weird original fic
Mar. 24th, 2005 04:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
soraciaEr. This is a dream I had, which is um...really weird...and there is more of it, later, but this is the first part which I actually have typed up. It's totally AU...like, very, very AU. I am not at all sure when or where the setting of this is. It's something like...18th century Europe, maybe? Yeah. Something like that. ^^;; But with magic, of sorts. Aine and Kevan, and Coren appear to be Irish...everyone else is vaguely English.
I have no real solid ideas about most of the pairings yet, but yes. There is a great deal of weirdness. You have been warned. ^_~
They were soldiers, city bred, and the likelihood of a tree as a hiding place did not occur to them. The fugitive had hid up this tree before, and knew exactly where to sit in order to be invisible from the ground. Darting around the corner of the huge gray building, the slight figure in a torn skirt swung up easily into the lower branches and vanished out of sight.
A small knot of soldiers burst around the corner in hot pursuit, and gradually slowed as they looked around at the empty yard. "Dammit! Where'd she go?"
"She disappeared...the general's going to be mad...she can't have gone far. Search the grounds!"
And though they crossed the grounds and searched around and under her hiding place, and anywhere else that might conceal an escaping thief, if that she was, not one of them looked up into the concealing branches. She clung to the branch, curling in on herself, as if to become smaller and less noticeable, even though the captain who stopped beneath her did not so much as raise his head. I'm not here, I'm not here, she thought, chanting it in her mind like a spell, and perhaps it was, for a moment later the soldiers moved away to search the other side of the compound.
She shifted cautiously, peering through the leaves, trying to judge the distance to the edge of the nearby woods. Not too far, not far at all, but there was the fence between.... just a simple chain link fence, not even any razor wire, but she would have to climb it. She studied it, weighing her chances, looking over her shoulder at the guards who were still moving on the far side. No choice but to make a break for it, or lose the opportunity altogether. When they finished their search, a guard would be set at the main gate, and they would be sure to catch her if she moved.
Taking a deep breath, she slipped down, pausing for a mere second to flatten herself against the trunk, tucking her skirt up and making sure that no one was looking. Then she sprinted for the fence, leaping awkwardly to grab it as high as possible, and clambering up as fast as she could manage. She was nearly at the top when she heard shouts behind her, and she flinched, but kept climbing. Almost there....
At the top she didn't bother to jump, but threw herself off the other side, hitting the ground and rolling, coming up smoothly and bolting for the cover of the nearby trees. The shouts behind her faded as she slipped into the shadows, and the last thing she heard was the captain's disgusted exclamation of, "Shit! We'll never catch her in there..."
She did not hear the sigh and resigned command ending the search, or the confident observation which followed. "Take a unit and go around the long way...we'll pick her up at the train station in Smelton."
It would have surprised her that they knew where she was going, and she did not think to consider the possibility of the enemy waiting at the other end of her flight. Instead she ran headlong through the trees with the simple, artless grace of long familiarity.
Above her a thoughtful pair of eyes watched from another perch; having observed the search and subsequent escape, Morgan was curious. Making up his mind, he darted from one tree to the next, swinging through the branches with astonishing speed, and coming up just ahead of the running figure below him. He dropped down just in time for the other to run right into him, knocking them both down.
Having expected this, he was the first to recover, quickly rolling over and getting to his feet again. The escapee, on the other hand, sat up slowly and remained kneeling, looking stunned and yet resigned to have been captured after getting clean away. She raised her head, hair tumbling back to reveal a sullen, wary expression, and met her captor's eyes. Pretty eyes they were, she thought absently, an unusual shade of purple.
He studied her for a minute, the delicate features and shoulder length hair, and then his eyes narrowed and he smirked. "Why the skirt? Yer not a girl, mate."
The kneeling figure looked away, and his expression grew, if possible, even more sullen as he muttered resentfully, "It's none of your business, you wouldn't even know if you hadn't knocked me down, that wasn't very nice, now you're probably going to drag me back in there and all you can say is I'm not a girl? Why do you care?"
