To Catch A Star

[Falling With Style]

Late Morning, Month IV Day XXIX, Cycle 13732903042

Setting: Steamer ‘SBSS Drake,’ Salvian seas

Closed for now. If you've got a cool idea and want in, though, shoot me a PM.


Stomp.

The drapes of a robe swished back and forth, back and forth in the little cabin that measured precisely four and two-thirds paces wide. Four and two-thirds, as a manner of measurement, is exceptionally irritating because while it’s almost enough for a round five paces, the cabin wall comes up a solid eight inches too soon and completely throws off your stride.

About, face! Stomp, stomp, stomp, stomp sto-wall.

“Gaah.”

Pacing about the room wasn’t getting anything accomplished. The wizard threw herself dramatically onto the creaky little bed, landing a good second before her long robe caught up and spilled down over her in a puddle of cheap linen. A single rusty-brown eye glared despondently at the ceiling from out of a similarly-colored pile of hair.

-whuff-

She blew a chunk of hair out of the way, where it stood hovering in midair for a fraction of a second before collapsing right back down over her face. Alcyone closed her eyes, infuriated at the gentle roll of the ship she rode within coursing through the waves. The eyebrow tensed every so often as she tried to will herself into a nap, but the afternoon wasn’t having any of that, and might as well have increased the sun’s output specifically to keep her from such. Bright sunlight filtered through a tiny porthole, creating a waltzing yellow circle on the floor that somehow managed to heat up the entire room.

Why was she so impatient for this stupid boat to arrive? Since boarding at Scara Brae a few days ago, all she’d done was pace her cabin and, when few sailors were keeping watch at night, occasionally steal off to the deck to stargaze. But every time she looked at the stars, the magic still gnawed at her, that the same cantrips she’d been casting for weeks now were no more potent despite practice and fine tuning. Her meteors still flashed up in the sky, insignificant little specks that lit up and were then gone, none even coming close to making it to earth. No, her magic had stalled dead in its progress and she couldn’t lens a single ray of light around any better than she could last week.

Why then, again, the impatience?

Rhetorical question. After all, the wizard Alcyone was on an expedition, wizards dislike waiting, and they greatly dislike waiting when they’ve built up a good head of steam like she had. Gaah, if only she could plug herself into the pathetic engines of this barge, send it scudding across the waves like a pyromancer in a hurry! Alas, hers were not the gifts of heat and fire, nor could she geomance the metals of the engine for further strength and speed. Presently, all the wizard Alcyone could do was wait: wait on this bloody ship, wait on the upcoming lunar eclipse. Wait for a chance to do something.

However.

Her pursed lips slid sideways into the half-smirk of a devious grin. Yessss. Yes, when the waiting was over, and the moon turned blood red in the shadow of the planet, and the power coursed through her like hot steam and carried her into the upper reaches of the sky where air grew thin and clouds shrank to wisps, she would show herself, Mizar –the world!- what her magic could truly do.

For the wizard Alcyone would catch a falling star.

[Falling With Style]

Evening, Month IV Day XXIX, Cycle 13732903042

Setting: Salvian Fields, Half-Day's Walk Outside Knife’s Edge

Mountains rose up in the west and took sharklike, jagged chunks out of the setting sun. The shy stars began to peek from the glowing sky, their tiny pinpricks of light needling through the firmament even now. Alcyone halted her walking and stared up at them – it was a beautiful sight, the flaming sky slowly dimming to a royal purple. Soon it would dim to a deep indigo, like the bottom of the sea, before going black as, well, night with only the brilliant white lights of stars breaking the infinite blackness.

Besides the moon, that is. Alcyone had chosen her night well, watching from the deck of that grubby steamship as the disk’s pregnant whiteness progressed from a bulging semicircle to a nearly-perfect white disc marred only by parched seas and craters. Tonight, Luna glared down in her full glory to energize the astromancer, feeding magic into the young wizard in electric tingles that shot through her veins like tiny fireflies prickling under her skin. All of her kind would feel the moon’s power tonight.

But even the full moon was nothing, totally insignificant compared to what was to come. For tonight not only offered a near-cloudless sky and said full moon, the land beneath the wizard’s feet moved inexorably into position. As the planet herself moved into position between sun and moon, light would warp around her massive gravitational pull, lensing sunlight through oxygen-choked atmosphere and casting a blood-red shadow on the moon. Tonight was a lunar eclipse, and its crimson power would drive her magics to unprecedented heights.

Tonight's experiment/performance, brought to you by Alcyone (Astromancer Extraordinaire), promised plenty of rewards. She would call down and attempt to capture a piece of sky, a meteoroid otherwise unobtainable. Who knew what unique properties it could have as a reagent? The wizard practically crackled in anticipation.

Alcyone grinned. She admitted a large part of her rationale boiled down to because I can, and that suited her just fine.

Quickly, stealthily, the wizard glanced around herself, checking her surroundings for others. These were the Salvian highlands, still and cool even during summer’s approach. In the daytime, one could look around and see rolling green hills, fogged glens far below where ancient castles crumbled slowly away into the mist, miles of low, hardy vegetation studded with rocky outcroppings. She would perform tonight’s ascent upon such a crag, this one sticking jauntily out of the terrain like the arse of some colossal bear fallen on its face.

No, she was alone with the night, her only companion currently the night wind. She pulled the thin cloak over her robes, shielding herself best she could from the highland breeze. On went her beloved Alerian airshipman's goggles, strapped to her forehead like the palest dark elf airman in Althanas.

All plans and preparations had been completed. She pulled her cloak tighter as the inscriptions began, drawing one line after another in a complex diagram of astronomical physics. The moon's energy coursed through her, leaving glowing sparks behind her charcoal upon rock, metal and parchment alike. Her one visible eye, electric with power, twinkled like rust-red Betelgeuse as she worked.

