A gold base. Circular, sloping upward to form a smaller circle. In that smaller circle rested a single wax candle. Hard wax, if his eyes did not deceive, the kind that they made in cities. Skandra didn't know precisely how far they were from a city who made hard wax candles. Not something you liked to use if there were another option in the summer. Hard wax candles were winter things. He would assume then that it was winter. The gold inlay on the candle holder spoke volumes of its origins. He thought it was a pattern of leaves and vines. The sort of code language that had been used once upon a time to communicate if there were humans about. Elves used that script. Strange to see it marking a candle, but there were other oddities before he asked about the candle.

( Many other oddities. )

Sound was roaring through his ears. Skandra could hear voices screaming together. A thousand of them. A million of them. Too many at the last for him to count. Was this death? That was what Gershul had been trying to warn him of. This was death, and Skandra was in the process of that death, experiencing it fully on his way to the depths of hell. This was the only explanation that flashed through his mind. He was falling, alone, in a sea of infinite black. Nothing there to help him. Nothing there to save him. Only the fall, and the screaming as he soared deeper into the abyss. He should have been terrified. Instead what he felt was a strange sort of peace. If this was the end... it was an end he deserved. It was an end that he should have seen coming, long ago, when the knife had been clutched in his hand and the faces around him were jeering for his death.

( The first, but not the last. )

From the abandoned house to the second scaffold was not far. Skandra did not worry that his limbs were going to give out on him. They were close enough now to Gershul, to the gateway that had started all of this madness, and Skandra was not going to turn his back now. One of them was going to die here today. Skandra was going to be sure of that in the only way that he could. If it meant that Skandra died, too, it was a price worth paying. He thought of that as he peered into the darkness, waiting to arrive wherever this scaffold was going to take them. Even a few years ago, if you'd asked him, he would have said that he wouldn't give his life for anything except... because no matter how awful things seemed, it was never so bad as it first appeared. There was always something else worth living for.

( Today, he couldn't see it. )

Above them stood that spire, unlike rock in texture but in firmness, second to none. Skandra wanted to know where such a spire could come from. And why it was this place to which Gershul continually drew himself. Something in his nature? Something about the way he summoned portals to other worlds? There was enough here that Skandra didn't know. And he did not see how things were going to be any different, later. This doorway was going to close. And Skandra was going to find a way to kill Gershul, no matter what it took. Yet it wasn't fear, so much as it was about ... what? Vengeance? Maybe Aeotha was right to look at him that way. This didn't matter. Skandra wasn't going to let himself be stopped because Gershul was still loved by his idiot of a father. Shantar was a fool if he thought Gershul was still within reach. The man had escaped that reach long ago, and he'd never fucking looked back.

( Who would, if they were Gershul? )

The first thing he noticed about those ominous spires was not the color of them, or the status of the elven houses - quaint little things of wood and stone - that were seemingly hung on the side of the things. It was the texture that he took note of. Running his hand over the surface of it, even through his gloves, felt like nothing he'd ever witnessed. The surface was soft, soft enough that it had give. But it still felt like stone so long as you did not put pressure on it. Rock had never behaved that way that Skandra was aware of. As wide at the base as ten houses grouped together, gradually growing thinner near the top, silver-glowing in color, with those houses hanging from the sides of them as hairs might.

( It still made his skin crawl. )

Of course, talking and climbing proved a very difficult mix. Especially when the climb was sheer, with little in the way of handholds, and part of him worried that they were simply going to slide back down to the bottom of the basin. There was no reason to think that something like this occurred naturally any longer - Skandra doubted such precision could be achieved by nature, even if nature intended it that way. By the time they reached the top of the thing, his hands felt as tired and creaky as the rest of him. Dust covered him from head to toe, he was certain that he was bleeding in several places beneath his clothes, and the stench of... something he didn't recognize... was clinging to his every inch of skin. If this was an adventure, he wanted to go back to a tavern, where at least he knew all the smells and he had his choice of women. Aeotha was like a canker, lanced and bleeding him dry.

( Of course, that wasn't really true. )

Skandra grimaced at the nothing that greeted his face. More blackness. Only... no. He was lying on a bed of cool polished stones; that much he could feel from the pressure on his cheek. Skandra pressed his palms into the stones. They were just piled; one on top of another, just like you might see in a river bed. Must have been piled pretty deep, too; there was no give as he pushed off with his hands. Every creak in his bones reminded him that he'd been falling once. And might be again, if the strangeness of his surroundings was any guide to what the hell was going on. Skandra was standing tall before he realized that he'd left his had on the ground. Bleary eyes blinked furiously as he stooped down to pick it up. It was only then that he realized precisely what he was standing on. And precisely why this all seemed so unusual. Instead of the drab gray he was expecting, Skandra found himself staring at smooth stones that appeared to be made of glass.

( Well, fuck. )

He was seated at a table. Fine oak passed beneath his naked fingertips. It was stained, glossed with lacquer, until it was the image of perfection. A thousand carpenters could toil for a thousand days and not make something so fine as this. They were eating dinner here. With their fine ceramic plates, also glazed fine, and gold forks. Gold spoons. There was nothing more decadent that he could imagine, with its sloping high walls and its domed ceiling. Servants must have climbed ladders to light the oil lanterns hanging in a circle above them. They not only lit the room with bright orange light, but illuminated that mural strung across the dome. Skandra stared at the plate in front of him. A slab of meat, cooked proper, still sitting in its own juices, smelling divine.

( It was the face that greeted him which he couldn't credit. )

One knee in the dirt, one raised near his stomach, Skandra took a moment to gaze across the untainted grass which surrounded them. Tall enough - because no one had any reason to cut it, out here - that wind would lay it flat. Which the wind was doing, at this very instant. Tugging on his hat at the same time. Stirring his coat around him. There were clouds in the sky, as smooth as the gray stones in the river they'd crossed to arrive here, but the threat of rain was just that. He could not imagine milder weather. And if he weren't focused on the black sphere which rested ominously in the valley below he might have been content to take a nap. Back to a tree, whiskey in his belly, and he could have slept for a thousand years.

( There was no whiskey to be had. )