The pretty violet eyes gleamed and Morgan shrugged cheerfully. "I don't," he said, and he sounded as if he didn't. Throwing a glance in the direction the fugitive had been running, he continued, "You shouldn't go that way, ya know--they're just going to pick you up on the other side, idiot." His voice was lightly scornful but not unkind, and he still sounded as if it did not much matter to him one way or the other.
The bent head jerked up, blue eyes widening with a look of dismayed confusion. "What? How do you know that? You can't know that unless you work for them...but I already thought you were one of them, except you look kind of young so maybe you don't, but then I don't know why you stopped me..." he continued in that vein for several seconds, his voice trailing off, before he said abruptly, "I have to get out of here, they're gonna be looking for me, I have to get to Carrington."
Raising both eyebrows, Morgan said simply, "You don't want to go that way, then." Carrington...this kid was a spy? He didn't look it... Surprising himself, he offered suddenly, "Come on, I was headed that way myself... you can come with me. What's your name?"
That earned him a wary, distrustful look which faded quickly into a doubtful expression. "Simon," the boy answered absently, looking as if he were considering the offer with great reservation. "Why should I trust you?" There was a calculating gleam in the blue eyes, and his head tilted sideways. "I don't think I trust you... you knocked me down, and that was mean, mean people can't be trusted. How do I know you're not just taking me somewhere else to turn me in?"
Morgan shrugged. "You don't," he replied. "But I know those pricks back at the base want you pretty damn bad, and I'm not hauling you back there like I could. Anyway, what choice do you have?"
The other boy appeared to think this over, before nodding to himself. "Where are we going then?"
Morgan reached down to lend him a hand in getting to his feet. "Anywhere we want to, blue eyes. Anywhere we want."
"Carrington," the blue eyed boy insisted, and Morgan rolled his eyes.
"Yes, Carrington. I said that a few minutes ago, idiot, didn't you listen?" He turned, striking off at a right angle to their previous path, and headed for the edge of the forest. His companion wandered along behind him, mumbling to himself.
"You said that way, you didn't say Carrington, so you could have meant something else, and just now you said anywhere we want, which could be anywhere, and I don't want to go anywhere but there..."
Morgan stopped listening, smiling faintly to himself as the muttered words went on. This was going to be a hell of an adventure.
---
This scene happens a good while later, after the boys get into and out of trouble at Smelton and are back on their way, having met up with some other travelers.
Kevan still wasn't sure why he'd offered to let the fugitives travel with them. It wasn't just because Aine had given him the wide-eyed pleading look and said, "But they need us!" He wasn't sure that was true at all, but that look was hard to resist. Still, it was far from being the only reason. He just wasn't quite sure what those other reasons were.
He had to admit, however, that there was something about them...something which drew him to like them in spite of himself, something which made him soften and almost smile when he watched them together, their contrasting sharp words and gentle--one might even say tender--touches. Something which somehow, gave them a place among the ones he wanted to protect, although that list was normally short indeed. They called to him in some way, with their subbornness and their courage, and their very aloneness against such overwhelming odds.
Now they were on the road again, running. Or at least, traveling with haste in fear of pursuit. Overall, Kevan was still making up his mind about whether the new additions to their small band were worth it. Aine was convinced they were, and his sister was usually right about these things. But he had reservations. They wouldn't be in nearly so much trouble if it wasn't for those two.
He wasn't even really surprised when the trouble came from ahead, and not from behind.
"Get back," he ordered, motioning the others to stay behind him as he caught sight of the roadblock. A line of brownies with rifles, led by a man in a dark hooded cloak.
"Dammit," Coren muttered behind him. "There's too many of them."
