Thistles of Circumstance - Equestrian Rain

My teacher was a rather odd specimen, his large wings were the only reason he wasn't doubled over with age. Or maybe it was the seventh eye that never looked directly at you that weirded me out so much.

Despite all his quirks, he was a great master of magic. "Any mage worth his butter won't ever test his wills against another." he said to me one day, "A battle of mages is one of ingenuity."

After seeing his underground aerial reversal mines, I could see what he was talking about.

Having torn another rip through dimensions, both me and Quill fell through the "hole" that connected us to another dimension. That's not really what was happening, but it makes more sense than what was.

I felt bad for the men who had been sent after us, they had only been doing their jobs. Quill has quite the candid way of dealing with things, but I guess it keeps me on my toes. He does what he can I suppose.

We landed rather abruptly on the other side, only to see that we hadn't really changed scenery all that much. The grass was still green, and the trees still covered with leaves. Maybe a bit off color, but that was to be expected.

"Is a smoother landing so much to ask for?"

Possibly I suppose. There are other ways of opening dimensional portals, but I'm not keen on most of them. I'm not a fan of hunting down winged lash-tongues for their eyes, nor do I like stretching myself across time and space. Instead of explaining this to my simple friend, I merely replied,

"Think of it as training. Your masters would be disappointed that you can't land on your feet after just a quick portal jump."

Quill merely gave me a sign with his hand to let me know what he thought about that.

As is our strategy for arriving in unknown areas, we split up. Quill went to scout out the surrounding area for danger, and to see if we accidentally took anything with us. I began to get a feel for the world around me.

Each world has its own ambient magic, but not all of them have the same kind. There isn't much difference between them, but enough to where I have to adjust my spells. I'm fairly quick at the calculations now, but it used to take quite some time before I could cast again.

Once certain I was adjusted, I cast my first spell. My vision darkened, and then quickly returned better than before. Now able to see the magical make up of the things around me, my next spells would be even easier. I heard Quill from across the field we had landed in say,

"You still need that spell? I thought you said you were beyond it now."

Inwardly I smiled. He was right of course, the spell was more of a precaution than anything else. After so many dimensional jumps, my instinct is quite adapt at judging the world around me. However, it had the added bonus of making Quill look like a stick figure, and that was humorous to me.

"I'm sure I said it was beyond you or something of the sort."

I was still a bit irritated at him for killing the bystanders. Not only are we already running, but he isn't making the problem any better by slaughtering anyone who looks at us funny. More importantly though, you never know what will happen when someone dies. That's still one of those things that no one quite understands.

After a few basic mapping spells, among other things, I had found the nearest settlement. Quill had finished his surveying by the time I did this, so he was standing in the field waiting on me.

"What did you find?" He asked.

"Oh this and that. Some form of intelligent life."

"How do you know that exactly? I don't recall your surveying spell being that informative."

I smiled for I knew the information I had would surely annoy him. Stifling my own humor I said,  "Well judging by the way the two forms in the nearest us are going at it, they've got to be civilized in some way."

Without his mask on I could see Quill's head shake with disbelief. The look of annoyance was highly satisfactory.

"Just how does that prove they're intelligent and civilized. Cows do it too, doesn't make them anything of the sort."

My inner smile only grew bigger, I'd wager it reached my eyes. "Toys" I said smugly.

Quill made a curious face then, the one he makes when he's between anger and annoyance, and then threw a dagger at me. Expecting this, I merely returned the dagger to its sheath before it could make contact. Though I'm sure if it had made contact, I would no longer be standing. The fact that Quill has survived this long is a testament to his skill. I debated on telling him that I had seen a house in a village not to far from here, and that's how I deduced the intelligent factor, but I decided not to.

Quill gave me another look that said he meant serious business and asked,

"Okay... Are there any cities nearby?"

I'll be honest, it's hard to be a mage. I have to juggle being insane, grumpy, and snarky all at the same time. At least that's what my teacher told me. I have a really hard time with the grumpy bit I admit.

"No" I replied with my best drawl, "I actually opened a dimension that has herds of nomads with no centralized civilization."

That could be possible really, if I hadn't seen the village already. Quill doesn't know, but I have no idea of where we'll end up. Tholgrain's algorithm for dimensional portals doesn't have room for parameters or coordinates. Instead it just dumps you in a random place, although I'm told it does try to put you somewhere you won't just die immediately. On the bright side, the portals don't leave residue, so no one could follow us through that method.

Quill merely sighed this time, meaning I'd have to improve upon my snarkyness in the future, and just asked for a direction to walk in. Deciding I'd had enough of this field, I moved towards the village.

"Do you think we'll need illusions?" Quill asked.

