The Search for Hope

[Hope]

(( Prologue: This story was written by my amazing teammates and friends. Thank you all for putting in the time and effort to write this and your patience during and after. Written by: Jewell, Eden, Kheldar, Gren, Michelle, Gloria, Mallory and Peaches. ))

Jewell swiped through her phone one more time with her left hand (the right was still burnt and bandaged), staring at the list of unanswered calls and texts before sighing, tucking it away in her pocket, and taking a seat on the couch in her living room in the penthouse on the third floor of the Mills at Little Elfhame. It was a comfortable spot made for relaxing with friends with tasteful yet insanely comfortable furniture. The room was open to the nearby dining room and kitchen, and the floor to ceiling windows in those rooms cast warm light upon them while also providing a view of the river and Dockside across the water. Sapphire had set out snacks on the coffee table--sweet and savory--before disappearing.

“Thanks for coming, guys. I know I’m not…” her voice hitched already. It was too soon for that. She was supposed to keep it together. “I know I’m not Hope, I’m not our Captain, but she can’t be with us right now…” the faerie trailed off, unsure of what else to say.

Kheldar loomed off to the side. It'd been a long couple of days; he looked haggard and unshaven, but he'd at least taken the effort to shower and change, albeit into clothes that had clearly been stored in a locker. Unsurprisingly he'd been quiet since arriving. Michelle and Gloria sat side by side on the couch, Gloria with her hands folded over her lap quiet and reserved.

Gren had been taking the loss of the Opals better than most. No more evil thoughts, evil whispers, or turning into Shadow Gren. He nibbled on some cookies that Sapphire laid out for them, and waited. Michelle was distracted, but pulled her attention to Jewell once it looked like she was about to start.

Jewell toyed with the edge of the bandage on her hand, “I know things have been a bit unsettled, but I just wanted to make sure everyone was okay and that we all stick together still even with Hope… since Hope disappeared along with the opals.”

“Are you sure she’s gone?” Eden knew she should sit down, but she was full of nervous energy. She paced back and forth in front of the windows, her usual bounce muted but for the little hop she took when she turned to retread her steps. “Maybe she just needed a vacation?”

The faerie wanted to say yes because this was Eden asking here, but the most she could offer was, “Maybe.” And then an explanation, “But Davien, her husband.. ex-husband, whatever he is… he was holding her arm or something when the Opals escaped and he said she disappeared. And I haven’t heard from her, and she’s not the only one who is gone. But… I don’t know. Maybe.”

Eden considered that for a long moment, looking out the windows at the view. Then she nodded. “Okay.” And she moved to get herself a cookie.

Jewell’s phone began to ring. Witchy Witchface showed on the screen. She frowned when she saw it, considered swiping to send her to voicemail, and decided to answer it instead, “Hey Mal, what’s up?” She held up a finger to the team and stood up, stepping towards the kitchen. “I’ve got the Real RhyDin crew here, is everything okay?”

[Hope]

On the other end of the line, it sounded like her hands were very full, papers rustling as she pressed the phone to her cheek. “Yes! I mean, no, everything is terrible, but that’s the point! Lower your wards!”

“You’re terrible,” Jewell grumbled before hanging up and doing the most normal thing she had possibly ever done: shouting for Ishmerai. “MERAI! MALLORY SAYS LOWER THE WARDS!” Pause. “MERAI? DID YOU HEAR ME?”

“YES!” The knight, off in some other room of the penthouse, shuffled audibly towards the door so they could all hear him.

“He heard me,” she reassured the rest of the team as she rejoined them and plopped back onto the couch.

The faerie barely had time to make herself comfortable before Mallory appeared right in front of her in a crimson flash, shoving her legs out of the way--“Hey!”--so she could dump books, scrolls, and several large sheets of graph paper on the coffee table. A stone-bound tome written in Terran landed on top of the plate of cookies, but the witch appeared not to notice. Her eyes only briefly darted over the others present — Kheldar, Eden, Michelle, Gloria, Gren — and gave them the briefest smile of greeting as she unrolled a tube of graph paper, revealing five magic circles covered in runes, sigils, and intricate notes.

