(no subject)

[cog_nomen]

She had discovered that the magical tie between the two beings in a bonded pair could be, in theory, severed and then connected again. This resulted in a body that was receptive to magic inserted between the two reaching ends of the tie. They still didn't fully understand how the tie formed initially, but he was confident the answers would come with further exploration of what it could do.

As much as he felt like the answer was right on the edge of his realization, he could not make himself focus. His thoughts raced to and fro, from Jessa to her work, to small irrelevant details of the day. He caught himself thinking of his lunch, and realized he must be tired. His mind was rebelling against it's relentless training on the same matter again and again for days. It was almost hopeless to force himself onward - it would only result in aggravation.

His answer would come on it's own, soon enough.

"Giving up already?" Jessa had heard him push his notes away.

"It'll come to me when it's ready," Cade assured.

"Wish I could chose my breaks with that much forethought." Her voice sounded far away. Muted by her concentration, and not aimed in his direction, as she wasn't turning her attention from her hands. "This is the hardest part."

Her hands were deeply enmeshed in grayish pink flesh, attempting to coax mis-matched pieces into a single unit.

"It'll be a miracle if it even functions on the first try." She said, to keep both of them in perspective as her work drew to a close. "But we'll have a pattern to go from, anyway."

He sighed, breath rushing through his teeth. They'd come a long way, functional alchemy to show for it or no.

"No one's even come this close, Jessa." He pushed his chair firmly away from the desk, it's legs scraping across the stone floor of the lab. "It's miraculous already."

She laughed, and shook her head. "You may not say that in a few minutes, when I wake him up." Flexing her fingers, she stopped to consider. She ticked a silent list off, her left index finger touching tip to tip with the fingers of her right hands in turn, and her eyes glancing to points along the figure on the table. Apparently her mental check-list was entirely completed, because she stepped back. "I need to wash my hands. But regardless of how he looks, he should be ready."

Cade examined the directive circle that surrounded the creature, and took up his charcoal again to retrace some lines that had smudged or blurred during her work. Jessa gave herself a quick scrub in a basin of water that rapidly took on a pink tinge. He was fixing up some of the lines around the creature's head, considering the work that Jessa had done last. It was fascinating, the human center of thought. Motion and function could be recreated inorganically, but thought could not.

Or at least, it had not been, yet. Hesitating, Conlan considered the pattern of the organ laid out before him. A brain was just a complex conduit for energy, powered by the factory of the body. Couldn't one recreate all of that inorganically? Certainly, the leyline magics involved would be extensive, and it would require days of work to even draw out the descriptive circle, but he wondered if there wasn't a way.

"What are you waiting for?" Jessa was practically breathing down his neck, and he startled out of his thoughts. "Go on, wake him up. I don't know how you can stand waiting."

"It's nothing," He laughed, "I was lost in thought." He took the sharp knife she offered him, and opened the lets on his arm, beginning the transmutation.

---

Awake in the youngest hours of the day, Conlan wasn't entirely sure when he'd managed to fall asleep. His dreams had caused him to wake again, and he felt the effects of the hard floor on muscles that had relaxed in an uncomfortable position. Even the hawk had tucked it's head down at last, fluffed feathers revealing that it was asleep.

Suddenly claustrophobic, Conlan had to get out of the place that was occupied with two too many bodies. He shifted carefully to his hands and knees. Worried that moving to his feet would wake his guest, he simply crawled to the door, grateful that he kept it's hinges in good care when it slid open noiselessly to admit him into the night. Once it was safely closed behind him again, he rose to his feet, and took in a deep, calming breath of cool night air. He hadn't dreamed anything but nonsense in some time, and had made a point of keeping his memories away.

He made his way away from the cottage and practically tripped over Thenotay, who was curled in the grass just feet away. The chimera exclaimed, and Conlan hastily shushed him until they moved out of hearing distance.

"I'm sorry, Master Conlan, I thought you'd seen me." The Chimera sat down underneath a sprawling fruit tree that had once worked for it's living, and now simply dropped fat apples to the ground for the birds and animals at it's own leasure. Conlan couldn't possibly consume all of it's apples himself, and he'd learned that apple sauce and apple tarts grew old rather rapidly. Before the town's children had become afraid of the 'horror' that supposedly lurked in the woods of his property, they had picked it clean when they'd found he wouldn't stop them. Brief glimpses or imagined visions of Thenotay apparently served as enough to discourage them. Conlan knew the truth of the matter was that the Chimera would be far more interested in playing their games to figure out how they worked than consuming them.

"I couldn't sleep." Waving off the apology as unnecessary, Conlan rested his forearm on the trunk of the big tree. His forehead rested on his forearm, feeling cooling sweat between his shoulderblades. He felt the panic ebb from him, slowly, though his nerves felt like they were standing out at a thousand prickly angles. "Dreams."

"What's she like?" Thenotay turned his head in, trying to catch his master's gaze, but the alchemist's eyes were closed.

