Planeside

[Rebonack]

[The Astral Wilds]

The mage begins slicing under the lightning gnarl with a blade of force! In her haste the gnarl bursts in a crackling discharge of magenta-tinted electricity! Up this close, that'll probably hurt quite a bit. Hopefully it doesn't send her tumbling down into the webbing along with G'ulk because those spider-shark-worms look pretty darn ravenous.

"I said over here!" the wildling on the other side of the tree yells again, shortly before the air is filled with a stinging scent of vinegar. The massive monster hisses as a sizzling sound fills the air and heaves its bulk in the offending direction. There comes a loud eep as the newcomer ducks out of the way of a flailing limb. "I have the silk reaver's attention. Neat. Now for the not getting eaten part..."

The silk reaver gives another horrifying bellow and lunges at the wildling only for the smaller creature to leap clear and grab onto a strand of sticky silk. With one acidic limb she cleaves through the line and sends herself swinging across the interior of the tree in classic Tarzan style. The reaver is none too amused, spraying a barrage of silk at it from behind! Will the newcomer escape?

Nope.

She just got glued to the wall.

"This worked out differently in my head..." the wildling grouses.

[Ionbound]

[The Astral Wilds]

The mage is zapped and nearly falls, but manages to maintain her grip as she mutters, "Right. Have to use the same element..." She starts crawling towards the next large lightning gnarl, trying to cut it off with a blade of lightning.

[Rebonack]

[The Astral Wilds]

It's a good thing she cast Spider Climb earlier, isn't it?

This time around the mage manages to remove the gnarl properly, the large lump of wood dropping into her waiting hands. The air around it smells strongly of ozone and it is producing a faint buzzing sound. Success! The mage has her prize! Now she just needs to make it back to the Hare's Highway without immolating and metamorphosing into a wildling! Judging from the radiance she can feel churning inside her she has just a few minutes more than two hours. Which means she can do it!

If she hurries, that is.

Meanwhile, the air fills with that stinging vinegar scent again as silk dissolves away from the wildling's acidic touch. She quickly scrambles out through one of the many holes in the tangled trunk of the elemental tree mere moments before a massive limb is shoved out behind her. Now that she's clear of danger, she decides to do the mature thing and blows a raspberry at the giant claw scratching about trying to reach her.

Thankfully silk reavers are rather hesitant to leave the confines of their home elemental tree.

"Hey! If you got your prize then get out of there quick!" the wildling yells, at the mage, her tone nearly bubbling with mirth. "Otherwise the reaver is going to be coming after you again."

And that would be terrible.

[Ionbound]

[The Astral Wilds]

The mage nods and drops, casting Feather Fall as she drops, landing lightly, and takes off running, trying to hurry back to the highway.

[Rebonack]

[The Astral Wilds]

"H-hey! Wait up!" the wildling calls before scrambling around the trunk of the tree and leaping off onto the winding branch the mage is running along. The monster lands, stumbling slightly, before racing off after her on all... sixes? The wildling is a pretty fearsome one to be sure. Fearsome and vibrantly colorful, crimson and electric blue and emerald green, she looks like a cross between a spinosaurus, a tailess whip scorpion, and a peacock mantis shrimp. Her body has a generally vertebrate look to it, though she's armored like an arthropod. Her four hind legs are powerful like a therapods and the front two of a similar style, though clearly as adapted to grasping as to running, each sporting a massive thumb claw. Her two heavily reinforced punching limbs are tucked against her chest while a pair of spine-covered scorpion limbs are folded across her back on either side of her sail. Her head is distinctly dinosaurish with a pair of bifurcated antenna growing from her nostrils and the second pair of antenna growing further back where the wide, colorful ovoid portions of the organs look distinctly like huge ears. Her eyes are large and silvery as a shrimp's, three black dots appearing on the trinocular eyes and giving them the illusion of a single vertically slit pupil that constantly meets one's gaze. Her armored, saurian tail ends in a two pairs of colorful urapods presently folded up for protection.

Presently the beast isn't that much taller than a human if she were standing upright instead of running on all six limbs for better traction. The scent of vinegar is still strong around her, though not overpowering any longer. And perhaps most importantly there's a triumphant (and no small part mischievous) expression on her face. She's wearing clothing, too! The stuff looks distinctly as if it were fashioned form black dragon leather and scales. The claws danging from a necklace she's bouncing around her neck are a pretty good indicator of that.

