You must never stop working toward being happy

For a moment, she thought the room was about to collapse. What was this, an earthquake? Was the room breaking apart before her very eyes? Her muscles tensed as her body prepared to run away at the drop of a hat.

The sudden image of the Caster stopped her. Her body relaxed as the room calmed. Well, at least it was good to know that Caster was there. The “body” before her, however, looked and sounded more like some sort of projection. Which meant that…

Their words confirmed it. They were all the way at the top of the room. And the only way up there was a staircase that seemed to extend past the heavens itself. “Ah, hi Caster… It’s good to see you. I knocked but I suppose you didn’t hear…” Her eyes wandered back to the spiral staircase.

Was she going to have to climb it?

“…Considering what these reports are about, I’ll probably have to come up and talk to you in person.”

She was going to have to climb the staircase. Damn it. This was going to be a pain in the ass.

Cana gave the projection a small wave and a smile before venturing to the beginning of the stairs. She took one last glance, to gaze up as far she could. She doubted she could even see the halfway point.

A small sigh exited her throat as she began to travel upwards. 

In what was probably only a few flights of stairs, Cana would find herself in a completely different area.

It would be more accurate to say that she left the Earth itself.  The concept of walls and a floor vanished and she found herself on a transparent surface looking down at the planet she called home.  All signs of the stairwell she’d used to reach this point had disappeared behind her.

“Hello there.  Sorry I had to send a projection down instead of joining you at the bottom myself but I’m still in the process of regaining some of my strength,” As soon as they spoke they became visible to her, sitting at a simple table with an extra chair pulled out for her.

“I think this is the first time you’ve ever joined me in my room is it not?  I hope it wasn’t too alarming.  Breaking the boundaries of Euclidean geometry is more of a compulsion than a necessity but being able to draw strength from multiple sources can be quite useful for something like me.”  They were being vague again but at least they provided some semblance of perspective to the endless expanse of space Cana found herself in.

@acertainaiwass

The door to the Caster’s room opened without a hassle, surprising her. She had knocked a few times to no avail. That usually meant they weren’t in their room, but the fact that the door wasn’t locked was… odd.

Cana took a step inside, eyes glued to the paper in her hands. “Ah, Caster? Are you there? I just need to-”

Her gaze traveled from the paper to the room around her. Well, no, this wasn’t so much a room anymore. She… really didn’t know how to describe it.

It now looked as though someone had shoved a tower into it. A spiral staircase seemed to travel endlessly into the heavens, far past where her eyes could see. She took a few steps back and poked her head out of the doorway. Everything still looked normal on the outside. It was just this one room that defied the laws of reality.

“…Um, Caster?” 

A loud groaning noise seemed to shake the entire room.  The spiral staircase warped and twisted the further and further up it extended, well beyond the point of actually being a staircase.  Upon their Master’s call the room came to a halt.  With an audible pop Caster appeared before Cana.

“Yes Master?  Did you need something from me?”  They spoke with an odd reverb in their voice.  Their outline also shimmered oddly, almost like a mirage on a hot summer day.  "If you’d like you can leave those reports here and I can go over them when I come back down.  Or you could bring them up to the top if you’d like to go over them in person.”

She stared at them, inspecting the stranger who saved her. They look just like a human but they’re not. At least it wasn’t something else like some goblin or so.

“…? um…” Okay, she takes it back. What was that just now? she just heard them say something and suddenly sounded like something else. Startled by it, Priestess quickly acted normal as if what just happened now didn’t scare her at all.

Priestess smiles at them “I-I see an angel. Oh! um well, I was separated from my group and tried escaping from the other side of the cave that’s when I ended up there outside on the ground. I couldn’t heal myself and just stood there but thank you for healing me tho! I owe you a lot!!”

“Oh.  I see.  I suppose that makes sense.  In that case is there a designated meeting spot or should I just take you straight to town?” It asked, either not noticing or not caring that it had startled the poor girl.