skill: entertainer

The song. The song. The bard was compelled to this door the moment their voices touched his ears. He enters this place, wherever in Mythris it might be, for the Northern Alpine would never be a place which Jaskier would think to go. But it is their song which carries him, which sparkles static energy through his body to give warmth where the cold had brought him to his knees. And there - there, light begins to shine through the darkness. A warmth on his back he had not felt in months. So the bard would do as he did best and raise his voice to sing! Sing until the world was right and whole again.

The Pheonix had heard his voice before she had seen him. It was his hymn which brought her forward, stepping into the portal which brought a cold deeper than she had ever felt in all her life. She felt her body immediately slow, thought soon her heart might stop, but there again, she could hear his song over the dark sky. The dark sky which began to open, pouring Ra's warm light upon her.

Setemhotep. ‘I hear you, I hear you!’ She would howl out to the skies, though surely her voice might be lost among the many.

Then comes another voice. This is the voice of Senmut. He bleeds devotion to his people, even as his mantle has turned to crumble. She smiles, for he is devout. And though her paws are numb and she feels she can barely catch her breath, she cries out in mournful song, praying for Ra's life-giving light returned to them.

These dreams, they plagued him, taking the rest from his sleep as they invaded his mind. It spoke of the world's wreckage, manifested by their own betrayal. Yaalk'ali had seen such things, but had forced himself to remain centered to what he knew and move on, as caribou hunters always had. Was it even real? Or was this all but a test of the spirits? Ice Raven demanded its own level of cruelty, while The Widow came for battle and death. The Vengeful One, even? In this never-ending darkness, he moved freely, drinking the fear which spilled through this world.

Wharever it was, Yaalk'ali wanted no part of this shit and he wasn't any hero either. He'd seek the path which seemed to offer a haven of protection from this mess, if it meant saving his own skin and sleeping soundlessly again. Would he be returned to the place he once was, among Saatsine? Or would he be forced into new, unknown lands to begin again?

Either way, he sought the light. The rest of Sun Clan would surely follow.

Oakley was relatively new to this world and it was a strange one indeed. In fact, he didn't quite realize it was a different world all together, for he had been traveling far longer than he would have ever imagined. Crossed many, many miles of new places, none which he stayed long enough to call home. …But this? This, magic? He had never seen colorful flames before, had never seen the world crack and emit blue light. Had never had such insane dreams which seemed to come to life or be without the sun in so very long…

Where was he? What was happening? It was a terrifying experience, for the most part, causing the young wolf to try and simply survive. Sleep would not even offer him respite from the chaos and now he found himself before three portals. Portals?? The young wolf barely could make sense of it and with a shuttle and tearing of his eyes, he steps towards the opening where song could be heard.

It was a cold place, dreadfully so. It reminded him of the Wall in Torbine. It was the only thing which came close to such. Yet as those all around continued to sing, the skies began to open up, streams of light pouring down on them. His heart sounded hard in his chest. His breath hitching. Please, please come back! He prayed to the Sun, he prayed for its return and so too lifted his muzzle in song.

---

She did not know exactly what it was that kept drawing her to her dreams. But it felt important — it felt like she had something that she needed to do. The little girl couldn't exactly explain it, but ... she just knew it. 

And her dreams felt so vivid today. So big. There were so many others here, too. Sazora would wonder ... was this a dream at all?

Mama! Her voice squeaked through the darkness as she saw the form of her mother drifting toward a door. A door where voices were rising, waving upward in volume in a strange and hypnotizing wave. It stole her attention, drawing her wobbling little frame ever closer. She felt pulled, compelled to join them as her little legs took her scrambling after Ivandri.

Bright gaze, innocent and steely blue, would look upward and watch as her mother lifted a beautiful voice toward the sky. All of the voices conjoined around her in such an eerie song ... and Sazora would lift her own head, releasing a series of puppy yips and howls and cries.

This was it: the important thing!

She could do it!

---

It felt as if she'd barely taken her first steps into this new world, and it was already crumbling around her. What ties that bound her were already threadbare; the friends she had once known did not recall her. And now the Dream Visitor had the nerve to ask them to fix his mistakes. Typical man.