"Why the big hurry? You ran off without even thanking me for getting slimed so you could snag your loot," the wildling laughs as she lopes along. "You aren't on the timer or something, are you Midgardian?"

[Ionbound]

[The Astral Wilds]

The mage nods and says, as she continues running back the way she came, "Quite. Wards failed a couple hours ago...I can just get back if I hurry."

[Rebonack]

[The Astral Wilds]

"Oh geeze, really?" the wildling replies, her tone dipping toward worry as her weird antenna/ear things droop. "You should have turned around as soon as your wards went kaput. That was the mistake I made and now look at me!"

The giggle that follows quickly decays into a sad, resigned, broken sort of laugh.

"But really, you should slow down a little. Running through the Wilds will just get you hurt or killed. Careful first, speed second. If you die you respawn who knows where and end up a wildling anyway. If you immolate then at least you still know where you are and have all your stuff," the creature says, trying to be the best voice of reason she can be. "Speaking of! G'ulk hid her loot just up this trunk a ways in a hollow. We should grab that, yep! She deserves having her stuff taken for using you for bait like she did."

That was a super mean thing to do.

Super duper mean!

"Really though, don't feel bad for her. She does that to Midgardians looking for gnarls all the time."

[Ionbound]

[The Astral Wilds]

The mage nods and says, "Mmhm. I see. Well, you can grab it if you want, but if I need to be careful, I absolutely cannot take any side-tracks. I have just enough time to get back to the highway. If you want to grab them, fine. But I can't help."

[Rebonack]

[The Astral Wilds]

"Well, you're headed for Sign 5941-7569-3022, right?" the wildling asks as she pauses for a moment to shove one of her saurian limbs into a hollow in the side of a tree and pulls out a tiny wooden box. She grins toothily at her prize and stows it away in a satchel hanging at her right forehip. "There's another section of the Hare's Highway that's closer. I doubt you could make it to all the way up to 5941 in... how long would you guess you have? A few hours?" Her prize collected, she drops back to all sixes and bounds along to catch up with the hurrying mage. "We're just above 5940. But we'll have to go through a flooded section of the Wilds to get to it. I can breath underwater just fine, but have you got a water breathing spell?"

Water breathing spells are super useful!

"And yes, I'm using we as in you and me. I would love to help you get back to the Highway before you become a wildling. Living here isn't too bad now that I'm use to it, but the adjusting process was awful. And... honestly I'm getting sick of spawning a bazillion little pink eggs every few months. I've heard that wildlings that move back to Midgard get to live with a sane reproductive cycle. It'll be kind of weird trying to integrate back into civilization, but I think I'm up to it! Hehe, and selling G'ulk's junk will be a great jumpstart!"

Yay for loot!

[Ionbound]

[The Astral Wilds]

The mage nods and says, "Thanks. I can cast a water-breathing spell, yeah. Go ahead and lead on."

[Rebonack]

[The Astral Wilds]

"Leading the way!" the wildling chirps, bounding past the mage before hooking her claws into a nearly vertical tree trunk and scaling her way down. She might be missing the toe pads of that gecko thing, but her not at all insubstantial claws digging into the bark more than make up for it. As she climbs down another one of those ratsquidfish things leaps at her, only to get snagged by the spiky limbs on her back. Without missing a beat she crushes the thing in her lethal embrace before popping it into her mouth.

Nasty wet crunching noises happen for a little while before she swallows the thing.

"So, how about introductions! Hi, my name is Jezreel son of Beor. Yes, son of, yes I'm aware I sound like a woman. Yes, I know I was just talking about spawning eggs, it's apparently a thing I do now," she rambles. "The Wilds are really particular about progenitors being able to progenitate, so if you're a guy before you get blown up then you'll be a parthenogenetic gal when you hatch out of your chrysalis. Or a weird thing that spawns offspring by making them bud off like hydras. Or you'll fart spores everywhere. Or whatever. The species I ended up being the mother of? The males are these tiny little crawly things that fuse into the females and provide... eerr... services. I came with one built in."

Well.

That's really freaky.

