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By all accounts, it was an unremarkable Tuesday evening. All throughout Vale, ordinary things were happening. Schoolchildren were doing everything but their homework. Cats were meowing for their suppers. Working men were searching for meaning at the bottoms of glasses. Dogs dragging their masters behind them on their evening walks. Like many Tuesdays before it, and many Tuesdays to follow, it was quiet, dull and forgettable. Until, quite suddenly, it wasn’t.
At the top of a clock tower, a silver haired man dropped his mug, the steaming contents spreading across the floor as a strange vibration rattled in his bones.
A world away, in a tower of black, a woman with ivory skin felt an unearthly chill, one that had not come from within.
In a dingy bar where the booze was cheap and the women were cheaper, a Hunter’s spine suddenly straightened as a phantom wind ruffled phantom wings.
Where the road met the wilderness, wind whipped through a hidden camp as its mistress felt something thrumming deep within.
On a lonely island, in a quiet cabin, a young girl’s gaze snaps suddenly to her window, as if she’d seen something in the very corner of her silver eye.
A star, distant and flickering, flared brighter than ever before. And then, soundlessly, it shattered. An uncountable swarm of lights spread across the void, smothering the stars as they streaked across the sky in a thousand brilliant colors. A cosmic event unlike any that had come before. For most, it was nothing more than a beautiful sky. A once in a lifetime curiosity. But to those few souls, touched by something long forgotten, there was more to this kaleidoscopic sky. A deep certainty, devoid of explanation, that something had changed.
On a moonlit trail, a Maiden stumbled, her wind whipping around her as if in warning as her gaze was pulled to the sky. She watched with apprehension as the spectacle unfolded. A meteor shower painted by a rainbow. She shielded her eyes, suddenly realizing that the night was growing brighter. A golden light soared down from the abyss above, painting the forest with false dawn as it plummeted. The streak of gold touched down in the distance with a blinding flash and a deep, echoing thud. The strange feeling in her core finally settled, like a guitar string slowly falling silent. She knew these woods, and she fixed the location in her mind as best she could as she set off into the moonlit night. She had to know.
Holly Short came to sluggishly, her body aching and throbbing to the very bone. Gone was the eternal twilight of Hybras. Gone was the stony plateau on which she had joined hands in a crude, improvised magic circle. Gone was the bomb. its seconds ticking erratically in both directions. She struggled to her knees, casting her gaze about as it slowly adapted to the dim moonlight.
She didn’t have to be a warlock to know that something had gone terribly wrong. The spell should have let them follow her memories, let her guide the whole of Hybras back to Earth. She remembered it clearly, following the light with Artemis, the four of them pulling a whole island through the very fabric of creation... wait. Four?
The memory burned and chafed, like a splintered edge in her mind, but it was no worse than her body felt. She closed her eyes, forcing her minds eye open and pushing past the jagged edges of her recollection. It had been smooth, at first. Organic even, like a stem splitting into twin branches. But they were not a tree. The first branch died as Abbot-
Her eyes snapped open. Had she... had she died!?
“I remember,” she said aloud. “You saved me.”Artemis smiled back. “It never even happened.”
Frond, she had died... but she hadn’t. She saw it clear as day, time flickering like a broken screen. Artemis had taken her gun off of her own corpse, taken aim, and fired at the very instant time shifted. Artemis had shot a hole in causality itself to undo her death. That was it. That was the split.
Holly stood, slowly and uncertainly. Her equilibrium was off. She felt high up, but both feet were on the ground. She stumbled as she tried to take a step, her balance shot. Something moved on her back, and she whirled around. The motion sent her flat on her rear. She was alone. No demons. No Artemis. She sighed, downcast, but something caught her eye before she could try to take stock of her situation. Her feet. Or more precisely, the far too large feet attached to far too long legs. Her hands shot out, just as oversized. She could see that her jumpsuit was in tatters. Split and torn in various places. Everything was too big. Her arms, her head, her legs her... alright she could deal with those being a bit larger, but the rest was quite distressing. She could see what was left of her boots a few feet away. She dragged herself too them in an army crawl, seizing them and holding one up to her feet. More than twice as large. Perhaps three times. Almost like...