But though she was tempted, she did not turn her back on the three doors altogether. If there was even a chance that one of her sisters roamed these lands, she had to try. She had to try, for the friends she still loved, regardless of whether they remembered her. Merel gritted her teeth, sighed, and strode through the first door.

It brought her to the rolling slope of a rounded hill. The sky was utterly dark, illuminated by neither moon nor sun. Yet the hills were not silent: song echoed across the frozen landscape. Merel had never been the finest singer among her siblings, but she lifted her voice now, joining the howls that called to the sun. Was this a foolish effort? Could a bunch of wolves really bring back the light? Her heart began to beat faster.

The omen-dreams came again, with their desperate, dying spirit. And this time, the option weren't only to watch, or to scrabble through snowdrifts chasing after a magic they didn't understand.

The gates promised storm, terror, darkness- and the chance to defeat them.

This weren't their land; these weren't their people, or their gods or spirits or stories. This place didn't want them here, and Cecil couldn't be sure what had taken them here in the first place to want them gone so fervently.

This spirit, though- it weren't the same. Or maybe it had been the one to snatch their dying spirits away, to fix what it had done wrong; maybe it needed another's hand to do these things, in the way those people who shaped the earth held the burden of never again being able to touch.

And truth was, speculation didn't matter; fact was they were here, and so were people they'd come to care for. If the choice were to actor stand idly by and let the stars fall, well, it were hardly a choice at all.

Neither were this, if Cecil got to thinking on it. They were no warrior, not the way a wolf was, and even on two legs, not in the way of the battle they were being shown. And
they sure as hell weren't in a place to pass judgment, and knew enough of men by now- in their kindnesses and cruelties- to know any judgment they made would be fought to the bitter end. Would be wrong.

It weren't about strength, or proving something, or being right. It were about helping, in the best way they could- and that didn't always need to be through shedding your own blood.

Cecil stepped through the first door and into a gathering storm.

The wind howled like a living thing, driving snow and ice into skin and eyes, sharply enough that even in their winter coat they flinched away. It weren't a wind they'd felt before, not even since the clouds had hid away the sun. It had something behind it, and Cecil wondered about the Naayéé', and the snarling spirits that clawed at the great tree, and what monsters had been left free here to call down plague and ice and endless frozen winter.

They were no slayer themself, nobody told of in legend. Just a person-who-was-wolf, and one who felt very small indeed standing in front of it- even as the doors welcomed wolves and dogs and beasts of every shape, tiny specks of shape in the frozen dark, giving voice to songs of every pitch and color.

And there was no ceremony to be made here. Only the cold and the snow and the endless clouds; and it weren't their place to make it, and it weren't the sun and stars that First Woman had crafted and placed above them. But it could be- it was- their place to sing, and hope that this world cared enough to listen in the same way.

They didn't have the voice of a man, but still had most of the tongue of one, somehow- enough to speak the language they'd been raised with. Cecil lifted their head, pitched their voice into a sloping rhythm familiar from long hours spent in firelight, in the company of elders and storytellers and clan and family, and sang the sun and moon out from the slowly thinning clouds.

---

The sun had fallen.

And this was their chance to revive it. To see, first hand, what it looked like. What color it was — what daylight looked like.

For the first time.

Mazikeen had so many questions for the strange man that lived in her head — but there seemed to be no time for that. She could not fully comprehend what was happening, but it felt urgent. The darkness grew heavier ... denser. It felt almost alive. It was so dark that it even dared to swallow the darkness of the moon. And that, to Mazikeen, felt wholly unnatural.

Besides, she'd only just gotten here.

And she couldn't let anything happen to her siblings! Her mamas!

So she would chase, once more, after Kvitrafn, following as she had those couple of mornings ago. And she would yip yip yip and throw her little puppy head to the sky and sing her heart out. She would sing into the density of the darkness with a voice as loud as she could muster, hoping to chase away the shadows that clogged up the sky.

She sang for the sun. She sang for the moon.

---