The First Labor

[Falling With Style]

((Open!))

The sky was falling, following them down the road.

Bouncing heavily on the packed, dusty road, an old hay wagon made its way towards the town of Scara Brae. Besides the old farmer, his mules, and about ten cubic meters of hay spilling down the sides, a thin figure sat boredly on the back, idly drawing designs in the haydust.

"Night's a'comin," said the farmer, finally breaking the silence. "Real pretty this evenin'."

"Yep," replied the slender figure, glancing up. A thick lock of rust-colored hair erupted from under her hat and flowed messily down to her collar, pooling like a crucible's contents just begun to pour. The hair obscured the left half of her face, while on the right, a matching rusty eye glanced up at the twilight. "How long until we make town?" she asked.

The farmer shrugged, unconcerned. He had a face like a topographical map, browned by the sun and pitted with such lines and crevasses to make a cartographer proud. "I'm only passin' through, dear, but I bet we get there in a half hour."

The girl shrugged and reclined back in the hay, using a large leather pack for defense against its itchiness. Her finger idly played with the design in the haydust, twirling loops and ellipses into its mathematical complexity. The twitch of an index finger poked a dot into the design, and almost immediately the sky responded with a tiny few lights.

The lights in the sky were meteors, falling from some unimaginable distance away, crossing over the wan crescent of the moon before winking out. These were tiny lights, smaller than the stars, caused by bits of dust or dirt traveling so fast they ignited and lit up the sky.

"Funny that," remarked the thin girl.

"Eh?" asked her driver, content to watch over his mules.

"They put on such a show," she replied. "The falling stars."

"Ah, yeah," said the old farmer. "I used ter watch 'em when I was your age, out in the fields o' the mainland, afore I moved ta this island. Beautiful."

Her one visible eye followed a particularly impressive one across the sky. "Yeah," she said. "I think so too. Wake me up when we get to town."

"Can do," he said, and went back to stoic silence.

As the cart thumped its way down the road, the falling stars followed them into town.

[Green]

Due to a small mishap, this post is to be read after the one below it!

Thank you.

The second story room was spacious if bare and smelled faintly of tomato sauce, although it did have a very nice view of the Carter family's sugar cane field (which was currently playing host to quite a few burgeoning weeds and no actual sugar cane to speak of). It was not looking to be a promising season for them. Apparently, there were some things more important to the Carters than making a living off what little land they owned. How did she know this? For the last four days, Hadewych had been staying here as their guest, earning her board by helping out with chores and what little farm work needed to be done. They did not act like a hard-working lower-class farming family. They acted scared.

It couldn't have been her. She was well aware of her outlandish appearance and George Gregor Carter had, at first, been understandably...wary, of the weird feathered machine that came a-knocking at their door. But Hadewych eventually partially earned the small family's trust, if not their liking (or respect). As a hard worker and a tidy tenant, (and seeing as they had no small children to fret over if ever said small children were to find themselves inexplicably in her presence alone), life around the place went about as it should have, with arrangements to hire one or two additional workers to jump-start the sick crop and Mrs. Carter bustling busily about the scullery or the parlor or wherever her cleansing talents were needed.
But then the normality trailed into apathy.

Which was odd.

At first she had attributed it to them simply growing used to her presence, but the lack of emotion or interest concerning her whereabouts on the property or whether or not she completed a job felt decidedly artificial. Plus, no one was really doing anything. Housework, sure. But it was half-assed, and people were definitely avoiding her.

Maybe she was just being paranoid. Maybe they were just lazy. Still though, there was something strange about everyone's behaviour as of late -- Mrs. Wilhema Carter, their twenty year-old son Winston, that farm hand Jacob Macerbi -- it didn't take a genius to know something was up. Or think something was up.

In any event, Hadewych had locked herself in the room for the evening.

...Not that she had actually been granted a key, but she supposed the chair she had propped under the knob would jam it for a minute at least.

In an attempt to keep herself from pacing and therefore arousing suspicion from anyone who should hear her claws against the old wooden floor Hade was seated on the end of the bed, her weight dragging rivulets across the dusky pink comforter. In her hands she perused her journal, searching for any information on nearby settlements. Her mind was made; it was time to leave, whether or not her suspicions were valid. But the writings proved little help as she had never been in this region of the isle before.

Hade closed the journal gently and slid it into the large side pocket of the cloak resting next to her. She had extinguished her lantern and shadows steadily filled the room as night descended. The window was open, letting a cool breeze filter through and raise bumps on the flesh of her human arm. A meteor fell just within view beyond the pane, followed in quick succession by several more. Her stormy grey eyes watched the show but she was too preoccupied with her current predicament to derive much pleasure from them. She had already searched her damaged memory for any hint that may have been dropped by the Carters regarding a town nearby, which of course turned up nothing. No matter. She had travelled miles without knowing exactly where she was headed in the past, after all.

A sudden scraping noise outside the door stalled her musing. Soft light flickered in the crack between jam and floor but it was quickly put out.

"Think it's asleep?" a voice she recognised as Winston's whispered. Hade stiffened. It? What were they talking about?

"Been up 'ere a while. Light's out. Haven't heard anythin'," George unmistakably replied. Good god, they were talking about her. But what was with the 'it'? They knew she preferred being called female...

The knob turned slightly. Hade reached for her staff.

"It won't open."

"Follow my lead."

A low masculine voice, a voice that wasn't familiar. Something which sounded like a gun being cocked followed close after. The 'borg slowly stood, possessions in hand and feathers fluffed to their maximum extent. The boards beneath her groaned and the activity behind the door quieted.

...

"NOW!"

The next moments were a blur. She leapt for the sill as the door was kicked open with a loud crash from the dislodged chair. She was already out the window as gunshots flared and someone yelled, falling hard onto the sloping roof and sliding down the wood tiles, elevating her staff and holding it parallel so it wouldn't impede her progress. More gunshots, and she reached the end of the roof and fell the remaining seven feet onto the dusty ground before the porch. The landing was awkward and pain jolted through her ankles, but Hadewych hadn't any time to waste and was soon on her feet and sprinting for the neighboring wheat field.

Yellow light flooded the area and she surmised someone had opened the front door. Three reverberating shots in the dark, one right after another, but by now she had reached the tall wheat and was obscured from view.

Hade frantically shouldered her way between the stalks, dry leaves and rough stems scratching against metal. It must have been a good five minutes or so of continuous shoving around the dense wheat when the stalks abruptly disappeared and Hadewych stumbled out into an open space.

Her claws thudding against the mix of earth and local flora, the 'borg stopped and faced the field, half expecting George Carter to come bursting from the wall of bleached gold cursing and brandishing his flintlock. But the wheat only rustled serenely in the breeze. The young wizard nearby went unnoticed.

[Falling With Style]

OOC: I totally didn't see you post, sorry. See PM for details?

Whump! The cart bumped on a rock, jolting the girl awake. She checked the sky - hmm, it had barely moved, clearly, she hadn't been asleep all that long.

But what was that sound coming from up front? It was low, like the groaning of an ancient tree, but somehow soothing. She peeked over to discover it was the old man, singing lowly to his two mules in an ancient, soft baritone. It was sad and slow, keeping up with the sixteenth-note clopping of mules' hooves on dirt. The girl was content to listen and watch the horizon samba slowly around to the road's rhythm, and then she thought: why not spice it up a bit?

A few more designs in the hay dust and the meteors began falling in rhythmic intervals, swelling in number to the stronger verses and pulling back when the old farmer did. The meteors became increasingly clear against the strengthening night; sporadic as they were, she watched them more than contentedly.

Like a tiny flash, a meteor appeared. This wouldn't have been anything out of the ordinary, except that it fell counter to her little shower. The girl narrowed her eyes, watching for any more. When none appeared, she reclined back, convinced that it had been a natural one.

Then, two more flashed silently by, then three, then five at once. The girl's eyebrow arched out of curiosity. She waited briefly - three and four, that made seven, then a few in a row made eleven, three sets of four, plus one...thirteen. She went bolt upright at this, watching the sky like a hawk.

Mizar, mouthed the girl.

In a fit of slight paranoia, she glanced over her shoulder, over the hay to check the driver. No change; he continued his slow inward melody. Her attention snapped back to the sky, which loomed expectantly above. While listening to the old man sing would be nice, Serious Business had come up. She hopped silently off the back of the cart and stole away off the road, clutching her pack.

It took her ten minutes of walking before she found a suitable spot to watch the sky, and the night was getting cool. Reaching into her pack, she extracted a plain robe of greens and browns, which she donned for a bit of warmth.

The telescope and astrolabe went up quickly, as did a small sigil on the ground, that of a solar system with dashed lines raking jauntily across the planetary paths. A few quick calculations later, timing the stars' path through her small telescope, and she dotted the final planet in her dirt map.

Nothing happened upon the sky here, but if her measurements had been right -and she knew they had been, they had to be- old Mizar, up in his tower, would be receiving a confirmation right about now. She pictured the crotchety gnome perched on a stack of books, fiddling with the controls of his massive telescope and scribbling vast amounts of star charts. Expectantly, the girl inclined her telescope towards a particular glob of stars, residing over the shoulder of the Ox.

It didn't take long. One of the stars twinkled, then pulsed three times mechanically. Anyone other than a trained astromancer would have seen nothing, but this wizard's eye was trained to see what they wouldn't have. The star in question blinked thrice more, as if to say:

ALCYONE

The young wizard, Alcyone, smiled back up at it. She was proud of her star; it was a good one, a bright one. Its pulsing was her confirmation, to which she dotted another one of her sigils, sending a few meteors soaring minutely over the skies of Fallien. I'm here.