<“Frond,”> she breathed, straightening up. <“I’m a mud-girl.”> She clamped down on her panic, crushing it beneath the weight of her training. She staggered to her feet, and felt that same fluttering sensation on her back. She turned, slowly this time, and noticed the feeling moved. She reached over her shoulder, and stroked her finger down something smooth and downy. She grabbed at it and flinched. She felt that. She looked at her hand. There were feathers caught between her fingers. She focused on the feeling. She tensed herself, then relaxed, feeling the motion against her back, and feeling her back against... wings. She took a deep breath and forced the new limbs straight, hearing them rustling behind her and feeling the wind. <“I have wings,”> she whispered to no one. She forced herself to calm. There would be time to freak out later. For now, she had to get out of the wilderness. She drew her Neutrino, frowning at how it looked like a toy in her hands. She could only hope she didn’t lose too much of her aim.
What seemed like hours later, Holly groaned in frustration. The wings felt amazing to use. Intuitive and reflexive in a way that Foaly could never dream of reproducing. They flapped faster than any set she’d ever used with the LEP. The wind across her feathers felt soothing, even grounding ironically enough. Unfortunately they lacked the endurance to actually pull her off the ground. If she struggled and strained, she could maybe manage a centimeter or two before she stopped involuntarily. The stars almost seemed to taunt her. She’d have to train, strengthen them like any other muscle. For now, she had to walk. Lacking any other landmarks, she put the moon in front of her and started walking. If nothing else, she wouldn’t be walking in circles. Every once in a while, she’d mark her trail, wrenching narrow branch until it snapped downward at a ninety degree angle. A way to tell where she’d been in case she had to go back. After what could have been hours for all she knew, something caught her eye, a faint glow that grew quickly as it flashed across the trees ahead of her. She heard the footsteps. A flashlight! She jogged ahead shouting to get whoever’s attention it was, and hoping it wasn’t a tactical error.
Taiyang Xiao Long was walking a patrol through the forest. He didn’t hunt anymore, but he was still scarier than any of the grimm on Patch. Someone had to make sure the meteors that landed in the woods didn’t start a forest fire. He didn’t find anything of note. A couple of larger chunks of what could be obsidian embedded in the ground. A handful of black pebble-shards here and there. Suddenly, someone was shouting. “Rao! Cdub! E's mucd!” a feminine voice called from the darkness. He swung his flashlight just in time to see... His brain stalled trying to process what the hell was suddenly going on.
A woman jogged out of the woods. She had chestnut skin and short ginger hair, which wouldn’t be notable at all if she wasn’t wearing some kind of skintight bodysuit that lost a knife fight with a weedwhacker. She was barely decent, and she didn’t even have shoes. She stopped in front of him to catch her breath. “Dryhg Vnuht! E ryja hu etay frana E ys. Ec drana y dufh un y ledo haynpo?” she panted. He didn’t understand a word of that. It was clear she was lucid, she wasn’t slurring, she was emphasizing, and he could feel more than he could understand the “Thank the Brothers,” she lead with. So it wasn’t gibberish, but it sure as hell wasn’t Common.
“Sorry, ma’am,” he said. “I don’t understand you.” Her jaw dropped. She stuck a finger in her ear and wiggled it, as if she hadn’t heard him properly.
“E teth'd kad dryd, luimt oui cyo ykyeh?” she seemed to ask a question, anxiety tinging her voice.
“Sorry, still nothing.” Taiyang smiled apologetically.
Holly’s eye twitched. Of course the gift of tongues wasn’t working. She must be more of a mud-girl than she... thought... <‘Oh Frond. I... I can tell its English, but I can’t parse it! I can’t even talk to anyone...’> Her thoughts raced before she turned her head to the sky and roared: “D’ARVIT!!!!”
Taiyang was pretty sure he knew what that one meant.
Artemis Fowl II groaned, his head splitting as he spat out a bitter mouthful of sod. He rolled over onto his back, his vision swimming.
‘I was right,’ he thought, too battered and exhausted to be smug. ‘There are consequences for meddling with Time.’
His memories were rough and ragged, like a wound not yet scarred over. He remembered with vivid clarity the moment that never was. Peering down the sights of Holly’s gun at someone who was no longer there. The count, recited with purpose in his mind like a litany, almost praying the pattern held.
