February Vignette

[Jasmine]

The usual rules apply, you have until midnight ALASKA time to complete the vignette. The details are up to you and it can be canon or non-canon to your character. Remember that February is only 28 days long, so don't wait til the last minute or you might miss it.

The topic for February is:

Between one step and the next, you have been magically transported to somewhere else. What happens now?

Where you go is entirely up to you and does not necessarily have to be somewhere else on Althanas. The manner in which you are transported (be it instantaneous or a slow change or a whirl of color or whatever else you can think of) is also up to you.

Have fun!

[Enigmatic Immortal]

Jensen looked upon the edge of the world, eyes fearfully scanning at the abyss below him. Infinite darkness, a void that swallowed all light was what loomed ahead. He felt wind rippling his jacket, teasing the frayed edges upwards as the leather clapped against itself. His hair constantly got into his face, rustling around as he looked into the endless chasm. He closed his eyes, lifted his arms out to the side, and with a deep breath he took a single step.

The air around him changed, the wind dying as he felt a hollowed noise whistling. It was empty around him, cold and Spartan. He felt the flesh of his skin rise, the hairs on the back of his head standing at attention like trained soldiers. Everything around him was so draft and cold. He heard a scream in the hallway, the bluish grey stone walls echoing it as Jensen heard a familiarity to the chord. In an instant he moved, feet pounding the cobblestone as his heart began to rapidly beat. He reached for the door, a large round knob twisting just as his fingers were about to grab it.

White filled his vision. Brilliant luminescence of a heavenly aura shined at him. He felt at odds, dressed in his usual dark attires. He lifted a hand to block the brilliant illuminations, fearfully turning a bit to the side as if these rays caused him harm. He felt something soft, silky, and feathery all at the same time hit his side, followed by another. The scream returned; a joyful pitch of mirth. The pillow fell to the side, and long strands of red hair fell into view. There was a bed, a large one with four posts. Several pillows lined the headboard, and the blankets looked rustled as if someone awoke recently.

Jensen turned to see Stephanie before him, smiling as the pillow came back up in a retaliatory strike for his awkward position. He smiled, feeling his stomach begin to rumble as a hearty laugh escaped his lips, echoing as he grabbed for the pillow. The two lovers tustled over the fabric, ripping it as feathers went everywhere in a rain. They laughed together, their hands grabbing at one another until they held each other tightly. Jensen closed his eyes to enjoy the bliss of holding her again; his beloved Stephanie.

When he opened them there was a downpour of rain that fell at a fast pace. The droplet’s beat upon his face like tiny finger’s drumming along his flesh. He shook his head, the slickness of his hair slapping the coat as he looked around. He was outside the castle, in the forest of Concordia. He heard something scream, and he quickly turned to find Azza and Stephanie playing in the puddles, splashing each other.

“Come on Daddy,” Azza’s voice echoed, her tiny voice carrying to him slowly. Jensen moved, splashing puddles himself as he stomped over to them, roaring with laughter as they giggled and screamed. He grabbed his little angel by the shoulder’s, hoisting her up in the air and planting her on his shoulders. She kicked wildly, giggling as Stephanie rang the wetness out of her auburn locks, smiling a sweet smile as she leaned in to kiss Jensen. When their lips met his eyes closed, enjoying the passion. His heart beat in time with her’s, and even Azza’s heart beat with them. All was one.

When he pulled back Stephanie was before him, dressed in the whitest of gowns, a headband tied around her forehead holding her hair back where it was braided over several times. Jensen felt his jaw drop, eyes watering to realize this was the woman he was going to marry. She smiled to him, sweetly as her cheeks flushed, doing a twirl for him. Jensen nodded in approval, looking at the beauty of the woman before him. There was a loud scream, and Jensen turned immediately to see Azza being chased in a little dress of her own, Tobias Greenleaf on her heels as she tried to tie a red band around his daughter’s head. She clutched onto Jensen’s leg, beaming to him with her maroon eyes to help her, and Tobias chuckled as she looked to Stephanie. She whistled a few cat calls, and Stephanie laughed. Jensen turned to see her smile, blinking.

There was emptiness, a void, an abyss. He was underground in Sei’s tombs, but they never felt more apt to that name than now. A chill wind, an unnatural feel to it blew on his body, and he fell to his needs. He shook uncontrollably as he looked around, until he heard a scream. He shot his eyes open wide, looking for the sound. Again the scream came, and Jensen chased after it. He moved down one end of the cave all the way to a dead end, Zerith Dracosius looking to him and sadly shaking his head.

Another scream and he ran, rushing as fast as he could, his heart ready to explode as he kicked up dirt in his mad dash. He pressed his fingers against the wall, digging his fingers in to turn sharply. Another scream and he turned a corner. Another dead end, Sei Orlouge looking to him with sadness as his head shook.

More screaming, more cries of pain. Jensen ran as fast as his feet would take him, heaving in and out every breath as tears rolled down his face. A corner away he could hear the screams getting louder. He focused his reserves, his strength. He pushed as fast as he could, and he turned the corner. Tobias Greenleaf looked to him, tears in her eyes as she shook her head.

More throat tearing screaming. Pain magnified by some unknown source. Jensen ran as fast as he could, tripping now as his body failed him. His lungs burned, his chest was on fire. He crawled towards the sound, his own ears ringing at the pitch the voice screamed. Jensen was almost there, he willed himself to his feet and limped weakly in a half trot forwards. Saliva dripped from his mouth as he coughed hard, eyes burning in pain as he clutched his chest. He was almost there!

He turned the corner, and found Cassandra Remi standing there, a vile, disgusting smile that Jensen trembled from. She coaxed him to her with one finger like a lover, turning with a saunter as one heeled foot stepped into the room she was in. Her black hair fanned out to him, and he could feel a gust of dread blow over him. He obeyed her, and moved towards her sanctum. He stopped at her door, and when he heard another scream he closed his eyes and opened them.

The door was still there. He heard more screaming and shut his eyes tightly.

Still the door remained. Jensen shook his head, crying as he wished for the door to go away. His prayer’s were only answered with more agonized screaming. Jensen at last moved into the room, and found Cassandra over Stephanie, a bloodied knife in hand that dripped every few moment’s to the ground like a leaky faucet. Stephanie’s body was beyond recognition, her flesh brutally flensed and insides exposed. Her face was barely noticeable, so cut up and disfigured it was. Cassandra peered over the left eyeball, tapping the knife against her lips in contemplation.

Jensen moved to Stephanie, looking her in the eyes as he pleaded for her to understand. But all she did was scream while Cassandra cut into her again. Each note was emphasized by the intensely hateful stare she gave Jensen. The immortal wept as Stephanie at last gave up her life, and he closed his eyes in mourning.

