text:
← David Zeitlyn on his book, Mambila Divination
Karen Strassler on her new book, Demanding Images →
Christina Dunbar-Hester on her book, Hacking Diversity
Posted on May 4, 2020 by |
Interview by Héctor Beltrán
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691182070/hacking-diversity
Héctor Beltrán: In your ethnographic work with voluntaristic open technology communities across hacker and maker spaces, you're careful not to characterize "hacking" as a single set of practices or cultural ethos. You also make clear that the "diversity work" enacted within these spaces borrows from a range of motivations and strategies.
How did you arrive at "borders of care" as a way to develop the conceptual work related to analyzing these overlapping, contingent collectives without necessarily essentializing them or reproducing stereotypes about them?
Christina Dunbar-Hester: In a way, this was one of the bigger challenges of the book. I did ask myself whether I was sampling "representative" groups and practices, though I also knew that my story would always be partial and particular. The research process was organically following leads, paying attention to what was happening in cities I happened to be in over the course of several years, traveling to other sites for conferences and meetups, and listening to what folks in sites told me about present-day activities and histories of activism around these issues in their communities. I also of course wound up in a lot of events and settings that don't appear in the book—sometimes because they were too dissimilar to the phenomena that I center in the book, and other times because you can't include everything. But this triangulation and iteration is of course informing the analysis. I found Anselm Straus's "social worlds" analytic useful for thinking about social meaning in distributed, large-scale encounters. It is more important to be conceptually careful about the things I can group together than to try to "sample" everything, which is of course impossible with a distributed phenomenon anyway.
Fundamentally, though, there is a shared impulse here, seeking individual and collective emancipation through engagement with technology. I conceive of the geek impulse to critique and remake their social world as a form of hacking. I write of "borders of care" to illuminate how communities are constituted by their priorities, their care and energies around "diversity" topics. But of course borders suggest limits, and there is a tension here: if the border were drawn elsewhere, these communities would look significantly different (perhaps more like a social movement), and the social world that is the topic of this book might cease to exist or shade into something else entirely.
Héctor Beltrán: By tracing these dynamic communities, you highlight how strategies, politics, and subjectivities move from one domain to another. In particular, open-technology diversity advocates are always close to the profit-oriented pursuit of techno-entrepreneurial development and growth. In this case, market logics and racialized capitalism become the basis for emphasizing diversity.
At the same time, you identify scale as a challenge for voluntaristic spaces. Perhaps a community can develop democratic ideals and corresponding codes of conduct that work in their intimate, carefully cultivated spaces, but scaling these practices to redress overarching structural inequity or promote restorative justice is another story.
Coincidentally, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs have established methods for scaling their projects; they combine iterative software methodologies with business acumen to launch their ideas onto the global stage. Are there any practices or strategies that open-technology cultures can appropriate/reconfigure from these techno-entrepreneurs in order to scale their resistant politics, without resorting to product-driven solutions or for-profit ventures?
Christina Dunbar-Hester: Well, I'm not sure how well I can speak to the practices of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, but it occurs to me that one of the main strategies they employ is naming and bounding problems discursively such that their versions of reality are accepted by users and by policymakers. For example, one that has clearly been very successful for them is calling companies like Uber, Facebook, and AirBnB "tech" companies rather than transportation, media, and hospitality companies, respectively. This has massive implications for regulation in particular, as they use these strategies to evade scrutiny and accountability. But these framings also have implications for how we think collectively about our society and the modes of intervention that are possible and desirable. One of the things activists can do is to zoom back out when they are naming problems: rather than centering "tech", articulate social aims people wish to fulfill. This is important for a few reasons. It considers social good (and harm) in its own right, decoupled from "tech" as the be-all, end-all goal, or yardstick for "progress".
Also, activists can redefine what engaging with technology is. It can be slow, deliberative, resistant to scaling up, ambivalent about "progress" narratives. It doesn't have to be something that is happening in sprints, or chasing venture capital or intellectual property claims. If slowed down, we can deliberately foreground sociality and power rather than gadgets. From there, it's a relatively short distance to define social problems in familiar terms for social intervention: militarism, and racial, gender, and economic inequ(al)ity are some of the social issues that advocates for diversity in tech care about and are wrestling with. Personally (and as a scholarly analyst) I think it would be useful to foreground those concepts and articulate them out loud, to bound care differently than it is when phrased as "diversity in tech". One effect of this may be to have some forms of social intervention by techies break away from being corporate-workplace-friendly, but I think we are at a point where it may be useful to draw some new lines. (Some feminist techies reacted with dismay to Sheryl Sandberg's "Lean In" feminism, for example.)
Héctor Beltrán: You describe a meeting organized by feminist hackers who explicitly attempted to connect open technology culture to decolonial social movements. They're left wondering why it turned out to be a mostly white gathering. In fact, many of the spaces marked as radical, genderqueer, and/or feminist many times turn out to be permeated by unmarked whiteness.
On the flip side, around the same time when you were conducting research, my colleagues and I organized a series of events as part of our "Latinxs and Tech Initiative" at U.C. Berkeley, where we were also left wondering, where are all of the white activists? This is truly unfortunate, as we were similarly interrogating the "diversity in tech" discourse, such as the limitations of "technology" as an orientating framework and the drawbacks of focusing solely on increased representation. We even came to similar tensions, negotiations, and conclusions (published in our policy brief) that you identified with your research participants. Needless to say, it might be a lot more productive and enriching for all involved if these different initiatives joined forces.
