The open door world
-at the first sign of day Merlin left his resting place and went to the mapmaker. Troy lay asleep on a pile of pillows and blankets next to a fireplace and a real bed. As he begins to wake, he notices a child squatting next to him and staring and two more adding pieces of firewood and playing with the fireplace, he had pointed his feet toward during his sleep. The young and apparent fanged child closest to him was bouncing on its toes and hugging its knees. It was considerably younger than the other two who seemed to offer the other much attention.
-Child: “he’s awake, he's awake, come look!"
-Older boy: “are you our sustenance?"
-Older girl: “we’re not keeping it, are we?"
-Troy: “NO" he replied while stretching and surveying the room.
-Medusa enters the room in a red outfit reminiscent of a butcher uniform much less extravagant than the one she had worn the night before. Almost simultaneously, the fanged children quickly rose to their feet and rushed to stand together. She points her hand outside the room and they swiftly race out of the room laughing while dragging the youngest of them with them causing the young girl to drag her feet along the ground.
The room was much calmer having much less people drinking and smoking and chatting as had the night before. The candles melted into the tables on which they once stood and the light shined in through the curtains slightly revealing the young child or at least something had gone through his sack. After wiping his eyes and pulling his hair behind him, he lifts his covers and pulls his socks and shoes back on his feet.
-Troy: “am I their food?"
-Medusa: “they are separate from humans for their earliest years.
-Troy: “why, is that?"
-Medusa: “it is done while they are taught to control certain hungers in exchange for a passive symbiosis, you call this harmony."
-Troy: “with humans"
-Medusa: “yes...they will visit with humans of their age or size with supervision from time to time. A baby would not hesitate to bite you at first chance. It might do you well to not pick up any baby in the city during your stay"
-Medusa walks to the fireplace and closes the glass doors in front of it that keep out embers that would cause damage. The carpet on the floor was twice as wide as it was long and reached from the fire all the way to the door.
-Troy: “where is Merlin?"
-Medusa: “he has gone to the mapmaker. The little one would have attacked you if not for the others.
-Troy: “that’s nice...can you, or someone here, take me to Merlin?"
-Medusa: [loudly]"guard! Escort...Sir Troy to our cartographer when he is ready, and send those outside in the war room in for their class.
-Guard: “yes your highness."
-Troy: “it’s not sir"
-Medusa: “very well, just troy."
-Troy and the guard leave the room and begin back through the room with the mirrored throne. The long table covered by one long tablecloth, which reached from end to end of the table, at the end of the table on the wall was a coat of arms with a sword, a hammer, an axe and a skull with obvious vampire fangs. While leaving the room across from the throne was the same coat of arms above a larger window he had not seen the night before.
-Medusa: “mister troy, if you do not find Merlin and need to see me, please ask the guards to find me before you come rushing in to request me each and every day you return to this hall. We will be having class for some time and will be learning the voracity all morning."
-Troy: “I understand"
-As Medusa tells Troy this all of the children grin and show their vicious teeth. She stands in the steel framed doorway and boldly smiles while ushering in her three children. As they walk away, he passes a small flock of children and another guard leading a washed small pig by a braided leather lead and harness.
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-Merlin sat waiting outside a closed cartographer’s office with severe impatience. Waiting on a bench of a small and quiet street that narrowed and rises while leading towards the center of the city, he picks up three stones and turns them into three smaller coin shaped pieces. While counting the people who pass him by, he waves his hand across to reveal pictures of flowers and wheels with a simple ease. As occasional mule-drawn wagons and people pass, he waves his hand again and changes them back.
-As he waited, a silver man in silver apparel approached with several long rolls of heavy and light rolled papers of varying lengths sticking out of his bag that draped across his shoulder. He walked steadily, minimally altered by the weight of the bag but was aged and seemed so by his obvious appearance.
-Mapmaker: "good morning, if I were you I would keep my hat on in this sun."
-Merlin: “I am Merlin. Have you made a map for me?"
-Mapmaker: “come inside"
-He unlocks the solid steel door with a detailed key that was filled with many small square holes and they enter into his shop. The mapmaker slides open the thick curtain that attaches to the ceiling and floor and swings his sign around, for passers by, on the street, to see. The light reveals a room filled with isles containing hundreds of worn wooden shelves without finish, filled with scrolls as well as small and suffused vials with colored inks. Also around the room where shoppers would wait were several wooden shelves, and clocks, too many for the needs of several families, sitting for sale.
-Merlin: “is it finished?"