‘An hour per second for a count of forty...’ A glance had been all he could spare her as she bled out. He had to keep the count.
‘... followed by a deceleration to thirty minutes per second for a count of eighteen...’ Her gun in his hands, familiar and alien. He fumbled the dial, flicking it up a notch as Qwan and No1 were slain behind him.
‘... then a slight jump backwards in time, one minute per second back for a count of two...’ The footprints almost glowed in his gaze, a beacon from the past. He ignored Abbot’s taunting approach as he lined up his shot.
‘Then it repeats.‘ He fired, the bolt of energy slipped between moments and slammed into the Abbot that had once been. And just like that, she was alive again. Or rather, she never died in the first place.
He pulled himself back to the present, unsure if the pain in his head was worse than the pain in his bones. He felt quite like he had slammed into a wall at great speed, which in a way, he had. He forced himself to his feet, his gaze drinking in the darkness of the strange forest he found himself in. He could tell they were deciduous trees, though not what kind they were. There were igneous shards scattered across the grass. Likely fragments of what was once Hybras. He blinked as his eyes adjusted unevenly to the moonlight, then looked up into the sky. A sea of constellations, not one of them recognizable. Even Ursa Major was absent, and the North Star with it. He stepped around a tree, peering around the canopy, and his jaw dropped. The moon was shattered. It looked as if someone had shattered fine china across the sky and not bothered to clean it up. “Curious...” he breathed.
In relatively short order, Artemis was hopelessly lost. He wished he’d paid more attention to what Butler did the few times his adventurous lifestyle had led them to wilderness. He’d passed by that rock several times, so he knew he was walking in circles. At the very least he was confident he wasn’t walking the same circle over and over again. He was getting more and more frustrated, and was staving off a panic attack by sheer force of will. He hadn’t seen Holly, hadn’t seen any sign of civilization, he hadn’t even found a river to follow or a landmark to orient himself. Worst of all, he was alone.
Artemis had dealt with many emotions but loneliness had never been one of them. Butler had been by his side longer than he could remember. And when he didn’t have him, he usually had Holly. He started to hyperventilate briefly, before he forced himself to take a deep breath, almost straining to stretch a thin veneer of calm over the rising fear. He knew that no matter how bad the situation got, panicking would only make it worse.
Suddenly, a twig snapped behind him. He whirled around, and his stomach dropped. He found himself staring at the jagged, grinning maw of a brutish, bipedal hound. Its skull exposed to the world and its eyes burning like coals of utter loathing. Artemis’ heartbeat thrummed in his ears, adrenaline flooding his system as his fragile composure shattered. With a scream of primal terror, he sprinted into the night as the Beowolf howled behind him.
Artemis hurtled forward, heart slamming against his ribs like it could somehow escape without the rest of him. He could barely hear the baying and the snarling over his own gasping breath. The pack behind him swelled as his stamina dwindled. He should think, he should plan, but he can’t. His mind struggled beneath the weight of the overwhelming panic, barely managing to plot a path through the darkness that wouldn’t send him stumbling. The hounds were practically nipping at his heels. If he stumbled, tripped, or made one wrong turn, he was a dead man.
A lucky glance was all the warning he got, and he leapt, just barely clearing the hound that pounced beneath him from the side. He rolled his ankle as he landed, yelping in pain but not allowing himself to pause. His ankle throbbed every other step. The mistake begat another, as he clipped branch that tore his jacket’s sleeve off at the shoulder. He could feel something warm running down his arm, but couldn’t afford to pay it any mind. His vision was beginning to blur around the edges. He was vaguely aware that he passed the rock one last time before his vision started to swim. He had never been an active person, eschewing sports, viewing exercise with quiet contempt. It was no surprise that his body was failing him.
A sudden, sharp pain exploded from his arm as his body threw itself to the side, and his own traitorous momentum slammed him into a tree. He barely had time to turn before the hound’s ravenous maw closed over his shoulder blade. Time slowed down as he felt his bones crack, buckle, and give. Heat washed down his chest. Blood. As his vision tunneled, his brain shutting down from blood loss or agony, he felt one final spark of hope.
He could swear Holly had come for him, with fire in her eyes.
