Tables and desks form a circle around the lantern, set far back against the glass wall-windows of the chamber to give the lantern some room. They're covered in charts, diagrams, bottles, bowls, and other stranger artifacts too numerous to count. Jennendra stands at the largest, peering over a long scroll covered in, to the layman, meaningless scribbles. Jekil perches on the seeress' shoulder, oddly quiet. His eyes narrow everytime he looks at Buran, and he makes no attempt to disguise the fact that he's keeping an eye on her.

Buran sits quietly, watching Jennendra work and, of course, watching the light revolve in its housing near the ceiling. It's a rather interesting device, of course, and an efficient solution to the problem of announcing the shore to mariners who might pass by. Not wanting to blind herself, she doesn't look directly into the beam but instead looks around the room from time to time at the various things the light beam illuminates. Outwardly, she doesn't seem unsettled by Jekil's scrutiny. After all, she's been through such things before.

Stray light from the beam washes over portions of the chamber as Buran examines it. The Onyx Eye only pays enough attention to Buran from time to time to say, "It won't be long now, dearie, just a few more calculations… ", so there's ample oppourtunity to study the place. The glass walls give the impression of being on a completely open platform, despite the occasional tallish bookshelf. With Aski napping downstairs, and Jennendra busy, there's little else to do…

Wait. There's a faint rapping from the northeastern window.

Buran's left ear swivels toward the sound, straining to pick it up, and she looks that way as unobtrusively as she can.

The window is black, showing nothing but the night sky outside. But still, that faint tapping comes. Then the lighthouse beam sweeps over it… just for a moment, Buran can see something against the window. Something white, and vaguely avian, but not shaped like any sort of living creature… it's gone as soon as the beam passes away.

Tap. Tap, tap. … Tap.

After another few moments, Buran rises from her seat, stretches a bit to relax kinks in her muscles, and wanders to the windows as if to look out upon the view, or what can be seen of it. She stands in front of the window where the … thing … was and wonders to herself whether it was merely her imagination. She wouldn't mind that on a night like this.

As Buran approaches the window, more of the land below can be seen. The forest below can be barely distinguished from the sky above by the faint starlight. A few slim clouds drift across the sky, edged in silver by the Procession. Then the beam sweeps overhead again…

It's skeletal, and tattered. Indistinct, but obviously not alive. Whatever it is opens its beak in a soundless scream and falls away from the window, its wings spread, to dissolve into the darkness below the lip of the tower.

And it's gone.

Buran, startled, watches it fall into nothingness in silence. She turns back toward Jennendra, her first reaction to ask if such things have been seen here before, but remembers that those computations probably require great concentration. She turns back to the window and watches the land below, unsure what to make of the creature.

The stars are the only things apparent that look back from the darkness, even after the beam passes overhead again.

The silence is unbroken for a few more minutes, when Jennendra finally stands upright from her table, stretching her back. "Mmmph! Well, that's that. We're ready to begin." The elderly Korv turns around to face Buran, a smile around the edges of her beak. "We're ready to begin the beginning, so to speak! You remember that I need you to aquire some components for me, correct?"

The Sphynx, her thoughts having wandered rather far in the last few minutes, starts a bit, though slightly-ruffled fur is easily smoothed back down. "Ah. Yes, ma'am, I do."

"Good! Well, this ritual we're conducting will allow us to obtain those." Jennendra takes a rickety step-ladder that was leaning against one of the cabinets, and with a great deal of effort, begins unfolding it. "One of the (uff) things we'll need as a component is something deeply personal to you. Something that (mph) represents a particularly wide and clear facet of your being. This isn't something that you have yet, dearie, trust me. It's something that… ah… something that you have to create, in a sense. Create, discover, it's difficult to describe, but it is specific to our spell. … Mmmph! Confounded balky ladder hinges… "

Buran politely offers help in unfolding the ladder. "Interesting… "

The old Korv is more than willing to let Buran assist. "Please, set the ladder up near the pillar. At any rate, I'm preparing to send you to find this thing. The energies of the spell will decide best where you can find what you need, and take you there."

Buran sets to work unfolding the ladder and making sure it'll hold when climbed upon. "It will… take me there? Magically?"

