Running through many folk tales is a common motif of travel between worlds. By way of example, think of Orphelius, who ventured into the nether realms to save his beloved, Theodor, who, fleeing a hurricane, found himself in the drab and monotonous world of Zo, or Ecila, who tumbled down a ferret hole into a land that had never heard of wonder. Also of this ilk are the many rural legends about people captured by the Wild Hunt, only to return to their homelands after years riding the sky with the spectral cavalcade.
Academia has, for the most part, dismissed these tales as mere epiphenomena of human irrationality. I, on the other hand, always operate on the assumption that a grain of truth lies in every tale - and so have decided to make it my goal to find it. After years of research, I have ascertained with great certainty that travel between worlds was once indeed possible - though only to a select few.
The key is the so-called "Elder Blood" - or rather, to use the scholarly term, the gene of Lara Dorren, the powerful elven sorceress. By comparing her genealogical tables against all known folk tales I have been able to determine that she and her descendants were the archetype of the worlds-traveling heroes of many legends. The bearers of Lara's gene possessed an extraordinary talent which allowed them to move through time and space and to reach realms beyond the borders of the known world. The overwhelming majority of them, however, did not know how to control this. It would only manifest itself in extreme situations, pushed out by sudden bursts of emotion or when the bearer's life was at risk.
That is how the above-mentioned Orphelius, in shock after the death of his wife, could in fact journey to another world, which he foolishly mistook for the afterlife. The hurricane provided the pressure needed for Theodor, terrorized at home by his zany Uncle En, to unleash his talent and teleport to a world free from madcap antics. And if we read between the lines, we clearly see Ecila was a prostitute and a fisstech addict - the "ferret hole" represents how, when she had reached rock bottom, she whisked herself away to another universe to get sober.
Unfortunately for any future Ecilases, the sad conclusion of my research is this: Lara Dorren's line has been irrevocably cut off. The last bearer of her gene, Cirilla Fiona Ellen Riannon, heiress to the throne of Cintra, died childless many years ago.
