Hall of Infinite Doors
You turn the extravagant handle and open the door. What greets you beyond is a sucking void of blackness vaster and deeper than anything you could imagine. You feel a shifting sense of vertigo and a rush of motion as you're sucked into the abyss. The white aperture of the doorway spirals away above you as you tumble through it, and then the darkness is inside your head and you're gone.
Images play through your head like a story, though realer and clearer than anything you could imagine. You see a green, rocky land cut through with wide roads, populated by dark-haired smiling folk in clean linen clothes and guarded by strong men and women atop powerful foreign horses. You see the mountains that ring this land and hem it in, and the cities that survive there, rich beyond their neighbors. You see a northern border free, though occasionally colored with battle, and an unwalled southern expanse that leads into another, allied country peopled with farmers and tradesmen. You see vinyards, gem and metal mines, orchards bearing apples and pears and apricots. Your vision spirals over this place and you know it not just as a country, but as YOUR country. In a very real sense, you own it.
Your vision continues to whirl, settling over a large city situated by a flowing mountain stream, and the many-towered castle of purplish-gray stone that sits in its midst. Made of delicate spires strung together by a lattice of high walkways, the palace is more a work of art than a defensible structure, but the sheer wealth involved in its creation and used for its prevention discourages attack. Again you feel a sense of ownership, and you know that this as well is yours. Your vision dips down towards the palace, flies through the colored glass of a sunlit window and into the bookshelf-walled room high on an interior spire.
You see a young man reclining on a sumptuous bed. He's tall and lean, with broad shoulders and a natural tendency towards strength, though he's wiry and off his excercise. His hair is a deep blue-black and is face is fair and clean-shaven. His voice, when he mutters in his sleep, is deep, and as your vision plunges further you know this man is you.
Suddenly, your sense of perspective pops like a bubble. You wake up, inhaling a gasp of clean cold air. But now you're on the bed, curled in the deep red comforter, the owner of this young body and suddenly aware of everything that's been going on, of the entire history of this place.
You are Prince Eliben of the Castle of Swans, the younger brother of King Diurden and his advisor. You are twenty-two years old and your brother's twin, younger than him by two minutes, and you've been settling into your responsabilities well after your father's death on a fox hunt one year previous. You and your wife, Aline, have handled much of your brother the King's affairs since your father's death, for though your brother seemed to be a graceful and strong person at the very beginning of his reign, lately the stresses of his position have been affecting him in curious ways. Though, outwardly, there's few problems in the Castle of Swans, anyone with any inkling about the royal family knows something's amiss.
It was three months ago that the sorceress Raeden arrived from the blinding bright and imperceptible North, and ever since then nothing's gone right. You think sorceress, but she's given no outward demonstration of any hidden abilities. You are a smart man, though, and have noticed things. She is an odd individual with odd beliefs, and she dresses in flamboyant fashion and carries certain articles on her person that you just cannot perceive the utility of. She speaks several languages, many of which you doubt exist anywhere else in the mortal world, and has taken for her own a distant southward spire which she keeps permanently locked and forbids the servants to enter. What's more, she burrowed her way into your brother's favor incredibly quickly, and he was swift in bestowing upon her the hospitality of the royal family and a position as his advisor. What she says tends to come true, especially when people are involved, and ever since her arrival your brother has been spending more and more time in the locked spire with her, and has been lazy and of different spirits otherwise. He has delegated most of his responsabilities as King to his advisors, though still enjoys all the exotic and sumptuous pleasures of being King. His tastes have grown more decadent and dark since Raeden came, and as the months went by, she has gotten much more of her will performed through his words than any other. Sometimes, servants and staff who express interest in Raeden simply disappear. Some are never seen again, while others reappear later strangely altered or crippled, and often must be killed due to their peculiar and new states of mind.
What's worse, Raeden has recently acquired something that she's shown is quite precious to her. As an advisor to your brother the King, she is in charge of all military matters of your country, and had a month previous sent a raid into a small fledgling community deep in the western mountains. They returned with a kidnapped woman; though your brother did not know her, you, as a diplomat and scholar of foreign matters, do. She is the princess Selene of Seno, a group of mountain tribe-villages united under a single religion, and she is apparently a figure of tremendous religious importance to them. Ever since then, your country's western settlements have suffered continuous raids from the mountainmen, and the princess Selene has been stored in a secret room under Raeden's tower, where it is hinted that she is kept forever asleep until the sorceress is capable of working her will on her.
Nothing's gone right since the sorceress appeared. Your brother dissolves in decadence and play. You've sent your wife Aline and your young daughter Atroa to your mountainside villa Stormwatch, so that even if you can do nothing about your brother, they don't suffer. Your younger sister, Adissenea, spends more and more time with Raeden every day, apparently regarding her as a friend, as though Raeden is unknowably old, her appearance is that of a young girl no older than fifteen. And every day your country comes a little bit more apart, and there's not much you can do to stem the tide of darkness.