Jereel leaps off the trunk she had been climbing on, landing with a splash in a pool of water on another branch below. She climbs out and causally flicks one of her legs, hurling off several disgusting leech-like creatures. "So when I say you don't want to be a wildling because it'll be weird, you can totally trust me on that."

[Ionbound]

[The Astral Wilds]

The mage follows swatting away at the bugs, trying to keep up with the wildling. She nods and says, "I see. Yeah, that doesn't sound like a good thing, even though I don't get genderswapped. Let's get out of here."

[Rebonack]

[The Astral Wilds]

"Well, we're working on the 'getting out of here' part right now, right?" Jezreel laughs. "Look, we'll do our best, okay? But if you blow up that's just how it goes. Honestly, I only have myself to blame for the whole wildling thing. I went in here on a bet and didn't take the Wilds nearly as seriously as I should have. The bet was over what color soul silktree flowers are of all things. I said they were purple. My friend said they were pink. So I said I would come in here and fetch one just to prove how dumb he my room mate was," Jezreel recounts as she leaps off another branch and tackles a squid-wolf-vulture thing that was busy gnawing on a carcass. She wraps her spiky limbs around the surprised creature and delivers a single punch from her hammers, crushing the wildling's skull.

Then?

She reaches into the monster's mouth and rips its squid beak out.

"Ooh, these are useful! Lucky find," she mutters to herself. The beak is dropped into one of her satchels for safe keeping.

The wildling gives her claws a shake, flinging off sticky strands of bright cyan blood. "Now where was I... Oh yeah! I found the flower with three hours to spare even though my wards had failed. Turns out they were pink and I was just an idiot. I figured I would be able to get back with plenty of time, but I ended up getting turned around after running for my life from a pack of feral wildlings for two and a half hours. I was literally within sight of the Highway when I blew up."

[Ionbound]

[The Astral Wilds]

The mage winces at the thought and says, "Ouch...I hope that doesn't happen to me. I'm here because my professor at the academy refused to allow me, or anyone, to graduate until we make our own staves. I wanted to do something special and impress everyone. Hopefully it won't be a mistake."

[Rebonack]

[The Astral Wilds]

"Waaah!?" Jezreel gapes, nearly tripping over her way too many feet in the process. "You're a student at a magical academy too? Haha! What a small world. So was I, though probably not the same one. Second year at Jambris University, probably the most prestigious elementalism program in all of Midgard." She puffs out her chest a little as she speaks. "I have a natural talent for acid magic! That talent was incorporated into my new wildling form. That happens sometimes, I guess. If you have a particular type of magic you're really good at and you don't metamorphose into a tree or dumb animal there's a good chance that your magic will be woven into your very being. That means all my bazillion children and grand children and great grand children and so on and so forth have inherited my knack for dissolving things."

That's...

Interesting.

And also terrifying.

"Oh, and just an fyi? The modrons won't let you use their portals if you're a recently meta'd progenitor. Something about unstable wildlings throwing off the ecological balance of Midgard. Apparently they haven't ever been able to live down letting that gal who meta'd into the first displacer beast into the material world and causing all sorts of havoc," Jezreel rambles. "Long and short of it, progenitors aren't allowed through until we've been here for a year and our reproductive cycle has stabilized so we don't flood Midgard with offspring. Technically you can sneak through, but that means finding your own route."

And that is MUCH harder to pull off.

Very soon our heroes come upon a rather interesting sight. Water. Lots of water. Water flooding everything below them, a vast swamp filled with teeming things just waiting to devour their flesh. The clarity is, frankly, incredible considering all the plant material. Usually water like this quickly turns tea-colored with tanins. Without a second thought, Jezreel dives in and surfaces a moment later. "Get that spell cast and dive in! Water's great! Just beware the terrors of the deeeeeep! OoooOOOoooOoh!" she says whilst wiggling her saurian claws in a sufficiently spooky fashion.

[Ionbound]

[The Astral Wilds]

The mage laughs and says, "Oh you have got to be kidding me. You're the guy that vanished last year? Wow...We all thought you had a TP mishap. Anyways, nice to know the Modrons won't let me out if I get poofed."

She looks at the water and casts a spell, her mouth glowing blue for a second before diving in beside Jezreel, saying, "I can handle a lot of things."

