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Description
A lone figure crept up the barren hillside. Gray walls shadowed his approach from every direction, and signs directed him back from whence he had come. The signs failed in their task, as the man trudged onward, barely pausing to verbally rebuke the signs with blandishments and cursing. From behind he seemed an ordinary man, walking boots hitched up, traveling cloak on to protect against the slick, impersonal northern winds... The good impression began to go horribly wrong as the sentinel, gripping both hands quickly to his halberd still thick with the blood of the last border-crosser, saw the man's hat - tilted too far to the right to be believable - and his face, which sported a grin which bared all of his teeth and showed simultaneous mirth and dangerous mayhem. Remembering the page in the officer's handbook, the guard shot forth a loud query, bitter and estranged in the harsh gale, which seemed to quicken slightly at the touch of his voice. It might have been "Who goes there?" or more likely "Show me your papers, citizen," but these words were borne away on the wind, which was definitely picking up -- hadn't the forecast read something about a sunny afternoon? The guard looked in the direction of the gale, just for a moment, and saw why the man was smiling. "Chaos Mage! Illegal!" the sentinel shouted uselessly as flowers cascaded down on the wind and buried them in fragrant softness. The guard wormed his way out of the flowers and directly into the mage, who had been climbing over the pile. The mage grinned, introduced himself as Tobias -- although he preferred to be called Tacks -- and was then borne away, on a cloud of roses, into the night.

The guard watched him go, turned back, resolute, and decided that Head Command of the United States simply didn't pay him enough to report the impossible. Chaos Mages had all been executed three months prior. They simply didn't exist anymore. This notion firmly in hand, he smiled, tried to forget the strange man in the night, and went back to standing around and looking important. He was contemplating how much his halberd allowed him to look important and stand around and kill things that didn't wear a uniform like he did when his good mood was dashed by the sounds of archers spotting a target running away from the border wall. Thinking it would be an excellent time to be on coffee break, the guard rushed past the walls and signs, searching for the door to freedom, looking everywhere -- when a short but thick man stopped him in his tracks. He wasn't sure if it was the man's eyes being a solid sky-blue with no whites or pupils, or the glare he sported like a crouching kitten playing with food, or the fact that this man was his commanding officer, but the guard stopped in his tracks and fervently wished he were elsewhere.

Moments later, the guard's head, which had been feeling a little stopped up anyway, wished it was elsewhere -- back attached to its former body, to be specific. The last thought it had blood to think was how much it hated Chaos Mages anyway.

---

Normally, the house stood erect on the hill, defiant in overlooking the town below. Faded white paint had peeled, leaving the blackened-brown wood naked to the wind and the elements. It was a house that did a lot to keep out the rain and the cold, but somehow the inhabitant was gloomy and irascible. The house loved him, but it was difficult for the half-elf who lived there to tell and he did little to know. The rolling, low hills of Kentucky surrounded his house, which Oren (for that was the half-elf's name, you see) felt was appropriate, as he lived in Kentucky. Directly down the hill was the town which Oren had successfully shunned after much hard work and little effort. He barely went into town at all anymore, placing his orders with the grocery store a week in advance and going in once a week to collect them, ignoring the cries and questioning glances of the town's citizens. Once he remembered grabbing a little girl who asked him why he wore the giant red dot... he remembered lifting her up, as if towards the sun, and his mouth was moving and sound was pouring forth in mass quantities, but what he had said remained a mystery. From then on the girl had avoided him and the townsfolk wondered why her eyes had become aged, losing the exuberance and vitality of youth and replacing them with the vigor and the experience of one who had been to war. "She has his eyes," the villagers complained loudly. They hated Oren, made no secret of it, and suspected him of not being human. In this, they were right. Oren's mother had been an elf -- still was, if the dispatches from the Great Forests were to be believed -- and his father an ordinary human from the same ordinary village Oren lived in now, ordinarily.