-Mapmaker: “let me see."
-The mapmaker walks down one of the thin isles and begins speaking to the back of the room.
-Mapmaker: "I worked on it all night"
-and the mapmaker moves an entire shelf of maps to other shelves then walks back to his counter and pulls a rolled and new leather map from his bag.
-Mapmaker: "I've never seen that map with my own eyes before, here you are Sir Merlin. I wish you luck"
-Merlin: “what does the queen require for its worth?"
-Mapmaker: “It is free so decrees the Queen...it's a beautiful map and I have never copied it before. I had thought and believed I never would, you could tell me what does it lead to if you really want to offer payment to me?"
-Merlin: “I cannot tell you but I wish you the longest life and give you my greatest appreciation for what you have done."
-Merlin reaching into his flowing robe pulls out a potted flower, as if instantly from his stomach. He places it on the counter top bouncing all of the items that were resting there and walks immediately out of the door. After a quick glance upon the map, he ties a small rope around it and hides the map up his sleeve. As he does, Troy approaches him from up the inclined road that had gained traffic in the time that passed while Merlin was inside.
-Troy: “let’s see this cartographer about a magic map."
-Merlin: "You want to learn. Can you read this sign?
-Troy: “no because I cannot read Viking”
Merlin: “It says 'map time' and I’ve already been inside with much success."
-Troy: “nice...then let’s eat again, I don’t know if you eat as much as I but I’m famished"
-Merlin: “agreed."
-Troy: “let’s go see what the eggs look like from those giant birds."
-Merlin: “this idea is awesome and fortuitous, let us be off."
-And the two walked away from the store. As they approached the same place, they had eaten the day before, the main doors, which held the same door they had used to enter the city inside of it, opened up. Joseph, Medusa's king, and his group of young disciples entered the city drenched in blood carrying bloody weapons and huge pieces of scale covered hides, teeth, horns and enourmous eyes. All were loud and seemed happy, as their mates rushed to join them.
-Joseph: "...Merlin"
-Merlin: "Joseph...welcome back to your awesome abode."
-The two hug and then shake each other’s right arm, hand to forearm.
-Joseph: "don’t tell me you're leaving?"
-Merlin: “yes, we are."
-Joseph: “but I’ve just arrived, stay, we should talk and drink" he asked Merlin
-Merlin: “I’ve just come for a map of medusa's to go to see anathema"
- Joseph: “do you take this one, with you?
-Merlin nods his head up and down noticing the treasure of a kill the young squad carrying.
- Joseph: “the trail comes for you then finally. If you are to use her map, you may be wise to know, that door will not be the closest but I cannot afford to take you to the one I know of but I have been to the one, which is on that map. You have fun and will say hello for me"
-Merlin: “I will”
-Many of Joseph’s troop briefly say hello to Merlin. Joseph addresses his troop.
- Joseph: “get cleaned up and rest well you've done well. I will expect to see all of you in four days. dismissed." the troop leaves, "Merlin I wish you luck"
-Merlin: “thank you Jo"
- Joseph: “if you need a laugh boy, you should have Merlin tell you about bullets."
-And with having that said, Joseph began uphill along the road into the city. After their fluffy omelet meal, they began out into the world again rested and revitalized, passing the small marbles on the ground allowing Troy to take a handful with him. They pass through the ranch and past the gardens around the entire city and begin past the town on their way.
-At the third evening next to a modest fire and a meal, he caught very luckily, as he crossed paths with, Troy wants to see the map. After seeing it on the ground, he picks it up. After loosing the string wrapped around the map, it unveils to be a blank map without destination or terrain.
-Troy: “it’s a blank map. What the hell have you conjured old wizard?"
-Merlin: “retie the string and give it here"
-He reattaches the simple string and hands the roll of leather over to Merlin. As he unties the map, the string glows once over with a glowing gold light and he unrolls a fully detailed map. He gives the map to his son and begins to prepare his patch of ground to meet his liking. Troy studies the map noticing several interesting sites of things he had never heard of. Noticing the names of places he had been and heard of and many others that he had not.
-Days along the narrowing trail as a cloudless night falls they come to the final site of their trek. Troy starts a small fire in the tall grass and hills that look like waves that fill the countryside. Tremendous Grey boulders and smaller broken piles of stone surround everything as if it were a wasteland, left over from a broken mountain. In one of the giant boulders was a broken door.
