"Found a way in," Ileyna said as her telekinesis slipped through. "Come on, follow me."

She showed Max the way around until she found the wall that had given way slightly and pressed her hand against it once more. She once more threw her power at it, feeling it give slightly. Ileyna grabbed hold of those edges and pushed with her mind, forcing it to give way entirely and open.

The girl's power forced in all of the surrounding panels, embedding different shapes around the doorway like the fragments of a kaleidoscope. The blue patterns flashed, and with a rumble, the doors started to part. Max stepped in front of Ileyna, his guardian manifesting with folded arms, in case something sprung out at them.

Ileyna stepped back as the doorway opened before them, letting Mass Effect also spring into existence alongside Max and his Stand. Oddly, it didn't seem dark on the inside--but the teenager supposed she shouldn't be too surprised about that, given the other feats she'd seen today.

"I wonder if this is how they felt," she whispered to herself, tentatively stepping forward into the building.

As she stepped inside, blue light unfurled along the smooth, black floor stemming from her foot, in twisting patterns. They crawled along the ground and up the walls, the light of yellow orbs suspended from the ceiling fading into existence.

Max followed, glancing about the room, then casting a cautionary glance over his shoulder. "What is this, some kind of starship?"

Before them stood a golden console. The patterns piped into the sides of it, licking the walls of the console. Strange, lit shapes littered its top surface.

Ileyna blinked at Max's statement, pausing her slow circling to take in the sight of the magnificent structure. She glanced down, her brow furrowing as she brought a hand up to her lip.

"Y'know, that's a pretty good possibility," she said. She dropped her fist into her hand with a clap. "Well, let's see what we've got on this console."

She trotted up to it, and looked it over. She was like that for several minutes, when...

"Well, I've got nothing!" she said cheerfully. "Do you recognize any of these letters?"

Max trailed his fingers over the console's odd shapes. "No, not at all. And I don't believe anyone in Silverton has a dusty book that can help us translate it." He glanced up from the console towards the north wall - circular and tightly segmented, with a large blue gem embedded in the middle. "But unless you know how to ghost through walls, I don't think we're getting any further."

"Aaaaah!" said a throaty voice behind them. "So, we're not alone after all."

Max swiveled about as someone slipped in through the crack left by the temple's large double doors - a thin girl, wearing an impeccable blue suit, a red tie tucked and fastened near the collar.

Balanced on her shoulder was a massive, curved sword, the blade broad enough to cut a man's head off in one stroke.

And as if she wasn't worried in the slightest, Ileyna bounced on her feet at the arrival of the newcomer and waved at the woman. "Hello!" she greeted brightly, like she was supposed to be there and she wasn't worried at all about the woman with the dangerous-looking sword. "Is this your magic castle?"

Edited by RisingDragon on January 3, 2014 at 0:26:26

The woman in the suit shuffled into the room proper, shoulder with resting blade brought towards Max and Ileyna. She leaned her head back, like a string was tied to her bundled blond hair and tugging on her skull, and brought the blade down, resting it on her other hand.

A jagged line formed in the blade's edge, splitting apart. "I'm afraid not," said the voice again. It was coming from the sword itself, and the gap in its length moved to the words like lips. "But there's something here I've come to find as well. Maybe we can work together."

Max's eyes narrowed. All of the alarms were going off. Well, they always went off. But he sure didn't like how this thing dragged the words in its sentences. "Sorry, I'm new to the neighborhood. I didn't catch your name."

"My apologies." The sword's gap curled like a sideways smile. "My friends call me Silver. Mister Silver." The girl holding Silver trailed her finger along the dull side of the blade, indicating its metalwork. "For obvious reasons."

"Mmm, but if you're not the owner, that means..."

Ileyna glanced aside, looking troubled at her realization. Then she perked up, chipper once again.

"Well, what exactly are you looking for in here?" she asked.

Edited by RisingDragon on January 3, 2014 at 12:04:50

"My allies and I travel across different worlds," Silver explained. It - or rather, the girl - walked toward the console they had been studying. "We think we can access a Gateway in this place that will lead us to another dimension."

Max shot a glance at Ileyna. "So you're not the only one in on this racket?"

"Man, come ON, lemme in!" someone shouted from near the doorway. A teenage boy wedged into the room, past some unseen obstacle, and landed on his hands with a "Ooof!"

"Brendan, calm down," Silver said. "They're all right."

The boy called Brendan scrambled back up, pulling up his jeans that hung loosely around his waist, and scooped his baseball cap up from the floor, plopping it onto his head. A golden ring nested around each of his fingers, each one brandishing a different-colored gem. "Man, Mister Silver! I'm the Ringmaster, remember?" He slapped the front of his sports jersey with both hands. "Riiiing-master!"

"What made you think I was unique?" Ileyna asked back at Max, sounding perplexed at the notion. Suddenly, she grinned cattily. "Well, I am unique, but still."

