Why Hunt When You Can Trap?

Doing this by word count

Job Info:

Almyra caught word of an international job from Iceberg, and spotted a post on a bounty board. Apparently Frostfire was running low on food, and needed someone to help catch some more for them. The girl had long wanted to visit the icy north. She had recently improved her cloak as her sister had directed her on how to long ago, and she was eager to put it to the test. With its newer, more powerful enchantments, it should keep her toasty warm even in the coldest reaches of Iceberg. It seemed that they needed the food rather urgently, so she decided that rather than travel by land through Seven, she would sail. Having been on various jobs with Anastasia and the rest of Team Four Star, Almy had actually gathered up quite a few funds, and could easily afford to book transport on a ship to Iceberg. Still, it would be a rather long journey to get to the village.

After her ship journey, Almy reached port. The air was cold on her face, but upon donning her hood, it was replaced with a pleasant warmth when she found herself growing too cold. She smiled, happy that the cloak worked so perfectly. She looked around a bit before pulling out her book and flipping the pages, opening up one of the various maps of Iceberg she had found and copied. It was a few day's journey from the port, it seemed, so it would be best if she set off now. Looking up towards the sun, she determined which location to go in and set off. It was rather peculiar to those watching. Many people wore heavy jackets and other clothing to stave off the cold, but not Almy. She was perfectly happy in what appeared to be a somewhat thin woolen cloak.

The journey lasted a few days, during which time Almyra couldn't help but take in the snowy beauty of this place. She sat by a fire at night, feeling content. So far she hadn't encountered any animals. Hopefully that would change as she got closer to Frostfire. Upon her arrival, she received many strange looks from the villagers, most of them rather unwelcoming, some confused as to how such a small girl had made the journey here with nothing more than a small satchel and a simple cloak. She noticed a longhouse near the center of the village.

Inside the house, there were several people, all doing various jobs, and one man sitting on a large chair at the head of a table. He was discussing village matters with others at the table. Almyra waited for a break in the conversation to introduce herself. "Hello. My name is Almyra. I'm here to help your village to gather food." She offered a gentle smile and hopeful eyes. The village elder looked her up and down before smiling back. "I wasn't expecting one so small to offer to be one of our hunters. But if you managed to make the journey here wearing only that, well I guess you must have some skills or power." She nodded "Yes, I've wandered much of the world, from Desierto to Stella, Seven, and Fiore, but this is my first time in Iceberg. I've learned to hunt and survive well, though." "Good, you'll certainly need it out here. Please, take these winter clothes, you'll need them if you don't wish to freeze to death out there." One of the others in the lodge began approaching with a coat, boots, and gloves, but Almyra shook her head. "I do not need them. I traveled here with only my cloak. It can guard me against any temperature, hot or cold." "Hmm... very well then. Allow me to give you some more information on what you might find out there." He said.

He spent a few hours explaining the surrounding area, including flora, fauna, and landmarks, as well as drawing a map for her for reference, something she was quite grateful for. Night had fallen by the time she stepped out of the hut, ready to go on her way. As she had explained to him before, she wasn't the strongest, but she was quite adept at setting traps. For larger beasts, she might need some help bringing them back. He let her know that the other hunters from the village would be going out as well, and could easily help her with that. He gave her a room to spend the night in, and shortly before dawn she left the village to go hunting.

The air was brisk and Almyra's breath hovered in front of her face with each exhalation. It was time to get to work. She walked out into the tundra, finding some lightly wooded areas nearby that she could harvest the materials for traps. It also provided some convenient areas to place them. She made note of any tracks or other signs of life that she could find, then there, in the middle of the woods, she pulled out her book and pen and closed her eyes, calling forth the magic of chaos within her. With it, in her deep meditation, she would be able to see the strings and ripples of causality, and use that to track her prey, predict where they would be and when, and set traps to intercept them.

