The hustle and bustle of Haverton’s small - yet often crowded - daytime market played in stark contrast to the serene expanse of the surrounding Outlands, as if it were a snippet of the restless city near a day’s travel to the Northeast. Here, where the willows and oaks dotted the tussocky landscape, a town known for its hunters, foresters, and tradesman thrived amid the tireless effort of its people.

Hair, a platinum-gold, danced gracefully in the cool Spring breeze. Mia squinted the jades of her eyes, a thin hand placed atop the smooth skin just above her brow as she adjusted to the bright noon sun. Tied behind her with a loose blue ribbon, she dropped her hand and let the locks framing - on either side - the soft features of her youthful, maturing visage hang freely apart from the rest. She wore a pair of brown mid-calf outdoor boots, best suited for the lumpy terrain of the Outlands, below a set of shortalls over a loose white blouse. Over one shoulder, a brown leather pack sat partway full of her usual odds and ends.

Mia passed through town, several neighbors and friendly faces greeted the fair-skinned girl, stopping her for a quick chat.

“Is your mother coming back anytime soon? She’s been gone for nearly a week this time around, hasn’t she?” An old, stocky woman furrowed her brow at Mia, voicing her concern for the girl and her mother under a hooked nose and well-worn sun-kissed skin. Crow’s feet, wrinkled deep around brown eyes, frowned just as she did, anger swelling in her chest, continuing before Mia could get a word in. “And your uncle Nick… egh!” She scoffed. “Disappears all this time, then he has the gall to take the stage now… for what? Nearly a year and he hasn’t sent so much as a letter to you! Despicable of him.”

Mia shared somewhat in the the woman’s distaste for her uncle. It seemed a hobby for the gossiping elderly to speak ill of those they found to be distasteful. Still, Nick wasn’t a story she could share or a man she could bad mouth on a whim with whomever would listen, then forget about and get on with her day. Others had that luxury, but Nick was family. He was her Father’s brother and, aside from her mother, Nick was the only family she had left.

“I hear you, Agnes,” Mia replied, nodding along with the enraged woman. “Tell you what, I’ll go ahead and give him a piece of my mind for you next time I see him. He owes me for breaking our promise anyway.”

Agnes shook her head with a slight frown, waving her hand in the air as if shooing away the thought. “There won’t be a next time unless you go off to that damned city- Oh! Pardon my language, dear.”

“That’s ok, Agnes, I’m not a little girl anymore.” Mia chuckled at the flustered woman.

“No, you’re not, are you? 17 now, is that right?” Mia nodded her head as Agnes continued in a more hushed tone, waddling closer to her so that only the younger girl could hear. “Well, when you come of age and head off to the city, make sure you ignore that bastard uncle of yours when you make it big. No doubt he’ll come crawling out of the woodworks like the pest he is.”

The two shared a laugh before Mia bid her farewell, speeding down the main road and coming upon the noisy markets. There, she slid her way through the jumbled crowd, slipping through the busy fur, lumber, and produce stalls and trotting towards the back edge of the market area.

“Mia! Did you sleep in again today?” A man, just under 6 feet tall, dressed in a lavish violet silk shirt - the top two buttons undone and showing a burly chest underneath - waved at the blond girl who paced steadily towards him. A dark tuft of hair, like a dense fur on his chest, matched the short curly hair and proud beard he styled and shaped with tender love and care.

“Yes, actually, I did. And by the looks of it, so did you.” She grinned at the man, noting his wares, most of which had yet to be set out on their stands, packaged away and out of sight.

“Me?! No, no, no. Mia! You’ve got me all wrong! Come on, now. What do I always say? A man like Amir can never be late to the party because…” Amir raised his eye brows, flipping his hand towards Mia expectantly.

She rolled her eyes, giving a half-hearted, exasperated chuckle. “Because Amir is the party.”

“You’re damn right. Now shut up before you drive away my customers.”

Mia looked around, this side of the market devoid of anyone looking to shop, giving Amir a questioning stare.

“What? They must have come earlier today, but I overslept. What can I say? It happens. They’ll come back.” Amir brushed off her glance and burst out laguhing, Mia doing the same before noticing the wide-shouldered man reach down beneath his stall and bring out a small, well-crafted box. “Here. This is what you came for, yes?” Opening the box and handing it to her, Mia’s eyes lit up at the sight of it.

Inlaid with gold and silver floral patterns, the ivory box sat in her hands, polished and newly void of the wear and rust it had picked up over the years. “Wow! It’s looks good as new! Wait…” She furrowed her brow, opening it and revealing the golden pin drum attached to a myriad of devices, levers, gears, and springs around it. “You didn’t swap it out with a fake, did you?” She eyed Amir with a deadly glare.