[Rebonack]

[The Astral Wilds]

The wildling's weird antenna/ears droop when the mage laughs. "Oh, ah, haha... I guess we are from the same school then. Has a year really passed? It's so hard to keep track of time in here since the lighting level is pretty much the same all the time."

It's true!

No night or day in the Astral Wilds.

It just is. Though the lighting in some portions is less than others, it never really falls below the level of late twilight.

"The only thing I really have to keep track of passing time is when I bloat up with eggs..." she grumbles. That isn't totally true. When she bloats up with eggs, then the eggs hatch, then the nymphs crawl out of her and ride around on her back for a while until they're big enough that she threatens them with consumption if they don't move out of the house.

It's always a very hectic time. Tough love, and all.

"Well, whatever! Let's get going!" Jezreel says before dunking herself underwater and begins swimming downward. If the mage thought that being underwater would stop the wildling from talking constantly she'll be sadly mistaken. Somehow she manages to make herself perfectly intelligible despite having lungs full of water.

She takes off really fast, though, unfurling her colorful urapods and beating her tail like a dolphin, sending her zooming through the water at a pretty impressive pace for an amphibious creature.

The Wilds are just as fantastical underwater as they are above. Tree trunks and branches still stretch endlessly in all directions, but other vegetation has been replaces with algae, kelps of all kinds, corals, and surreal anemone like creatures. Some of those sessile tentacle things are pretty big and sting-y looking. Best keep clear of those. All around them teem aquatic... things. Calling them fish doesn't really do them justice any more than Jezreel is a fish.

[Ionbound]

[The Astral Wilds]

The mage, unable to keep up with her mere mortal limbs, tries to catch on to Jezreel and let the fish wildling tow her through the water as she says, spell keeping her lungs free of water, generating the air to keep her body working, "So how long is it going to take us to get through here? Sorry if I'm bugging you but I can feel the clock ticking away."

[Rebonack]

[The Astral Wilds]

It sure is a good thing that Jezreel has that huge fin on her back. That thing is really great for grabbing onto and being hauled through the water by. It does slow her down a fair bit, though.

"I don't know exactly," she admits. "I just know it's a lot closer than the other Highway section. We should be able to make it with plenty of time to spare so long as one of the aforementioned terrors of the deep doesn't decide to harass us."

And then one of the aforementioned terrors of the deep decides to harass them.

In this particular case?

Alright.

Imagine a colossal squid. Have you got that? Great. Now combine it with a flower urchin, complete with its weird three-part venomous pincer things on the ends of tendrils, just scaled up to super sized. Got that? Good. Now combine it with a deep sea viperfish. End result? Something really really big and really really awful. It lashes out with one of its tentacles covered in suckers, hooks, barbs, and pincers as Jezreel swims past the things lair, snagging her in one of its awful limbs.

"Ack!" the wildling grunts as she jerks herself to the side, trying to throw the mage free to avoid her fate. "Yeah, that feels like narcotizing toxin turning my insides into soup," she mutters, crimson blood already leaking out of her eyes and mouth. She unclasps one of her satchels and shoves it toward the mage as the horror drags her back toward the inky depths of its lair. "Hang onto that for me! That's my best loot! I'll try to catch up wi-"

And then there's a crunch from the gloom and a cloud of blood billowing in the water. A small swarm of tiny horrors begin nibbling at the scattered bits of flesh and carapace.

[Aric Kale]

[The Gloom]

Just to be clear, putting the ghost to rest would involve carrying the corpse back to Midgard and having it properly buried in consecrated ground. This isn't the sort of thing that can be done half-way, otherwise the ghost will just be upset even more.

The Gloom - Azgul Fortress

Not worth the effort.

She'll simply turn the spirit into another one of her children. Albeit a naughty child...

Solana really did have other things to think about.
The nightwalker had been studying the Nexus and its necromancers/undead leaders long before she made her grand debut.

This necromancer did not want any competition...and she knew who her first target would be.

[Ionbound]

[The Astral Wilds]

The mage's eyes widen as she grabs the satchel and watches her friend die, swimming as fast as possible away from the horror. She curses several times before muttering to herself, "Sympathetic magic, sympathetic magic...Air, Water, and Force...Alright. Let's see how fast I can go."