((Word Count 892/6250))

The member 'Almyra Bys' has done the following action : Dice Rolls

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'Monster Dice' :

Almyra's eyes remained closed for only a moment as she called forth Amor Fati. Her eyes slowly opened, now glowing green as she looked at the world with new eyes. Causality was revealed to her. What had caused, what could cause, what was, and what will be all became visible to the woman. It was more than vision, though, she could feel, smell taste, and hear the ripples and strings of cause and effect. With pen in hand, she began to scribble in her book. At first they seemed pointless, messy scribbles, but from the chaos there would soon come order. The scribble became a pattern, as one looked farther out, or closer in, they would find it to repeat itself endlessly. The fractal itself wasn't completely necessary, and didn't completely apply to Almyra's predictions. It was more a tool for centering herself, to allow herself to better focus her mind on the task at hand. For now, she was simply gathering data to use for her actual models. While her using her magic to help set the traps wasn't entirely necessary, a few hours of work before laying her traps would likely save several days of actually hunting and trapping, since she would know when and where what creatures would likely pass through an area, so she would know just what traps to set and where.

The air movements, the needles on the trees, or lack thereof, a broken branch, a large rock; all of these were useful data points, all had an effect. Yes, the tracks of the animals helped to determine where they had been, and thus help determine where they would go. The time for centering had passed, so Almyra turned to a new page and begin to write her notes. She had developed her own writing system, only comprehensible to her, though others could likely learn it given a bit of time, though those not from Desierto would find it harder, as it was based in her native language. The system was a form of short-hand notation in a way. By utilizing symbols to represent several words at a time, or certain recurring ideas in her line of work, she was able to save time and space in writing.

She took the smaller factors into account, the ones whose causes it was less necessary to trace back to their origin. But now came the most complex factors: the tracks. She had seen the tracks of one rabbit, only one; the survivor, the veteran. A lone rabbit among among countless other predators. The last one in the area, it seemed, and so far it had evaded capture by the vast amount of predators in the area. She decided she could neglect catching this rabbit, as there was bigger game to go after that would supply ample food for the villagers. If she eliminated some of them, more rabbits maybe able to enter the area and bring the ecosystem back into balance. It seemed that there was an abundance of the rabbits at one point. With the base of the food chain readily available, the hunters had reproduced, and now it seemed, were consuming their own food supply faster than it could replenish itself. It was no wonder the people here were having trouble finding food. Her work here would not only bring them food in the short term, but also help out in the long term to bring back balance into the food web, allowing for a more stable amount of creatures. She would have to make sure to tell the hunters of the village to ignore the rabbits for a time, and focus on bigger prey in order to cull the things higher on the food chain to allow for those lower to recover from being over hunted.

There were, of course, other tracks. Bigger ones, ones of foxes. There were many tracks of the small predators, many indeed. In the surrounding area that Almy had scouted and could now sense with Amor Fati, she was able to identify no fewer than 10 individual foxes, likely more, almost double that, but it was hard to confirm, even for her, because she was not looking directly at the tracks using Amor Fati, just going over her memories to see the smaller details of them, but with distortion from time, temperature, and other factors, it was difficult to tell just how many foxes there were. That was likely a very large reason for the over hunting of the poor rabbits. The foxes would be easy to trap, still. She would just have to make sure she set the snares somewhere were the little rabbit wouldn't set them off. Or bait them with something the foxes would want.

The other presence of animals she had detected were large predators. She estimated there to be two bears in the area. She probably couldn't hunt them and take them out with a fight, but proper use of traps could kill them, or severely injure them enough that the hunters could come and finish them off. She didn't want to use her magic, since it would badly damage the meat, causing the bodies to go to waste.

Finally there was the apex predator: The HyVulcan. This would be difficult to trap, and even more difficult to kill. She would be able to cripple it with traps, maybe, but she would have to finish it off with her knife. She doubted that the hunters would be able to get to it in time to kill it before it escaped. She would have to wait on hand on the trap. Still, her magic could help her in some way, she thought, as she could counter its spells with her own.

