shiny new world

[mrsparkle]

Sadde's running.

Not for any particular reason, just because it's faster. He's been meaning to go to one of the capitals for a bit and now, he supposes, is as good a time as any.

And eventually he's not running anymore, because he's close enough to civilisation that someone might spot him. Not that he wouldn't be able to notice them by scent before they saw him, but still. And as he makes his way to the Norway capital at this more leisurely pace, he notices the tiny, shiny key. He walks towards it and picks it up and immediately notices just how magic it is. He can tell by the way the key feels like things, and different things depending on where it is.

He verifies that what the key feels like is consistent in absolute location by waving it around a bit and seeing that the same place always feels the same. "Huh," he murmurs to himself.

He straightens up and thinks. The first obvious thing to try is seeing whether it opens any doors - a universal skeleton key sounds like the kind of thing a magical key could be - but the second obvious thing can be tested right there and then. He pushes the key into thin air with some purpose, as if he wanted to unlock an invisible door, and then turns it, et voilà, the faintest of door-shaped outlines appears before him.

He locks the door, and it disappears. Unlocks it again, and there it is. So he pulls it open and sees-

Comments

[mssparkle]

"Or maybe someone else found another key and locked it? That sounds improbable. We should test the wearing-off part, though."

[from_scratch]

"Yeah. Put one in the swimming pool room or something where we won't accidentally blunder into it."

[mssparkle]

She runs over to the swimming pool room and creates a door there.

[from_scratch]

Cam sticks a camera to the wall to watch it so they don't have to.

[mssparkle]

"...so I'm now stuck until I find a door back to my world, I guess."

[from_scratch]

"You can't make them to wherever you want?"

[mssparkle]

"I'm not sure. The key feels like stuff, depending on where it is, but it's a really vague feeling - I'm not sure if it's vaguer for non-vampires or just the same for everyone - and I haven't tested what this feeling means but my hunch is that it somehow correlates with what world the door will open to. Like I said, I didn't really test it much." She offers it to him.

[from_scratch]

Cam takes it and examines it.

[peterxy]

It's fairly obvious that the key is magic the instant Cam takes it, and even moving it from Sadde's hand to a spot closer to his eyes is enough to trigger the "feeling," as impossible to explain as sight to one born blind. It's golden, small enough to fit in a child's hand, and, other than the ineffable feeling, completely ordinary.

[from_scratch]

"This thing is weird," he murmurs. He moves it around to various points in the air.

[mssparkle]

"That it is," she agrees.

Some points don't feel like anything, but most points do. The feeling is very vague, and while apparently completely random, there are places where it's similar enough to other places that it might actually be the same. And any given location always feels the same no matter how many times he moves the location there or how long he waits to return to it.

[from_scratch]

"Hmmm."

He tries to find two same-feeling points against the wall so he can mark them for superior vampire senses to confirm.

[peterxy]

There are a few candidates, but the first pair he finds that are completely indistinguishable as far as he can tell are about four feet apart, the one on the left a couple of inches higher than the other one.

[from_scratch]

Cam marks each with a little red dot. "Can you check if these two feel alike to you?"

[mssparkle]

"Yeah." She takes the key and checks. "Mmhm. Identical as far as I can tell. Want me to try to open them?"

[from_scratch]

"How sure are you this key doesn't lead to - lava pits or Cthuloid horrors or anything?"

[mssparkle]

"I am completely one hundred percent not sure at all."

[from_scratch]

"Should have thought of that before you opened one in my pool. Let's go make sure that one's not Lovecrafting the place up."

[mssparkle]

Sadde zips over there with vampire speed. "No Lovecraftian horrors that I can see," she calls, then opens the door. "Huge fall, though."

[from_scratch]

"Okay. Well. As long as we're waiting for results on that, do you have design opinions on a set of wings or want to look at a catalog or what?"

[mssparkle]

She closes the door then zips back to where Cam is. "Will people be prejudiced against me if I go with feathers?"

[from_scratch]

"Eh, if they're black it will probably be pretty restrained but maybe."

[mssparkle]

"I'll take a look at a catalog, then. ...can we snuggle while I do it?"

[from_scratch]

"Yes."

So they go plop on the couch and Cam makes her the latest edition of a curated wing type catalog and puts his wing around her and fiddles with his computer.

[mssparkle]

Eeeee snuggling!

Eventually she settles on a design that has a pair of limbs leaving from between her shoulder blades and separating into four "fingers" that end in blunted claws, with a fifth claw protruding from where the fingers join, and a thin membrane between all of them, basically a completely black version of this.