The Captain's Log: #106: Pocket Dimension

Like all registered adventurers in the Paperverse, Eltanin had been granted exclusive use of one of the Parchment Imp Inn’s many rooms. For 1000 gold a sidereal year, less than he made from a single smuggling run, he could step off the Redoubtable and spend his downtime in 250 square feet of his own design. Bonus: the open bar, at least until Martus caught wind of just how much rum the Paperdemon could drink in one night.

 

In anticipation of an incoming solar flare, the Redoubtable had put into port to wait out the coming chaos. His watch had been relieved, the logs were in order, and the crew were all on shore leave to who-knew-where. With his trusty ship’s log under his arm, his talisman and key to the lock of the Paperverse, he stood before the full-length poster of the Inn hanging up on his cabin wall… and stepped inside it.

 

The world shifted around him, thousands of miles collapsed and spanned in seconds, and then he was in his room.

 

The Redoubtable, though technically a fancy Navy vessel, still very much valued function over form. Its rooms were compact by design, with dark wood walls and tiny porthole windows that made it look dimly-lit even at noon. His guild hall room was nothing like that.

 

It was furnished in imitation of the Soujel style: Minimal furniture, plenty of open space, draping curtains and upholstery on every possible surface. A grand bay window that also doubled as a cushioned reading nook let in natural light from the guild’s current location, Wouagi. Eltanin much preferred its familiar yellow sunlight over Kahari’s eye-straining blue, but the three moons could get a little annoying on nights when they were all full and the curtains more translucent than he thought.

 

The wallpaper was pastel cream, painted with curling vines, exotic flowers in bloom, and cloud cuckoos clinging to branches or wings spread in flight. A simple chandelier hung from the wall, wrought from aluminium alloy, Avangard’s favourite metal. Fun fact: It was what the Empress’s crown was made of! A canopy double bed leaned against the far wall, built of pale pine wood and topped with fine white mothsilk covers. Weird, he didn’t remember ordering housekeeping that day, yet it’d been perfectly made, turned down and ready to be tucked into. Maybe the rumours of Martus being an omniscient, unkillable force of nature had some truth to them…

 

In front of the bed stood a beige chaise longue, for fainting dramatically after receiving devastating news. A dresser table with silvered mirror and matching stool rounded out this half of the room, along with a hat rack, wardrobe, and four-panelled folding screen. His candy outfit from the Sugar Soirée, at least, seemed to be exactly where he’d left them last time. That was to say, on the floor. Curse his past self! He gathered up the pieces to take down to the laundry room, eventually.

 

Just as he did on his vessel, Eltanin liked to keep his work away from his leisure. The opposite side of the room held his escritoire writing desk, his bookshelves of cheap penny dreadfuls and priceless compendiums, and whatever conundrum he was currently working on. Oh, right, there was that recipe he’d gotten from Cera at the Sugar Soiree, waiting to be transcribed into his talisman proper. Eh, another time perhaps.

 

No, today was a day for relaxing, and relax he was going to do!