Dreams of Fire and Ice

"Mimir it is." Balar replied with a nod, truly a little sad to see the crazy old fool changed so utterly. Kespin had been an irritating old fossil but he had been their irritating old fossil and he would be missed. This new younger man in the old mans flesh was an enigma they were yet to truly understand. As were so many things on this strange adventure they had..

Balar blinked. He was standing back in the common room of the noose. It was dark and a strange purple smoke was emanating from he fireplace. He barked a cough as the spicy aroma hit the back of his throat.

"Strange that you should come back here?" Balar whirled around to come face to face with Harlequin. The coloured diamonds on the demi-gods face and clothing were shifting in colour and focus as he stepped back away from the fiend.

"What am I doing here?" Balar asked. Harlequin laughed.

"It's your tavern you tell me. Oh things are about to get interesting..." Harlequin began to fade from sight and Balar reached forward to grab him only for his hands to pass through the figure as it dissipated into more purple smoke, which rolled forward to smother Balars face.

Balar was choking. The heat was unbearable. He seemed to be standing in a wide open courtyard the air thick with hazy vapours. He could not breath. Before him a giant ziggurat rose up carved from blood red stone. He could not focus on the thing, it felt like the palace of Hela but worse.

To his right and left two great armoured structures sat gleaming in the low orange light of this strange place. As he watched one of them opened up and two figures emerged. One a nightmarish creature with the aspect of an insect they other a blue skinned female with what looked like snakes attached to her head. Strangest of all she moved on what appeared to be a floating metal cart.

They did not look at him. Perhaps they could not see him. His lungs were fit to burst now, his skin blistering from the heat. He looked up to see the thick yellow clouds above part as a vast craft of fire and metal began to descend towards him.

Balar fell to his knees... into the snow. A blast of cold wind stole the heat from his skin and brushed fresh fallen snow from the tree limbs above. He looked up in confusion. The clouds were white now and slowly giving way, wafting open to reveal a terminal blackness bedazzled with stars.

There came the soft whicker of a horse and Balar turned to see a large man leading a nervous Chestnut gelding into the safety and warmth of another one of those strange armoured structures. Once the big horse had his bearings, his human counterpart began to work on a strange glowing tablet he held in his hands.

“Riley? You about?” the man spoke.

“Depends who’s looking,” a womans voice came out of the eldritch tablet.

“Check yah local map,” the man was saying. “Look fah Keppler’s Ford. Tha missin’ shuttle is waitin’ there.” he was silent for a moment then and Balar clambered to his feet taking several careful steps closer

“Ah’m standin’ in it right now.” the man said and then once more a womans voice came from the magical device.

“Any sign of the blonde?” she asked.

“Nada,” he said. “Just a note fah Vas.”

Balar stumbled forward once more as a great gust of wind rose up from the darkness. Snow billowed up from the ground and he was forced to cover his eyes. He tried to call out but the wind snatched his voice away. He stumbled further and further into the cloud of snow reaching for the man and his strange shelter...