Another Place
 

((Location Thread! Huzzah!))

Arena

In front of him, a small cyan glow formed in the air, slowly expanding to be about 2 metres high. When it reached it's full extent, it burst into a circle of blackness bordered with cyan and he hopped into the portal. As soon as he went in, the portal began it's collapse, then stopped. It remained hanging in the air, about an inch wide and making a faint hum.

Interlude, in the Darkness
Some time later...

He awoke. He was weightless, pleasantly warm, drifting on a faint breeze and arcing a path through timeless space. All around was a faint rushing noise like a strong wind heard through earmuffs.

The headache that he'd had since his fight with Ekail was fading and it looked like his bleeding had stopped. (As much as he'd hate to admit it, Varina's weapons could and would draw blood, a situation he liked to avoid when possible). He'd obviously been wounded more than he had thought...

Still, no time to worry about that now. He took of his blindfold and tried to look around. Nothing. He could construct it from memory though. Above and below, two-dimensional blue, green, turquoise and white 'clouds' drifted in dozens of insanely complex layers, each following it's own unique path. Between the two layers at the horizon, a degree of sky all the way around was perfectly dark. This was the space that he drifted in.

Before doing anything else, he sat up and rifled through his satchel. He found all the books he'd left in there and threw them out randomly. They could end up anywhere, quite literally and that was a thought that amused him greatly.
Now, where to go?
Those who did this innately said that all they needed was 'The Will and The Idea'. All they needed was to know where they wanted to go and have the will get get there. For those who couldn't do that, insanely complex maths was needed. First, to find your destination. The longest number by far, but the easiest to get. Then, where you'd like to be in there. Three numbers for this one, and each different each time. (Planets move and rotate). Then, when. All the times before 'now' were equal here, so this number must be found exactly.
After much experience, Tor could do this in about two minutes, with a 98% success rate. From the outside world, he jumps in at portal and out the other with no time in between, no matter how long he spent drifting through.
But still, where to go? Eventually, he decided on a place he had some fond memories of, and began the process of getting there.

Another Place

A small cyan glow formed in the air, slowly expanding to be about 2 metres high. When it reached it's full extent, it burst into a circle of blackness bordered with cyan and Tor stepped out. Behind him, the portal remained open, but he was more concerened with the fact he appeared to be in an upright stone coffin barely two feet square. He tapped around the edges until he was certain which one was the front and, with some effort, he pushed out the door. It fell, and the crash echoed throughout the massive hall before him.
Ah. I thought they were just nice statues down the walls...
In his memory, the room appeared before him. A vast hall, with three tiers of these... sarcophogai up the walls (though they barely covered a quarter of it's height), thin streams of light coming in from the slit windows high above, the sound of distant breaking waves through the walls, the smell of... well.. and old castle on the sea and the feel of rough cold stone under his feet... at least he still got most of them. This room was the one he remembered the most, the rest he hadn't seen for centuries, but he was happy here.
With a smile, he left the open portal behind him and began to explore this familiar, yet changed castle of solitude.

((The castle might be familiar. Earn a cookie if you recognise it))

Several rooms away, Tor had been slowly learning his way around the vast castle. He'd felt his way up a few floors a day or two ago, and was now trying to find his way back to the hall without knocking himself unconcious. From the hall, the noise of something large and alive falling drifts up to Tor's room as does some muttering which he can't quite place.

"Who's there?! I thought I closed that portal!"

Ah, that's it. That demon who was fighting Aitch. Regenerator, seemed rather surly. Name... Something Latin, I think...

Quite content to retain the advantages for being hidden and let the echoes convey his end of the conversation, Tor slid down the wall and sat down before continuing.

"I'd have thought that'd be easy to work out. Still, you sound like a busy... creature, and probably wouldn't grasp the major mechanics of it, so it'd be best to think of Hatty and myself as twins. It's not accurate, but a useful lie."

"Can't sing, can't dance, but I can use a sword a little. Or could."