With all her notes in the area taken, she could get to the heavier duty work; making her predictions. She had to take all factors into account. The upcoming weather, the thoughts of the animals, the surrounding trees and rocks and other forms of shelter. To truly trap as well as she did, she one had to not only become one with the prey, but to become one with the world itself. She closed her eyes and set to work.

WC: 1929/6250

Amor Fati side-effects.:

Almyra's eyes opened once more, now glowing a soft green as she saw the world in a new light, heard it with new ears, and felt it with new skin. She could feel, hear, and see the ripples of causality, see the strings that connected all things. She looked down at her book with her notes visible. It had become a veritable spider web as each symbol and word had a string leading to Almyra. She smiled and focused a bit more, focusing on channeling the spell a bit differently. The strings shifted up by a factor, pointing now to what had caused Almyra to write them, turning it into a jumbled mess that few would be able to make out. Luckily, Almyra was one of such few people who could read the strings and feel the ripples without being overwhelmed. Almyra briefly recalled records of newer acolytes pushing themselves too much with the spell and sending themselves into sensory overload seizures. Fortunately she had never done that to herself.

With the world revealed to her she could make her predictions. She decided to start with weather patterns, since they would be a large effect on the animal's behaviors. She looked at her notes she had taken earlier, and then looked around, making more precise observations of what she had seen earlier, as well as using Amor Fati to look at their causes, allowing her to read past weather events. She opened to a blank page and began to scrawl out her equations and figures. Her hand flew across the paper as she worked, the scribbles so hastily made that no one but Almy could read them, even if those trying were to know or have figured out her writing system. The fractal on the page grew larger, forcing her to expand it onto the next page, and the next page. Anyone who could understand the mathematics she was performing (which were very few in this world), would no doubt be astounded by the pace at which she worked through them. She was honestly more limited by the pace at which she could write than by the pace at which she could think. She should really try to find a way to let herself write in her book using only her mind instead of her hands. Her precision and speed would no doubt improve significantly.

It took a few minutes of calculations before she put down her pen and looked over her work. Based on her calculations, tomorrow would be clear, no matter what, the next day had a 90% chance of clear weather, but the winds would pick up, the other 10% chance would be a snowstorm coming. The next day the odds of clear weather decreased to a one in two chance, and then by the fourth day, the snow would most likely be upon the area. She could hopefully capture enough food for the village before the snow came, because trying to hunt or trap in the snow would be difficult as tracks would be covered up and the inclement conditions would make survival difficult, even with her enchanted cloak to guard against the cold. Still, with that major factor of the animal's behavior now predicted, it could be accounted for in order to help her to better figure out where the creatures she was hunting would turn up. She decided to start with the rabbits, as they would be caught with simple snares. The foxes probably could as well, for that matter.

To predict the actions of a rabbit, one had to put herself into the mind of a rabbit, or at least that would help. But simply putting oneself into the mindset of the prey was not enough. One also had to know what the prey's environment would be like, the stimuli of weather, vegetation, predators, mates, time of year, and numerous other factors all had to be taken into account, since putting yourself into the mind of the prey would be useless without knowing the environment the prey would have to be in. Almyra had already gathered her information on the environment, and the ways it would be changing over the next few days. Now came the time to predict the actions of rabbits.

Although weather patterns were her specialty, Almyra wouldn't have too much trouble with finding the paths the rabbits would take as they searched for food while trying to evade predators. Granted, these paths wouldn't be exact. She would be nowhere near as accurate with the predictions as she would be with the weather, but still, her own hunting and trapping experience mixed with her wizardry of mathematical probabilities and chaos theory, graph theory, and game theory would allow her to be far more accurate than most hunters and trappers. And to think, all this ability came at the small price of no longer having an immortal soul, being unable to be healed by magical means and difficult to heal by normal ones, among other bad things. Still, it was totally worth it, since these abilities could be used for so much more than just hunting and trapping. And while she may not have access to an afterlife, they made this life so much more interesting and worth living. She could find enjoyment in nearly any aspect of living. She enjoyed simply the fact that she existed, and felt that, even if her consciousness wouldn't live on, she would still exist through the impact she had on the world.

