prophecized | I dreamed of this path I walked as it was then

When Elora turns to look behind her, she feels unmistakably like something has been lost. It isn't just Graydon, either, though there's an ache in her chest when she thinks about him being left behind, out of reach; it definitely isn't whatever sheltered idea she had of the world before she followed the rescue party out of the castle. It's what she felt, maybe, that power, that potential. Even if she didn't — very much doesn't — want what the Crone was offering her, that doesn't mean it didn't feel good. Maybe that's just how life works, though. One door opens and another one closes, or something cliché like that. She left behind the safety and security of the life she'd known for twenty years and found it was all a lie in the first place, but discovered, with a lot of trial and effort, something inside her she never could have imagined. She isn't and won't ever be what the Crone would have had her be, but she's going back with some better sense of who she actually is, and with the family, however odd and makeshift, she never had. Whatever comes next, she has no idea, except to be certain that this isn't really over. No matter what it is, though, she won't be facing it alone.

"Hey," calls Kit from up ahead, pulling Elora from her thoughts. "Come on. We need you up here." Weeks ago — or maybe days, or maybe months, time on the Shattered Sea impossible to comprehend — she would have thought that Kit had lost her damn mind if she'd heard something like that. Now, she returns her friend's smile and hurries forward a few steps to catch up with the others. She steals one more glance back over her shoulder, that haunted, longing feeling whisper-quiet and yet nothing she can ignore.

And then she turns forward, and for the second time in recent memory, the world has utterly changed in an instant.

Gone is the dusty air of the Immemorial City and its eerie golden glow. Gone are her friends. She can hear and see a few people not terribly far away, but no one who should be there, who was a few steps ahead of her just a moment ago. "Oh, come on," she mutters to herself, frustrated and frightened in equal measure. Shivering, the air so much colder than it just was, she wraps her arms around herself, only to drop them a moment later and press her fingertips to her temples instead, as if trying to bring herself back to reality. "Okay. This is not right. This can't be right."

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Is she? It's a simple question, but Elora genuinely doesn't know the answer. She can't be sure if she's all right when she doesn't know where she is or what happened. A part of her wonders, for a moment, if this is a trick again, the work of the Crone, but she rules it out as quickly as it occurs to her. The Crone is gone, she knows it, she feels it. Their fight isn't over, but the battle, for now, is won.

It isn't much of a reassurance when she doesn't know where she is or where the others are.

"I think so?" she says, clearly uncertain and a little apologetic. "But I am... really lost. I have no idea how I got here, actually."

"Yes, it can be quite disorienting," Loki said, his suspicions all but confirmed.

"I'm sorry to be the bearer of rather odd news, but you're in a place called Darrow. Unfortunately, I can't be any more specific than that. Two years ago, I arrived very much as you did, from somewhere far away, and very much against my will."

"...Yeah, I don't have any idea what you just said," Elora admits, grimacing apologetically. The words themselves make sense, of course, but that doesn't help her grasp what any of them mean in this context. They were about to try to leave the Immemorial City, but having gotten only a few steps, she doesn't know how she could have arrived somewhere else, or why she's suddenly alone, or how it got so cold so quickly.

"How did I get here? Where is here?"

Inwardly, Loki sighed.

Why was this never as easy as he'd hoped it would be?

"Well, let's see... It's a place seemingly cut off from the rest of time and space," he said, demonstrating absolutely herculean patience for a man with hardly any patience at all. "How or why we're here, I honestly couldn't say. But unless you're a great deal more powerful than I am, which—" He smiled charmingly. "I doubt, then you won't be able to leave of your own accord. Because none of us can."

She is powerful. In truth, Elora doesn't know just how much so. After all, it's turned out, these past few weeks, that she's far more powerful than she ever could have anticipated, and still she has the sense that she's only just scratched the surface, so many of her lessons hurried and desperate. There's a part of her, stubborn, that wants to counter his claim, to assert that she might be more powerful than he is, mostly just for the sake of it. But she doesn't know him, either, or what he might be capable of, and right now, with as lost as she is, she needs his help too much to go on the offensive.

"So... what you're saying is, I got kidnapped by a city," she says, voice flat, not quite incredulous. As crazy as it sounds, he seems like he means it. "I mean, that sounds like a kidnapping." It sounds a little like what happened to Airk, too, but she tries her best to ignore that chilly fear. "A really weird, impossible kidnapping, but still."

"In a word, yes," Loki admitted, arms falling at his sides. He might as well be direct, and thankfully, she didn't seem all that surprised by the magical bits.

"As far as any of us can gather, whomever you were with? They won't notice your absence. You're still there, doing all the things you're meant to. It's a bit like experiencing a parallel life."

Noticing the way she held herself, arms tucked closely at her sides, Loki conjured a long coat, exactly her size and of a color complimentary to what she wore. It materialized in a flicker of green magic, and he held it out to her with an arched brow.

"Oh! Oh, wow, thank you," Elora says, grateful, surprised but unfazed by the appearance of the coat. She definitely wouldn't have expected some stranger to conjure something warmer for her to wear out of thin air, but magic is something innately familiar to her now, even if it doesn't always feel like it is. None of that still really makes much sense to her. Neither does this, so strange that she somehow circles around to feeling calm about it.

There's a little bit of comfort in what he says, too, if also a slight sting. Having spent her whole life not knowing what she was meant to be doing, it's jarring to be so abruptly ripped away from it all over again. But at least, if she understands him right, she won't seem to have suddenly ditched her friends or been spirited away by some agent of the Wyrm's.

She slides the coat on, as much to give herself a moment to think as because she's cold, although she's very much that, too. "I think this is all gonna take a minute to sink in. Or... a lot more than that."

"I've been here for two years. I still haven't entirely gotten used to it," Loki admitted, with a rueful smile.

"I do apologize that I don't have clearer answers." Not too terribly long ago, he wouldn't have bothered to consider that his own frustration and restlessness might have been equally felt among the others in the same circumstances.

"I am Loki, by the way." No titles. No cognomen or sobriquet. Simply Loki.

While he gives her only a single name, something about the way he carries himself, or maybe just the twenty years she spent as a servant girl in the castle kitchen, leads Elora to duck her head in acknowledgment at the introduction — not as deferential as a full bow or curtsy, but a sign of respect all the same. Given the way he magicked her a coat out of thin air, there's definitely something noteworthy about him, anyway, aside from the mere fact of his stopping to help her.

"I'm Elora," she replies, keeping her own introduction as simple as that. "And it's okay. I mean, it's not, but that's not your fault. Besides, I'm kind of getting used to things not making sense."

I dreamed of this path I walked as it was then

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