Ordinary had been Oren's life -- until the war. The Civil War was more than a hundred years ago, but skirmished often broke out among the border, and one day a particularly nasty regiment of ogryn hired by the United States had escaped into the Confederacy just north of Oren's village, somehow keeping their retirement plan intact. ogryn being what they are, a mere twenty-seven and a half seconds had passed before Oren's village found itself berated on all sides by belligerent ogre after belligerent ogre. Ogres are tall beings approximately twelve to fifteen feet tall and with limbs as thick as tree trunks -- and about as knobbly. The siege lasted somewhere between three months and a year, depending on whom you believed. Half of the village had been decimated and the resemblances between the attackers and the attackees grew more pronounced as time went by, villagers growing hard, strong and thick and the ogryn softening up as their retirement non-regimen did not keep them particularly in-shape. Oren was twelve at the time, and an aspiring Order Warrior. When the war was over, he was granted this status but shocked his villagers and his fiancee by refusing to accept his commissioned post.

Now, almost ten years later, Oren was enjoying his weekly walk back from the grocer, just as he did every week. Oren was proud of regiment, as was his father before him, and (Oren presumed) every right-thinking and therefore happy person in the world. As he rounded the last switchback up the hill, he committed the first of what would soon become a serious breach in his ordinary and therefore happy life.

Oren dropped his groceries.

Skeletons were encamped around his house. Their ramshackle tents were spread on his lawn and there was a satisfied looking skeletal command regiment gleefully using Oren's flowers from his very ordinary and regimented garden to power their bonfire, which crackled in the breeze. Oren pulled out his Order Warrior's Handbook, Perfect Edition from its perch in his trouser pocket. "Tents made of tanned animal hide loosely thrown over sticks," he read, thumbing through the index. "Let's see, let's see... skeletal regiment... command bonfire... officers wear the best hats... Yes, it's definitely a skeletal encampment," he concluded. A simplistic, small smile littered Oren's face for a moment before he caught himself and brushed it off like an undesirable bug, and then he gathered up his groceries and sneaked into his house.

His bedroom was simple -- a single window, a single set of pillows for the bed, and the object of his attention -- there! On the wall, hung delicately above the scrubbed and sparkling floor, was what Oren referred to as the Bishop. It was a polearm which had a single carved-out niche in the blade, causing it to resemble the symbol for the bishop piece in a game of chess. Oren's hands found the familiar grips and he almost sang as the polished weapon glinted in the moonlight -- deadly, efficient, and ready. The house wished he would sing. It had been so long. Before ogryn claimed his father, and refusal to accept his commanded post lost him his fiancee, an even more devout follower of order than Oren was.

As he began to walk out the front door, he felt a sudden pang of uneasiness. Would the best thing to do really be to kill all of them and leave their bones out, to eventually bleach in the sun? Well, it might symbolize purity or something like that, he thought. Quickly eschewing thoughts of literary symbolism from his mind, he opened the door and announced that the skeletons had precisely twelve minutes ago to vacate the premises, and he sliced through the first one as the others reached for their blades, skeleton cracking and cackling peppering the lawn around him.

---

Breathing fast and heavily, Oren observed his lawn. A scattered skeleton or two (distinguishable from a non-scattered skeleton by its confused facial expression) was still charging at him in an attempt to bring him down. Thinking the situation over, Oren could hardly blame them. He had, after all, left most of their members dismembered in little piles about the lawn, and -- wait a moment, who was that?

The hat, tilted too far to the right to be believable -- that traveling cloak, buttoned most precariously up the front -- and the smile, baring teeth which screamed mirth and mayhem -- Oren bore this information in mind and pulled out his handbook. For the first time in a decade, Oren's eyes grew to the size of gnomish dinner plates, betraying his elfish heritage. "A chaos mage," he read, "is extremely illegal both in the United States and the Confederacy." Turning the page with trepidation, he read: "While the Union has utilized valuable men and resources killing all practitioners of this most Law-destroying magic which destroys peace, the Confederacy's finest aristocrats have commissioned researchers who have discovered the true path to order. Registration processes and special manacles are produced and tracked in Atlanta, Georgia, which prevent Chaos Mages from utilizing even the most rudimentary spells of their trade." Oren almost smiled, but then he remembered with trepidation the long trek to Georgia.