He laughs to himself and grabs a can of beer from his pack. The 'fsst' of it opening is somewhat louder than he'd have liked, but beer solves all problems, right? After a quick swig, something he had noted in what the demon had said last came to mind.

"Waitasec. One of his friends? I thought he was a loner.
...
Nonono, he did mention that gir~ you didn't do anything to her, did you?"

"What he is? An insufferable angsty guy who belives the whole world's out to get him and would quite like to be either normal or dead. We meet up every now and then, but rarely chat for long. The first time, that was fun. You know his wings are kinda mismatched? Me.
Oh, want a drink? I have one free here"

He dug out another can from somewhere in the depths of his satchel and chucked it out into the corridor. It made a reassuringly loud clanking off the wall before getting holed and spinning down the corridor like a beer-propelled rocket.

"Oh her? You ever had one of those dates? You know the kind, it goes really well until you do one silly little thing and then they hate you, vow to track you down and kill you and have an above average chance of doing so? One of those sort of things.
Ugh, she's never understood the proper way to live this kinda life, you know?
Ah well."

There's a hint of a sigh and a faint chuckle before Tor continues

"Still, once you get past the screaming, vengeance-obsessed harpy, she's really a lovely girl."

"There's no point in looking for Varina, unless she's three foot behind me with a murderous gleam in her eyes, I don't know where she is. Plus, If you want to know about Hayate, I'd be the person to ask."

He got up and wandered out into the corridor, as if looking for Legion and cleared his throat.

"If you want to know where Hayate is, first I'd have to ask you what exactly you did to his...ah, friend. "

As he was looking for Legion, the change in air pressure and the sounds indicated that he'd stumbled into the hall. Feeling fairly certain that the demon could see him, he started to make a show of looking around the hall nervously as if expecting, at any moment, the walls to start sprouting armies of ninja.

"Right. In that case, I strongly suggest that you move house, leave no forwarding address, tell no-one you're leaving and spend a very long time getting as far away from him as huma~ ah, demonically possible, because you've just done the one thing that you should never, ever have done.
Course, he'd be after me as well, so if you won't tell, I won't, eh?"

"I'd find either of those unlikely. You don't quite understand how he thinks."

At Legion's second comment, an eyebrow rose above the blindfold and a little smile flickered across Tor's face.

"Nay, demon. Not even Birnham Wood getting up, surrounding this place and dancing the bloody hokey-cokey would let something like you put me down.
Take a look around. Where do you think we are?"

"I think it's be easier for us both if we didn't fight now. I've got no reason to, am at a disadvantage, and I quite like this place.
On the other hand, you don't want to fight me, becasue, well..."

He smirked and the portal in the coffin fizzled out behind Legion in a spray of cyan sparks and a faint tinny smell.

"... if I'm not well disposed towards you, you're stuck here."

"So soon? But we were getting on so well, I thought."

He sighed and performed a very good simulation of a teenage sulk before another portal opened a little way in front of him.

" I guess you'll want to end up back where you came from, then? Now, this is the tricky bit... Wait there, would you?

With that, he stepped into the portal. The standard questions of 'Where?', 'where?' and 'when?' came and went, faster this time than before as he knew exactly where he was going.
A couple of minutes or an instant later (you pays your money and takes your frame of reference), the other end of the portal blinked into life in the Arena's stands.
Shortly after, Tor jumped out of the castle's end, a little smile on his face.

"There we go. Should be the right place and time. I'll leave it open again though, this little discussion was quite pleasant compared to my usual fare"

"Do I need to? If you haven't noticed, he has a knack for finding people. Keep your eyes open, I guess."

In a somewhat quiet room of this old, grand place a small, shimmering crack appeared on the north wall, directly across from the door. A rainbow of colors seemed to slither from the crack, small strands of light shooting from it across the walls. Eventully, a large, slightly narrow doorway formed and before another action could be taken, what appeared to be a large ball of purple cloth shot through the doorway, rolled several times across the floor then bolted up and ran to the door, the same shimmering twilight dancing across it's outstretched hands. It grabbed the still remaining part of the castle wall and seemed to pull them, the walls somehow growing and sliding in place over the doorway. Just as the last bit of wall was about to slide into place, a claw swiped from the door and barely missed taking off the man's arms.