“Ever since the Diamond Quest — once I realized I could feel Hope stretched across the Plane of Earth, and I started putting together whose kids were affected and why, that it was always the kids of Opal holders — I’ve been sending my warlocks out to survey places where elemental Opal essence has punched through our reality and manifested. The burning gas swamps... the haunted catacombs... the weightless quarry... I’ve been using these thin spots to measure the shape of the Opals in their pure form... find a way through, get to Hope and maybe whatever part of all the others has ended up on the other side, but these manifestations are inherently unstable. I haven’t been able to build a portal, or even stretch out my Sight, to find Hope or anyone in these places before they fluctuate...”

Which should have been worrying information, and showed in her brief frown, but she rolled right past it as she flattened a large piece of tracing paper over the first one. There were four circles on it, lining up with four out of five on the page underneath, though their boundaries were different and they had a teardrop-like shape on one side. “One of my warlocks was staying close to the Tower of Earth, in a grotto beneath the forest where the elements are strong, when she heard whispers. She heard three names distinctly, one she couldn’t make out— but two she could. Davien, and Malik.”

Mallory looked up from the page to look around the room, her eyes landing on Jewell’s. “The Opals’ manifestations are unstable, but Twilight Isle is a plane with rules. Portals to the elemental planes can be built, have been built... and PathFinder’s power is very different from the Keeper’s, but the difference in shape doesn’t matter. It comes from the same place, the Plane of Earth.” She allowed herself to crack a grin, toothy and a little manic; her hair was wispy, pinned back haphazardly, and there were dark bags under her eyes. “We can summon her, or her elemental essence, or call her forth — communicate — something, as long as we do it in the Tower of Earth.”

[Hope]

“I… what?” Jewell blinked, confused. “You smashed…” she was pointing to the plate of smooshed cookies under the book. “Have you slept since the Quest?”

“Since the Quest, yes,” Mallory replied. She hadn’t asked if she had slept last night!

Eden’s eyes widened as she looked over the papers and the books, trying to take in everything Mallory was saying but understanding precious little of it. Midway through, she wiped the cookie crumbs from her hands onto her jeans, accidentally leaving bright pink streaks in the denim. Seeing what she’d done, Eden balled her hands into fists. “Is she--is she somewhere like where Michelle was?”

Michelle glanced over to Mallory, her frown thinned out in a tight, concerned expression. That was a question the witch could answer more directly. “Yes... but a different kind of place than that. Not evil, just... different from this world, but like Michelle, she was drawn in against her will and she doesn’t want to be there.”

Mallory tapped her left ring finger against one of the four circles on the tracing paper, the center of a spiral of Primordial power far more complex than the raw shape of PathFinder. “And just like with Michelle... I know where we can find Hope. I can— we can fix this.” There was a desperation to her tone, a need to assert it to herself at least as much as to her friends.

Eden nodded, her expression worried. Then she reached down to pull her backpack onto her lap. She stuck her hand in then leaned forward. On top of the graph paper, she set down a chunk of MoonBeryl. “Will this help?”

With a piece of the yellow stone on the table, something sparked inside of Michelle. She wanted to take it, hold it close to her like it was before. But this wasn’t for her, it was about finding Hope.

The witch’s manic expression fractured, then broke into a softer smile for Eden. “It does,” she said, and pinched the shard between her ring finger and her thumb to hold it up to the light and examine it. “Any piece of PathFinder, too... but we can use this to anchor an Auran abjuration to disrupt the borders of Elemental Earth— and her previous connection to MoonBeryl should help us divine her location.”

Gren tried to listen to what Mallory was explaining to them, but most talk about magic went right over his head. His eyes darted back and forth as he tried to process what she was saying, and secretly, he was relieved to hear that ShadoWeaver was not part of the solution.

Jewell had been listening, processing, and shrugged casually as she sunk back into the couch after leaning forward to get a better look at all the papers Mallory had set out. “Guess I should go after PathFinder, huh? Could help. What else do we need?” She didn’t let the little flutter of hope break into her voice. Not yet.

Mallory’s answer was simple: “Access to the Tower.”

***

[Hope]

It took a while to get everyone on the same page and moving en masse to Twilight Isle.

Gloria spoke up quietly, “I can’t grant you access to the Tower of Earth, but if it helps, in the meantime I offer the use of the Celestial Tower. Everything you’ve said matches with what I have studied and learned so far. It is good to hear that your process of discovery corroborates my own notes.”

