A Portal Assisted (6 hours, 50 minutes ago)
message to everyone in the vicinity of Haffemet
Mel looked down from the hill she stood on, near the northeast border of Haffemet. Being well into the foothills of the central Beluaterra mountains, she could see quite a long way across the plains. She could also be seen, but not easily accessed. That was probably for the best, depending on how this went.
Taking the eight portal stones out of her backpack, she set about arranging them in a ring. When it was complete, she sat back and waited for something to happen.
"Something" happened fairly quickly: the stones hummed, glowed, and sang, shooting a spear of light to the heavens. After that, things were quiet for a while.
Several hours later, though, there came drifting out across the land from the southeast the distant echoes of a great bell being rung. At the same time that Mel heard that, the portal stones began to shiver and crackle with energy. Soon, they rose from their bed in the dirt on top of the hill and began to spin, forming a disc of light.
It soon became clear that something wasn't quite right, though, when the disc didn't turn upright or open into a proper portal. Then another peal echoed from the south, and all of a sudden the portal snapped open—hanging six feet off the ground, almost right over Mel's head.
As she scrambled backward, something started to fall out of the portal. Several somethings, actually—dark shapes that landed easily on too many legs, glance briefly at Mel, then skittered off down the hill.
Before more than a few dozen of them emerged, however, the portal flickered, then tilted down on one side, spinning crazily around an axis no longer perpendicular to its disc. After a few moments more, one of the stones simply fell out of the portal, crumbling to dust as it hit the ground, and the rest suddenly flew off in all directions.
One of them struck Mel in the head, and darkness claimed her for some time.
