Daniel's breath stopped coming so easily as he left terra firma, thought once he told himself to breathe he quickly remembered how. As the ground dropped further away, Daniel took a mental note concerning the locations of the building in the town. Might come in handy at some later time. He still was more comfortable closing one of his eyes to look around, his mind able to reasonably comprehend things in that smaller visual range.

He wasn't terribly fond of heights, but he still wasn't convinced this was anything other than a dream. Korpi's presence and chatter was somehow comforting rather than disturbing. "Keep goin'? Where we goin' ta?"

"Up!" Korpi laughed. Daniel became aware of how useful a caribou-skin was in clouds, insulated and warm even as his breath frosted before him.

"Here - follow close," Korpi said, taking the lead. Some minutes passed in the blind cloud, the raven blazing a complex trail that made little sense yet was surely important by the way she concentrated. At last Korpi came to a spot that seemed to be the right one, however that might be told, and with a further "Up!" shot almost vertically through the cloud layer.

Looking down, it appeared they weren't in Kansas any more.

Indeed, if Kansas was down there, it was a knot on a twig on a branch that stretched away like the distance to the moon below, one of several branches leading to a trunk so vast its edges could only be seen because they were so far away. Looking straight down a drop that might take a lifetime to fall caused the mind to writhe with wrongness: although the Lower World was beyond even the keen sight of a caribou instinct screamed to flee from the dangers there. Straight up, other branches and an infinite spread of green an unimaginable distance above, ever-shifting in the light from yet higher beyond the worlds.

"Close now," Korpi remarked, over the song of the air and the beat of the blood. Even with the little distance gained, there was a kind of ecstacy of purity in being nearer the light, the soul starting to tune to the upper air. Korpi looked up, an instant before shadow swept over them both with a downgust of tinny air and distant thunder.

"Aha! Don't fear!" she called to Daniel, moments before vast talons closed - carefully - over his shoulders and flank and he was swept upward in a thunderous blur of wind and wings and dumped - lightly - on some upper surface. Sky Dog's voice could be heard resuming a sentence nearby.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:30, Sun 10 Mar 2013.

A presence suddenly seemed to loom over them all, overwhelming the level of reality that Korpi had found within the Hunting Grounds, the vision quest for which she had found a companion. Whatever lay before them now, whatever they perceived was suddenly broken and shattered, and they found themselves now upon the branch of a gigantic tree. To such an extent did this tree dwarf them in size that there was no risk of them falling if they walked upon it, unless they ventured close to the edge.

Above them, peals of thunder tore into the night sky, and they could not but look to the source. White flashes of lightning burned in the wings of a gigantic bird, so far above them that it appeared little more than a dark shape, each beat of its wings crashing like thunder. As the bird came down closer to where they were, it could be seen more closely. At first, it was nearly beyond the limits of their perception, enormous, graceful and terrible all at once, though slowly it resolved into something they might think of as a condor. It perched upon the branch beside them. As a mouse is to a man, so were they to it, and being in its presence was terrible to behold. Keen, brilliant eyes studied them, judging their worth.

It did not speak, but something seemed to emanate from it. It was not something that spoke in language, but in thoughts and ideas that resolved in their minds into their own languages, that they would hear as if the mighty Thunderbird had in truth spoken to them.

"It has been long, little one, since you have come to seek the favor of my aid. What do you seek?"

Sky Dog stood up as his helper spirits scattered into half-there trees, predawn starlight glittering over his velvet antlers like frost. He grinned, never less awed or blessed than the first time, and held out a hand in case the Son of the Storm would deign to brush that mighty beak to it in greeting.

"Perhaps I have stayed out of trouble," he said, clearly a joke. "-but please, forgive me, it is a long way to get this far since I am still without a drum. You were never far from the heart of my thoughts, Most Radiant; See, I have burned sweet herbs for you, and brought the meat of a snake that it might please you. I have fasted since yesterday's sunset, and not licked the grease on my fingers: you have the full honour of the sacrifice."

"I seek your wisdom, cousin. Things are walking in the Middle World that should not walk, and I would know their path."

"Your sacrifices have pleased me, little one. Tell me more clearly what you seek, that I may send you my vision. Tell me quickly. I must not stray long from my hunt," came the thoughts, crystallizing in their minds into concrete words that they might understand.

