Making Magick 05

Through Rain, Snow, Hail or Fireballs

Dear Mother,

As our journey to the capital continues, I must admit to some rather unpleasant discoveries of the nature of Midgard, particularly its demihuman population. The war against the heathen creatures has taken a serious toll on the nation, much more than I had imagined possible against a kingdom with such potent magic at its call. It was not even a day into our journey that we encountered a band of the marauding beasts attempting to ravage a nearby farm.

It went without saying that the subsequent battle did more damage to the farm from stray magic than the goblins ever could. Not to mention the poor peasant woman who must have been frightened out of her mind to protest Black's criminal behavior. But she couldn't put that in. What would mother think…

No wait, she probably knew exactly what mother would think. But she was most certainly NOT insane. Because if she was insane, she wouldn't be worried about being considered insane, so that meant she was sane. Right?

"Reeber nee?"

Yes. Not crazy. Not insane. Not psychotic. She is Louise De La Valliere, and she is NOT insane. The quill went back to parchment.

And though that first band goblins did little to change my impression of them as primitive, cowardly creatures not dissimilar to those infesting our native Halkeginia, subsequent encounters proved otherwise. I have personally witnessed other such raiders employ forged armor, gunpowder and even airships-

Not that the last did them much good after Black had accidentally shot it down with a stray meteor… whereupon it had crashed in a hapless village, with its surviving crew promptly setting about looting the place.

-of their own construction thus far. How they acquired the means and knowledge to build these weapons and ships is beyond my knowledge, but I fear that the orcs, which are supposedly much greater threats than goblins, will be in possession of even greater armaments and proficiency. Fortunately, our magical arts proved superior to the task and I am optimistically hopeful that they will continue to be so as we reinforce the frontlines-

"Areeber!"

Providing there was anything left of the rear lines. And everything else before that. If she could just get rid of her companions for good, surely the kingdom would benefit from not having a quartet of psychotic, kleptomaniac spell throwing lunatics running loose? Surely she was the better choice alone? By dint of not blowing everything in sight, friends AND enemies, up on a whim?

I am however, increasingly concerned regarding the…suitability of my companions for this endeavour. Not to disparage their magical proficiency, but their… discipline-

"Areeber!"

-is somewhat-

"Ahum!"

The quill folded in half for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with the wagon sized rock flying past her head. Nothing to-

"Enough!" Louise shrieked, throwing down the ruined pen and grabbing for her staff. Ok, maybe it did.

"Can you not go five minutes!" She shouted at the top of her lungs, not caring who else could hear the commotion. "Without starting up trouble?!"

There might have been brilliant flashes of light and thunder punctuating every word, Louise was almost sure something was happening. But here, at the end of her patience and overwhelmed by the pent up frustration, rage and confusion fueling her rant, she didn't see it. All she could see were idiot, psychotic mages who didn't have the common decency to give her a moment's peace and quiet.

Her cheeks were flushed, and a sudden gale of hot blustery wind made her robes billow as she yelled incoherently. "Are you children?! Infants!?"

"Five minutes!" she begged of the heavens as it replied with a rumbling crackling roar that must have been an avalanche. On fire. Lost in the cacophony of her screaming and the unseasonal weather might have been other kinds of screaming, but she didn't hear that either. "For one miserable letter!"

She wasn't how sure how long her angry tirade lasted, but when it finally did come to an end, it came on the rumble of fading thunder. Red faced and panting, drenched in sweat, she was nearly doubled over, her staff propped up to give her support against suddenly wobbly legs.

"Just five minutes." The lost Valliere croaked out from parched lips. "Is that too much to ask?"

Nobody answered. In fact, now that the thunder had come to an end, it was eerily quiet. She couldn't even hear the wind anymore. Running on the dregs of her stamina, she lifted her head-

"Well are you- oh…"

-and saw a depressingly familiar sight. They had stopped briefly along the road, adjacent to a small farm when she had decided to make that attempt to write her letter. Only it was different from how she remembered it. What could have been shattered was shattered. What was stronger than that was on fire. What couldn't burn and didn't break had been encased with ice. The farmhouse still stood, strangely enough, but the peculiar cutouts painted in the guise of livestock were so much kindling. And of her companions…

"Vina think Pink Wizard is stressed yes?"

Louise closed her eyes. Frowned. Slowly, she lifted her hand until it was level with her brow… and snatched her hat away.

"Meep! No blast Vina!" Yelped the diminutive figure hiding in the shadow of her battered hat. "Vina has cure. Is drink! Solve all problems." Reaching behind her back, the fairy pulled out an all too familiar bottle bigger than she was. "Stress, depression, anxiety, after drink, all gone! Maybe consciousness and memory too, but is bonus, not flaw!"

It took several moment for Louise to register her other hand was reaching for the proffered spirits. And it took another second before she could actually bring the treacherous appendage to a halt with an effort of will. Closing her eyes, she deliberately and quietly suffocated the niggling voice that said Vina was making sense. Her lush of a familiar might have had a point, the fairy might have even had her interests in mind. But as tempting as drowning her worries was, she was not going to throw the last shreds of her noble dignity down a bottle.

"All that will do." She said slowly, "is give me a terrible headache when I wake up. Do you want me to be extra grouchy when I eventually wake up?"

Louise felt very proud of that delivery. It was clever. It was subtle...

The fairy sniffed disdainfully. "Only in human drink. Human drink give hangover, bad breath. FairyCo drink superior! No hangover when drink from FairyCo! No bad breath in versions one point eight on." She rotated the bottle, showing a rectangle of paper that had been somehow stuck onto it's side, filled with all sorts of runes. "In patch notes see?"

Louise had to squint to make out the script the fairy was pointing at. Much of the text was tiny, aside from the prominent label identifying the bottle's maker as PuckWeiser, whatever that was. The smaller text was no more illuminating, her eyes glossing over a list of alien terms like '30% sparkle dust' and 'Lethe water'. One line in particular however, seemed to stand out, saying-

- Following community feedback, Blinding Headache has been removed from active status effects of PuckWeiser and replaced with Random Memory Loss debuff. This effect is stackable and has a chance of being permanent.

