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Chapter One : Livellel

Clay-like buildings rose in a scattered way throughout the village, as if whatever builders had put them there had put little consideration to their organization.  A faded red tile roofed the houses, along with various odd wooden poles sticking up at different angles.  The effect was like a get mass of brambles and trees, though no such vegetation could be seen growing anywhere on the ground but on the outskirts of the village.  The earth was lush with grass, though, and flowers grew beside the wooden sidewalks.
Perched comfortably on one of the rooftops, sitting on a pack stuffed with something square, was a young-looking fellow holding a small orange flag in his hand.  Whatever the purpose of the flag was, he seemed unconcerned with it, his face upturned and beaming in the sunlight that flooded onto him.  His expression was that of pure contentment.
“Hmm.  How marvelous.” he muttered to himself, grinning foolishly.  A slight breeze ruffled his earthy colored hair, causing his head to tip to the side, wallowing in the pleasure he felt from the soft airy touch.  His mouth gaped open in an obvious smile, eyes still closed as if he were half-asleep.  The hand limply holding the flag slackened, the fluttering orange cloth dancing about.
A rather loud and angry voice erupted from lower down, startling the young man from his daze.  His eyes widened in surprise and he fumbled with the flag urgently, hopping up to his feet quickly.  He darted over to the edge of the roof until his toes popped off the edge, then deftly stood at an angle in that position and began whipping the flag back and forth in a small, rapid motion with one arm.  His mouth had drooped to a line short of a frown.
“See me?” he called out in a distracted voice, peering unenthusiastically to the road beneath him.  A slightly fat person rushed from between a tight pair of buildings, head rolling and craned upwards.  Upon sighting the young man, he trotted over until he was close enough to be heard clearly.
“What’re you doing, boy?  Get a move on!”  His voice was furious in a non-specific way, as if he wasn’t angry at anything in particular.  Or at everyone and everything, the young man didn’t really know.
“But I have all afternoon.  Don’t I?” he called back.  Even though the larger man was a good enough distance below to be blurred somewhat, it was still evident that he was seething.
“Sure, kid, BUT I DON’T!  NOW HURRY IT UP!”  At the last the young man jumped, hopping backwards.  His mouth had taken on a truly downcast, almost half-square shape, his brows limp above his gray-brown eyes.  Taking a quick scan about his rooftop, he grabbed the pack he had been sitting on and began jogging across the tiles.  Reaching the edge of the roof, he flung his legs out before him and leaped.
The fat man muttered some inaudible curses and tried to follow him, though being on the ground, he had to detour between the buildings.  The young man grinned slightly, but was otherwise focused on his task.  He paused to stare into a window across the street, then continued his jog across the rooftops.
He stopped suddenly for no particularly apparent reason, staring at the roof.  His bare toes stared back at him.  Intent on the tiles, he brought his pack to his chest, slipping his hand under the flap at its mouth and fiddling with the button that held it closed.  Eyes still aimed at his shadow, he flipped his pack open and proceeded with flipping it upside-down, dumping its heavy contents on the roof.
A small, head-sized box rolled onto the roof, making a metallic sound though it looked wooden.  The young man knelt beside the box, his gaze shifting to it, and set both hands onto its sides.  Gently, he slowly turned it over, then set it down on the roof again on a different side.  The box rested silently for a moment, then shuddered, became still again, and abruptly spat out a puff of smoke from the side that was facing up.  There were no holes in the box, and the corners seemed to be sealed together perfectly.  The young man made an exasperated sound.
“Hey, HOL!  HOL!  See me?” he shouted, discarding the box and creeping to the edge of the roof.  He cast around with his eyes for the fat man, fluttering his orange flag with a hand.  Muffled crashing sounds came from an alley somewhere close to the building the young man was on, followed by the fat man stumbling into the street.  He was huffing from exertion, and had to stop with his hands on his knees for a moment.
“Boy?” he bellowed from the awkward position.
“See me?” came the mandatory reply.  As the man looked up, the young fellow waved the flag in a distinct, slow pattern.  A strangled sound came from below.
“You sure?” the man roared, followed by a frustrated swipe of the flag in reply.
“No, I was just joking.” called the young man sarcastically.  He heard furious huffing coming from the large man.
“Then just wait there for me!”
“Why?  I can’t help you fix it.” said the young man.  He glanced back, staring at the spot he had dropped the box on earlier.  Slowly, as though from some deep underground vibration, the cube began to shift from the place he had set it on.  The young man hurried over and replaced the thing to its place, wedged the flag against it and a tile, then scurried back to the edge of the roof again.  “You better hurry it up, Hol.” he called, not necessarily in a cruel way.
Most of the houses had a series of ladders, stairs, or ramps that lead up from the main street to the roof, whether constructed onto the house or in the alley beside it.  On the particular building the young man waited on, a steel ladder was secured to the clay-like wall beside the door, rising up straight to the edge of the tiled roof.  The big man took to this immediately, and, despite his size, he crawled up deftly and with obvious experience doing so.  He was soon pulling himself up beside his younger associate, squinting at the box.
On closer inspection, one could see the man was not exactly fat, but built heavily and with large limbs fit for power more than mobility.  He wore a simple, sweaty white shirt that currently clung to his massive stomach, and a tool belt hanging lazily to his waist.  It housed a hammer, a pouch filled with nails, and several other compartments, large and small, that held their own mysteries.  Across his shoulders, like a bundle of extremely large arrows, was tied a neat collection of the same odd-shaped poles that stuck up from many of the rooftops already.  These, however, were of a gleaming bronze complexion, whereas the others were of a darker, more ominous and natural color.  The man’s eyes had deep, powerful gray irises, which were currently focused on the box.  It had shifted again, and rotated slightly.
“It’s quite lively, don’t you think?  What color is it, Rif?” he inquired of the younger man.  “Can you even see it?
… Rife?”
Rife had gone quite; his gaze as well locked onto the phenomenon, though his sat higher up than Hol’s.  His eyes were calm, peaceful and relaxed as a first impression, but then again, they usually seemed that way when he was working.  But his brows were clinging to the middle of his forehead - something about the seen distressed him.
“Oh, I can see it.” he muttered, still crouching as if on the verge of some ledge, though he had moved farther up the roof when Hol had joined him.  His eyes took in a different sight than the larger man.
Where he had set the box the roof was pale, almost sickly, and from it rose a gush of color that pillared into the sky for a few hundred feet before fading into the air.  It was not of any substance quite describable with natural words, the closest comparison coming to what wind would look like if it bore color and substance, not being smoke or full with debris.  Having this colorful mast seemingly rising through it, the box quivered constantly at a low level, almost indiscernibly.
“Blue wind.” he said simply.  Rife pulled his eyes from the thing and looked at Hol.  “Blue like… water, without substance and with sun shining through it.  And alot bigger than usual.”  The large man made a huffing, snorting sound in the back of his throat.  Then he looked back at the pillar.
Without saying anything, Hol shuffled towards the box, and with a smooth motion, unleashed one of the staffs from his back and struck it unceremoniously into the center of the box.
The box seemed to have a violent reaction to this insult, beginning to immediately hiss and shudder, and struggle in an almost living way against the pole that impaled it.  After a second or two of this rumble, it spewed gouts of blue smoke as if sick.  Hol stumbled back, waving the smoke away from his face, but kept his eyes on the box.  Rife watched silently.
This gaudy show of color didn’t last very long.  The box stilled, the pole unperturbed by the reaction.  The bronze color had been replaced by the darker mood of its twins, making the thing look now like a tall walking stick.  Rife let out a pent up breath, rolling backwards until he lay supine on the roof with his arms outstretched like wings.  Hol scratched at the stubble beard on his chin, frowning.
“That was different.  It doesn’t usually spit all over us.”  He peered down and Rife, who looked dizzy.  “You okay, boy?”
The young man nodded from where he was stretched out.
“Then we should head over to Jo...”
“Not that good...” mumbled Rife quickly, cutting him off.  His eyes were closed so tightly they wrinkled the bridge of his nose.  He brought one long-fingered hand to his forehead and covered his eyes, moaning in his throat.
“What’s the matter with you, then?”
“I’m okay… just give me a minute…”  Rife’s lips curled downward suddenly until they nearly deformed his face, another muffled groan rumbling in his throat.  Hol gave a momentarily concerned look, then shook his head and glanced upwards.
“You go home, a‘ight?  Even if you feel better.” he ordered, positioning himself on the ladder.  He paused before sliding down, giving Rife a hard look.  “Straight home.  No wandering.  I’m supposed to watch over you for your parents, you know.”
“My parents?  I’m older than that.  I usually watch over them.” he replied in a pained, nauseous but good-humored voice.  He grinned.
Hol harrumphed, then slid down his ladder and vanished.  Rife frowned again, slowly setting one of his hands onto his stomach.
“Easy.” he said in a slow, persuasive manner.  His eyes cracked open, taking in the whole incredible serene azure of the sky, disrupted only by distant puffs of white cloud.  The stream of blue wind was gone.  Taking a few deep, slow breaths, he pushed himself up until he was sitting.  His eyes turned maliciously to the box.
“You…” he muttered, falling forward onto his hands.  He crawled forward on all fours, stopping shortly before the box.  He glared down at it.  “Blue smoke?  What’s up with that?” he waited for a moment, angrily, as if expecting an answer.
Suddenly, unexpected, he laughed, almost giggling, a vibrant smile replacing the frown.  “Never mind.” he chuckled, grabbing the box by two of its widths.  With one rapid motion, he jerked the box towards him.  The pole wavered, like a harp string plucked by a finger, but it became still again.  It was firmly rooted into the roof, the tiles placed around it, as though it had always been there without the solid box.  He searched around for his bag, slung it over his shoulder, and dropped the box into it.
His mouth took on a slight grimace when he stepped forward too quickly.  Flinging his left leg out, he slowly dropped forward onto it.  Then he flung out his right leg, completed the same slow procedure, and stood for a moment.  He let out a breath, and shook his head.
“Okay, slowly, then.” he said to himself, his eyes taking on a determined look.  He bent his knees and lowered himself, then shuffled forward with his arms stretched out before him, walking like some kind of monstrous cat.  He worked his way across the roof and toward the edge opposite to where the ladder and street was.
The building was squarish in shape, but tall, with more than four stories and several balconies and tiled canopies growing like mushrooms out of its sides.  Many of the other houses had more or less similar construction about them, though some bore random boardwalks that led out apparently to nowhere, rope ladders and bridges connecting to impossible places on other houses.
Rife hopped off the edge confidently, without hesitating to investigate where he was hopping, and landed on one of the balconies.  Still hunched over, he took hold of the rope that was tied to a ring below a window beside him, then flung himself over the railing before him, slid down the rope for a short distance, then dropped himself.  His feet landed on a black wiry pole sticking out from the neighboring building.
He paused there for a moment; seeming to be perfectly balanced with only a fourth of either foot perched on the pole, and rubbed his stomach again.  Muttering something under his breath, he turned, and jumped off to the side.  He sailed through the air, for what to any other person would seem dangerously long, and landed on a lower roof.  He stumbled from his obvious momentum and fell forward onto his face.
He muttered more inaudible words under his breath, his face planted into the tile.  His eyes rolled upwards slowly.
“They lowered their roof.  Without leaving a sign up.” he growled.  The rooves in the village had different layers to them, easily assembled and disassembled.  The second layer from the top of the building was a muffler of sorts – there was usually a bit of roof traffic – and was in the process of being repaired.  He huffed for a moment, then slid his hands forward until he could push himself up to his knees again.  Slowly, Rife started to rise to his feet, staring forward with a determined frown.  After having reached the position he had taken to earlier, he paused, eye widening.
He chuckled.  “Well, seems it cured my stomach!  Thank you!”  He giggled deeply in his throat and smiled, then took off at a jog to the other side of the house.  Hopping in a particular pattern, he launched himself from the building and landed lightly on another roof, close enough to be reachable, and proceeded with his roof jumping for a time, still wearing the good smile on his face.  With arms maneuvering like the tailwing on a bird, he zigzagged and took sudden turns from house to house, seeming to take to no obvious direction.  However, the confidence in his chosen route and the fact he made most of his jumps, climbs, hops, and slides with his eyes closed and his face tilted up at the sky, said that he knew where he was heading and had been that way many times before.