Four other stars twinkled briefly, one north, one south, one east and west, forming an invisible box. From the inclination and declination of these she divined a midpoint, triangulated via their positions on the celestial sphere. Alcyone pointed her telescope directly at that spot and waited, checking briefly to make sure nobody was around.

The small patch of sky visible through her telescope contained very faint stars, invisible to the naked eye and only barely visible through a telescope. They now began to pulse in rhythm, tapping out a silent staccato, a code.

First task for
Student Alcyone
...
From midpoint of month
find Ox and Bowman
find path of arrow
From Citadel
follow arrow
Ox's eye sees a friend
even in death
eater of
eater of death
Mother of seven
Grants Entry
Good luck

The stars all pulsed once, before going dim. Alcyone looked down from her telescope, poring over the message she'd copied.

"Gorram it, Mizar," she mumbled to herself. That gnome was obsessed with codes and double meanings and if he had anything to say about it, she'd be figuring this out for the next few nights. He sure loved his riddles, but Alcyone sure hated figuring them out.

She glanced back at the sky, which had settled back into the stasis of the night. There would be very, very few who even noticed anything happening tonight, thought Alcyone cynically, as all the rest were too busy running after gold or grubbing the dirt for a living. As she packed her equipment, Alcyone made the same resolve she usually did: don't become one of those people.

[Falling With Style]

The old man and his mules had long since clattered off down the dusty road. Sitting on a small knoll adorned with a single gnarled oak, Alcyone pored over the gnome's message in a pool of moonlight. That is, of course, until the sharp blam! of a gun split the serene night, and several -was it several?- voices shouted faintly from a field away. The wizard's eyebrow went up, her eye scanning warily the surroundings.

No change. A small breeze came by, lazily waving the lake of grain back at her. Satisfied, the young wizard returned to her thin pool of moonlight, looking over the message once again. Her eye briefly flicked to the wheat field, looking for trouble, but no further shots nor voices sprang forth.

Alcyone mumbled to herself as she wrote. "Midpoint of month...tomorrow I think. S'halfway through the month," she muttered. "Ox, Bowman...right...that's easy, maybe I follow the arrow's path...? ...makes sense...but, what's this about the 'eater of death?' Bloody old gnome, he probably slipped while casting, s'why the line's repeated..."

Clank.

Alcyone shut up real fast. There, below the hill, Something had emerged from the wheat field. It had a head like a skull, great gnashing teeth and a ragged pile of metal for a body. A pair of moldy wings shot crookedly from under the shoulder-blades, a few ragged feathers clinging to their thin metal frames. Rusted, bent and featherless as they were, the wings of the horrid Something were somehow more frightening for being the broken floundering things they were rather than proud beaters of the sky.*

Worse still, it was almost completely silent.

Holy shit, thought the wizard nervously. Trembling, her left hand reached out and erased the sigil in the dirt. Her mouth went slightly dry as the thing's head rotated silently on a spined neck, looking back towards the field. Ohshit ohshit. Her mind raced. This must have been what the farmers chased off. But they had a gun, and Alcyone had...what? What?

A thundering heart in her esophagus, that's what. Shut UP, damn you! she thought madly. She had to do something. Anything. As best she could, the young wizard put an arm through the strap of her pack, and drew a design on the last bit of parchment she had. The wizard floated upwards into the tree...

(rustle)


*With apologies to Douglas Adams.

[Green]

Hadewych spun around, her head swiveling on it's axis and reaching the desired direction a good half second before the rest of her. The hill and it's tree were deserted.

Dropping her cloak and hat to the ground, the cyborg cautiously advanced up the slope, staff held in a readily defensive position at her side. In the glint of celestial light her body shone simultaneously luminous and in shadow, with hollow breathing noises and soft clacking from many adornments, a shape menacing and unidentifiable. If she was disturbing during the day, that was nothing compared to what the machine could come across as in the guileful night.

Even though she was still too close to that cursed farmhouse for her comfort, Hade's brain was in self-preservation mode and the mysterious rustle she had heard was cause enough for an investigation. It could have been a raccoon for all she knew. It also could have been a Carter or someone equally as dangerous. A threat that needed to be extinguished. As farfetched as that sounded, the theory made perfect sense to the being whose dysfunction was not limited to her mechanical anatomy.

As Hade neared the hill's crown her left knee joint stuck and she was sent tumbling onto her face. "Goddam it," the cyborg said rather strongly. It took two additional tries before she was able to get up without an issue. Testing her knee once, Hadewych then resumed the hunt, producing her bifocals which she had stored in a relatively protected area within her ribcage and setting them delicately upon her snout.

She circled the tree trunk once, functioning auditory system straining for any snatch of sound. It occurred to her to look into the branches, but with her less-than-stellar vision she was unsure if the lump among them was truly animate. Hade hesitated, then raised her staff a bit forcefully to prod it.

[Falling With Style]

Alcyone clutched her parchment tightly as it fluttered, attempting to escape her grasp. Below her were tree, and fields, and...well, whatever that thing was.

In fact, she had exercised the better part of valor (discretion) as well as the better part of discretion (cowardice) and floated straight up through the branches. Up here, the wind had full reign upon her skinny body, cutting through what little flesh and fat she had to get at the bone. It didn't help that her robe had snagged in the tree, and now resided in a disorganized lump, down where that...thing...was patrolling. She watched it stalk around, perched on tiptoes like some kind of horrible bipedal lizard. Just watching the mechanical beast move in the silence of night gave her the chills, but perhaps its most eerie aspect was the total and complete silence in which it moved.

Alcyone watched another gust of wind roll over the land below, pushing through wheat and dust until -whomp- it buffeted her where she floated. This elicited a grimace.

The machine was still stalking around the tree. It strutted around the grassy knoll like some kind of huge flightless bird, before...tripping? And falling? Alcyone blinked. Perhaps it wasn't quite as mobile as it looked, though, that metallic claw looked frightening enough to make up for any mobility issues.

Finally, perhaps most incongruously of all, Alcyone's keen eye picked out a glint of moonlight on a pair of tiny glass disks. The machine had put on glasses. And produced a cane with which to hobble around. She didn't quite know whether to laugh in stupefied bewilderment or simply give up and go mad now.

Going mad would be a very attractive option, though.

The machine raised its cane, poking at the tree, and then, predictably, Alcyone's robe fell out in a lump. Great, she thought. It's got my robe. I liked that robe. Swaying there in the breeze several stories up, all she could do was watch in bewilderment.

Though, it would have been more helpful to watch the wheat field. Alcyone completely missed the tell-tale rustle of stalks parting...

"I see it, s'flyin'!"

BLAM.

Pain erupted like a thousand hornets of hot iron burning into the wizard's side and face. She cried out in pain and shock, tumbling over in midair as the invisible magic spewed from her wounds like water from a colander. Madly, she looked down at her parchment, riddled with dozens of tiny scorched holes...

...which came apart in her hands. -oh, SHIT- was all she could think, then she was falling, the wind howling in her ears, thrusting her hands downwards and blasting invisible thumps of magic to try something -anything- to slow her descent but it was too late oh shit the ground-

-whump-

-stars/black-

Like a fallen star, the wizard impacted the ground with a thick snap, and lay motionless.


Is this the end? Could our heroine have gazed her last star, scribbled her final diagram, seen her last sunset? Find out in our next exciting installment!

[Green]

Hade stepped back as some sort of cloth loosened from the branches onto the grass by her claws. She shifted it around with the end of her staff, eyes narrowing. The colour was hard to make out -- green, maybe? What was it? A cloak? What was it doing up there? She canted her head and leaned in to scrutinize it, her brain demanding a further examination, when there came a sound of rustling, a tone recgonised as George Carter's, and the blast of a shotgun. Seconds later, a body cracked against the hard earth.

She wheeled around but there was nothing doing. The attack had come too quickly. Another firearm discharged, and she heard more than felt a projectile rip into her shoulder.

chick-shick

BLAM.

The force of the small shot tearing into her lower abdominal area sent Hadewych and her staff spinning before she collided with the ground.

Pain and the sensation of hot fluid escaping. An external artery carrying blood to the organic parts which required it in her head had been nicked and Hade clamped a wide, metal hand over the wound as she frantically tried to get up, but the appearance of a shotgun barrel looking her in the face stalled any further attempts. The stubbly gourd-shape of George's face leered at her from above.

"Caught'ch'ya, ya goddamn freak."

Water tinged with blood was leaking onto the grass. Luckily her pressure was naturally low and the flow, sluggish.

"The hell Carter! You gone and shot a woman!"

The old farmer swiveled at the exclamation, coming from one of three men standing behind him. Hadewych seized the opportunity and grabbed hold of the barrel, and at George's surprised cry one of the shadowy figures sent a ball of fizzing white light from his hands at her chest. Upon contact the magic field surrounding her crackled loudly, an electrical sound. Sporatic fingers of dull crimson energy flared around her body. Hade jerked violently, her anguished female scream fading into a high-pitched whine like what a jostled microphone might produce before she crumpled and became still.

Carter nudged her with his gun and chuckled triumphantly. "Thanks for that, Emery."

The creator of the light weapon stepped forward in silence, nonchalantly replacing a worn leather glove on his right hand. He was a dark fellow of about middle age. Tall and black clad. Cool, foggy blue eyes stared without emotion at the motionless machine from an otherwise unexceptional human visage.