Tacks smiled as he placed another rose into the hands of the dead skeleton, or at least the no-longer-animated skeleton, and arranged the body with the hands folded across the chest cavity. "Like an old glove," he mentioned to nobody in particular, baring his teeth into the formerly animated face, trying to mimic the skeleton's deathly grin and nearly succeeding.

Oren was approaching the man, bent over a skeleton and seemingly absorbed in his strange and macabre task, when suddenly the Chaos Mage swung his face and neck towards the worried half-elf and nearly screamed "Hi, my name's Tobias -- but I fervently hope you call me Tacks. What's your name?" Oren thought for a moment, and then, perceiving no danger in allowing the mage his name, opened his mouth to speak and was abruptly cut off when the mage inexplicably continued: "Seems you've been killing skeletons here! What do you think of that?"

Taken aback, Oren failed to think before he asked "Well, morally it was the right thing to do, wasn't it?" Tacks quick rejoinder flew across the distance between the two men: "A powerful necromancer would be needed to raise this many -- and another will surely come along eventually and reanimate them if necessary... Skeletons, after all, have a much longer lifespan than you" -- he indicated himself -- "or me," -- indicating Oren.

Oren's head tilted so far to the right he fell over. He felt inexplicably better about his moral qualms for killing the skeletons and yet the man's manner of conversation frightened him more than war had ever done. Oren shook his head to clear his thoughts. Widening his mouth so as to drown out the holy and terrible silence, he explained himself to the mage. "You're coming with me. I'm takin' you to Atlanta and we're gonna get you some of those shackles that prevent you from castin' any of your magic." Calming slightly as he said these words, Oren carried on: "Now, if you have any problems with that, I'll be just as happy to drag you there as I am if you go on your own accord."

"I'll be happy to follow you around," said Tacks. "Seems that you and I have very little in common and you want to imprison me forever, inflicting great pain upon my person. I can't think of anything better to do."

Description
A lone figure crept up the barren hillside. Gray walls shadowed his approach from every direction, and signs directed him back from whence he had come. The signs failed in their task, as the man trudged onward, barely pausing to verbally rebuke the signs with blandishments and cursing. From behind he seemed an ordinary man, walking boots hitched up, traveling cloak on to protect against the slick, impersonal northern winds... The good impression began to go horribly wrong as the sentinel, gripping both hands quickly to his halberd still thick with the blood of the last border-crosser, saw the man's hat - tilted too far to the right to be believable - and his face, which sported a grin which bared all of his teeth and showed simultaneous mirth and dangerous mayhem. Remembering the page in the officer's handbook, the guard shot forth a loud query, bitter and estranged in the harsh gale, which seemed to quicken slightly at the touch of his voice. It might have been "Who goes there?" or more likely "Show me your papers, citizen," but these words were borne away on the wind, which was definitely picking up -- hadn't the forecast read something about a sunny afternoon? The guard looked in the direction of the gale, just for a moment, and saw why the man was smiling. "Chaos Mage! Illegal!" the sentinel shouted uselessly as flowers cascaded down on the wind and buried them in fragrant softness. The guard wormed his way out of the flowers and directly into the mage, who had been climbing over the pile. The mage grinned, introduced himself as Tobias -- although he preferred to be called Tacks -- and was then borne away, on a cloud of roses, into the night.

The guard watched him go, turned back, resolute, and decided that Head Command of the United States simply didn't pay him enough to report the impossible. Chaos Mages had all been executed three months prior. They simply didn't exist anymore. This notion firmly in hand, he smiled, tried to forget the strange man in the night, and went back to standing around and looking important. He was contemplating how much his halberd allowed him to look important and stand around and kill things that didn't wear a uniform like he did when his good mood was dashed by the sounds of archers spotting a target running away from the border wall. Thinking it would be an excellent time to be on coffee break, the guard rushed past the walls and signs, searching for the door to freedom, looking everywhere -- when a short but thick man stopped him in his tracks. He wasn't sure if it was the man's eyes being a solid sky-blue with no whites or pupils, or the glare he sported like a crouching kitten playing with food, or the fact that this man was his commanding officer, but the guard stopped in his tracks and fervently wished he were elsewhere.