Suddenly the houses appeared to open up and leave a clearing of sorts; a strange, vastly large platform suspended by thick wires between the buildings close to it and sitting on an odd arrangement of stilts occupied this clearing.  He slid down a rope with his feet, then dropped onto this platform and looked around himself.  It was wooden beneath, thick dark bars forming x shapes between the legs that supported the top.  The top area was massive, larger than many of the houses put together, and held a garden of sorts.  Marble stone fountains grew up seamlessly from a bounty of verdant small-leafed trees.  No patch of dirt could be found here, every possible space was filled with a variety of trees or a carpet of moss.  Tiny, hip-high bushes spread throughout the ground like miniature green clouds, soft looking leaves chattering together in chiming voices.  Tall, mammoth trees thicker than any man could wrap his arms around rose, covered with a delicate fur of moss, in what could only be described as an artistically random pattern.  Smaller trees, willows, and thin, lofty vegetation grew where they would, no tree was smothered by the taller ones, and all had a pleasing design to the eye to behold.  Many subtle shades of green filled every space, even the shadows seemed subdued by it, and there was, where the taller plants grew closer together, a speckled paint of light spattered across the mossy earth.  It was a haven of flora, undisturbed by any walking creature that might upset it.
The pack slid from Rife’s back, a look of true, complete calm and joy overcoming his features.  His head lolled back on his shoulders as he breathed in the earthy aroma given off by what now surrounded him.  Sighing quietly, he simply walked further into the forest, his arms limp at his sides.  His eyes were half-lidded, but not witless or tired.
“I will go home, but surely a few minutes would be all right, wouldn’t it?  This is on my way anyway, so I’m just passing through.” he said to himself.  He shook his head slightly.  “This is probably the safest place in town, anyway.”  Suddenly, he veered left into a gaggle of wiry reed-like plants, shoving through them gently until he came upon a shadowed ring of the largest trees in the garden.  The moss here grew in limitless amounts, in many thick layers as that his feet sunk almost past his toes.  Beside one of the trees sat a fountain, so immersed and inconspicuous among the foliage it was hard to see.  Rife paused beside this smooth marble structure, coming up to his elbows in height, and gazed into the calm reflective image cast by the water it held, spattered with supple bits of shadow.  He stared at himself, his features, for a time, running his finger delicately across the surface of the water, rippling his face with the tiny waves.  He smiled, more so at the feel of the water than at his visage, and dropped suddenly to the ground, using the moss as a cushion, so he was sitting beside the fountain and against the trunk of the tree behind him.
His eyes turned up languorously, drinking in the canopy of leaves above him.  Patches of blue and sun sprinkled through moderately, giving the area a cool, mottled hide.  Rife folded his arms behind his head, sighing, and let his eyelids droop closed.  His chest almost immediately took on the slow, rhythmic rise and fall of sleep.  No animal sang within this forest, but there was a sort of music, a magnificent orchestra of leaves and branches and fountains that clattered, shivered, and clapped together to fill the air with flowery song.  A soft din that was there and not, like a shadow seen from the corner of the eye.
Rife wasn’t exactly sleeping, he didn’t have any deep dreams and he was still somewhat aware of his surroundings, but he failed to notice the passage of time.  The wind increased and decreased sporadically, the sun that filtered through the leaves brightened as noon came on, and dimmed slightly as the day passed that mark.  It was still hot outside, if not for the wind, would have been uncomfortably so, but as it was, Rife was content enough to lose track of himself.  Fanciful daydreams filled his head, of his own making, and roamed from logical to degenerately not so.  He wrote stories in his mind, lost interest, and began another one.  This was how he usually dozed, with his imagination wandering where it would until he either woke or fell asleep.
His reverie had drifted into flying creatures, beasts that glided through the air with great, feathered wings.  They were long and scaled, with ruffs of fur along their spines and at the ends of their tails and heads.  Horns sat like a crown around their skulls.  They swam through the air, floating like a weightless leaf caught upon the wind.  Two pairs of taloned arms and legs were tucked against their sleek bodies.  They were beautiful in their shape and sun-shimmering scales, but he disliked the faces – shaped like the beak of a predatory bird, bone-like, it was unlike the rest of their figure, unnatural, almost as if something had stuck a stony mask on their heads.  They emitted a peculiar droning, shrieking roar.  Rife’s face knotted at the sound, his mouth quirked downwards.  The sound continued at a pitch that seemed both low and high at once, fixing itself in his ears.
When it persisted, his mind began to reel.  It rubbed against how his dream should be, it seemed unnatural.  He began to come out of his daze and notice the aches his position had caused in his arms and back.  What was more, however, was the knowledge that came to his mind, between the time it took his eyes to flash open and the realization of the distinct smell that came to him, that the sound was a foreign object from his dream.
He opened his eyes to see one of the very monsters from his daydream, glaring into him with two fierce, yellow eyes.  Its head was as large as Rife’s torso, and an inch from his face.  The boy’s mouth hung open in terror; his arms were stiff at his sides, useless, with his fingers in a clawed rigor.  The two calm, peaceful gray-brown eyes previously his were now a wide collection of horror and surprise.  His thoughts had vanished to some other place; all other coherency was gone to him.  He only stared back at this huge beast that, moments earlier, he had figured was beautiful.
When he didn’t move, the creature growled and let out a breath through its nostrils, blowing smoke into Rife’s face.  His eyes watered, and his mouth quivered, and his silence broke.  Without pausing for dignity’s sake, he threw his head back and screamed at the top of his lungs.
The monster shrieked its fury back at him, stepping back in annoyance and surprise.  It huffed and puffed smoke from its nostrils, raising its head back on its long, muscular neck.  It’s mask-like face split open to form the jagged line of a mouth stretched bleow its eyes, revealing a black gum filled with two rows of teeth.  The eyes glinted as it stared forward.
Rife realized what the purpose of its action was quickly, and the scream died into a gasp as he threw himself, to the best of his ability, away from the tree as the great snouted head struck forward.  Nicking his shoulder, the beast’s nose and teeth sunk into the bark and shattered it with an incredible explosion noise, sending shards of bark flying out in all directions.
The young man scrambled, unable to get to his feet in his hurry, and fled as fast as his shambling-crawl could take him.  The monster whipped its head around, its agitation grown to become a seething, obvious aura.  The cloudy gray scales along its neck shivered and rose slightly along with the soft fur lining its spin, such as the hackles on a dog would, and it stretched out from its previous crouching position.  Its tail unraveled itself from around the things legs, becoming easily as long as the rest of its body, lashing from side to side.  Its four legs seemed to be a mix between a hunting bird and a big cat, with four fingers and a thumb, each with a large talon on its end.  As it stood, it became a menacing thing.  Rife felt that his heart would have sunk into his feet with hopelessness if it weren’t already lodged in his throat.  He fled.
The beast began to run.  Rife couldn’t see it, as that his nose was pointed in the direction of his escape, which happened to be away from the creature, but the sound was in itself terrifying, considering his situation.  An airy whoosh sound issued from its wings as it leaped forward, its padded, taloned feet making surprisingly little noise as it crossed the mossy floor.  By the thumping behind him, the image that came to his scattered wits was that of a feline, sure and fast, silent, lithe, and most definitely about to catch up to him.
Suddenly, it stopped.  A strangled cry issued from behind Rife’s gaping teeth, and without thinking, he stumbled and flung himself to the ground.
The air moved, his hair was flung forward, and his loose, pale shirt flipped up almost past his head.  Rife gazed up in time to see the large body of the creature sail overtop of him, having leapt before he fell; it missed him and struck the ground where his head ought to have been.  Because of the lazy relationship the moss had with the ground, the furry green gave way to the force of the great feet that dug into them, and the beast sped forward with its momentum.  Unable to stop itself, the thing shrieked as it shouldered into a tree, its back crumpling in on itself, head and neck twisting back.  The tree creaked deeply, but didn’t topple from the blow, leaves chattering its agony.  The monster groaned in an oddly human way, but remained where it was, tangled on the ground.  The tip of the tail twitched and flipped over.
Gasping, Rife lurched to his feet, turned, and fled in the other direction.  The creature growled after him, but it’s attempts at getting back up again were not succeeding.  He flew through the trees with little care as to how they treated him, slapping and scratching his face and arms.  Blood dripped from his shoulder where the monster’s teeth had nicked him, and a shard of the tree’s bark was lodged into his back, but he failed to notice these.  He was soon in a wild patch of willows.  Though he couldn’t see where he was going, he seemed to have a good enough memory of this place to keep in his direction.  Rife’s arms were stretched out before him, nimbly swatting the slender branches aside from his path.  At last, he tore out from the huddling vegetation, and burst into the clearing he had come from originally, where he could make his getaway into the town.
And ran headlong into another of the creatures.  This beast had been standing in the clearing, clearly studying his abandoned pack, when he collided with its leg.  Rife’s head came up to its shoulder.  His head whipped up in dismay, as the aquiline face slowly peered down towards him.
Rife’s first thought was that the first beast had beaten him here, by some feat of silence and speed, but he soon realized this was an obvious mistake.  This one was more magnificent, if so could be said through absolute terror, and clearly older.  Mature, with eyes that shone an exotic type of intelligence, the fur was longer and better groomed.  Large wings were folded neatly over black scales.  It stared down at him, not with anger or surprise, but curiosity.  Its head rose, and revealed even more fearsome teeth than the younger one possessed.  Its muscles tightened, as if it were readying itself to chase after him when he tried to flee away from it.
Rife, desperately, seeing that the edge of the platform was behind the beast, leapt forward into a run, straight past the creature.  It let out a puzzled, low thrumming sound as he darted across, close enough his shoulder brushed against its own scaled arm, apparently surprised he would dare get so close to it, and choose that direction in which to run.  It relaxed and peered at the spot he had been for a moment, then idly lifted its head and followed his movements behind it.  It lashed its tail at him, but Rife caught this movement and jumped over it and ran on as fast as he could.  It growled lightly, and turned as if to make after him.
Both characters flinched and paused in their antics when a huge, fiery explosion erupted from several places on the platform.  The monster swung its head around, gazing with its dark yellow eyes at the forest.  A rippling in the air followed the explosion, as well as angry plumes of black smoke, rising up into the sky.  Cracking noises filled the air; some tops of the larger trees suddenly fell.  The creature huffed, and began walking towards the trees.
Rife was frozen with shock.  He stared, unbelieving, as smoke clogged the air above the trees, and the taller plants began to drop.  The platform shuddered.  His arms were limp at his sides, his fingers lifeless, and his knees sagged until he looked like a scarecrow.  His eyes were wide, and dismayed.
“No, not the trees.” he uttered breathlessly, his mouth distorted into a gaping frown.  He lifted one arm, his fingers reaching for the trees.  His voice caught in his throat and he hiccupped, his eyebrows twitching.  He took a step forward.  “Please don’t destroy them.” he begged, though there wasn’t a living being close enough to hear him.
Suddenly, the first beast he had encountered broke through the stand of willows.  It spotted him, and its mask rose like lips, baring its teeth in fury.  It snorted curling tendrils of smoke from its nostrils, and spread its wings slightly, as if to make itself menacing.
Rife gasped and suddenly came back to himself, his arms flying up and wind-milling in his haste to turn and run.  He scrambled, half-falling forward so many times he was almost a four-legged creature.  The monster behind him whooshed, the familiar thumps sounding from the ground.  Rife cried out in terror when he realized that before it must have been toying with him, for the pace it took now was faster than anything he had ever believed was possible from a living animal.  He had only taken a few scrambling steps when the force of its breath sent him tumbling.
He reached the edge of the platform.  Rife didn’t have time to hop up to the ropes, or jump to one of the ramps, or staircases, and definitely no time to cling to a ladder.  He heard a hissing noise, and felt moisture closing in on his neck.  Rife made a sound somewhere between a scream and a yell, and took the last available option to him – he launched himself off the platform.
