"The nerve of that kid! SHIELD needs his power, and so he traps me here because of it. What is he waiting for, pacing around in that room?" Fury paused in his ranting to consider the situation, then turned away from the tusk in disgust.
He noticed another one of the strange optic pieces that Alex had rotated earlier, and he idly spun the device around for several moments, considering his options. Then he remembered, Alex had looked through the device!
With that thought, Fury returned to the first optical device, and peered through it, seeing the light separator, and a tusk nearby.
A brisk walk brought him across a small sandy beach, and down into a rough staircase hewn into the rock. A few steps down, and the staircase split, one part going up to the tusk, and the other part going down. For a moment, he thought about going down, but chose to go up to the tusk he had looked at earlier first.
He looked at the buttons, and poked at them for a moment, but nothing seemed to happen, so he reached down, and cautiously tried the handle. Nothing happened. "Damn!" he swore, briefly pounding on the door. Nothing happened, and he set it aside to think about later.
After a moment, he turned, and walked down the steep staircase, then he saw the small cottage. It seemed to be built into the tusk that Alex had entered, which made Fury wonder if there was a staircase or rope ladder inside. Holding that thought firmly in the forefront of his mind, and walked across the short walkway to the cottage. He stared at the doorhandle, trying to decide if it would be locked or not.
After a moment of glowering at the door, he reached out, and the doorknob turned easily. He tried to push the door open, but it would not open, so, breathing very deeply, and trying to remain calm, he pulled. The door opened easily, with a mild creaking noise. He stepped inside, but just inside the entryway, a wrought-iron gate blocked the path. Trying to push on it didn't work, and neither did pulling on it. An odd handle on a wheel in a box caught his eye, so he pulled it down, and released it.
The gate swung open, and a mirroring gate swung with it. Fury walked over to the other door, which seemed identical to the one he had entered by, but it went somewhere else. In between the two doors was a short hallway, blocked by a third wrought-iron gate. He pulled on the wheel-box by the other door, but nothing happened, so he looked around until he saw a blue button ensconced in a brass cup in the small indoor garden. When he pressed it, the gate in the hallway lowered down until it was on the floor.
Fury triumphantly walked through, finding himself in what looked like the bottom of the tusk proper. A quick examination showed a hammock, which had a journal in it, though some of the pages were torn out. Also in the room were a variety of knickknacks, a crude electromagnetic experiment, and an elevator.
Ignoring the rest, Fury stepped into the elevator, closed the door, then pulled the two-stage handle that looked like it was embedded in a toaster. The cage around the elevator trundled around, and Fury groaned, realizing that there was another problem with the elevator. The cage whipped back to its starting position, and the elevator began it's ascent with a relieved Fury. His relief was not to last, as when the elevator arrived, he found that he could not open the outside door at the top. Snarling impotently in rage, he pressed the button to go back down, where the cage spun around again before he could get out.
With nothing better to go on, Fury gingerly settled into the hammock to read the book.
Everything has gone to plan thus far. I have accurately duplicated everything from the game. I actually didn't need to bother with the damage, since I was building everything to be this way, but still, it's nice to see that everything works as it should. I believe everything in J'nanin is ready. Now I just need someone to walk in and piss me off. Still, I hope that doesn't happen yet. Edanna is proving difficult to assemble. Hopefully, all the elements will be ready soon.
I've tested the elevator. It can be made to malfunction simply through misalignment of the mechanicals below.
Fury looked at the images in the book, and smiled grimly. He now had the key to get upstairs. By reaching around the elevator cage, he was able to activate the lever, sending the elevator upstairs, empty.
With a grunt, he stepped down into the maintenance pit at the bottom of the elevator shaft, and looked around to survey the various pieces. The access panels looked as though someone had been unable to remove them, and simply smashed through them, revealing the intricate workings behind. He made the annotated changes at each station, as depicted in the crude drawings, then climbed out of the pit, and used the lever to call the elevator.
After the cage spun back around, not seeming to do anything, Fury reached over to the lever, and pulled, which started the orbiting cage spinning around the elevator car once more. This time though, as it spun, the car turned with it. The cage released, and spun back, then the elevator began its ascent.
"Finally," he growled, pulling the lever again. This time, when the elevator arrived, he entered it before pulling the lever. The car spun around, and Fury frowned, not enjoying the sensation of being turned, then the cage snapped back, and he watched as the floor fell away.
When the elevator stopped, he quickly opened the door, and then the door into the observatory, and was just in time to see Alex lay his hand on another of his books. Immediately after Alex had faded away through the book's strange power, the walkway retracted, the egg closed up, and descended. Then the hatches covering the three optical viewers closed after the viewers themselves had retracted.
"ALEX!" Fury roared. "I'll kill you myself for this!"
After a few minutes of futile anger, he tried prying open one of the covers, but the covers were steadfast, and resisted everything he tried. Finally, he tried the blue button that stood near the right side of the opening into the center. Like clockwork, the covers sprang open, and the viewers extended, light pouring out of them. One was red, another was green, and the third was blue. The light seemed aimed up at the ceiling, and after a moment, Fury looked up at the ceiling, hoping there would be instructions written there.