I opted for a straight answer, "I can only guess. I know it would be easier if I could tell right off, but I can't. The proper term is veil by the way, since we are disguising ourselves with the magic."

"I suppose I should get ready then" He said as he began rummaging amongst his person.

The first dimension we had been chased out of had been because the inhabitants had never seen a humanoid before. After that we had come up with a little test. We find a singular inhabitant, I introduce myself, if they freak out, Quill takes them out. With a sleeping dart or sigil of course. Then I make the inhabitant sort of glaze over the last few moments.

We approached the outskirts of the town cautiously, keeping a lookout for anyone that might try to sneak up on us. The first house had a back door that was luckily left unlocked.  We entered the kitchen area, and heard soft noises from upstairs.

We checked the house out, and found no one else in the living place. Quill went up the stairs, and approached the room echoing noises. My mage sight allowed me to see there was some sort of heavy magic material across the door. Some sort of silencing bubble was my best guess.

Quill looked at me, I nodded, and he flung the door open.

The look on his face, and the look on the locals face will be a memory I hope to keep for awhile. Quill had managed to reveal a small horse of bright color, wearing a towel on its head. The horse opened its mouth to scream, but true to his talent, Quill had a dart in its body before it could. I hadn't even seen him move for that one.

Quill turned to face me and said, "Well... That's new."

I reached up to brush my hair back, forgetting momentarily that it had been blown off not to long ago, "I don't think I've ever seen something not human wearing a towel on its head before."

We both looked down at the creature, who was currently having a nice nap. Contemplating I said, "I suggest veils for now, although our test isn't really conclusive. Put it on the bed will you?"

Quill did so while I pulled out a monocle from what Quill called my funbag. It wasn't really a monocle in the sense that it was used as an eye sight handicap thing. I had... procured it from a local artifact dealer in some other realm before this whole mess started.

It was heavily enchanted, beyond what simple mage sight can do. However, looking through it all the time can cause massive migraines, so I use it for precision work only. Now able to see all the tiny little ley lines running through the creatures brain, I could precisely remove the memory of it seeing us.

Of course if it thought to hard on why it was in bed, it would realize it was forgetting something, but it would be hard pressed to remember what. I would've liked to take time to read more of its memories, but that takes an excruciatingly long time to do.

So instead I took off the monocle, and turned to face Quill. "That should do it, take a look at her, any fine details I'm missing?"

While I'm certainly good at the intricate arts and patience is certainly a requirement, I prefer to leave the detail refinement to Quill. He has a certain... knack for finding all the kinks in any creature's body. Quite creepy really.

"Looks like a normal horse to me. Minus the pastel colour anyways. There seems to be some sort of design on its flank.. Apparently it has a pie tattooed on its arse. There's no extra bones or muscles beyond normal."

"One broody black mini horse veil coming right up."

Quill quickly put in, "Its usually referred to as a pony."

Ignoring him, I put my hand a few inches away from Quill's chest, muttered a few fancy words that don't actually mean anything, and poof. In front of me stood a black mini horse with a silver mane. Of course with my mage sight I could see beyond the veil, not the death one mind you, and see and outline of Quill's real body.

A few changes to the equation, and I appeared to be a deep purple mini horse with a white mane. A very deep purple.

"Y'know" Quill said, "It'd be more believable if half your hair was burnt off."

"In that case" I replied, "I better give you a pointy hat and funny bathrobe, since you are obviously the master of devious magics."

Quill grumbled something I couldn't quite hear, and then my head started to ache a little. Before it could get worse, I uttered the cancel command for the mage sight. The lesser version caries the same risks as the more effective one to be sure.

We left the house before the inhabitant could wake up, and moved to observe the town. It didn't take long before we ran into several other mini horses. The sun, which was a quite larger sun than what I've seen, was just starting to get high in the sky.

In a quiet tone I told Quill, "Mini horses seem to be the dominant species here, at least in this town."

"Again Sil', they're ponies. You're supposed to be the smart one."

"There is a difference between cleverness and smartness you may never know oh broodmare."

Quill stopped for a second, before trying to turn around. I watched him for a second, wondering if I should say anything.

I decided to alleviate his.. well probably well placed fears, "It's a joke Quill. You know, the whole 'I'm an assassin my life is in the dark' broodiness."

He looked me in the eyes and said, "It better be just a joke. After the last time you did that... well I won't be pulling any punches."

I fake sighed and then replied, "Well at least you know that much about the basics of combat. Maybe I should get you an instructor."

Quill ignored my jibe and whispered, "We're getting a lot of looks Sil', are you sure you did this right?"