Finally, half an hour later, the wizard rose to her feet and brandished a scrip of parchment at the night sky. Above her, the great eye of the moon had burst a blood vessel, as red began to seep across it in the planet's shadow. She had become a sort of lightning rod for the magic, and all around her various sigils and diagrams glowed wildly upon the rock - bright yellow-orange for iron, icy blue-white for water, and various other shades for silicates and more. All around her launch pad, small rocks and nocturnal insects levitated boggledly around in a slow orbit.

The magic of the eclipse was not to be denied, and would not wait forever. Saturated with magic and anticipation, the wizard Alcyone couldn't suppress a hearty cackle at the sky. Not one of those small cackles, mind you, but a full-on head-thrown-back bellowing-to-the-heavens Mad Scientist Guffaw, roaring with firmament-shaking magic power.

"MUA HA HA AHA HAA HAAAA!"

Grinning madly, the wizard pulled her goggles down, threw the hat to the ground and ticked the final mark on her free-fall sigil.

And just like that, she rocketed into the sky.

[Falling With Style]

Setting: Salvian Airspace
Altitude: High Troposphere

The wizard fell into the sky, tumbling over and around in a mad aerial cavort. Wind tore 'round her thin form at over a hundred miles per hour to drive ripples down her robes and cloak as she rocketed skyward. It seared at her exposed face and threatened to rip her parchments away, but the wizard had come entirely too far to be stopped by a force of earthly nature.

Night had fallen completely now, and in the clear mountainous air the stars glared expectantly down. A natural meteor -not one of hers, that is- flashed by in the corner of Alcyone's vision some enormous distance away, disappearing without fanfare into a distant cloud.

Tearing upwards through the sky, Alcyone closed her goggled eyes and allowed her mind to wander. She drifted free of the forces savaging her form one hammer-blow of turbulence after another, and expanded into the sky. Already she could feel her sigils upon the ground gaining energy, drawing larger and faster pieces of debris into the upper atmosphere. Tiny charged particles flashed in thin ribbons of aurorae, drawn by the wizard's magnetic pull like all the other meteoroids deflected from their trajectory by her magic. All around her -the planet- faint gravitational signatures from hundreds -thousands?- of them screamed in at many miles per second, unable to resist her gravity.

The magic grew stronger as more and more of the moon's disc enveloped itself in a shadowed redness. The time of total eclipse drew near.

In a tiny back corner of Alcyone's wandering mind, a small thought process clicked on. Never before had she had access to this kind of power - invigorating and, hell, addictive as it was she couldn't help but wonder if this entire experiment was entirely a solid plan. Why not, it reasoned, call down a meteor shower from the safety of a cave or outcropping and scavenge the meteorites as so many rock hunters did in Fallien? Such a risky experiment may not be such a good idea...

Her primary train of thought, however, crushed this quite promptly. Of course it was a good idea, and how dare she think otherwise? Idiot, it shot back, would y'rather pick tiny, burnt-up grains of meteor off the ground or collect the entire thing before it can flash away? Forget it. This was audacious if not overly practical, and would net her much better results than a more cowardly approach. Let's see that doff of a gnome, Mizar, top this.

'Top' proved to be an interesting choice of words. Alcyone opened her eyes and drew a breath - or rather, attempted to draw breath. She had slowed her fall considerably, now traveling upwards at a steady rate maintained by her magics. The air had grown thin, almost unbearably so, and its chill cut through her lungs like frozen glass. This she had forgotten to bank on, and a lack of air would prove either a hindrance...or fatal. Even worse, the moon's red horizon had traveled almost halfway across its surface. Damnation! In only a short time, the eclipse would be upon her and meteors would rain down. She needed those full eight minutes of the eclipse to capture a meteor, not travel!

Damn it, she'd have to work fast! Energy still coursing through her, the wizard Alcyone focused like a newborn star, drawing particles of air closer to her. Without any diagrams or sigils, she relied on the sorcery of will, channeling the magic of the eclipse through her skinny frame like a lightning rod floating thousands of vertigo-inducing feet in the air. Come on, she thought, clenching teeth and eyelids shut, air, come to me. GATHER UP, DAMN YOU!

With a gathering howl, wind speed increased around her, spiraling inward like the arms of a birthing solar system. Her hair blew around and outwards, alternately plastered to her face and shooting outwards like rusted lightning. Alcyone's ears popped as air pressure increased around her. Her gravity pulled the thin air into a thickening bubble around her, increasing its pressure substantially. Sweat leaked down her wind-seared cheeks as temperature skyrocketed, transforming the chilly north Salvian air into the dry heat of a Scara Brae summer.

The sorceress' eyes snapped open, the white of her right one faintly luminous like the moon. Her mass of rust-colored hair drifted back to its usual position covering that left eye as the thickened air, held by the intense new pull of gravity, calmed its whirlpool revolutions to a lazy swirl.

"Right then," she spat, sparks falling from her breath. "Back to work."

Colossal bubble of air in tow, the wizard Alcyone resumed her ascent.

[Falling With Style]

Setting: High Salvian Airspace
Current Altitude: Mid-Upper Mesosphere

Wrapped in her cocoon of pressurized air, the wizard Alcyone finally slowed her descent to a halt. She had long passed clouds and mountaintops alike, soared maddeningly above the planet and watched the Salvian landscape shrink to a child's map. Far, far below her feet, tiny formations of land denoted mountain ranges, rivers and continents alike; even the planet itself curved ever so slightly in her vision.

Above her stretched the maddening blackness of space, stretching infinitely on with stars jamming spears of light into her eyes. The stars were obscene at this insane altitude, with almost no atmosphere to speak of to interfere with their light. The moon itself, now mostly taken up by the dim redness of a building eclipse, glared low-lidded disinterest at her. The wizard glared right back, the look in her faintly luminous eye challenging the rocky satellite.