Jekil's tailfeathers flick. "That is what the Seeress has just said, dunderhead! Honestly, of all the-… "

"Jekil, really. That's uncalled for." Jennendra's tone is stern, and Jekil grudgingly claps his beak shut. Turning her attention back to the Sphynx, the elderly Korv nods. "It will also bring you back when it is time for you to return… though you'll need to take something with you to do so… " Jennendra raises one broad wing up to cover her face for a moment, and lowers it again. In the palm of her wingclaw rests a perfect black sphere, glossy and reflective. The Seeress proffers it, her left eye shut. "Be careful with this, dearie… I only have two of them, you know." A raspy chuckle, here.

The Technopriestess very carefully takes the sphere into her hand, tilting her palm to look at it from various angles. She pointedly ignores Jekil and instead promises, "I'll be most careful with it." Some part of her mind wonders if Jenenndra harmed herself by doing what she did, but Buran decides not to ask.

It only takes a moment for the Korv to tie a black zolk scarf at an angle around her head to cover the appropriate half of her face. She shuffles back from the ladder a little, and watches the lighthouse lantern turning with her remaining eye. "We'll require one other object as well, a more mundane component of the spell. It can be one of two things. I'll need you to bring me either something that can hold and cast light, made predominantly of metal, or a very pure grade of oil, highly refined. The latter will be difficult to find, as I don't know of any place with a refinery that can produce exactly what we need… but you should have some flexibility in this part of your search. The Eye will not only allow me to watch over you, but will let you know when you've found what you need."

Buran merely nods, repeating the Korv's request to herself softly to better commit it to memory.

Jennendra takes her place in the center of a circle inlaid in the floor with mother-of-pearl. "We're ready to start, then!" says the old Korv briskly, rubbing her wingclaws together. "Have you any questions?"

The Korv's visitor shakes her head, not having any, and looks with interest at the circle.

"Ascend the ladder," rasps the Seeress. "Jekil, begin the incantation."

Buran lightly balances the black sphere in her right hand, folding her fingers gently around it so that it can't fall, and holds to the ladder with her left hand as she steps onto the first rung. It wouldn't do, of course, to fall… Her ears perk themselves up to listen to Jekil's chant.

The tiny crow bobs back and forth as it chants in a surprisingly powerful voice. "As far as stars, the eye can see, and perceive the destination… "

Jennendra's voice, meanwhile, has taken on a softer quality. "Buran, look into the mirror when the lantern passes around. Don't be afraid… think of who you are… think of what makes who you are… "

The lantern swivels, the mirror gathering the light from the blaze in the lantern and focusing it into a harsh beam that would surely burn the eyes like a dandelion clock in a furnace…

Buran hesitates, looking at the aura the beam casts through the room. It is awfully bright, and brightness can blind… and what is there to see after that? She doesn't want to do something foolish, as her rational mind insists this is… but another part of her wants to find answers to what has happened to her. If that can happen, then isn't it worth it to risk it? Maybe this Korv knows what she's doing? The Sphynx takes a deep breath, holds it, and looks at the light …

"… Bring that which the mind's eye sees, and find a new location." The light of the mirror plays across the Sphynx' face, intense, and yet there's no pain. Another Sphynx stares back from the other side of the lantern's fire, surrounded in runes of gold gilt on the polished surface of the mirror. Jennendra's and Jekil's voices harmonize in the background in an indecipherable, yet strangely pretty language, and the gilded runes flare. This time the light is blinding, and the sounds of chanting, the sounds of the turning pillar, everything… fades away…

** KLANGGG!! **

The roar of thousands of deep, angry voices rolls over Buran. Crashing and shouting echoes from every direction, a cacophony with a near deafening chorus of war-cries behind it. The priestess finds herself standing in a barren field composed of loose dirt. A steely overcast sky drops a few spatters of rain down as a token to cool a world gone berserk. Hulking monstrosities of wood, tar, and other materials crash around the field, milling with armor-clad warriors who dash madly from foe to foe, fighting pitched skirmishes that compose a larger, raging battle. As many as are standing are lying still, amidst the carcasses of several of the great monsters, greasy black smoke rising into the gray clouds from a dozen impromptu funerary pyres.