Pierre listened and watched intently. " The runes I am familiar with may be more of a fragment of the runes necessary to use here. " He scratched his chin to think a minute. " I wonder if the source of magic here is more stable than that which I am accustomed to. That could explain why a cruder rune...

O! Will you be staying,
Or will you be flying?
Your ponies are straying!
The daylight is dying!
To fly would be folly,
To stay would be jolly!
And listen and hark
Till the end of the dark
To our tune.
Ha ha!

(Somehow Songhue made me think of this.)

Steven watched her leave the room, and then started looking around. He was lying in a bed, with a few blankets over him. A damp cloth had been placed on his forehead. The room itself was no larger than his own bedroom, but it seemed to be filled with far more. The door of the room was across from th...

" Well, part of my magic you've already seen. " Pierre started putting the strips of meat on a couple sticks. " I drew a rune of breaking on the log before swinging my hatchet, and the log broke in one stroke. Some of my magic is rune based, and some of it simply is. Other runes I can draw are ones ...

" While leaving was an option, with how things were, it wouldn't do much good. If those closest to danger always left, that danger would be allowed to advance. Both enemies took everything they could take. We fought to hold the cities closest to danger, and that implicitly protected the rest of them...

Pierre laughed a bit. " I have nothing against hunting itself. I dislike waste. To answer your statement though about how it is where I'm from, there are differences from being out in the wild like this, and how everyday life is. I spent most of my time in a village, one that was far enough to be sa...