The shaman straightened. "We are in the settlement of Dodge, North America. A nearby village was killed by a pack of vampires herded by a demon. The demon must have made a pact with a white sorcerer who was killed over ten winters ago: an immortal body for a way into the Middle World, but it has spent the time since regenerating the body...if the sorcerer was in the skin so long, he is probably crazy and unpredictable, but maybe he has influence over where he and the demon go."

"I would know where it is most likely the demon and the vampires will next attack."

"To see that which has yet to happen is not easy, and is not certain, but you have pleased me well enough that I can offer you a small glimpse of that which is, and that which may come to pass. Know that more than this, I cannot tell you." The mighty Thunderbird spirit lifted off the branch, hovering over them and paused to send its vision to Sky Dog.


It then lifted, and with a boom of thunder that accompanied each flap of its wings, it ascended the heights, flying further and further off until it could be seen no more.

PM:

PM:

Sky Dog waved his thanks to the departing thunderbird with a wide, wild wave, stepping back a pace with the backdraught before breaking into laughter.

In response to his wave, one last flash of lighting danced in the sky as the last traces of the Thunderbird disappeared. They no long stood upon a tree branch, instead standing upon the ground.

Sky Dog laughed, and shook himself, which caused the almost-trees around to become suddenly clear, cathedral-high and verdant larches. "Ah...sorry, Dalix - my cousin is the son of a storm, they are all like that. Hastier than me! It can be like talking to a hammer." His grin showed dog's teeth in his mouth.

As they flew upwards, Daniel had to repress a sudden urge to gulp at the air as the world seemed to disappear below him. Many thoughts flitted through his mind, though most prominent among those was some fear that the drink had been poisoned and he was now on his way to heaven. Though it all may still be a dream.

His worried thoughts were interrupted by talons, flying, an an enormous tree trunk lying on its side. At least he believed it to be a trunk before he discovered its true nature...merely a branch.

Daniel put his hands to his ears as the great being spoke, though it didn't seem to affect his perception of the bird's speech. He listened to what Sky Dog had to say, or at least he presumed it was Sky Dog. When he heard Sky Dog say that they were still in Dodge, Daniel relaxed a little. They must be in some sort of shared dream. He frowned at the mention of demons and vampires. Not that he was surprised by such talk, but that they might truly be the ones behind the attacks on Hays and other towns.

As the large bird flew away from the pair, Daniel could only manage a tentative wave as its receding back.

He slowly comprehended that Sky Dog was speaking to him, though Daniel had to blink a few times before he was ready to respond. "Your, er, cousin? If he is the son of a storm, and you are cousins, then what sort of parents do you have?"

"Ha!" Sky Dog gestured in the direction the vast bird had left. There was something different about him here: it took a surprisingly long time to realise it was the antlers. The subconscious insisted they'd always been there.

"Our mothers are blood-sisters: there were great storms in the Upper World when I was very young, and he was blown into the Middle World as a fledgeling. She covered him with the blankets and hot wreckage of our tipi, making many trips through the snow to gather embers when she might have snatched me from his side and fled."

"When the Hurricane herself arrived with wings like iron and copper, she gave my mother a little of her blood to replace what she had lost and named her 'sister'." Sky Dog stretched. Although Daniel's ears told him the shaman was speaking that deer-bell language of his, the nature of the place seemed to translate for them. "It was mixed things he showed me just now...but I am impressed you worked out how to get out of the caribou skin." The shaman seemed slightly bruised at present, and as he wandered up it could be seen that faint scarring criscrossed all over his visible skin.

A gentle nudge at Daniel's elbow proved to be the rough lines of the mushroom-buck, probably hoping for said skin back. A cuckoo called somewhere out in the forest and was answered by the scream of a jay. A crashing that sounded like something worryingly large was nearing off to the left, but Sky Dog paid it no heed whatsoever.

Daniel nodded at Sky Dog's explanation. "Cousins it is, then." His brow furrowed as Sky Dog asked about the Caribou skin, Get out of the...?

Daniel hadn't even realized that he had slipped his second skin, as it were. While considering the implications and the dream he had entered, he was suddenly startled by the nudging he received from the caribou outline and reached over to where the skin lay. He looked to Sky Dog briefly, "Does he need muh help replacin' it?"