Then, her magic-heightened senses picked something up. A lot of somethings, really, approaching at insane velocities from the depths of space. Invisible to the eye, these somethings would flare to light and rain brilliantly down all around her, bursting into flames as the world pulled them in.

In other words, here came her quarry.

Nice pun, she told herself, and a flash of light lit up the black sky to her right. It was a small one, burning itself out within a mere second. The mage whirled around with arcane speed, tracking the streak of light as it went. Another meteor whipped about a half-mile behind her. Without looking, she knew it was too small for her purposes as well. Then came a third, and a fourth, and soon enough five more, all too small.

Time to speed things up.

The sorceress closed her eyes and focused, again amplifying her magics through sheer force of will. The magic of the eclipse made it possible; like her all astromancers would be feeling this power tonight, and would likely be out in force employing their magics. As the magic radiated from her slender form to connect the meteors with her launchpad of sigils upon the ground, the sorceress felt a sort of solidarity with her brethren.

But that feeling was soon demolished by the churning nuclear pressure of rivalry. Her eyes blazed open again and she sent invisible cables of gravity out to the cosmos, dragging larger and larger meteoroids towards her. She'd be the one to outdo all the others - they'd see - she'd show them all! With a cackle, the hovering mage watched more and more meteors begin to fall around her.

Nothing she couldn't handle.

A largish rock about the size of a softball began to light up a quarter-mile away and Alcyone was on it with frightening speed. Her robed form whirled around and from her hand sprung another invisible tether. Almost instantly, the glowing rock changed course and tacked off in an arc around her at a quarter-mile distance. She pulled it in like a fisherman, drawing the meteor in a roaring circle with an enormous radius.

Grinning madly, the power of magic racing through her, the mage reeled her target in and -

BLAM!

- the meteor exploded in a fireball. Too fast, too hot and too little holding it together. Damnation! She'd have to do better than that. More power, more magic should do the trick, right? The mage channeled more of the building eclipse's power through her, drawing the meteors closer.

****

It wasn't just the meteors she drew closer. Miles away, invisible against the blackness of near-space came a certain other set of Somethings - things that moved with bloated caws and cicada-like buzzing. Things that had absolutely no business existing in what amounted to low orbit, and traveled disturbingly fast.

Things that zeroed in on the distracted mage as she toyed with the heavens.

[Falling With Style]

Another fireball exploded, this one a few hundred feet away. The sorceress Alcyone lowered her head and tried again, ensnaring three meteors like marionettes and bringing them into roaring orbits around her own private atmosphere floating in near-space. All three exploded one after another, as she tried to force them into a tight turn.

"Come ON!" she spat, glaring death at the fiery streaks raining down around her. A meteor silently hurtled in and the mage whipped towards it, hurling a wash of gravity that bent the starlight into it. This one, the size of a large potato and likely made of iron, practically took her head off but for a timely dodge. Alcyone seethed in frustration and tiny sparks of light shot from her teeth. No. Not letting this one get away.

The iron meteor had lost enough speed not to ignite, but plummeted earthward just the same. The mage whirled and poured her effort into this one, binding her palms to the plummeting space rock, trying to slow its fall. The force was incredible. Her bones strained in their sockets as the meteor hauled on her like a demented fish, trying to pull her from the minute nebula she'd constructed out of atmospheric oxygen and nitrogen.

The energies went taut, sucking in light and particles down their path before reeling back in. Breathing wildly, the sorceress glanced down, straining her empowered eyes to catch sight of her prey. The better part of a mile away, the tiny speck began to grow larger until it rocketed back towards her. "HA!' she yelled, and hauled her invisible ropes to the side to put the iron rock in orbit around her.

She'd done it! She'd caught a falling star, proved those bastards at the academy wrong. And she'd done it herself. Oh, she'd show them her space rock and hold it aloft in elation while her peers scratched their heads in dim bewilderment. The sorceress cackled heartily to the heavens in a grand release of pent-up frustration.

But why stop now? The eclipse hadn't even reached peak yet! Oh, the thought of being up here in the high atmosphere, where starlight shone pure and the moon glared blood-red at her, that was too much to refuse. She could snare a whole bevy of meteors, ride back to earth like a comet. Oh ho ho, think of what old Mizar, that gnome, that professor of hers would say to that!

"Caw."

No, not that. Honestly, when had Mizar ever cawed?

"Graaaakkk. Aaaalllsiee!"

Wait a second.

Eyeball ablaze, the mage Alcyone whirled around to find a singularly disturbing sight. Before her flapped a veritable armada of blackbirds of varying types: ravens, rooks, crows, those sorts of things. In defiance of all known laws of biology and aerodynamics, the things just hovered there, flapping lazily in the thin air fifty miles above ground, regarding her with thousands of black eyes between them. Alcyone looked closer.

SHIT. They were hideous! The birds' feathers -flesh, even- fell out in great greasy handfuls, many lacked beaks or eyes or feet even, and great pustules covered each one, raspberry-like with various shades of glistening red and white and black to go around. Some of them were so hideously mutated that they bore little resemblance to birds, just great flapping bags of pustuled terror dripping pus and white bird-shit below them.

"Aaaalllsieee," croaked one of the birds.

"HiiiiIIiiiiii," screeched another. It would have been hilarious had the bird in question been possessed of a head rather than a beaked zit.

The sorceress, still high on magic and power, blinked at the repulsive squadron. "...the hell do you all want? And how d'you know my name?"

Another bird cocked its head. It had an extra larval beak where one of its eyes should have been. "Kiiinnng-fisheeerrr. Aaalllsieee." Its smaller beak added: "Aaaakkk-illa." It sounded remarkably like 'Aquila.'