His thick lips twisted into a snarl.

"Fool! This is not the one!"

Carter gaped at him. "But...but I...ya said --"

Emery was not listening. With long, solid strides he abruptly returned to the hooded men gathered around the other body. One had his fingers pressed against her neck whilst his companion looked on, hands buried deep in the sleeves of his robe to avoid the cold.

"She's alive, a'ight," the first drawled before his master could ask.

"Leave her," Emery ordered tersely, turning away from the unconscious young woman laying prone at his feet. "I don't have time for this."

"H-hey! Hey, what 'bout, what 'bout what we talked 'bout, remember?" George yipped eagerly after him. "My pay, remember? What we talked 'bout?"

The black clad man ignored him as he and the robed men began walking away.

"Hey! I'm talkin' to you!"

But the trio vanished soundlessly.

"HEY!" George called again. They were gone, with nothing but the night and the breeze in their place. The farmer stood dumbfounded for a moment, his shotgun hanging by his hip from a limp grasp. He staggered to stand over the woman he had mistakenly shot, biting the side of his hand. "Shhhit," he muttered, glancing at the cyborg a few feet away who had yet to stir.

[Falling With Style]

George Carter may have been a pragmatic man, but he wasn’t heartless. That’s what he’d told himself every step of the way back home, carrying the young woman like a limp sack of potatoes. She was skinny, all right – looked a bit unhealthy, like she’d been spending too much time around books instead of working the fields.

Looked like his suspicions may have been correct.

Not that being a farmer was as easy or simple as people made it out to be. He had to keep several small fields fruitful and planted, tending them all during the growing season and taking care of them in the winter. Rolling out of bed before the crack of dawn, plowing the fields behind his mule while sweat rolled down brown haunches and reddened necks alike, these were just a few samples of the glorious life of a ‘simple’ farmer. Truth be told, farmers were always hurting for cash money, and he’d jumped at a chance to buy hisself a new mule and maybe a small plot of land on Scara Brae.

Presently, the girl lay raggedly in the spare bedroom, the one that that…thing had occupied earlier today. Ma Carter tended to her, after she’d tended to her husband. And by “tended,” he referred to an ass-chewing so severe his backside literally ached. Well, that and the solid boot he’d received after sheepishly depositing the girl in her new bed. That could be it.

Wilhelma “Ma” Carter wasn’t a severe woman, but you’d never know it when she was in a righteous fury. Even now as the night grew dark, she bustled around the house giving out orders and dirty looks with equal ferocity, though the latter were solely reserved for her husband for shooting that poor girl in the fields.

George Gregor Carter, you’re pragmatic but damn, you’re stupid, he re-iterated. Seemed like he’d told himself that a hundred times now, and he did so because he was the only one to know the truth: it wasn’t no ordinary girl he’d shot on mistake.

Nope. That girl had been flying, and anything hovering up there pretty as a bee looks awful scary when it’s human size. The girl’s sallow face, that bony light little body, like a bird it was, they all pointed to one thing that confirmed his suspicions: witch. George Carter had never wanted no trouble with a witch, and now he’d gone and shot one. Even dumber, so he chided himself for the hundred and first time, he’d gone and brought the damn thing home instead of shooting her dead in the fields. Oh, he could’ve done it all right. That witch, lying there all ragged and beat up, clinging to life –blam!- one shot and she’d be history.

But George Carter had that singular human flaw: mercy. He’d carried her home, put her in a bed and endured constant kicks and tongue-lashings from his enraged wife because he’d shown mercy. In hindsight, maybe it made him a good man. Maybe not.

“B-boh…boh,” mumbled the witch weakly. Her breathing was light as a newborn’s, though her face wasn’t nearly as pretty. The left side was pocked pretty bad by Carter’s bird shot, and a minute constellation of tiny pinholes riddled her linen clothing. Her left arm had been done up in a bent wrapping by Ma, with a wooden splint to keep it in place while it healed. Beside the bed had been placed her bag and staff, which the Carter’s didn’t touch.

“You say somethin’ dear?” asked Ma Carter, dropping another tiny piece of shot in the tin with her tweezers. It sure was helpful that this girl was out cold, else this would be a whole lot more painful. Honestly! That damnfool husband of hers, shootin’ up a defenseless girl he thought was that monster! She’d have to give him a good boot next time she saw him.

The girl only managed a slight whisper, though, almost too minute for Ma Carter to hear.

”Buh…boh…bowmuh…bowman, Ox…”

“S’right dearie,” repeated Ma in that practiced tone of voice mothers usually reserved for gabbling babies. “You just think about them pretty stars, the bowman and the ox, an’ try to sleep…”

Downstairs, rubbing his freshly kicked backside –he’d gone in again to check on the girl- George Carter decided it was time for another walk. Curiosity had gotten the better of him, and a nice nighttime walk was certainly better than hanging about the house, so he shouldered his gun and headed out, intending to check on that monster he’d shot.

The right monster, this time.


Carter's your NPC now, Green. Enjoy ;)

[Green]

Fifty-three years ago, George had no one but the oak on the knoll. There weren't any boys his age around with which to play and he had not the luxury of attending a public school. When the rare lull between chores came along, he was always out here in this, his secret place. The tree had been a fort, a crow's nest, a shelter, a listening friend. Hot afternoons spent draped on the thick lower boughs, clear fall mornings shuffling in the flame-licked leaves. Scars earned scraped onto the skin of his knees, his palms, distant among more recent marks. Winston knew of it but did not cherish the oak as he.

It remained his secret.

However, George had never expected to approach his old friend with as much apprehension as he did this night.

God, he hoped that thing was dead. He'd have never let it step across his threshold if he hadn't thought at the time that handing it over to that good-for-nothing Emery bloke would provide him with some valuable coin. Having it in the house had been torture...even more so with the message that the Hunters were on their on way to collect the beast and it had better still be there when they arrived. He loathed having to tip-toe around the thing in his own fucking house and to top it off, he'd nought a measly speck of gold to make up for all the trouble!

Damn that Emery! And damn that Thing! What had he done to deserve this! He was an honest man, a pragmatic man. He laboured hard, asked fair prices for his produce (which was more than what could be said for Neighbor MacFarlet, hmph!), was generous in his wages, seldom skirted his taxes and loved his wife, god damn it!

George had worked himself into a froth by the time he reached the knoll; it took him a second to notice that there was no sign of the monster.

Warily he circled the tree, pausing at a sizeable wet spot on the ground from where he had left the Thing Heydovik or whatever it called itself. He raised a gnarled index finger to absent-mindedly scratch at his balding temple.

-snap-

"RRRRAAAAWWWWRG."

"Ooof!"

He was sent sprawling as a big, heavy something collided into him from the branches above. George could practically feel the bruises forming as metal impacted with soft flesh. In the resultant frenzy he shoved it off with his gun and hurriedly back-pedaled on his ass 'til he was leaning against the oak trunk, chest heaving. There was the damned Thing, crouched pretty as you please with moonlight glimmering off metal and shadows obscuring those predatory grey eyes. It had tied a piece of cloth over a tube thingy along it's neck which was already stained a deep scarlet shade.

It made a move to get up.

"Don't yew dare!" George threatened, getting his trembling hands to aim the gun from where he sat. "I shot ya once an' I can shoot ya 'gain, right enough!"

It cocked it's head as if considering his words.

"The hell you shoot me for in th'first place?"

It's voice was masculine now with the accent of the farming country. George rose stiffly to his feet, wincing as his back protested. He kept the gun squarely aimed. "Why the hell not? I was supposed to get a fair amount of money from you, you good-for-nothing hunk of...metal!"

The Thing straightened up despite his aggressive lurch forward. It was slouching more than he remembered.

"Why don't ya shoot me now?" it asked tiredly, spreading it's freaky mismatched arms wide in an inviting gesture. "Go on. Shoot me like you shot that girl. Gun me down."

chick-shick

The Thing didn't move, just stood there staring at him, daring him. George raised the sight to his eyes, pinning his tongue between his teeth. He had it now. A clean shot. At this distance he could do some serious damage. He could kill. Be rid of it. It would be so easy to pull the trigger...

"Well?"

It was using a female voice now, mature-sounding and a little exasperated. The one it had used most of last week.

His finger curled. The Thing's eyes widened. The gun spluttered indignantly. No shot left.

"DAMN it."

"You were going to shoot me? Again?!"

"What did you think I was going to do?" George let his gun lower with a sigh. "Here's the deal. I'm gonna let ya walk out of 'ere, an' I don't e'er wanna see yer -- what th' hell are ya doin'?"

It was on it's knees, it's human arm wrapped protectively around it's middle.

"I'm not going anywhere," the Thing gritted, pain evident in it's voice.

---

"George Gregor Carter, what in god's name do you think you're doing?!"

"...I couldn't jes' leave it -- her, there."

"You...! This is too much. You've gone insane, haven't you? You're insane. I always knew all that sun was doing something to your brain..."

"Would ya jes'...be quiet for a second, woman! It's not permanent, only 'til it's able to be on it's feet -- er, claws. 'Sides, I don't think it -- er, her -- is much dang'rous..."

Ma's whack atop his head sent him staring guiltily at the ground. "Fine," she huffed at length, fists digging into her gracious hips. "Fine! You do what you want. That poor girl is still up there needing attention and I can't be wasting the night standing down here trying to talk some sense into you. But it stays in the barn! I don't want it back in this house. Is that clear?"