"It would be kind to hold it up so that he can get his little skull in," Sky Dog said, distracted by some incongurous undergrowth. He crouched down and stretched out a hand to touch the leaves, attention on the shrub as though talking to it.

"...Mountain of Olives? Is that where you are from, Dalix?" he asked, looking over.

"Riiiight." As if this hallucination couldn't get any more bizarre, the reindeer needed help getting his skin back on. Daniel took a deep breath and then held the skin open for the caribou, as if he were putting a sweater on a child.

He waited for the Igor drawing to start wiggling its way into the skin before he stepped away from the animal. "Uh, thankee Igor. 'Preciate it. Hope ya didn't mind sharin'."

And now he was talking to the animal.

"Mountain of Olives? Where didya hear that?"
This message was last edited by the player at 11:41, Thu 14 Mar 2013.

Sky Dog laughed. "He cannot answer that you can hear - that is a mushroom-spirit, not the soul of Igor, my living-sacrifice," it's that kujjai word again. "Igor still needs his skin, or I would already have a drum!"

The mushroom-buck wriggled back into his skin and shook himself out, then nudged under Daniel's hand to show that the thanks were accepted before springing off into the forest. The crashing sound had come considerably nearer; looking off in that direction showed something knocking down trees.

"I asked the plant-soul where it came from...it is not part of my heart-forest," Sky Dog gestured at the ancient trees around, still crouched. "-I was hoping it was not like the little silver bugs from the World Below, because it is so much bigger...they are not very wicked, the silverfish-demons, and I have seen them in the Middle World, but they did not come this high before...there was not enough decay."

A huge elephant-like beast moved sonnambulantly through the upper left of the clearing, heedless of what it knocked into, copper-haired in the shafts of early sun and barely-there shadow brown in bars of shadow. A man could easily ride on the tusks if he chose. Sky Dog looked vaguely irritated.

Daniel smiled and nodded at Sky Dog's response about the mushroom spirit. Not for the first time he wondered exactly what had been in the concoction that he imbibed without question.

He looked questioningly back and forth between Sky Dog and the elephant-like thing that was breaking stuff left and right. "Plant soul? What kinda plant gotta soul?"

"The trees will right themselves," Sky Dog said offhandedly, noticing Daniel's distraction. "It is the ghost of a Lifter - in the beginning, they brought up the earth from the sea, but after humans came to the North God swept the land with flood to get rid of them because they were so destructive. Too much so for the higher Heaven!" He waved over at the hairy half-there beast lumbering heedlessly back into the forest.

"Sometimes when we cut clean freshwater ice for drinking back home we find their corpses, more often just bones and tusks," he added, then simply stared at Daniel, perplexed in the manner of someone asked what kind of animal obeyed the law of gravity. "Any kind. A thing could not exist if its spirit had no shape. It...I do not...you mean what kind is this plant? It is not a Siberian plant."

In the Lifter's wake, a fallen tree faded from view and replaced itself upright.

Daniel looked at Sky Dog for a few moments, attempting to comprehend. His mouth hung agape, though his eyes were clear and focused. "Soul maybe ain't the word yer lookin' fer, but we can talk 'bout language later."

He considered the story of the lifter, "You sayin' the lifters is why Noah had ta build that ark? It was lifters, not the wickedness of man that caused the Almighty ta flood the land?"

A snow crane dropped into the clearing, its feathers ringing like tiger bells, and approached with a kind of dancing caution. Sky Dog let the plant's leaves slip from between his fingers. "Noah? I do not think people at the start of the world had time to be wicked, before they had reindeer and dogs to help them carry and hunt...besides, they were not drowned: a raven was sent to warn them to the high places. It is why there are Yupik in Siberia and also in America - when the flood came, it drowned the land between, but they still live where they always lived."

He held out a hand to the crane in welcome, brushing under its throat as it snaked its neck over his shoulder to beak-clack, apparently murmuring in his ear. "Ah?" Sky Dog rose, a laugh abruptly giving way to seriousness.

"Dalix, we need to start seeking a way down." He beckoned, moving off. The crane looked at Daniel warily.