Kevan grimaced. Coren was right. They were outnumbered and not as well armed, and if they stood to fight, they would lose, and lose badly. But maybe it wasn't still too late for some of them to run. He started going down a list of possible distractions in his head, looking for something that would allow most of them to get away.
Aine's quiet murmur, answering Coren, interrupted his calculations. "No," she said, the words soft but insistent, "there's only one."
Frowning, Kevan looked again, and this time he saw the telltale haze that marked an illusion, no matter how skilled. Aine was no mage, herself, but she'd been around him long enough to know magic when she saw it, and she had clearer sight than most.
"All of you, get off the road," he told them, striding forward to meet the cloaked figure who must also be a mage. Kevan heard them scatter behind him, a vague awaremess as his focus narrowed to the road and the upraised hands of the man in front of him, beginning a spell that made the air crackle sharply with the smell of sorcery. His own hands sketched a quick warding and he cast about for an appropriate counterattack.
"Traitor," he snarled at the other mage, with all the anger he reserved for those who chose to use the power they held in service of oppression, to a military that ruled by fear and enforced with brutal efficiency. The man didn't bother to answer, already having nearly completed the spell he wove. Kevan gritted his teeth, ducking as the energy released lanced toward him in a form that was significantly more complex than it appeared. Not that he had the time or the inclination to appreciate its intricacy at the moment--he was too busy dodging, firing off an attack of his own, a simple blast of pure magic shaped into a bolt of energy; crude, but effective--if it had actually hit anything. Which it didn't; his opponent was equally good at dodging, it appeared, and Kevan growled deep in his throat as he pulled out the first attack spell he could think of that could do a lot of damage with minimal preparation.
He threw it at the mage and... nothing happened, except that another spell flashed in the man's hands and Kevan had to duck again and reinforce his warding. What the hell had that been? It was like hitting shielding, only...not. There had been no flash, no impact, no... damage. It was as if his spell had been sucked into a black hole, and the energy with which it was fueled along with it. Not only that, but--he wondered if he was paranoid to think that it had seemed like the other mage had used his spell's energy to fuel his own; but that wasn't possible...was it?
It didn't much matter at the moment, and he decided there was pretty much only one way to deal with this--if an outright attack didn't work, and the man actually was somehow using his energy, then pretty much only one thing was going to stop him. Some kind of a trap...some way to trick him into using his own attack against himself. Kevan sorted through the short list of trap spells he knew that didn't require elaborate preparation and physical ingredients--very few, indeed, and only one that he could probably pull off before he got himself killed here.
It was fairly simple, really, simple but effective; the main reason it didn't get used more often was that it was also, often, fairly easy to counter. What Kevan was counting on was first, that the other mage would be expecting an attack rather than a trap, and secondly, that he was right about whatever that strange shielding was. Two rather large risks, really, but it was the only thing that was going to give him a chance here, and he'd never cared about odds.
He spared a single glance behind him to make sure the others had gotten out of sight as he traded another spell and counterspell with his opponent; the man was good, and if he weren't an enemy, Kevan thought he might actually enjoy a duel with the guy. It was, he thought, a shame that men with that kind of talent chose to use it for such bad ends. He said as much, or rather growled it in sheer frustration as he started setting up the threads of energy he'd need for the trap spell. He knew what this spell did, it was dangerous, and it bothered him to have to use it on another mage--but, he reminded himself, this one worked for the military. Idiot. Such a waste, and it made him angry, angry with the other man in particular and with the whole damn situation. Someone had to do something about it, and soon. He wondered vaguely why he thought suddenly of Simon, but it was a passing stray thought which he had no time to pay attention to.
He ducked yet again, gathering the ends of his spell, checking it one last time, and shouting a last warning at the other man, getting, as usual, no response; except this time, a faint frown. Fine. Kevan had given him more of a chance than he really deserved, he thought, and if he wasn't even going to talk, then he was going down. He paused, going still and bracing himself, holding his spell ready and waiting...waiting for one more attack, and there it was, bright traces of magic threaded in a complex pattern through the mage's fingers. Kevan frowned, not recognizing the formation, and hoped belatedly that this wasn't yet another unexpected trick that was going to backfire on him. This man had some really...really strange magical energy signs, and he wondered vaguely where and how he'd been trained, with a faint sense of regret that he would never know.