… it was… it was...

Louise realized her mouth was left hanging open, and her hands were both raised and shaking with... something. At this juncture she didn't really care anymore. Not even bothering to read the runes, she closed her mouth with an audible click. The hands… she let them shake a little longer.

"Where," she began, disregarding the shrieking warning from her dwindling sanity, "do you keep pulling all these things out from?"

"From Fairyspace." The tiny being replied nonchalantly. "Is standard for all Fairies. Phenomenal storage power in itty bitty space. Vina keep all things inside. Many things." She paused. "Also, keep Pink Wizards' things too."

"That sounds…" Louise began before the latter half of the sentence hit her. "wait, what things?"

She quickly patted herself down, but found nothing missing. Which was surprisingly easy because since her robes had no pockets, she was limited to what she could carry in her hands. "What have you been stealing from me?!"

"Vina not thief!" The fairy shot back, waving her now empty hands, "Vina honest fairy! Vina keep things safe for when Pink Wizard needs them." Her hands waved again, and suddenly she was clutching an oversized, cylindrical object. A familiarly garish yellow rod. "Like Quest Marker."

"Eiireeber?!"

Louise ignored the spectral voice and rubbed her eyes. Was that… it was! It was that same damnable garish floating club Black had stolen from that poor peasant woman. The mage had discarded it barely half an hour later, but that didn't explain how Vina had gotten her hands on it. Much less hide it in that… that whatever space!

"Wha- how?" She sputtered incoherently before finally settling on, "Why? Why in the name of all that's sane would you keep that hideous thing?"

"Pink Wizard not have beating stick yet." the fairy replied with a shrug. "Maybe not need now, but Vina think later may need."

"Arum! Nikker neeber rez, urretferdig ha byrden tjener!"

Louise felt an eyebrow twitch.

"Or now too."

She didn't say anything in reply. One hand rose halfway towards the club, but then stopped. Instead, Louise pinched her nose and sighed. A long suffering look was directed towards her fairy.

"No Vina." She said with a defeated sigh. "Not the club. Just give me that void damned drink."

Looking at the bottle of Puckweiser, Louise made as if to put it to her lips but raised her staff instead, letting a by now very familiar piece of magic flow through it. A pillar of light shone down from the heavens a moment later, as a dark hooded figure materialized out of the ground-

"Ahum!"

-whose face she quickly jammed the open end of the bottle into.

"aarblblelbleee!"

Black's arms flailed about, but Louise easily avoided his clumsy punches, keeping the bottle firmly jammed in his mouth. Or at least she thought it was his mouth. It was hard to make out any features with that cowl of his and the eye watering fumes that were coming out of the bottle. But then she realized it didn't matter, and she didn't care. Revive was a two element spell after all. She could do it again.

The bottle continued sloshing.

"brrrbllleblellglgll- urlg- blrb"

The flailing began to slow, and when the bottle's liquid contents finally drained to the last drop, Louise pulled it away, watching her tottering black robed companion with a raised staff.

"Err-" he slurred woozily, raising his staff in reply but only succeeding in throwing it away with a loud hiccup, "reeber..."

Whatever else he had been about to say abruptly ended as he toppled over face first.

Louise blinked, then prodded the prone body of Black experimentally with a toe. But the mage failed to so much as stir. Not daring to breathe, she counted to ten, straining her ears to listen for the first sign of a familiar voice. Ten seconds in silence, and then a minute, and still nothing. Not a whisper, not in the air or in her head.

"It worked," she whispered disbelievingly, "liquor really did solve that problem."

"Vina think that not proper way to enjoy alcohol…" the fairy interjected, "but Vina not deny effectiveness."

She nodded in agreement, luxuriating in the totality of non-sound. Peace. No inanity, no random fireballs for the sake of staving off boredom, no looking over her shoulder for avariciously murderous colleagues who wanted to take her loot. Err… not that she had any loot, garish club and academy stave notwithstanding. That left-

"Neeber rez?"

Louise whirled around, eyes widening as Yellow poked Black's immobile form with his stave, elemental magics already swirling.

"Don't!" She half squeaked, half shouted, giving herself a swift mental kick at the same time. She'd completely forgotten about the others.

"Ier… reeber dette rez?"

"Well that's err… that's because-" Words tumbled past her lips as she tried to think up a good excuse. "Well, he's not dead, just asleep. So it won't work. And there's no wakeup spell, so we should just leave him be-"

"Reem," Red interjected with a shake of his head.

Magic swirled. A new combination. Fire. Arcane.

"Wait!" She all but shrieked, diving forward to slap his staff away from Black. "What are you doing?!"

Red cocked his head to the side, puzzlement clear on his face. "Ierr, veene heratta hanet?"

"But- but-," Louise sputtered. Only a few short days ago, if someone had told her that they were going to wake someone up by hitting them in the face with a fistfull of fireball, she would have been horrified. She would have thought them mad, murderous. Now… "that wouldn't work, would it? You don't feel pain. He wouldn't wake up just because you set him on fire. And if you revived him, he'd just come back asleep, right? Couldn't you, couldn't you just let him be?"

"ier syy?" Yellow questioned as Red shook his head.

"Neer forlate huijatta" Blue chimed in as well, mirroring Red's reluctance to do the only sane thing. "Neeber… ikke skille"

"No, I don't mean waiting for him to wake up." Louise shouted in exasperation. "I can understand if you don't want to abandon your frie-fri-fri," the word wouldn't come out, wrestling with her tongue like a living thing in protest of this clear and obvious desecration of the Queen's Brimiric. It took two more abortive tries before an acceptable finally word came out, "colleague. Wouldn't it be better if we just left him behind?"

The three shook their heads as one, but it was Blue who elaborated.