When he opened them he shot straight up in his bed, body full of cold sweat. His heart ran a mile a minute as he clutched the shirt he wore. He breathed heavily, almost wheezing at the rate his lungs pumped oxygen. He looked to his hands as if they betrayed him. Nothing but sweat.

“I was too late,” he whispered. “ I should have been faster…” Jensen collapsed into his hands, tears streaming his face as he sobbed. He replayed his nightmare over and over again, unable to find peace in the night as he grabbed a pillow and held it tightly. No matter what he was told, no matter what was said, Jensen could think one thing.

Stephanie was dead, and Jensen felt it was all his fault.

[Duffy]

Stepping into another world often produced small mercies, and there were many small mercies to be found in the halls of the D’Urberville residence. First and foremost amongst them was the colourful and mercantile vibrancy in which the family insisted on living. Of all the noble households of Scara Brae, they were its reformation men, its lifeblood. They were the movers and the shakes and the ones to lead the way to change.

D’Urberville Cross, the mansion in which the family had come to reside only fifty years prior stood on a corner of two streets in the upmarket Sirius Square, with east and western wings stretching into Lavender Drive and Primrose Road respectively. The fact that the house resided on a corner was most unusual in Scara Brae, as most geometric edges were occupied either by business places or guardhouses, or clock towers that housed no clocks.

It was this precise fact that had attracted the current head of the family, Alistair D’Urberville to the property. Though young amongst the cities of Althanas, Scara Brae’s heritage was to be found in these strange quirks, and to possess one was to be a spectacle and a part of the cultural elite.

Though young in terms of age for a noble house, the D’Urberville had moved from a smaller property thirty three years ago, to the day as fate would have it, after the now late Leopold D’Urberville passed away in service to the Knights Provost of the city. His captain hood is still dropped into every possible conversation, at every opportunity afforded to the elders of the family. The most power after all was often wielded by those with the best connections they could drop into their pre-dinner banter.

They had used their patriarch’s considerable wealth to buy into heraldry as a reward for his service, and they climbed another rung in the social mobility ladder quite literally by stepping over his dead body. This was the way Scara Brae had always been.

The front door of D’Urberville Cross was an unremarkable affair. It had been repainted red so many times the paint cracked in the heat, revealing slithers of darker shades beneath the peeling flakes. It was a two piece structure, with two large lion head door knobs that housed heavy silver rings in their tightly clenched jaws on each half of the door. The square patio, which stood atop a flight of four cracked terracotta stairs was covered by a square awning that was propped up by two crumbling, ivy wreathed columns. The roof tiles of the awning were terracotta too, missing one of two tiles from every other layer.

Just beyond the door there was a more regal setting, a trophy house of artefacts and trinkets gathered from across the globe by a military family who had always been keen on amassing wealth. It was important, they thought, to gather resources for the day when they finally became somebody, for when they ascended into the spotlight. Long after that event had been and gone, they insisted on plastering every available war space with swords, shields, Fallien glass ware and portraits of long dead D’Urberville relatives and their repugnantly tasteless attire.

Alistair D’Urberville was by now in his early sixties, a grouchy man that hid behind a bushy beard, a large waistline and an incessant wall of complaining. Though his mind had once been keen, sharp and effluent, he had been reduced to trying to keep his warring family in line and hosting demoralising dinner parties almost on a nightly basis. There were many who were interested in the D’Urberville legacy, and it’s eternally expanding trading company that had been established in the wake of the civil war with Radasanth. The D’Urberville’s it seemed were always eager to profit from death, and to do that, your kitchen had to be well stocked and your wine cellar impenetrable.

As the sun had set on another uneventful day, a small gathering of nobles and associates had streamed through the cracked red doors into the marble lined entrance hall of D’Urberville Cross. Their coats had been taken, their hats placed on stands and their parasols, for which there was no use asides glamour were propped up in the umbrella bucket which rested at the foot of the stairs. The guests were given a brief tour if they had not seen the house before, before they were whisked away through the gold leaf covered doors to the right of the grand stairway into the dining room.

The doors had been shut for over three hours, and four courses had been and served already. Fruit salad, fish tart, beef stew, and soon, the main; spiced lamb from a distant island of sand. Silence quickly followed, just as dusk turned to night, and the sound of chatter began to trickle through the doors and out into the cold and empty air of the entrance hall.

Many of the nobles had hired mages from the University of Molyneux to enchant the walls of their homes over the years. Rituals and glyphs warded those who were uninvited away, keeping their gold, and indeed, their hearts safe from unwelcome attention. The D’Urberville family had, in its short tenure in the Noble Guild attracted a lot of unwarranted attention. Jealousy was a bitter fruit, and in Scara Brae, that fruit shed its pips and grew everywhere one might care to look.

To gain entrance to the house, then, one required either the D’Urberville name as your surname, an invitation, or an employment contract. Whilst the servants of the downstairs of D’Urberville Cross came and went through the rear entrance, and were, for the better part of the day treated with utter disdain, they were amongst the few privileged individuals that had access to the kitchens and cellars, and thus the true treasure of the D’Urberville family – it’s vast, two floor wine collection.

Duffy Bracken stood before the long line of oak barrels, still supporting their contents through another year towards vintage status with the sort of admiration that only an alcoholic could give to a wine cellar. The hefty barrels required several men to haul through the cellar door, and each was stamped on the flat top with a large black lion, the D’Urberville insignia, to mark it as belonging to a particular vineyard.

“Soon, my pretty, you will be mine for the tasting…” What Duffy meant was the wine would be in his cellar for the tasting. Between courses, every time he had delved into the shadows of the mansion he had helped himself to a little glass from the fermentation barrel at the start of the row. Whilst the tart, frothy wine found in that barrel was a pale imitation of the contents improving in the other casks, it was a glimpse of the sheer indulgent nose the wine was said to have.

At forty gold a bottle on the open market, it had better have been divine enough to melt said nose and leave its drinker unconscious and twitching.

Under normal circumstances, seeing a man in black coat and tails brandishing a high, stiff white collar and a white towel draped over an elegantly poised right arm, one might be given the benefit of the doubt. He was just a butler choosing the wine for the main course, matching grape to meat, spice to aroma, and glass to bottle. There were several things wrong with this picture however. The first was that Duffy was wearing the towel over the incorrect arm. An amateur’s mistake, all being told. Though infiltration using the servants’ garb and role had been his preferred method of stealing for many decades, there was so much information rattling about in the bard’s mind it was easy to forget something, even if that mistake would cost him dearly.