For a moment he sailed through the air, like one of the creatures had with their brilliant wings, but then he began to fall.  He lost sight or knowledge of everything else.  The ground was a quite a ways away from him, but it was speedily racing up to reach him.  Hopelessly, he tried to slow himself.  Having spend nearly a lifetime wandering upon rooftops, he had become somewhat good at falling, but he had never fallen from such a height, at such a speed.  He would obviously die if he hit the ground.  His eyes expertly locked onto a pole that was reaching out of one of the support beams below the platform.  Knowing he would break something, but hoping that it would help stop his descent, he reached out until his hand was even with it, and let it race towards him.
The pole hit him harder than he could have imagined.  If an object can be malevolent, the pole definitely had some kind of animosity towards him.  His hand latched onto it, his body twisted in the air, and kept going.  He swung violently, then the force of his inertia hit his arm full force as his body discovered that the arm wasn’t coming with it.  An agonizing, unbelievable pain exploded in his fingers, wrist, elbow, and shoulder.  There were noises, but he couldn’t hear them above the pain that struck him.  His mouth flew open, his hand flew open, and he flew sideways.
His fall had hardly ceased at all.  The only difference he had made was that now instead of a straight, downwards plummeting drop, he was arcing temporarily towards the ground, partially sideways.  His head was floating elsewhere, having been scattered by failure and the pain having his arm nearly ripped from his body had caused.  For a moment he couldn’t see where he was flying to, or what he was flying into.
His head came into contact with something smooth and soft.  He jerked out of his disorientation and, instinctively, clung to whatever it was with his arm.  He brought his face down and his knees up, wrapping around this object that had come between him and the ground.  His face met with something soft like silken fur.  The realization came to him abruptly.
Suddenly the object became clear to his eyes.  The fur was the light wooden color of sand, the scales a pale golden-wheat color.  It was one of the monsters he had landed on, by some chance of luck, or lack of luck, he had fallen onto the beast as it was sailing along beside the platform.  A sound tried to escape from his throat, but it died before it became anything substantial.
The monster keened, its wings faltering for a moment.  With its long neck it glanced back at him, eyes wide and mouth gaping, as if it were surprised.  Rife was too horrified by his situation to react to its stare.  Its scales were smooth and clean, the ruff of fur on this one wasn’t very thick, and he was finding difficulties hanging onto it with one arm.  He began sliding to one side, his fingers desperately trying to work their way under the scales, to find some kind of life-saving grip, but to no avail.  They were soft, but it was almost impossible to dig his fingers beneath them.  Rife began thrashing and digging with his knees, trying to push himself upwards, but he managed only to knee the thing in the flank, repeatedly.  The creature keened again, louder, and suddenly, without the slightest warning, rolled.
It was odd.  The thing was so quick about it, Rife didn’t know it had happened until after.  Its wings cut into two different directions, the beast flipped belly-up, and log-rolled several times in rapid succession, as though it were in water.  Rife had been dislodged so abruptly he seemed to hang in the air for a moment, then began to fall again.  He shrieked, upside-down, and hit the thing’s wing.  Rife slid off the feathered mass and tumbled downwards.  Air pummeled him with its placid arms.  By now, his mind was such a wild area, he almost couldn’t tell in what direction he was falling, though that was obvious.
Something much harder than the monster broke his fall.  His shoulders struck it first, and whatever was beneath him broke immediately.  Chips of tile and wood flew above his head.  His eyes were tightly shut, teeth clenched, his arms raised upwards.  The impact tore through what was left of his mind, and as his body floated for a time in comparison, while his vision became speckled with dark splotches.
Expecting some solid floor would be the end of him, it came as almost more of a surprise than breaking through the roof when he something slapped him.  Compared to the shattering wood and tile he had experienced seconds earlier, this bodily slap wasn’t overly mind-boggling, but still excruciating.  He tried to cry out as every inch of his back was tormented with millions of needles, but he was engulfed by something cool and wet.  His eyes flashed open.
Everything had a hazy blue color, bubbles raced up from his mouth.  Rife realized abruptly that he was in water, and the slap had been him hitting it flatly on his back.  His mind was in an uproar and he couldn’t figure out how he had come to be drowning in water, of all things, but he still had enough senses left to him to attempt swimming.  With all that had happened, he had nearly forgotten the uselessness of his left arm, when he tried to move it this memory came back to him, and he almost breathed in the water.  He struggled, kicking with his bruised legs, and wriggled like a snake, flapping with his right arm.
His head broke through the water, and the first comfortable feeling he found in what seemed an eternity came to him.  He sucked the air in desperately, coughing, his hair flattened to his skull, water streaming drown his face.  Rife remained where he was for more than a minute, lightly swinging his legs to keep him floating, gasping from more than lack of air.  There were savage cuts on his face, though nothing that wouldn’t heal.  His left arm hung limply, his right arm bore more wounds than his face did, and already purpling bruises were appearing.  The back of his shirt was ripped in too many places to ever be mended properly.  His legs hurt fiercely, probably much less than they would later.  Otherwise, he was in fine condition considering his prior escapade.
After having gained something of his logic back to himself, he swung his head around in a feral way, his eyes wide and fearful, looking as if to find one of the beasts sitting next to him.  Rife found that he was in a cylindrical room, that would have been dark but for the gaping hole he had put in the roof.  The water rippled like an annoyed thing.
“The water tower?” he exclaimed in surprise.  His wide eyes became incredulous.  That he could be that lucky was unfathomable, his falling trajectory must have been altered dramatically by the pole and the monster he had temporarily hitched a ride on.  Though it was called a water tower, it wasn’t used in that conventional sense.  It was used purely to satisfy the fountains and water the garden forest, but it sat firmly on the ground, so made more of a building than a tower.
Rife blinked.  He was shivering, not because he was cold.  The water was quite pleasantly warm, actually, having been heated by the sun all day.  He paddled over to the edge of the tower, finding a ladder, and clung to it with an arm.  His mouth was set into a frown; his brows had crawled up and across his forehead towards each other.  It was a difficult maneuver, crawling up with one arm and both legs hardly mobile for their pain.  He was adept at laddering, though, and pulled himself up rather quickly.  A latched square door was set into the wall, which he paused in front of.  He pushed his elbow behind a rung of the ladder, and reached up awkwardly with his hand, fumbling with the latch.  His fingers were shaking, making this simply act far more difficult than it should be, but he managed eventually to push up the latch.   The door swung open on its own before he could stop it.  He lunged after it clumsily, making a choking sound in his throat, and teetered.  He was hanging on the ladder, and the door opened directly outwards, without a balcony.  Having virtually no use of his arm, and little power left in his legs or back, he tilted forward out the door, dangerously swaying.  His eyes widened, realizing his folly.
Rife had one chance to glance downwards before he fell.  It wasn’t a far drop, comparatively, but it was more than ten feet.  He let out a shriek of terror before he took on a frightfully sharp angle, then his feet popped out of the rungs they were hooked under and, arm wind milling, he plummeted.
Rife flipped in the air, and before he could correct himself and take any kind of rolling measure to save himself, his right leg came between him and the dusty earth around the water tower.  Again, the noises that he couldn’t hear, and again he was struck with agony.  Rife forgot about the monsters in the instant his mind registered the pain.  His body, back, and arms convulsed, then, with a grimacing look of pure despair, he crumpled to the ground.  He became a hopeless, listless heap on the ground.  His mouth opened as if to scream, but no sound came from him.  He could have been a puppet abandoned and stringless.
The sky rolled about now, with thin, starved clouds drifting speedily across it.  Whatever disaster had come across the small town, the sky was generally unconcerned with it, like a fish is to the happenings of catipillar.  The blue was still startlingly beautiful and calm.  The smoke that rose from the burning forest leaked into this peacefulness like a disease.  Their cries of anguish and pain were loud in the crackling, bursting flames.
Rife’s eyes watered with overpowering sorrow.  For a reason he couldn’t comprehend, his limbs didn’t hurt as much as he believed they should.  The pain was incredible, but the intensity was missing, as if some other force was draining it from him.  The misery that wracked his body was more powerful.  His breaths came in shuddering gasps, almost sobs, and his hands twitched where they lay limply at the ends of his arms.  In his mind, the trees were screaming, and he could do nothing to help them.  He could smell their death.  He didn’t want to move, even if a monster came upon him.  Everything suddenly seemed to overwhelm him.  Rife knew he was resigning, and had probably hit his head at some point.  He was tired, and could find no explanation why.  Somewhere he knew there was some fatal error with sleeping in such a situation.
It was something else that was bothering him, however.  Usually, when he forgot something, it pricked at the edge of his mind impatiently, but this was different.  A wailing, hysterical something tore at him from a corner of his mind, with claws and knives.  Through his despair, pain, and boggled thoughts, he couldn’t reach out to it, and remember or realize what it was.  The dirt was fine like sand, but not as sharp or heat-consuming.  He could feel it on the back of his neck, sticking to him because of the water that clung still to his skin.  His feet were numb, and cold now, though he had no idea whatsoever as to when or why that had happened.
When he tried to sit up, he was caught in a fit of dizziness and fell back again.  Slowly, the panic he had been tangled in earlier began to creep up on his once more.  As his thoughts gradually became coherent, his situation made itself apparent to him again.  Rife’s heart began to race, his limbs shivering with effort.  He was sprawled like a starfish, a perfectly open and good target for any man-eating creature that came across him.  Fear crawled over him like a spider.  The thought that had been bothering him managed to break its way closer to clarity, becoming vaguely more familiar, but he still couldn’t hold onto it.  Sweat beaded on his forehead along with the water, his efforts at raising himself failing miserably.  There might as well have been some mysterious force sitting on him, holding him to the ground.
The thought came to him suddenly.  As it occurred to him, his eyes widened with a terror more pure than any he had previously shown or felt towards the monsters that faced him.  Despite the odd weight that seemed to have been holding him down, he jerked up to his feet frantically.  Rife’s leg was immobile, but he appeared to ignore it at once, though it must have caused him a great deal of pain.  His eyes shone a desperation unlike their usual placidity.
“My family…” he breathed to himself, staring forward at nothing.  Images of his sister and mother came to him vividly, their open mouths screaming as one of the monsters descended upon them.  His heart felt like it was being torn from his chest in fear.
Rife looked around at the buildings surrounding him.  Immediately, he darted left, into an alley between two houses.  Only now he recognized the loud crashing noises erupting from buildings in the distance, the sounds of their walls breaking and falling in on themselves.  Dust clouds from the debris leapt into the air.
Gasping, the young man limped down the alley, his eyes jumping in every possible direction.  The few windows he could find in the lane were empty, like the alley itself.  Despite the fervor in his search, he could see no other people, nor their pets.  His breath began to wheeze into his lungs, ragged, deep gasping ripping through his gaping lips.  His hair was a disheveled mess, dirty, wet, and ruffled in odd directions and flat in others.  Rife did not stop, though his body was begging him to do so before he collapsed.  He put his right hand against a wall and kept running.
The town could as well have been deserted.  The strangeness of the lack of people began to feed his fear and desperation.  He began to stumble from his exhaustion.  He was running in the same direction, half-bent over and supported by the palm pressed against the wall, when a sound came over to him.  His head flew up and locked on the object, separated from him by a building.  He froze, staring through the wall.
Something was clacking against the wooden sidewalks that sat in front of the houses.  The rustle of feathers and scales was unmistakable.  Rife tried to hide his breathing.  As loud as it was, he feared the monster would spot him out immediately, but he failed at this attempt, and only made himself choke and rasp louder.  However, the beast had started to make so much noise it probably couldn’t hear anything that wasn’t shouting and directly beside it anyway.
Rife, too desperately scared for his family to run away, edged forward.  Where he was, the alley was about to open up into the street.  He slid against the wall slowly, eyes still tied to where the creature would be.  It was making an explosive noise, as if bashing something against the wall of the house.  The building shuddered at each blow.  The young man flinched at each shudder, expecting it to cave in on him.  He didn’t know if any of the monsters could survive a house falling on them, their scales had seemed surprisingly soft and malleable, but he definitely couldn’t.