"The eagle?" she yelled over the roar of the wind. "Whatever." A punctuating meteor burst into flames mere hundreds of feet behind her. "What do you want?!" she asked, this time more forcefully.

"Commme with oossss," the first one croaked, laboriously. "Commmme noorrrrth. Aaaaakkk-illa waantss to meeeet you."

"Forget it," the mage replied. "and piss off. I've got WORK to do," she bellowed, in that self-important mad scientist voice. "so don't keep me from it!"

The birds didn't really care.

"Coommmme NORRRRTHHH!" rose from the cawing horrors, and they all dived for the mage together.

[Falling With Style]

The birds tore inwards, a mass of snapping sharp beaks and talons and greasy feathers flying everywhere, everything covered in horrible slick pustules crusted with frozen pus. Sharp scratchings were all over her, scrabbling at her layers of clothing, seeking exposed skin and splattering horrid blood and bird shit all around. A beak snared her ear and the sorceress yelled in pain and frustration.

"Enough!"

The sorceress' eyes blazed and she pulled into a cannonball, clenching her skinny arms tightly across her chest. In the space of five seconds, her bubble of air became a pressure cooker. Air crushed inwards with hideous pressure, causing the temperature to massively skyrocket. Birds squawked in agony, bursting into flames or simply imploding into fragments of blood and pus. Then, the air burst back outwards again, casting flash-frozen ravens back outwards. Some tumbled helplessly downwards, never to be seen again.

The mage looked up from smoldering robes and hair burnt to a curl at the ends. Her eye glaring lightning at the remaining birds, the sorceress tried again over the roar of the meteor shower. "All right," she offered -offered in this case being a rather loose third cousin of demanded - "who the hell is this Aquila, and why do they want to see me?"

There were a lot of birds left, Alcyone noted. She'd barely made a dent in them, even wiping out several dozen with one attack. Even the meteors falling about their heads barely thinned their numbers.

An emaciated raven made its way to the front, drifting lazily though the atrocious flock. It blinked at her.

"Aaakk-illa worrrrkss the starrr magic, liiiike youuuu," it croaked. "Aaak-illa wishes youuu to comme norrrth. Norrth into the arrrrck-tick."

Alcyone did a double take.

That's right. Encased in a low maelstrom of swirling air held together by her own sorcerous gravity well, floating fifty miles above the land near the border of outer space in the middle of a meteor shower approaching at cosmic velocity and catching them, Alcyone did a double take.

"You're lying. One, there are no astromancers in the arctic. Two, an astromancer's star name is just that. STAR name. Not constellation name. There aren't enough of those to go around."

The raven flapped insolently at the laws of physics. "Wroonnng. Aaak-illa, Siiiig-nuss, all reeealll. Waaait for youuu, in the arrck-tick."

A small rivulet of bird blood ran down the sorceress' face. She flicked it away, where it began a fifty-mile fall backlit by the exploding meteors. "Again, there are no astromancers in the arctic. It's not possible. Even if these idiots exist, you can tell them to piss off, for I've no interest in haring off north. It's cold enough down there in Salvar."

Caws and chittering erupted from the flock. The raven's eyes regarded her with the same cold fascination it might give an insect or bit of carrion before speaking again. "Aaaaak-illa notisssed you. Grrrannnd ex-perrriment waits. You will come, taaake part. Aaaak-illla has grrreeat plans, grreat plannns...!"

A very pregnant pause ensued, punctuated only by the escalating meteors. Three more exploded around them, frying an unlucky raven in a bomb of grease.

"Well, tell your bloody Aquila that I'm not interested. I have work to do."

The meteors fell thickly now, great shining streaks of orange and yellow punctuating each word. Above, the moon had practically swallowed itself up in crimson shadow. The mage regarded the armada of filthy birds with an eye luminous as the moon. "Attack again," she told them.

The raven cocked its head.

"Do it," spat the mage, a few sparks falling from her lips along with the words. "This is where you try to take me alive or dead, right? Well, come ON!" she roared.

The birds obliged. The squawking mess dived inwards, a mess of blisters and beaks, but the mage held steady. For below her, the great mass of the planet finally ticked into place. Moonlight completely vanished save for a blood-red glow of atmospheric lensing.

The total eclipse had begun.

-come get me-

[Falling With Style]

- the mage looks around her. What she sees isn't pretty: a cloud of black flapping horrors all closing in on her, eager for flesh and tissue alike. They fly in slow motion - perhaps time itself has slowed for her benefit? - or is it simply relativity playing tricks on her - ?

- a wry grin escapes her thin mouth -

- this is quite possibly better than sex, but only if you're demented enough -

- I think I am -

- now let's dance -

First wave of birds didn't know what hit them. Their prey exploded into light and motion, rocketing further skyward within a glowing tail of nitrogen and oxygen. The lot of them, hundreds of birds attempted to follow but simply weren't fast enough. The mage moved with positively demonic speed; the old expression "like a bat out of hell" didn't do her justice. Cawing, they circled back towards the glow of the mage -

Echoing laughter rung through the heavens, the cackle of someone plugged into entirely too much raw power for her own good. An explosion of light on their six o'clock caused most of the birds to whirl around, eyes rolling wildly in their sockets as their prey was (?) in two places at once.

Dozens of meteors veered off-course, tearing erratically through the sky like scaled-up electrons. Instantly it became a death zone, as hundreds of birds disappeared into fiery red mist. The remainder of the first wave executed quick Immelman turns to bring themselves about, aimed at the hated flying mage.