The second was that Duffy Bracken was anything but a butler.

It had taken weeks of planning, but the bard had carefully wriggled his way into the side entrance as a legitimate member of the servant’s household, and now, he could stake his claim on the D’Urberville treasure. He just had to serve three more courses beforehand…

He was there only on the small mercy of the second wonder to be found once inside the mansion. If you wore the uniform, nobody ever acknowledged your presence beyond curtsy, nods and the occasional bonus on the turn of a holiday. Except in the more liberal households, you were quite literally invisible for the majority of your time of your service.

“Though first I must serve the wine for the lamb,” he said glumly as he turned about. On the opposite wall there was, from floor to ceiling a wire rack extending the full thirty feet of the surface. In every hole in the rack there was a golden coloured bottle top, which was the chosen labelling for the D’Urberville vineyards they had purchased shortly after their acquisition of D’Urberville Cross. As the butler of the household, a new replacement for the almost skeletal Winston Jones, who had been shipped to Corone ‘at his master’s retirement request’, or Duffy’s shoddy handwriting, it was Duffy’s job to select a wine to serve with the spiced Fallien lamb at precisely nine in the evening.

This left him six minutes to make the most important decision of the entire heist.

Already, Duffy could see his carefully laid plans coming undone. The closest he had ever gotten to proficiency with wine was a dextrous ability to juggle three full bottles without dropping them, regardless of how inebriated he was. He pressed his free hand into his hip, and started to tap his polished shoe against the dusty flagstones.

“If I was filthy rich, obese and on my fourth glass of claret, what would I want to see served with the piece de resistance of the fourth dinner party of the week?” he tried to put on a mocking, enthusiastic tone, but fell short of the mark when he realised he had answered his own question. “After the fourth, I would stop caring…” As long as the wine kept coming, he doubted anyone would notice if he had made a blunder with his selection.

He stepped forwards and reached for the closest bottle to his fingers. The tip was cold, crusty, and covered in dust. He pulled it from the rack with a heavy clunk and swaddled it with the pristine, pearl white folds of the towel. He pleated the edges as he had been instructed, wrapping the label and hiding it out of sight from pedantic eyes and tucked it neatly so that it would not come undone. Pressing his thumb into the base of the bottle, he tipped it slightly and pandered his free thumb and forefinger to act as a pedestal for the top of the bottle. He tilted it forty five degrees to the left, and cleared his throat.

“Act five, scene one, the fat man loses his keys…” He beamed a last smile before he slipped back up the poky spiral stairway into the kitchen. All he had to do was waiting for the opportune moment to slip the cellar door key from the pocket of the raucous Alistair D’Urberville and then he could heckle the rest of the troupe to the side entrance in between the lamb course and the first of four deserts.

There would be much meringue and claret slugged in the Prima Vista playhouse come sunrise.

[Les Misérables]

The dripping sound would not stop.

Why didn't I listen to Elena?

She lay next to him in bed, curled luxuriously on the downy mattress, her hair a chestnut mane of sensuous smells. And she was fast asleep.

Lucky girl. He tugged the covers off of his tired bones, twisted sideways and rolled silently out of bed.

Phyr Sa'resh rose in the darkness, striding to the window as his azure eyes penetrated the deepest shadows and showed him the hard lines of their oaken walled bedroom. With one gnarled ear pressed to the chilly glass, the sound became clearer still. Drip, drip, drip. I am a child's fool, and the weather's, and the bloody emperor's...

Pulling a linen shirt and denim trousers over his narrow body, Phyr knotted a simple hemp belt around his waist as he exited the bedroom.

The kitchen of the Last Night's Maiden, the inn they owned together since he had helped pay off the debt, stood between the old drow and the leaky gutter. Elena had asked him three buki times to clear the leaves out of the eaves-trough, and yet somehow the request had careened off every crag in his brain and gotten lost amidst the ring of muck and decomposing plant matter that filled the gutters bordering their thatched roof.

Unlike their bedroom, the kitchen had no windows. No glowing patches of diluted moonlight for his drow eyes to take advantage of.

Extending the palm of his left hand straight ahead, Phyr braced his right hip and arm-stump against the heavy stone counters and edged his way past the cooled ovens. Nearing the kitchen door, he heard a faint scratching and knew he would have to be quick. Sliding his crooked fingers through the handle, he jerked the door open just wide enough and slithered through, closing the oak portal firmly but silently.

"Mrrrow." Elena's cat whined, rubbing up against his leg. The old drow bent to scratch the grey feline behind her ears.

"I'd like to let you in," he said aloud as the cat changed its meow to a purr, "but we both know you'd go waking up the lady of the house, and there only one reason to do that this late at night." The cat seemed unsatisfied with that, and padded into Phyr's path as he turned toward the dripping gutter. Grumbling half-heartedly, the drow bent his knees and slapped his thigh, angling his torso back ever so slightly. The cat bounded up his leg, leapt off his stomach and coiled itself around his neck with snakelike confidence. "Ooof, watch where you hop," Phyr grumbled as he straightened and circled the Maiden. T

The cat purred like a brimming steam engine, and ignored him.

As the chilly autumn night in Underwood summoned a gust that ruffled his long silver hair, Phyr wished he had dressed warmer and felt thankful for his vibrating scarf. Just a quick fix, and I'll finish the job by day. He was nearing the dripping sound when he stumbled and -

-a moment of nothing and -

- the cold hadn't changed, but suddenly it bit to the bone, injecting dread from swollen venom pockets. He could feel the wind still, but it moaned so. A moan he had not heard for years but would never forget...

Phyr opened his eyes and saw snow up to his ankles. The moaning came from above and directly before him... growing louder as the wind whipped his rags into a frenzy. Rags - where are my garments? He knew he should not look up. He had no desire to see what lay ahead. But the cat shifted on his neck and nuzzled his ear with its nose, and somehow Phyr Sa'resh's shaking legs carried him up the hillside.

Everything looked as he'd last seen it. The garish prison carved from a Salvic mountain, its side ruptured by a chasm that had fuelled the inmates' escape. The cat's fur was in his ears, blocking out the awful moan, allowing him to venture down the scarred labyrinth of hallways. He shuffled past piles of skeletons and discarded weapons, hearing nothing but the reassuring purr. Somehow those twisting tunnels took him below, where he had toiled building technology and brewing despicable grog behind the backs of the guards to satiate his addiction. They took him above to the death cells that looked out at the empty sky and horizon, where prisoners chose between a swift drop and freezing to death. They took him to the common pits where he had sewn the seeds of dissent and union for decades, striving to build an army out of broken beings. And where did it take him?