“Do I look like I have a death wish? Do you have any idea what Elena would do to me if she found out I stole your music box? Your mother is a crazy woman, you know that? Like, an insane person, yes? Her screws are loose. As in, she should be locked away…”

Mia played with the box, cranking the handle and hearing everything click and clack, moving into place and working just as she remembered. “Yeah, yeah. My mom is amazing, I get it.”

“No. She’s not. She’s a bad person—”

“Cool! Thanks Amir! I gotta get going!”

“Alright, so that’s going to be… Never mind, I’ll just put it on your tab then.” Amir watched as the girl dashed off, back into the crowd and out of sight. “Oh! Thank you so much Amir. You’re so kind and helpful and handsome,” he mocked, voice high in falsetto, before returning to it’s normal, only slightly grating tone. “You’re welcome, Mia. I’m always happy to be of service! Amir doesn’t need money anyway, right? Heh…” He sighed, looking down at his various crates and boxes and beginning to unpack them.

Mia hurried out of the market, now on the edge of town and darting over the tussock-laden Outlands. Towards the South, the Norde River flowed gently to the East. Perhaps a 15 minute trek from Haverton, Mia found her usual spot and set down the bag beside a small nook just off of the river bank where she would often sit on a smooth boulder that happened to be nestled comfortably beside the grass. This was her “study” spot, as Mia often assured her mother. Of course, she didn’t come out here to study. Rather, Mia used the spot to work on her art, in a far more private space than she could otherwise find.

Bringing out the Music box, she opened it once more, cranking the handle several times, winding it as far back as it would go. Feeling it stiffen, she placed it atop her bag, releasing the handle and hearing it play for the first time since she had sent it out to repair nearly 3 months prior.

It chimed with glee a tone so reminiscent of her childhood she couldn’t help but smile as it played through just as she remembered it. The clear tone clacked away with joyful innocence. Mia’s hand tapped along as the time slowed, but the rhythm of 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3 over and over stayed the same. She shut her eyes, voicing the playful, wondrous tune.

“Dun, tata, dun, tata, dun, tata!” Her voice, a smooth, silky tone flowed out with pitch perfect precision. Following the waltz at first before adventuring into the accompanying melody with vocal acrobatics unlike many have ever possessed the talent to perform. Soon the song ended. Though it lasted no longer than a minute, it had brought her joy to last a life time. Mia sat there for a moment, the song replaying in her mind as she hummed it gracefully. She gave a content sigh, opening her eyes to wind it once more.

Gone was the peaceful sight of the Norde cutting through the surrounding Outlands. Gone, was the cool breeze rustling her hair like it did the hanging leaves of the willows nearby. In their place was a blanket of white, as if the clouds supporting the heavens had descended to envelope the lands of mortals.

She could still make out the sound of the river beside her, but it was quiet. Quieter now than it had been moments before, and then quieter still it continued as it faded slowly into nothing. The joy she felt, the peace and innocence of her youth brought back by a trinket of her past faded too with the sound of the River Norde escaping her, just as seemingly all other sound did, except for the pounding of her heart beat racing in her chest.

Had she gone deaf? She thought, discarding the idea as she stood and heard her boot settle into the dirt and grass below. Extending her arm, she watched as her hand disappeared into the mist, a fog that hung like a wall impenetrable by internal or external force.

If the mist was natural, then it was a freak occurrence. If not, then she only hoped it came from a benevolent force. Mia was aware of mages who could manipulate the forces of nature. She’d never seen one, but her mother - a scholar and archivist who had worked with many sorcerers in the past - had made note of them in her frequent bed time stories when Mia was young. If that were the case, then maybe Mia could identify it and better understand her predicament.

Feeling the rhythm of her heartbeat, now calmer as rational thought had overcome initial fear, she counted a measure of 4. On the off-beats between 1 & 2 and 3 & 4 - but only on every other measure - Mia snapped her fingers using that count to focus her mind, closing her eyes as the white of the fog turned to the black of her emptying thoughts.

1, snap, 2, 3, snap, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4.

In her thought, Mia focused on a light, dim at first, that grew brighter and larger with every snap of her fingers before flashing and bringing her to a deeper understanding of her being.

Mia Anisse Kaufman ??? - 1

Date of Birth - 44th Cycle, Period of Dawn, 982 P.G.D.

Age - 17

Height - 163 cm

Weight - 52 kg

Occupation(s) - Student, Musician's Apprentice

Strength - 7(-2) - 5

Dexterity - 15(-2) - 13

Intelligence - 16(+1) - 17

Perception - 10(-5)(+1) - 6

Fortitude - 8

Location - Undiscoverable Stamina - 14/15

Status Effects:

Fear Paralysis (II) - Strength and Dexterity reduced. Status cannot stack with other fear effects. Converts all fear to Fear Paralysis and increases level of effect up to a maximum level 10 (X) as total fear level rises, further decreasing Strength and Dexterity values.