It was too late. The meteors fell in around their prey, dashing themselves into a loose gravel - a microscopic asteroid belt, if you will - with one colossal fireball after another. The lead crow cawed roundly, again leading his filthy squadron in an evasive maneuver -

- before the mass of gravel and fire exploded conically outwards. Most of the remainder found itself incinerated instantly, and what remained of that instantly turned to blood- and pus-colored mist. Only a few dozen ragged birds beat their way out of the storm of rock and fire.

Hanging back amongst the sicklier birds, the spokes-raven from before watched his first wave practically annihilated. With so many birds at his command, sending every last one of them in wouldn't be efficient; they'd simply get in each other's way. No, Aquila's programming rang clear in his tiny brain:

Stall the mage until the eclipse ends.

The old raven could not agree more. It gestured to flights two and three -

- interesting, notes the mage - there are so many but they aren't attacking her -

- why? - why indeed - simply take the fight to them, then?

- definitely -

- she doesn't have to check the sky. she knows but she looks anyway. force of habit. total eclipse reaching midpoint. the most power she will channel for a long while - ever? -

- suppose i'll make the most of it -

Again the meteors veered off their course, but these didn't burst - they circled inwards, faster and hotter, blurs at escape velocity that tried desperately to combust but she wouldn't let them - and the air too, ambient air outside her little nebula coalesced and sucked inwards, whirling to the beat of blurring meteors before her.

This time, there was no escape. Thousands of shrieking birds tumbled inwards as the mage and her little planetary system rose skywards, consuming rock and gas and fire into the sallow form of the mage in the center. Orbiting meteors shattered squalling birds by the hundreds, and hundreds more flapped in vain, attempting to escape.

All the while, meteoric rock coalesced into miniature planets whirling demonically around her, pulverizing each other and birds alike. Shards flew in and slashed the mage's flesh, sending globs of crimson blood sparking and explosive with raw magic outwards to join the forming system.

Those unlucky enough to survive more than three seconds of this vicious pounding saw a rather chilling sight. Two blood-red eyes, glowing above a weirdly twisting grimace/smile, encased in a maddened face glowing from the inside with celestial light -

*****

On the ground fifty miles below, an elderly farmer could swear he felt lighter. He'd always loved watching the stars, made him feel young again. Young, and light in the head his wife told him - but tonight he really did feel lighter. Maybe it was old Jenkins' moonshine...

(-blam-)

Well, would y'look at that - a new star in the sky. Big 'un, too, flaring up all sudden like before dying down nice and peaceful. Might've even been a dying star - the crazy old wizards said they flared up like that when they died, 'course he never believed a star could die after all...

Pretty, though.

*******

- the birds are toast - she looks around at tumbling feathers -- i'm on fire - and puts out her robes and hair - and skin - i'm bleeding - god that was amazing though - she's bleeding indeed, magnesium wounds burning white in flames -

- too much magic, it'll kill me -

NO - she can handle it - has to handle it or die - has to get herself down from here, won't die up here, won't become a grease spot now that the birds are dead -

A caw sounded behind her.

- she whirls around - oh shit -

- there's MORE?

[Falling With Style]

The scene was fifty miles up, the border of space in a meteor shower, and the cavalry came.

They glided upwards in complete defiance of physics with that old wizened raven - somehow it had survived - commanding their ranks. This flapping was heavier, slower-paced than the ravens and blackbirds, as were the nightmarish shapes which came out of the meteor shower. Instead of an armada of small birds armed solely with their sharp beaks and weak talons, these huge beaters of the air looked liable to snap an arm with their wings alone.

"Vultures" as a general term would describe them well. "Hideous" would be too mild.

Massive condors flanked by vultures and buzzards thumped into the sky to meet her, dripping blood and globs of sickly yellow-green liquid from their many open sores. Most didn't even have feathers, looking like the most revolting Thanksgiving turkeys imaginable, with their heads still on and scabrous talons outstretched. This didn't stop them from somehow flying, though, fanning out in practiced formation to encircle the young wizard.

- she glares daggers at them, sparks falling from her furnace-grate teeth - - no, she thinks, this isn't happening, I destroyed them all really I did - - but the birds didn't agree did they, giant buzzards flapping around spewing their blood and bile everywhere - she'll kill them i'll kill them - i've got the eclipse and you fucking birds can DIE -

The raven followed Aquila's programming that had brought his terrible wing to this mage, squawking a steady command at his heavy flight. Mute, the giant buzzards and condors acknowledged, simply hovering there with redundant flaps of their bare wings. Their thin chicken-skin bulged heavily on their frames as they watched.

Their prey, the wizard, again seethed with the cosmic energies, her wounds spouting sparks and solar plasma to sear her robes - but the prey didn't notice, she raised her arms to the sky and grabbed hold of something invisible, forming a huge circle of leaking plasma and her electrical blood -

Three hundred buzzards and condors simply hovered there -


*****

The old farmer rocked gently back and forth, back and forth on his porch. Yessiree, tonight certainly was a banner night for star-watchin'. First a lunar eclipse, then a meteor shower, then that flash of a star. Did his old bones good.

- and then the stars disappeared.

Squinting, the old man thought he'd gone blind. It had to be a trick of the light - either that or he really was going blind...

*****

He wasn't. Rays of light entering the planet's atmosphere from stars, the moon, all over the sky diverted off their paths into the invisible lens. Radio and micro-wave emissions seethed with energy, flaring into visible light, all collecting into her lens in the space of a microsecond - it feels like an eternity -

- but die anyways -

Soundlessly, the light struck downwards into the birds, a pillar of destruction incinerating a hapless condor instantly. That same celestial laughter echoed through the sky as the pillar of light raced among the giant birds. Their flesh ignited and burnt away in globs of flaming grease. The stench was nearly unbearable but the wizard didn't care -

- she only wonders why they aren't reacting - they let themselves burn -

In the mad glory of destruction, the mage failed to notice just why they didn't respond. Each bird killed burst into flames and plummeted earthwards among meteors and its brethren, but the strong magic had wrought a startling change in the dead vessels.