He arrived in the cell where he had wasted away for twenty years, saw the corner with the deepest shadows that had been the only blankets on his stone bed. Being there should have brought the dread to an intolerable level, but it had waned with each step and now... now he could sense only the cat, as if it had somehow found it's way onto his face...

... Phyr awoke spitting fur, and sat up so swiftly the cat leapt to the floor and skittered twice before diving into the kitchen. The sounds and smells of a friendly autumn morning filtered back, along with curses from the cook who tripped over the cat. Phyr closed his eyes and massaged them one at a time with the heel of his hand. When he opened them again, Elena had appeared in one of her gossamer robes. She flowed into bed like the silk that she wore, face arranged in mock severity.

"You forgot to clean the eaves-" she began, but he covered her mouth with a kiss.

"Nothing would make me happier," Phyr Sa'resh told his lover, "than cleaning out your gutters."

[Wings of Endymion]

The back gate of Rostarinne, the Castle in the Clouds, hid amongst a labyrinth of carefully cultivated arboreta and magnificent hanging gardens. Nobody stood guard, for it opened up to a long empty drop to the ocean, and could not be approached from the air unless in full view of the hawk-eyed Sentinels posted at the barbicans to either side. The spired citadel of Tor Elythis sat far below like a pearl in the deep navy blue, periodically winking out of view behind wisps of skittering cloud.

Any sane person attempting to leave Rostarinne would not have done so via the thick wooden doorway inscribed with runic warnings. But the archway, constructed of the ubiquitous smooth white stone that pervaded the entire castle, made for an ideal location to open a portal, assuming of course that one could bypass the numerous powerful wards and conjurations that protected the castle and its vicinity. Kayu sincerely hoped that Touma could find a way through them, or else that Ecthelion would be so glad to see the back of her that he would let them lapse for an instant. If Touma didn’t show by the change of the watch, she would have to find passage down to Tor Elythis via the elven portal at the main gate, walk for two leagues across the great bridge that connected the island to the mainland, and finally negotiate passage through the fortified outpost, before she regained her freedom.

Fortunately, he did not keep her waiting for long.

The last rays of the blood-red twilight had just sunk beneath the western wall when the wooden doorway rippled like a quicksilver mirror. The arcane quake quickly subsided, leaving a glistening sheen upon the perfectly cut planks. Instinctively she looked to the bottom right of the mirror, and unsurprisingly Touma’s face stared her back, clenched in concentration as if striving against an almighty weight.

“Quickly,” it said through grit teeth, the bodiless apparition flickering in static caused by interference from the castle’s wards. “I can’t hold this for long.”

Kayu returned her eyes to the portal, unconvinced of its stability. She had travelled by arcane means many times before, but not once had a portal had rippled with such intensity and fragility. Swiftly she made up her mind, reaching for the small haversack of possessions at her feet. Moments later, it flew through the air, impacting squarely in the centre of the esoteric mirror.

A soft slurping sound echoed through the rapidly dimming garden, like a rock landing in a pool of slime. Touma’s face flinched involuntarily, as if something had passed uncomfortably close to its head. The portal wavered, faded, just about held.

“Next time you plan on nearly killing me by flinging something through, warn me first,” he told her crossly. “Quickly, before…”

She did not hesitate any longer. Tightly clenching her staff in both hands, she barrelled through the murky mirror that coated the solid oaken door. Moulded power, cool and feathery and barely tangible against her skin, swallowed her whole.

Travel by arcane portal never counted amongst the most pleasant of Kayu’s experiences. It required the courage to step off the solid ledge of reality into a darkly swirling ethereal void, and the gut-wrenching stomach-churning sensation of entrusting one’s life to something as fickle as the winds of magic. The air always stank of concentrated power, a stench akin to the lightning discharge or focused sunlight, but the journey always remained strangely silent as it whistled past her ears. After falling through the myriad stars of nothingness for an instant that somehow stretched into eternity, the physical world dragged her back with an abrupt and unpleasant wrench, whirling darkness suddenly coalescing into the scenery of her destination. But only if both she and the portal-opener kept their wits about them and Lady Luck on their side. Else she might accidentally materialise in the centre of a rock, or five hundred feet in the air, or at the bottom of the ocean. Needless to say, the consequences of such a mishap could be quite severe.

Still, she supposed as she tried to reorient her dazedly swimming mind, things could always be far worse. Touma had a knack for controlling his powers that was truly uncanny, and never had he ever placed her in danger, despite how frequently she had once travelled with him by this method. Quite how he accomplished the feat was beyond even her knowledge of the arcane, but even at a young age her companion had been an expert at maintaining a cool facade that was actually quite charismatic. Little doubt existed in her mind that such poise was borne only out of absolute confidence in his powers, and perhaps not without good reason.

“Hello, Kayu,” his resonant voice reached out to her through the bitingly sharp air, echoing as crisply and as cleanly as his boots on the untouched pristine snow beneath her knees. “It’s not all that bad. Just pretend that you were on a boat or…”

“Just tell me that I’ve safely arrived…” she mumbled weakly in reply. Slim hands clutched tightly at the supple strength of her slender staff, such that blue veins stood out vividly against the translucence of her skin. Loose strands of her silky ebony hair stood out as much a contrast to the alabaster white of her face as they were to the bleakness of the landscape. Every breath of breeze seemed to nip annoyingly at the delicate lines of her exposed forehead, and her keen black eyes nearly watered with the pain of simply keeping them open and focused. She sniffed once reflexively as the chill infiltrated her nose, almost immediately having to stifle a small sneeze.

“You have indeed arrived safely,” Touma reassured her. Then he grabbed her arm and quite literally began to yank her through the snow at full pelt, her belongings hefted casually over his shoulders. “And now we had better run, lest that wonderful fact change to something rather less comforting.”

Something lithe and serpentine snaked between her pounding legs, the folds of her robes parting as water as it slipped through. Reflexively she met its ruby-red eyes, noting the crackle of arcane power that shimmered across its transparent form. A mana amphitere, she realised, most likely a familiar of one of the elven mages from the Ivory Spire of Tor Elythis who had traced Touma’s portal. It glared at her accusingly before winking from sight.

“Are you scared that Ecthelion will give chase?” she asked between strides, confused at the urgency as he nearly tore her shoulder from its socket.

In response, Touma dropped to the snow with a loud crunch and dragged her down on top of him. She had just enough time to gasp in indignant surprise before a swift-moving shadow swept past the back of her head, so close that she could literally smell the bestial stench of dried blood and rotten faeces.

