Turn 143
Use 10 shards to double up on my Kinesis affinity. Run to the portal, using kinesis to boost myself there.
STR [3]
CMP [6+2=8]
POT [5+1=6]
SPD [(6)/2+3=6]
There were times when Henry greatly approved of wind. Usually, the time was it was hot. Or where he needed for his cape to billow heroically. Or if he wanted his hair to look extra spectacular. Or his coat extra menacing. This was not one of those times, and the wind, while having fantastic effect on his hair and shirt, was unwelcome. Henry braced himself against the ground, but the wind was too strong and Henry felt himself slowly slipping away from the portal. If physical strength was not enough, it was time to go with magic. Henry concentrated power on his feet and leapt forward kicking out craters of dirt. Wind kept him from making any large leaps, but he managed to reach the portal in less than a dozen steps.
CMP [6+1+3=10]
POT [4+1+5=10]
LUCK [7]
Xom was holding firmly onto a rock and was, for the moment, safe from the chance of exploring space without a spacesuit. But that only applied for as long as he did not try to search for the key, or go into a portal, or try anything other than holding on until all of the islands air escaped. It was not particularly delightful prospect of thought, and Xom began looking around for a way out. He looked at the mouth of the volcano. He could try jumping. Wind would carry him quite far. But if he went too far, he would need to learn to breathe vacuum. If he went not far enough, he'd have a chance to train swimming in lava. His eyes wandered further away from the volcano and momentarily stopped at the salt plains. Xom smiled. He took out his five shards, tossed them into volcano's mouth, and followed up with a blast of magic to the portal itself. Beam of light above the portal wavered and shrunk until it was a barely noticeable line. Then the light surged outwards, claiming Xom and greater part of the volcano.
Jase looked around. He was on a portal pad, forged of solid stone, same as it was when he first entered. Grass around the portal also seemed identical, just as the gang of wizards around him. Though there were diferences enough to keep him from nostalgia.
There were a total of nine mages with him included that apeared on the pad. Seva was also looking around curiously, but that only lasted for a moment before he was distracted by his raptors geting distracted and starting to run around, chasing eachother. Bernardo was also there, checking his variety of suspicious looking tools and tossing them out one after another, as his equipment was not designed to survive traveling through such a portal once, let alone twice.
Cuberac was there, dragging along almost unconcious Blake with his one good arm. He dropped the demonologist in surprise as he saw towering T-Rex that was Bob. Behind the duo stood Illium, wondering if portal defences protected from more than magic, say, molotovs to be more specific.
Tall, rocky mountains separated main portal from a sprawling eldritch field. Origins of the field were unclear, but the ground was somewhat spongy and full of tiny holes. It was as if untold amounts of ants decided to make their homes in the pale dirt, digging up millions of tiny tunnels wherever eyes could see.
Gambler and Skeliborn placed down James' glass coffin and together with Nihilum and Eterna took a look around. The ground, despite the tunnels, did not seem any worse to walk on than common dirt. There were, however, some other, larger curiosities. Four of them were near a pool of some brown, thick liquid. It resembled some sort of slime in texture and large bubbles seemed to rise from below at semi regular intervals. Some distance away stood towers of what appeared to be reflective and colorful crystal. Several figures stood near one of the towers, where they gathered in formation and charged forward.
As they approached, Trio of mages saw that the figures were in fact skeletons, with spikes of crystals growing out of them in a way uncannily resembling bone cancer. Not a single bit of flesh could be seen remaining on them. The swamp plat out a particularly large bubble, and from it emerged a heap of meat. It was as if someone had piled up three hundredth pounds of eels into one place and painted them all red and yellow. The mass was not alone, as several other deformed piles left the lakeshore. Against all sense, they somehow managed to move at half decent speed and charged towards the approaching skeletons. The two groups tore into each other, bone tearing flesh and flesh breaking bone. Soon, more figures began gathering at the towers and in greater numbers, while telling popping sounds signaled emerging of more flesh heaps.
In another direction entirely, within great forest to the south, lone figure awoke among the woods. Shias looked around, and saw a pair of squirrels playing in branches of a tall oak tree. Beneath them, a wild boar was crunching acorns that had fallen on the ground. For the moment, there seemed to be nothing dangerous nearby, though Shias knew well how quickly that could change.
In the lake to the east a figure emerged from under the slow rolling waves. Another soon followed it. Kahel and Chorkinaan were in the process of reconsidering the wisdom of their initial choice, as water around them proved to be chilling cold. It wasn't uniformly cold; rather there were several streams of chilling water mixing through mostly bearable temperatures, as if someone had thrown a block of ice into a pool. It could had been exactly the case, thought Kahel, looking at floating icebergs not too far away. Fair distance beneath the two wizards, Jiksap was swimming around, blissfully unaware of how cold the water around him was. There were more than just gills that he had gained trying to access underwater treasures.
First thing that Xom noticed was that the rock he was holding on to was slipping downwards from his grasp. Then his mind took note of how light he felt. This was followed by sudden realization that the rest of the volcano was no longer connected to the chunk to which he was holding to. While he began wondering what could had happened to so much rock, a quicker part of his brain deduced that he was falling. Xom peered over what he figured was the edge of his chunk and noticed that he and about thousand tons worth of various sized rocks were falling onto a land that seemed to be spewing boiling hot water. If his elemental form had possessed the required glands, he felt he'd most likely be overcome by adrenaline.
Invisible and undetectable to other mages, mostly due to not yet being truly and entirely on the island, Viznor Flare and Gloomy were mostly making themselves busy, but each sparring an occasional glance to nearby windows. They were still all blocked by aether, meaning that they were still trapped inside, though neither of them saw it as such. Viznor was working in the library while Flare labored with his Golem and Gloomy toiled in the halls. All of them had some plans that did not require outside world, but they all noticed that the purple wall behind the windows began to fade.
Amulet on Jase's neck gained another crack.