She casts three spells in quick succession. Combined, their effects create a hardened shell of water around the mage, and then an air bubble around that before propelling her forwards at high speed like a torpedo. The downside is that now most of her mana has been used, and she can't steer, simply hoping that she'll go far enough to be able to see the exit.

[Rebonack]

[The Astral Wilds]

Sadly there isn't much in the way of open spaces in the watery depths of the Wilds. It's like navigating through a jumbled cross between a submerged jungle, a mangrove swamp, and a coral reef. As the mage bounces off trunks and rips through kelp and smashes coral apart those weird harpoon polyps Jezreel had warned her about launch their sticky, barb covered tendrils at her. Hopefully the shell around her is enough to keep them at bay, because otherwise getting hauled into one of those monsters would spell certain agonizing death.

It's difficult to keep track of time, what with all the crashing and smashing, but eventually the water will just abruptly stop and the mage's bubble will slam into the massive branch of another equally massive tree. And from there?

From there she'll see it.

The wide, well tended path of the Hare's Highway, flanked by signs and guarded by wards to keep it safe and secure. She's just about there! Just a little further! But she had best hurry. By now the mage will be able to feel the distinct sensation of radiance roiling inside her, making her feel super-charged! Never has she felt so alive! Why, that energy is buzzing so bright that she might even notice it starting to glow through her skin!

...which is a sure symptom that immolation is minutes away at most.

Hurry, mage! Hurry!

[The Gloom]

Well, it would seem the nightwalker has secured her new fortress. Now there's just the matter of deciding what to do next. Build up an undead army? Find allies in the Gloom to join her cause? Take up cross-stitching?

[Ionbound]

[The Astral Wilds]

Yep! That's the point of the water shell. It keeps things from penetrating into the main bubble, be they obstacles or attacks.

When the mage lands, she swallows, shakes her head as she starts running, even casting the last spell she has, Expeditious Retreat to speed her up, muttering, "I have not come...This far...To die no-" Oh no. This is what Jezreel was talking about, not going to fast and being careful! The mage trips over a tree root, almost to the highway, swearing loudly as she falls. She starts crawling towards the highway, but just as her hand is about to touch the borderstone, her skin erupts into light.

Crystalline structures form around her, trapping her as she begins sobbing, realizing her foolishness. However, she is trapped within her chrysalis, and it begins to fill with fluid as she feels her consciousness slip away.

[Aric Kale]

The Gloom - Azgul Fortress

Solana sets up her Magic Room, and begins to cast one of her Portal Spells...
Something involving shadow travel for decently sized groups...

Time to destroy a Lich.

My foes will fall before me...one by one...

Even if they do not die the first time...they will fear me.

[Rebonack]

[The Astral Wilds]

When the mage slips, Jezreel's bag is sent bouncing across the limb, tumbling end over end and thankfully getting caught on a branch before it can go plummeting down into the next level of forest canopy below. This also prevents the bag from being sealed inside the mage's chrysalis. If that had happened things would have gotten really awkward.

And then?

Time passes. Time passes as the poor mage's body is dissolved into fluid and rearranged, as she becomes yet another native to the Astral Wilds. Yet another wildling. One new species of surreal monster in a realm filled to the bursting with surreal monsters.

Hopefully she doesn't lose her mind.

That would be terrible.

Perhaps forty five minutes before the former mage is ready to hatch, Jezreel's bag begins to fidget. Fidget and bounce and wiggle until at last the brightly colored wildling shoves her head out of the opening and gasps for breath. The monster, still slick with amniotic fluid, drags herself out of her satchel. "So glad I went to all the trouble to get this bag made," she mumbles to no one in particular as she pulls the thing off the end of her tail and then straps it down over her left forehip.

Then?

She looks around. "Welp. Still in the wilds. So either she dumped me on the way or she exploded. Hey mage who never mentioned her name, you around somewhere?" No answer. Not that she needs one. Because there's a big chrysalis a few inches from the Hare's Highway. "Oh come on, seriously? That's just cruel," Jezreel complains as she heads for the mage's chrysalis and shoos away several small predators who were waiting to attack the mage as soon as she hatches. "You had better not be feral when you get out of there," Jezreel informs the cocoon. "Because if you try to eat me I'll be really upset."

And then?