“The High Archmage and his elves I’m not concerned about,” Touma replied in between laboured heaves for air. “I’m more worried about that monster that’s been stalking me for the past two days.”

“And you brought me into the middle…?” Her voice rose in offended huff. “Touma, what…”

Something large and heavy slammed into the snow not so far away. The impact tossed her aside, and she rolled with the momentum to bring her to her feet.

“… is that…?” she finished weakly.

“As I said, a monster,” Touma said blandly as he picked himself up, dusting off his robes. “I hope you can understand that I didn’t actually bother trying to ask its name.”

The beast addressed them in a stentorian trumpet, causing snow to tremble in fear beneath their feet. It bore resemblance to the chimeras of legend, as if some twisted mind had taken a number of animals native to the highlands and forged them together without regard for nature’s laws or order. Three heads jostled for position and dominance upon a single neck, one baring the rabid fangs of a northern wolf, the second that of a billy goat crazed with fear, and the third brutish humanoid features lost in confusion and pain. Its body rippled with tensed muscle, likely once that of one of the legendary aurochs whose herds migrated southwards into the tundra during the winter. It had two tails – one the auroch’s own, the other hissing angrily as it ended in the head of a snake – and its forelegs ended not in thick hooves that would easily split open a man’s head, but eagle-like talons that would rip his torso apart instead. A pair of leathery bat-like wings rooted to its shoulder blades explained how it had passed overhead mere moments before.

“I’ve come across some strange things as I approached this area,” Touma continued as if his life were not in mortal danger, thoroughly ignoring the riled-up monster only ten paces distant. “Two-headed geese, flocks of sheep dead for no obvious reason, packs of wolves rotting away from the inside, so on and so forth. This is the first such abnormality to take this much exception to my presence, though.”

“Gee, I wonder why?” Kayu rolled her eyes as she brought her staff to bear. “You never said anything about that when you told me about this venture…”

“You never asked,” Touma shrugged, and then they both had to roll out of the way as the chimera charged. Acidic saliva spilt to the snow beside her head as the wolf snapped at thin air, and the ogre moaned miserably in Touma’s wake.

“Watch out, Kayu!”

She turned just in time to bat away the snake’s head as it arced for her shoulder, her staff singing through the cold winter air. It hissed angrily as it reared away, readying itself for another strike. But its attached body had different ideas, and anger turned to frustration as its prey slipped from its reach.

“What should we do?” Kayu called to her companion. Surely he had more experience fighting beasts of this kind?

“Can you stop its movements?” he hollered back, somewhat preoccupied in fending off the attentions of the wolf head. The goat in the middle bleated pitifully, brandishing a pair of wickedly curved horns. This close, Kayu could see the rotten sloughed flesh where the animals had been knit together. The overwhelming stench of the beast assaulted her like a noxious cloud.

She could try. Traditional mainstream Nipponese spells, the discipline of hojutsu, could not in any sense be considered suited to combat. Dependent on intricate verbal and somatic components as well as elaborately ritualistic circles of power, she had found out very quickly after her arrival in Haidia that the magic as she knew it would not serve her in the wider world. So she had equally swiftly learnt to adapt.

Bracing her legs, she brandished her open palm to the bitingly cold wind. Pre-inscribed runes glowed in incarnate power, sending tendrils of pure light searing through the crisp air. They did little more than scorch the beast’s thick shaggy hide, but all three heads reared in pain, blinded by the sudden intensity.

Kayu seized the moment. An athletic leap born of years of pathfinding through difficult terrain nimbly brought her in close. The snakehead tail hissed and struck, but again she batted it away with her staff, letting it coil around the supple wood just out of reach of her body. Her teeth grit against revulsion, she plunged her free hand into the rotten morass of pus and flesh at the beast’s shoulder, holding her breath against the stench as the soft flesh gave way. Static electricity danced around her fingers, and she channelled it with all her might into her foe.

The monster collapsed almost instantly, three heads wailing as one as its wings and legs jerked and spasmed uncontrollably. Its keening shriek pierced the clouds overhead like a sonic spear, almost puncturing her eardrums with shrill force. The snakehead tail went limp, forked tongue drooping as it slipped from its support.

Kayu had not quite finished. Withdrawing her hand from the chimera’s body, her cold-numbed fingers traced a simple sigil in the churned snow beneath its fallen torso, deftly completing it before the beast’s confused minds could work out just what had happened. A pulse of power later and the binding magic activated, translucent arcane restraints reaching out to tether the monster to the mushy snow. She jumped back as its wings just about found purchase to lash at her wildly, blending the ground even further into a messy quagmire of acidic saliva, rotten pus, and icy mud. But the chains that she had applied stood firm against the desperate thrashing.

“They won’t hold for much longer,” she panted with exhaustion, as Touma drew up alongside her with an approving expression on his coolly composed brow. “But hopefully long enough for us to get away…”

The question of trying to kill the beast did not even come up in their minds. They possessed neither weapon nor magic likely to pierce the chimera’s thick leathery hide, and the longer they lingered, the more chance that the beast would break free or his screams would attract further predators. Neither Kayu nor Touma felt like taking the risk.

“C’mon, then.” Touma once again took her by the arm, leading her away more gently this time. She acquiesced to his guidance with a sigh, the shadows cast by the heavy red sun in the wan sky to the west travelling before her as eager as hounds on the hunt.

“Next time you plan on nearly killing me by ambush, warn me first,” she told him, dusting the worst of the assorted gunk from her robes with her free hand as they ventured onto pristine snow that crunched happily beneath their feet. Five minutes into her latest adventure, and already she had dirtied her clothing.

What a grand welcome it had been.

[Lillith]

Lillith stared at the convalescence. Shimmering in the maelstrom, she could see a thousand worlds, each one just beyond a veil. She saw distorted towers, bridled with silk. Her heart witnessed vast meadows and floral plains, lavender blooms dancing in strange winds. She heard, over the din of the portal’s power a thousand conversations over a thousand homely tables. Looking through the portal, she saw all the possibilities of tomorrow.

“This is…strange, Neko,” she whispered. The portal, though exuding waves of power through the dark chamber also drew all the heat from the air. It was getting colder in the depths of Ixian Castle.

The nekojin could only nod slowly in agreement. His black fur shone, reflecting the portal’s strange hubris. Both wore simple kimono, in black silk, with white trim. They were here to delve into the small ripple in the fabric of Althanas and cleanse it. Lillith could not be sure why Sei Orlougne had called her specifically to tend to this matter. She was a spirit warder, and through the veil, she felt no spirits to ward.

