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The next arch portal showed a familiar scene. A levitating barge in the Sea of Grass, with its sailors fighting off a Great Viper using spears. A trio of adventurers at the helm assisted with crossbows and spells. The Viper wasn’t big enough to be Big Betty. The fight seemed to be a stalemate as the great snake couldn’t claim any easy prey, but the defenders of the barge had difficulty in really hurting the larger beast. Mira kept walking.
She found the next archway’s view was focused on a crystal obelisk standing tall in a desert, maybe the Yellow Desert in the Kushae province far to the east, judging by the color of the sand. She could see with her gifted sight eight ley lines, crossing and focused on the crystal spire. It was powerful, but she didn’t recognize any of the sigils she could see and didn’t understand what it might do. Despite the powerful resonances, nothing in the scene changed. Mira’s eyebrows furrowed; she had no idea what this was. She had thought she knew all the Realm’s secrets.
Mira continued her tour. The next Arch had a scene that was high in the frozen heights of the Temblor Mountains in the Reaches, not terribly far from her home in the Thallesadra valley. A white dragon was defending its nest, and its eggs, from a group of hungry Yeti while a blizzard raged over the battle. Mira shuddered; glad she was not physically present. Any one of those beasts or even the mountain itself could prove fatal to an unprepared traveler. She hated the mountains with a passion, never taking quests involving snow without special enchantments to avoid the cold.
The next shimmering image displayed was a sight that would be astounding to even the most well-traveled adventurer. It showed a city of gold and diamond below a high mountain plateau where a large table with thrones made of raw gemstones sat. Above and beyond the tableau, the globe that contained the entire Mythic Realm hung high in the sky. This was the fabled City of the Gods! The last time Mira had been there, she had narrowly succeeded in surviving the Game of Powers.
She quickly stepped past, thankful none of the New Pantheon was there. The perception of gods was too powerful to assume the scrying portal wouldn’t be detected. Either Glaucus was supremely powerful or a fool, maybe both, to leave this portal viewing their council room. People who came to the attention of the gods usually regretted it.
As she approached the next arch, she could hear crashing water. The shimmering pane across the arch shared a scene of a powerful martial warrior meditating at the base of a waterfall. Mira could see the power of the Qi imbued in the water. Some natural treasure must have been in the water. The warrior's tattoos glowed with energy as he cycled his own Qi, building a resonance to grow his power. Mira smiled and moved on, her own Qi wasn’t to that level, but seeing a true master was inspiring.
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As peaceful and calming as the last image had been, this one was the opposite. Mira’s nose wrinkled as a foul smell emanated from the view of shattered crags of obsidian rock. Above dark clouds were illuminated with flashes of red lightning. Mira’s skin rose with goosebumps as primal fear settled upon her. The Abyssal planes. Home of demons and monsters, where constant strife and pain were the only measure of time. Mira quickly moved on, shuddering with contained fear.
The last arch showed a young human, camped on a canyon ledge directly over a powerful Mana Font. The light was overpowering to her mystic senses. The man must have been a practitioner of magic, he was carefully gouging the rock with a chisel to make a magic circle. To Mira’s critical and experienced eye, the man was clearly a novice. The runes were sloppy, and several sigils were inverted.
“What does that fool think he’s doing?”, Mira murmured.
His ritual circle preparations were “completed” and the man pulled an enchanted knife and activated the complex sigil array. As power began rushing through the design, the man slashed at his arms with the knife. The blood danced into the magic circle's pattern and the Akasic energy poured into the man. Screaming, he dove into the center of the font and disappeared in a flash of lighting.
“Damn, if that’s what the Realms are teaching outside of the Arcanum, I can see why this place is a constant battle zone. That poor idiot. He must have realized that would kill him, right Tiamat?” Mira said. Not getting an answer, she tore her gaze off the view.
“T?” she asked again as Tiamat’s claws dug deeply into her shoulder. She yelped in pain and saw Tiamat was looking back. She gasped as she saw a subtle stream of mist drifting out of the Abyssal arch. Mira screamed as a massive “Abyssal Soul Drinker” crossed the plane of the open portal. Its face was a gruesome animal skull atop a hound's body with writhing tentacles along both flanks.
Mage and familiar both froze in fear as the Abyssal mists spread up Mira’s legs. The mist leached her Qi and it felt like her very life was draining away. Her muscles locked up, freezing in body and mind until the thing’s head turned their way and the monster howled!
The terror of the monster’s gaze and blood-curdling howl pushed all of their panic buttons and unlocked their immobility. Tiamat flew up and Mira ran towards the exit door. The space to escape stretched in front of her desperate scramble as she heard the beast give chase. Her enchanted boots refused to work in the spatially distorted room. She could almost feel the hound's breath on her neck when she tripped and went sprawling still ten feet away from the exit.
The beast was atop her instantly lashing her with its tentacles, it reared up with its skeletal-headed maw wide to bite when Tiamat flashed in splashing it with flames in a strafing attack. Mira flipped around and crawled forward until a claw dug into her calf and dragged her back.
Mira felt the beast's teeth, not just in her back, but in her soul. She howled in agony as her very Qi core was punctured and the creature pulled at her vital energy.
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