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Sylvan Sherwood · Journeyman Joined: 14 Nov 2008 Posts: 107

Turning away, Sylvan could not bring herself to look back at Arahim or Christopher. She knew her resolve would falter with even the smallest glimpse of her best friend and their child. It was hard enough to feel like she was abandoning the most important people in her life, when truly what she was setting off to do was intended to be an act of love.

Squaring her shoulders, she walked away and tried to balance her warring emotions. For months now, she had seethed inside. Night after night, she had lain awake as Arahim slept. Invasive thoughts, showing her the defilement of Arahim's soul and youth, pummeled her every waking moment. It was simply too much work to keep trying to pretend as if nothing was wrong. Were the need for remuneration a star in the sky, Sylvan's mindset would have been a galaxy.

The reality of the situation was simple. A need burned within Sylvan, yet she set off on the journey without the slightest idea of how to proceed.

For countless days and nights, Sylvan wandered the forests. Most of her travel was on foot. Though she didn't really know why, this seemed important. To have left with the clothes on her back and the few scant items tossed into a satchel symbolized something that was just beyond Sylvan's ability to fathom. She drank when she found fresh water, and ate when nature provided her with the opportunity. After a few short days her already lean body began to change, and though some might have described her face as gaunt there would have been no doubt about the strength being gained. Strength both physical and psychological. Perhaps even spiritual. There was a fierce, almost feral expression about her entire being; a look at her eyes would have made many people turn away quickly though they would likely be unable to explain, if asked, exactly why.

One evening just as a violet twilight was falling, Sylvan realized with a grim sort of humor that she was standing only a few scant yards from the Shrine of Chaos. Her heart skipped a beat, and for a moment her stomach felt like it was trying to scramble its way up her throat. What she would have called 'that roller coaster feeling' once upon her lifetime.

Her feet felt as if they each weighed a ton as she closed the distance to the ankh. Her pulse hammered in her temples and an excited sweat broke on her brow. There was an answer here. She wondered briefly if she would know the right question to ask, or be able to take the true meaning of what might be revealed to her.

Sylvan Sherwood · Journeyman Joined: 14 Nov 2008 Posts: 107

As Sylvan knelt before the shrine, she reflexively crossed herself. Without hearing her own whisper, words issued from her lips—vestiges of a religion, and a lifetime, lost to her. A vain attempt to save her soul from the damnation she was born into.

“Forgive me, Father.”

Eyes drifting closed, Sylvan remained perfectly still. With all of her being, Sylvan tried to open her senses to receive any message that might be given to her. Time became resilient and meaningless. It could have been a minute, or more than an hour, when a small quiet voice came into her head. The moment was startling—it was most certainly an outside influence and not a thought from her own mind. The voice was distinctly masculine. Its message was brief, and simple.

“Sleep,” it said.

Sylvan's eyes snapped open, and a renewed anger washed over her. With a grunt of disgust, she stood and walked away from the ankh without a backward glance. Full night had fallen.

For more than an hour, she walked and tried to swallow back her ire. Fists clenched, Sylvan was unaware that her fingernails had cut into her palms until exhaustion caused her to stop moving. The wet, cold feeling of the spilled blood drew her attention. She groaned quietly and shook her head. She wished for the day that she could control the anger, and not be controlled by it.

So thinking, Sylvan crept into the forest once again. Regardless of the directive to sleep—though still uncertain as to whether it was real or imagined—she had to admit she was tired. She created a small enclosure of deadfall and crawled into it. Moments after closing her eyes, sleep claimed her weary mind and body.

Sylvan Sherwood · Journeyman Joined: 14 Nov 2008 Posts: 107

The dream, if that is how it could best be described, was simple yet powerful.

The map showed itself to her in an almost cartoon-like simplicity. It appeared as it may have if, those years ago, Sylvan would have drawn it on the eve of her thirteenth birthday. The night she gleefully committed patricide.

A cruel, predatory smile formed on the mouth of the sleeping woman as long-forbidden memories crashed down into her mind. How good it felt, to relive that night. Even sleeping, Sylvan was acutely aware of the irony that such a heinous act could bring such personal safety and peace.

Through the crush of memory, the image of the map remained burned into her sleep-vision. Just like in the movies from her childhood, X marked the spot.

As suddenly as the dream began, it ended. Sylvan slept deeply. No other nocturnal imagery made itself known to her. When she awoke an hour before dawn, with the first tendrils of light creeping into the horizon, Sylvan felt strangely refreshed and energized. She crawled out from her meager shelter and turned in the direction of her query.

Toward the X.

Sylvan Sherwood · Journeyman Joined: 14 Nov 2008 Posts: 107

Now that the memories had been allowed, and shown themselves to her, Sylvan went to the place that held her deepest secrets. Within a half of a day she found herself at the proper location. The energy below thrummed up through her feet, vibrating through every cell of her body. Again without realizing, she crossed herself, though she said nothing.