“What do you suppose it is?” she raised an eyebrow inquisitively, whilst she raised a small rectangle of yellowing paper to the opening.

Neko shrugged.

“I cannot say, it is like…” he twitched his large, white tipped ears nervously, “like it is, alive?” he looked up to see if Lillith understood what he as saying. He lowered his body weight onto his haunches, letting his leg muscles take the weight of his cankerous form.

Lillith took a deep breath, breathing in through her nostrils and exhaling through her mouth. She took a draft of the stale air and instantly transported to the sea. There was a smell of salt in the air, of sand and wind and raw fish. It was coming from the portal.

“Not alive,” she said hesitantly, acting entirely on instinct, “but it wants to be.”

It had appeared the night before, according to Sei Orlougne’s account. The mute had, apparently, felt the same strange sensation when he had approached it. His daughter had forbidden him to cross through to whatever waited would be adventurers across the border, so he had called for the one person in the ranks of the Ixian Knights he thought could help. Lillith was grateful for the vote of confidence, but now she was regretting answering the call.

“Is it a spirit veil tear, perhaps?” Neko started to fasten long, steel cat claws over his own paws. They were metal spikes, sharpened to a fine point and studded to thick leather gloves. In the hands of the nekojin, they were a potent augmentation of his natural weapons. “There are whispers of such things in the forests of Akashima. Tell-tale signs of kami gone awry.”

“This is not a part of the spirit world, or those hells which exist between.” Lillith was certain, now, as the temperature continued to drop and her goose pimples continued to rise. “Older magic is afoot here, a strange, dangerous whim of the universe.” She could feel, taste, and hear the magic crackling in the air around them. Though the nekojin remained oblivious to the presence, Lillith could hear it scream.

With a cautious advance, Neko reached out his right paw, extending it towards the portal with disregard for his own safety. Lillith watched him, unable to think about anything but an old adage about curiosity and cats. As he approached the portal, the last light of the corridor leading into the storage chamber vanished. It was like a siren’s call, and it pierced Lillith’s stoic mind with one final assault of saline and sulphur.

“We will face it together, old friend,” she said excitedly, and reached out her own hand.

Cat paw and painted nail skimmed the surface of the portal in unison. A rush of nausea, cold blood to the head and lightning broke apart the two curious bodies and drew them into the swirling opening. It scattered them across the nine planes, until it re-assembled them in the heart of the unfamiliar.

In another time and place, Lillith Kazumi and Neko-chan came face to face with the Vorpal heart of The Tap. The portal closed.

On the far side of the world, a new locus opened.

[Duffy]

Thanks to Sir Artemis for pointing this out to me. I meant to post this as Ruby La Roux...please consider her an entry from her, thank you!

“I do not want to know, if I am honest,” Ruby looked up from her embroidery for just long enough to deflate Duffy’s ego. She dropped her gaze, and sighed as she realised she had dropped a stitch in the process. “It is not something I am altogether intrigued about.”

“How could you not be?” the bard looked flabbergasted.

“Because,” the matriarch started to unpick her mistake, “the less we know about our lives Duffy, the less we have to worry about whilst living it.”

She continued her craftwork in silence, under the scrutiny of the bard. He dropped his delicate porcelain cup so that it rested in his cupped palms on his lap. In the reading room of the Winchester Mansion, the temperature dropped quite sharply. He was being given a classic cold shoulder, but he was not going to give up quite so easily.

“Let me put it another way, so that you can understand, shall I?” she looked up again; satisfied that she had corrected the stem of her scarlet begonia. She continued, not concerned if the bard wanted to hear what she had to say or not, “I could not give a rat’s a-”

“Ruby Winchester!”

She looked up and over Duffy’s shoulder at the large double doors at the back of the room. Standing with a disgusted look on his face, and a double whiskey in each of his chubby hands, Leopold Winchester hovered on the border between hallway and home.

“Mrs, dear. If you are going to scold me, do not slip with etiquette,” she dropped her attention back to her embroidery, and adjusted the circular frame on her lip. Duffy smirked, suddenly uninterested into trying to convince her to his point of view.

“Do come in Leopold, I am dying of thirst here,” Duffy said, curling around the tall satin backed chair to throw his voice over his shoulder. He could not see the man’s face, but he assumed it was sour and bristling with contempt. It was a Winchester trademark. When he heard heavy footsteps over the well-kept carpet, he sat back into the chair and brought his cup to his lips.

“I can only apologise for the wait, Mr Bracken. Wilfred cornered me in the smoking room wishing to speak to me about arrangements for the debutante ball of a young Lady Montanan.” Leopold, clad in thick black cotton and his usual golden threaded waistcoat appeared by Duffy’s side. He offered him a cut crystal tumbler, filled with what was immutably Fireball Whiskey and dandelion.

“Oh, excellent Leopold, excellent,” he tipped back the cup and polished off the last of the herbal infusion of peppermint and fennel, and set the cup onto the small circular table next to the chair. He replaced its absence with the alcohol, and raised his glass in a toast. In the manner of a true snob, he raised the glass to his nose and took a deep draft of the liquor’s peaky, spicy aroma. It smelt like cinnamon, aniseed and good times.

“What were you two talking about?” Leopold waltzed over to the third chair, set at an angle between the bay window seat of his wife and the fireside chair of Mr Bracken. He wrinkled his nose and flinched as he crossed a sunbeam on his descent. His heavy weight squeezed all the dust from the long unused cushion. “Nothing risqué I hope, it is only five in the afternoon,” he let out a soft chuckle and took a sip of his drink.

“This is apparently too early to talk about Lady Montanan’s habitual need to pay for male company, but not too early to partake in alcohol without cause.” Ruby’s dry tone cut the humour and heart out of Leopold’s conversation starter. She did not look up from her craftwork, but Duffy and Leopold both knew there were daggers in her attention to detail with his name on it.

“We are,” Duffy sighed mid-sentence, “celebrating, Ruby. I was trying to tell you, but you apparently were not interested.” The sun beams shining through the window as the day started to turn into dusk continued to move across the carpet. They shone in through the lattice work behind Ruby, casting her in an angelic aura. She was being anything but.

“You asked to be more involved in my life, Ruby. Here we are, trying to inform you that the Winchester Rose Trading Company has acquired its first Royal Charter, and all you can do is being a barbed and salacious tease for no reason.” Leopold curled the furlongs of his thickening mop of hair with an idle finger.

The cuckoo clock over the unused mantel of the fireplace chirped five times. It had been ten minutes late or so for thirty odd years, but Ruby had seldom had the urge to correct it. In her world, it was always a different time. A woman after all always liked to make use of the fact that a man was late, even then he was not.