"Yes ma'am."

With a final disgusted look over his shoulder into the darkness of their hay storage barn, Ma stalked off and could be heard pounding heavily up the porch steps. Thinking that he had best be staying out of her way tonight less he wanted to endure another thorough booting, George cast a final glance into the darkness of the small building where the cyborg and her effects were resting in the corner before sliding the door shut -- and padlocking it.

Back to you. :)

[Falling With Style]

Dawn came faster than anyone thought, and if you asked George Carter’s opinion, faster than it really should’ve. He’d gone ahead and slept on the other side of the bed from Ma Carter for good measure, the side that was all cold and hard and made it tough to sleep. Come to think of it, that described the whole damn bed last night. He’d lain there while his wife snored next to him, thinking of the crazy machine in the barn, but more worried about the witch upstairs, the one he reckoned would probably turn the lot of them into toads or something or blow the farmhouse away with a tornado. He dreaded her waking.

While not being overjoyed to see the witch still out cold, George breathed a sigh of relief when he checked on her and confirmed it.

The day boiled on past that. Except for the occasional tiny stir out of the witch, life at the Carters had to go on – George went back out to plow while Ma stayed in and alternated between peeling potatoes for supper and tending to her patient. Winston and Jacob had headed out to mend a fence or something, and it was well past lunch when the girl woke up.

In the same fashion that a long-oxidized gate resists opening, Alcyone’s rusty eye creaked open, its lid crusted with an unpleasant amount of sleep. She reached up to wipe it off-

- bleh, her arm must be asleep. She tried to move it harder. OW – pain shot through her upper arm like a knife slicing it open. “Gah!” she cried, forcing a tear out of her eye. Sweet lightning it hurt!

“Ooh, don’t move your arm there, dearie!” came a voice, presumably from the indistinct colored blob beside her bed. “I splinted it, best I c’d do.”

Splinted? Was her arm broken or something? Moreover, where the hell was she?

Cracked barely open, her eye surveyed what was beginning to look a lot like a bedroom, where light streamed through a window onto a dusty floor and a fierce dumpy woman bustled around her little bed. Said woman brandished a bowl of…well, something at her, something that smelled remarkably odd.

Alcyone blinked and recoiled slightly.

“Dearie, you best eat up. It won’t kill ya, s’just chicken soup.”

The eyebrow went up. Soup from a chicken, then – the question was, what part of a chicken held the soup? Volume wise, a single chicken might hold half a cup of the stuff, so you’d have to press like five to get this amount of it…

Screw it. She was hungry, and dug into the soup, spooning it down with her one good arm to discover it really wasn’t too bad at all – in fact, it barely tasted like chickens, more like vegetables and pepper and some cheese. The woman brought her some milk, which she regarded for a second. Did they squeeze animals for all their food here on Scara Brae? Weird. If nothing else, though, she had this weird craving for the milk, and glugged it down greedily, sending rivulets trickling down her cheeks.

“My there, where’re you from?” asked Ma Carter hesitantly. The girl ate like a wolf and had slightly worse table manners.

“Mphayleiennph,” she mumbled unhelpfully around a mouthful of bread, not knowing why she was so absurdly ravenous.

“Er,” replied the woman, completely abandoning that line of questioning, “er, well, anything else I c’n get ya?”

“Hvv ya ghottney cheese?” asked the witch, still chewing and unable to help being an atrocious houseguest. “An’ summore milk?”

Ma Carter couldn’t help but smile a bit; 'once a mother always a mother,' her own had always said. With Winston growing up and out all day, a small part of her appreciated having someone to baby. She went downstairs to fetch some more milk and cheese.

Alcyone’s head thumped back against the wall, still swimming in pain from her arm and not really caring that she was in a strange house with unfamiliar people. At least they took care of her. Inwardly, she couldn’t help but wonder if they’d gotten that awful monster.

[Green]

Meanwhile, back in the barn...

Five hours, six minutes in a powered-down state had done her some good and as Hadewych awoke she was pleased to notice that the metal healing effects of Regina's magic were doing their job well. Whilst pockmarks remained, anything more had been mended leaving prominent welded impressions on the effected surfaces. The external artery, which thankfully was artificial, had done a fair bit of mending in it's own right but needed a few hours yet. The bandage was thoroughly soaked and blood had trickled out from underneath it during the night, streaking her frame and the feathers there as it coagulated. A small amount persisted and changing the cloth out had been her first order of business.

The cyborg did little else that day, simply sitting and prying shot from where it had lodged in bone and rattled about in hollow metal spaces. Luckily the side which had been targeted possessed few organic parts and the tiny projectiles were barred from doing much harm by the geometrical slabs of decorated, protective plate metal hinged in place above her hip and below the lowest alloy rib.

These reasonably mild wounds did not explain the weakness which was preventing her from doing much else than squatting in a corner all day in a warm, musty hay barn. The CPU responsible for her more intricate wiring was operating at the very least forty-three percent below normal capacity, which may have explained the sluggish response in her limbs and the decreased sensory input from her synthetic regions.

It was a worrisome development and it left Hadewych cursing her rotten memory. Because for the life of her, she could not recall a lick of what had happened the night before, besides getting shot, that is. Just what had transpired to put her in such a state? Not-knowing, while a sadly familiar condition, was simultaneously putting her on edge and distracting her from wondering just why she was stagnating in a warm, musty hay barn to begin with.

"Right. I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I -- " she slammed a fist into her hiccuping voice unit. Yet another thing to add to her steadily expanding list of to-do's. "I w-was at a house, for a bit of a w-wage...at their house..."

Talking aloud had always helped the arduous task of memory retrieval. Hade stood up with a metallic groan and started hobbling back and forth, her joints stiffer than usual.

"At their hou-ou-ouse, fer ah week? Car...Cart. It...t'was a week!...weren't it? I-I-I-ah...bugger."

The sound was in and out, twisting between different female and male tones and accents and volumes and varying amounts of static, reminiscent of an indecisive hand on the radio dial flipping between talk shows. Hade eventually grew tired of wrestling with her muddled vocals and resigned herself to silently pacing the floor from one peeling wall to the accumulation of aged alfalfa stacked near the other.

Time passed -- three hours, twenty minutes, three seconds on the dot according to her chronometer, when a lock rattled beyond the big sliding door and it was forced open by a wiry, pot-bellied human male silhouetted against the light. The man took a moment to push the wide brim of his hat aside and clinically eye the rusted track of the door.

Hade watched him quizzically from she was crouched atop the alfalfa pile, having never even thought to check the door to see if it was locked in the first place.

"Er...hi," said the man awkwardly. "Figured I'd check on ya...er...heh. Do ya wan't any...thing?"

"Water," Hadewych replied instantly, keeping her voice within the preferred feminine range.

"Okay...water. I can uh, get ya a cup..."

"Insufficient. Is access to a replenishing water source available?"

"Er...yeah. Yeah, right out here there's a, er...pump out here, ya c'n use."

Hadewych jumped down, her adornments clinking. The man took a quick step backwards.

"Excellent."

He stepped to the side as she limped past him, keeping a hay fork in close perimeter. But Hade did not note his blatant mistrust and instead headed straight for the iron pump outside the building. The machine kneeled rigidly on the gravel laid beneath the spout and positioned her jaws under the opening.

Alas her arm could not properly work the handle while her head was lowered. After a minute's deliberation she straightened and took hold of the handle, lifted it and pushed it down but was too slow to meet the pitiful squirt of well water. A couple of tries later she had a rhythm going and was able to sloppily catch the last of the squirt if she timed her head's descent under the opening just right, noisily lapping water in the fashion a dog slurps from a hose. It was a dampening affair.

As this was happening the hairs on George Carter's neck prickled and he looked up at the second-story window, the window belonging to the witch's room, to see a shadow standing there.

[Falling With Style]

For indeed the witch had risen. Risen to wreak hell upon this pitiful plot of land, rain fire from the skies and call down the very blazing sun itself to scorch the earth, ah hah HAH HAAA-

*cough*

She needed to stop doing that.

Alcyone felt terrible. The soup had taken the edge off her hunger, but she'd downed a good quarter of a wheel of cheese and a jug of milk since Ma Carter brought her that first bowl. Finally sated, she stared out towards the blazing afternoon sun, her copper-colored eye narrowed to a slit. Its sibling, blocked by a curtain of rusty hair, caught a bewildering diffraction pattern filtering through instead, all manner of red and gold lines playing into the pupil.

She couldn't shake the nagging feeling that there was something she'd forgotten. It sat there wiggling around the back of her skull like some delirious little chrysalis, the kind that only hatches when you're not paying attention.

The wizard turned from the sun, pacing back to the center of the room. She was getting bizarrely hungry again. Her first thought turned bizarrely to...pregnancy? She dismissed this immediately. She was still a virgin -disappointing as that was, that bit of fooling around with that guy at college didn't count- and besides, that awful feeling was coming from all over, like a chill in her bones. Hmmmm, she'd have to ponder that later.

Her brain switched tracks instantaneously. She needed to check the stars, but that would have to wait until nighttime, yes, nighttime would be nice, then she could get to work on that -

*bing*

Ah, blast it all. That was it - that stupid riddle Mizar sent her, the bloody old gnome!

Wait, how long had she been out? It started with the 'midpoint of the month'...was that today?

