everything around him was, after all, a trap, a means of distracting him from the fact at there were marauders at every turn.
And these were not safe times.
But the sun was warm, as warm as he remembered from his youth. Low and streaming through the maple branches, casting its evening orange glow on everything. Danger or not, Pan tried to enjoy it while he could. Lord knows he'd suffered enough cold the last few months, years, the tattered remains of his overgarments sitting bundled up behind him. They made for a soft bed, but he was determined that at the next creek he was going to get them out and give them a nice wash, and probably himself too.
It was fine to be mysterious and all, but nobody liked a sorcerer who smelled like he did.
A sorcerer. How ominous a sound, for something so mundane. It was nothing but understanding nature, and he was far from the best around. He personally knew about a dozen, most were decent fellows, but a couple were certainly questionable and he chose not to associate with them, were it possible to avoid it.
Since he was a child had he wanted to be what he had become, yet in the becoming the goal had lost all romantic notion. To be expected, of course, at least to some degree, but he missed those long gone days of, at least in retrospect, careless afternoons spent with his best friend, whom himself had no interest in things magical.
As a youth he remembered it was never as carefree as he chose to recall, but it was a nice fantasy.
His horse nudged him, sensing something he could not yet.
Then he saw it, the bright flash from behind him. He turned, half expecting to see a brigade bearing down on him, but instead only saw a fireball, and it was headed his direction.
It would miss, barely. The ground shook with a thunderous boom like he had rarely heard, and as the fireball finally passed overhead it broke into pieces and started to glow, gleaming rivulets of blue and purple light streaming in every direction.
Pan had seen fireballs from the sky before, but this was something else, as though God himself were in that stone and trying to break out. It was brilliant, and impossible to look away.
It crashed into the woods only a couple hundred yards in front of him. In a drier year it probably would have set the entire grove alight. As it was, only a single tree was fell from the impact. Spot fires betrayed the crash, but they would soon extinguish themselves.
He dismounted and rushed over to the crash site, careful to avoid the sparks and flames jutting up from random locations on the forest floor.
Cautiously Pan approached the remnant. It looked smaller up close, fragments strewn about for several yards, but the main piece still intact. This was no simple rock from the sky, he realized. There was something else inside it, something crystalline, something...different.
And small enough to fit in his hand. It was covered in so many facets that he could not make any single face out clearly. It was spectacular, hypnotic, no longer glowing, but refracting light in ways he had never seen.
He tapped the crystal, careful not to burn him self on what he was sure was an intensely hot rock. It felt cool to the touch.
Again he touched it, longer this time, but this time the crystal touched him back, like a bolt of lightning reaching from its surface through his skin, and aimed directly at his mind.
As his skin made contact he could suddenly see other lands, other worlds. The crystal spoke to him, sang to him, and promised to tell him the secrets of the universe.
Pan fell back, breathless, staring at the crystal.
No, he thought. Not a crystal. A tear of God. A key to unlocking life itself.
He reached for it once more.
Three: Ignition
Eight years later Pan found himself in the same part of the country, and the memory of that day flooded back to him. He still possessed the crystal, but it had not sung to him since that day. Yet he could not bear to part with it, for in that moment of
And these were not safe times.
But the sun was warm, as warm as he remembered from his youth. Low and streaming through the maple branches, casting its evening orange glow on everything. Danger or not, Pan tried to enjoy it while he could. Lord knows he'd suffered enough cold the last few months, years, the tattered remains of his overgarments sitting bundled up behind him. They made for a soft bed, but he was determined that at the next creek he was going to get them out and give them a nice wash, and probably himself too.
It was fine to be mysterious and all, but nobody liked a sorcerer who smelled like he did.
A sorcerer. How ominous a sound, for something so mundane. It was nothing but understanding nature, and he was far from the best around. He personally knew about a dozen, most were decent fellows, but a couple were certainly questionable and he chose not to associate with them, were it possible to avoid it.
Since he was a child had he wanted to be what he had become, yet in the becoming the goal had lost all romantic notion. To be expected, of course, at least to some degree, but he missed those long gone days of, at least in retrospect, careless afternoons spent with his best friend, whom himself had no interest in things magical.
As a youth he remembered it was never as carefree as he chose to recall, but it was a nice fantasy.
His horse nudged him, sensing something he could not yet.
Then he saw it, the bright flash from behind him. He turned, half expecting to see a brigade bearing down on him, but instead only saw a fireball, and it was headed his direction.
It would miss, barely. The ground shook with a thunderous boom like he had rarely heard, and as the fireball finally passed overhead it broke into pieces and started to glow, gleaming rivulets of blue and purple light streaming in every direction.
Pan had seen fireballs from the sky before, but this was something else, as though God himself were in that stone and trying to break out. It was brilliant, and impossible to look away.
It crashed into the woods only a couple hundred yards in front of him. In a drier year it probably would have set the entire grove alight. As it was, only a single tree was fell from the impact. Spot fires betrayed the crash, but they would soon extinguish themselves.
He dismounted and rushed over to the crash site, careful to avoid the sparks and flames jutting up from random locations on the forest floor.
Cautiously Pan approached the remnant. It looked smaller up close, fragments strewn about for several yards, but the main piece still intact. This was no simple rock from the sky, he realized. There was something else inside it, something crystalline, something...different.
And small enough to fit in his hand. It was covered in so many facets that he could not make any single face out clearly. It was spectacular, hypnotic, no longer glowing, but refracting light in ways he had never seen.
He tapped the crystal, careful not to burn him self on what he was sure was an intensely hot rock. It felt cool to the touch.
Again he touched it, longer this time, but this time the crystal touched him back, like a bolt of lightning reaching from its surface through his skin, and aimed directly at his mind.
As his skin made contact he could suddenly see other lands, other worlds. The crystal spoke to him, sang to him, and promised to tell him the secrets of the universe.
Pan fell back, breathless, staring at the crystal.
No, he thought. Not a crystal. A tear of God. A key to unlocking life itself.
He reached for it once more.
Three: Ignition
Eight years later Pan found himself in the same part of the country, and the memory of that day flooded back to him. He still possessed the crystal, but it had not sung to him since that day. Yet he could not bear to part with it, for in that moment of
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