Wired - a box?
Eda has made her way to the server room, and frankly she appears to not be impressed. If this is, in fact, what they’re looking for, it doesn’t exactly seem vast.

Then again, depending on exactly how she’s to take a random and slightly ominous stranger’s advice, she supposes that might be a good thing. If one were going to try to simply… put this box into a larger box. Which sounds deeply silly, but would also be extremely funny. Even if it would probably be easier to find whatever’s actually inside and deal with that.

Either way, for the moment she’s poking around the outside, circling the thing and then rapping on it lightly with a knuckle.

She looks up when she notices anyone she recognises as a co-worker.

“Hey, do you know anything about uh, blocking the kind of signals Steel might be using?”

Enter the Matrix
The bones of the Isles. Up close, the Isles can be slimy. And gross. But if you look at it from a different perspective…

Eda isn’t quite sure whether she just said that or just remembered when she said that. In fact, she’s not quite sure how she got here. When she turns to look, she’s alone. She is, however, sitting on her staff and, she notices, in witch form.

Below her stretches the skeleton of a creature so large an entire civilization can–and does–fit on just the parts that rise above the boiling sea. The Titan.

Most people would find it overwhelming. Possibly terrifying, as well. But then, most people didn’t grow up there.

As someone who did, Eda finds her place in the world, in comparison to this vast decaying deity, reassuring. Her home, her magic, her very life—all provided by something huge, and ancient. Exactly the way it’s always been, exactly the way it should be.

The only thing that bothers her is that it isn’t real. The familiar view tugs at her heart as she feels herself in two places at once. She’s not really back, as much as she wishes she was. No, she can feel her body trapped in the wires, in Steel’s seemingly endless warehouse. But try as she might to struggle, her real body doesn't listen.

If nothing else, there are worse imaginary places to be trapped in.

A)
In true Boiling Isles fashion, the Knee is named for exactly what it is; the snow-capped knee of the skeleton. It isn’t where Eda actually lived, but it’s the highest point on the Isles and as such, the best view. She needs to think of a plan, but… she might as well indulge in a little nostalgia while she’s stuck here.

Anyone who happens to stumble on her thoughts will find her sitting in the snow, legs crossed and a staff topped with a wooden owl balanced idly across her lap. Around her are something resembling pine trees, if their needles were entirely bright red.

The view really is impressive. Directly ahead, and between the massive ribs of the Titan, lays its skull.

B)
While the nostalgia was nice at first, things eventually began to get… unnerving. She’d begun to have to fight to keep the familiar imagery intact, to ignore whatever this place was trying to show her instead.

She hoped it would help to focus on something smaller than the Isles themselves.

Eda made her way to her house, or at least something based on the memory of it. She shut herself inside and breathed a sigh of relief at the fact that everything seemed right, at least for the moment.

She wanders the house restlessly, looking for things to hang onto. She might be found on the top floor, sitting in a large bird’s nest and looking at what appears to be a family photo of herself, a small, furry, skull-faced creature, a teenage human girl, and some sort of slightly unnerving bird-worm.

At another point she might be found in what appears to be a somewhat makeshift bedroom, picking up a copy of a fantasy novel with a teal-haired witch on the cover. Or on her couch, flipping through a scrapbook.

Wherever you find her, it probably takes her a moment to notice that anyone else is actually there.

C)
Try as she might, she’s slipping. There are memories that Eda has been, at turns, trying to sort into coherency, or trying to ignore. Since entering Steel’s machine, she’s been choosing ignore as firmly as she can.

Ever since arriving in Gloucester, Eda’s been struggling with the confusing nature of the timeline back home. Things she remembers that others don’t, that they remember that she doesn’t. The idea that some version of her was there longer than she remembers, or is going to get back without memories of this place.

That was based purely on piecing together what she was told.

Since her more recent encounter with the Visionary, she’s been struggling with a version of events poured directly into her mind like salt into an open wound.

Unfortunately, that imagery she’s been trying so hard not to think about is very useful to Steel’s machine.

And that’s why, sooner or later, she finds herself near the skull of the TItan as she watches it split and crumble into the sky. A fundamental piece of her world being torn apart like it’s nothing.

The stars crashing to the ground around her are colourful and fake looking, something out of a child’s picture book. It would be laughable, if not for all the destruction they were causing.

In this version of events, she can’t see the being responsible for all this, but she can hear childlike laughter from the sky.

And she can feel the body of the unconscious witch she’s holding close with her single arm, the other currently ending near the elbow. There are other people passed out nearby–friends and enemies and friends-turned-enemies-turned-maybe-friends-again, but the one she’s most upset about is Raine. She knows this version isn’t real, but that doesn’t make this hurt less.

D)
Eda finds herself retreating further inwards.

She isn’t inside her own mind, not technically, or at least not by what she’d consider usual means. At this point, however, that really is a matter of technicality.

She knows what the inside of a mind looks like; she knows going into one is serious business. Dangerous and, at home, somewhat illegal. It also seems like her best option, right now.

Eda is walking through a forest. Most of the trees and plants would look strange, to someone who isn’t from the Boiling Isles. The grass and leaves are mostly shades of red, and purple. Some of the moss growing on trees and rocks appears to have eyes.

There is one plant people from the Human Realm might happen to recognise—some of the trees have orange and yellow snapdragons growing around the base.

The trees vary in size, age, and health. Some vibrant, some gnarled or withered. But the most noticeable thing is that they have framed images hanging on them, some so old that the tree trunks have grown around them.

The images, like the trees themselves, vary. Some appear clearer than others, some brighter or more faded. Here and there, trees and portraits have scratches on them that look as if they were made by a large animal.

One tree that Eda passes is withered to the point it seems to be dying, and the portrait shows… nothing. Not the back of an empty frame nor the darkness of an unlit space; nothing. A void that her eyes slip past, one that it hurts to try to look at. Eda doesn’t try for long.

The subject of the rest is, for the most part, consistent—Eda herself. Sometimes she appears as a small child, all tangled red hair and missing baby teeth and skinned knees. Sometimes a teen, often in a grey and yellow school uniform, occasionally dressed for sports, and, in one unfortunately memorable incident, what appear to be rat ears.

In some she’s a young woman, hair still fiery but beginning to grey at the temples. In some she’s much as she appears now, and everything in between. Sometimes she’s pictured alone, sometimes not—as a trend, the older she gets, the less she’s seen with people around her.

In the distance, there are other trees, ones that look older and different. They bear images of an animal with wings and talons and a heart-shaped owl’s face. They aren’t what she’s looking for.

She isn’t necessarily sure what she is looking for at the moment. Just something safe. Something… grounding.

Wildcard
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