Moments later, the guard's head, which had been feeling a little stopped up anyway, wished it was elsewhere -- back attached to its former body, to be specific. The last thought it had blood to think was how much it hated Chaos Mages anyway.

---

Normally, the house stood erect on the hill, defiant in overlooking the town below. Faded white paint had peeled, leaving the blackened-brown wood naked to the wind and the elements. It was a house that did a lot to keep out the rain and the cold, but somehow the inhabitant was gloomy and irascible. The house loved him, but it was difficult for the half-elf who lived there to tell and he did little to know. The rolling, low hills of Kentucky surrounded his house, which Oren (for that was the half-elf's name, you see) felt was appropriate, as he lived in Kentucky. Directly down the hill was the town which Oren had successfully shunned after much hard work and little effort. He barely went into town at all anymore, placing his orders with the grocery store a week in advance and going in once a week to collect them, ignoring the cries and questioning glances of the town's citizens. Once he remembered grabbing a little girl who asked him why he wore the giant red dot... he remembered lifting her up, as if towards the sun, and his mouth was moving and sound was pouring forth in mass quantities, but what he had said remained a mystery. From then on the girl had avoided him and the townsfolk wondered why her eyes had become aged, losing the exuberance and vitality of youth and replacing them with the vigor and the experience of one who had been to war. "She has his eyes," the villagers complained loudly. They hated Oren, made no secret of it, and suspected him of not being human. In this, they were right. Oren's mother had been an elf -- still was, if the dispatches from the Great Forests were to be believed -- and his father an ordinary human from the same ordinary village Oren lived in now, ordinarily.

Ordinary had been Oren's life -- until the war. The Civil War was more than a hundred years ago, but skirmished often broke out among the border, and one day a particularly nasty regiment of ogryn hired by the United States had escaped into the Confederacy just north of Oren's village, somehow keeping their retirement plan intact. ogryn being what they are, a mere twenty-seven and a half seconds had passed before Oren's village found itself berated on all sides by belligerent ogre after belligerent ogre. Ogres are tall beings approximately twelve to fifteen feet tall and with limbs as thick as tree trunks -- and about as knobbly. The siege lasted somewhere between three months and a year, depending on whom you believed. Half of the village had been decimated and the resemblances between the attackers and the attackees grew more pronounced as time went by, villagers growing hard, strong and thick and the ogryn softening up as their retirement non-regimen did not keep them particularly in-shape. Oren was twelve at the time, and an aspiring Order Warrior. When the war was over, he was granted this status but shocked his villagers and his fiancee by refusing to accept his commissioned post.

Now, almost ten years later, Oren was enjoying his weekly walk back from the grocer, just as he did every week. Oren was proud of regiment, as was his father before him, and (Oren presumed) every right-thinking and therefore happy person in the world. As he rounded the last switchback up the hill, he committed the first of what would soon become a serious breach in his ordinary and therefore happy life.

Oren dropped his groceries.

Skeletons were encamped around his house. Their ramshackle tents were spread on his lawn and there was a satisfied looking skeletal command regiment gleefully using Oren's flowers from his very ordinary and regimented garden to power their bonfire, which crackled in the breeze. Oren pulled out his Order Warrior's Handbook, Perfect Edition from its perch in his trouser pocket. "Tents made of tanned animal hide loosely thrown over sticks," he read, thumbing through the index. "Let's see, let's see... skeletal regiment... command bonfire... officers wear the best hats... Yes, it's definitely a skeletal encampment," he concluded. A simplistic, small smile littered Oren's face for a moment before he caught himself and brushed it off like an undesirable bug, and then he gathered up his groceries and sneaked into his house.