Alex's face appeared after a moment. "You had to piss me off, didn't you? I'm sooo sorry I can't be there to greet you in person, but I just didn't think it would be wise, given how pissed the both of us surely are right now. Feeling a bit helpless? Wondering where all your power went? I know just how you feel, I've been down that road a time or two myself, but, if you wanna do something about it, you're gonna have to solve this place. In the spirit of fair play, I'll give you some help. Those three viewers projecting my face right now? They have an access code that pertains to their particular location. Each location has a sign that you'll have to enter into that device next to the opening. Once you do that, you can come back home! Simple enough, right? Well, I know how hard some of this stuff was, back when this was just a game, so I've set up a little stash for you downstairs. It's enough food and water for a week, although each world can be solved in about two hours," the projection turned from smug to deadly serious then. "I'm not coming to save you. If you run out of food and water, that's not my problem. If you do something stupid and die, that's also not my problem. Find the symbols. Only then can you return home."
The projection vanished, and Fury sighed. "I shoulda sent Rodgers. He could have talked with Alex, no problem."
Fury took the elevator back down, and searched the room. In the desk, he found exactly what Alex had promised: Food and water for a week. Along with the food was a blank journal and a clipboard that showed a log of when the food and water had last been changed out. On the desk was a ballpoint pen.
Fury opened the blank journal, and found a short message in the front cover: Keeping a journal can be handy for getting out of Exile sooner. A lot of signs in this place are important, and you might not be able to exactly remember everything. Additionally, three loose pieces of printer paper are in the back. Safeguard them, because you will need them to draw the symbol onto, and the machine doesn't like folded/torn/damp pages very much. Regards, Alex.
Fury gently closed the book, and picked up the pen before taking the elevator back up to the observatory. Seeing a handle near the door, Fury wasn't terribly surprised to see that the elevator dropped away when he pulled on it. What did surprise him was the disc that extended to cover the gap in the elevator shaft, allowing access to the locked outer door of the tusk. Fury had no interest in going outside, but sliding the deadbolt to the unlocked position meant that he could enter and exit at the top or bottom of the tusk, as he chose.
A moment of internal debate led to him choosing one of the viewers. An owl seemed to be etched into the glass, and he wondered what he was looking for. The entire apparatus could move, and the handles altered zoom and focus, so when Fury finally locked onto a tusk, he began searching for the sign.
Eventually, the owl etched into the glass of the viewer was perfectly aligned and focused with the owl in the window above a doorway. Using the journal, he carefully sketched the position of the four beads that had moved around while he was moving the viewer. Finally, he noted that it was the 'owl code', and moved on to the next viewer. This one had a leaf, and was designated the 'leaf code', and the final one was referred to as the 'eye code.'
As the eye seemed to be the closest, Fury decided to try that one first. Exiting at the top of the observatory, Fury followed the short walkway to where it terminated at rungs buried in stone, and then followed the pathway from the bottom of the ladder. The path split, to allow access to one of the optic housings, which had a colored ball mounted on top, while the other path appeared to be a natural path, not actually built with rails and planks. The other two tusks had been relatively simple to access, from what Fury could see, although he knew that both had their own puzzles. The 'leaf' had been locked, with five buttons on the door, and the other didn't have a path to the door.
This place though…Fury couldn't even see the door. He began searching. After about ten minutes of searching, Fury discovered a ladder, driven into the side of the rock. At the bottom, a step away from the ladder, was a console with two levers. Ahead of the console, about thirty feet away, was a walkway, leading to the very door he'd been looking for. The problem was that there was a large barrel between the ladder on the walkway, and the door. This led to another five minutes as Fury moved the levers, which eventually moved the barrel out of the way.
With that done, Fury triumphantly climbed the ladder, and went over to where he knew the other ladder was. A simple brass collar was all that marked the hole he would need to climb through, and the brass rungs of the ladder were right beneath that.
A cursory inspection of the door assured Fury that he had done no damage when he had accidentally rolled the barrel into the door, so he put his hand onto the bar, and twisted. To his great surprise, it opened easily, but when the door opened, he saw that the floor had been shattered and broken. There was no way for him to get over to the console or the cage hanging high above. Unless… Fury looked at the hole, then at the barrel, and back again at the hole. With a sigh, he returned to the console, and soon had the barrel rolling right into the tusk. After making sure the ladder was aligned with the collar, he left the console, and returned to the tusk.
The barrel trick had worked, and the console that he would need to enter the code into was accessible. He pulled out the journal, flipped to the correct page, and carefully moved the wooden beads within their tracks to the positions indicated by the viewer in the observatory. That done, he pushed the button in the center.
The console gave out a satisfying 'clunk' noise, and the beads returned to their starting position. A moment later, the counterweight began to rise up, and the brass cage above began to descend. Soon, he was able to see the name on the front cover of the book: 'Amateria'. He flipped the cover open, ignoring the clanking of the brass anti-removal device that the book's covers were carefully locked into. There, on the first page, was that shimmering panel that showed images of another world.
With a small amount of trepidation, Fury gathered up his pen, journal, and two bottles of water, then touched the panel. The world faded to black as the universe roared around him, and when it cleared, he was in Amateria.
A/N: I should have clarified earlier, but I'll do it now. Alex is my own character. He is not a Marvel character, and his powers are as follows: Writing, magic. Writing is a rare art, family magic that cannot be done by anyone else. Alex is the last surviving member of his family, so while there may be other Books in existence, nobody else is writing them. As for magic, that just the general stuff that anybody could learn by going to Hogwarts, or any other institution that teaches magic. His wand is a 16½ inch cedar with unicorn hair. As far as that magic goes, he specializes in combat medicine and the mind arts, particularly occlumency.