"Nier." He started, before quickly rattling off a quick explanation.

They couldn't.

"Reeber arvioda nur ryhmahanke"

Because this was a group project.

There was an advantage, to dying all the time.

Well, maybe, sort of?

Black knew for example, what exactly it was like to get a rez. Lots of the other wizards didn't pay attention to it, but there was always that hint of minty ozone in the air, like lightning flavored chewing gum. Ok, it was a big stick of chewing gum, probably harder than the training swords they had back at the Academy, and maybe trying to bite it when it had a lightning enchantment wasn't the best of ideas in retrospect. But it was chewing gum. Food that wasn't cheese and sausages. It had demanded to be tried!

Hmmm…. mint chewing gum sausages? Ooh, he'd have to write that down. As soon as he found a pen and paper, which was probably a little hard seeing as he wasn't in the university anymore and the outside world was short on things to write with. Except maybe blood and someone else's robes? That was an idea.

But anyway, dying and resurrection. Black was an expert on that. Peppermint ozone. Halo of light, churchy kind of music, though he would have preferred something more upbeat. There was a lot to go on about between that moment when you were stuck pestering your friends for a rez and they delivered. Even if you were asking so you could start making them ask for a rez… mostly because they were the cause of you asking in the first place. He could have written a thesis about it. Would have too… except Vlad had turned down his proposal. He sometimes wondered why the professor was so adamant against the study of being not-totally-dead. It was a shame. Getting his Masters of magicka before the others would have been worth years of bragging rights. Oh well.

"-uurgh"

So with all his collected wisdom, Black knew for certain that this… this was not a revive spell.

For one, revives left you bright eyed and itchy staved for whoever it was that made it necessary. Not bleary eyed and no memory as to how you got there. It also didn't leave you lying on the ground, stumbling upright like you were some undead- er, which he totally was not. He had no desire for brains, not a bit, so obviously he wasn't a zombie. Instead this was almost like the aftermath of Vlad's lectures in ethical magical use.

For another, there was something that definitely did NOT taste like sausage or cheese, not even minty lightning flavored chewing gum, in his mouth. Yuck. And that just wouldn't do. Well, he had his staff and… well, there STILL wasn't a magick to create sausages so it was with a less than pleasing mouth that Black picked himself up.

"Where's everyone else any- oh"

That was unexpected. Well, no, not the unmoving robed bodies, face down on the ground, signs of scorching and other magically improved bits of vigorous debate. All of that was pretty much expected, even if they were so rude as to start without him, honestly. What was unexpected was the fact that nobody seemed to be asking for a rez. In fact, it was deathly quiet. Not even small talk or an insult from Blue. Now that was downright odd.

And on top of that, three bodies, not four. Pink wasn't here. No still body, no itty bitty pieces of ex-wizard. And the last he remembered was her stuffing something into his mouth so before it got all dark.. wait.

Did he…?

Did that mean…?

"Awww yessss!"

Thrusting his fist into the air, Black laughed out triumphantly, the conclusion obvious.

"First!" Shouting his victory, Black thumbed nose at the bodies of his fellow student. "Miss Pink is no longer at zero, and I was her first!"

It was the logical explanation. Everyone else was in various stages of dead or so dead they left no trace, and he was still standing, ergo, it was him, and nobody could say otherwise.

"That's why you're all sulking isn't it? You're all jealous that I- errr..."

"-rrrnnghhh-"

His celebration cut off at the sound of some very unhealthy sounding moans. Moans that were coming from the stirring forms of Red, Blue and Yellow. Who were now beginning to push themselves upright with sluggish, but totally not normal motions. And he knew they were not normal because nobody was throwing spells as nature demanded of any waking wizard. That sounded like… like…

Waitaminute. Dead bodies… sluggish clumsy movements… unearthly moans…

As the respected Professor Romero once concluded, "yaaaah zombies!"

Fire shot out from his staff, bathing one of the groaning undead with righteous awesome. It screeched instantly, running around in blind panic as Black took a step back. Hah! No zombie was going to take him down! He'd taken down Pink, the unkillable one! He was untouchable! He was-

Completely without a shield as a bolt of arcane lightning struck him full in the face.

…

…...

One revive, a hasty explanation, followed by a brief argument and more revives later, Black scratched at his hood as he put together the facts.

"So…"

A blast of water pre-empted him, punting him into a nearby tree.

"For the twelfth time you idiot, no!" Blue's voice was filled with exasperation. "We are totally not zombies, ghouls, cheaty undead wizards or any other kind of not-living being."

He sounded pretty sure, even if it lacked the absolute certainty when Vlad told everyone he wasn't a vampire, but Black supposed after an even dozen revives, any kind of undeady business would be put behind. But still… "and you're sure I didn't get Pink?"

"Only in your dreams," Yellow shot back sarcastically, "she put you down with a drink. Like a featherweight."

"Why you-" A staff suddenly interposed itself between the two.

"What's more important," Red muttered, "is that she's not here, and it's not because she's dead since we can't rez her and she isn't asking for one either. So that means she left. Do you know what that means?"

Uncharacteristic silence fell among the four as they considered the unfamiliar question. Leaving a group was practically unheard of. Wizards were never to split the group, couldn't in fact, unless they wanted to flunk. It was practically a law of the universe, right there with missing socks and acute drowning skills. Yellow was the first to raise a finger.

"She got tired of Black?"

"She found a way back to Sanotopia?"

"She didn't want me breaking her record of zero rezes?"

Everyone looked at Black, who shrugged. "What, you all tried to do it too."

The snap of paper preempted Yellow's outburst.

"It means," Red snapped with more than a little annoyance, "she's trying for a solo accreditation."

Gasps answered him all round.

"That's crazy talk." Blue objected, "You can't do that, Vlad would never approve a change in point division once the quests started. Even if she finished it by herself, he'd flunk her."

"Oh yeah?" A piece of paper was waved between Red's fingers. "I bet this letter of hers says otherwise."