“You forgot what day it is and I am somehow the one to blame for my mood?” now she did look up, and the daggers in her glare struck Leopold square in the forehead. He felt the heat on his temple, and frowned.

“What day…what day is it?”

“Duffy, do the man a service and inform him of the occasion, if you would be so kind.” She dropped her gaze back to the embroidery and moved on to the outer circle of leaves of the central, large crimson begonia.

With the echo of the cuckoo clock still ringing in his ears, and the tart, slightly burning sensation of whiskey on his tongue, Duffy tried to put date and event together. There were so many memories that Ruby Winchester liked to celebrate he had to be very careful not to end up in the doghouse sat next to Leopold. He had, on last count, been a dog for three weeks. Leopold Winchester could seemingly do nothing right of late. He wrinkled his nose and hid his uncertainty behind his glass.

“No need,” Leopold said with a smirk, “Ruby…Ruby, look at me.” She did, but did not look pleased at being disturbed. “Can you honestly look me in the eye and tell me you thought I forgot our anniversary?”

The pin dropped, even for Duffy. His eyes widened to dinner plates with a sudden realisation that ten years ago to the day, Ruby Roux had become Mrs Ruby Winchester. It had been a fantastic ceremony, one people still talked about fondly at dinner parties, or whenever a new engagement was announced amongst the noble houses of Scara Brae.

Ruby could not help but look unpaved. She had, from the curl of her lip, very much thought her husband had forgotten. Even Duffy had to admit, in his macho bias towards him over her that Leopold had gone above and beyond to arrange an occasion to celebrate their anniversary worthy of Ruby Winchester’s lofty expectations. Whilst he had not quite acquired a castle, a Pegasus and a carnival procession, he had come a close second in the stakes to please her.

“So how are we to celebrate this diamond anniversary, Leopold?” she finally set her embroidery circle onto the sewing table by her chair and turned to give her husband the full attention he thought he deserved. There was no thawing of her icy heart, any cooling of the air or tempering of her growing rage. Duffy could only sit, mouth open wide, quite unable to find the gumption to leave or the words to help the man out.

He had stepped into a completely different world from the one he was used to whenever he visited the Winchester Mansion. This world was domesticated, yet wild. This world was horribly familiar, yet entirely unknown to him.

He took another sip of his drink. He took another, and another, then a gulp.

It did not make the new world any easier to stomach.

“Or will this be a repeat of our crystal celebration you tried to pass off as an incredulous expense and first time on the island affair?” she raised an eyebrow, an expression that single handily disarmed any attempt Leopold had to argue his way out of a very long, very expensive evening of apology.

Duffy downed the last of his drink, and vowed never to let anyone trick him into the inhospitable world people called marriage, but he called hell.

[Mordelain]

Mordelain opened her eyes, slowly, painfully, agonisingly. The sun overhead was immutably familiar, but the sand on her back was oddly unrecognised. She rubbed her hands in the soft grain.

“Where the hell is this?” she grumbled. Moments ago, she had been inches away from being split in two on the merit of a well swung Hudde blade. The rusted iron could have killed her of its own accord, without bringing into account the sticky poison the Bedouin coated their weapons with.

“It better not be Braen Beach, I hate adamant Oise…” she pushed herself upright, using her shaking hands to prop herself half seated on the soft shingle and well-worn sand. It was a strange mix of rock and ruin, rubble and rice like sand

On the horizon there were tall spires; needle like protrusions from a thin band of shadow that Mordelain could only assume was a distant city. To her left, there was nothing, a vast, infinite bleakness that swallow the sky. On her right, swaddled by bolts of halcyon sunshine there was a treeline. Her eyes did a double take as she blinked. The trees, she could see, even from such a great distance where red.

“Raiaera?” she mused. It was, without a doubt, the Red Forest. The high elven kingdom had no deserts so close to the blood trees though. “No…an amalgamation of worlds.” She remembered the name of the northern city and looked over her shoulder. “Beinost,” she whispered. The tall towers belonged to the various machine cults and colleges that existed in the city.

Over her shoulder Mordelain was greeted by a vast sea of sand. In small clusters, wind worn and sandblasted rocks formed cairns and plateaus to long dead gods and desert apparitions. Wisps of sand kicked up from the structures whenever the soft wind grew into a banshee’s wail.

Several minutes of indecision went by.

“This is a fine mess you have gotten yourself into,” she chided herself as she pushed herself upright. With every inch of movement, she dusted down the fur lined edges of her strange and colourful garb. Her bells tinkled, her heart raced, her mind throbbed with tired indecision.

Without thinking, she walked north.

With soft muslin covering her brow, to rebuke the heat of the alien sun, Mordelain Saythrou advanced across the unknown sands. If she were to walk back to Althanas through the void, she would need to be near something that represented the strange planet she now called home. With Beinost singing in her heart, and a new world dragging her down, the traveller walked alone with her head bowed to stay the searing pain of the sand that tore through the air.

[Anke/Varg]

Rouge set the gear down onto the oily desk with a longing sigh, before she turned back to the clockwork monstrosity sprawled out on the table behind her. He hissed steam, destiny and impatience. They were six hours into their regular and all too frequent need to repair his bodice of steel and mechanical limbs. She had a faint memory at the back of her mind of needing to be somewhere, of needing to eat, sleep, and relax.

Anywhere but trapped in a world of her own devising.

“I really wish you would not be so reckless with yourself Leper,” she leant into the cavity on the right side of his chest. Embedded in the recess she had installed a self-pumping lung that kicked out small plumes of water vapour into the mechanical heart. The flesh surrounding the chamber had healed over long ago, but it still sent a shiver down her spine every time she looked into her companion. It was a cruel, mocking scar on what was once, she hoped, a fine example of humanity.

There was less man and more machines in him now, and fewer machines than there was wolf.

That very fact made Leper such an invigorating breath of fresh air in Rouge’s lungs.

A hiss of steam drifted up with a grinding noise from the werewolf’s mouth. Whilst prone and in considerable pain, the vocal chords bound in horse hair and connected to a synthetic lung did not it seemed want to waste any energy. Rouge took the exhalation as a witty retort. She pulled down the heavy goggles from her forehead and adjusted them over her deep blue eyes. In the darkness of the workshop, a small hovel of modern day marvels beneath the cobble stones of Scara Brae, magic was about to be performed.

“If you did, I would not have to do this,” she reached into the cavity with gentle fingers and a lot of care. She touched the small screw that mounted the clockwork organ and turned it with a pinch. Leper flinched, squirmed and writhed. Against the confines of his heavy leather straps, the werewolf could only tussle in disagreement. It was the only way she could get him to remain still enough for her to recalibrate the cleansing mechanism.