He was so focused on the house he almost didn’t see the figure standing in the street, close to the building that was being gradually demolished.  Rife quickly tore his gaze from the house.  He couldn’t quite see the person, standing slightly in front of the building, but it was apparent that he was a man and older than Rife.  Terror shook through him.  He hadn’t seen another soul in his search, and this man was about to get himself killed.  If the creature hadn’t managed to spot the stranger before, it was going to soon.  The building shuddered ominously.
Rife sprinted forward.  He reached out to grab the shoulder of the man with his good arm, prepared to pull the man with him as he made his getaway.  His mind was spinning through possibilities, most of them not good, but he had hoped that the monster would be making too much noise to hear them, and they could escape before it noticed them.
He froze suddenly before he could reach the man.  Rife felt like an electric shock had jolted every nerve in his body, his arm still outstretched towards the man.  His breath caught in his throat.
Two yellow eyes peered out from beneath the man’s slender brows.  His hair hung in a feathery way on his head, soft like the fur of the monsters was.  He was beautiful in the strange way the creatures were.
Horror flooded every sense and piece of logic left to him.  Before he could think, the most inhuman cry of surprise that ever passed his teeth burst from him.  The sound took to the air like a wild thing, a shrill noise that overcame the destructive din the creature was making.
The man gasped.  With speed that couldn’t belong to a normal human, he flipped around, his eyes wide, and brought his hand up.  The slender-fingered palm faced Rife almost touching his nose, and before he had time to blink, darkness exploded into his mind.  His cry disintegrated into a whimper as pain unlike anything he had ever experienced flooded his body.  The force of whatever darkness had struck him blew him backwards until he fell on his back in the alley.  He cringed, bringing his arms up to his head and crossing them over his face, as if to protect him from the agony that was attacking him.  He rolled and curled into a ball on the ground, blinded, with every fiber of his being torn at by invisible talons.  His mouth gaped open and no sound issued from it.
He heard a voice call out and a footstep making an attempt to approach him, but it was cut off by a foreboding groan within the building next to him.  He couldn’t see, his vision was still blackened, but he knew what was about to happen.  Wood cracked, walls cracked, and the building gave up in a terrible, thunderous roar, and collapsed.  His muffled, pained scream was inaudible amongst the blare of the defeated house.  The ground reverberated as chunks of the structure hit the alley.  Suddenly, though it was impossible to distinguish the various sources of pain that radiated from him, another agony confronted him and all thoughts faded from his mind.

*

An uneasy wind crept across the figure of a tall man.  It ebbed, and started again slowly, as if exhausted or nervous.  The man wore a wide-brimmed hat and a long, high-collared leather jacket.  His face, but for his eyes, was wrapped with a black bandanna, his distinct blue gaze staring callously outwards.  His eyes had dark circles around them, as if he had not slept in a very long time, and had a most detached look in their depths.  The bandanna became a scarf around his neck, the ends falling to touch the ground lightly.  Belts were wrapped around his waist, legs, and torso, that, along with his boots, held various strange tools, some looking to be related to knives.
“Surely, there can not be anything left here.” he said while gazing up at the sky.  He fingered one of the larger knife-like objects on his waist, then turned his eyes towards a slightly shorter man to his left.
Four men stood in the empty street.  All wore a similar peculiar attire, though the other three seemed to keep less weaponry.  There was no visible skin on any of the other three of the men.
“You would think not.  However, it seems the Gat would take more to be persuaded otherwise.” replied the shorter man.  He wore a thin bandanna to cover his mouth, and had a twin to it tied above his eyebrows, pulled down over his eyes.  The other two remained silent, wearing on their heads devices that made them seem bug-like.  Large, complicated goggles covered their eyes and a fine mesh of steel was over their mouths.
The tallest man looked at the creature crouching before him.  It had human-like features, arms, legs, fingers, but it was distorted.  The arms and stomach were slightly too long, and its face was a black, lipless mask with two narrow slits for eyeholes.  Its hands, though gloved, bore wicked claws.  It was clothed with a myriad of form-fitting black bands, covering its body but allowing it to move freely.  Like the four men, it did not have any skin revealed, except for its bare feet, which were painted black.  The curves its body consisted of were feminine.
“Gat, what is it you are here for?” questioned the man, in a deep voice that was not cold, but void of passion.  The creature glanced up at him, then stood.  Its mouth split open to reveal a dark pit that appeared to lead to nowhere, not ending with a throat or obstructed with teeth.   The sound it made was airy, without any vocal power or substance, but in a pattern that expressed language.  It turned, excited, and ran down the street in lithe, rapid strides, its head hardly moving and arms limp at its sides.  The tall man frowned, then followed it.
The street was desolate, as if it had never witnessed any form of life.  Any vegetation that could be seen from the street was blackened.  Buildings that had seemed to be made of a clay-like substance were collapsed.  The town stretched out as a pile of dust and broken things, no structure that was still standing was more than six feet tall.  Smoke rose up from an area in the center of the rubble.
The strange creature suddenly stopped.  It breathed loudly, opening its jaws and huffing air, as if smelling through its mouth.  It knelt, staring down an alley and making strange, windy noises.  The taller man kept walking, his eyes curious but otherwise without haste.  The other three walked behind him, unconcerned as well.  The two with the goggles scanned the buildings, hands in their coat-pockets.
They found themselves in front of a pile of rubble, not specifically different from any of the other heaps of stone, wood, and metal.  The creature was perched before it, staring into the shadows quietly, until the man came up behind it.  The thing peered back at him, then began to chatter, doing so by clicking its mouth shut.  It took a step towars the pile, dropped onto its hands and knees, and gazed under a thick beam that was propped up on boulder.  The man tilted his head, looking with a vaguely puzzled expression at the creature, then knelt beside it.
“What is it?” he asked, not seeing anything.  The Gat breathed at him, gesturing with its clawed hand.  He shook his head, not understanding what it meant to tell him, and pushed himself back up to his feet.
“Do any of you understand?” he asked of his three companions.  He turned his gaze to the man that was slightly shorter than him.  “Gazik?”
Gazik shook his head.  “It must have found something it wants.”
“No, the Gat was made so that it would not seek to possess anything.” The taller man said.  He shifted, staring at the Gat.  It stared back at him silently.  “It has taken us a long distance from our original destination.  There must be something here, unless it has broken itself again.”  The Gat shuddered, and shook its head in denial.  Its dark hair followed its head like a shadowy mass of spider silk.
“There is a boy.” said one of goggled men suddenly.  The taller man looked at him.
“What do you mean?”
“There is a boy under the rubble.  He has to have been there for at least a day, and  he is probably dead, but he is there.”  The goggled man lifted his arm, pointing into the mound.  The Gat stirred, sighed breathily, and moved closer to the pile.
“Is that all?” said the tall man.  He glanced at the pile, searching for the boy, but could not see anything.  He turned, as if to leave.  “We are not looking for humans.  If there is nothing else, we will go.”
The Gat made a whistling, desperate sound as the man started to walk away.  It crawled forward and tugged at the man’s pant-leg, imploringly, making him pause.  It sighed loudly, almost on its elbows.
The man gazed for a while at the creature, as if having a staring-contest with it.  Meanwhile, one of the goggled men had gone over to the pile.  He knelt, tapping the beam gently with a finger, then another, slowly progressing with his tapping until he had touched most of the larger debris accesible by the street.  He stuck his hand in through a hole, waited for a moment, then pulled it out and looked at it with interest.  Gazik watched, then joined the goggled man, crouching beside him on the balls of his feet.
After observing this display for a few seconds, he absently reached out to grab a small piece of metal that was protruding from the heap.
The Gat shrieked abruptly, as close to a shriek as moving air can make, and lunged for Gazik.  It swiftly took hold of his wrist before he could touch the metal piece, twisting him until he plopped down into a sitting position.  Gazik didn’t so much as frown at the creature, but rubbed his wrist, and looked bewildered.
“Lagoon?” he asked.  The taller man was studying the Gat closely.
The goggled man came over to the piece of metal, peered at it for a moment, then nodded, as if it afirmed his belief.  He flipped his head back until he was facing Lagoon.
“This pile will collapse if anything in it is moved.  Probably, even touching something too hard will have the same effect.  I am surprised the wind has not done so already.”  He gave a curious look to the Gat, then stood.  “Still, even if the boy was still alive, probably, he is no use to us.  We do not go after his type.”  Having said this, the goggled man seemed to lose interest, then returned to stand quietly beside the other bug-masked man.  Gazik lifted an eyebrow towards the pile, then looked at Lagoon, as if to get the answer to the situation from him.  Lagoon stared, seemingly at nothing, as if thinking.
“We should probably just let the boy die.  We are not a rescue service.” he paused, looking again at the Gat.
Suddenly, Lagoon spun and stared at Gazik, the shorter man stumbling back with surprise.  He blinked, a confused look on his face.
“Gazik, describe our services please.  Be detailed.” Lagoon said plainly, his eyes distant, and waited for an answer.  Gazik nodded, but didn’t seem to understand what the use of it was.
“We hunt living things and objects that contain any significant value of magical quality and sell to the markets, discreetly, that is, and on occation take specific orders from wealthy customers.  We are not obliged to any laws of any area but those of our own making and only refrain from taking that which we have already obtained and/or sold.  Unless, of coarse, there has been a breach of contract in which case we are then obliged to take an equivalent amount of equal worth to that which was sold from the buyer, whether or not this exchange includes the item which was originally exchanged.  Any and all items belong to the group until it has been legalized as according to our own regulations, and any item that is taken before being legalized is considered an offence and punished as necessary.  All exchanges that result in disfavor or harm to the group will not be accepted, or, if necessary, will not be unavenged.  No item, of any category, is discluded from these rules,”  He took a breath.
“Stop.” said Lagoon, cutting him short.
“Would you like me to describe all secondary rules and consequences?”
Lagoon did not answer, but continued to stare forward.
“We are not very specific about relative items, are we?” he said.  Though it was not posed as a question, Gazik answered anyway.
“No.  ‘No item, of any category, is discluded from these rules.’  That does not specifically discriminate any object, though if it goes against the group, it…”  Lagoon cut him off.
“Then humans are no exception, even though they rarely find any use to us.”
“Yes, I suppose, but how does this relate to our current situation?” Gazik asked, confused.  “We do not usually benefit from taking people, unless they have breached contract or harmed the group.”
Lagoon turned, and walked up to the Gat, who was standing at this point.  It stared at him, a head shorter than the man, until he bowed forward so that he was eye-level with it.  He spoke slowly.
“Gat.  Is the boy alive?”
The Gat nodded fiercely, breathing loudly.  It crept back towards the pile.  The three other men exchanged surprised looks with each other.
“Gat, do you consider youself human?” Lagoon asked, still sounding detached.  The Gat hesitated, looking briefly at the ground.  Gazik frowned, confused, but interested in where Lagoon was going with his questions.  The Gat then slowly shook its head.
“Gat,” he asked, slower, pausing.  His blue eyes were so focused on the Gat, it almost appeared he was trying to see past the mask that covered its face.  “… is the boy human?”
Gazik and the two goggled men swung their heads around abruptly, surprised, and watched the Gat intently.  Even the goggled men, who so far had rarely said more than was needed or asked, muttered something to each other, touching the square mesh screen in front of their mouths with emphasis.
The Gat shook its head.
“Yu, is there any way to remove the boy from the rubble without killing him?” Lagoon asked of
one of the goggled men.  The man that had originally spoken and investigated the wreckage shrugged.
“We probably can not.  I do not think it is possible for any person to, most likely.  You would have to crawl under, without touching anything, and pull him out without moving anything.”  He trailed off, then twisted a ring on one of his goggles with two fingers.  “No.  Not possible.  There is too much on him, he has actually become one of the supportive structures.  Even if you could get under there, moving him would collapse it, certainly, unless you could replace him with something.  We do not carry that kind of power with us.  So no, we can not.”