“So what are the chances that Andrea is around and she lets us in?” Jewell didn’t look too hopeful. There were a lot of very angry people in the dueling community these days.

“I don’t know... but we shouldn’t go in unwelcome.” Mallory looked up from her phone after another unsuccessful attempt to reach Andrea and frowned over her shoulder at Jewell. “That’s a line I won’t cross. But maybe one of the mephits, galeb duhr, or elementals will know... how to reach her...”

The witch’s words trailed off as they breached the treeline, and the thick canopy of the forest that covered the heart of the Isle gave way to a skyline dominated by mountains. The craggy peaks and their steep flanks had changed since she had lost the Tower of Earth, but it wasn’t the mutable nature of mighty stone that stopped her in her tracks.

The sky itself was utterly black above the Tower, pierced by lightning without any clouds to anchor them, electricity spiderwebbing across the despairing earth. There was a palpable feel of a sorrowful yearning in the air, devoid of malice in spite of its dark appearance.

Among the boulder-strewn field and the overgrown roots of the mountain wandered countless spectral figures, in soundless conversation, walking from place to place, or sitting down together for meals without any tables, chairs, or food.

“Heyheyheyheyheyheyheyhey!” Gren rapidly pointed at all the ghostly images as if he was the only one that could see them and he was warning everyone else of their imminent danger.

“...Terry?” Mallory watched as a woman familiar to her bent down to tie the shoes of an unfamiliar boy, but neither figure seemed to notice her as she circled around them for a closer look. A number of other figures appeared familiar, though changed in subtle ways — the witch missed what looked like her own spitting image, plus another forty tattoos and minus her horns, strolling past them as she turned pages in a massive old tome.

[Hope]

Eden had blithely followed along after stepping through the portal and accepting her usual freshly-prepared cherry coke delivered by goblin (as was their habit upon the arrival of the former Archmage). Eden sipped through her curly-straw, ice clinking in her glass, as she looked up at the strangely dark sky and the ghost-like figures who seemed to be walking around the Tower. “Did we go through another portal?” Eden turned to look behind her, then turned to look back. She shifted her glass into one hand and snapped her fingers. Above her head a large, bright pink, sparkly umbrella appeared, casting herself and those near her in a protective pink glow.

As the spectral figures wandered, Michelle anxiously looked for one that she hoped to see, but wouldn’t find. Gloria reached out for the young widow’s arm, touching her in a gesture of comfort. Disappointed, Michelle looked over in the direction of the Tower of Water. After a moment of longing, her eyes focused on the massive Tower before them. She could feel the edges of the Void.

Jewell seemed undisturbed by the spectres, though they manifested around her in larger numbers than anyone else, unwittingly drawn by the one that existed on their side while she still walked with the living. “Shoo,” she tried to brushed one of them away from her impatiently, used to active spirits being drawn to her. “I cannot help you.” But these shades seemed to be passive, completely ignoring the party even as they manifested and floated among them, so the faerie looked impatiently around at their small troop, “Right, we really need to go inside. Like now..” She tried to wave another ghost away. “All for sneaking in through a window or something since Andrea doesn’t appear to be home?”

Mallory moved under the rosy glow of Eden’s umbrella as she shook her head at her: “No, we’re still on the Isle... and they can’t hurt you,” she added for Gren with a flicker of a reassuring smile. “And we absolutely are not sneaking in,” she snapped at Jewell as her expression changed. “I said it already— I’m not crossing that line. That’d be like Battlefield Park all over again.”

The faerie rolled her eyes, “Not quite. We’re just looking for some knowledge, not to do harm. But have it your way. We’ll just wait.”

“Good,” Mallory said. She folded her arms and took a few steps away, looking around the apparently empty area in front of the Tower — other than the spirits, at least. It was hard to get a good vantage point on a few of the lower lying areas, little dips and small copses of trees near the base of the tower, so she picked a large, mossy boulder nearby and began her ascent.

What was five feet of extra height suddenly became ten, then twenty, and the ground rumbled as a massive, boulder-formed elemental rose out of the earth with the witch on its shoulder. It slapped its broad, stony hands together with a sound like a thunderclap as eyes like chips of coal swept over the group—

—then over at the witch who was still windmilling for balance, and had just grabbed a craggy eyebrow to steady herself.