Three sets of hands reached out almost at the same instant, stopping only scant inches away from the paper when their owners noticed the other.

Gravel crunched under her boots, each step sounding like a muted rumble of thunder to her ears. Her voice was a close match to that sound as well, hoarse and ragged as her aggrieved muttering never stopped.

"Lunatics, the lot of them."

It wasn't the first time she'd said that phrase, not since her arrival here. In fact, it wasn't the first time she said it either since striking out on her own... so much so she'd also lost count of how many. Not that it had lessened the truth of her statement.

Classmates? Mad. Vlad the not-a-vampire? Insane. The beard- err headmaster? An inmate running what was clearly an institution for the mentally unsound. The Alderheim University of Magic was clearly a festering hive of insanity that seeped out into its surroundings like a disease. Why else would they treat an actual, honest to Brimir invasion of their nation as an academic project!? Did the kingdom know? That escort of royal guard were pretty adamant about them going off on their own now that she thought about it. Was that just grudging acceptance or were they part of the insanity too? At this point, she wouldn't be surprised if it was the latter.

No wonder Vina was perpetually drunk!

Hmph… at least she had gotten one silver lining to all of this. It defied all logic and sense. Fleeing, threats, fireballs and even outright mur- lethal self defense had failed to make a difference against the cloud of madness gibbering in her wake. But faerie liquor, quick hands, and barely avoiding resorting to the aforementioned no matter how tempting, had prevailed. Even if it had taken some creativity to get just one bottle into three faces before they could catch on. The end result? An empty bottle and four snoring mages who were neither assaulting her ears with insanity, or her precious bodily self with less aggravating, but no less appreciated, deadly magics.

Puckweiser, for temporary relief from madness. Perhaps she should tell whoever brewed it that they should add that note to the list of effects and sell it as medicine. For sane people suffering an attack of mage derived madness. It was almost enough to make her cry. Or laugh. Maybe both.

But the thing keeping her from doing either was the sobering realization. Puckweiser, temporary relief. She'd gotten away for now, putting as much distance between her and the collection of ambulatory insanity as she could, but they'd wake up sooner or later, and she doubted she could knock them out with the same trick twice. Well, maybe Black would, but she doubted the others were so...foolish- no, stupid- no… unable to learn from past lessons. Yes, that was it. Red and Blue at least, appeared to have some awareness of their surroundings when they were flinging magical death, and sometimes didn't repeat the same course of actions that killed them. At least not within ten seconds of the first attempt.

So in the end, it came down to one inescapable fact. She had an uncertain amount of time before the others woke up and started the chase again, and her hard won peace and quiet was gone.

Again.

Founder curse it all, just thinking about it made her want to start throwing magic around again and- and-

No.

She wouldn't be like them, she wouldn't! She was rational! Logical! Not an insane… insane thing whose magic powered lunacy was the stuff of nightmares!

She needed to calm down. Yes. She just needed to…

Needed to…

She stopped, patting her robes down with increasingly frantic motions. Rage and annoyance quickly gave way to the tinges of panic as she came up with nothing but fistfuls of pocket deficit fabric.

"Where is it?"

"Where is what?" A muffled voice spoke from inside her hat.

"My letter! I was writing on it when- when those four interrupted me and now I can't wait-" Louise paused, snatching off her hat and sending a hopeful look at the fairy inside it. She stared, briefly, a small part of her wondering when and how a tiny wine cellar had been fitted into the underside of her hat. Vina stared back and shrugged, apparently reading her mind.

"Is bigger on inside."

A shudder ran through Louise's body as an entire train of thought was mugged, beaten to an inch of its life and clapped in irons by the committee of sanity preservation, thus preventing her from giving voice to a different sort of question with potential aneurysm causing answers. "You said you've been keeping my things for me." She said at last. "I must have dropped it back then, my letter. Did you pick it up?"

But where the fairy had easily produced two feet of nauesating yellow exclamation mark slash club before, now she only had an empty bottle of liquor and a shake of her tiny head.

"Vina not see letter. But Vina busy then too."

Louise felt an eye twitch. Busy? The perpetually drunk fairy who had taken up orbit around her head? With what? Drinking? She only realized her thoughts had been spoken aloud when Vina shrugged her shoulders with a short-

"Hiding. Not become 1up. Much Angry Doom then."

Angry doom?! She… she couldn't really argue against that.

That meant the letter was as good as lost, but looking at the tiny bit of good, there hadn't been all that much written in it. She could start anew without losing very much. She wasn't about to go back and risk the quartet having shaken off their liquor enforced coma. No, certainly not. The biggest risk she supposed, was that the letter was now in those lunatics hands. But given what she remembered between her ranting, it seemed unlikely the flimsy piece of paper could have survived.

And even if it had survived, there wasn't all that much on it after all. A little embarrassing maybe, but nothing too private, and nothing they didn't already know.

No harm could come of it, she supposed.

It was the rarest of rares, the most unprecedented of unexpected outcomes.

Four wizards looked at the somewhat scorched, slightly tattered piece of paper, and as one, nodded in full agreement.

There was no dissent.

"Umm-"

Alright, maybe there was a little dissent, just a tiny bit though. It was quickly silenced by three looks of unanimous disapproval. Another rarity as no magic had been involved.

The message was odd, and the choice of wording unusual to the Midgardian tongue, but there was little doubt as to the content. And what a content it was. It was unforgivable, unacceptable. An insult that had never been given voice in recorded history, which was admittedly quite short since nobody wanted a boring job like historian. Still, no wizard worth a rezz, which was practically everyone, would let slide what was written. Nevermind soon to be graduates like them, oh no. They were Colors after all, a title that was earned with hard work, frequent rezzes and being faster on the spells than anybody else. Not like one of those run of the mill Browns who couldn't make the cut enough to earn some proper dyes for their robes.

Except Ms Pink, suspected Support Wizardess and shoe in for the Valedictorian of the year, had called them academic slackers!