Returning to the matter at hand, Almyra picked up her book and began to wander, still writing notes as she looked around at the environment around her. A small bit of brush here, some tracks that were clearly followed regularly there. She made notes of them on the map in her book as well as her mental map. Each of these points was where she would set up her snares for the rabbits. It took her a few hours to find all the places the rabbits might go, but she did it. With that part of the map completed she found a spot to sit down again and go to the next step in the process: the foxes. These would take slightly larger snares, but were still manageable. Having mapped out the locations the rabbits would likely be going, she would be better able to figure out where the smaller predators would be, since they would no doubt be trying to track the rabbits as easy prey.

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Almyra walked about, her eyes still aglow, analyzing the environment and her maps, putting herself in place of the foxes she was intent on trapping. She knew what the weather would be like, and she knew the general behavior of foxes from studying nearly everything she had found in a multitude of libraries. All that remained was for her to predict their behavior, to put herself into their position. A simple thing, for Almy anyway. Still, wandering about and looking at all of the best locations took a rather significant amount of time, just as it did with the rabbits, but she was able to get the locations where she wanted to place the traps down. Now would be the more difficult part of the trapping, the larger predators.

Snares didn't really work too well on bears, and she refused to use the ankle traps, not only was it cruel, but it stressed the animal out, making the meat not as good. Besides that fact, she didn't have any. The ground was likely too hard to arrange any sort of pit fall. She would have to try to find a way to lure them into position for something to quickly kill them. For now though, it would be best to at least map out where they would be going. To do this, Almyra was once again sent wandering through the forest, examining each point she thought would be likely to have a bear roam through it. She was able to map out their path fairly well, but the difficult part had now come. How did one trap a bear without the usual leg traps or pitfalls? She looked about more, writing down her observations of the surrounding and possible interactions before finally coming up with something. She would construct the traps later. For now came the study of the final creature, the apex predator of the area: the HyVulcan.

With so much information gathered, regathered, and recalculated, predicting the beast's movement patterns were trivial, though she knew that the HyVulcan was far more intelligent than any of the other creatures in this region. A trap would probably not be enough to kill this. Any trap simple enough to conceal wouldn't catch the creature, and anything complex enough to catch it fully would be noticed by it. Her best bet would likely be to set a trap and remain nearby, something to harm the beast or temporarily disable it, then come in for the kill. Yes, that would do. Still, she had to find a good place to set her trap. She put her mind into that of the HyVulcan, the apex predator. Despite its strength, it wouldn't hunt any of the other predators, those were still too dangerous to it, too high of a risk for low reward. It would likely be on the trail of the foxes and rabbit, rather than the bears. She consulted her book for other information on the beasts, and was able to find areas where other, non meat-based food sources it might go for would be. She was able to find some of its tracks, which were rather fresh. It would likely return to this place. With her map completed, she closed her eyes and relaxed, slowly toning down the power of Amor Fati until it was gone, leaving her feeling somewhat drained, but otherwise alright. With a smile, she got to work setting her traps, starting with the snares for the rabbit and foxes. It took several hours to do so. Between this and mapping out the locations where she would put her traps, it had gone from early morning to mid-afternoon, but she had finally set the last of the traps for the rabbits and foxes. She looked up at the sun and decided that she would have enough time to set the bear traps and HyVulcan traps as well, though it would be night by the time she was done. She wouldn't want to risk fighting the apex predator at night, but still, she was confident that she could defeat it.

