System Access

The Western Reach

    The first door added to the new hallway beneath the House was dark and cold, tangibly affected by the mere presence of the doorway to the Western Reaches.  As the door formed, ice and snow gathered around its frame, rimming it in glacial trimmings, ornate and horrible, painful to look at.  

    Fighting past his growing headache, Xakep motioned to touch the door handle, pausing at Father's gentle hand.

    "You don't want to touch that directly...wear this," he said, offering him a gently glowing glove.  In the presence of the doorway, the glove glowed brighter as it got closer to the handle, pulsing slightly on contact.

    Almost immediately the door opened and snow began blowing into the hallway, an unnatural chill settling in the space.  The walls began to glow a deep and menacing orange light that had no source, illuminating the hallway as Xakep and Father pushed past the wind and snow through the doorway.

    As they made it through and into the Western Reach, the door, etched crudely into the side of a slab of frozen stone jutting out of the snow field, slammed shut, the sound echoing out into the distance.  Turning to look at the door, the sound startling the group, Nehrgan's eyes widened as he said, "That's...impossible."

    "What's impossible," Videa asked, already shivering in the cold.

    "My door...its...decaying," he responded, touching the etched frame.  His eyes narrowed as he focused on it, trying to mend it, but his power was opening doors...not repairing them.

    "I don't know what caused this...but we need to keep our business here brief...I don't know how long the door will hold, and the Reaches can have strange effects on magic and System powers," he said, audibly annoyed.

    The wind blew, harder than before, and a strange howling sound carried through the air, ringing through their bodies and filling each of them with a sense of despair.

    The ground glowed a gentle blue, magically lighting up the space around them, even as the day turned to night and the empty black sky met their gazes with impersonal apathy.  Despite the light, there was a deep sense of terror and foreboding that clawed its way into their souls, grabbing hold of the confidence they'd built from their recent successes and shaking them to their cores.  

    Conversation did little to disrupt the feelings they all felt growing, cutting short when nobody could think of ways to carry conversation amidst the oppression of the Reach.

    Father and Nehrgan maintained their composure well, not so deeply connected, but Xakep and Videa were so closely linked that their internal struggles bled into each other, doubling the impact of the strange and implacable feeling and energy.

    The very air pressed on them, pushing them so heavily that when the heavy winds weren't blowing, it took remarkable effort even to take steps forward, slowing progress to a crawl.  It took them hours to make it to a mere five miles, a distance that even the elderly Father should have been able to make within thirty minutes.  Xakep attempted to decrease the effect the gravity had on them, but found that it did almost nothing, even when he used as much energy as he dared to try.  Whatever was causing this, it was incomprehensibly powerful...and even as far from the heart of the Reach as they were...it was clear this was only the beginning of its power.

    Despite this opposition, they felt like they could still push on, knowing they could turn back at any time, get back to the door and seal it so nothing could ever make its way into their home.

    This safety net, however, relied on Xakep and Videa being able to map their path through the Reach, having created a mapping function within themselves prior to this little expedition...and when Xakep went to check that map...he stopped dead in his tracks.

    So focused on just moving forward, nobody noticed he'd stopped for dozens of more steps, even Videa not noticing the rising panic in her partner.

    When Father went to ask Xakep a question, it was he who noticed that their leader had stopped and, in fact, had fallen to his knees in the snow.  

    Trudging back through the calf high snow drifts, they made their way back, somewhat easier moving away from what must have been the heart of the Reach, trying to lift him up, thinking he must have fallen.

    He pushed their hands away, and Videa felt it.

    A pressure from all around him, pushing into him, different than the despair, stronger and much more terrifying.

    It raced along their connection directly to her and, her hand shaking, made a gesture, pulling up her version of the map...only to find...that it was blank...no, worse than blank, everything they'd seen was wrong.

    The map she saw could have very well been from a different world entirely, with different boundaries, a line showing where they'd moved that made no sense, leading off of the edge of the map and reappearing in the center of it.

    She looked around, desperate to find some reference, some landmark that would make the map make sense, but even the world around her was different now, different from what they had literally just seen, and vastly different from the map in front of her.    

    A hand caressed Xakep's cheek from behind, and Videa turned to find nobody there.  A massively powerful wind blew, far stronger than any of the ones before, and the snow around them kicked up into a cyclone of frigid particulate and stones.   

    Directly between them stood an altar, jet black with facets that jutted one way and then appeared another when they looked back at it.  

    Pain lanced through their heads as they tried to make sense of it, to follow the etchings and facets to the same place more than once.  Its very shape defied them, standing perfectly still, but changing as they looked, forming and shifting as they looked upon it, unable to fathom the nature of its existence.  

    Fighting past his growing headache, Xakep motioned to touch the door handle, pausing at Father's gentle hand.

    "You don't want to touch that directly...wear this," he said, offering him a gently glowing glove.  In the presence of the doorway, the glove glowed brighter as it got closer to the handle, pulsing slightly on contact.

    Almost immediately the door opened and snow began blowing into the hallway, an unnatural chill settling in the space.  The walls began to glow a deep and menacing orange light that had no source, illuminating the hallway as Xakep and Father pushed past the wind and snow through the doorway.

    As they made it through and into the Western Reach, the door, etched crudely into the side of a slab of frozen stone jutting out of the snow field, slammed shut, the sound echoing out into the distance.  Turning to look at the door, the sound startling the group, Nehrgan's eyes widened as he said, "That's...impossible."

    "What's impossible," Videa asked, already shivering in the cold.

    "My door...its...decaying," he responded, touching the etched frame.  His eyes narrowed as he focused on it, trying to mend it, but his power was opening doors...not repairing them.