“Unless…” spoke up the other goggled man.  He ta

Description
Chapter One : Livellel

Clay-like buildings rose in a scattered way throughout the village, as if whatever builders had put them there had put little consideration to their organization.  A faded red tile roofed the houses, along with various odd wooden poles sticking up at different angles.  The effect was like a get mass of brambles and trees, though no such vegetation could be seen growing anywhere on the ground but on the outskirts of the village.  The earth was lush with grass, though, and flowers grew beside the wooden sidewalks.
Perched comfortably on one of the rooftops, sitting on a pack stuffed with something square, was a young-looking fellow holding a small orange flag in his hand.  Whatever the purpose of the flag was, he seemed unconcerned with it, his face upturned and beaming in the sunlight that flooded onto him.  His expression was that of pure contentment.
“Hmm.  How marvelous.” he muttered to himself, grinning foolishly.  A slight breeze ruffled his earthy colored hair, causing his head to tip to the side, wallowing in the pleasure he felt from the soft airy touch.  His mouth gaped open in an obvious smile, eyes still closed as if he were half-asleep.  The hand limply holding the flag slackened, the fluttering orange cloth dancing about.
A rather loud and angry voice erupted from lower down, startling the young man from his daze.  His eyes widened in surprise and he fumbled with the flag urgently, hopping up to his feet quickly.  He darted over to the edge of the roof until his toes popped off the edge, then deftly stood at an angle in that position and began whipping the flag back and forth in a small, rapid motion with one arm.  His mouth had drooped to a line short of a frown.
“See me?” he called out in a distracted voice, peering unenthusiastically to the road beneath him.  A slightly fat person rushed from between a tight pair of buildings, head rolling and craned upwards.  Upon sighting the young man, he trotted over until he was close enough to be heard clearly.
“What’re you doing, boy?  Get a move on!”  His voice was furious in a non-specific way, as if he wasn’t angry at anything in particular.  Or at everyone and everything, the young man didn’t really know.
“But I have all afternoon.  Don’t I?” he called back.  Even though the larger man was a good enough distance below to be blurred somewhat, it was still evident that he was seething.
“Sure, kid, BUT I DON’T!  NOW HURRY IT UP!”  At the last the young man jumped, hopping backwards.  His mouth had taken on a truly downcast, almost half-square shape, his brows limp above his gray-brown eyes.  Taking a quick scan about his rooftop, he grabbed the pack he had been sitting on and began jogging across the tiles.  Reaching the edge of the roof, he flung his legs out before him and leaped.
The fat man muttered some inaudible curses and tried to follow him, though being on the ground, he had to detour between the buildings.  The young man grinned slightly, but was otherwise focused on his task.  He paused to stare into a window across the street, then continued his jog across the rooftops.
He stopped suddenly for no particularly apparent reason, staring at the roof.  His bare toes stared back at him.  Intent on the tiles, he brought his pack to his chest, slipping his hand under the flap at its mouth and fiddling with the button that held it closed.  Eyes still aimed at his shadow, he flipped his pack open and proceeded with flipping it upside-down, dumping its heavy contents on the roof.
A small, head-sized box rolled onto the roof, making a metallic sound though it looked wooden.  The young man knelt beside the box, his gaze shifting to it, and set both hands onto its sides.  Gently, he slowly turned it over, then set it down on the roof again on a different side.  The box rested silently for a moment, then shuddered, became still again, and abruptly spat out a puff of smoke from the side that was facing up.  There were no holes in the box, and the corners seemed to be sealed together perfectly.  The young man made an exasperated sound.
“Hey, HOL!  HOL!  See me?” he shouted, discarding the box and creeping to the edge of the roof.  He cast around with his eyes for the fat man, fluttering his orange flag with a hand.  Muffled crashing sounds came from an alley somewhere close to the building the young man was on, followed by the fat man stumbling into the street.  He was huffing from exertion, and had to stop with his hands on his knees for a moment.
“Boy?” he bellowed from the awkward position.
“See me?” came the mandatory reply.  As the man looked up, the young fellow waved the flag in a distinct, slow pattern.  A strangled sound came from below.
“You sure?” the man roared, followed by a frustrated swipe of the flag in reply.
“No, I was just joking.” called the young man sarcastically.  He heard furious huffing coming from the large man.
“Then just wait there for me!”
“Why?  I can’t help you fix it.” said the young man.  He glanced back, staring at the spot he had dropped the box on earlier.  Slowly, as though from some deep underground vibration, the cube began to shift from the place he had set it on.  The young man hurried over and replaced the thing to its place, wedged the flag against it and a tile, then scurried back to the edge of the roof again.  “You better hurry it up, Hol.” he called, not necessarily in a cruel way.
Most of the houses had a series of ladders, stairs, or ramps that lead up from the main street to the roof, whether constructed onto the house or in the alley beside it.  On the particular building the young man waited on, a steel ladder was secured to the clay-like wall beside the door, rising up straight to the edge of the tiled roof.  The big man took to this immediately, and, despite his size, he crawled up deftly and with obvious experience doing so.  He was soon pulling himself up beside his younger associate, squinting at the box.
On closer inspection, one could see the man was not exactly fat, but built heavily and with large limbs fit for power more than mobility.  He wore a simple, sweaty white shirt that currently clung to his massive stomach, and a tool belt hanging lazily to his waist.  It housed a hammer, a pouch filled with nails, and several other compartments, large and small, that held their own mysteries.  Across his shoulders, like a bundle of extremely large arrows, was tied a neat collection of the same odd-shaped poles that stuck up from many of the rooftops already.  These, however, were of a gleaming bronze complexion, whereas the others were of a darker, more ominous and natural color.  The man’s eyes had deep, powerful gray irises, which were currently focused on the box.  It had shifted again, and rotated slightly.
“It’s quite lively, don’t you think?  What color is it, Rif?” he inquired of the younger man.  “Can you even see it?
… Rife?”
Rife had gone quite; his gaze as well locked onto the phenomenon, though his sat higher up than Hol’s.  His eyes were calm, peaceful and relaxed as a first impression, but then again, they usually seemed that way when he was working.  But his brows were clinging to the middle of his forehead - something about the seen distressed him.
“Oh, I can see it.” he muttered, still crouching as if on the verge of some ledge, though he had moved farther up the roof when Hol had joined him.  His eyes took in a different sight than the larger man.
Where he had set the box the roof was pale, almost sickly, and from it rose a gush of color that pillared into the sky for a few hundred feet before fading into the air.  It was not of any substance quite describable with natural words, the closest comparison coming to what wind would look like if it bore color and substance, not being smoke or full with debris.  Having this colorful mast seemingly rising through it, the box quivered constantly at a low level, almost indiscernibly.
“Blue wind.” he said simply.  Rife pulled his eyes from the thing and looked at Hol.  “Blue like… water, without substance and with sun shining through it.  And alot bigger than usual.”  The large man made a huffing, snorting sound in the back of his throat.  Then he looked back at the pillar.
Without saying anything, Hol shuffled towards the box, and with a smooth motion, unleashed one of the staffs from his back and struck it unceremoniously into the center of the box.
The box seemed to have a violent reaction to this insult, beginning to immediately hiss and shudder, and struggle in an almost living way against the pole that impaled it.  After a second or two of this rumble, it spewed gouts of blue smoke as if sick.  Hol stumbled back, waving the smoke away from his face, but kept his eyes on the box.  Rife watched silently.
This gaudy show of color didn’t last very long.  The box stilled, the pole unperturbed by the reaction.  The bronze color had been replaced by the darker mood of its twins, making the thing look now like a tall walking stick.  Rife let out a pent up breath, rolling backwards until he lay supine on the roof with his arms outstretched like wings.  Hol scratched at the stubble beard on his chin, frowning.
“That was different.  It doesn’t usually spit all over us.”  He peered down and Rife, who looked dizzy.  “You okay, boy?”
The young man nodded from where he was stretched out.
“Then we should head over to Jo...”
“Not that good...” mumbled Rife quickly, cutting him off.  His eyes were closed so tightly they wrinkled the bridge of his nose.  He brought one long-fingered hand to his forehead and covered his eyes, moaning in his throat.
“What’s the matter with you, then?”
“I’m okay… just give me a minute…”  Rife’s lips curled downward suddenly until they nearly deformed his face, another muffled groan rumbling in his throat.  Hol gave a momentarily concerned look, then shook his head and glanced upwards.
“You go home, a‘ight?  Even if you feel better.” he ordered, positioning himself on the ladder.  He paused before sliding down, giving Rife a hard look.  “Straight home.  No wandering.  I’m supposed to watch over you for your parents, you know.”
“My parents?  I’m older than that.  I usually watch over them.” he replied in a pained, nauseous but good-humored voice.  He grinned.
Hol harrumphed, then slid down his ladder and vanished.  Rife frowned again, slowly setting one of his hands onto his stomach.
“Easy.” he said in a slow, persuasive manner.  His eyes cracked open, taking in the whole incredible serene azure of the sky, disrupted only by distant puffs of white cloud.  The stream of blue wind was gone.  Taking a few deep, slow breaths, he pushed himself up until he was sitting.  His eyes turned maliciously to the box.
“You…” he muttered, falling forward onto his hands.  He crawled forward on all fours, stopping shortly before the box.  He glared down at it.  “Blue smoke?  What’s up with that?” he waited for a moment, angrily, as if expecting an answer.
Suddenly, unexpected, he laughed, almost giggling, a vibrant smile replacing the frown.  “Never mind.” he chuckled, grabbing the box by two of its widths.  With one rapid motion, he jerked the box towards him.  The pole wavered, like a harp string plucked by a finger, but it became still again.  It was firmly rooted into the roof, the tiles placed around it, as though it had always been there without the solid box.  He searched around for his bag, slung it over his shoulder, and dropped the box into it.
His mouth took on a slight grimace when he stepped forward too quickly.  Flinging his left leg out, he slowly dropped forward onto it.  Then he flung out his right leg, completed the same slow procedure, and stood for a moment.  He let out a breath, and shook his head.
“Okay, slowly, then.” he said to himself, his eyes taking on a determined look.  He bent his knees and lowered himself, then shuffled forward with his arms stretched out before him, walking like some kind of monstrous cat.  He worked his way across the roof and toward the edge opposite to where the ladder and street was.
The building was squarish in shape, but tall, with more than four stories and several balconies and tiled canopies growing like mushrooms out of its sides.  Many of the other houses had more or less similar construction about them, though some bore random boardwalks that led out apparently to nowhere, rope ladders and bridges connecting to impossible places on other houses.
Rife hopped off the edge confidently, without hesitating to investigate where he was hopping, and landed on one of the balconies.  Still hunched over, he took hold of the rope that was tied to a ring below a window beside him, then flung himself over the railing before him, slid down the rope for a short distance, then dropped himself.  His feet landed on a black wiry pole sticking out from the neighboring building.
He paused there for a moment; seeming to be perfectly balanced with only a fourth of either foot perched on the pole, and rubbed his stomach again.  Muttering something under his breath, he turned, and jumped off to the side.  He sailed through the air, for what to any other person would seem dangerously long, and landed on a lower roof.  He stumbled from his obvious momentum and fell forward onto his face.
He muttered more inaudible words under his breath, his face planted into the tile.  His eyes rolled upwards slowly.
“They lowered their roof.  Without leaving a sign up.” he growled.  The rooves in the village had different layers to them, easily assembled and disassembled.  The second layer from the top of the building was a muffler of sorts – there was usually a bit of roof traffic – and was in the process of being repaired.  He huffed for a moment, then slid his hands forward until he could push himself up to his knees again.  Slowly, Rife started to rise to his feet, staring forward with a determined frown.  After having reached the position he had taken to earlier, he paused, eye widening.
He chuckled.  “Well, seems it cured my stomach!  Thank you!”  He giggled deeply in his throat and smiled, then took off at a jog to the other side of the house.  Hopping in a particular pattern, he launched himself from the building and landed lightly on another roof, close enough to be reachable, and proceeded with his roof jumping for a time, still wearing the good smile on his face.  With arms maneuvering like the tailwing on a bird, he zigzagged and took sudden turns from house to house, seeming to take to no obvious direction.  However, the confidence in his chosen route and the fact he made most of his jumps, climbs, hops, and slides with his eyes closed and his face tilted up at the sky, said that he knew where he was heading and had been that way many times before.