By nightfall, all of the bear traps and her vulcan trap was completed. The bear traps were set in locations with the few larger trees. Should the bears get too close, large stakes she had managed to hang in the tree would fall down on them, impaling them. It would either kill them instantly, or they would bleed out rather quickly. Her HyVulcan trap consisted of a large number of stronger snares. She knew that none of them would kill the thing, but they would entangle it, giving the creature difficulty in moving and responding to her actions. While it was bound, she planned to go in for the kill.

She yawned as she finished with her traps before standing up and set up camp near the HyVulcan trap, making sure to place herself downwind of it. She lit no fire in an effort to be as stealthy as possible. She simply climbed up a tree as to not be snuck up on and curled up in the branches with her cloak all wrapped up around her to keep her toasty warm through the night. Hunkering down, she closed her eyes, not sleeping, but still resting as she waited for the HyVulcan to appear.

Partway through the night, she heard the roar of the HyVulcan as it set off her traps. Her head shot up immediately. Almyra smiled, pleased with the results of her work. Still, what was about to come would be difficult physically and mentally for her. She disliked killing, but this was necessary for food. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before jumping down from the tree and heading over to the HyVulcan's location. She reached the point to see that the creature had gotten three of its limbs caught in her snares, and was struggling to free itself from them. Drawing her knife, she snuck up behind it and tried to plunge it into the creature's throat. It struggled against her, making her miss her mark and instead stab into the shoulder near its neck. It continued to thrash about, trying to shake her off. She pulled her knife out and stabbed again, but once more, was unable to land a critical blow.

The creature shook her off of it as one of the snares snapped on its arms. With an arm and a leg free, it tried to turn to face her, but couldn't quite turn all the way. Still, it was able to call down falling hail and icy winds to try to harm her. The hail struck Almy rather painfully, but otherwise it wasn't too bad. She was protected from the icy winds by her cloak. As she came in for another attack, it swung at her, but she was able to duck under its blind attack and work with her knife, stabbing it in the ribs now. Unfortunately, this thing was going to put up too much of a fight for her to kill it quickly. She would need to weaken it before she could actually get a killing blow. She reached forward, smacking the thing in the back of the head with her magic, careful to avoid areas with large amounts of meat that could be harvested. Two spells struck before she backed off as it made another swing. Killing this would take a long time. Still, it looked like it was being worn down slowly. Dropping her knife, she focused her magic a moment, activating her Degrading Blows before rushing in, avoiding another attack from the beast. With the entropic energy gathered around her hands, she struck it with blow after blow, letting her magic to the actual work of damaging it, allowing her to make swift strikes faster than the creature could respond, especially in its ensnared state.

It was a rather arduous fight. The creature took blow after blow without going down, but the ropes binding its arm and leg were strong enough that it couldn't break them. Almyra just had to be careful not to hit the ropes with her own spells, which she managed to do. Eventually, the creature was worn out, its face heavily damaged by Almyra's attacks, and its constant struggling against the restraints and against Almyra wearing it out. It had tried magical attacks, but Almyra avoided them, for the most part, and the biggest one was easily cancelled out using Inevitability. Now was the time to finish the beast off. Deactivating the magic empowering her hands, she stepped up to it with her knife, whispered a few words of thanks to the beast for its meat, along with apologies for killing it so that others may live before plunging her knife into its throat and letting it bleed out. It was still a gruesome death, but the woman was simply not strong enough physically to end it faster, and her magic wasn't designed to kill things, despite the fact that it could be used to do so. As the creature stopped moving she cut the ropes binding it. She spent the night next to the corpse, watching for bears or other creatures that might come to try to snatch it away, but none came. Day came, and Almyra set off towards the village to inform them of her success in killing the HyVulcan. They sent a few hunters with her to go and butcher the corpse, which was still fresh thanks to the cold. She went out to check her other traps to find that quite a few of them had been sprung. She collected the bodies of the foxes and the lone rabbit. She had found a multitude of the bear traps sprung as well, catching all of the bears in the area. She thanked all the creatures killed for their food, muttering softly to each body before she returned to the village to tell them of her success in hunting, and give the locations of the bears to gather up the meat from them. When all was said and done, the village had a good supply of food. They invited her to join them in their feast of celebration.