Downstairs in the kitchen, Ma Carter stood over the cooking pot, adding bits of meat here, ladling the broth upon itself and sprinkling the odd herb in there. She brought out the wooden spoon to taste the broth and decided it needed more vegetables. Hmm, potatoes would go well, maybe some celery. She produced a large knife and held it over-

"HOW LONG WAS I ASLEEP?!"

"Zagh!"

Ma Carter practically sliced her arm off. Knife in hand, she whirled around to face the girl. "...what are ya talkin' about?" asked the woman, equal parts enraged, trembling and confused. What she found wasn't pretty: the girl from upstairs was now mobile, leaning hard on her staff with one arm while the other hung in a makeshift sling by her side. A few red pockmarks riddled her face where the bird shot impacted.

They have a term for this kind of look. It's called 'death warmed over.'

"Hun, you almost lost me a finger!" panted Wilhema 'Ma' Carter. "What're you doin' out of bed, anyway?"

A lone eye poked out from behind that mass of rusty red hair. It twitched a bit. "The...the date - how long have I been out?"

Ma blinked. All this fuss over how long she'd been sleeping, huh? "Y've been out fer most of the day. Damnfool George brought ya down -er, in- last night an' you've been sleepin' most of the day. How come...?"

But the wizard was already gone, clumping up the stairs much faster than someone with a sprained ankle and broken limb should really be able to.

Less than a minute later, the window flew open and a robed figure shot out into the blue, tumbling end over end in a deranged free fall like a body dropped off a high building. Of course, this body dropped itself sideways out a window, for all the brains that would break. The robed figure, clutching a piece of parchment tightly as she whistled towards the main city of Scara Brae, didn't even pause to look at the two figures below.

[Green]

Half a day later, 6:32 PM, The fair City of Scara Brae.

A warm-ish evening with just a hint of early spring chill swept across the city. The air was soft and fragrant, the smallest of zephyrs mixing a conglomeration of aromas delicious, sour, pale. People were bustling about the thoroughfares going about their errands, closing shops in lieu of a prosperous business day and bringing in produce and wares along tables and racks on the store fronts for the night. Chimney smoke hung heavily above rooftops, wafting around the voices of the citizens as they chattered and greeted, the clopping of hooves on cobblestones and dirt, the occasional shout and popping of light firecrackers from outside a tavern in celebration.

Along side a derelict building that would soon become one of the classier inns in town if it's new owners had anything to say about it, Hadewych sat hunched against the bleached brick wall, hood up and cloak pulled tightly around her shoulders. It was not for heat -- she had her internal temperature control for that -- but rather for anonymity. She planned on spending the night here. As accustomed as the cyborg was to the interesting reactions of those unused to her appearance, she had not the energy to confront anyone just yet. No, it was better to keep her head down and get the lay of the land before making any decisions.

George Carter had been most helpful that day. By the time he had recovered from witnessing the dreaded witch's peculiar feat, Hadewych had filled the necessary storage compartments and her flask with the vital water and had promptly gone to fetch her belongings. She was healed enough.

Journal in hand, cloak thrown around her shoulders hiding her wings, Hade clomped back out from her musty prison.

"In the fashion of kindness with which you have graciously shown me of late," Hadewych began, nearing George who couldn't help but clutch at the pitch fork which had mysteriously found it's way into his grasp. "I'd like to know just how far that city is..."

He voice held a defiant note of pride. Remembering her original destination after everything that had happened was quite an accomplishment.

George pointed her in the right direction and quietly named it for her. Scara Brae, after the island. Or vice versa. Thanking him mildly the machine left. And that was that.

Travel of course was slow. Hadewych had yet to return to a fully operational status and was forced to pull over and rest periodically, lengthening an hour into the three hours or so it had taken to get here. Once within the city darkness was falling, dusting the sky in burnt ochre, and she hunkered down and let her thoughts roam as they pleased. As she sat, waiting for the return of her energy, her circuits itched in anticipation of a new job that would perhaps hold her down for more than a month...

Hadewych eventually gave in to scribbling busily in her journal when she heard the telltale scrapings of a scuffle further down the alley she was nestled within.

[Falling With Style]

If there was one thing that Scara Brae wasn't, it was quiet. The wizard Alcyone had touched down outside the great stone walls of the city to avoid undue attention and immediately discovered the displeasure of going in on foot. Even in the evening, the city bustled around her, where ware-hawking vendors created a joint cacophony with preachers and beggars alike. Alcyone liked the city about as much as a broken arm, which conveniently was splinted to her side as empirical evidence.

As the day wore on and the sky dimmed from brilliant blue to a fiery orange, the wizard finally ascended the last steps before the mighty gates of the Dejas Pagoda. With one arm strapped, immobile, to her side and a solid array of pockmarks down her cheek, she looked and felt a mess. The wizard looked down at the city below her, still excruciatingly active, before regarding the Pagoda's gate.

The arch loomed at the midpoint of a hill, a huge stone edifice crowned with some bizarre kind of shingled roof, curled up at the corners like old Mizar's fingers on a proper mad rant. Akashiman architects, eat your heart out. She'd heard of places like this in other cities - the Citadel of Raidasanth for example - and all served the purpose of bloody deathmatches. Why her old professor, that lunatic Mizar, wanted a symbol of death as her starting point was beyond this wizard.

Alcyone shrugged. The most important thing now, at least regarding her studies, was beginning this first task. The first part of the riddle she'd copied from the sky read:

From midpoint of month
find Ox and Bowman
find path of arrow
From Citadel
follow arrow

This seemed easy enough, at least for an astromancer. Proper timekeeping was essential when studying the heavens, and as a student her instructors had drilled punctuality into her straight away. Thus, it made perfect sense to start her at the "midpoint of the month." In other words, this very evening. Alcyone gazed skyward, regarding the purpling firmament like a great dome of tinted glass. A few hardy stars drilled their light through the opaque canopy, among them the shapes of two particular sigils, the Bowman and the Ox. Alcyone recognized the former by his 'belt,' a trio of stars arranged midway down a hardy frame from which arms, legs and a sword hung.

Any child could tell you of the Bowman's quarry, the Ox. This large constellation thundered hugely across the sky, his massive bulk arranged headlong at the Bowman's form and his red eye, Aldebaran, glowing madly. The young wizard regarded the Ox's eye, shining in sadness for his imminent death yet prideful to the end, locked forever a second away from the Bowman's bolt crashing through his skull.

Alcyone nodded to herself. This first part of the riddle -why was it always riddles with that gnome, anyway?- had proven easy enough to figure out. She'd found the equivalent of a "Citadel" in this city, tracked the path of the Bowman's arrow and now had her celestial bearings. She aligned herself along the arrow's path and-

- well, that was interesting. It was as if a new street had popped into existence, cascading narrowly down the hill before her. Of course, it hadn't, as she would have sensed the magic in the air otherwise, but rather the street had appeared via an optical illusion. The white stone and red-tiled roofs of Scara Brae's central district had concealed this thin street from view from precisely the angle of the Pagoda's entrance, except when she aligned her position with the Bowman's arrow. How bizarre.

The girl collected her staff and picked her way down the white marble road, glancing every so often at the Bowman's arrow. The entrance to this street seemingly rose up in blackness to swallow her, but upon entry the light filtered down just the same as under the dimming sky. Still, no magic buzzed through to her here - 'twas simply a clever bit of architecture. Alcyone idly wondered what purpose a street whose roofs aligned perfectly with a constellation on a certain date would serve, and it occurred to her: hers. How many like her had picked their way down the crookedly straight path of this odd street?

A rusted iron street sign the same color as the wizard's eye and hair glared back at the limping mage in the dim starlight. Aurochs' Way, it read. The wizard regarded it for a second as her brain assembled and filed this detail. 'Twas simple enough, she reasoned - aurochs, Ox, same creature really. But the convergence of the street's name and her current mission was too happy a coincidence for her to dismiss entirely. She approached the street sign, brushed thin fingers against its corroded surface, frustrated by the lack of magic in the air. This wasn't some kind of elaborate glamour; she'd have sensed that. It was, however, unnerving that -

"Evenin', lass!"

- shove! A rough pair of hands caught her in the small of the back, propelling the thin wizard against the marble wall. With an umph of air Alcyone impacted the wall and the same hands whirled her around. The broken arm exploded into novas of pain cartwheeling up her spine to claw at her skull.

What Alcyone found wasn't pleasant. While pondering the odd sign, a few local ruffians had apparently decided a skinny girl with a broken arm equipped solely with a staff would be easy pickings. Unfortunately, they were right. Splitting pain shot up her arm and Alcyone grunted, only barely making out the figures before her.

"So, what 'ave we got here?" grinned the big one. "A little bird 'at broke her wing." He displayed a slightly better set of teeth than the stereotyped rotten mugger, more of a local hooligan than a desperate man. He looked like, given a better upbringing, he could have been a prizefighter. A contender, a -

Ow! He'd smacked her in the face. "Pay attention, missy. You look like a reasonable sort, yeah? Intelligent, but not from around these parts. We're the welcoming committee, yeah, and our fee's lookin' like your gold, an' those shiny brass gadgets you're carryin'."

Alcyone blinked groggily, one part unfocused anger and three parts incoherence. The pain welling in her fractured arm made it thoroughly difficult to reply coherently. A pair of ruffians skulked around behind him, a tall one and a short one, but both looked underfed and unshaven. Three-to-one odds made this completely against her favor, but there were, after all, loose cobbles and the like. Slowly, painfully, the wizard lowered her pack to the ground.