And that just couldn't fly.

So they had agreed. That Pink had indeed called them slackers. And that they would do something about that. Not becoming un-slackers of course, because they were Colors, out here on assignment so that couldn't be true.

No, they were going to catch up to Pink, and show her just how wrong she was to think they weren't pulling their weight.

They'd show her alright. They'd show everybody who thought they weren't up to snuff!

Which only left one other thing to resolve.

"So what do we do about this letter?"

"Put it in your pocket, duh."

"I don't have any pockets"

"That's just lame. No pockets, pfft."

"Then why don't you put it in your pocket huh?!"

"Well… a wizard doesn't need pockets. He only carries precisely what he needs."

"So you didn't really need that sausage you tried to get off me yesterday then."

"Of course not. I had you to carry it."

"Why you!"

"Enough already! Pink will probably finish the assignment by herself at this rate. Just drop it at the next fairy circle wecome across."

"Really? There's no address though, just a name."

"No envelope too."

"Eh, The Snail Service will figure it out. Always have."

How far had she walked?

It was mostly an academic question to Louise. The sun hadn't begun to dip down the horizon yet, meaning it hadn't been for all that long no matter what her internal sense of time told her, nor had her feet begun to tire or sore. Since she had never been a particularly athletic person, then it was a reasonable conclusion that her ex-compatriots would be similarly fresh when they covered the same distance. Well, maybe not as fresh as she was, since she certainly didn't have the hangover- no wait, Vina said it had been… 'patched out', however that had been done. Drat it. So that meant they were all but assured to wake up as fresh as she was.

Thereby, the answer of distance was... not voids-damned far enough yet.

But the cruel fates, sadistic gods or malicious demons, whichever was in charge of this insane reality she found herself in, that were intent on driving her completely insane however, had apparently decided otherwise.

"It's just a tree." She flatly observed.

To be completely fair, it was not a small tree. Louise was no botanist, but she was certain a tree this size must have had a great many years to its life. Even lying on its side, the girth of its trunk easily reached her chin, and its length was enough that it completely stretched from one embankment flanking the road to the other, blocking it off entirely. Which made it a problem to be honest, but still…

A sickly pale hand flourished in the air, the owner directing a corpse pallor stare at her, "clearly this roadblock must be the work of goblins."

Or the work of a professor with suspiciously specific denials about his nature, she thought a little darkly. It wasn't entirely fair to the man, but Louise had found her patience and forgiveness to be running very thin. Especially to certain faculty members who put her on this road in the first place. The same person who had also apparently neglected to inform his students of his long range teleport spell. A spell that could have reduced the distance, and the aggravation, of travelling with a murderous quartet of lunatic mages over the last day or so.

"It's still just a tree." She repeated. Was it a castle wall, impregnated with defensive wards and strengthening enchantments? No. A palisade with musketmen and mages ready to repel unwanted trespassers? No. There was not a single goblin, hostile or otherwise, in sight. It was just a tree, with no guards, no protections, no nothing. Just a tree. Even her old magic, her failed spells, would have made short work of this shoddy obstruction. As she was now, destroying it would only be a moments work.

Which she did, conjuring a large earthen boulder and hurling it at the trunk-

-where it shattered harmlessly into dust on impact, failing to even scratch the bark.

She blinked.

What.

"With the road closed-" Vlad's voice continued, but Louise paid no heed to his words, frowning at the unscathed obstruction before her.

Alright. Just a tree, but maybe it was a particularly tough breed. But trees of all kinds burned if you threw enough fire at them didn't they?

…

Louise blinked again, watching as the last of the magically conjured flames guttered out. Flames that were so hot mind, the ground beneath had actually blackened. Yes, she watched as they winked out… leaving behind perfectly pristine brown trunk, without even a slight scorching.

She scowled. Apparently trees in Midgard were, in addition to being tough, also fireproof.

Fine, well she'd learned a spell for teleporting as well didn't she? It was fairly limited, as she discovered earlier. Short range, line of sight only. But it should be enough to…

She stared at the tree bark right in front of her face as the light of dislocation vanished.

"-no choice but-" the professor nattered on, apparently oblivious to her attempts to clear the obstinate roadblock. Accursed man, he had probably known beforehand, letting her waste the attempt for nothing so he could snicker behind her back. Stupid goblins and their stupid magic proof trees.

"How about the 'wise' and 'powerful' Vlad help out instead." She snapped, not even bothering to hide her sarcasm. "Surely you should be capable of getting rid of this tree with no effort."

"-to, eh…?" The professor actually stopped this time, fixing her with a surprised look. But it lasted only a moment as he drew himself up, his face a mask of condescending pride again. "Harumph! Of course such a thing is a trifle to the wise and powerful Vlad, but it is your quest to fulfill, not for one such as I."

Even now he-! Louise grit her teeth as the thought process ended in a mental screech of rage, the volcano of emotions within her reaching the eruption point.

"But fear not, for Vlad has a solution for you!"

Really? Louise felt a tiny spark of hope-

"You must cross into the forbidden forest, where the great serpent, Nidhogg lairs! Should you survive the encounter, you will be on the road to Midgard once more." He actually crooked both index fingers as he said, "Good luck."

-explode into a screaming thunderous fury. Professor or not be damned! She'd blown him up once and was lauded for it. She'd blow up this miserable misanthropic miscreant of a teacher again and this time-

"Oyareee!"

Every thought in her head, every emotion, came to a dead halt. A heartbeat processed the sound, made the connections. Just one, and Louise felt a thin scream escape from her lips. No! Nononono! Not them again! Not so soon! Thoughts of murder and destruction burned through her mind at the speed of panic. But just as quickly they were squelched. It wouldn't work. They'd come back. Haunt her with madness!

Must run away! Run awaaay- the forest- no! He'd tried to send her there, he'd send them too, but then- the tree! Of course!