"What?" The sudden change of topic caught the alchemist off-guard. Conlan took a moment to think, and then laughed. "The Thuss? She's... cultured, I'd say. Why are you so-"

A noise interrupted them, and Thenotay's attention whipped toward the woods. A figure unfolded it's self from the shadows of tangled limbs, making no effort to hide it's presence. It had seen them, and it's attention was on them. Thenotay moved quickly to put the apple tree between himself and the new arrival, but it was no good.

"No use hiding, Chimera. Nor you, Alchemist." It was a man's voice, and smooth. It seemed familiar, but Conlan couldn't place it. Shadows seemed to cling to his frame, and he was surefooted over the uneven ground where forest roots turned to once-tilled earth. He wasn't large at all, Conlan suspected he himself was bigger, but he moved in a way that suggested skill in hunting and catching. He stopped while he was still enshadowed, the night aided by a hooded cloak.

"Witch hunter," Conlan breathed, backing unconsciously. There was nowhere for him to go, hard ridges of bark at his back, pressing through the thin shirt he had worn to bed.

The man stepped in closer, and Conlan paddled the air with one hand, indicating that Thenotay should flee. He heard the grass rustle, indicating the chimera's departure. The hunter did not even bother to track it's departure, intent on a single target. And why not? He could always destroy the chimera later, it was Conlan he was here for.

"It's not witches I'm hunting." His voice dropped to a whisper, a faint accent audible in his vowels. He was just steps away now, and the shadows continued to cling, almost maddeningly, to his figure.

Conlan felt panic rise up in his system like a wave. It was one thing to be woken in the middle of the night, too sleepy to debate or reason with his fight or flight instinct, another entirely to be completely awake when faced with a fear that had finally, after tens of years, begun to lay to rest.

"You're not running." The man seemed almost surprised, then rolled his shoulders in a mild shrug. He seemed almost disappointed. He cast a glance back toward the alchemist's cottage, and Conlan found his attention following the man's gaze. He wasn't certain that the Thuss would aid him - in fact, he was fairly certain that if he was revealed as an alchemist, she would let the Hunter have his right. Though if he raised a commotion, he could possibly gain a few moments of confusion in which to slip away.

As if sensing his thoughts, the hunter moved like a snake striking. Conlan felt the breeze of his motion, the power behind what seemed like a simple flick of the man's fingers, before the pain hit him. His shoulder felt pinned, and then his arm seemed to hang, dollish and without life. Reaching up with his left hand, he discovered a thick needle-like dagger protruding several inches from his skin. It had penetrated his shoulder deeply, point nestled in a nerve cluster, disrupting feeling to his hand. It hurt, sharp pain waking his senses to the panic that rose up from a deep hum to a screaming crescendo. Numbly, he gripped the needle and began to try working it free, his mind rapidly retreating to a state of animal instinct.

He tried, very hard, to step himself through it logically. But his hindbrain came fore and trampled over logic, pounding sensibility to the back of awareness. He pushed away from the tree, muscles gathering to run as the world suddenly seemed silent to him. He could hear his breath, ragged, draw in to prepare for flight. His injured arm came up to his chest, folded at the elbow to stay close to his body, protected by his bulk from any jarring that might cause him to stop. Tingling feelings in his fingers revealing that no permanent damage had been done to his nerves. He cast aside the needle-knife and made it three steps into the night before the hunter was on him, laughing.

"I knew you'd run." His voice was rich with satisfaction, shifting as if there were chuckles just behind his tone. Conlan could at last see him somewhat clearly, deep in his mind logic triumphantly belled out that he wasn't shadowed - his skin was dark! Wrestled to the ground, he saw that a real knife had found it's way into the man's hands, appearing from somewhere invisible - no sheath marred his silhouette. "A shame you weren't very good at it."

The knife struck for his throat, but missed by centimeters. It drew a jagged bloody line under his jaw, and nicked deeply behind his ear, but did no more. The man pitched sideways with a surprised grunt, a roaring, hulking shape crashing into his side and knocking him free of the alchemist. Suddenly in the middle of a scramble of sturdy heavily furred limbs and a wiry hunter wielding a knife that he saw flash in and out of his vision, Conlan found opportunity to scramble free - and took it. He stumbled into the field between the woods and the cottage, aware that the noise would rapidly wake the Thuss woman inside.

"Master!" Thenotay appeared at his side, surefooted through the woods and steady. The chimera ducked his composite skull down under Conlan's uninjured arm, guiding him away. "We have to get away." The chimera whispered urgently, the sounds of a struggle still going on behind them. Animal and human growling intermixed. Conlan's mind pinwheeled, he was uncertain where to go, instinct telling him to run and to freeze and hope he went unnoticed at the same time.

"We have to move now, please." The chimera's voice passed over his mind like water over stones, unable to penetrate.

A sickening, meaty crunch rose over the field, and the hunter screamed in pain. Breath leaping into his lungs, he began to move, Thenotay beside him, guiding. When the alchemist's hand slipped from his companion's shoulder, the chimera guided it back with his head, urgent, insisting. Behind him, the screams of a hawk joined the fray.

Conlan ran.