Each one fell no more than fifty feet before violently exploding, sending tendons and gristle outwards but also discharging a massive quantity of shiny green things. Light from meteors and the mage's beam of death played off their carapaces, each about the size of a large hornet.

Flies.

More birds fell, more carrion eaters swelled up and burst, discharging more flies. The mage, caught up in the power of the eclipse simply didn't notice them.

What she also didn't notice was that her showy magics of destruction had eaten much of her precious eclipse. Below her, the planet began to move out of the sun's path, and a tiny sliver of white appeared on the moon's surface.

Total eclipse--HA HAA burn all of you, a god am i-ended.

[Falling With Style]

The stars winked back on.

Rocking on his front porch far below, the old farmer shook his head. The lightness disappeared as gravity reasserted itself. The disappearing stars had clearly been a trick of the light. After all, they don't just wink out like that.

...do they?

*****

"!......ugh."

Alcyone somehow managed to stagger in midair, her head awash with unfocused color. The feeling of being unplugged from some insane source of power was indescribable - indescribably bad, that is. It didn't matter that the moon's power still ran through her - now it was on the down-swing, and she weakened with each passing second.

Flapping haughtily, the raven knew this was what Aquila had programmed his tiny brain for. It squawked once.

Attack.

A buzzing rose from beneath. Jade and gray carapaces reflecting in the moonlight, untold quantities of horrid insects -flies? she couldn't tell- approached with horrid speed. Behind them, the remaining few dozen condors thumped the air heavily, taking off towards the mage with their huge beaks open.

A meteor blew up and backlit the atrocious squadron for emphasis, and the wizard Alcyone turned and ran.

She'd never been more thankful for her goggles than now, when she willed herself into a steep dive. Meteors fell from the corners of her peripheral vision, racing ahead of her and exploding into shards of stone flak. The wizard careened about one of them, still encased in her cocoon of air.

Wind whipped around her but did little to mask the buzzing of hungry flies. Alcyone dragged herself into a sharp turn, lassoing a trio of meteors and hurling them towards her pursuers. One, two went wide, then - pow the third exploded into flying debris and shredded a group of buzzards.

A series of wet pops sounded from the burning corpses. Tearing along before the pack, Alcyone snapped her head around to see. From the vultures erupted another wave of flies, joining the first.

"...shit."

Bloody hell, she'd played right into their hands! (Talons?) Whoever the hell this Aquila was, he/she/it had known precisely how to manipulate her.

The flies closed in, wings shrilling against the deathly chill of altitude. Behind Alcyone's goggles, tears of salt and blood forced their way out of sheer frustration. She zoomed upwards and executed an Immelman turn, lobbing a compressed lump of gravity at the flies.

The invisible bubble sucked light in, racing away from the speeding mage to catch a few errant meteors. It careened in on the main pack and exploded outwards in a blast of icy mist flash frozen by the drop in pressure.

Alcyone yawed her speeding flight path around - did she get any?

Her answer came as angry buzzing. The pack of flies surged forward like some colossal amoeba, amorphous but acting as one being, the light of the meteors glinting from countless green carapaces.

Blood loss and fatigue had already begun to set in, and the careening mage barely evaded a bursting meteor. Her control over the falling stars had weakened; she pulled in the iron rock from earlier for safekeeping. More explosions lit up the sky around her, punctuating each surge of enraged buzzing.

Alcyone knew had to get out of here. She had to destroy her sigils and stop the meteors.

The flies were nearly upon her. Magic seeped out of her with each second the eclipse passed and soon she'd be reduced to nothing again, a pale novice flinging pebbles around.

A sudden and idiotic idea hit the wizard as she floated there in near-space.

Unfortunately, so did the flies.

Instantly she was covered with biting, stinging insects - crawling upon and under her robes and scrabbling against the lenses of her goggles as her two bloodshot eyes watched in horror. Their tiny strong mandibles chewed at her pasty skin, the green flashes scuttled into her rust-red hair...

Alcyone had no time. She pitched herself at the ground fifty miles below and shot downwards with all her might.

[Falling With Style]

Accelerating like a meteor, the wizard Alcyone plunged towards the earth at insane speeds. All bets were off now - her bubble of air shrieked and howled around her as she forced herself well past terminal velocity. The wind seared at her cheeks and her hair flailed around like a nest of caffeinated red octopi.

WHAM went the stratosphere like a wall of fire. Flies, chewing on flesh and clothing alike heated up and some caught fire, their fragile wings bursting into flames before each one went up in a pop of zapped bug.

The farther she plummeted through the stratosphere, the colder it got, attempting to flash-freeze her smoldering robes. Despite the cold and her protective air-bubble, the heat became more and more intense. Alcyone felt the bubble dissipating resolutely away as the gravity holding it in place faded with the eclipse.

"C'mon, hold together," she muttered to nothing in particular. Wind screamed through her bubble, over chapped lips and burnt skin while the meteors crashed down around her.

One practically burst on top of her, sending the mage into a spin. Such uncontrolled tumbling is death from altitude, and it was only with a herculean effort of willpower that she regained control. The wizard juked left, dodging a meteor that screamed past going many times her speed.

This brought Alcyone to a mad realization - what would this last volley do to the ground below her? If there were people down there - or trees, she could burn down half of Salvar - dear god what was she thinking when she came up with this mad idea?

The wizard clenched her teeth, focusing through the howling wind and oncoming continent at the meteors around her. The whites of her eyes, already crimson from broken blood vessels glowed a tiny bit as she willed the meteors to budge.

Failure - they didn't, at least not much. The plummeting mage, slightly on fire from her efforts and speed, speculated upon an idiot idea that danced giddily into her head like a nine-legged spider wearing lederhosen. (Green lederhosen.)