Then it was too late, and he gritted his teeth and didn't duck this time, standing still as the spell was cast and thrown, raising his own hands at the last minute and throwing out the trap to meet it. For a minute, nothing happened--he scowled, wondering what the hell he was going to do now, because that was his last trick, and the others weren't nearly far enough away yet, it wasn't good enough, not nearly good enough, but there had to be something... and then the subtle flash of light, like the transmutation of a cloud flashed where the magics had met in midair, transforming into the familiar greenish gold net-like formation of the trap. Kevan breathed a huge sigh of relief and straightened out of his half crouch where he'd been ready to run or duck or simply throw himself out of the way again, and watched silently as it settled over the man's head and shoulders.
The mage gave him a single, startled, wide eyed look of incomprehension, and then his expression went blank and he froze, hands still upraised, bent slightly as if he too had been ready to duck or run. But now he was still, unmoving, and would remain that way until someone who knew the spell and how to reverse it happened to come this way. Probably a long time. It was, Kevan admitted to himself, rather a nasty trap, and one he didn't like to use, but this guy had definitely been asking for it.
He sighed wearily, rubbing the back of his wrist across his forehead and looking around for the pack he'd dropped by the side of the road. Not finding it, he assumed Aine had grabbed it for him when the rest of them had run. Good girl. And damn, he had a headache. He gave the frozen man one last glance, eyeing the barely visible green gold dust motes still hovering around his head--they wouldn't be visible at all to a normal sighted person. Then he turned away, moving past and starting off up the road again, hoping that the rest of the group had managed to gather somewhere safe and that he could find them without too much trouble. The mage behind him was soon forgotten without a second thought, his only faint puzzlement still remaining being what exactly it had been, that shielding or fusion that made his spell disappear like that. It couldn't have been what it had looked like. That just wasn't possible.
Unfortunately, it seemed he was never going to know for sure.
I have no real solid ideas about most of the pairings yet, but yes. There is a great deal of weirdness. You have been warned. ^_~
They were soldiers, city bred, and the likelihood of a tree as a hiding place did not occur to them. The fugitive had hid up this tree before, and knew exactly where to sit in order to be invisible from the ground. Darting around the corner of the huge gray building, the slight figure in a torn skirt swung up easily into the lower branches and vanished out of sight.
A small knot of soldiers burst around the corner in hot pursuit, and gradually slowed as they looked around at the empty yard. "Dammit! Where'd she go?"
"She disappeared...the general's going to be mad...she can't have gone far. Search the grounds!"
And though they crossed the grounds and searched around and under her hiding place, and anywhere else that might conceal an escaping thief, if that she was, not one of them looked up into the concealing branches. She clung to the branch, curling in on herself, as if to become smaller and less noticeable, even though the captain who stopped beneath her did not so much as raise his head. I'm not here, I'm not here, she thought, chanting it in her mind like a spell, and perhaps it was, for a moment later the soldiers moved away to search the other side of the compound.
She shifted cautiously, peering through the leaves, trying to judge the distance to the edge of the nearby woods. Not too far, not far at all, but there was the fence between.... just a simple chain link fence, not even any razor wire, but she would have to climb it. She studied it, weighing her chances, looking over her shoulder at the guards who were still moving on the far side. No choice but to make a break for it, or lose the opportunity altogether. When they finished their search, a guard would be set at the main gate, and they would be sure to catch her if she moved.
Taking a deep breath, she slipped down, pausing for a mere second to flatten herself against the trunk, tucking her skirt up and making sure that no one was looking. Then she sprinted for the fence, leaping awkwardly to grab it as high as possible, and clambering up as fast as she could manage. She was nearly at the top when she heard shouts behind her, and she flinched, but kept climbing. Almost there....
