtle ten thousand miles long, dusted with the frost of dead comets, meteor-pocked, albedo eyed…
There was a mountian in the centre, and they seemed to be heading towards it, as the disc spun slowly beneath them