The sorceress - for right now, she wasn't being all that wizardly executing spells by force of will all hopped up on eclipse juice - had to focus those meteors on a specific area to get them all, like ball bearings dropped into a funnel.

Unfortunately, the best and only such funnel would be her own gravity well.

The wind howled bloody murder in her ears and meteors burst one after another. The sorceress Alcyone willed out to all the remaining ones, the ones that would make it to the ground with a simple, radial extension of gravity.

Meteors both above and below the mage converged on her position, white-hot rocks spewing fire and dust as they screamed earthward. What was in reality mere minutes stretched onwards into an eternity. The blazing rocks wrapped themselves around her, a pressure-cooker cocoon made of fire fusing itself together.

There was one way, one slim chance she could survive this.

But it was going to hurt.

As the rocks closed in around her, packing in like asteroids converging into a new planet, the burning mage produced the iron meteorite she'd caught. It was still warm, somewhat scorched from its journey but still serviceable.

*****

The whole affair slowed its fall, one agonizing meter per second after another as it plummeted earthward. Still on fire and deathly hot, it screamed in towards the source of its component meteors: the rock upon which the wizard made her initial ascent.

Observers rarely see meteors impact the ground, but the results are generally spectacular. This one only hit with a fraction of its kinetic energy but still managed an amazing fireball. One second, the large rock stood there, glowing all over with meteor sigils, the next:

- well, the mage's own meteor screamed in and blew it to smithereens, obliterating the sigils adorning it along with a sizable chunk of the landscape, quite a few fuzzy woodland creatures, all plant life within sixty feet and created a rather large crater.

Smoldering, the crater showed no signs of life -

- am I dead yet? -

[Falling With Style]

A female hand, made of dripping iron slag and molten rock, fell feebly upon the crater's rim. A body dragged itself from the wreckage, a scrawny nude form seething of fire and liquid metal. Hair had been burnt to cinders, replaced by a continuous cascade of liquid iron. Two featureless eyes red as the eclipse moon found her supplies, having survived by fortuitous planning.

"...think I torched my hat."

Slowly, painfully, the liquid iron rolled out of the mage's form to extrude itself back into a meteor through her hands. Dehydrated, burnt, seared by wind and lacerated by flying rock, the thin pasty body that remained looked and felt a mess. The ravages of high-octane magic showed on her cuts as the magic still glinted and sparked in the crusted blood.

Alcyone lay there on the ground, her breath coming in shallow fishlike gulps as curled up under her spare robe in the fetal position. The planet's shadow receded minute by minute from the eye of the full moon which looked balefully upon her as the last drop of red disappeared. The wizard glared at it -

"Piss...off."

- and then normalized. Magic forced its way out of her system in boiling invisible bubbles, escaping into the aether. She rolled over and dry-heaved a few times, coughing up small bits of dust and iron flecks. The ride up had been wonderful, but the rest of tonight's little expedition hadn't been as much fun as, say, a good mule-kick in the face.

There was, however, the matter of her prize. Alcyone weakly dragged the iron rock over to her, noting its magical buzzing had greatly diminished. Shit. She'd siphoned off most of its magic to save her life, and now it might as well be an only slightly-magical chunk of space metal. Damn it. Had this whole expedition been for nothing, a complete waste of time and blood and resources?

Difficult question. For one, she'd been slashed, bitten, burnt, crushed, whiplashed, likely irradiated and let's not forget the bird shit. Oh, tonight had been a cavalcade of lovely new ways to be miserable and humiliated.

Regardless of material rewards, however, the wizard Alcyone had done the impossible. She'd ascended into near-space, lassoed a meteor screaming in absurd speeds, channeled the power of a total lunar eclipse and fought off a horde of terrible birds out for her blood. Her peers at the academy in Fallien likely never dreamed of this, and humility be damned she'd done it!

Not to mention, those eight minutes plugged into the obscene power of the eclipse had been - in a word - sublime. The wizard's thin frame tensed as she remembered the sheer power she'd channeled, tearing apart those birds in a spectacle of destruction - gah, amazing -

She had to have more.

Gathering her brass-capped staff, the wizard clutched her spare robe to her and picked her way into the impact crater. Maybe she could scavenge something useful from the stone wreckage, perhaps part of a meteor.

******

A few nagging issues remained in her mind, though:

Who the hell was this Aquila, and of what interest was she to them? (He? She? It?)

Those flies - when they'd stung her, a weird feeling raced from the wound; it'd felt...celestial if you will...

******

No matter, she'd simply have to think on them later. Her bare feet treading carefully, weakly about the rock shards of the crater, the wizard picked her way towards the big chunk of debris at the center. Maybe there was indeed something worth salvaging.

******

Alcyone, doer of the impossible, still managed to miss one tiny detail. A flash of moonlight glinted off a tiny green carapace, a single fly nestled within her new robe...




~End Quest!~

Spoils:

- One iron meteor, about the size of a large potato and weighing about five to six kilograms. Has little magical potency left.

- One carbonaceous meteor, a bit jagged and lighter in weight, prised from the wreckage of the last meteor volley. Somewhat more magical and useful as a reagent. Approx. two to three kilograms.

- Negative one stylish travel hat. Sadly, Alcyone's dramatically thrown travel hat found itself directly in the crosshairs of her final crash landing and was unceremoniously incinerated.

- Negative one set of plain wizards' robes, winter cloak, shoes and a few rolls of parchment. Alerian airshipman's goggles badly damaged but not destroyed.

- Addendum to ability (Clockwork Universe) requested, due to the bite of a strange engineered swarm of insects. During an astronomical event, she feels a tugging - an irresistible pull to the planet's north, like a compass. It's as if something is calling to her and practically forcing her to travel into the arctic. This serves as a further hindrance to this ability and may end up driving her neurotic.

