(23a) Addendum to (23)

The Crusader Campaign (095-1123 to ???-1123)

Kalida's Fourth Klatrin Experience

    Kalida's fourth klatrin experience starts out much like the first, with the shrinking and expanding and floating. This time, she has some very definite directions in mind.
    She starts out focussing on Santanocheev. She wants to trace down who else he is affecting.
    He is affecting pretty everyone right now. Unconsciously or consciously, he's pulling on everything, threads going out everywhere. They're strong, very strong, and Kalida herself has strengthened them. She simply can't figure out which is strongest.
    That doesn't seem to be getting here anywhere, so she refocusses on Norris. He's still pulling all kinds of threads, as she expected, but he's also getting pulled now as well. Santanocheev is pulling Norris now, and unintended consequences are everywhere. It's a very complex system. It's really hard to avoid getting tied up in it, almost literally.
    Still, she's holding on, even though it feels dangerous here. Among these threads, they're tying her down wherever she looks, and all she has to do is twitch and some thread strengthens.
    In response, Kalida stops looking too hard locally, and remembers that Norris had some threads that went out in odd directions. She tries to pick one and examine it, follow it. That one right there, in fact. It looks like he's pulling threads that with just a little ripple are going out and affecting some trading company. He's deliberately pulling something, that's certain. It's very minor and overshadowed by everything that's flying around at the moment, of course.
    On a whim, Kalida pulls back from Norris and looks for Eduard. It's kind of hard to identify anything related to him. There's just such strong threads over there that he is probably masked underneath. There's the strong ones that Santanocheev is sending out, and the threat that's coming in to Adabicci is somehow a consequence of that, and details are pretty obscure up there.
    She does, however, think she sees something else pulling around Adabicci's family. It's not part of the threat, but there's something going on around there. She starts looking into it, and suddenly runs into a wall. Something's blocking her view out there. There's a hole that's being blocked, and she thinks that while there might be threads coming from it, she can't see them.
    She looks for a way around it. She can't see one, and what is worse she feels like her view is being sucked into there, views elsewhere are starting to fade on her as she is falling into the hole. She tries to fall back out -- she can hold where she is, but it's taking an effort.
    Kalida notices she's starting to feel tired from the major effort of holding still. She fights against it harder, but she's starting to slip slightly, getting sucked in by the strength of the pull.
    She looks for something to grab hold of, and clutches some nearby threads. She has no idea what threads they are, but they're where she can grasp them and try to pull herself out.
    But as she does so, she feels like she's made things really worse. She can't see what, but she feels that it's something bad. The hole has sprung out towards them, sending ripples flying along the threads she's holding. This is not good. She has once again made a bigger mess. She has to try to extricate herself somehow, unless she dives right into the hole, which she doesn't think is a good idea.
    Suddenly she comes to a decision. She doesn't know what will happen if she lets go of everything she's holding, but it's what she will do.
    Kalida lets go.
    As she falls into the hole, she sees that the threads she was holding are stabilizing back again, recovered a lot from what she'd done to them. She is falling into the hole.
    ...strange feelings
    ...she's passing some sort of boundary
    ...or not
    She feels like she's falling into a black hole, hovering on slowing down, like she's being drunk as a glass of water, like she's a book and someone's riffling through her pages. Time is
    ...strange
    ...but she's drifting and not affecting anything
    ...not being affected
    ...holding there
    Stuck. She's not actually attached to anything at the moment. She looks around but can see nothing. The only sensations she has are of herself, and those are doing strange things. She tries to move herself, and the sense of everything goes.
    ...black
    ...nothing
    ...gone