Well I couldn't be 100% sure, you never can you know. But I think it was safe to say that my veils would hold up under any scrutinization. "Oh whoops, silly me, I forgot to give you four legs." I replied in my best drawl.

In my normal voice I continued, "They're just seeing some unknown folks walking through. Though you'd draw attention anywhere we go regardless."

Dutifully he ignored me again and he whispered, "Well you better put up one of those language spells now. They don't speak anything I recognize. We've probably already drawn some suspicious speaking like this.

Adding to the list of things Quill is good for, hearing things I can't because I've been next to too many explosions, and knowing a lot of languages. I can't confirm the second one, but honestly if the first wasn't true, he'd have to be deaf. Magic can only repair so much unless you start sacrificing things.

Without a word I brought up the calculation that would create my own customized language compulsion. I'm very proud of it if you must know. Instead of using a translating spell that would require we have two people that know one language each, I cast a compulsion on us that makes us want to be understood by everyone.

It forces us to speak whatever language the listener knows best, even though we don't know. Pure genius I must say. Of course we had a few mishaps in early development where you couldn't lie or even hide your true intentions. That was a bit awkward. The only issue here is that I must also cast compulsions on each individual that we wish to understand. Its the same spell of course, it just has to be recast quite a few times.

We used to have an amulet of tongues that I had fashioned, which gave off an aura of this compulsion, another thing of genius, before some rabid sea otters stole it and smashed it against some rocks. Quill of course in his ignorance blamed me for not putting indestructible enchantments on it. Because he knows so much about enchanting.

Now we had some jewelry that I procured with a lesser version of the same enchantment. This one couldn't always stay on like my first one, but it could go a week before cutting out. Of course leaving it off when you sleep, or when you aren't using it could prolong the use greatly. The amulet had used some rather rare ingredients to make its effect permanent. The jewelry rather had to absorb the magic around it when it could to keep itself running. I'd give this to Quill should we ever split up, since he couldn't cast the spell as I could.

Meanwhile I suppose something odd must have happened when I cast the compulsion because Quill gave me an odd look. Before he could say something though, someone else did.

Now I couldn't understand the words at first but a quick cast at the offending other purple pony at least let us hear the last few words.

"...not possible, you don't have a horn to do that with. There it is again."

Now I know I'm usually a composed and reasonable man, but the words were out of my mouth before I could stop myself,

"Oh I've got a horn alright, and it can do..."

Quill stopped me from saying anything more, and began dragging me away forcefully. While he did so he loudly stated, "Sorry my friend is a bit ill and isn't quite right in the head. We need to get going sorry again." And under his breath said, "Not that being ill has anything to do with you being wrong in the head."

When we were safely away from the not-quite-as-purple-as-me one, Quill let me go. I straightened myself and respectably said,

"You shouldn't interrupt a man when he's getting his grove on."

Quill offered me another hand gesture in return while saying, "When you cast those spells you're head lit up like a torch, and everyone was giving you really weird looks."

I shrugged and said, "I've got a killer angler fish impression, what of it?"

I got a punch to the arm for that one. I thought that was a good one too, at least deserving of a kick to the shins. Not that it really mattered, since I intercepted it with a well placed shield.

"Well apparently you didn't notice anything while talking about you're own horn. Because she certainly had one."

I put my hands up in a defensive manner, "Whoa whoa whoa. Now I'm all for voyeurism, but that's a bit too much. Then again you are the assassin guy."

"Ninja" Quill replied curtly, "And not that you prat, a horn as in a unicorn. Magical horse type deal. Plus her horn was going off the same way your head was, as was the basket that was floating next to her head."

Okay so his noticing things in the background skill is good, I was just preoccupied with something else. Complex calculations or something. However, knowing that he was more likely to be right than wrong, I did adjust my veil to fit his description.

"How's that?" I asked.

"Better, but the horn needs to be shorter, her's was only half that length."

Before I could reply, Quill held up his fist. However, I will point out that my horn did not change length.

"Anything else you noticed oh far-sight the assassin?" I asked in my memorable drawl.

"Ninja." He corrected, "And yes I did. The town has a circular structure with a river running right through the middle. It's not big enough to be a city but it's quite large nonetheless."

"Well then." I replied a bit put out, "Shall we go find some food?"

Quill pulled out the purse we carried our usually paltry sums in. Bounty hunting should pay well, but between having to cut out early, and other issues, we have enough problems simply surviving. Thankfully money is one of those things that keeps changing to fit wherever we end up. How? I don't rightly know.

After counting what we had he said, "Judging by how much we had last time, we should have enough for a few days."

He pulled out a single golden coin, "Although there are less of these than we had gems. So lets hope that they're also worth more. Although we seriously need to actually cash in on a bounty this time. We can't afford another mix up, literally."