"Ah, there is the rest of your group. I had wondered-"

The rest of his words were like the wind as Louise scrabbled against the fallen tree like a madwoman. Nothing happened at first, her fingers sliding against bark like it was glass, her attempts at jumping failing to raise her more than a head's height. Not enough. But then something cracked inside. Desperation and insanity, once kept apart by strong ramparts, barbed wire and attack dogs, tore down the wall, allied and gave her a solution. She jumped. She casted.

"Vina think-," Vina's voice came from under her hat, "this not goo-"

She landed.

Click

A flash of light and thunder. Four pair of eyes caught the eruption, which was a curiosity in itself. Normally something like that was so commonplace as to be ignored unless it was coming your way, and this was obviously not.

What preceded the detonation however, that caught their attention.

Namely, a screaming, flailing, overachieving and lately, insulting Ms Pink who was now on a ballistic trajectory to… somewhere, but mostly up. They were wizards after all, not artillerists.

"Dammit, she's getting away! Quick-"

He paused, realizing a previously missed detail. They all did. One of them laughed.

"Hah! So much for Miss Smartypant's headstart. She'll hit the boundary soon enough."

"Damnit, I wanted to be her first. Can we say it didn't count if it's self inflicted?"

It went without saying of course, that anyone stupid enough to try to go past a properly and thoroughly set up detour was due for a quick rez, as Vlad had lectured repeatedly. As any self respecting adventurer, wizard or theoretical physicist knew, physical obstructions like trees, rockslides and chest high walls were merely warning signs not to cross. Not that it stopped people from trying oh no, as there was an allure to such things, like giant red buttons with the words "do not touch" on them. It invariably resulted in people who did push them, just to see what would happen. Or in this case, try to cross obstructions. No one was absolutely certain what happened if you did, but everyone agreed that the unlucky schlub would shortly after require a rez without exception.

So it came as a great deal of surprise to all when Pink's ascent passed the point of no return, and began to descend shortly after without being turned into little Pinklets. No, she was still very much in one piece, flailing limbs and all.

"That's… that's not supposed to happen isn't it?"

"Wait for it, she's still coming down."

In fact, her screaming, once faint, was growing stronger. "-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiregreteverything-!"

"Not for long."

Indeed, Pink's descent was rapidly coming to an end as her scream raised to a fever pitch as she fell behind the tree-

"-AAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaa-"

-and continued screaming, her voice dwindling to nothing instead of what should have happened. Which, given all four's extensive experience with the matter, should have involved various degrees of 'crunch' and 'splat'. A moment passed before one of them lifted a finger in explanation.

"I guess that really was the end of the road."

Louise screamed.

She wasn't doing it because she liked screaming, or because she screamed easily. No, shouting and swearing didn't count, especially when they were accompanied by well deserved attempts at murdering primordial avatars of insanity. That was ranting, which was perfectly fine. Heartfelt, terror fueled screaming, now that was a fish of another scale, and well deserved for fallingtoyourdeath!

A mantra whispered in her head, desperation mixed with pleading at the speed of blind panic. She was shielded, she was protected. She would survive.

Maybe.

The rest of her kept on screaming as the ground rushed up to her face-

"-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-"

-and proceeded to pass right through her instead of splattering her stupid self all over the kingdom.

"aaaaa….aah?"

The Louise of old would have kept on screaming, too consumed by fear and panic to notice the incongruity. But the Louise of today caught on quickly, her frayed, survival-addicted mind pausing her thought process as she speedily took stock of her surroundings. The first thing to leap to mind was that the ground was there, sort of. Everything had gone… weird, even by her much abused standards of what was normal.

Even as the air blasted in her face and howled by her ear, the ground seemed to have… stopped, not coming closer, nor going further. Though smeared somehow in an odd, stuttery way if she shifted her eyes. As if someone had created a hundred paintings of the same scene, with only slight variations, and then overlayed them somehow so that the end result was an eye-wateringly endless number of still frames. Worse, at the slightest turning of her head, the panoply smeared together from the motion into an unrecognizable, stomach churning blob.

For a very brief moment, she considered the possibility that she had died and this was the personal hell of an insane god who-

No, she wasn't dead. She couldn't be dead. No no no. She was Louise the Zero. Zero revives, zero deaths.

Which meant in conclusion, two things.

One. If she wasn't dead, and wasn't in a head trauma induced coma… then world itself was... no. It couldn't be. But maybe. Sort of? Could it be?

"Ah-heh."

Yes! Yes, that was it! The light of epiphany was dazzling with its brilliance.

"Heh… aha. Ahahahahaaa-"

It all made sense now! Or the lack thereof. The world itself was broken! The magic. The callous regard for death. Revolving doors of death and life! Vina's Fairy Godmother guild with their tiny little fairy fingers in everything! And this! This swirling fractal wrongness that contravened every sense of a world that should! It wasn't the magic or dying that drove them insane, it was this! Obviously whatever insane god who built this Midgard, and he had to be mad, had never completed it in the first place, leaving behind a half finished thing of wibbly wobbly bits that fit together like round pegs jammed into square holes. She was seeing things that were not meant to be! A gods unfinished weekend project! The truth of this world, at the edges of reality that stood between things where shape mattered and utter visual gibberish!

"Hahahahahahahahaha-"

And she was in it. Right at the ragged edges where things became kaleidoscopic mush.

"hahaaha-"

Also, still falling.

And picking up speed.

"hahaaa...aaaaAAAAAHHHHHHH!"

Magic flowed and twisted. Phenomenal cosmic powers propelled a mighty metaphysical fist through the skein of reality, rending apart space and time in its wake. Across worlds and dimensions, it screamed through the ether, plunging into the singular constant, the final destination of all realms and universes…

Where it punched the immemorial incarnation of Death in the face and rifled through his files. Again.

But this time, something different happened. Or didn't happen.

No halo of light appeared, no brief choir of heavenly voices to signify the triumph of magic over being mortally challenged. No creation of flesh and cloth, stave and sausage, the spark of life where once there was usually a mess of wizardly accident.