Mist - Perception highly reduced.

Focused - Intelligence and perception slightly increased.

Abilities:

Inner Focus - Applies the Focused status effect and grants insight into the user's current state.

The Chords of Souls (Innate) - Listen.

"Location - Undiscoverable". She had never seen that under the Location marker before. While she was still new to this ability, it had always shown her the most accurate information possible in terms of immediate surroundings and general whereabouts. Aside from that, her class title was changed and replaced with question marks. "Musician's Apprentice" was now an occupation were is at had previously been her class. Had she gained a new title even her Identification was unaware of, or had the fog messed with her incantation?

Before she could mull it over, Mia heard a sound around her. Her eyes shot open, looking around to no avail, the fog still dense, impossible to see anything beyond the length of her arm. Again, unintelligible and faint, it came from behind her, the girl turning towards it, heart beat racing once more.

A third, fourth, and fifth. More and more, they clamored around her. Close, far. They grew louder and louder surrounding her in sensory overload. Mia waved her arms about, fear gripping her chest. She searched for her nook, the boulder she had sat on where she had placed her items nearby. Gone, as if she had moved without knowing it. Stepping forward over the uneven ground, her lead foot collided with something, objects scattering and sending her tumbling to the ground, feeling a rush of air sweep past her head.

"Agh! Ow…” Below her, she could feel something soft, but filled with hard objects. She groaned with pain, rolling onto her back and clutching at what she had fallen on. It was a bag, her bag, and nowhere near where she had remembered putting it. She looked it over before her eyes were drawn up to the mist by sudden movement.

There, her mind struggled to process what she was looking at. As if connected to the fog itself, an arm, gray in color and covered in a jagged, almost stone-like material, hung in the air. Before her, the fog was clearing in her immediate area, sucked up into the arm as more of it manifested, past the elbow and up to the bicep and shoulder. Squinting, Mia reached back, feeling her hair as it hung free of any binding - a blue ribbon grasped in the stone fist.

A bell chimed. Again, then again. With each, the arm recoiled, cracked. Mia’s ribbon fell from its hand, the arm pulling back into the mist and vanishing from sight as the whispers scattered and the sound of the river returned.

Mia took a breath, noticing how cold the air had become. The breeze was gone, yes, but the fog diffusing the sunlight had dropped the temperature considerably. Her chest heaved with every breath, sucking in cold, damp air almost made it harder to breath. There was a silence where she could sit and try to process what had happened. A moment of reprieve before another bell sounded, now directly in front of her, closer even than the arm had been. With a blink of her eyes, the frightened girl’s sight fell upon a figure that hadn’t been there an instant prior. Standing, a woman - a crude wooden mask painted with red symbols hid her identity from the the blond staring up at her - dressed in tribal garb loomed over Mia. Much of her body was wrapped in white cloth beneath the tribal wear, but what skin was visible certainly wasn’t human - a blue hue to her pale tone under long, braided silver hair. Horns of black, like darkness materialized from above long, pointed ears tagged with piercings up and down. While she appeared whole in nature, her skin steamed in various places, mixing with the mist around her.

Strangest of all, with every blink of her eyes, Mia found herself looking at a different person. The general dress and description was the same, but the person was not. They couldn’t be. In one moment, she was young with a fit, healthy form. In the next, age had hit her and she was hunched over, skin wrinkled and worn. Up and down the time line of adult hood, her age never the same as before she had taken her eyes off of her.

Mia brought herself to a sitting position, desperate to move away, but her body wasn’t listening. The woman watched her tremble, the normally fiery nature Mia gave off recoiling inside of her and drowned in anxiety and horror. The young girl could feel the energy in the air. From the arm, from the woman looking down at her, even the mist itself hummed the same tune.

Death. A black energy foreboding a definite, unavoidable end.

1, 2, 3. 1, 2, 3.

The Minute Waltz played further back into the heavy fog. Mia stared into it, memories of her mother, her father playing in her mind before being swept away by fear once more, though opportunity had been presented. Looking up at the blue woman, she had turned to face the music as well. Mia could escape. She could run. Then, in that moment, she could live. But her legs didn’t move. She wanted them too, but they didn’t.

Instead, heavy hands that warmed her frigid body amid the cold air pulled her up to her feet with immense strength. Mia yelped as she watched the tribal woman turn back to her before the fog clouded her view, grabbing at her abductor in an attempt to release. Roughly, an iron grip held her by the wrist and around her slim waist, hurtling them both through the fog and far from bells and horrid whispers.