Smoke enveloped Ivkarha, and the scent of incense as it burned in the braziers set around her. Rahaam and Niyaro had taken her to a chamber within the tower, one empty put for the sigils upon the floor, picked out in gold and silver and precious metal, of carnelian and lapis lazuli and stones precious in nature. The sigils twisted and curled around the room until they reached the centre, forming an eye-bending pattern that seemed to twist the fabric of reality, for there the shapes seemed not to sit right, the floor wavering when viewed, tugging the eye this way and that.

A series of bronze barziers stood at points about the room, and to each the old sages added oils and incense and light, so that the room was filled with the smoke and scents of them, each different, each fighting for supremacy as they blended one into the other.

Ivkarha was le into the centre of the room, and as she walked the last part, the whole world seemed to tilt beneath her, swaying first one way and then the other so that she had to fight to retain her footing, even as her mind tried to battle with her senses, to tell her this could not be.

When she at last stood at the heart of the chamber, she sat, the sword resting across her lap, fingers curled around the hilt.

Rahaam and Niyaro began to chant, strange words in a strange tongue, words that curled around the room, swirling inwards as if following the curve of the sigils rather than coming to her as sound was meant to do. The smoke too twisted about, spiralling inwards, to gather around her and she began to feel lightheaded from the effects of it, and the incense.

Then, before her, the air began to ripple and fold and twist and a darkness beckoned to her, drawing her forth toward it. Lights flashed and hissed around her and she was powerless to resist it. The sound of the chanting faded away, and the smoke and the room and the incense too.

She found herself standing elsewhere, the stars beneath her feet, leading out in a long path before her, and around her was darkness. Not the darkness of night, but a deeper darkness, beyond the dark that human sight could fathom, that drew in all light unto it, devouring it. Only upon the path was there any light, the myriad sparkle of a thousand pinpricks of light, and a thousand thousand, stretching forth into the void and the dark.

Cold too was there in that place, a cold that pierced to the very bones so that her breath misted before her. A chill gripped at her limbs, threatening to hinder her steps and her thoughts.

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Ivkahra began to walk, and as she did, each step sent light rippling outwards where she planted it, the light of the stars flaring and growing, dancing along the path so that she walked as if upon a rainbow, wreathed in light and warmth. The sword echoed the light of the path and glowed with rainbow hues, the air bleeding with it as it moved through it.

Ivkarha’s step increased as she walked, drawn quicker along the path until she found herself running effortlessly along it, and laughter spilt from her as she went, for there was the exhilaration of madness in that place, where nothing was as the senses would admit to being.

The attack came unexpected, a thing slithering from the darkest parts of the void, formless and vast, a roiling mass of horror and lashing tentacles that were bedecked with horns and claws and talons, and between them the large and luminous cluster of eyes that blinked in and out and shifted from place to place. No sound it had made, yet Ivkarha had felt it coming, and was rolling forward as the tentacles slammed down upon the path, the light of the stars dimming at its touch.

It hung there off the dark, in the endless, depthless expanse of the void, and its tentacles coiled around the path, both from below and above, before and behind, constricting it. It dragged itself forward and many beaked maws appeared upon it, snapping towards Ivkarha.

Swift she came to her feet, poised low and ready, sword singing with light in the dark places. It lashed out and scored across the amorphous ever-changing body that roiled and rolled ever forward, and darkness bled into the air as the light of the blade tore deep into it.

A voiceless, noiseless scream washed over Ivkarha, and her mind reeled at the touch of it, spinning and recoiling, for in that scream came visions of horror and despair, of death and decay, of worms crawling through rotting flesh, of the deformity of limbs and mind. Horror and terror and despair, all crashed down upon her, and upon the verge of breaking was she, her mind to be reduced to a gibbering, incoherent wreck.

Teeth clenched tight, she felt anger rising inside her instead, a burning that washed across the fear, devouring it, fueling the rage and pushing her ever onwards. She screamed her defiance into the teeth of the maddening creature, her hands clenched tight about the hilt of the sword as she flung herself at it with nary a thought of self-preservation, hewing at it with all her strength and the fresh fires that drove her, mindless of its lashing tentacles.

The sword rose and fell, over and over, and each hew sen more darkness seeping from rents torn across the body of the creature. Tentacles fell, to dissolve away into dust and dissipate, and still she hacked on, eyes burning with her rage and passion.

And then it was gone, and she was alone on the path once more, breathing deeply from the exertion, leaning forward onto the blade. Her body ached, for in her fury she had noticed not the last of the tentacles that battered at her, tearing skin, the wounds burning now.

Little she could do about it and so she pressed forward along the path of stairs, the Stairs of the Night, to see where it led.