Spells used: Hand of Change, Shaken Foundations, Amor Fati (non combat use), Inevitability, Degrading Blows
HP: 140%
MP: 35%

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Almyra graciously accepted the offer to attend the village's feast of celebration, during which they would prepare the biggest prize of Almyra's hunt. Thanks to her plentiful harvest of the predators of the area, she they would have more than enough food to last them to the end of winter, and as such, could afford such a feast. With the abundance of foxes culled as well, smaller herbivores could begin moving in in the spring, restoring balance to the ecosystem and allowing for the village to survive on their own in the future. She was given a place to stay and rest before the feast. One of the villagers brought her herbs and poultices to help with the few wounds she had sustained. By the time of the feast, she no longer even noticed their presence thanks to her own medical knowledge and the help of the villager in treating her wounds.

By the time she had finished patching up her wounds and had a decent rest, the feast was ready. The man who had helped her clean herself up lead her to it. Almy hugged the man before they went to the feast and thanked him for helping her out. He was a bit taken aback by how close she had gotten to him so quickly, but quickly realized it was just her hyper friendly nature. He responded with a smile and a pat on the head, which brightened Almyra's mood further. With her escort leading the way, the two proceeded to the feast, Almyra clinging to her new friend's arm.

The entire longhouse was now full of people. Tables had been set up, and the fire in the middle was roaring, leaving the whole place pleasantly warm. There was meat on every plate and mead in every mug. Upon entering, Almyra was given a mug of mead approximately the size of her head. She looked in awe at the giant mug of golden liquid. It was deliciously sweet and gingery smelling. She took a sip, her eyes widening when her lips touched the heavenly mixture. The alcohol gave it a slight, but pleasant burn that went along with the ginger added to the honey wine. She held the massive mug with both hands as she was lead to a seat of honor at the table. She had never received so much attention, and actually cowered away from it, somewhat nervous as she wasn't sure how to react. She was given some of the prime cuts of the beast she had slain, all cooked to perfection. Everyone in the hall raised their mugs to her, greeting her as one of their own. As the drinking and merriment ensued, Almyra drank more and more of the mead. Quickly the night became a blur as intoxication overwhelmed her.

She woke up the next morning in a small cot next to the one of the elder's beds, wrapped up cozily in fur blankets and her own cloak. The female elder was relaxing nearby and smiled to the girl as she woke up. "It seems you enjoyed our mead a bit too much young one. You missed out on some of the festivities because of it. You were looking quite tired, so I arranged for a bed to be brought here so you could rest undisturbed." said the older woman. "How are you feeling now? Any headache?" Almyra shook her head. "Now that's surprising, given how much you drank. You are indeed full of surprises, little one." Almy just gave a rather shy smile in response. "Well, I suppose that the job is done, and you've made many friends, but I'm sure you would like to go back to your home now." Almy nodded, as she had begun to miss her friends in Team Four Star. "I figured as much. We've gotten all of your things packed up for you, and given you your reward with it." The elderly woman said as Almyra got out of bed and pushed her messy hair back down to get it at least somewhat under control before putting her hood on.