At the top she didn't bother to jump, but threw herself off the other side, hitting the ground and rolling, coming up smoothly and bolting for the cover of the nearby trees. The shouts behind her faded as she slipped into the shadows, and the last thing she heard was the captain's disgusted exclamation of, "Shit! We'll never catch her in there..."
She did not hear the sigh and resigned command ending the search, or the confident observation which followed. "Take a unit and go around the long way...we'll pick her up at the train station in Smelton."
It would have surprised her that they knew where she was going, and she did not think to consider the possibility of the enemy waiting at the other end of her flight. Instead she ran headlong through the trees with the simple, artless grace of long familiarity.
Above her a thoughtful pair of eyes watched from another perch; having observed the search and subsequent escape, Morgan was curious. Making up his mind, he darted from one tree to the next, swinging through the branches with astonishing speed, and coming up just ahead of the running figure below him. He dropped down just in time for the other to run right into him, knocking them both down.
Having expected this, he was the first to recover, quickly rolling over and getting to his feet again. The escapee, on the other hand, sat up slowly and remained kneeling, looking stunned and yet resigned to have been captured after getting clean away. She raised her head, hair tumbling back to reveal a sullen, wary expression, and met her captor's eyes. Pretty eyes they were, she thought absently, an unusual shade of purple.
He studied her for a minute, the delicate features and shoulder length hair, and then his eyes narrowed and he smirked. "Why the skirt? Yer not a girl, mate."
The kneeling figure looked away, and his expression grew, if possible, even more sullen as he muttered resentfully, "It's none of your business, you wouldn't even know if you hadn't knocked me down, that wasn't very nice, now you're probably going to drag me back in there and all you can say is I'm not a girl? Why do you care?"
The pretty violet eyes gleamed and Morgan shrugged cheerfully. "I don't," he said, and he sounded as if he didn't. Throwing a glance in the direction the fugitive had been running, he continued, "You shouldn't go that way, ya know--they're just going to pick you up on the other side, idiot." His voice was lightly scornful but not unkind, and he still sounded as if it did not much matter to him one way or the other.
The bent head jerked up, blue eyes widening with a look of dismayed confusion. "What? How do you know that? You can't know that unless you work for them...but I already thought you were one of them, except you look kind of young so maybe you don't, but then I don't know why you stopped me..." he continued in that vein for several seconds, his voice trailing off, before he said abruptly, "I have to get out of here, they're gonna be looking for me, I have to get to Carrington."
Raising both eyebrows, Morgan said simply, "You don't want to go that way, then." Carrington...this kid was a spy? He didn't look it... Surprising himself, he offered suddenly, "Come on, I was headed that way myself... you can come with me. What's your name?"
That earned him a wary, distrustful look which faded quickly into a doubtful expression. "Simon," the boy answered absently, looking as if he were considering the offer with great reservation. "Why should I trust you?" There was a calculating gleam in the blue eyes, and his head tilted sideways. "I don't think I trust you... you knocked me down, and that was mean, mean people can't be trusted. How do I know you're not just taking me somewhere else to turn me in?"
Morgan shrugged. "You don't," he replied. "But I know those pricks back at the base want you pretty damn bad, and I'm not hauling you back there like I could. Anyway, what choice do you have?"
The other boy appeared to think this over, before nodding to himself. "Where are we going then?"
Morgan reached down to lend him a hand in getting to his feet. "Anywhere we want to, blue eyes. Anywhere we want."
"Carrington," the blue eyed boy insisted, and Morgan rolled his eyes.
"Yes, Carrington. I said that a few minutes ago, idiot, didn't you listen?" He turned, striking off at a right angle to their previous path, and headed for the edge of the forest. His companion wandered along behind him, mumbling to himself.