“I do not enjoy it,” she added, though secretly she did. Her moral code was highly pious, and she did not often step over the murky line between science and madness. Leper, thanks to unfortunate circumstances and a long standing friendship, was her curiosity’s one release. It was her only opportunity to truly bend the rules.

In these dark hours, she could be more of a monster than Leper was.

She turned the screw until it clicked, then pushed it inwards. The spring loaded mechanism jettisoned the rust and it spiralled back in its groove to a safe position. Whatever Leper had been doing all night had seriously strained the cooling system. Rouge made a mental note to fine tune the mechanism when she had the time, but for now, she removed her hands from the cavity and turned back to the tool bench.

“We are nearly done. Once I put this back in,” she picked up a small runic cube and twirled back to face Leper on the swivel stool. It creaked a demand to be greased, “you can divert function back to your breathing apparatus.” Leper let out a long winded hiss, and gently settled on the cold table.

Satisfied that she could replace the part without interruption, Rouge gently guided the cube through the opening, cunningly hidden by the fold of his regal, but blood stained waistcoat and set it in place. She whispered a few arcane commands she had built into the Ventricle to make life easier on herself, and the screws placed on the wall of the cavity sprang out, clipping the cube into place. She retreated again, and punched the air in triumph.

“Okay, resume breathing functions,” she flipped the lid closed and slid the latch across. As a torrent of steam hissed out of the gasmask covering Leper’s mouth, she button up his waistcoat and stood up from the stool. “Then you can tell me exactly why I just spent most of the small hours repairing your damned body, instead of dining with Lillith and indulging in a little light reconnaissance.” Her tone was severe, stern, but comforting to the werewolf. They were a duo that relied very much on some tension between them. It was how they thrived.

“That…hurt…” the werewolf croaked. There was malice in his voice that was more menacing than usual.

“Good,” Rouge retorted, before she started to unstrap the gentlemen’s mechanical hands. They too were blood-stained; a dark congealing coating covered each of the long scythes claws. She ran through the various scenarios that were plausible, but arrived at a dark series of unfortunate events for the criminal underbelly of Scara Brae. Somebody had died that night, she would pray for them in time. “How do you feel?” she dropped the strap and it clinked as it dangled from the table. She leant over to unbuckle the other wrist, and then left him to remove the straps across his chest and over his neck.

She slumped back onto the stool and kicked herself away from the table. The creaky wheels scraped over the well-worn stone floor of the workshop. It too was covered in oil and long abandoned. There were a hundred long grooves in the rock flagstones where had idly spent her days trundling back and forth, deep in some thought or another.

“Much better than last night,” Leper righted himself, rising like a creature from a grave long left to rot. He moved with a jittery and cankerous motion that signified he was fatigued, worn out, and in need of steam. He shuffled to the edge of the table and sat upright and alert. His eyes, pale discs of inner white late glimmered in the gloom. Rouge stared at him expectantly. “Thank you kindly,” he hissed.

Rouge nodded with appreciatory conviction, and started to pack away her tools into the leather roll that had various loops and pockets to store them away safely.

“You might go out into another world on the streets at night without me, Leper, but when you return to the Golden Halls of the Scourge, you return to my world. Do you know what that means?” she raised an eyebrow as she pocketed three ratchets and a cog, for a later jaunt into the mechanical malady of her maddened mind and paused for a reply.

“It means a world of truth, clarity and foresight,” he cocked his head and scraped his claws over the edge of the table, like a wolf ready to pounce on an unwitting pray.

“That is correct, so can we have less of this recklessness? I did not spend my inheritance, steal from my family and devastate the Sess-Terria mines in order for you to squander your gifts. Do you understand?” she looked over her shoulder and shot him a deadly look through the thick, magnifying glass of her goggles.

“Yes, Rouge.”

With a hiss of steam, the wolf came back in from the cold and returned to the red widow’s strange yet calming world of rules, morals and innovation. He missed the cold wind and pang of the midnight chime already. It was still woefully unfamiliar and strange to him, but as soon as she set his top hat back on his polished head, he suddenly seemed quite at home.

[Atzar]

Atzar had always loved snowstorms. They presented an excellent excuse to lounge lazily for the entire day, warding off the cold by throwing a few logs in the fireplace and burying himself amidst the cozy mass of fluffy pillows and warm blankets atop his bed. The snow swirled outside his window, eddying with every howling gust of freezing wind, but the mage merely smiled in contentment. What a perfect night.

He let his book rest on his chest for a moment, wriggling a little deeper into the comfy cushions that propped him up. The mage’s gaze wandered inevitably to the fire that blazed merrily on the other side of the room. The firelight glowed softly on his dark wooden walls and played across his rug, a vibrant creation of reds and yellows that he had purchased on a whim in the port city of Tirel in Salvar.

He coaxed his eyes back to his book, a rather thick volume detailing the exploits of a Raiaeran mage. Were honesty required of him, Atzar would have admitted that he didn’t care much for the book – he disliked elves in general, and the story was written in a way that made his eyelids grow heavier with each passing sentence. It was, however, a perfect choice for a night like this. His pace slowed to a crawl as he fought to rein in his wandering consciousness until finally, head slumping forward to his chest, he gave in to sleep.



He was on a battlefield. The jarring ring of steel on steel sang around him, and the ground was decorated with angry flames and the bodies of the fallen. Red-cloaked men shouted battlecries to the uncaring heavens, waving barbaric weapons at their foes.

Another shout came from behind him, and the mage whirled around. A murderous man hefted a wicked axe high above his head. Atzar leapt back out of range as the blade cleaved the air in front of his chest. Without a wasted movement the warrior swung again, and the young wizard dodged once more. Again and again the axe sought his flesh, always threatening but never finding its mark.

Atzar’s heel caught on the haft of a fallen spear, and he tumbled heavily to the ground. The killer stood over him and prepared for one final strike, and desperately the mage searched within for his power. An orb of incandescent flame burst from his outstretched palms, striking the man with force great enough to -



- wake him from his sleep.

Snowflakes blew into his face as his confused gaze swept back and forth. His blankets, once a haven of warmth and comfort, now seemed inadequate, and he burrowed deeper within them to hide from the frigid onslaught.

Only then did he recognize the gaping hole in the wall on the other side of the room. Embers still glowed along its edges as the winter gleefully invaded his home. The blaze in his fireplace sputtered and died, and for a fleeting moment Atzar hated what he had become.

Hopefully this is an acceptable use of the prompt. Either way, this one was fun to write. Hope you like it!