-The door functioned as a great lock, its surface covered with gears and wheels with teeth missing and certain shapes missing from each wheel. The inscription to the side of the door is in Viking and tells that the door will open with a key of stone and if all the wheels turn at once. Several of the wheels lay on the ground in front of them and all around the entrance of the door rusted and broken.
-Together, they spend several intricate hours, with Merlin magically re-forging pieces, placing the pieces back onto the door. So they will work properly they fit them into several places on the door. Shortly before morning just as the sky is turning blue, they get the door to open.
-They find themselves in a room of blue glowing spheres and eight magnificent doors standing next to the other in a large circle. As they look around, they notice that they are in a great hall much bigger than was the stone outside of the door. They stand near great pillars supporting a high ceiling and off into the distance as far as they could see still lay a looming and endless darkness.
-a large cauldron filled with a liquid form of the blue that covers many of the lines and spheres where they are sits on the floor and the doors in a curve face it. Troy reaches into his pocket and pulls out a dagger. When he touches the surface, it freezes solid instantly while keeping the ripples, as they were when he makes contact. When he pulls away, it returns to its previous state. Confused he taps the radiant liquid each time freezing the waves that would fall away from the last. When he blows against the water, it does not freeze.
-They begin to hear intense pounding which soon becomes the sound of running but from something giant. It begins to be discernible as a huge man of steel with strange shape, charging at them with a huge hammer, moving directly towards them.
-Merlin reaches out his hand and stretching his palm upward, creates a perfect fire sphere. The stone and steel man creature, slides to a halt before them. With another heavy noise he sat the hammer down, which he previously had raised above his head to attack them in his charge, to the ground. The vibrant red and orange sphere has the symbol of Merlin inside of it.
-Merlin: “This is Thor. Say hello."
-Thor:/-Troy: "hello"
-Thor: "I'm sorry, I had not recognized you Merlin, and you have grown younger in the years past.
-Merlin: “This is Troy; we wish to use your gateways."
-Thor: "They are not exactly mine, yet… but you may good wizard man.
-Troy: “what is this place?"
-Thor: "this is Valhalla"
-Merlin: “these are the doors to the other eight worlds"
-Troy scratched his head in disbelief and picked up his bag to which he had dropped in the commotion. On the floor reads 'Midgard' in the Viking language. In another language unrecognizable to Troy reads something else of similar length and symbols.
-Merlin: “They lead to the other 8 worlds but never the same place more than once.
-Thor: "Choose a door, and I will open it for you Phoenician"
-Merlin chooses one of the intricate doors without walls supporting them and Thor raises his massive hammer from the ground to strike the mirror that was within it. On the floor, a symbol that matches a symbol above the door begins to glow. The engraved lines and symbol on the door begin to glow blue like the rest of the great hall. After glowing blue than white the mirrors glow fades into an open doorway and reveals a green pasture that shines with two suns, Thor leans into the doorway and looks down and then around.
-Thor: "I see no one. If this is ok, you may cross Merlin"
-Merlin: “it is fine, thank you so much and don’t you think that I forgot"
-Thor: "watch your step both of you."
Merlin pushes troy through but before he steps through himself, he pulls a mirror from his sleeve, a gift he had promised him from a previous passing and gives it to Thor. He then steps through the doorway stepping down a couple of feet to a green grassy ground. He waves to Thor and as the doorway fades shut they can see Thor run to the door, they had entered from and hit it very hard twice, denting it outward then walking into the darkness as the doorway closed them out completely.
-Troy: “how will we return?"
-Merlin: “we will use another hall of portals of stay forever"
-Troy: “he breaks the door"
-Merlin: "every time so that the external mechanisms break again. Each world has its own eight doors so that the gods can use them to escape.
-Troy: "that is why they say 9 worlds. Escape from what?"
-Merlin: “each other…maybe an angry child”
-Troy: “the mirror?”
-Merlin “he will use it to talk to a face that is not his.
-Merlin laughs at his astonishment and they begin off through the tall grass filled countryside looking for a path. They pass the only tree they can see after an hour of spotting it. As they look around, they cannot see a forest, mountain, ocean, or city in any direction. Very lost they continue walking in one direction towards what has become the vague sight of trees into the distance a few hours more, one of the suns set and the other rests calmly just above the horizon. At such time, they make camp to rest.
-Merlin begins to manipulate the fire, making fire spouts reach into the sky in attempt to draw attention to someone else in the wild where they find themselves. After only a few short hours Troy wakes after having lost track of time in the wavering sun that hesitates to set. He spends a minor amount of time inspecting the white marbles he collected earlier and then spends time following that looking over the parched map.