"You said that way, you didn't say Carrington, so you could have meant something else, and just now you said anywhere we want, which could be anywhere, and I don't want to go anywhere but there..."
Morgan stopped listening, smiling faintly to himself as the muttered words went on. This was going to be a hell of an adventure.
---
This scene happens a good while later, after the boys get into and out of trouble at Smelton and are back on their way, having met up with some other travelers.
Kevan still wasn't sure why he'd offered to let the fugitives travel with them. It wasn't just because Aine had given him the wide-eyed pleading look and said, "But they need us!" He wasn't sure that was true at all, but that look was hard to resist. Still, it was far from being the only reason. He just wasn't quite sure what those other reasons were.
He had to admit, however, that there was something about them...something which drew him to like them in spite of himself, something which made him soften and almost smile when he watched them together, their contrasting sharp words and gentle--one might even say tender--touches. Something which somehow, gave them a place among the ones he wanted to protect, although that list was normally short indeed. They called to him in some way, with their subbornness and their courage, and their very aloneness against such overwhelming odds.
Now they were on the road again, running. Or at least, traveling with haste in fear of pursuit. Overall, Kevan was still making up his mind about whether the new additions to their small band were worth it. Aine was convinced they were, and his sister was usually right about these things. But he had reservations. They wouldn't be in nearly so much trouble if it wasn't for those two.
He wasn't even really surprised when the trouble came from ahead, and not from behind.
"Get back," he ordered, motioning the others to stay behind him as he caught sight of the roadblock. A line of brownies with rifles, led by a man in a dark hooded cloak.
"Dammit," Coren muttered behind him. "There's too many of them."
Kevan grimaced. Coren was right. They were outnumbered and not as well armed, and if they stood to fight, they would lose, and lose badly. But maybe it wasn't still too late for some of them to run. He started going down a list of possible distractions in his head, looking for something that would allow most of them to get away.
Aine's quiet murmur, answering Coren, interrupted his calculations. "No," she said, the words soft but insistent, "there's only one."
Frowning, Kevan looked again, and this time he saw the telltale haze that marked an illusion, no matter how skilled. Aine was no mage, herself, but she'd been around him long enough to know magic when she saw it, and she had clearer sight than most.
"All of you, get off the road," he told them, striding forward to meet the cloaked figure who must also be a mage. Kevan heard them scatter behind him, a vague awaremess as his focus narrowed to the road and the upraised hands of the man in front of him, beginning a spell that made the air crackle sharply with the smell of sorcery. His own hands sketched a quick warding and he cast about for an appropriate counterattack.
"Traitor," he snarled at the other mage, with all the anger he reserved for those who chose to use the power they held in service of oppression, to a military that ruled by fear and enforced with brutal efficiency. The man didn't bother to answer, already having nearly completed the spell he wove. Kevan gritted his teeth, ducking as the energy released lanced toward him in a form that was significantly more complex than it appeared. Not that he had the time or the inclination to appreciate its intricacy at the moment--he was too busy dodging, firing off an attack of his own, a simple blast of pure magic shaped into a bolt of energy; crude, but effective--if it had actually hit anything. Which it didn't; his opponent was equally good at dodging, it appeared, and Kevan growled deep in his throat as he pulled out the first attack spell he could think of that could do a lot of damage with minimal preparation.
He threw it at the mage and... nothing happened, except that another spell flashed in the man's hands and Kevan had to duck again and reinforce his warding. What the hell had that been? It was like hitting shielding, only...not. There had been no flash, no impact, no... damage. It was as if his spell had been sucked into a black hole, and the energy with which it was fueled along with it. Not only that, but--he wondered if he was paranoid to think that it had seemed like the other mage had used his spell's energy to fuel his own; but that wasn't possible...was it?