- New ability requested: Meteormorphosis. When she gets her hands on a natural object of extra-terrestrial origin (in other words, meteors and the like), Alcyone can absorb a tiny bit of it into her hands, wherein she takes on minor properties of that compound. Right now, it's a pale shadow of what she executed at the end of this RP:

Iron: her iron meteor gives her slightly hardened skin and minor resistance to physical attacks, but leaves her vulnerable to electricity and thermal damage. She gains a minor increase in mass, becoming slightly more dense. (Physically, not mentally, speaking!)

Carbon, at the moment, can only turn her skin to a thin coal- or graphite- like substance. This provides minor resistance to swords or daggers and the like, but leaves her vulnerable to hard blunt impact like pickaxes or hammers. Carbon provides decent resistance to thermal damage and electricity.

[Breaker]

To Catch a Star
Quest Judgement

I think I should open this commentary by saying I think you're a good writer, and this score doesn't come close to reflecting the full potential of your skill. For the most part, you seem to have lost points for misplaced effort, and i think with some subtle tweaking you'll be writing superior stuff in no time. That said, let's get to the rubric.

STORY

Continuity ~ 4/10. You didn't introduce your character or her reason for being there particularly well. Throughout the thread you mentioned the academy, Mizar, and a few other things, but I never got a sense of why Alcyone was doing anything that happened. The given reason of "because I can" didn't do it for me, and I think you could have given much more background about the Academy to make the events more interesting.

Setting ~ 5/10. At times, your descriptions were fairly interesting and substantial. Too frequently though, I had difficulty developping a really vivid mental picture. It seemed like you missed some good oppurtunities by being nonspecific in the wrong places and overly specific at times. A lot of my comments for technique will also tie into this.

Pacing ~ 3/10. To be frank, nothing that happened seemed to happen for a reason. It seemed like you were maybe going for a little shock and awe, what with the majesty of the lunar power and all that, but the storyline was boring, and when you have a boring storyline the events within matter very little.

CHARACTER

Dialogue ~ 3/10. There wasn't much dialogue for awhile, and when it did come (mostly internal) it seemed very cliche. Nothing Alcyone said really projected her character, and this ties in with my comments in Persona. I think you would benefit from being a little more specific where and how you use dialogue, and try to use it to make Alcyone original and unique.

Action ~ 4/10. There certainly was a lot of action, but in a lot of ways I felt you traded quality for quantity. This thread was a very long read for 11 posts, and the action sequences in particular dragged. When you changed from present tense to past and back, it always threw me off. I recommend sticking with past tense, because that's where most people are comfortable writing and reading. A lot of the time, I had trouble following the action, and found myself wondering what was going on. Alcyone's actions should be decisive and in character, and describing them a little more clearly wouldn't hurt.

Persona ~ 2/10. I like to sugarcoat comments, so here it is; I could barely discern anything about Alcyone's persona. I mean, I hardly learned anything about her, and despite the epic events of the quest, she hardly reacted to anything. Use unique dialogue and action to bring your character to life, and show her personality in the way she reacts to an interacts with her surroundings, and you should have a much more interesting character.

WRITING STYLE

Technique ~ 5/10. I gave you an extra point or two for pure effort here. I could see quite clearly where you made an effort to use literary devices, and I appreciated it. That said, your metaphors were a hindrance as often as a help. Devices that use comparison (metaphor, simile, personnification) are meant to enhance the reader's mental image of the setting, or the action, but many of yours just threw me off. At times, it almost seemed like you just wrote the first thing that came to mind whether it was a good comparison or not. Also, there's more to good technique than just throwing up endless streams of metaphor. Foreshadowing is important and will also help with your Continity and Pacing. I've got a good example in mind, so I'll put it up here.

Mountains rose up in the west and took sharklike, jagged chunks out of the setting sun This is actually a decent metaphor, but it could have been worded better. Something like "Pointed mountains bit a jagged chunk from the setting sun, the earth a shark lying in wait for the fall of night." This would not only make the device a bit stronger, it also adds a little foreshadowing.

Mechanics ~ 6/10. I had you scoring pretty high in this category until post #7. The fragmented prose, the out of place hyphens, the changing tense and POV all really threw me off. A single paragraph of this might have been effective at a high climactic moment, but any longer (and you went much longer) and it just becomes irritating and confusing.

Clarity ~ 5/10. A lot of my comments for technique and mechanics also apply here, but I think the answer to your Clarity problems can be summed up in a single word: Brevity. Focus more on things that are relevant to the plot, don't get too long winded in descriptions or action, and make your metaphors a little less jarring and out-of-place. You have a good working vocabulary, but at times you just get word happy. You seem to use one word when you should use many, and many when I wish you would just write a single, concise sentence. As an exercise, consider putting a limit (perhaps 500 words) on posts in a thread. That way, you'll be forced to keep the content highly relevant, and ideally this will make it more interesting and easier to follow. As I said at the beginning, you just need to tweak your style and you should shoot up in scores.

MISCELLANEOUS

Wild Card ~ 6/10. Solid effort for the character's first quest, and I know I'll be seeing improvement from you in the future.

TOTAL ~ 43/100.

EXP and GP Rewards

Falling with Style receives 420 EXP and 100 GP

Other Rewards

All requested spoils are approved, but with reservations. Alycone's new abilities are locked until they have been approved in a character update, where they will be subject to the approval moderator's discretion. You may wait until your next level up, or post an update right away if you wish to. I feel pretty certain the RoG staff is going to want you to tone down those abilities a bit, but I'm no expert in that area so I'll leave it up to them.

Alcyone also receives a well-taxidermied raven from a farmer with an odd hobby.