Suddenly the houses appeared to open up and leave a clearing of sorts; a strange, vastly large platform suspended by thick wires between the buildings close to it and sitting on an odd arrangement of stilts occupied this clearing.  He slid down a rope with his feet, then dropped onto this platform and looked around himself.  It was wooden beneath, thick dark bars forming x shapes between the legs that supported the top.  The top area was massive, larger than many of the houses put together, and held a garden of sorts.  Marble stone fountains grew up seamlessly from a bounty of verdant small-leafed trees.  No patch of dirt could be found here, every possible space was filled with a variety of trees or a carpet of moss.  Tiny, hip-high bushes spread throughout the ground like miniature green clouds, soft looking leaves chattering together in chiming voices.  Tall, mammoth trees thicker than any man could wrap his arms around rose, covered with a delicate fur of moss, in what could only be described as an artistically random pattern.  Smaller trees, willows, and thin, lofty vegetation grew where they would, no tree was smothered by the taller ones, and all had a pleasing design to the eye to behold.  Many subtle shades of green filled every space, even the shadows seemed subdued by it, and there was, where the taller plants grew closer together, a speckled paint of light spattered across the mossy earth.  It was a haven of flora, undisturbed by any walking creature that might upset it.
The pack slid from Rife’s back, a look of true, complete calm and joy overcoming his features.  His head lolled back on his shoulders as he breathed in the earthy aroma given off by what now surrounded him.  Sighing quietly, he simply walked further into the forest, his arms limp at his sides.  His eyes were half-lidded, but not witless or tired.
“I will go home, but surely a few minutes would be all right, wouldn’t it?  This is on my way anyway, so I’m just passing through.” he said to himself.  He shook his head slightly.  “This is probably the safest place in town, anyway.”  Suddenly, he veered left into a gaggle of wiry reed-like plants, shoving through them gently until he came upon a shadowed ring of the largest trees in the garden.  The moss here grew in limitless amounts, in many thick layers as that his feet sunk almost past his toes.  Beside one of the trees sat a fountain, so immersed and inconspicuous among the foliage it was hard to see.  Rife paused beside this smooth marble structure, coming up to his elbows in height, and gazed into the calm reflective image cast by the water it held, spattered with supple bits of shadow.  He stared at himself, his features, for a time, running his finger delicately across the surface of the water, rippling his face with the tiny waves.  He smiled, more so at the feel of the water than at his visage, and dropped suddenly to the ground, using the moss as a cushion, so he was sitting beside the fountain and against the trunk of the tree behind him.
His eyes turned up languorously, drinking in the canopy of leaves above him.  Patches of blue and sun sprinkled through moderately, giving the area a cool, mottled hide.  Rife folded his arms behind his head, sighing, and let his eyelids droop closed.  His chest almost immediately took on the slow, rhythmic rise and fall of sleep.  No animal sang within this forest, but there was a sort of music, a magnificent orchestra of leaves and branches and fountains that clattered, shivered, and clapped together to fill the air with flowery song.  A soft din that was there and not, like a shadow seen from the corner of the eye.
Rife wasn’t exactly sleeping, he didn’t have any deep dreams and he was still somewhat aware of his surroundings, but he failed to notice the passage of time.  The wind increased and decreased sporadically, the sun that filtered through the leaves brightened as noon came on, and dimmed slightly as the day passed that mark.  It was still hot outside, if not for the wind, would have been uncomfortably so, but as it was, Rife was content enough to lose track of himself.  Fanciful daydreams filled his head, of his own making, and roamed from logical to degenerately not so.  He wrote stories in his mind, lost interest, and began another one.  This was how he usually dozed, with his imagination wandering where it would until he either woke or fell asleep.
His reverie had drifted into flying creatures, beasts that glided through the air with great, feathered wings.  They were long and scaled, with ruffs of fur along their spines and at the ends of their tails and heads.  Horns sat like a crown around their skulls.  They swam through the air, floating like a weightless leaf caught upon the wind.  Two pairs of taloned arms and legs were tucked against their sleek bodies.  They were beautiful in their shape and sun-shimmering scales, but he disliked the faces – shaped like the beak of a predatory bird, bone-like, it was unlike the rest of their figure, unnatural, almost as if something had stuck a stony mask on their heads.  They emitted a peculiar droning, shrieking roar.  Rife’s face knotted at the sound, his mouth quirked downwards.  The sound continued at a pitch that seemed both low and high at once, fixing itself in his ears.
When it persisted, his mind began to reel.  It rubbed against how his dream should be, it seemed unnatural.  He began to come out of his daze and notice the aches his position had caused in his arms and back.  What was more, however, was the knowledge that came to his mind, between the time it took his eyes to flash open and the realization of the distinct smell that came to him, that the sound was a foreign object from his dream.
He opened his eyes to see one of the very monsters from his daydream, glaring into him with two fierce, yellow eyes.  Its head was as large as Rife’s torso, and an inch from his face.  The boy’s mouth hung open in terror; his arms were stiff at his sides, useless, with his fingers in a clawed rigor.  The two calm, peaceful gray-brown eyes previously his were now a wide collection of horror and surprise.  His thoughts had vanished to some other place; all other coherency was gone to him.  He only stared back at this huge beast that, moments earlier, he had figured was beautiful.
When he didn’t move, the creature growled and let out a breath through its nostrils, blowing smoke into Rife’s face.  His eyes watered, and his mouth quivered, and his silence broke.  Without pausing for dignity’s sake, he threw his head back and screamed at the top of his lungs.
The monster shrieked its fury back at him, stepping back in annoyance and surprise.  It huffed and puffed smoke from its nostrils, raising its head back on its long, muscular neck.  It’s mask-like face split open to form the jagged line of a mouth stretched bleow its eyes, revealing a black gum filled with two rows of teeth.  The eyes glinted as it stared forward.
Rife realized what the purpose of its action was quickly, and the scream died into a gasp as he threw himself, to the best of his ability, away from the tree as the great snouted head struck forward.  Nicking his shoulder, the beast’s nose and teeth sunk into the bark and shattered it with an incredible explosion noise, sending shards of bark flying out in all directions.
The young man scrambled, unable to get to his feet in his hurry, and fled as fast as his shambling-crawl could take him.  The monster whipped its head around, its agitation grown to become a seething, obvious aura.  The cloudy gray scales along its neck shivered and rose slightly along with the soft fur lining its spin, such as the hackles on a dog would, and it stretched out from its previous crouching position.  Its tail unraveled itself from around the things legs, becoming easily as long as the rest of its body, lashing from side to side.  Its four legs seemed to be a mix between a hunting bird and a big cat, with four fingers and a thumb, each with a large talon on its end.  As it stood, it became a menacing thing.  Rife felt that his heart would have sunk into his feet with hopelessness if it weren’t already lodged in his throat.  He fled.
The beast began to run.  Rife couldn’t see it, as that his nose was pointed in the direction of his escape, which happened to be away from the creature, but the sound was in itself terrifying, considering his situation.  An airy whoosh sound issued from its wings as it leaped forward, its padded, taloned feet making surprisingly little noise as it crossed the mossy floor.  By the thumping behind him, the image that came to his scattered wits was that of a feline, sure and fast, silent, lithe, and most definitely about to catch up to him.
Suddenly, it stopped.  A strangled cry issued from behind Rife’s gaping teeth, and without thinking, he stumbled and flung himself to the ground.
The air moved, his hair was flung forward, and his loose, pale shirt flipped up almost past his head.  Rife gazed up in time to see the large body of the creature sail overtop of him, having leapt before he fell; it missed him and struck the ground where his head ought to have been.  Because of the lazy relationship the moss had with the ground, the furry green gave way to the force of the great feet that dug into them, and the beast sped forward with its momentum.  Unable to stop itself, the thing shrieked as it shouldered into a tree, its back crumpling in on itself, head and neck twisting back.  The tree creaked deeply, but didn’t topple from the blow, leaves chattering its agony.  The monster groaned in an oddly human way, but remained where it was, tangled on the ground.  The tip of the tail twitched and flipped over.
Gasping, Rife lurched to his feet, turned, and fled in the other direction.  The creature growled after him, but it’s attempts at getting back up again were not succeeding.  He flew through the trees with little care as to how they treated him, slapping and scratching his face and arms.  Blood dripped from his shoulder where the monster’s teeth had nicked him, and a shard of the tree’s bark was lodged into his back, but he failed to notice these.  He was soon in a wild patch of willows.  Though he couldn’t see where he was going, he seemed to have a good enough memory of this place to keep in his direction.  Rife’s arms were stretched out before him, nimbly swatting the slender branches aside from his path.  At last, he tore out from the huddling vegetation, and burst into the clearing he had come from originally, where he could make his getaway into the town.
And ran headlong into another of the creatures.  This beast had been standing in the clearing, clearly studying his abandoned pack, when he collided with its leg.  Rife’s head came up to its shoulder.  His head whipped up in dismay, as the aquiline face slowly peered down towards him.
Rife’s first thought was that the first beast had beaten him here, by some feat of silence and speed, but he soon realized this was an obvious mistake.  This one was more magnificent, if so could be said through absolute terror, and clearly older.  Mature, with eyes that shone an exotic type of intelligence, the fur was longer and better groomed.  Large wings were folded neatly over black scales.  It stared down at him, not with anger or surprise, but curiosity.  Its head rose, and revealed even more fearsome teeth than the younger one possessed.  Its muscles tightened, as if it were readying itself to chase after him when he tried to flee away from it.
Rife, desperately, seeing that the edge of the platform was behind the beast, leapt forward into a run, straight past the creature.  It let out a puzzled, low thrumming sound as he darted across, close enough his shoulder brushed against its own scaled arm, apparently surprised he would dare get so close to it, and choose that direction in which to run.  It relaxed and peered at the spot he had been for a moment, then idly lifted its head and followed his movements behind it.  It lashed its tail at him, but Rife caught this movement and jumped over it and ran on as fast as he could.  It growled lightly, and turned as if to make after him.
Both characters flinched and paused in their antics when a huge, fiery explosion erupted from several places on the platform.  The monster swung its head around, gazing with its dark yellow eyes at the forest.  A rippling in the air followed the explosion, as well as angry plumes of black smoke, rising up into the sky.  Cracking noises filled the air; some tops of the larger trees suddenly fell.  The creature huffed, and began walking towards the trees.
Rife was frozen with shock.  He stared, unbelieving, as smoke clogged the air above the trees, and the taller plants began to drop.  The platform shuddered.  His arms were limp at his sides, his fingers lifeless, and his knees sagged until he looked like a scarecrow.  His eyes were wide, and dismayed.
“No, not the trees.” he uttered breathlessly, his mouth distorted into a gaping frown.  He lifted one arm, his fingers reaching for the trees.  His voice caught in his throat and he hiccupped, his eyebrows twitching.  He took a step forward.  “Please don’t destroy them.” he begged, though there wasn’t a living being close enough to hear him.
Suddenly, the first beast he had encountered broke through the stand of willows.  It spotted him, and its mask rose like lips, baring its teeth in fury.  It snorted curling tendrils of smoke from its nostrils, and spread its wings slightly, as if to make itself menacing.
Rife gasped and suddenly came back to himself, his arms flying up and wind-milling in his haste to turn and run.  He scrambled, half-falling forward so many times he was almost a four-legged creature.  The monster behind him whooshed, the familiar thumps sounding from the ground.  Rife cried out in terror when he realized that before it must have been toying with him, for the pace it took now was faster than anything he had ever believed was possible from a living animal.  He had only taken a few scrambling steps when the force of its breath sent him tumbling.
He reached the edge of the platform.  Rife didn’t have time to hop up to the ropes, or jump to one of the ramps, or staircases, and definitely no time to cling to a ladder.  He heard a hissing noise, and felt moisture closing in on his neck.  Rife made a sound somewhere between a scream and a yell, and took the last available option to him – he launched himself off the platform.