It didn't much matter at the moment, and he decided there was pretty much only one way to deal with this--if an outright attack didn't work, and the man actually was somehow using his energy, then pretty much only one thing was going to stop him. Some kind of a trap...some way to trick him into using his own attack against himself. Kevan sorted through the short list of trap spells he knew that didn't require elaborate preparation and physical ingredients--very few, indeed, and only one that he could probably pull off before he got himself killed here.
It was fairly simple, really, simple but effective; the main reason it didn't get used more often was that it was also, often, fairly easy to counter. What Kevan was counting on was first, that the other mage would be expecting an attack rather than a trap, and secondly, that he was right about whatever that strange shielding was. Two rather large risks, really, but it was the only thing that was going to give him a chance here, and he'd never cared about odds.
He spared a single glance behind him to make sure the others had gotten out of sight as he traded another spell and counterspell with his opponent; the man was good, and if he weren't an enemy, Kevan thought he might actually enjoy a duel with the guy. It was, he thought, a shame that men with that kind of talent chose to use it for such bad ends. He said as much, or rather growled it in sheer frustration as he started setting up the threads of energy he'd need for the trap spell. He knew what this spell did, it was dangerous, and it bothered him to have to use it on another mage--but, he reminded himself, this one worked for the military. Idiot. Such a waste, and it made him angry, angry with the other man in particular and with the whole damn situation. Someone had to do something about it, and soon. He wondered vaguely why he thought suddenly of Simon, but it was a passing stray thought which he had no time to pay attention to.
He ducked yet again, gathering the ends of his spell, checking it one last time, and shouting a last warning at the other man, getting, as usual, no response; except this time, a faint frown. Fine. Kevan had given him more of a chance than he really deserved, he thought, and if he wasn't even going to talk, then he was going down. He paused, going still and bracing himself, holding his spell ready and waiting...waiting for one more attack, and there it was, bright traces of magic threaded in a complex pattern through the mage's fingers. Kevan frowned, not recognizing the formation, and hoped belatedly that this wasn't yet another unexpected trick that was going to backfire on him. This man had some really...really strange magical energy signs, and he wondered vaguely where and how he'd been trained, with a faint sense of regret that he would never know.
Then it was too late, and he gritted his teeth and didn't duck this time, standing still as the spell was cast and thrown, raising his own hands at the last minute and throwing out the trap to meet it. For a minute, nothing happened--he scowled, wondering what the hell he was going to do now, because that was his last trick, and the others weren't nearly far enough away yet, it wasn't good enough, not nearly good enough, but there had to be something... and then the subtle flash of light, like the transmutation of a cloud flashed where the magics had met in midair, transforming into the familiar greenish gold net-like formation of the trap. Kevan breathed a huge sigh of relief and straightened out of his half crouch where he'd been ready to run or duck or simply throw himself out of the way again, and watched silently as it settled over the man's head and shoulders.
The mage gave him a single, startled, wide eyed look of incomprehension, and then his expression went blank and he froze, hands still upraised, bent slightly as if he too had been ready to duck or run. But now he was still, unmoving, and would remain that way until someone who knew the spell and how to reverse it happened to come this way. Probably a long time. It was, Kevan admitted to himself, rather a nasty trap, and one he didn't like to use, but this guy had definitely been asking for it.
He sighed wearily, rubbing the back of his wrist across his forehead and looking around for the pack he'd dropped by the side of the road. Not finding it, he assumed Aine had grabbed it for him when the rest of them had run. Good girl. And damn, he had a headache. He gave the frozen man one last glance, eyeing the barely visible green gold dust motes still hovering around his head--they wouldn't be visible at all to a normal sighted person. Then he turned away, moving past and starting off up the road again, hoping that the rest of the group had managed to gather somewhere safe and that he could find them without too much trouble. The mage behind him was soon forgotten without a second thought, his only faint puzzlement still remaining being what exactly it had been, that shielding or fusion that made his spell disappear like that. It couldn't have been what it had looked like. That just wasn't possible.
Unfortunately, it seemed he was never going to know for sure.
