"You do look like you could use it. Sleep well."

"Goodnight." Vanyel clambers the rest of the way down the rock and vanishes into the twilight. 

The Vale is quiet, save for the soft bubbling of one of the hot springs below, and the occasional chitter of wildlife in the greenery. The stars come out. They're very clearly visible; there's not much light pollution. 

- until, about a candlemark after Vanyel went to bed, someone comes jogging down the path out of the trees, mage-light held aloft in the palm of his hand. 

"Cam? Are you there?" 

"- yes? What's going on?"

"I am not sure. I had a dream... That I was showing you the Heartstone. It is - not done, with outsiders - but in the dream I knew it was very important... Perhaps it is related to the danger that could happen if you continue your plans un-warned." Moondance sounds unsure of himself, though, and fairly shaken. 

"...okay. Should I come see it? Now?"

"I think you had better." 

Moondance waits for a few seconds to see if Cam is following him, then heads down another path. 

Cam wafts down from the rock on the wing and meets Moondance at the bottom and follows from there.

Moondance leads him down a twisty path, out into another clearing, and then right up to a visible, shimmering barrier; Cam can't quite see through it. 

"With me?" Moondance says quietly, holding out his hand again. His fingers are trembling very slightly. 

"Yeah - dude are you okay? -" Hand.

Moondance doesn't answer, just leads him through the barrier. It feels very strange, a little like stepping through a very thin but intense waterfall running hot and cold at the same time, there's a disorienting sense of discontinuity and then they're - 

- in a room that seems to be completely underground, smooth stone walls with no sign of any doors or other exits. 

In the middle of it is a spire of rock, no, maybe crystal. It looks black from some angles and oddly like pearl from others. It seems to be humming faintly; it feels alive. 

"This is our Heartstone," Moondance says, very softly. "It is - a gift from our Goddess. A kind of powerful magic that She gave us so that we could survive here in the Cataclysm-damaged lands, and work to set them right." 

"It's... pretty?" says Cam, slightly blankly.

Moondance seems unsure what to say as well. He stands stiffly, shifting his weight slightly from one foot to the other. 

And then, suddenly, there's a sense of - something there. A presence in the room with them. Not in Cam's head, it's politely keeping its distance, but...something, or someone, is there. There's the sense of an unseen hand being held out. Beckoning. A request, not a demand. 

"...hello?" he says dubiously.

- and suddenly he's only half in the room, and his eyes are seeing a second scene superimposed on the first, which will grow sharper and clearer the more he pays attention to it. The scene is of a spacious darkness, swirling with distant purple nebulas and, nearer at hand, a shimmering, glittering golden fog. Under his feet is a path made of moonbeams. 

A woman stands a few yards away, clad head-to-toe in black robes, hands clasped behind her back. Her face shares the Tayledras features. 

Her eyes are nothing human. They seem to hold an entire bottomless night sky worth of stars. 

After a few beats, she nods to him deeply, almost a bow. 

"Greetings, stranger of another world. I am glad that you came here. There are important things you must know." 

"- okay, yeah, that's why I'm here, I wanted to know what was so important." She's much politer than fire guy.

She watches him solemnly. 

"You come bearing changes. Perhaps for the better, you hope, and yet this world contains vast powers, magics that cannot be safely wielded by anyone, and - the last time the world saw such change - even though those mortals who worked and built toward it had only good intention - within a handful of years it was nearly destroyed, and millennia later it still bears the scars." 

"Okay, that - makes sense, but I'm not myself planning to distribute magic that can't be wielded safely by anyone."

"No. You are not the one whose actions I fear." 

A long pause, as though the goddess is thinking, or carefully choosing Her words. 

"- The man who caused the Cataclysm still lives. He is immortal, by a dark blood-magic rite that lets him steal the bodies of others to wear. He may already know of you, and he will seek to find and control you, by any means necessary - and he must not be underestimated. He is millennia old and knows of magics that no one else does. He would take over your mind and bind you to his will."

Another long pause. 

"And so I fear that if you wish to safely bring change to this world, you must destroy this man first." 

"...okay. The problem isn't me, the problem is some mind-controlling bodysnatcher who will puppet me. Is that it?"

"Perhaps. The future is not always easy to see. But it would seem a natural conclusion that if another Cataclysm were to happen, he would likely be at fault." She takes a half-step closer. "I might show you, if you wish, some of what he did then. My people lived in the kingdom that he fought to conquer, in the war that led to the Cataclysm." 

"Show me how?"

"In a place far from here, the memories of some of the survivors are - recorded, by magic, in a tapestry. They are kept in a sacred temple and I might call a shaman here to show you. It would feel as though you were watching the events through their eyes." 

"You could tell me where it is, save the shaman a trip."