You've kept your true opinions hidden for fear of upsetting the balance in the Castle, but you decide that today you can't keep up the masquerade any longer. Everything is made more difficult by Raeden's actions, and you intend to brush away some of the veil of mystery that surrounds her.
There must be SOMEONE you can talk to.
Images play through your head like a story, though realer and clearer than anything you could imagine. You see a green, rocky land cut through with wide roads, populated by dark-haired smiling folk in clean linen clothes and guarded by strong men and women atop powerful foreign horses. You see the mountains that ring this land and hem it in, and the cities that survive there, rich beyond their neighbors. You see a northern border free, though occasionally colored with battle, and an unwalled southern expanse that leads into another, allied country peopled with farmers and tradesmen. You see vinyards, gem and metal mines, orchards bearing apples and pears and apricots. Your vision spirals over this place and you know it not just as a country, but as YOUR country. In a very real sense, you own it.
Your vision continues to whirl, settling over a large city situated by a flowing mountain stream, and the many-towered castle of purplish-gray stone that sits in its midst. Made of delicate spires strung together by a lattice of high walkways, the palace is more a work of art than a defensible structure, but the sheer wealth involved in its creation and used for its prevention discourages attack. Again you feel a sense of ownership, and you know that this as well is yours. Your vision dips down towards the palace, flies through the colored glass of a sunlit window and into the bookshelf-walled room high on an interior spire.
You see a young man reclining on a sumptuous bed. He's tall and lean, with broad shoulders and a natural tendency towards strength, though he's wiry and off his excercise. His hair is a deep blue-black and is face is fair and clean-shaven. His voice, when he mutters in his sleep, is deep, and as your vision plunges further you know this man is you.
Suddenly, your sense of perspective pops like a bubble. You wake up, inhaling a gasp of clean cold air. But now you're on the bed, curled in the deep red comforter, the owner of this young body and suddenly aware of everything that's been going on, of the entire history of this place.
You are Prince Eliben of the Castle of Swans, the younger brother of King Diurden and his advisor. You are twenty-two years old and your brother's twin, younger than him by two minutes, and you've been settling into your responsabilities well after your father's death on a fox hunt one year previous. You and your wife, Aline, have handled much of your brother the King's affairs since your father's death, for though your brother seemed to be a graceful and strong person at the very beginning of his reign, lately the stresses of his position have been affecting him in curious ways. Though, outwardly, there's few problems in the Castle of Swans, anyone with any inkling about the royal family knows something's amiss.
It was three months ago that the sorceress Raeden arrived from the blinding bright and imperceptible North, and ever since then nothing's gone right. You think sorceress, but she's given no outward demonstration of any hidden abilities. You are a smart man, though, and have noticed things. She is an odd individual with odd beliefs, and she dresses in flamboyant fashion and carries certain articles on her person that you just cannot perceive the utility of. She speaks several languages, many of which you doubt exist anywhere else in the mortal world, and has taken for her own a distant southward spire which she keeps permanently locked and forbids the servants to enter. What's more, she burrowed her way into your brother's favor incredibly quickly, and he was swift in bestowing upon her the hospitality of the royal family and a position as his advisor. What she says tends to come true, especially when people are involved, and ever since her arrival your brother has been spending more and more time in the locked spire with her, and has been lazy and of different spirits otherwise. He has delegated most of his responsabilities as King to his advisors, though still enjoys all the exotic and sumptuous pleasures of being King. His tastes have grown more decadent and dark since Raeden came, and as the months went by, she has gotten much more of her will performed through his words than any other. Sometimes, servants and staff who express interest in Raeden simply disappear. Some are never seen again, while others reappear later strangely altered or crippled, and often must be killed due to their peculiar and new states of mind.
What's worse, Raeden has recently acquired something that she's shown is quite precious to her. As an advisor to your brother the King, she is in charge of all military matters of your country, and had a month previous sent a raid into a small fledgling community deep in the western mountains. They returned with a kidnapped woman; though your brother did not know her, you, as a diplomat and scholar of foreign matters, do. She is the princess Selene of Seno, a group of mountain tribe-villages united under a single religion, and she is apparently a figure of tremendous religious importance to them. Ever since then, your country's western settlements have suffered continuous raids from the mountainmen, and the princess Selene has been stored in a secret room under Raeden's tower, where it is hinted that she is kept forever asleep until the sorceress is capable of working her will on her.
Nothing's gone right since the sorceress appeared. Your brother dissolves in decadence and play. You've sent your wife Aline and your young daughter Atroa to your mountainside villa Stormwatch, so that even if you can do nothing about your brother, they don't suffer. Your younger sister, Adissenea, spends more and more time with Raeden every day, apparently regarding her as a friend, as though Raeden is unknowably old, her appearance is that of a young girl no older than fifteen. And every day your country comes a little bit more apart, and there's not much you can do to stem the tide of darkness.
You've kept your true opinions hidden for fear of upsetting the balance in the Castle, but you decide that today you can't keep up the masquerade any longer. Everything is made more difficult by Raeden's actions, and you intend to brush away some of the veil of mystery that surrounds her.
There must be SOMEONE you can talk to.