For a moment he sailed through the air, like one of the creatures had with their brilliant wings, but then he began to fall.  He lost sight or knowledge of everything else.  The ground was a quite a ways away from him, but it was speedily racing up to reach him.  Hopelessly, he tried to slow himself.  Having spend nearly a lifetime wandering upon rooftops, he had become somewhat good at falling, but he had never fallen from such a height, at such a speed.  He would obviously die if he hit the ground.  His eyes expertly locked onto a pole that was reaching out of one of the support beams below the platform.  Knowing he would break something, but hoping that it would help stop his descent, he reached out until his hand was even with it, and let it race towards him.
The pole hit him harder than he could have imagined.  If an object can be malevolent, the pole definitely had some kind of animosity towards him.  His hand latched onto it, his body twisted in the air, and kept going.  He swung violently, then the force of his inertia hit his arm full force as his body discovered that the arm wasn’t coming with it.  An agonizing, unbelievable pain exploded in his fingers, wrist, elbow, and shoulder.  There were noises, but he couldn’t hear them above the pain that struck him.  His mouth flew open, his hand flew open, and he flew sideways.
His fall had hardly ceased at all.  The only difference he had made was that now instead of a straight, downwards plummeting drop, he was arcing temporarily towards the ground, partially sideways.  His head was floating elsewhere, having been scattered by failure and the pain having his arm nearly ripped from his body had caused.  For a moment he couldn’t see where he was flying to, or what he was flying into.
His head came into contact with something smooth and soft.  He jerked out of his disorientation and, instinctively, clung to whatever it was with his arm.  He brought his face down and his knees up, wrapping around this object that had come between him and the ground.  His face met with something soft like silken fur.  The realization came to him abruptly.
Suddenly the object became clear to his eyes.  The fur was the light wooden color of sand, the scales a pale golden-wheat color.  It was one of the monsters he had landed on, by some chance of luck, or lack of luck, he had fallen onto the beast as it was sailing along beside the platform.  A sound tried to escape from his throat, but it died before it became anything substantial.
The monster keened, its wings faltering for a moment.  With its long neck it glanced back at him, eyes wide and mouth gaping, as if it were surprised.  Rife was too horrified by his situation to react to its stare.  Its scales were smooth and clean, the ruff of fur on this one wasn’t very thick, and he was finding difficulties hanging onto it with one arm.  He began sliding to one side, his fingers desperately trying to work their way under the scales, to find some kind of life-saving grip, but to no avail.  They were soft, but it was almost impossible to dig his fingers beneath them.  Rife began thrashing and digging with his knees, trying to push himself upwards, but he managed only to knee the thing in the flank, repeatedly.  The creature keened again, louder, and suddenly, without the slightest warning, rolled.
It was odd.  The thing was so quick about it, Rife didn’t know it had happened until after.  Its wings cut into two different directions, the beast flipped belly-up, and log-rolled several times in rapid succession, as though it were in water.  Rife had been dislodged so abruptly he seemed to hang in the air for a moment, then began to fall again.  He shrieked, upside-down, and hit the thing’s wing.  Rife slid off the feathered mass and tumbled downwards.  Air pummeled him with its placid arms.  By now, his mind was such a wild area, he almost couldn’t tell in what direction he was falling, though that was obvious.
Something much harder than the monster broke his fall.  His shoulders struck it first, and whatever was beneath him broke immediately.  Chips of tile and wood flew above his head.  His eyes were tightly shut, teeth clenched, his arms raised upwards.  The impact tore through what was left of his mind, and as his body floated for a time in comparison, while his vision became speckled with dark splotches.
Expecting some solid floor would be the end of him, it came as almost more of a surprise than breaking through the roof when he something slapped him.  Compared to the shattering wood and tile he had experienced seconds earlier, this bodily slap wasn’t overly mind-boggling, but still excruciating.  He tried to cry out as every inch of his back was tormented with millions of needles, but he was engulfed by something cool and wet.  His eyes flashed open.
Everything had a hazy blue color, bubbles raced up from his mouth.  Rife realized abruptly that he was in water, and the slap had been him hitting it flatly on his back.  His mind was in an uproar and he couldn’t figure out how he had come to be drowning in water, of all things, but he still had enough senses left to him to attempt swimming.  With all that had happened, he had nearly forgotten the uselessness of his left arm, when he tried to move it this memory came back to him, and he almost breathed in the water.  He struggled, kicking with his bruised legs, and wriggled like a snake, flapping with his right arm.
His head broke through the water, and the first comfortable feeling he found in what seemed an eternity came to him.  He sucked the air in desperately, coughing, his hair flattened to his skull, water streaming drown his face.  Rife remained where he was for more than a minute, lightly swinging his legs to keep him floating, gasping from more than lack of air.  There were savage cuts on his face, though nothing that wouldn’t heal.  His left arm hung limply, his right arm bore more wounds than his face did, and already purpling bruises were appearing.  The back of his shirt was ripped in too many places to ever be mended properly.  His legs hurt fiercely, probably much less than they would later.  Otherwise, he was in fine condition considering his prior escapade.
After having gained something of his logic back to himself, he swung his head around in a feral way, his eyes wide and fearful, looking as if to find one of the beasts sitting next to him.  Rife found that he was in a cylindrical room, that would have been dark but for the gaping hole he had put in the roof.  The water rippled like an annoyed thing.
“The water tower?” he exclaimed in surprise.  His wide eyes became incredulous.  That he could be that lucky was unfathomable, his falling trajectory must have been altered dramatically by the pole and the monster he had temporarily hitched a ride on.  Though it was called a water tower, it wasn’t used in that conventional sense.  It was used purely to satisfy the fountains and water the garden forest, but it sat firmly on the ground, so made more of a building than a tower.
Rife blinked.  He was shivering, not because he was cold.  The water was quite pleasantly warm, actually, having been heated by the sun all day.  He paddled over to the edge of the tower, finding a ladder, and clung to it with an arm.  His mouth was set into a frown; his brows had crawled up and across his forehead towards each other.  It was a difficult maneuver, crawling up with one arm and both legs hardly mobile for their pain.  He was adept at laddering, though, and pulled himself up rather quickly.  A latched square door was set into the wall, which he paused in front of.  He pushed his elbow behind a rung of the ladder, and reached up awkwardly with his hand, fumbling with the latch.  His fingers were shaking, making this simply act far more difficult than it should be, but he managed eventually to push up the latch.   The door swung open on its own before he could stop it.  He lunged after it clumsily, making a choking sound in his throat, and teetered.  He was hanging on the ladder, and the door opened directly outwards, without a balcony.  Having virtually no use of his arm, and little power left in his legs or back, he tilted forward out the door, dangerously swaying.  His eyes widened, realizing his folly.
Rife had one chance to glance downwards before he fell.  It wasn’t a far drop, comparatively, but it was more than ten feet.  He let out a shriek of terror before he took on a frightfully sharp angle, then his feet popped out of the rungs they were hooked under and, arm wind milling, he plummeted.
Rife flipped in the air, and before he could correct himself and take any kind of rolling measure to save himself, his right leg came between him and the dusty earth around the water tower.  Again, the noises that he couldn’t hear, and again he was struck with agony.  Rife forgot about the monsters in the instant his mind registered the pain.  His body, back, and arms convulsed, then, with a grimacing look of pure despair, he crumpled to the ground.  He became a hopeless, listless heap on the ground.  His mouth opened as if to scream, but no sound came from him.  He could have been a puppet abandoned and stringless.
The sky rolled about now, with thin, starved clouds drifting speedily across it.  Whatever disaster had come across the small town, the sky was generally unconcerned with it, like a fish is to the happenings of catipillar.  The blue was still startlingly beautiful and calm.  The smoke that rose from the burning forest leaked into this peacefulness like a disease.  Their cries of anguish and pain were loud in the crackling, bursting flames.
Rife’s eyes watered with overpowering sorrow.  For a reason he couldn’t comprehend, his limbs didn’t hurt as much as he believed they should.  The pain was incredible, but the intensity was missing, as if some other force was draining it from him.  The misery that wracked his body was more powerful.  His breaths came in shuddering gasps, almost sobs, and his hands twitched where they lay limply at the ends of his arms.  In his mind, the trees were screaming, and he could do nothing to help them.  He could smell their death.  He didn’t want to move, even if a monster came upon him.  Everything suddenly seemed to overwhelm him.  Rife knew he was resigning, and had probably hit his head at some point.  He was tired, and could find no explanation why.  Somewhere he knew there was some fatal error with sleeping in such a situation.
It was something else that was bothering him, however.  Usually, when he forgot something, it pricked at the edge of his mind impatiently, but this was different.  A wailing, hysterical something tore at him from a corner of his mind, with claws and knives.  Through his despair, pain, and boggled thoughts, he couldn’t reach out to it, and remember or realize what it was.  The dirt was fine like sand, but not as sharp or heat-consuming.  He could feel it on the back of his neck, sticking to him because of the water that clung still to his skin.  His feet were numb, and cold now, though he had no idea whatsoever as to when or why that had happened.
When he tried to sit up, he was caught in a fit of dizziness and fell back again.  Slowly, the panic he had been tangled in earlier began to creep up on his once more.  As his thoughts gradually became coherent, his situation made itself apparent to him again.  Rife’s heart began to race, his limbs shivering with effort.  He was sprawled like a starfish, a perfectly open and good target for any man-eating creature that came across him.  Fear crawled over him like a spider.  The thought that had been bothering him managed to break its way closer to clarity, becoming vaguely more familiar, but he still couldn’t hold onto it.  Sweat beaded on his forehead along with the water, his efforts at raising himself failing miserably.  There might as well have been some mysterious force sitting on him, holding him to the ground.
The thought came to him suddenly.  As it occurred to him, his eyes widened with a terror more pure than any he had previously shown or felt towards the monsters that faced him.  Despite the odd weight that seemed to have been holding him down, he jerked up to his feet frantically.  Rife’s leg was immobile, but he appeared to ignore it at once, though it must have caused him a great deal of pain.  His eyes shone a desperation unlike their usual placidity.
“My family…” he breathed to himself, staring forward at nothing.  Images of his sister and mother came to him vividly, their open mouths screaming as one of the monsters descended upon them.  His heart felt like it was being torn from his chest in fear.
Rife looked around at the buildings surrounding him.  Immediately, he darted left, into an alley between two houses.  Only now he recognized the loud crashing noises erupting from buildings in the distance, the sounds of their walls breaking and falling in on themselves.  Dust clouds from the debris leapt into the air.
Gasping, the young man limped down the alley, his eyes jumping in every possible direction.  The few windows he could find in the lane were empty, like the alley itself.  Despite the fervor in his search, he could see no other people, nor their pets.  His breath began to wheeze into his lungs, ragged, deep gasping ripping through his gaping lips.  His hair was a disheveled mess, dirty, wet, and ruffled in odd directions and flat in others.  Rife did not stop, though his body was begging him to do so before he collapsed.  He put his right hand against a wall and kept running.
The town could as well have been deserted.  The strangeness of the lack of people began to feed his fear and desperation.  He began to stumble from his exhaustion.  He was running in the same direction, half-bent over and supported by the palm pressed against the wall, when a sound came over to him.  His head flew up and locked on the object, separated from him by a building.  He froze, staring through the wall.
Something was clacking against the wooden sidewalks that sat in front of the houses.  The rustle of feathers and scales was unmistakable.  Rife tried to hide his breathing.  As loud as it was, he feared the monster would spot him out immediately, but he failed at this attempt, and only made himself choke and rasp louder.  However, the beast had started to make so much noise it probably couldn’t hear anything that wasn’t shouting and directly beside it anyway.
Rife, too desperately scared for his family to run away, edged forward.  Where he was, the alley was about to open up into the street.  He slid against the wall slowly, eyes still tied to where the creature would be.  It was making an explosive noise, as if bashing something against the wall of the house.  The building shuddered at each blow.  The young man flinched at each shudder, expecting it to cave in on him.  He didn’t know if any of the monsters could survive a house falling on them, their scales had seemed surprisingly soft and malleable, but he definitely couldn’t.