In the silence that followed, if one were generous, there might have been something that resembled a dispirited 'sput' ghosting in the wind.

Four minds, the greatest of their generation (at least in their minds), had conferred over this. They had analyzed, theorized and concluded. And though the fine details differed, the overall thrust of their conclusion was the same. That wasn't supposed to happen.

Specifically, if you were a wizard and you died, your fellow wizards would rez you. It was only polite after all. Civilization certainly wouldn't last if you didn't have a medocium of courtesy. And since the screaming had long since stopped for over a minute, they'd counted, the mutual consensus was that the original team of five was now four plus a rez in waiting. Except the last part didn't seem to be sticking, which as they'd concluded earlier, wasn't supposed to happen.

Unless you were an evil wizard of course, with an emphasis on evil. Not to say that evil wizards couldn't rez someone, they could of course, like every other wizard. They just didn't because they were evil, obviously, and didn't have any friends like the four of them were. Evil wizards waived their friendly rez privileges for the right to cheesy lines, an unlimited voucher for take-over-the-world plans and most importantly, goatees. Slim and tapered bits of suitably diabolical looking facial hair which were not to be mistaken for the noble and righteous beard. That was an industry standard it was.

And though Ms Pink had some peculiar notions, they weren't what anyone would call evil, nor had she tried to conquer the world. Certainly nobody was going to argue that she had grown either a beard or goatee. Blue's objection of gender requirements for facial hair in the first place had been struck down by majority vote. If Pink had gone evil, a goatee would have sprouted up somewhere, somehow, and maybe with a twirly moustache too.

But that didn't leave very many options.

"Maybe she hasn't died yet?"

"So she fell into the ground and then... what, got stuck in it so badly she's neither living nor dead? Pfft, world's not that poorly built. Besides, we'd still hear her somehow if that were the case."

"Wait, maybe there's water on the other- hmm, no. Drowning means she'd still be rezzable."

Silence briefly fell as they contemplated this possibility.

"Well what if… what if our rez is broken?"

Blue snorted. "Through what? Overused on you Fumbles McBlack?"

"Why- no. No, I'm not going to waste time arguing. There's only one way to find out for sure."

"Yeah? And what's-"

Lightning flashed.

"For science!"

…

…

…

"Well," said the smoking figure of Red two minutes later, "we can rule out rez failure."

"Most definitely." Yellow nodded from somewhere under the drenched mass of his robes.

"And going past the barrier's a bust." The statement was punctuated by a drifting fine mist that was settling atop Blue's shield globe. "What now?"

"You could continue on your task to save the world." Came the grandiose, if slightly annoyed voice of their senior lecturer. "Or fail your finals project."

And that was that.

The first rule of the hunt. Know your prey.

Foquet of the Crumbling Dirt. A highly skilled mage thief who specialized in noble owned artifacts and the like rather than merely the coinage of lending houses and banks. Germania, Albion, Romalia, Gallia, now Tristain. Her methods ranged from the subtle to the brazen, linked only by the mocking message left at every scene of the crime. Common knowledge to anyone who bothered to follow the thief's exploits.

She had access to a little more than that. Few of the nobility cared to share the details of how they had been robbed, but Mazarin's network of eyes and ears had gathered what they could, piecing together a picture of this thief from the disparate fragments. A potent user of earth magics, hence the name, but not solely reliant on them. Undisturbed wards and locks in several cases, thefts going unnoticed until the vaults were inspected, indicative of extensive insider knowledge, either through informants or personal infiltration. Foquet was both powerful and resourceful, but also a perfectionist. Proud. An exploitable flaw. Several times now, the thief had warned his or her would be victims days in advance, only to rob them blind afterwards.

The second rule of the hunt. Know yourself.

The Duchess Karin de la Valliere. Her name, but not her at the same time. Titles, family lineage, meaningless for the hunt. She was simply Karin now, a knight once more in service of the crown. Her true weapons were her wits, her broad command of wind magics, and most importantly of all, her many years of experience. It was the first and last that would truly decide the outcome of this task. Not to clash with spell and blade on the field, but to outthink her prey, and catch what had proven elusive thus far. Only then would strength of arms be a factor.

"It is no easy task I set for you Duchess. But your aims are no less daunting, and require an equally difficult challenge. Noble families both high and low have failed to stop this thief from raiding their estates with their guards and spellswords. I cannot promise that it will still all their wagging tongues, but succeed in this task, and you will have the open gratitude of the crown, a firm reminder that you and your family are above reproach."

The third rule of the hunt. Know your battleground.

The Tristain Academy of Magic. She had felt a pang upon returning to this place. The place where… she tamped down the thought as she had done so many times before. She had made this choice of her own will and could afford no distraction, only the hunt. The Academy was a tempting target for the thief. The greatest concentration of treasure and artifacts in the entire nation, protected by the most potent magics available. If the picture that had been put together was accurate, the thief would not pass up this chance. The reported boast was likely no misdirection.

So she came to this place, though she did not enter, much less announce her presence. No, that would be predictable, expected. So she waited, hidden well beyond the boundary walls of the Academy, and observed. Buried earth and stale air, a taste of old familiarity so different from the life she pretended to. She schooled herself to silence, watching as the days inexorably crept by. Disciplined herself to stillness when a great golem, Foquet's hallmark, rose from the earth to strike at the main tower. Waited as the sluggish defense by the staff failed to deter the tower sized constructs single minded destruction, followed by an anemic pursuit when it finally did leave, one lumbering step at a time.

Instead she roused to action as one of the tendrils of corded wind she had stretched out days before finally whispered in her ear. A solitary figure, hooded to conceal, yet unburdened. An obvious precaution against being so obvious as to carry ill gotten goods by hand where others could see by chance. But leaving the Academy all the same. In the opposite direction of the grand distraction that even now was receding past the horizon.

