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Post by Noa on Jan 29, 2023 0:26:23 GMT -6
But it didn't happen very often anymore, or at least not to Noa. And he was pretty confident in his ability to handle anything it threw at him at this point anyway.
Rhys wasn't terribly swayed by his words, however. {You don't know that for sure,} the Faeron said. {Maybe it'll trap you inside or something.}
Noa frowned. Really, he couldn't remember Rhys having been like this before. What had changed to inspire this new attitude? But if Rhys wasn't being forthcoming with the explanations, Noa wasn't about to dig it out of him or anything. It wasn't as if Rhys could stop Noa from heading inside if that was what Noa really wanted to do, and Noa hadn't intended on coming all this way just to back out at the last second.
"Then I simply won't enter the house," Noa said. He was of half a mind not to enter the house anyway.
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Post by Noa on Jan 29, 2023 0:26:34 GMT -6
It was true that he didn't like enclosed spaces that he couldn't escape from. It wasn't claustrophobia; the size of the space didn't matter nearly as much as the availability of an exit. Locked doors were, unfortunately, something that upset him in a way he couldn't entirely rationalize away. It wasn't something many people knew about him... But then, there weren't exactly a lot of people to know things about him to begin with.
Maybe that was what Rhys was channeling, though if that was the case, then it was a new instance of it -- and an inconvenient one. For his own part, Noa didn't feel apprehensive in the least. It was a choice to enter the house itself, and even then, it wasn't guaranteed that they would be trapped inside... Though having had the notion proposed, Noa wasn't eager to enter the house proper to find out, at least not on this particular trip.
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Post by Noa on Jan 29, 2023 0:33:08 GMT -6
At any rate, they'd wasted enough time. Noa wasn't there to wait for Rhys to acquiesce, he was there to collect what he could and then leave. If they found anything of interest worth investigating, then he would pursue it, within reason; he had set aside a good amount of time in their day for that. And it was good to take a break from his research once in a while, especially when he had been hitting as many dead ends lately as he had been, to keep himself from growing incandescent with rage, if nothing else. But the time he'd set aside wasn't for reassuring Rhys out of whatever ridiculous notion the Faeron had developed in the intervening time between their last trip and this one.
Noa pushed open the gate with little fanfare. It swung open readily, and without the creaking that would have accompanied it in some other months.
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Post by Noa on Jan 29, 2023 0:33:19 GMT -6
This, as far as it went, was somewhat heartening. In fact, Noa had the thought that they could afford to come here more often on months when the Mansion wasn't adopting some sort of run-down theme. The gate still worked in the Mansion's more dilapidated periods of the year, but it wasn't as pleasant an experience, and if the matter could be avoided as easily as coming down when the Mansion was presenting its better self, then why suffer? It wasn't as if he was particularly fond of the things he found in October, or in... Which month was it when the whole place was made of driftwood, and reeked to the high heavens of salt and dead fish? Well, all the more reason not to come back during summer in general, even before factoring in the heat.
Of course, nothing terrible happened. And nothing continued to happen after Noa stepped inside.
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Post by Noa on Jan 29, 2023 1:26:11 GMT -6
Whatever Rhys had expected, at least it hadn't befallen them the moment they stepped onto the Mansion grounds proper. He shot Rhys a look as if to say, 'See?' But his efforts were wasted, since the Faeron was too preoccupied with looking around to see if he could spot anything amiss to pay Noa much attention.
Still, as long as the Faeron wasn't causing trouble, Noa supposed he didn't really care what Rhys got up to. And having an extra set of eyes wasn't a bad thing either, though he did personally wish that Rhys would spend his energy helping Noa look for things to take back, rather than scanning for threats that weren't there. Sighing, he closed the gate behind him. A closed door wasn't his favorite thing, but in this case it didn't bother him; there was no ceiling over them, and if push came to shove, he could always fly over.
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Post by Noa on Jan 29, 2023 1:27:38 GMT -6
That wasn't true before he got his hands on a wind node, but it had been one of the first nodes he'd ever made, so he'd had ready access to flight for almost as long as he'd had access to magic. And he hadn't ventured outside the Gracehaven property too often prior to that, due to a mix of health concerns and... well, not really needing to. Tutors had always come to them rather than the other way around, and outside of a few business trips to the Canyons to visit Marric and his kin, most of the business dealings of the Saint-Clair family were taken care of by his parents when he was younger.
With Rhys on the lookout for threats, Noa decided that he may as well take advantage of that, and turn his own full attention to finding knick-knacks that were of a size to be removed and taken home.
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Post by Noa on Jan 29, 2023 1:32:40 GMT -6
Unfortunately, he suspected most of them would be indoors on this occasion, but perhaps he would be wrong about that. What would one find in a month like this? He could hardly guess. Movement at the periphery of his vision told him that there were plenty of those little scurrying creatures this month too, the kind that were sold by another shop in the city -- though the trader didn't take these, so they weren't of much interest to him as prizes for capture. One could get credits for them, but ironically he was doing pretty well for credits at the moment.
There might have been bigger creatures wandering the grounds as well, but Noa didn't see these often, and anyway if there was anything, Rhys would have sounded some sort of alarm by now. In a way, it was one more thing he didn't have to worry about, if Rhys took the lookout duty upon himself.
