Sigil: City of Doors

Jolene had to blink a few times as she stepped through the portal. It wasn't the light, dim by most standards, or the seething sea of beings filling the streets which could be heard from beyond this narrow alley, little different from most large cities regardless of their location. No, despite her dislike for crowds, whether those be made up of elves like herself, or of all manner of bizarre creatures as here, that was something she'd sublimate, doing whatever it takes to show that public calm that was a hallmark of monastic training. No, the blinking was for the grit in the air, and in some ways a reaction to the smells assaulting her. At the portal's other end, the gate town of Xaos was hardly what one with her upbringing and training could be comfortably used to, but still this place, Sigil, took that to a whole new level.

The alley snaked and turned, split and remerged, enough times that most beings would have forgotten the route taken by the time they stepped into the incrementally brighter outskirts of the Great Bazaar; the ingrained order within Jo, however, made certain that an exact count of steps and precise angles of turning were remembered in full. After all, sooner or later the Githzerai would come to a decision, and the route would need to be retaken.

For now, though, a wait, a temporary turning aside from the next step of her lifelong pilgrimage. Twenty years since first stepping from the gates of the Jade Centipede Temple in the far lawward Outlands, the only home she had known to that point, to seek a deeper understanding of the order underpinning the multiverse and its presence within the mind of mortals, nine orders of monastics met and learned from, ranging from the arcanist kama-masters of the Shining Hand on Faerun and the temporal guardians of Broomsage Abbey on Oerth to the dragonblood mystics of celstia-adjacent Bojunlong and the cruel staff-fighters of the Magmasoul order in fiery Phlegethos. But many more, so many more to see, even given an extended elven lifespan. And for now, the Gith temple of Arsanith beckoned, a chance to seek enlightenment in the juxtaposition of law and utter chaos in the depths of Limbo. But later.

At this time, the rank odor of stale beer wafted from deep within the bazaar. Merchants of liquor and ale often also had juices and nectars, and for some reason portal-travel tended to build up a powerful thirst within her. Pulling a coat on, the sleeve sliding up to cover the winding tattoos on a lean, muscular arm, she strode into the living maelstrom, mind cataloguing every new sight and sound even while she let her features slip into what would look to most like a neutral, uninterested expression.