She put her hands behind her back and stepped aside for Silver and its host to approach the console. For an outsider, it would look pretty surreal, with such a normal-looking girl acting as if nothing were out of the ordinary, beside a talking sword as they stood within a massive golden tower reaching towards the heavens from the lake beside the sleepy town.

"So, Greek Guile... you two... my new friend Max here... and myself..."

Ileyna glanced between each of the travelers present. "Hmm. So it's happening again?" she asked. "Why's it happening now?"

"What're you talking about?" Max asked.

"The Convergence, of course!" Ileyna replied, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "That's why we're all here, isn't it?"

Edited by RisingDragon on January 3, 2014 at 18:33:45

Max arced an eyebrow. "The what? What do you mean by Convergence?"

"Silver," another voice spoke, deeper, with the faint hint of an echo. A final figure pushed the door wider and walked inside, wearing a large suit of armor with fading sunlight reflecting off its dark surface. Holstered pistols sat against his hips, with a rifle drawn across his shoulder. "Have you found a way inside?"

"I was just about to have Brendan analyze this console's language." Brendan pouted. "Ringmaster, I mean."

The armored knight turned towards the street tough. "You still insist on using that foolish moniker?"

"Man, shut up, Roland!"

Max folded his arms. "This is ridiculous."

"Yeah, they're pretty ragtag," Ileyna commented. "But still, dimensional travelers all suddenly showing up at the same place? All looking for the same thing, even if it's just... coincidence?"

She sighed and closed her eyes, and pivoted on her toes, swept up in what could only be described as nostalgia. "Ah, I should've realized it sooner, when that lunatic in the wife beater showed up," she said wistfully. "I'm here, then you came here, then he came here, and now we've got these newcomers!"

She opened eyes and smiled, spreading out her arms in an welcoming gesture, taking in the whole of them within the towering structure. "I never thought I'd see the likes of a Convergence ever again, but here we are!" she exclaimed.

Then her shoulders slumped, and Ileyna sighed again. "I hope it won't be like the last Convergence..."

"What is she babbling about?" Roland asked, pointing towards Ileyna.

Max shrugged. "Hell if I know. I just came to this dimension today and suddenly some Greek and his undead soldiers were tearing up the whole city. I couldn't just stand by, I had to do something."

The fingers of Silver's host tapped Silver's blade. "Hmmm. I think I understand. We were all...drawn here, to this place." The girl lifted Silver up, to point it towards the large radial door before them. "Because behind that door is a Gateway. I'm SURE of it. And...we're not the only ones who are interested in it, it seems."

"I don't know about you, but I just want to get out of here," Max said as the girl brought Silver back to its normal resting position. "So I'll take any chance I get. You say you can translate this console?"

Silver's host gestured towards Brendan, who stepped forward. "Ringmaster here has a variety of magical powers thanks to his rings. One of them allows him to read any language or decode any text."

As Brendan approached, the ring on his small finger shone golden light, and he hovered his hand over the console. "...all right, that's how it is. See, these are some kind of hieroglyphs and you gotta punch 'em in the correct order. Like a password."

"Well, how are we going to get the password?" Max asked.

Silver smiled. "You didn't look at the sundial, did you? It's the key. It has what you need."

The older man's frown deepened. "Of course. It's always a copout like that."

Ileyna brought her fist up to her mouth and coughed, coming out of her spacing out from earlier. The teenager stepped up to the console once again, looking down at it with a flat expression on her face.

"Copouts, huh? Well, I'm pretty old hat at that too."

Suddenly, she blazed with blue light. Her wings extended from her back, the halo formed above her beret and hollow notes of sound drifted through the air. For her, the parameters had been narrowed down, and she now had options open to her.

Her right hand lifted up to the gemstone around her neck, which flared with a symbol within, and pressed two fingers against it. She closed her eyes, and her left hand began to move. Instinctively, she touched a glyph, one after another, in a single, precise order as knowledge resonated between two crystals--one abreast, and one within--and filled her mind.

Each glyph began to shine brightly as she pressed them. As she touched the last one, her hand moved to the center of the console, and she pushed her full palm against it.

A wave of energy emitted from her touch, streaming down the blue patterns in the console. The charge flowed towards the radial door, intersecting with the gem. It flashed brightly for a moment. Then, a rumble rolled through the room as the door slowly spun, each circular segment grinding in a different direction, before they all stopped. The door rumbled into the wall.

"Yo, what the fuck, how'd you do that?" Brendan demanded.

Ileyna grinned conspiratorially at the young man, raising up a finger. "Now that... is a secret."

She then smiled a bit more warmly at him. "Thanks, though. Your telling me what it was allowed me to figure it out, Brendan."

Edited by RisingDragon on January 4, 2014 at 17:29:48

His surprise faded. "Uh, thanks," he said, scratching the back of his neck. "But...still. Came out of nowhere."

