Sigil: City of Doors

So this was it, the big moment! What his entire life's work had led up to. The ultimate cure - the be all and end all of the magical Panacea. Or the equation to create it at least. Vast gulfs of time and countless failures had been quite daunting - yes siree indeed, very daunting - heck, he'd been ready to just give up on the whole thing a time or twenty. But oh ho that would have been a mistake! Now he was just one calculation away from knowing what everyone kept telling him was impossible. THE fix for everything. All problems solved, presto change-o, just like that!

Ok, sure, maybe it wouldn't be quite as simple as snapping his fingers - in fact, it would be a great deal more complicated really, what with all the diagrams and ancient dialects being chanted in out of nonsequential monotones. Not to mention all the dogs he'd have to train to bark at various pitch and length; A total of 33 different species of canine in fact. He couldn’t even begin to imagine why you needed a pair of ukulele playing mermaids stringing a little ditty called “greensleeves” - a astonishingly popular melody found throughout many different, low magic, prime worlds, albeit usually going by some other name. Still, he quivered with excitement. THE fix, finally!

His hand whipped about the papyrus laid out before him with swift and erratic pitch, his body struggling to keep up with the pace of his fevered thoughts. “Almost there” he spoke aloud to an audience of himself. “You can do it Ziggy, you can do…”

End what you are doing Ziguard. It is of no consequence. The time has come for us to meet. Put your silly puzzle out of mind and attend me at once.

His hand stopped dead in it’s track. There was nothing Ziguard could to do to move it. The fingers trembled in their reluctance to stop, but the voice (in his head?) proved to be a force too powerful to ignore. “Why!?” he cried out in a strangled croak, tears of frustration running down both cheeks and raining onto his masterpiece, smearing together algorithms that might never again see the light of day. “No no, not now, please, not now”, this time a guttural scream from lips reddening darkly from the effort to disobey the strange voice in his mind, one that was likely just a part of the creeping madness that had threatened to overtake him so many times of late.

I said enough Ziguard. Forget this - forget everything about it. You will come to me now. There will be no further delays.

Slicing through his entire body, like a chilly yet calm river, he relaxed and took a single deep breath, let it out and closed his eyes. How will I know how to find you? He thought to the voice, unsure if the other would hear him, but feeling in the pit of his stomach that it would. And it did.

You will know.

And he did.

There could have been, and SHOULD have been a much easier way to get from point A - a nice and cozy, if a little beat up, dock warehouse (on some prime he didn't even remember the name of at the moment), where he was spending all his recent time working on The Fix (tm), just before who's-it's mental voice command intruded and forced him to venture to point B - a private demi-plane with a sizable (and appropriately spooky looking) castle that pretty much took up the whole of everything, except for a small bit of featureless ground. When one creates their own demi-plane, one usually makes it fairly accessible to all associated parties that will use said plane; At least that's how Ziguard felt about the issue. The whole thing was just a bit rude when you got right down to it.

But some people just had to have their privacy he supposed.

The entrance to the plane wasn't so much in a specific location (although not just anywhere would work either mind you), but the portal could only be opened when one was co-existing in at least two different planes at the same time (which meant only one thing: Far Realm...always the darn Far Realm), with the key being some fresh blood (his blood of course) drawn and the words "Send me a Sandwich Far Far Away, before the Night Oyster comes home to Play" uttered aloud, assuming one still had lips in the part of the Far Realm they found themselves in contact with.

He had to admit, the rhyme was kind of catchy.

The castle was all very impressive, and elaborate, and just a bit over the top really, but it was missing one critical element that surely a sane (hint hint) builder wouldn't have forgotten in their construction plans - an entrance. Bare stone (granite?) laid between him and the inside of the dwelling, looking a bit moist and perhaps even writhing a smidgen (even though stone isn't typically known for that behavior) was an obstacle that he really didn't feel like trying to surmount. Not that anyone asked his opinion anyway.

"O-KAY!" He piped out to the mysterious voice that he had already mentally named Alphonzo, or "Al" for short. "So uh...what now? Maybe no door means you aren't home? You think I can go now, because I think that I should go now..." he turned to leave, but was interrupted by Al's brain splitting voice swooshing around in his head again.

"Enter."

Forming from what was previously a mostly blank slate of unpleasant looking stone, was now a rather small wooden (oak?) door with a simple handle of brass. Much less grandiose than he was expecting, considering everything else he'd been through, and of course by comparison to the rest of the grim fortress in general. The plainness of it caught him off guard.

"That's the door? Really? That." He rubbed his eyes, not quite believing that this was as good as it got. Didn't he deserve something a bit more...prestigious... for all the effort he had to go through to get here? I mean, normally these kinds of things didn't faze him at all - it's not like he thought of himself as someone in need of grand ceremony most of the time, but this...this was just upsetting in it's lack of style and scope. "Look, I don't know who you think you are, or, for that matter, who you actually are, or, even, what you are, but there are just some things you don't do when setting up these kinds of clandestine meetings, and the complete lack of effort on your part here really isn't doing much to impre..."

"Enter.

And with dreadful trepidation, he did.