    "I don't know what caused this...but we need to keep our business here brief...I don't know how long the door will hold, and the Reaches can have strange effects on magic and System powers," he said, audibly annoyed.

    The wind blew, harder than before, and a strange howling sound carried through the air, ringing through their bodies and filling each of them with a sense of despair.

    The ground glowed a gentle blue, magically lighting up the space around them, even as the day turned to night and the empty black sky met their gazes with impersonal apathy.  Despite the light, there was a deep sense of terror and foreboding that clawed its way into their souls, grabbing hold of the confidence they'd built from their recent successes and shaking them to their cores.  

    Conversation did little to disrupt the feelings they all felt growing, cutting short when nobody could think of ways to carry conversation amidst the oppression of the Reach.

    Father and Nehrgan maintained their composure well, not so deeply connected, but Xakep and Videa were so closely linked that their internal struggles bled into each other, doubling the impact of the strange and implacable feeling and energy.

    The very air pressed on them, pushing them so heavily that when the heavy winds weren't blowing, it took remarkable effort even to take steps forward, slowing progress to a crawl.  It took them hours to make it to a mere five miles, a distance that even the elderly Father should have been able to make within thirty minutes.  Xakep attempted to decrease the effect the gravity had on them, but found that it did almost nothing, even when he used as much energy as he dared to try.  Whatever was causing this, it was incomprehensibly powerful...and even as far from the heart of the Reach as they were...it was clear this was only the beginning of its power.

    Despite this opposition, they felt like they could still push on, knowing they could turn back at any time, get back to the door and seal it so nothing could ever make its way into their home.

    This safety net, however, relied on Xakep and Videa being able to map their path through the Reach, having created a mapping function within themselves prior to this little expedition...and when Xakep went to check that map...he stopped dead in his tracks.

    So focused on just moving forward, nobody noticed he'd stopped for dozens of more steps, even Videa not noticing the rising panic in her partner.

    When Father went to ask Xakep a question, it was he who noticed that their leader had stopped and, in fact, had fallen to his knees in the snow.  

    Trudging back through the calf high snow drifts, they made their way back, somewhat easier moving away from what must have been the heart of the Reach, trying to lift him up, thinking he must have fallen.

    He pushed their hands away, and Videa felt it.

    A pressure from all around him, pushing into him, different than the despair, stronger and much more terrifying.

    It raced along their connection directly to her and, her hand shaking, made a gesture, pulling up her version of the map...only to find...that it was blank...no, worse than blank, everything they'd seen was wrong.

    The map she saw could have very well been from a different world entirely, with different boundaries, a line showing where they'd moved that made no sense, leading off of the edge of the map and reappearing in the center of it.

    She looked around, desperate to find some reference, some landmark that would make the map make sense, but even the world around her was different now, different from what they had literally just seen, and vastly different from the map in front of her.    

    A hand caressed Xakep's cheek from behind, and Videa turned to find nobody there, its touch lingering on her cheek with an discomforting warmth.  

    A massively powerful wind blew, far stronger than any of the ones before, and the snow around them kicked up into a cyclone of frigid particulate and stones.   

    Directly between them stood an altar, jet black with facets that jutted one way and then appeared another when they looked back at it.  

    Pain lanced through their heads as they tried to make sense of it, to follow the etchings and facets to the same place more than once.  Its very shape defied them, standing perfectly still, but changing as they looked, forming and shifting as they looked upon it, unable to fathom the nature of its existence.  

    It denied analysis, rejected touch and attempts to take it, pushing back on them, creeping into their connection with each other and moving, slippery and grimy like a molded slime, wrapped itself around their minds.

    The ground dropped from beneath them and the altar turned itself inside out so they were inside of it, and surrounded on all sides by the infinite void of space.

    Stars and planets twinkled in the distance as they lost themselves in the altar, rotating gently around them as they fell, floating down to a place that had no name and knew no master.

    As they fell into the unknown, Xakep's head began to shake rapidly, appearing in slow motion to Videa, his features blurring and blending until he seemed as unknowable as the altar.  Lightning raced before her eyes, spiraling her body and locking her in place, forced to watch Xakep with increasing focus as the power holding her in place magnified their abilities and senses.

    Hours passed like this in seconds, and years later, they landed on a grassy hill that rose out of a sea of starlight.  They moved, and their bodies and minds were one, their senses and memories synched in perfect harmony.

    A voice spoke, its tone lower than any ears could hear, and its words were unfamiliar, the vibration of their intent and meaning shaking the foundations of their reality to pieces slowly.

    "An abomination."

    From the depths of the starry ocean surrounding them, it rose.

    Its form turned their eyes against themselves, unable to perceive it, so immense was its body, so alien its curves and edges.

    They fell backwards in horror as its declaration continued to ring through the inky eternity surrounding them, unable to flee from this thing that stood surrounding them, its form seeming legion to their mortal perceptions.    

    They curled into a ball, clutching their heads as their minds began to c***k at the seams, fracturing at fault lines they had no idea existed.

    Then, when they could take no more, it stopped speaking...and reached out, and touched their minds.

    Its touch was the screaming claw of thousands, perhaps millions, all crying out in agony at the same time, a cacophony of nightmarish horror.  Their minds filled with this discordant symphony of the damned, and their vision began to grow dim, overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of mental contact, the images and sounds and feelings and tastes and smells blanked out through pure sensory overload.    

    As the darkness overtook them, a single voice rang out more familiar than the others, its tones and textures bringing them to just enough awareness to reach out and do the one thing they could think to do faced with such opposition.

    Raising their hand weakly toward the thing, the creature sealed within the altar and bound with the magically sealed ice of an entire continent just to keep it in place, they focused their will on that single voice, that single person, that single unsure feeling within the multitude...and they took it.