She followed from a distance, never too close. Until her quarry had entered a forest hut. One that was most likely a trap, but one she knew how to unravel.

A pulse of magic, whirling eddies of shrieking wind compressed and shaped until they shimmered in the air like living things. They carved through the structure like a sculptors knife. Timbers and joins parted, the thatch roof disintegrated into nothingness. A heartbeat, and every seam had been sliced clean, the hut beginning to groan with its imminent demise. But she was moving already, another shaping of wind that propelled her through the air like a cannonball.

She blurred past falling walls, slamming into the back of a figure who had just begun to turn. They tumbled, crashing over a crumbling table in a tangle of limbs, rolling to a stop a moment later. Her atop, straddling the prey, sword wand to the throat, a slaying spell begging for release. All around, the remnants of the hut's walls thudded loudly as they struck ground.

"Foquet."

The hood had fallen away, revealing hard blue eyes staring back at her, the face of a balding bespectacled man in his thirties.

And a triumphant grin.

"Not quite."

Flesh turned waxy, running like clay, becoming clay.

She did not turn, didn't need to as she felt the disturbed whisper of air tell her everything she needed.

As the clay doll collapsed into dust before her, its master had appeared from behind. A weapon, most likely a wand, was pointed at her back. But that was only the obvious threat. The doll's body had crumbled into dust, but there was an unusual feel to the parts that had stuck to her, ready to take shape once more as something less benign.

"I give you points for noticing the distraction for what it was," came a prideful woman's voice, each word muffled slightly to eliminate any trace of accent, "but you lost more for coming alone."

She did not smile, not outwardly. "Alone?"

A heartbeat skipped, its absence made audible by the enchantments woven in her ear. Nearby, a manticores roar-

"aaaaaaaaaaaa-"

Waitaminute-

"What the ff-!"

Not her distraction, but she didn't question. She dove in the same moment, magic already coursing through her. First heartbeat. The air pulsed, ensorcelled dirt blasted into powder. Second beat. Another pulse, and it froze, trapped in daggers of wind as she spun-

KRONK

The Karin of thirty years ago would have frozen, blinked. The Karin of today did not blink. But she hesitated all the same, eyes wide open.

A falling figure, arms flailing, wand already flying away. Green hair, a woman's face. A bloodied indentation on her forehead, eyes already rolling up as she toppled back from the impact to land bonelessly on the ground.

As for the thing that had impacted the thief…

A line of fire, inexplicably burning on empty air without fuel source, highlighted the object as it wildly spun above the flames. Once, twice, tracing a drunken path in a way no natural thing could until it finally managed to stabilize itself.

And it was no natural thing.

Against the pull of gravity and common sense, hovering in the air was a snail. A snail in the sense that it had the familiar spiral shell and slug body protruding out from it. That was where commonality ended. Tiny, articulated steel limbs protruded out from under its shell on either side, each one terminating in a pair of short crimson cylinders that hummed as they vibrated, small tongues of smokeless blue flame flaring from beneath them. Atop its shell, a tiny saddle...

"Stupid mechanic, brakes not fine at all!"

With an equally tiny rider, goggles on her face and gossamer butterfly wings vibrating angrily behind her back as she berated the snail she was astride. But the creature's ire lasted only a heartbeat, expression changing to authoritative as she whipped her head around to bear on the only upright human.

Her sword wand flashed upwards by instinct. It was only halfway there when-

"You are Karin de la Valliere, yes? Duchess of Valliere, yes?"

She froze at the question, original prey all but forgotten. Questions of who and what bubbled to the forefront, but her mind clamped down on them, focusing only on the most important elements. Her identity had been cloaked, hair dyed and face concealed behind both mask and magic since her vigil. And yet...

"How?" The question escaped her lips before she could stop it.

There was a tiny sniff. "Is job, poor postal fairy if not know who to receive, no? Also have letter for you."

Karin had only a moment to parse the tiny creature's words when suddenly a folded piece of paper was thrust into her face. A portion of her mind noted that said paper being several times bigger than the… fairy and flying snail mount combined. The other part of her parsed the words, trying to make sense of it. Only two people knew she would be anywhere near the Academy, but her husband certainly didn't have such an… unusual courier. The princess? She hesitantly touched the letter with the tip of her sword wand.

Nothing happened at first, though her ears caught a diminutive sniff coming from behind the paper-

"Hurry up, is letter, not wizard. Not waste post time."

-and then it was suddenly thrust forward, the tip of her sword wand impaling the letter before she could pull it back. She jerked the wand aside in a heartbeat, expecting treachery. But instead of an attack, the creature had already wheeled her flying snail about and away, the high pitched whining from the contraption picking up in intensity.

"Thank you for using FairyCo Postal."

"Wait-!"

Azure light flared, a banshee scream drowned out her words. One moment the fairy was there. In the next, she was a hundred paces into the air and accelerating, a rapidly dwindling star. Lightning wreathed around her an instant later, and before Karin could even gasp, the fairy vanished in a flash of light, a trail of fire burning into the sky where she had gone.

…

It was several long seconds before Karin found the presence of mind to remember her original intent, much less the letter speared on her sword wand. It was another second after that for her to close her mouth with an audible click.

She gave herself a rough mental shake, trying to take stock of the situation. Foquet, at the least, would not be getting up anytime soon. Her eyes were not tracking anything, and there was an ugly contusion on the woman's head that had already begun swelling from the bleeding beneath.

As for the letter… Karin lifted it to eye level, giving it more attention now that a familiar smell was making itself known to her. Though faint, she could easily identify the scent of soot and dried blood coming from the letter, the smell of vicious battle. There were stains as well, and tears throughout its body that didn't originate from her sword wand. The situation had to have been dire, for whoever had written the letter. But who? And why her?

Unable to contain her curiosity, she opened it and began reading.

"Dear mother…"

A/N: Well... that was a long hiatus. I'd say something about 'hope' and 'not as long', but that probably would sound unconvincing.