Once In Light

Luci had reached the town by now. She felt her nightly appetite begin to gnaw at her. Anything would do, but she craved something else, candy. She's the type of drake that would do nearly anything for food and absolutely loves eating. She had planned to go visit the tavern; they had food there.

Luci was about 30 feet from a group creatures. She didn't notice them, but smelt their odd scent. Her vision was poor in the dark, but had an extremely good sense of smell to make up for her lack of comprehensive vision. It was well enough for her to make a nearly exact picture of her surroundings in her mind. She smelled some sort of crystal, a power crystal, similar to the few in her pocket that she had taken from her mine. She made note of it, but did nothing further with the creatures and their crystal, passing behind them in the dark.

Lessya took her place in the complex circle Gerrin had drawn, and nodded.  Gerrin closed his eyes, concentrating, and the runes began to glow dimly around him.  At almost the same time, Lessya began casting her spell.  It wasnt just her eyes that glowed, her entire body radiated a pale light, especially the row of small spikes down her back.  She fed her spell into the area around her, and from there it was caught and replicated by Gerrin's runes.  The power crystal was slowly losing its color, being drained to amplify Lessya's natural emanation.

Once again, the spell bounced right off Gerrin and Kabiri's amulets.  But this time, the spell affected a much wider range.  Waves of invisible power spread through the town, and Lessya smiled faintly each time she felt them take effect.

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"Before he could react," Kader was saying urgently, "Sasha leapt towards him!"

Kader too leapt forward, to the front of the stage.  He bared his teeth slightly as he continued, "he could barely see anything but pure white light, but he could feel her claws like ice cold needles sinking into his neck."

Something odd was going on, something Kader only noticed halfway through the next sentence, "the last thing he saw was a pair of pale blue eyes, glowing with pure hatred..."

Something was wrong.  There was a wave passing through the crowd, people were stumbling and falling over within seconds.  As the wave came towards the stage, Kader realized what would happen next.  With a yelp, he scrambled backwards, but there was no escaping it.

The last phrase of his story echoed in his mind, oddly fitting as he fell to the ground.

'And then everything faded to black...'

Terran had tried to hold back a yawn as Kader continued his story. She was totally lost, having no idea who or what Sasha was or if she wanted to cheer her actions on or fear her. By now Terranwas bored, and frankly, didn't want to be out partying anymore. She looked over at Aiko, who seemed to be enjoying herself. It would be pointless to ask Aiko to leave withdher and escort her to an inn. It wouldn't be fair for Terran to wreck the rest of her friends evening.

Her head was starting to ache but soon intensified. She suddenly felt rather lightheaded and off balance. Terran tried to grip the side of the bar but found her strength failing. As Terran began to fall backwards out of her chair she reached a hand out towards Aiko, hoping she wasn't dying or something weird like that.

Aiko realized something was amiss and looked around. Everyone was stumbling over and falling asleep, it seemed. What sort of magic could this be? Whatever it was, she and Terran needed to get out of ther, and fast.

Aiko grabbed her knife and was about to tell Terran they were leaving when the faun stumbled out of the seat. "Terra-" it was then Aiko, too, fell out of the seat as the magic overcame her.

The story had been had been coming to it's climax it had seemed and out of nowhere it seemed that most of the patron within the tavern had fallen asleep. He was alarmed by this, but there really wasn't much he could do. It took him a moment to relive this was a magically induced sleep. He'd seen it countless times, it was never a good thing when it was used en mass like this. So he tried to resist the magic. He knew he'd succumb to it, but he wanted to stay awake as long as possible. But he knew the fight was futile as the world around him slowly grew darker. He had one last though before he passed out. He hadn't realized it but it was spoken out-loud.

" Looks like I was wrong about tonight."

"So it seems"

Then he was out like a light.

Luci's appetite was suddenly overcome by a strong sense of tiredness. She felt weak and limp, trudging to the tavern. Her eyes closed as she stopped walking and started to stumble over. She fell forward and landed in an uncomfortable position right in front of the tavern's door. Everything relaxed a few moments after she collapsed. Luci was probably one of the last of the targeted beings that fell asleep.

The power crystal dimmed to black, and the sleep spell died out. Its effects would continue until the next morning, most likely, but the exact length was determined by an individual's stamina. Lessya stopped casting at almost the same time as Gerrin, both sensing their power source vanishing.

Kabiri grinned. He coiled around himself and pulled a few small items out of his bags with his mouth. He placed them on the ground, three in total, and then picked one back up for himself. Lessya and Gerrin both took one. They did not clean the spell site. It didn't matter if anyone found it, they would be long gone.

They each nodded silently and walked off in opposite directions, taking one of the objects each. They were like compasses, attuned to magical power. Kabiri wasn't sure how they worked, nor did he care. All he knew was that they led to his targets, those with exceptional abilities in magic.

Or at least that's where he thought they led. As the group began scouring the town, following their own devices, a shade of a creature with mismatched eyes slipped away into another plane. No one saw it. The only evidence there was that it had ever been there was the magic. A marker on some of the nondescript people in town, changing the direction the magical compasses pointed.

He smirked as he reappeared in his own plane, his wall of magical screens blinking on in front of him. His first step was complete, and now he had little else to do but watch his plan unfold.

Kabiri nudged the tavern door open with his nose, squinting slightly at the dim light inside. The first thing he noticed was the effect of Lessya's spell, that being the large amount of creatures asleep on the floor. He slithered forward into the building cautiously.

