"I have. He's... somewhat single-minded, but his skill with Lightning Bolt surpasses my own. I've been giving him a few tips on Wind Blast in the evenings, considering how well he's taken to Winds of Heaven he should be able to wield it quite well by any standard, let alone that of a Journeyman."
Should be Wings of Heaven, rather than Winds.
"Gone too," Snorri says grimly. "But we've dug some exploratory shafts. The veins that Karak Vlag mined have not returned, but instead been replaced with solid rock."
"Solid," you echo. "So not simply caved in." He nods. "So that would mean that..."
"Whatever did it isn't playing silly buggers with time, it's playing silly buggers with us," Snorri finishes, to a rumble of anger from the other Rangers.
... So that means that somebody
teleported or ISOT'd the Karak Vlag in
space rather than time.
They switched it with some huge bit of stone somewhere in the Warhammer world. Who the heck knows
where, though.
And finally, you see it. Like a faint star you can only see when you're not looking directly at it, a tiny string of energy far below, one end frayed as the magical energy reaches its destination and finds nothing there to redirect it further south, and instead spills into the stone. At the point where those magics are being grounded the ambient energies must be so high that any creature there would be wracked by terrible mutation, but stone is hardier than that, and it simply radiates the energies until they're so diffused that they're harmless by the time they reach anything that could react to it. Stone is an excellent insulator of magic.
Ah. Or maybe it's not a permanent teleport/ISOT, then?
Maybe the energy is being used to fuel the translocation of Karak Vlag in perpetua.
... Which presumably sounds like, Vlag could snap back if something was done on their end or on this end.
Except, Karak Vlag would have no idea when it would be safe to do so, so...
Stone is not that excellent an insulator of magic. After almost two centuries of constant bombardment, even stone would be affected, but it isn't. Ergo that magic isn't being radiated, it's being used. You try to do the mental calculations for what could be done with that amount of power multiplied by one hundred and eighty-five years, and quickly realize that the better question is what couldn't be done, and that's a damn short list. Also short is the list of beings that would be capable of shaping that amount of power, and damn near every entry on it is Chaos-aligned. The word 'portal' comes uncomfortably to mind. And then you realize that whatever original objective this gambit might have had, the Ice Witches going to the trouble of scouring High Pass clean of snow would have announced that some sort of very important target of opportunity would be approaching.
So in summary, someone is doing something with a lot of magic, and the 'someone' is almost certainly Chaos, and the 'something' is almost certainly bad, and the Ancient Widow has announced that there's an excellent target for that badness trundling down the pass this season. You hold your pose of concentration and consider what your next move should be.
... Whuh? That's a weird sort of reaction to me.
Maybe I'm slow on the uptake/alarm, but...
I was assuming that somebody either teleported Vlag away (or perhaps Vlag teleported itself away, but I don't think they'd have done so so soon and fast, so probably it was teleported away).
I think a more likely assumption is that the fraying end of magic is being used to maintain the...
whatever... of this big stone block where Karak Vlag used to be; and/or is being used to keep Vlag translocated or dimensionally shifted.
I figure it's better to just act quietly about things. Currently, it sounds like alarm fueled by "Celestial Matriarch said something bad may happen" plus "Insulator was mentioned twice, HOLY FUCK GUYS!" and noticing the frayed end of a connection.