His bedroom was simple -- a single window, a single set of pillows for the bed, and the object of his attention -- there! On the wall, hung delicately above the scrubbed and sparkling floor, was what Oren referred to as the Bishop. It was a polearm which had a single carved-out niche in the blade, causing it to resemble the symbol for the bishop piece in a game of chess. Oren's hands found the familiar grips and he almost sang as the polished weapon glinted in the moonlight -- deadly, efficient, and ready. The house wished he would sing. It had been so long. Before ogryn claimed his father, and refusal to accept his commanded post lost him his fiancee, an even more devout follower of order than Oren was.

As he began to walk out the front door, he felt a sudden pang of uneasiness. Would the best thing to do really be to kill all of them and leave their bones out, to eventually bleach in the sun? Well, it might symbolize purity or something like that, he thought. Quickly eschewing thoughts of literary symbolism from his mind, he opened the door and announced that the skeletons had precisely twelve minutes ago to vacate the premises, and he sliced through the first one as the others reached for their blades, skeleton cracking and cackling peppering the lawn around him.

---

Breathing fast and heavily, Oren observed his lawn. A scattered skeleton or two (distinguishable from a non-scattered skeleton by its confused facial expression) was still charging at him in an attempt to bring him down. Thinking the situation over, Oren could hardly blame them. He had, after all, left most of their members dismembered in little piles about the lawn, and -- wait a moment, who was that?

The hat, tilted too far to the right to be believable -- that traveling cloak, buttoned most precariously up the front -- and the smile, baring teeth which screamed mirth and mayhem -- Oren bore this information in mind and pulled out his handbook. For the first time in a decade, Oren's eyes grew to the size of gnomish dinner plates, betraying his elfish heritage. "A chaos mage," he read, "is extremely illegal both in the United States and the Confederacy." Turning the page with trepidation, he read: "While the Union has utilized valuable men and resources killing all practitioners of this most Law-destroying magic which destroys peace, the Confederacy's finest aristocrats have commissioned researchers who have discovered the true path to order. Registration processes and special manacles are produced and tracked in Atlanta, Georgia, which prevent Chaos Mages from utilizing even the most rudimentary spells of their trade." Oren almost smiled, but then he remembered with trepidation the long trek to Georgia.

Tacks smiled as he placed another rose into the hands of the dead skeleton, or at least the no-longer-animated skeleton, and arranged the body with the hands folded across the chest cavity. "Like an old glove," he mentioned to nobody in particular, baring his teeth into the formerly animated face, trying to mimic the skeleton's deathly grin and nearly succeeding.

Oren was approaching the man, bent over a skeleton and seemingly absorbed in his strange and macabre task, when suddenly the Chaos Mage swung his face and neck towards the worried half-elf and nearly screamed "Hi, my name's Tobias -- but I fervently hope you call me Tacks. What's your name?" Oren thought for a moment, and then, perceiving no danger in allowing the mage his name, opened his mouth to speak and was abruptly cut off when the mage inexplicably continued: "Seems you've been killing skeletons here! What do you think of that?"

Taken aback, Oren failed to think before he asked "Well, morally it was the right thing to do, wasn't it?" Tacks quick rejoinder flew across the distance between the two men: "A powerful necromancer would be needed to raise this many -- and another will surely come along eventually and reanimate them if necessary... Skeletons, after all, have a much longer lifespan than you" -- he indicated himself -- "or me," -- indicating Oren.

Oren's head tilted so far to the right he fell over. He felt inexplicably better about his moral qualms for killing the skeletons and yet the man's manner of conversation frightened him more than war had ever done. Oren shook his head to clear his thoughts. Widening his mouth so as to drown out the holy and terrible silence, he explained himself to the mage. "You're coming with me. I'm takin' you to Atlanta and we're gonna get you some of those shackles that prevent you from castin' any of your magic." Calming slightly as he said these words, Oren carried on: "Now, if you have any problems with that, I'll be just as happy to drag you there as I am if you go on your own accord."

"I'll be happy to follow you around," said Tacks. "Seems that you and I have very little in common and you want to imprison me forever, inflicting great pain upon my person. I can't think of anything better to do."