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Post by Noa on Jan 29, 2023 1:32:51 GMT -6
Noa wandered slowly away from the gate and towards the house. He didn't intend to go inside, but on the walk leading up to it, there were several of the crystal spires, and while these were much too large for him to even think of taking them with him, maybe there would be smaller things at their base. Or, even if not, he could get a closer look at them, and see if he could guess at what they were made of. They were the one thing he couldn't really recall seeing anything similar to on his other visits, so that made them at least mildly interesting.
As he walked further into the property, however, the sky overhead seemed to darken. Noa frowned slightly, looking up, only to be caught off guard by the sight that awaited him. Rather than clouds, it was as if the entire sky was blanketed by night.
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Post by Noa on Jan 29, 2023 1:33:02 GMT -6
Or maybe it would have been more accurate to say that it was as if night had fallen, spontaneously, all at once. In the few steps that he had taken, the entire process of dusk had apparently happened without his having noticed... No, that wasn't quite right either. Noa stopped and looked, really looked at the sky, and realized it was more like a veil. Through it, faintly, he could still see what was probably the real sky. He had come here in the late morning, and the sun was still almost directly overhead, but now its light filtered in very weakly, as if through some sort of massive blanket.
Noa felt a shudder travel down his spine. He had just been thinking that there was no ceiling to the exterior part of the Mansion, but in light of all this, maybe his previous assessment on the matter had been wrong after all.
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Post by Noa on Jan 29, 2023 1:42:47 GMT -6
If this was some sort of canopy, it was definitely far above the top of the gate... wasn't it? But having seen the sky change, Noa was no longer so sure. He hadn't wanted to leave right after arriving, but it was also true that he hadn't anticipated this turn of events.
Rhys had noticed it too. {What -- How is it doing that?} he asked, to which Noa had no answer. How did the Mansion do any of the things that it did? There hadn't been any conclusive papers published on that topic either, though there had been plenty of speculative articles written over the years. Nothing worth reading, in his opinion, having skimmed enough of them to know that the bulk of that sort of thing was nothing but drivel.
But there was a difference between speculating from the safety of his home, and being out in the thick of it on site.
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Post by Noa on Jan 29, 2023 1:43:01 GMT -6
And while Noa didn't intend to go home, he did want to make sure that he had an escape route in case things went awry. So he turned and walked back to the gate through which he had entered... And this time, as he walked, he noticed his surroundings lightening again, so that by the time he reached the gate and looked up overhead, it was the regular sky that he was seeing.
That was why he hadn't noticed it at first, in retrospect. It hadn't set in until he was some ways into the property itself. The fact that he could now see the real sky again was somewhat reassuring, and when he tried to pull open the gate, it swung towards him with no more resistance than it had put up when he had first entered it. So he wasn't trapped, at least not by the front gate.
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Post by Noa on Jan 29, 2023 1:43:12 GMT -6
That was all the reassurance Noa needed to continue his foray into the Mansion's grounds, though this time he didn't close the gate behind him. Just a precautionary measure... Or maybe a token one, to reassure the irrational part of his mind that what it feared would not come to pass.
{Are you sure we shouldn't just go home? The sky was all wrong,} Rhys said. Noa could feel the shudder traveling down the Faeron's spine.
"The place is just putting on a show," Noa said. "I don't want to leave before we find anything to bring back, and we can still leave through the gate anytime we want." That was what he had been checking for just now, after all.
Rhys subsided, but he wound himself closer to Noa, and huddled down low. Noa, for his part, made his way back to the spire of crystal he had meant to inspect before.
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Post by Noa on Jan 29, 2023 1:52:32 GMT -6
The sky darkened again, but this time he was prepared for it, and it didn't bother him anymore. It was still a little strange, a little unusual, but it was always like that here. On this occasion it just took a turn he hadn't been expecting at first.
The lack of light did make it harder to inspect anything though, much less look for things to take home. Sighing, he said, "Rhys, light." The Faeron was a lot more useful now than he had been when Noa had first started exploring the Mansion, having numerous spells under his proverbial belt, and there was one particular to familiars that allowed them to act as a light source. That was what Noa was calling on now.
Rhys knew well enough what Noa meant. A moment later, soft light began to emanate from his body. It wasn't the clear and bright light of day, but it was enough to see by.
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Post by Noa on Jan 29, 2023 1:56:19 GMT -6
Noa would know; he had used this exact capability of Rhys's in the mines before, when it was just the two of them. Nowadays he felt inclined to use it even when they weren't, since the gargoyle wasn't exactly a light source even when it was present, though it did do the digging in Noa's place when they went together.
The soft light cast by Rhys gave the crystal spire a different atmosphere than it had had when viewed from outside, in bright sunlight. Before, it had looked like nothing so much as a giant icicle. The cold temperature helped the impression; it was, after all, still January, with the chill to match. But the gentler lighting seemed to bring out another element to it, and it was no longer the nearly transparent color it had been before. Glints of other hues appeared, blue and green and violet, with occasional flashes of something more vibrant.
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Post by Jack on Jan 29, 2023 11:09:20 GMT -6
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