The only tool at her disposal was a care-worn dagger. This, she dug out of the satchel and began to dig. The metal box lay only inches beneath the black soil of the forest, and was soon uncovered with alternate use of hands and dagger. The iron was not as rusted as Sylvan would have expected, and briefly she wondered if that were an omen or simply coincidence.

With a primal howl of triumph, Sylvan lifted the box from its resting place of the years since its interment. Damp hair hanging in her eyes, Sylvan broke the weak lock with the tip of the dagger and slowly tilted back the lid. A sickening, pulsing, green glow occasionally spiked through with the darkest purple spilled from the box.

Sylvan lifted the pyramid-shaped, crystalline, container from the cloth on which it rested. She held it aloft, the disturbing glow bathing her face as she did.

“And we meet again, you bastard.”

Briefly, Sylvan watched the swirling and tormented soul captured within. A soul without rest, a soul that currently had no chance to be receivd by Heaven or Hell, Oblivion, or The Great Lights Out. As satisfying as it was, this was not what she sought. She moved aside the cloth on which the container had rested, revealing the books, journals, and notes beneath. Quickly, she shuffled them into her satchel. Not knowing what to do with the glowing pyramid, she set that atop the books and carefully secured the pack. She slung it onto her shoulder and stood.

Sylvan Sherwood · Journeyman Joined: 14 Nov 2008 Posts: 107

A week had passed since finding the magical tomes, and far from the place of exhumation, Sylvan slumped exhausted and starving, dirty and determined, against the trunk of a huge oak tree. How many times she'd read the rituals and curses, she could not have said. Though she herself had refused vehemently to follow the path her family would have preferred, she felt her inner magic was strong enough to attempt the casting of just one spell. It made perfect sense, if the spell was able to bring them here, it should be able to take her back to her birthplace. For a moment, she wondered just when it was that she stopped thinking of it as 'home'.

Weeks had passed since leaving those she loved and adored. Her heart ached to hold and be held. But first, this personal journey.

Wearily, Sylvan stood and pulled a runebook from her pack and made the brief journey to a moongate and took herself to Skara Brae; she was aware of no acquaintances she might encounter there, and because of that it seemed as good of a location as any to take a room and get cleaned up after purchasing some new clothes. She hurried through the washing and dressing, and burned the other clothing in the hearth. Why she did that, she wouldn't have been able to say.

With a sense of urgency, Sylvan left Skara Brae behind and took herself deep into the lost lands. When she'd gone a full day without encountering another person, she felt the time had come to take action.

All Sylvan could think about was casting the portal. Was it actually possible? Oh, how she hoped. She envisioned the things she might be able to bring back, should she succeed, and gather what she wanted. To come back to this world through the same means that brought her here as an adolescent. It would be possible to level the scales that hung so unjustly out of balance. Again, her mind filled with the visions she had gotten from Arahim.

Poisoned by his memories that were so deeply buried in his mind that he did not even know they were there, Sylvan's determination grew with every passing moment. It mattered not that he knew what was in her heart. What she was doing, she was doing for him. And for herself, and for every child ever harmed by adults who should have protected them.

Sylvan Sherwood · Journeyman Joined: 14 Nov 2008 Posts: 107

As far as she could tell, the ritual went flawlessly. From the words spoken with perfect diction to the incantation to form the portal, it could not have been done better. When Sylvan opened her eyes to the center of the magic circle in which she stood, she was amazed to see something that resembled a moongate, only it glowed a color unlike any others she'd seen. It shimmered, the color waxing and waning and swirling.

Grinning, the exhausted woman picked up her satchel and prepared to step through, into the world that was once her own. But when she actually took that final step, she was met with solid resistance. A series of obscenities issued from Sylvan's lips, and she lifted a hand to the portal, trying to pass the barrier without success. Again, there was a barrier of immense force.

Apparently, this was a one way gate. Whatever the words she uttered during the casting of this series of incantations, they were futile. She could, just barely, see beyond the portal—so close and yet so far. Disbelieving, Sylvan stepped back and stood there staring as the magical gate first flickered, then faded from existence.

In her mind, a cruel laughter erupted and brought with it the blinding pain of the headaches she thought she'd overcome. There was no mistaking the owner of that voice. It was her father's. Sylvan took another faltering step backward and fell onto one knee and was crushed by an onslaught of ideations, some of which bordered on the paranoid; perhaps it was a trick, or maybe fate was simply a cruel mistress--on and on the thoughts marched. Some time later, the laughter and pain faded. Opening her eyes and peering about, there was no evidence of what occurred here other than the marks on the ground.

Sylvan did not take the time to process the possible meanings or implications of this series of events. Rather, she got to her feet and found her way into Umbra. Once there, she removed the crystal pyramid from her pack and took a final disgusted look at the soul within. With a seemingly disinterested gesture, she tossed the object into the soft dirt not far from the western bridge, but within city limits. Let them do with it what they would. It was time to go home.

If she still had a home.