He was so focused on the house he almost didn’t see the figure standing in the street, close to the building that was being gradually demolished.  Rife quickly tore his gaze from the house.  He couldn’t quite see the person, standing slightly in front of the building, but it was apparent that he was a man and older than Rife.  Terror shook through him.  He hadn’t seen another soul in his search, and this man was about to get himself killed.  If the creature hadn’t managed to spot the stranger before, it was going to soon.  The building shuddered ominously.
Rife sprinted forward.  He reached out to grab the shoulder of the man with his good arm, prepared to pull the man with him as he made his getaway.  His mind was spinning through possibilities, most of them not good, but he had hoped that the monster would be making too much noise to hear them, and they could escape before it noticed them.
He froze suddenly before he could reach the man.  Rife felt like an electric shock had jolted every nerve in his body, his arm still outstretched towards the man.  His breath caught in his throat.
Two yellow eyes peered out from beneath the man’s slender brows.  His hair hung in a feathery way on his head, soft like the fur of the monsters was.  He was beautiful in the strange way the creatures were.
Horror flooded every sense and piece of logic left to him.  Before he could think, the most inhuman cry of surprise that ever passed his teeth burst from him.  The sound took to the air like a wild thing, a shrill noise that overcame the destructive din the creature was making.
The man gasped.  With speed that couldn’t belong to a normal human, he flipped around, his eyes wide, and brought his hand up.  The slender-fingered palm faced Rife almost touching his nose, and before he had time to blink, darkness exploded into his mind.  His cry disintegrated into a whimper as pain unlike anything he had ever experienced flooded his body.  The force of whatever darkness had struck him blew him backwards until he fell on his back in the alley.  He cringed, bringing his arms up to his head and crossing them over his face, as if to protect him from the agony that was attacking him.  He rolled and curled into a ball on the ground, blinded, with every fiber of his being torn at by invisible talons.  His mouth gaped open and no sound issued from it.
He heard a voice call out and a footstep making an attempt to approach him, but it was cut off by a foreboding groan within the building next to him.  He couldn’t see, his vision was still blackened, but he knew what was about to happen.  Wood cracked, walls cracked, and the building gave up in a terrible, thunderous roar, and collapsed.  His muffled, pained scream was inaudible amongst the blare of the defeated house.  The ground reverberated as chunks of the structure hit the alley.  Suddenly, though it was impossible to distinguish the various sources of pain that radiated from him, another agony confronted him and all thoughts faded from his mind.

*

An uneasy wind crept across the figure of a tall man.  It ebbed, and started again slowly, as if exhausted or nervous.  The man wore a wide-brimmed hat and a long, high-collared leather jacket.  His face, but for his eyes, was wrapped with a black bandanna, his distinct blue gaze staring callously outwards.  His eyes had dark circles around them, as if he had not slept in a very long time, and had a most detached look in their depths.  The bandanna became a scarf around his neck, the ends falling to touch the ground lightly.  Belts were wrapped around his waist, legs, and torso, that, along with his boots, held various strange tools, some looking to be related to knives.
“Surely, there can not be anything left here.” he said while gazing up at the sky.  He fingered one of the larger knife-like objects on his waist, then turned his eyes towards a slightly shorter man to his left.
Four men stood in the empty street.  All wore a similar peculiar attire, though the other three seemed to keep less weaponry.  There was no visible skin on any of the other three of the men.
“You would think not.  However, it seems the Gat would take more to be persuaded otherwise.” replied the shorter man.  He wore a thin bandanna to cover his mouth, and had a twin to it tied above his eyebrows, pulled down over his eyes.  The other two remained silent, wearing on their heads devices that made them seem bug-like.  Large, complicated goggles covered their eyes and a fine mesh of steel was over their mouths.
The tallest man looked at the creature crouching before him.  It had human-like features, arms, legs, fingers, but it was distorted.  The arms and stomach were slightly too long, and its face was a black, lipless mask with two narrow slits for eyeholes.  Its hands, though gloved, bore wicked claws.  It was clothed with a myriad of form-fitting black bands, covering its body but allowing it to move freely.  Like the four men, it did not have any skin revealed, except for its bare feet, which were painted black.  The curves its body consisted of were feminine.
“Gat, what is it you are here for?” questioned the man, in a deep voice that was not cold, but void of passion.  The creature glanced up at him, then stood.  Its mouth split open to reveal a dark pit that appeared to lead to nowhere, not ending with a throat or obstructed with teeth.   The sound it made was airy, without any vocal power or substance, but in a pattern that expressed language.  It turned, excited, and ran down the street in lithe, rapid strides, its head hardly moving and arms limp at its sides.  The tall man frowned, then followed it.
The street was desolate, as if it had never witnessed any form of life.  Any vegetation that could be seen from the street was blackened.  Buildings that had seemed to be made of a clay-like substance were collapsed.  The town stretched out as a pile of dust and broken things, no structure that was still standing was more than six feet tall.  Smoke rose up from an area in the center of the rubble.
The strange creature suddenly stopped.  It breathed loudly, opening its jaws and huffing air, as if smelling through its mouth.  It knelt, staring down an alley and making strange, windy noises.  The taller man kept walking, his eyes curious but otherwise without haste.  The other three walked behind him, unconcerned as well.  The two with the goggles scanned the buildings, hands in their coat-pockets.
They found themselves in front of a pile of rubble, not specifically different from any of the other heaps of stone, wood, and metal.  The creature was perched before it, staring into the shadows quietly, until the man came up behind it.  The thing peered back at him, then began to chatter, doing so by clicking its mouth shut.  It took a step towars the pile, dropped onto its hands and knees, and gazed under a thick beam that was propped up on boulder.  The man tilted his head, looking with a vaguely puzzled expression at the creature, then knelt beside it.
“What is it?” he asked, not seeing anything.  The Gat breathed at him, gesturing with its clawed hand.  He shook his head, not understanding what it meant to tell him, and pushed himself back up to his feet.
“Do any of you understand?” he asked of his three companions.  He turned his gaze to the man that was slightly shorter than him.  “Gazik?”
Gazik shook his head.  “It must have found something it wants.”
“No, the Gat was made so that it would not seek to possess anything.” The taller man said.  He shifted, staring at the Gat.  It stared back at him silently.  “It has taken us a long distance from our original destination.  There must be something here, unless it has broken itself again.”  The Gat shuddered, and shook its head in denial.  Its dark hair followed its head like a shadowy mass of spider silk.
“There is a boy.” said one of goggled men suddenly.  The taller man looked at him.
“What do you mean?”
“There is a boy under the rubble.  He has to have been there for at least a day, and  he is probably dead, but he is there.”  The goggled man lifted his arm, pointing into the mound.  The Gat stirred, sighed breathily, and moved closer to the pile.
“Is that all?” said the tall man.  He glanced at the pile, searching for the boy, but could not see anything.  He turned, as if to leave.  “We are not looking for humans.  If there is nothing else, we will go.”
The Gat made a whistling, desperate sound as the man started to walk away.  It crawled forward and tugged at the man’s pant-leg, imploringly, making him pause.  It sighed loudly, almost on its elbows.
The man gazed for a while at the creature, as if having a staring-contest with it.  Meanwhile, one of the goggled men had gone over to the pile.  He knelt, tapping the beam gently with a finger, then another, slowly progressing with his tapping until he had touched most of the larger debris accesible by the street.  He stuck his hand in through a hole, waited for a moment, then pulled it out and looked at it with interest.  Gazik watched, then joined the goggled man, crouching beside him on the balls of his feet.
After observing this display for a few seconds, he absently reached out to grab a small piece of metal that was protruding from the heap.
The Gat shrieked abruptly, as close to a shriek as moving air can make, and lunged for Gazik.  It swiftly took hold of his wrist before he could touch the metal piece, twisting him until he plopped down into a sitting position.  Gazik didn’t so much as frown at the creature, but rubbed his wrist, and looked bewildered.
“Lagoon?” he asked.  The taller man was studying the Gat closely.
The goggled man came over to the piece of metal, peered at it for a moment, then nodded, as if it afirmed his belief.  He flipped his head back until he was facing Lagoon.
“This pile will collapse if anything in it is moved.  Probably, even touching something too hard will have the same effect.  I am surprised the wind has not done so already.”  He gave a curious look to the Gat, then stood.  “Still, even if the boy was still alive, probably, he is no use to us.  We do not go after his type.”  Having said this, the goggled man seemed to lose interest, then returned to stand quietly beside the other bug-masked man.  Gazik lifted an eyebrow towards the pile, then looked at Lagoon, as if to get the answer to the situation from him.  Lagoon stared, seemingly at nothing, as if thinking.
“We should probably just let the boy die.  We are not a rescue service.” he paused, looking again at the Gat.
Suddenly, Lagoon spun and stared at Gazik, the shorter man stumbling back with surprise.  He blinked, a confused look on his face.
“Gazik, describe our services please.  Be detailed.” Lagoon said plainly, his eyes distant, and waited for an answer.  Gazik nodded, but didn’t seem to understand what the use of it was.
“We hunt living things and objects that contain any significant value of magical quality and sell to the markets, discreetly, that is, and on occation take specific orders from wealthy customers.  We are not obliged to any laws of any area but those of our own making and only refrain from taking that which we have already obtained and/or sold.  Unless, of coarse, there has been a breach of contract in which case we are then obliged to take an equivalent amount of equal worth to that which was sold from the buyer, whether or not this exchange includes the item which was originally exchanged.  Any and all items belong to the group until it has been legalized as according to our own regulations, and any item that is taken before being legalized is considered an offence and punished as necessary.  All exchanges that result in disfavor or harm to the group will not be accepted, or, if necessary, will not be unavenged.  No item, of any category, is discluded from these rules,”  He took a breath.
“Stop.” said Lagoon, cutting him short.
“Would you like me to describe all secondary rules and consequences?”
Lagoon did not answer, but continued to stare forward.
“We are not very specific about relative items, are we?” he said.  Though it was not posed as a question, Gazik answered anyway.
“No.  ‘No item, of any category, is discluded from these rules.’  That does not specifically discriminate any object, though if it goes against the group, it…”  Lagoon cut him off.
“Then humans are no exception, even though they rarely find any use to us.”
“Yes, I suppose, but how does this relate to our current situation?” Gazik asked, confused.  “We do not usually benefit from taking people, unless they have breached contract or harmed the group.”
Lagoon turned, and walked up to the Gat, who was standing at this point.  It stared at him, a head shorter than the man, until he bowed forward so that he was eye-level with it.  He spoke slowly.
“Gat.  Is the boy alive?”
The Gat nodded fiercely, breathing loudly.  It crept back towards the pile.  The three other men exchanged surprised looks with each other.
“Gat, do you consider youself human?” Lagoon asked, still sounding detached.  The Gat hesitated, looking briefly at the ground.  Gazik frowned, confused, but interested in where Lagoon was going with his questions.  The Gat then slowly shook its head.
“Gat,” he asked, slower, pausing.  His blue eyes were so focused on the Gat, it almost appeared he was trying to see past the mask that covered its face.  “… is the boy human?”
Gazik and the two goggled men swung their heads around abruptly, surprised, and watched the Gat intently.  Even the goggled men, who so far had rarely said more than was needed or asked, muttered something to each other, touching the square mesh screen in front of their mouths with emphasis.
The Gat shook its head.
“Yu, is there any way to remove the boy from the rubble without killing him?” Lagoon asked of
one of the goggled men.  The man that had originally spoken and investigated the wreckage shrugged.
“We probably can not.  I do not think it is possible for any person to, most likely.  You would have to crawl under, without touching anything, and pull him out without moving anything.”  He trailed off, then twisted a ring on one of his goggles with two fingers.  “No.  Not possible.  There is too much on him, he has actually become one of the supportive structures.  Even if you could get under there, moving him would collapse it, certainly, unless you could replace him with something.  We do not carry that kind of power with us.  So no, we can not.”
“Unless…” spoke up the other goggled man.  He ta