"You know, missy," the leader told her, with a rather unpleasant look in his eye. "There is, maybe one more thing y'could provide. See, you're not bad lookin'..."

[Falling With Style]

I think Green's left the site. Which sucks, because she was a pretty cool roleplayer. If you're reading this, Green, and you want back in just drop me a line.

Anyway, forging ahead alone!

Scara Mezza, the middle town, may have been a mere half hour by horsecart, but by mule it was an eternity. Josephine wasn’t cooperating today; she hawed, wrestled in her harness and generally made life miserable for the harried George Carter. It wasn’t that he enjoyed being out of the house, but frankly, the past few days had been trying on his sanity with Ma Carter still taking kicks at his backside for that incident with the witch.

Speaking of witch.

“Did I do right, hun?” he asked. “Should’ve I just shot the damn fool thing in the field?”

Josephine took a snap at a passing dragonfly, honking her mulesong ill-temperedly.

“Fer whatever that’s worth, I’ll take it,” muttered Carter. “George, you’re still a fool.”

Indeed, he sure as hell felt like one. This was strike three; he clattered his old cart towards the city actively looking for the girl that would likely turn him into a toad. Yup, George Carter’d sure cursed the fates when he found a stack of parchments nestled in the seat of her chair, along with a compass that didn’t point north and some kinda strange brass gizmos.

Witch things they was – and common wisdom dictates you don’t touch witches’ things.

Unfortunately, common wisdom also dictates that witches are vengeful, capricious beings that’ll soon as turn you into a toad as strike you down with lightning or fling you into the river if they think you’re stealin’ from ‘em. George Carter wanted none of this and frankly, wanted her stuff away from his family and home as fast as possible.

Carter’s cart clattered into Scara Mezza as evening set in, and from there, it became a matter of locating a needle in a haystack. George had come armed, though – all those parchments o’ hers, he could maybe use them to find her in old Scara Mezza. He just hoped she’d understand, if’n the witch got her stuff back.

Or, at least if he wound up a toad, the witch wouldn’t go after his wife and Winston. He unrolled a parchment containing a cryptic riddle; the witch had made a bunch of copies of the damned thing, so clearly she'd felt it was important. It was also the only real chance he'd get to find her in here.

“Now, then,” mused the farmer. “From midpoint of month…”

*************

Carter heard the scuffle on his third wandering lap around the Pagoda.

Without saying it, he already knew he was a damn fool. Why? Because he was gonna go investigate, maybe help whoever it was in trouble. Pragmatic he wasn’t these past few days, and he knew Ma would’ve had his rear for this, but…

…he peeked around the corner. Two –three, actually- crooks, assaulting a small figure in the low light. Aurochs’ Lane had noticeably darkened except around the three, who were backlit by some kind of soft light coming off the smallish victim. She was yelling indecipherably.

- aw, hell, it was the witch! Second time he could have shot her, or left her for dead, but damn if George Gregor Carter wasn’t a colossal softie under it all. He hoisted his trusty shotgun.

“’EY!” he bellowed, pointing the shotgun at the short one in the back. “Back offa that girl!”

The crooks froze. The two in the back –accomplices, from the looks of ‘em- dropped the small brass devices they were holding and started slouching nervously off. “Go on, git!” yelled Carter, clicking a hammer menacingly.

They ran.

“Hands off the girl,” commanded the farmer, now directly addressing the main miscreant. Big guy he was, not as rough looking as your average crook. Turned around all the same, though, at the click of the gun’s second hammer. Carter looked the crook dead in the eye, giving him that look usually reserved for an ornery goat. “You heard me. Git or I’ll shoot yer prick off.”

The robber’s face twitched. “Now, ‘old on a sec,” he managed. “– me girlfriend an’ I was just clearin’ some domestic problems, y’see -”

WHUMP.

The hooligan’s sentence ended when his face crumpled inwards from some invisible force. The blow spun him right around, blood spiraling outwards from his bludgeoned nose. He crumpled to the ground, totally unconscious, his breath coming in reflexive, fishlike gulps.

The witch stood, softly glowing with incandescent rage, with an outstretched palm now flecked with blood. She shambled forwards, hair a mess, that one brown eye glinting a disturbing red in the alley’s half-light.

Frankly, it scared the living hell out of George Carter. His shotgun trembled, before he thought better and brought it up.

“L-look, witch, I-I don’t want no more trouble out o’ ya – I’ve just come to bring y’ back yer stuff, see…?”

George Carter’s sentence ended, too – but this time, when the witch clamped an arm around him and squeezed. Tentatively, George put an arm around her small frame. The witch sobbed quietly into his flannel shirt, and all the farmer could do was stand and comfort her.

Mite better than being a toad.

[Falling With Style]

Supported by the farmer, the wizard Alcyone picked her way through the smooth cobblestones, all the while following the path of the Bowman’s arrow shining flawlessly above. A poet once said the stars 'threw down their spears,' and tonight lived up to it.

Alcyone, in a dark mood herself, welcomed the clear night, her eye roving the heavens to pick out what constellations she could from the stone canyon of Aurochs’ Way. Her mind replayed the assault for her, a private cinema she wished she could stop watching. Before her eyes, the hooligan's face crumpled over and over, ejecting blood and phlegm onto the cobbles. If she'd had more power on tap, she may have snapped his neck. The very thought sent a dark shiver up her spine.

The farmer broke the silence. “By the way,” he offered up, a calloused arm still supporting her weight, “I’m George. Figured it’d be polite an’ all, to introduce m’self.”

Alcyone offered a smile, though whether or not her heart was in it was a different story. The absurdity of it all – the man who nearly killed her coming back to save her was one thing, but until he said his name he’d had been nothing more than, well, an acquaintance – just like the old farmer who’d given her a lift into Scara Mezza’s fields. The first-name basis, for some deranged reason, was oddly appropriate now, bonding the two after her salvation.

The wizard returned the favor. “Call me Alcyone.”

The farmer –George, then- matched her with a chuckle. “Never heard a name like that around. Al see uh ney,” he attempted, having some difficulty with the strange pronunciation. “Yer given name, is it?”

The witch put a tentative foot down on a loose cobblestone. “Sort of. It was given to me by an old gnome, but then again, all of ours were.”

“’All o’ ours?’” asked George. At this point, he seemed almost nonplussed to hear about the gnome mentor, Mizar.

Alcyone kept putting one tentative foot before another. “Yeah. Well, it’s a long story; I won't subject you…”

The farmer shrugged. “All ears.”

The wizard nodded. "All right, then. There's a corner of Fallien, then, where the ley lines converge..."

So she told him about the wizards and their Academy looming over some bizarre corner of Fallien, how its glass-and-sandstone walls were only visible out of the corner of your eye. She told him of pale geomancers emerging from the dirt while the aeromancers, olive-skinned from constant solar exposure, flitted jovially above their heads. She told him of the highest parapet where the astromancers gathered, calling down meteor showers to write craters in the desert’s canvas.

She told him of flying – “it’s really only falling with style” - and of the stars, and their clockwork motion through the clear desert nights. Finally, she told him of her own star, ‘Alcyone,’ which shone from a tiny clump above the shoulder of the Ox constellation. All astromancers took new names from the stars, as much a sign of prestige as a sign of severance from their old life.

And as she told the farmer her story, the wizard tried to forget her pain.

[Falling With Style]

Aurochs’ Way trundled a ways farther before swerving sharply up a hill. In the vertex of the angle thus created, a roundish door squatted under a canopy of red-shingled roofs. Said door would be wholly unremarkable were it not ringed by an iris of windows glowing a deep gold from interior light. It was the sort of glass you see around the door of a pub, not sufficiently transparent to look through but warmly translucent, almost glowing from within when backlit.

The whole affair reminded one, if viewed with some artistic liberty, of a weary eye. The vaguely roundish door formed the pupil, ringed by a golden glass iris, and nestled within the stonework corner of Aurochs’ Way as if encased in rocky flesh.

Alcyone’s foot caught on one of the steps and the wizard lurched forward with her magestaff still in her good hand. In the brief instant she began to fall, her fatigued brain oscillated impotently between dropping the staff and splaying a hand out or sticking a knee forward to break her fall. Immediately a braking force appeared on her shoulders, in the form of Farmer George’s rough-hewn hands preventing her from cracking her face on the stone.

“Careful now,” he cautioned. “I reckon you’re close to the root o’ this. Be a shame to bust your head now.”

“Thanks,” she mumbled embarrassedly, brushing a rusty strand of hair out of her eye. “…and agreed.”

Upon the doorstep Alcyone found a small iron sign, similar in style to the one up the street. The sign bore a thick crust of dirt and corrosion, its iron having long since oxidized in the humid air of Scara Brae, and it read simply:

The Ox’s Eye Tavern

Under that, in small-block castings, were two additional words:

GRANTS ENTRY

Alcyone knelt down to puzzle at it, cradling her arm. ‘Ox’s Eye’ was obviously part of the cryptic message her professor Mizar had sent. It linked up with the riddle, after all, with the line of the ox’s eye ‘seeing a friend.’ Perhaps she had to meet someone here - it seemed the most obvious use of such a device. Besides that, the Bowman’s arrow led her directly to this little inn, where the street swerved up the hill.

“How do we get inside?” mused the wizard, scratching her head. “It’s clearly connected with the riddle, this place, yet I’ve no idea what it expects us to do now.” She adjusted her travel hat, as if that would somehow help her think more clearly. “Perhaps it has to do with the parallax of a certain star, or the phase of the moon…”

“I’ve got an idea,” replied George, and promptly walked up to the door and knocked twice.