She climbs up onto a overhanging branch and waits for her friend to be reborn.

[Hattish Thing]

Azgul Fortress:

Snowfall is dropped here, along with nine others from his force. They are nondescript, but possess light armor made of gloombound ice, the same material that their leader's entire body was composed of. Snowfall, all seven feet of him, will stand tall and proud, gazing over his surroundings. He looks to his soldiers behind him and turns back to his front, gazing upon the large dark hole in front of him. There was something past the wall, their had to be, but the creature couldn't sense anything beyond the barrier. The knight of dark ice will stride forward now, his men beside him, their swords and axes at the ready.

He'll walk forward now, attempting to walk right through the large crack in the wall.

[Aric Kale]

Azgul Fortress

Snowfall can walk through the crack easily, as can his warriors.
However, as they enter the castle, the shadows seem to just continue on in front of them...

{Snowfall, the darkness closes around us!} The frozen Lieutenant shouts, just as what appear to be two wights with pitch dark armor jump in and grab the warrior.

One of them is knocked out of the circle with a well placed shield bash, but the other manages to pierce his torso with what appears to be a four foot long sharpened rod of solidshade.

Pitiful...tell me why I should release you from my shadows, Lich?

[Hattish Thing]

Azgul Fortress:

The two shadowwights grip his massive blade, the cleaver the size of a whole man, thick and sharp, jagged like a glacier. The frozen lich brandishes Isverð, the blade of cold, with ease. The towering figure possessed a supernatural strength that rivaled even that of a giant. He'll look around, before stomping towards one of the wights and willing his blade to adopt a magical nature, making it able to slice through even solid shadow, like these things. The blade was quite powerful, meant to best the strongest of blades. He'll thrust it forward, most likely ripping right into the flesh of one of the shadow wights, before he'll slice to the side, most likely ripping out of it's abdomen and continuing to slice the second wight right in half. He was good at this sort of thing.

There is nothing but a simple phrase spoken by the lich. "Þú munt deyja."

[Ionbound]

[The Astral Wilds]

15 minutes later, a clawed hand, clad in black fur, punches it's way out of the chrysalis, swiftly followed by a new wildling. It's body structure is quite clearly digitigrade, though the spinal column seems to imply more of an ape-like structure, capable of both bipedal and quadrupedal locomotion.

And, indeed, for the most part, the reborn mage seems to be patterned on the black panther, internally as well as externally, with a few exceptions. The first is, of course, her bipedal capabilities. The second is that her hands, while padded to protect them from debris on the ground, and outfitted with retractable claws, are otherwise humanoid, with four fingers and a thumb. The third is the presence of a Hunter's Organ and a Sach's Organ where her human appendix and additional intestinal structure were, allowing her to release powerful electrical shocks to defend herself or hunt prey, as well as a weird, slimy, eel-y tail instead of a panther's sleek black one. The organs also serve to enhance her ability to use lightning magic, despite her inability to cast other forms.

She turns and growls at Jezreel, more annoyed and frustrated than anything else, before saying in a much different voice, "Wrell...Now what?"

[Rebonack]

[The Astral Wilds]

Well.

That's certainly a thing. Some kind of apecateel?

At the very least she seems to have retained at least some cognition. Hopefully her messed up voice is just due to her weird new mouth instead of mental degradation. Mental degradation would be terrible.

Jezreel does her best to stay positive! "Well... first of all, sorry you didn't make it to the Highway. Second, congratulations, you're pregnant! I can smell it on you already. No idea how long it'll take your offspring to grow, probably no more than half a day. For whatever a day counts as around here. Usually takes a few hours after I notice that I'm gravid before I've got larvae crawling out of me and onto my sail for a piggy-back ride until they get big enough to fend for themselves."

Well.

Isn't that horrifying?

The monstrous dinoshrimparacnid sits down near her friend and begins rummaging through her satchel. "So basically, you're a progenitor now. Another new species of wildling that'll introduce a new race to the Astral Wilds. You're going to be making a ton of offspring for the first few months, and that means you're going to be super-hungry all the time." She pulls out several large strips of dried meat from her satchel that have no business being able to fit in there and offers them to her friend. "By the way, you never told me your name. This place doesn't work like those weird pretend demon worlds where stuff steals your name and enslaves you, you know."