Then he noticed the second thing. A shadowy equine picking its way through the tavern. His eyes widened in surprise that anyone was still awake. There had to be something special about this creature. He raised himself up, hissing and flaring the dark red frill on the back of his neck.

This creature would not stand in his way, he had a job to do.

Kabiri hissed even more loudly as he flinched back. He wasn't sure what the thing in front of him was, but it clearly didn't like him any more than he liked it. He briefly considered going to get help, but he assumed that his friends would have heard the noise, and would be coming soon. He narrowed his eyes at the shadowy creature in front of him and bared his fangs. Hopefully it would fall for his bluff, at least long enough for the rest of the group to show up. Not that he couldn't take the equine himself, anyway.

Kabiri coiled back around himself with amazing speed. He brought his tail up in front of his face, much like most creatures would hide behind their arms. His frill was pressed against the back of his neck in a subconcious attempt to become smaller and thus invisible. His terror was interrupted, or perhaps strengthened, by a large paw landing on his back. He uncoiled instantly and prepared to hiss, only to bite it back.

Gerrin's cool gray eyes met his, and Kabiri suddenly realized that the world had gone quiet again. He looked behind him, back into the tavern, and realized that there was nothing there. Everything was gone.

"Wh- what happened?" he stuttered out, confused.

Gerrin shrugged, "I heard a sound." The large feline's tail twitched, and he changed the topic of conversation to buisness "Lessya is getting the few that are outside. Most of them are in here."

Kabiri nodded, still incredibly confused and maybe a bit nervous, but followed Gerrin deeper into the tavern. It would take several hours to move the targets, pointed out by the magic compasses, far enough into the forest to prevent them being spotted in the morning. But this was their job, find people with potential, and they were paid a lot to do it.

The smell of grass and the sound of birds chirping were the first things Kader noticed as he woke up.  Judging by the birds, it was morning, but that wasn't the important part.  He was, very definately, outside.  And that was not where he remembered being before.  He didn't open his eyes just yet, anyone watching could think he was still alseep, and that would be fine with him.  He thought back to the night before, and after a moment was able to confirm his suspicion.  Something had happened, and now he was somewhere else.

He took a moment longer to check his surroundings in any way he could before anyone could tell he was awake.  First off, once he paid more attention, he could hear other creatures nearby.  Some of them were breathing heavily, as if asleep, while others were moving about.  He could smell food cooking and smoke.  Actually, there was a lot more smoke in the air than he thought there should have been for just cooking, but he didn't worry about that too much for the time being.  He moved one of his hands slightly, and felt a weight dragging it down, along with the sound of chains clinking against each other.  Great.  So he had been kidnapped, presumably along with several others.  Finally, he opened his eyes and sat up.

There were three tents around him, two of them closed, and the other hanging open.  All across the ground were other creatures, most of which he had seen in the audience the night before.  He didn't bother trying to identify them all, and continued looking around.  He could be in danger, after all.  In the midst of the tents was a small campfire with some type of meat cooking over it, and tending to the fire was a large gray feline.  Their eyes met for a moment, and Kader almost expected hostility.  Instead, there was nothing, just silence.  The cat went back to cooking.  Kader wasn't sure what to think about that, but he decided to stay calm... For the moment.

Aiko wasn't like Kader when it came to waking up. Her eyes shot open as she sat strait up, finishing the sentence she was going to say before passing out. "Terran! It's a spe-" she paused, looking around before looking at her hands. Her eyes switched from her chained hands to Kader, who was now awake, to a gray cat that was cooking. She was chained up like a wild animal and didn't like it. This was a huge insult, to her. She could easily get out of these chains, though. She was chained in human form, but foxes have a lot smaller ankles... or wrists... or... you get what I mean.

"You..." she growled at the grey feline. "Tell me where I am and I won't free myself and hurt you- believe me, I'm willing to do that," She looked around the room before adding in with a snarl, "And where is the faun named Terran?" her nails morphed into claws, a common thing for Aiko to do whenever she was more angry then normal.

The faun named Terran. Who had said that? Terran shifted slightly, as if trying to find a comfortable sleeping position. The way her arms and legs were bound forced her to stay on her stomach, rather annoyingly. She opened her eyes with a groan. Her vision was rather blurry and her head was spinning. She hadn't quite comprehended that she'd been kidnapped, maybe she assumed she had one too many drinks and fell asleep. Well she was certainly feeling those drinks now.

It wasn't until Terran moved her hands to cover her nose from the scent of cooking meat when she fully heard the clanking of chains. This finally got her head back on her shoulders. Terran looked around, causing more clanking. "Aiko?" Terran said in a confused, almost timid voice, at first. But she soon sounded a bit raspy and urgent. "Aiko?!?" Terran whipped her arching body around, trying to spot her friend.

Aiko turned to the direction Terran's voice came from. She was fine- well, not really fine, as they were chained up, but alive. She saw a unicorn and pegasus, as well. Unicorns were a rare sight, even for her despite her constant travelling. She nodded at the two before speaking to Terran, "You're alive! That's good. I don't know where we are, but..." she cast the cat a threatening glare, "I'm about to find out. NO ONE chains up a kitsune without having to pay a price- which can be easily arranged."

Aiko made sure to keep her eyes locked on the gray cat-creature. Sure, the meat smelt delicious to her but it wasn't going to let it get her sidetracked. She wanted a list of answers and wasn't going to let "no" be amongst them. "Why, exactly, are we here?"