"-and talk as we go...my cousin showed me that Quanterill is on the plains: it is as I thought, that the sorcerer is still in his body, and mad from ten years buried in it, and the demon is sharing his remade skin...but there is a thing I have never seen: the demon has bound the corruption that moves the corpses to itself, so they follow its host - I was laughing very hard earlier because I was shown Quanterill-the-Man running away from these things, that cannot tell he is there or help but follow him." He smirked, but waved the humour away.

"The demon must be more powerful than I have ever met. It is east of where it will attack next, and is afoot...it may attack a stand of oak trees, or hide there in the day, I am not sure...but it is very powerful. The vampires...they are not like the vampires back home, perhaps they are something else. An American kind." Sky Dog looked back at Daniel for ideas, clearly afraid but with no thought of backing out of a hunt. Peace sifted through the clear forest light like dust from angel feathers, an assurance that horror could not take root there.

Daniel squinted at the crane as it approached, shaking his head a little at the tinkling sound that accompanied the fowl. "I'm purty sure folks could be wicked back then. Evil folk've been around fer awhile." He appeared ready to continue the moral discussion, but Sky Dog didn't, and this was his dream, or so Daniel surmised.

He nodded at the suggestion they search for a way to descend back to their bodies. Or the ground. Or leave the dream.

"Quantril, huh. I'd like ta get my hands on him. Or muh sword, even better. Why ya think there's a demon or sorcerer involved?" Daniel was aware of their existence. And knew that his future would bring him in contact with such, or at least he believed it would. It was his destiny. "If ya got a fix on where he got off ta, we should go git 'im before he attacks another town. 'Course we gotta stay a few days in Dodge first. An' where ya see vampires?"

The pair moved, the crane running on ahead, ringing and scattering light fom its white feathers.

"Ah, you are cavalry?"

The shaman moved a low branch aside with one hand and his antlers as the cathedral-tall larches gave way to a pole-forest of Siberian spruce and birches that dropped leaves like golden coins. "Because the stinking mute men that kill and heed no bullet are undead, and no lone mortal man could herd them, and because Quanterill-the-Demon acts like one of his kind, not a man...when men raid, they fall on a camp from the side with the animals, to make them irreversably into meat, discouraging the people from coming and protecting them. If they want to put fear into people, they make a terrible noise, but only once they are not giving people the chance to escape and shoot them from the woods." Sky Dog's tone was even as ever, though firm with the certainty of experience.

"So. These act in a way that would end them if they were men, and yet twenty afoot surround, catch and kill maybe fifty before the people can get to the woods or their horses. Twenty afoot that have followed a horse constantly ready to run as though wolves pursued it. Live men could not keep up with the horse. Dead men should not, but I have heard of it happening...a demon can supply such energy. Also, he acts much like a smallpox-demon, letting a few go to find settlements for him, speaking his name to give him more presence in the Middle World. Demons cannot make power, only take...and if Quanterill was not a sorcerer, how would a demon end up sharing his skin after his life was gone? It is not the same, to possess a man from the World Below and to be truly in the Middle World, in his skin."

They came onto a small plain, vivid with wildflowers though the air carried a chill of far-off snow. Off in the trees, Daniel might have briefly caught the gaze of the beast that had been silently padding parallel far off to his right before it turned and faded, a glimmer of flame-striped hide and empty dappled darkness. The crane called, indicating a direction with its beak; Sky Dog nodded and strode after it.

"I have nothing clear, save that Quanterill-the-Demon will run West afoot...I could draw the place with the trees for Wyitterp, perhaps. I also saw a white man who hated buffalo, killing more than he could eat in a month...perhaps he will be the first killed. If we could discover where there are buffalo and trees near each other, we might find Quanterill."

"Vampires I have seen back home...or rather, I have ended one and heard of many. They are easy to deal with - stronger and faster than a man, yes, but if you can outwit a wolf, you can trick or trap them, and end them. Quanterill's dead men use weapons, and they are all white, male, adult - when a horde of vampires swells itself, it is simply all the dead they create by biting. These...act strangely. What are American vampires like? Or...zombies, if they are different?"

More was spoken and things were done there in that strange place where their spirits roamed, but slowly those last words and actions faded into only the faintest of memories, only remembrances of dreams faintly recalled remaining in their minds when they came to again.