Immediately, a gruff voice shouted something along the lines of Yeah, I’m coming and there came a profusion of small clicks and clacks of locks opening.

Alcyone blinked. “Oh.”

[Falling With Style]

A small wooden panel slid open. The eye that appeared through it glared, owl-like, at them from beneath a feathery eyebrow. It darted back and forth, a rogue green marble.

"An' who would you be?" asked a voice. It was old, gruff, and male, and most assuredly rather tired.

The wizard and the farmer exchanged glances.

"Alcyone-"
"George-" they said, simultaneously.

The eye's sibling joined it through the panel. Together they settled interestedly upon the wizard. "Alcyone, eh?" their owner asked. "How's your mother?"

Alcyone blinked, caught completely off guard. "My...mother?" she asked, feeling slightly foolish.

"That's what I asked."

"You don't know my mother." Inwardly, she thought: Do you intend to make me look the fool, you old coot?

"Of course I do."

The wizard's visible eye hooded itself over in rusty exasperation. Her shot-riddled face darkened to a frustrated glower. "Look, old man. I barely know my mother. She's dead for all I know. You cannot possibly-"

"Not very bright, are you?"

Alcyone jawed at the insult like a koi gulping at duckweed. The old simmer built inside her as she mouthed silent, incoherent retorts at the man, the stars, and everything else that had led her on this misbegotten disaster of a first labor. WHAT had this beastly old man told her?!

"You - - zagh - - I'll -" she spluttered, finally getting some words together - "- drop a meteor-"

"Don't be childish," the voice chastised. "You haven't got enough power to get a meteor through the mesosphere. Much less hurt anyone."

George finally piped up. "Beggin' your pardon, but this lil' lady isn't all that harmless..."

Indeed, the witch had become quite a bit less harmless over the course of that sentence as all the frustrations of this idiotic task built to a critical pressure inside her. A pebble clattered once on the cobblestones, before sprinting and bouncing towards her. Small rocks and clumps of dirt rose to join it, falling into jagged orbits around the witch. Her knuckles were white on the brass staff and her one rusty eye burned behind writhing hair.

In a word: pissed.

George backed away, reflexively groping for his trusty shotgun. "Whuh oh. Yeh've done it now..."

[Falling With Style]

The blood had gone out of Alcyone's clenched fists, causing her already sallow skin to appear luminescent in the thin starlight. Her accretion disk built in ferocity, swallowing more debris into the whirling ring. The hanging sign creaked on its hinges, leaning towards her.

"I am sick," she snarled, voice crystal clear over the din of the wind and debris, "of this labor. I have been shot, broken my arm; just now that hooligan tried to -tried to-" -at this, Alcyone's face twisted into a grimace, as a flying pot burst against the door- "...ugh! And now all I have at the end of this idiotic scavenger hunt is some senile old twit hurling insults at me!"

Behind her, George Carter clutched the gun to his chest, twitching the muzzle back and forth in time with his brain. He'd instinctively begin to bring it down towards the increasingly dangerous witch, then get ahold of himself and sweep it back towards the rooftop. Not that George wanted to in the first place, but really, could he really be blamed for being twitchy? Yesterday he'd gone about his business without anything out of the ordinary, and today, he'd fallen in with powers far beyond his scope.

Only the innkeeper seemed unfazed by the wizard approaching critical mass on his doorstep. The eye glanced her over as if regarding an offending anthill. "This has gone on long enough," he said. His voice was strong, retaining none of its former crackle, and carried over the noise. "Young Alcyone, you are being phenomenally dense."

The door banged open, and there stood an ancient man in his pajamas, with a cane in one hand and a mug of tea in the other.

"You vastly overestimate yourself. Not a good sign for a prospective astromancer."

At this, the old man set his cup down on thin air, and drew a little sigil in the space before him with his finger. Alcyone's visible eye went wide in surprise as her accretion disk halted in midair, in complete defiance of angular momentum, and fell impotently to the ground in a clatter of pebbles and bits of dirt.

George almost blew a hole in a third story window.

The wizard spluttered incomprehensibly for a few seconds, watching the old man take his tea from midair.

"Y-you - you're a - an - but that's not possible - I haven't heard of you-"

"Yes, I'm an astromancer," the exasperated old man said, largely to cut her off. "By the stars, this year's crop is dense. Now come in and have some tea before you go into shock."

George, recovering faster than the wizard, uncocked his shotgun and moved to help her inside.

Injured, fatigued, chilly, and feeling more than a little deflated, the wizard numbly complied.

[Falling With Style]

The farmer helped Alcyone inside the Ox's Eye Tavern. The events of this whole ordeal were showing on her - between the shotgun blast, the broken arm, and heavens-knows-what else that had nearly happened, it was pretty incredible that she was still functioning.

Nevertheless, the wizard still scanned the room, if only out of sheer bloody-mindedness, looking for anything obviously related to this rather stupid errand. At the very least, Alcyone had never seen a pub before. The wooden arches over tables were alien to her, as were the large kegs of various beverages. It was in every way a typical pub, except she didn't know what that was.

"Calmed down yet?" the old man asked. He was a hunched, wizened little thing, the sort that more experienced adventurers know not to mess with because they always have some sort of magic up their sleeves.

The wizard managed a weak nod. Already, her skinny frame felt about three times heavier.

"Fair enough, then. Have a seat, you two."

George grabbed a few chairs and lowered the witch into one. She glanced at him and offered a smile, and he managed a welcoming nod. Alcyone was glad, at least, for the farmer's presence. He was quite obviously unaccustomed to magic -she could tell; he probably thought she'd turn him into a frog or something- but shored it up well. He was a strong, adaptable one, very fatherly. She wondered if he'd ever had any daughters.

The old astromancer mirrored the young one, lowering himself into a chair that scooted up behind him. He leaned forwards on his cane, looking for all the world like a cantankerous owl with his fluffy eyebrows.

"So then - as you may have surmised - my name is Grant, the proprietor of this little pub, and I suspect you're both going to need something to drink."

George furrowed his brow. "Beggin' your pardon, Mr. Grant, but I'm sure a drink might knock the lady here out like a candle."

"Nonsense," replied the old man. "I've got some black-barley stout here. She'll need her iron." At this, a trio of mugs poured themselves and glided gently across the room. Alcyone reached out her good arm and took hers out of the air, finding it almost weightless. This, finally, was familiar to her - any astromancer worth their salt, even a novice like her, could pull off a simple gravity sigil. It also helped stabilize the mug in her shaking hand.

George and Alcyone took big pulls on their stouts. It was a heavy, thick sort of brew with a distinctly burnt taste, totally black in color with a creamy head on it. George slugged his down easily, but Alcyone took her time.

The three of them sat there in silence, working on their beers. Alcyone was the last to finish, and managed to sit up a little. Far from any magic, it was simply the action of drinking something, particularly as rich as the black stout, that strengthened her. While the stout was rather weak in alcohol, she hadn't eaten anything since the market's lunch hour.

Alcyone composed herself enough to ask a question. "Sir," she asked, understandably rather strained, "your name."

Grant quirked an eyebrow.

"Not that name," Alcyone clarified, following the exertion with a slow pull on the stout. "If I may be so bold - what is your astromancer name?"

[Falling With Style]

"My name, eh?" The old man rocked his cane gently back and forth. "You mean you hadn't figured it out, yet, with all your knowledge of the stars? My word."

George released an exasperated breath, brandishing a mostly-drained mug at the cryptic old loon. "Look here, mister. I'm about fed up with this." Beside him, the girl glanced at him in clear bewilderment - after all, she'd stood no chance against the crazy old coot's power; she probably wondered what George thought he'd do.

"You're bein' roundabout here, especially to th' young lady who's traveled thayne-knows-how far to do this. Look at her. She's been shot -sorry again, miss- had a broken arm, pieced together this riddle I can't make heads or tails of, and took care of Scara Brae's worst while she was at it." That last part was a bit of an embellishment, but George didn't think it was necessary to describe his part in this any more than necessary. He felt protective of the little witch, up to and including defending her against this deranged old coot.

"If all wizards are this rude, it's understandable why yer dyin' out. So give yer student a lil' respect."

The old wizard's feathery eyebrows belied his nonplussed expression. George heard Alcyone suck in her breath.

The old man's eyes narrowed. "I take it you've seen your charge here do a few tricks. Consider that she's simply a novice, and that I'm fully versed in the star magic. I could show you things, farmer, that would crush your mind from the causal strain. The spinning planets in the cold void. I could take you inside the heart of the sun, show you the exploding interplay of fire and light - can you imagine that, farmer? Can you?"

George downed the last of the foam. "You're smart, but you're still actin’ a right old asshole, you know that?"

And then the old wizard's face did something rather surprising - it inverted itself, from a scowl to a smile. "And you’re right, Carter. I am. You and your family have proven yourselves very capable in aiding young Alcyone here, and I, for one, am indebted to you."

George blinked. This was the first thing Grant had said that had caught him properly off guard. "Whatnow? How d'you know my name? And wait - aiding - indebted - what?"

An arthritic finger scratched the short beard, producing a scritch-scritch sound, the facial-hair equivalent to sharkskin. "Oh, dear. Let me back up somewhat."

[Falling With Style]

"George Carter - husband of Wilhelmina Carter, if I recall correctly - how long has your family owned that plot of land? A few generations, perhaps; do you recall the name of your great-grandfather?"

