Karin sat alone at a table with her elbow on it and her chin supported by her palm while she watched the festivities around her.  She hated parties, she hated that her parents forced her to attend them, and she hated dealing with the numerous "suitors", as her parents called them, that were forced upon her.  She blew some of her green-tipped purple hair from her face and shifted her gaze away from the dance floor to her parents.

Her father was a half-elf, though he played more to his elven side than his human one.  Her mother was a machka, someone her father had met in the elven capital of Neis.  They'd married then moved to the Machine Empire for... reasons the half-machka had yet to work out.  Her mother spoke with another woman, an elf from the looks of it, she smiled and perhaps laughed a little bit, then took a sip of her champagne.  Karin wished she could set her mother on fire.

Her ear flicked and she turned to see one of the servers passing by her table, with alcohol no less.  Karin grabbed two drinks, martinis from the looks of it, and quickly downed them.  She coughed a bit when the strong alcohol bit back, but she felt... better, she supposed.  The blue-eyed girl rose from her seat and headed for one of the ballroom's exits in hopes of finding some privacy.

The door led to an empty hallway that was darkened for the time-being, but dim light filtered in through the wall of windows on her left and her feline eyes adjusted to the conditions in almost no time at all.  Her heels thumped against the rug that ran down the center of the hall while she walked with no particular destination in mind.  Karin soon came to another set of doors, doors that had a magical seal engraved into their surface.  Naturally, she tried the knob and found it was open and the seal didn't seem to do anything.

The doors swung inward when she put her should against them and opened to reveal a circular room made from white stone.  The rest of the house was made from a mix of grey and black stone, so it stood out immediately.  Caged lanterns ringed the room and held blue flames that gave the white room a blue and somewhat eerie cast.  In the middle of the room was a hexagonal platform with two steps up to it.  A ring-like formation of rectangular stones rotated slowly perpendicular to the platform.  Despite the size of the room, it was empty other than the ring of stones.

"What is this place?"  Karin asked herself.  Somewhat uninhibited from the strong alcohol she'd inhaled not long before her visit, she stepped up onto the platform and examined the stones.  They were about the length of her forearm and had red runes engraved into them.  She reached out to touch one, which made the ring tremble then spin faster.

The ring gained speed at an incredible pace and soon made a whirring sound; Karin wisely stepped back from it.  Inside the ring a spark appeared and not long after a portal opened into another location altogether.  The half-machka had more sense, even in her inebriated state, than to attempt to breach the portal herself.

Instead, something came through from the other side and left the bewildered girl at a loss for words.