Max took point. As he stepped into the new room, patterns within it also shimmered blue. They trailed towards the north end, down and up the small, soft valley in the floor, to line up the base of a towering golden statue, shaped like a golden, stylized mole of layered plates. Embedded on top what could be a crude, polygonal representation of its snout was a red, multifaceted gem. It guarded a silver pillar, also littered with the strange language they encountered.

"That doesn't look like any Gateway I've ever seen," Ileyna said as they came upon the gargantuan statue. "And believe me, I've seen a lot."

She gave the silver pillar only a cursory glance before stepping away so that Brendan could work his magic on its writings. Instead she examined the golden statue surrounding it. "Looks kinda like the Earth King," she muttered. "Guess that rules out Belka... maybe it's Al-Hazard?"

She shook her head, growling as she muttered to herself. The aesthetics of the temple were really starting to get to the girl.

"That's because this Gateway is activated in a special way," explained Silver. "Watch."

Silver's host raised the sword high before the pillar. The pillar was suddenly overcome in an aura of cool blue light, shimmering about its form as the strange characteristics lined over its surface flashed.

Max glanced down at the pocket of his coat - suddenly, he noticed a heavy weight within it, giving off similar light that shone through the fabric. "What the -?" He slipped a hand in his pocket, eyes widening as he produced a small, shimmering dagger, the hilt encrusted with a smooth gem, the handled wrapped in paper. "What the hell is THIS doing here?"

"What? What's what doing here?" Ileyna said, stepping up to him. She looked down, taking view of what he held in his hand.

When her eyes landed upon the blade, she felt the world turn over on itself for her, as if she was seeing something utterly alien.

"What in the world?" she breathed, snatching Max by the wrist and bringing the weapon up to her face. She looked from it, back up to Max. Despite the blue light illuminating them, he could easily see the shock in her face.

Something came to her mind just then, and she looked back at the dagger, then to the pillar that Silver had activated through its host. Back to the blade, and then once more to Max's face. Her expression was incredulity warring with delight.

"How in the world did you get this?" she asked in an excited whisper.

Edited by RisingDragon on January 4, 2014 at 21:52:18

"I don't know!" Max said. "This is the first time I've ever seen this weapon in my life." He looked to the pillar. "But since it's reacting to that pillar, there's no doubt that they're connected in some way."

"Maybe it's like Mister Silver," Brendan said. "You point it at a waypoint and it pops open a Gateway!"

Roland glanced down at Silver itself. Its host readjusted the blade to better stay in her hands. "Well, let's not jump to conclusions, here. Only a few items can unlock a Gateway."

"And I don't see anyone with Scales from the Great Serpent here," Ileyna said, invoking the name of the guardian of time. Her eyes turned back to the silver pillar. "There might be some clue on that thing. What's it say?"

Brendan stepped around the golden statue to trail his hands over the pillar. "It says...'only those with courage unswayed...may swim across realms with the journeyman's blade.'"

"And it rhymes, too." Max glanced down at the strange sword he held. "Well, I guess I know what this is called, now." He unwrapped the paper from about the weapon's hilt, unfolding it and reading the contents. His brow seemed to puzzle over it. "'The blade can guide you back home. Don't lose it.'"

Ileyna pursed her lips. "So no instruction manual for that either," she said. She began to sit in midair again, looking thoughtful. "It sounds like it works just like the Scale..."

"You sure are muttering a lot of stuff you could be filling me in on," Max said. "If I'm supposed to travel dimensions with this, what am I going to run into? Is it even a good idea to do so?"

"Dimensional travel CAN be tricky," Silver added. "We've only managed to make it so far because we work together. I think you'd be much better off finding a safer way to get around."

Max looked down at the blade, flipping it over. "...if only it was that simple." He held up the note. "Out of nowhere, I get a sword that activates near a dimensional gateway with a note telling me that it'll help me get back home, which is EXACTLY what I wanted at this time? This is too specific, too prearranged. What else can I do but follow through?"

"Not much, honestly," Ileyna said, sounding sympathetic to his plight. "But it's never that simple, Max. I told you before. Dimensional travel rarely takes you where you want to go. It takes you where you're needed."

She looked aside, away from the others. "You've been chosen for something," she continued. Her voice now had the weight of experience in it. She turned her gaze back to the older man, ignoring Silver and the others. "And when you're chosen for such a journey, it's never easy. And it's never simple. There are... so many concepts that get turned on their head."

Max frowned, and regarded the pillar again. "If you're saying this is destiny, I'm not much in the mood for that." He lifted the blade, and it pulsed with recognizing light again. "But I know a call to adventure when I see one. And it's the only lead I've got."

-THIS GATEWAY IS FORBIDDEN.-

A voice of deep timbre spoke as a dense rumble shuddered throughout the room.