Amber was expecting a crater. She was fairly sure she’d found the impact site, but there were no furrows in the ground or circular dent in the landscape. There wasn’t so much as a snapped tree branch. All she found was the fading stench of sulphur on the wind, and obsidian shrapnel littering the ground. She raised her staff, coaxing torchlight from the red gem at its head. She cast the light about, searching for any clue, any reason that golden light had seemed to call out to her. ‘There!’ Subtle shadows flickered on the ground, and she bent low to see them better. Footprints. Not a hiking boot, or any kind of sensible shoe, but some sort of loafer or dress shoe. They seemed to come from nowhere, almost as if-
As if someone fell out of the sky.
A scream pierced the night, in counterpoint to a Beowolf’s howl. The mystery could wait.. She ran, long strides stretched by the wind as she gathered speed. It was time to Hunt.
The world blurred by faster and faster with every step as she followed the noise. It wasn’t long before she could pick out the growling and snapping of a growing pack of Beowolves barreling carelessly through the woods, snapping branches and clawing sod into tracks so clear she could track them blind.
She didn’t waste time on the first Beowolf she saw, using its skull as a springboard to throw herself up and over the pack. There were so many, whoever they were chasing must have lured every Grimm in the forest. Her eyes blazed brighter, and the wind caught her and carried her higher and further over the baying crowd. At the top of her leap, she just caught sight of him. Just in time for an alpha to swing its arm like a war club and throw him into a tree.
It was over. She could hear the sickening crunch as it bit down over most of his chest. She watched him slump, the last of his strength flowing in a red river down his front. Too slow.
The sky shook with her rage, thunder rattling the trees as black clouds spun themselves from nothingness high above. She never touched the ground, the wind holding her skyward as she gathered her storm. The Beowolves howled and snapped futilely at her heels, her fury tantalizing but far out of reach. With a wave of her hand in a downward strike a bolt of vengeful lightning lanced down from the heavens. It struck a Grimm in the shoulder, burning a huge wound that poured noxious smoke. Again and again she struck, performing a cruel and vindictive dance in the canopy as she sent Grimm after Grimm to their doom, sparking and twitching.
Finally, silence reigned, save the rushing of the wind. She descended slowly to the ground, the black mist of sublimating Grimm parting beneath her as if recoiling. With a tired sigh, she walked up to what was left of whoever it was. A boy, she noted. Couldn’t be older than sixteen, if that. Expensive clothes in tatters, stained with blood and ashes. Idly, she wondered if he’d been running even before he fell from the sky.
She knelt in the dirt, a tear rolling down her cheek. Failing to rescue someone was never easy. She began to search him, carefully, looking for a wallet or a scroll. If only to find a name to put on his grave. As the back of her hand brushed his chest, she froze.
He moved.
She leaned close, bracing against the tree as she held her breath, her ear close to his face. There it was. Breath. Faint and shallow, but it was there. The boy was clinging to life with what must be a will of iron! But will would not be enough. There wasn’t a ghost of a chance of first aid saving him, and she could forget about a hospital. But there was one thing she could do.
It was taboo, almost anathema to do this without consent. The most intimate trespass. But it was his only chance. She laid her hand on his forehead, a pale glow surrounding them both as began to reverently recite her oath, etching it into his very being just as it had been etched into hers.
"The night is dark and stormy, and the cold winds cut us deep.
The lonely, cold and weary, in their solitude they weep.
But us that join together, brace our backs against the storm.
Become for all a shelter, candles burning, safe and warm
Ignite your soul dear brother, share the burden, take the leap.
As basking by our candles, sons and daughters safely sleep."
His soul eagerly drunk in her aura, almost as if it had grabbed hers with both hands and pulled as the white glow settled around him. She held her breath, unsure if he could pull through even as the hue shifted to a yellow tone. Like sunlight glinting off a gold coin. The power began to gather, his wound glowing brighter. She heard it crackle unpleasantly as bones snapped back into place, watched glimmers of power pull new skin taut over the teeth marks.
The light faded, gathering itself to his torso to the very last moment before finally winking out. The tense silence seemed to stretch those few moments into an eternity. And then he gasped, his chest swelling with a ragged breath before he coughed violently, blood splattering from his mouth as his eyelids fluttered. She sighed with relief. He was going to live.