She talked with the elder a bit more before the two stepped outside, where they were greeted by nearly the whole village bidding Almy farewell. Where she had entered a rather unwelcome stranger, she left a well-respected huntress and hero to the village. As she set off, the villagers told her that they would inform other villages of her actions, ensuring that she would be welcome in any village across Iceberg. They had tried to get her to keep the coat as something to remember them by, but she felt it would do them more good than it would her, and left it behind, assuring them that she would never forget them. Still, to ensure them that she would have something to remember them by, she took one of the buttons from the coat, since it could easily be replaced by a tailor, but to her, it would hold a special place in her heart as a bit of memorabilia of such a wonderful bunch of people, and because buttons were awesome. She wasn't the type to forget anything, especially such wonderful people. They had also packed in her payment for the job in jewel, which they buried deep amongst her things so she wouldn't dig it out and give it back to them. As she waved goodbye to the villagers, she assured them that she would return someday to see them all again. She would make do on this promise many times in the future, for once Almyra made a friend, she never abandoned them.

On her way home, it seemed that they had sent someone out during the night of the feast to spread the news, and arrange to pay for her transportation home. It seemed the people here, once you got to know them, were rather forcefully generous, resorting to a bit of trickery to give Almyra extra compensation for her work and friendship. Or perhaps it was because they knew she wouldn't have accepted the coat. The thought of it brought a smile to her face, people so nice an generous that they came up with a plan to outsmart her just to make sure she got the payment they thought she deserved. She found the port village a bit more welcoming as she stepped into it. The ship she was planning on riding home hadn't yet arrived, so she spent the night there. The innkeeper let her stay free of charge, likely having already been paid by the runner from the village. She gave the woman a small bow of the head in thanks before heading to her room. She awoke the next morning after a night of pleasant dreams of being with her sister once more. The thought of it brought tears to her eyes, but she wiped them off, and with a stoic face, stepped aboard the ship bound back to Fiore.

Her endeavors in the forest were enjoyable, for the most part, but she found herself wanting companionship more, wanting to be with her other friends in Team Four Star. She still had to talk to Ashe about her sister, something she had somewhat avoided doing by going on other jobs, but the memories kept on coming back, and she decided that it would soon be a good time to discuss them with her. She was growing to see the other woman as another sister to her. That's how Ashe treated her. If Timara was still alive, she was sure the two would have gotten along wonderfully. Ashe was a lot like her in many ways, only she could walk, but that didn't really matter. Walking wasn't important, especially for one as powerful as Timara was in life.

Her thoughts of her sister and Ashe left her mind as she boarded the ship. The sea air snapped her back to reality and brought a smile on her face. How she enjoyed the ocean. The storm didn't end up hitting until the next day, by which time the boat was well away from it on its way to Fiore. It was smooth sailing all the way back home. She stepped off the ship after her journey, a smile on her face. It was time for her to rejoin her friends, taking a train to the Neutral Grounds where, for some reason, Ana liked to live despite the fact that magic didn't work there. Almyra wasn't too fond of it. She liked having her magic and felt sluggish without it, but still, it was Ana's choice and the others agreed to it.

It was a windy day as she waited on the platform for the train, blowing her cloak behind her and taking the hood off of her head, whipping her hair about. The playful wind brought forth a joyous giggle in the small woman as she clutched her beloved doll to her chest, twisting her upper body back and forth happily. It wasn't long before she heard the whistle of a distant train approaching the station. She looked on with bright eyes as she saw the mass of steam-spewing metal approach. It was such a magnificent machine, really. Every cog, gear and beam served the purpose of propelling the mechanical beast forward as it dragged its massive load of cargo, often consisting of thousands of tons of goods, people, and other cargo. They allowed one to ride in comfort, watching the landscape go bye and providing a soothing rumble of the wheels chugging along on the tracks.

The train pulled up beside the platform and she boarded, giving her ticket to the man and taking her seat. As it left, she watched Fiore drift by her for about twenty minutes, her eyes slowly drooping more and more as the dull rumble of the train lulled her into a peaceful sleep, her face pressed rather sloppily against the window. She would awake with each stop, checking to see if it was her own before passing out once more. After a day-long train ride, she reached the neutral grounds and stepped off, but not before wiping off the smudges she left on the window as best she could using her cloak. She was finally home, and it was about time she greet her friends again.

Job completed!

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