what in the

[middlingalong]

Aurin is on the communication crystal with Mial, mid-whine about his most recent breakup (he liked this one!), gradually becoming less deaf to attempts to change the subject, when the crystal abruptly goes dead.

Comments

[thisvorlunatic]

...what?

Mial blinks at his crystal a few times, analyzes it - yup, totally broken, the call didn't just end abruptly - and then teleports to Aurin's house. To find out what.

[alicornucopia]

Aurin is not there anymore.

There is some slight damage to the doorway of the house, like something large crashed through it, and on the lawn an enormous gold dragon (too large to have performed this property damage without destroying the entire structure) whom he may presume to be his aunt is standing, breathing hard, curls of flame licking around her jaws, staring down the smoking ruins of something that looks like a thirty-foot snake with jointed navy-blue plates for scales and a full length mirror for a face. She doesn't notice Mial right away.

[thisvorlunatic]

"...Hi, Aunt Alys," says Mial.

[alicornucopia]

She swaps immediately into human form, white-faced.

"It," she says, of the snake thing. "It."

[thisvorlunatic]

...he looks at his dead communication crystal. He loos at the mirror-faced snake thing.

He doesn't quite know what to say.

[alicornucopia]

"It appeared. Must have been pushed from somewhere but I don't know what it is," says Alys, shaking. "It appeared and it - put him through that plate, mirror, thing, on its front end, and he was gone, and if he'd been swallowed, if he'd lost a form he would have burst right out of it, if - It chased me and I got out of the house and burned it and if he was there if he'd lost a form he'd have -"

[thisvorlunatic]

"He was talking to me," says Mial, holding up the crystal. "And now this isn't a communication crystal anymore, the spell just broke... that also wouldn't have happened if he'd been eaten by a giant snake, I don't think. I'm not sure what makes a communication cryatal do that, I don't think it happens if the paired crystal is just destroyed..."

He goes over to inspect the mirror-faced snake.

[alicornucopia]

It is not, on close inspection, much of a snake. For one thing, it has the mirror plate thingy in complete lieu of... a head at all. No eyes, no mouth unless the mirror counts; its spine goes halfway up the surface's backing and melts smoothly into it from there. The scales are huge, and interlock in a distinctly inorganic way, hinged in places, accordioned to collapse when it bends. Some of the bits have been warped with heat; part of its side has burst open and it is leaking dark sludge which does not smell terribly pleasant.

[thisvorlunatic]

"Eugh," says Mial.

He considers poking the mirror, decides that would be very stupid, rummages in his pockets, comes up with a small wooden button, and throws it at the snake's mirrored end.

[alicornucopia]

It bounces off.

[thisvorlunatic]

Because of properties of the button, or properties of the dead mirror-snake? Hard to tell. This is not a productive line of inquiry. What the fuck happened to Aurin.

"I'm... going to go look up what does cause a communication crystal to go totally inert," Mial decides, and he teleports home to investigate this question.

[middlingalong]

Meanwhile:

"AAAAAAAH!"

[eversomuchfun]

It's late evening, in a grassy area decorated with variously shaped stone objects. Some of them may have writing on their surfaces, but there's not enough light to read it by. There are also smallish stone buildings here and there.

Someone sticks his head out of the nearest such building.

"Do shut up," he says, in a language which Aurin has never heard of until now.

[middlingalong]

"I would apologize for disturbing your rest but I have other things on my mind right now such as where the fuck am I," says Aurin.

[eversomuchfun]

"Sunnydale," says the someone. Then he takes a closer look at Aurin, and amends, "Which is a town on Earth. Where were you previously?"

[middlingalong]

"I was in my house! Not, say, a sending circle!"

[eversomuchfun]

"Yes, and then what happened?"

He steps more fully out of his crypt.

[middlingalong]

"And then I was here! And my crystal's gone dead," he brandishes a small green crystal, "and I've never heard this language before in my life and you'd think I'd know all the ones with any currency such that you'd deploy them to complain at a random shouting fellow, wouldn't you..."

[eversomuchfun]

"Why, pray tell, would you think that?"

[middlingalong]

"Oh, I s'pose it's dark. 'M a dragon."

[eversomuchfun]

The stranger looks at Aurin. He sniffs the air experimentally.

"You don't seem very dragonlike to me."

[middlingalong]

"...Did you just smell me to try to figure out if I'm a dragon?" inquires Aurin. "And then get the wrong answer?"

[eversomuchfun]

"I said you don't seem very dragonlike; I didn't say that you weren't a dragon," he says. "You smell perfectly human, but that's clearly not definitive. What's a sending circle?"

[middlingalong]

"Wizard thing. The sort of environment which, unlike my living room, is usually associated with suddenly being in another world with unfamiliar languages and people who don't know what dragons are."

[eversomuchfun]

"I'd credit local phenomena if there were any suspicious characters nearby, but there aren't unless you count me, and I didn't just summon you here from another world."