"Great-Granddad?" George asked. "Never knew him, but Granddaddy always said they called him 'Aldie' Carter. How come?"

"Simply a bit of history. 'Aldie,' as you called him, was a sort of brother of mine before he passed. Not by blood, mind you, but by allegiance. You see, he was one of us - of the witch Alcyone's - order as well, though his command of the natural forces was never as dedicated as that of others. Speaking of which, do pay attention, young Alcyone."

The younger wizard brought her gaze back from one of the paintings on the wall depicting an older lady wearing a crown of seven small diamonds.

“Sorry.”

“Right,” the old man continued. “As I was saying, George, our order is of the stars – and when a star passes, its influence does not disappear entirely – merely its output, its light and its energy. When your great-grandfather Aldebaran died, his requests were twofold. One was that his family be taken care of. He came from farmers and those who worked the earth, and had an innate grasp of the movements of the seasons and the sun.”

“We, naturally, acquired a fine piece of land for your grandfather, Geoffrey Carter. From thn on he Carters have been protected, if you will – do you recall the drought last year?”

“Sure do,” replied George. That drought had properly messed up everyone’s harvest, though the Carters’ had been the least hit.

“The residual charms on your land will blunt the effects of most adversarial weather – and they also emit a certain frequency for those who can read them. Young Alcyone, I’m referring to you.”

Alcyone glanced back from the painting of the old woman. “So that was why I picked that spot, precisely – I knew there was something to it.”

“Precisely.”

George toyed with his empty mug. “So old Great-Granddady Aldie was a wizard. What does all this mean, anyway?”

Old Grant fixed them both with that infuriating, knowing look. “Because Aldebaran had fallen in love, many years earlier, with another of our order. She was beautiful and powerful in her prime – I attempted myself to woo her, but she only had eyes for Aldebaran.” The old man smiled. “Alcyone.”

The young wizard quirked an eyebrow.

“Not you, of course, but a previous astromancer who also used that star name. She was prone to showing off, of course, and had a distinct visual style to her magic. She loved meteor showers and the subtle manipulation of gravity. That’s her, of course, on the wall.”

The portrait’s smile now seemed more like a smirk, as if the lady knew something they didn’t. Her seven-jeweled tiara was frozen in mid-gleam.

“Their child, Geoffrey, though content to be a farmer, still told certain children of his about the wizards who work the star magic.” At this, his gaze settled upon Alcyone. “And one of his descendants was drawn back to the farm where her great-grandfather, Geoffrey Carter, sent them away.”

Alcyone – the young wizard – bore an expression of shock. “So that lady – the one with the crown – she’s my great-great-grandmother?”

Grant nodded. “And your great-grandmother, George.”

The farmer and the young wizard exchanged glances. “So, uh,” he managed, “you’re sorta like, my niece, a few times removed?”

Alcyone blinked. “I suppose so.” A sense of being was welling up inside her – before this, the only family she’d had had been the matrons, the professors, the nuns and her books. Now…did she have a family? A proper, blood-relative family?

George smiled at her. “Yer a part of the Carter family, then. We’ll fix ye up nice with a room t’stay in, then. Y’can come callin’ any time y’feel like.”

Grant drummed his arthritic fingers on his knee. “This is all quite touching, but we have business to attend to here. Mizar didn’t bring you here, Alcyone, just to reunite you with family. If anything, that’s ancilliary to what needs to be done.”

Both George and Alcyone looked back up.

“What do you mean?” she asked. “I’m thrilled that I have family – I mean, I’ve never met any blood relatives of mine – “

Grant sighed. “Because this is where the actual labor begins. You see, all the riddles and dangers you’ve faced so far were all very well and good, but the training begins now. You see, the other part of Aldebaran's request now comes into play.”

Alcyone quirked an eyebrow. “What was it - and what do you need me to do that I haven’t already?”

The old wizard placed a hand on his cane. Shaking slightly, he rose to his feet, his face a picture of stoic pain.

“The second part was that I take over his star name - thus I have donned the mantle of 'Aldebaran,' one of the oldest and largest stars. I’ve brought you here via your mentor, Mizar, because I need something from you.”

A spark of exasperation was building in her. “Will you bloody well tell me already?”

Grant smiled.

“You are to help me die.”

[Falling With Style]

Both of them reeled. Alcyone’s face was a mask of horror.

“Y – you – what?”

George blinked a few times. “Could be somethin’ in this brew, but I think I jes’ heard him say he’s lookin’ fer you to help him die.”

“Yeah. That’s what I thought he said.”

Grant - or Aldebaran, since his friend's passing - hobbled towards the door to his room. “Enough of that, you two. An astromancer’s death, I’ll have you know, is not all flowers and black suits and gloomy music. There’s a reason I need you here, so-called wizard.”

Alcyone rose to her feet, clutching the splint on her arm. “I don’t understand – why?”

“Come.”

Alcyone and George followed Grant up the narrow, creaking stairs of his inn, three floors up to the highest floor. A simple bed was laid out there, bathed in the pale moonlight from a large skylight directly above. A basic telescope and some parchment had been prepared, as well as a half-dozen incomplete sigils etched in charcoal upon the floor. (“Do try not to stomp all over them, if you please,” said Grant, more towards George than Alcyone.) Beside the bed, a tiny nightstand had been set up, atop which a cup of tea steamed gently, steeping under the flame of a microscopic sun. Once at the bed, he reached up and pulled on a rope, swinging the skylight open so the cool night breeze ruffled their hair.

Alcyone placed a paperweight upon the parchment while George stood against the wall. Neither had any idea what to do.

Grant was pulling the sheets back. “I shouldn’t have to explain this,” he told his young charge, “but we astromancers are more like the stars we study than you realize. All things die; it is the way of things. A dying star has a variety of effects; some simply peter out and fade into obscurity. More powerful ones may slough off their outer layers as a newlywed does her garments, bathing the vicinity in magnificent novas of light and energy. Still more powerful stars, some of the largest and the brightest, will become voluminous and arthritic as they age, becoming enormous and red as they prepare to die.”

Alcyone looked out the skylight. Above, the Bowman and the Ox were locked in silent and frozen combat, the Ox’s red eye gleaming.

“Aldebaran, the eye of the Ox, is one such star. Enormous and red, it will certainly die a glorious death – a blast of energy and flame that will certainly consume anything around it. Were Althanas herself in its orbit, all would be reduced to dust – us, the towns, forests, the earth beneath our feet.” He cleared his throat. “I am a particularly powerful astromancer, and as I have mentioned before, we are quite closely linked with the attributes of the stars. I think you can see where this is going.”

Alcyone blinked. “So you choose when to die, and when to relinquish the star’s energy…but you need me to somehow contain it?”

The old man looked ridiculous in his nightgown, but his face was serious. “No. I do not need you to contain it – and that is part of your training.”

“What is?”

“Alcyone,” Grant replied, “this is one of the reasons this first labor was chosen for you. This is the reason I provoked you on my doorstep. Your mentors have been growing concerned about you, that you are attempting to contain these energies rather than direct them.”

“I don’t understand the difference.”

“I know you don't – but you should. Why do you think we employ diagrams and sigils? Alcyone, the energies we use and we control are not to be taken lightly. They aren’t the simple elemental forces of the other magics. You can contain fire, contain lightning and wind and rain and the power of the earth – up to a point. Why do you think so many elemental mages begin taking on attributes of their element, in both personality and appearance? Why, you can even contain the power of the stars – up to a point. That point, however, is far lower. Far lower. Such are the energies that we work with. Come here.”

Alcyone approached the old man, one hesitant step at a time. Her rusty hair hung over most of her face, obscuring all but her left eye and her small mouth.

“I’ve heard about this,” said the old man, reaching up. He began to brush her hair away from her right eye. “This is the result of attempting to contain this power.”

Alcyone flinched and stepped backwards. “No!” she hissed, her voice thick with shame and embarrassment.

Grant returned his hand to his knee. “I had a feeling you would be nervous about your eye, which is why you keep it covered.”

The young wizard dropped her gaze to the floor, muttering something about magics and backfiring. She looked up at Grant, who was watching her intently, and then to George, who stood, bewildered, against a wall. He was looking at her, but sympathy was on his face.

“Hun, y’don’t have ter show us if y’don’t wanna. Must be a right nasty scar.”

Alcyone kept her mouth shut. Grant took the opportunity to continue his lecture.

“I assume you got that when you tried to channel more than you could handle, Alcyone. Your professors are quite concerned about this, as this behavior poses a danger to both you and those close to you. As I’ve said, we work with far more powerful forces than the simple elementalists, and this is why we start you off so cautiously.” He cleared his throat. “You must never be the canal through which the water flows; rather, you must be the gate-keeper, the one who holds the key to the waterways. To personally involve yourself in the flows of these energies is to be the tree that seeks the lightning.”

Alcyone put her good hand in her pocket, glancing at the stars outside.

“Remember this well, young wizard. Your powers will grow, but you can never let them define who you are. Once you start thinking of yourself solely in terms of what you can do, you will never grow in character, nor will your grasp on reason improve.”

He had now settled into his bed almost completely, looking for all the world the frail old man he was, not a massively powerful astromancer. Alcyone was beginning to understand – but before this, the only family she had ever had consisted mainly of her books and her studies. She thought of herself as an astromancer first and a human being second.

“I will do my best, sir.”

For the first time, Grant smiled at her with approval.

“Excellent. Now let us begin my end.”