Fortuna gasped as he jumped back, with his final movement slamming the wall into place just as the claw retracted back through the portal. Fortuna was panting, blood covering the white mask that hid his features. He stood up slowly and began to observe the place he'd landed in. In his haste, perhaps he hadn't chosen the proper place to crawl into..Although, any place was better then a cave with a very pissed, recently revived dragon. He casually pulled up the hood of his cloak over his hair and ears, deciding to explore this place a bit more and perhaps find a nice place to lay down for a bit. With that thought in mind, he exited the empty room, now filled with the feel of magical energy and made his way through the corridors of the castle.

Since Legion had left, Tor was forced to re-appraise his situation. While he found the prospect of Hayate actaully killing him rather low, his twin was annoyingly fast and rather persistent. Clearly, bumbling around in the dark just wouldn't cut it anymore. Time to try things the... well... easy way. Probably.

What's the worst that can happen? Just close your eyes (for whatever good that would do) and try to visualise. All those frosty layers of mathematics showing where every single last thing is, arrange them into a coherent picture showing your surroundings. Just concentrate.
Minutes and hours ticked away as Tor sat in the middle of the room and concentrated. He could see the numbers, but he couldn't make any sense of them. They danced around in his head, seeming to dare him to make sense of them. He gritted his teeth and made one further effort to visualise the room around him.

And then, he... saw.
For the briefest of instants, he saw everything. Etched past, ever-changing now and all potential futures of all existence stretched out before him, frozen in half-light, the glowing thread known as 'destiny' winding it's insanely convoluted path through infinity. The vibration of atom, every person's entire life, the histories of whole universes, still and silent before him.

As his mind's eye hung there gazing into existence, he felt things staring back at him, some malevolent, some curious, some amused but most simply doing so unwillingly. He became aware that suddenly, he'd gained the attention of practically every magic user, god, demon, angel, and other occult creature ever. That wasn't a good th~

The sheer load of all the information was far more than any human brain could hope to handle and Tor was hurled across the room with a cry, thudding into the floor a long way back from his starting point, as blind as he was a second previously and with a splitting migrane.

"...Well... I guess that counts as fufilling one ambition of mine...

Fortuna's search was quickly halted as his eyes were suddenly pulled from their sockets, or just about. He found himself suddenly staring through time, space and just about everything else to see a single man, a man who then flew backwards and landed against a wall. Fortuna gave a soft groan as his vision was his own again, and he screamed, loudly. The sudden burst of color, light and all the other goodies of vision returning all at once was not plesent, and his scream echoed down the empty hallway. Pulling his hand up to his mask, he covered his eye for a moment while planning what to do.

With a grimace, he opened his eye and began to carefully make his way down the hall. A soft stumble or two there, and he was back on his toes, his eyes no longer bleeding. He sighed and turned, winding his way down the place ever slower. It seemed like so sort of eternal maze, and even if he decided to use his powers to scramble out of here it would probably send him somewhere just as confusing, if not moreso.

He decided to just keep going for now, perhaps locating a bed wouldn't take more then the next few centuries. His soft footsteps resumed, and once more he was winding his way through the hallways from hell.

Laying on the floor, Tor was rapidly becoming annoyed. Perhaps he'd over-compensated then, and used far too much power. While always a follower of the principle that finesse is a sure sign you're laking in power, he had to admit that perhaps in some cases, finesse would be a good thing.
He gingerly sat up, holding his head to prevent it from either exploding or falling off and rummaged in his pack for some Neurofen Plus and a glass of water to take it with. He had a distict feeling that there was someone else in the castle, but would rather be able to walk and think before even attempting finding a possibly non-existent person.