What can we do to avoid activist fatigue and to get communities to cultivate meaningful relationships across difference?
Christina Dunbar-Hester: I love this question, and I think it cuts to the heart of what is at stake with this kind of activism. I would love your thoughts on it too. I hope it is not an either/or for regroupment in enclaves versus coalition building, but rather a both/and. It is pretty clear that our present moment demands trust and solidarity across difference. And yet I understand that this is a moment where some people feel that additional burdens of trust (and vulnerability) are too much to take on.
Something you touch on in your report and I return to in the book is that markers of social difference are dynamic—shifting both situationally and across time. This might be more readily apparent to people steeped in anthropological traditions than a lot of people running tech meetups. Of course I do not mean to paper over difference—and real material matters are at stake, experienced differentially. But it can be useful to recall that some of the categories of difference that divide us are doing so in service of a system that harms us (if not all equally), so naming, understanding, and pushing back on that can be to collective benefit. I like where you land with "productive tensions" between cultural scripts; many things can be true or partially true, even when they almost contradict each other—it's very important to strive to not be reductionist or essentialist.
I quote in the book an activist who says that she thinks hacking communities should be unafraid of tension (which, she specifies, is different from fear). Ultimately I have a lot of sympathy for the challenges that people in elective/affinity groups who operate on volunteered time face in confronting what is ultimately a segregated, stratified society. It is not easy. The word "ally" gets thrown around a lot, but how do people join forces in practice?
Héctor Beltrán: I like that you identified the shock of vibrantly colored hair as a common geek identifier. Several of your research participants commented that this was a strategy for others to comment on their appearance in a respectful way without resorting to "harass-y" comments. The hair also serves as a way for members in this community to self-identify.
The irony is that any self-identifying community marker can also serve as a way to inadvertently exclude. Perhaps if I don't have a shock of vibrantly colored I hair I might feel like I am not the right type of "geek" to participate in this space. Can you tell us more about the dynamics of self-othering and being othered that you witnessed across your research spaces?
Christina Dunbar-Hester: Does one have to do the things that are normed within the subculture? Is this (ironically) another form of gatekeeping? It could be. I felt this tension with my interlocutors sometimes. I had one person I was interviewing ask me about which comics I read, which I think was a friendly effort to "place" me. The answer is none. I don't know that she actually thought less of me, but I think she was somewhat mystified and even perhaps sad for me.
I also witnessed moments where geeks themselves drew attention to how nerd humor, for example, is potentially elitist, so they're not fully unaware of these phenomena. Even so, it can be hard to see how the norms that are utterly naturalized for an individual or a group are markers of belonging that can feel exclusionary to people who aren't acculturated in that way. I quote another interviewee who vividly described how she felt that as a self-identified bicultural Latina, she had to modulate both her cultures of origin and the femininity they emphasized to enter hacking spaces that were more "Anglo or German." She was laughing about some of this when she relayed it to me, calling the other hackers "goth" and even "emo"! And yet these norms do real work, even to the point of presenting potential barriers or forms of subcultural policing.
Héctor Beltrán: Part of extending the genealogy of hacking is giving recognition to voices and groups who have been historically silenced and marginalized. You make the point, however, that more than just failing to be recognized, the creative and expressive technological tinkering of these groups is often criminalized.
Drawing from the work of Rayvon Fouché and Ben Chappell, you point to the horse hay rake and the lowrider car as examples of "hacks" by members of racialized populations that had to be defended in the face of mainstream ingenuity; these inventions were rarely portrayed as hacking in a positive, agentic sense. I like the lowrider example because Chappell also claims that the hydraulic suspension was not only for show but was a pragmatic modification that allowed cars to ride lower than the California legal limit, but then to be lifted in an encounter with a police officer. It shows how recognition, visibility, and "hacking" are closely interconnected.
What might coding be able to offer marginalized communities along the lines of recognition and visibility?
Christina Dunbar-Hester: This is key. A lot of what we hear is a push to "diversify" tech, as if that in itself will promote social transformation, though the "how" (and to some degree even the "why") is usually inchoate. I don't think the critiques I am making about the ambiguity of diversity work in general are especially pathbreaking (I'm leaning hard on a lot of excellent work by, for example, Sara Ahmed, Herman Gray, and others). But how this gets hitched to tech is worthy of consideration in its own right. And here I think it is worth really breaking down the dynamics into their discrete parts.
If "tech" is assumed to be the seat of progress, an incredibly ubiquitous and frankly banal cultural script we encounter every day, that is already importing ideas about who the bearers of said progress are (and aren't). An uninterrogated "progress" laid on top of the priorities of the U.S. can mean new forms of encoding old traditions of racist policing, for example. But also technology being vested with this power is contingent; there was a time when the term itself meant something like "mechanic techniques and artifacts" and wasn't vested with progressive power. Social progress wasn't automatically enfolded into it. My belief is that we could once again decouple these concepts, and we would be richer for it.
At the very least, as long as technology occupies a central role in how we imagine power and progress, we need to do the work to understand how power structures have shaped technological development, counting some groups of people as automatic agents of that power and viewing others with suspicion or hostility. There needs to be sustained attention to power structures and not just a hope that "add X and stir" will fundamentally change technoscientific practices and institutions. In addition, a flip side to recognition and visibility is leaving space for, as you note by way of Chappell, strategically blending in or going unnoticed—and retaining the power to choose when pop up as "visible" versus when to stay more submerged or camouflaged. In a way, this perhaps returns us to the preceding question: to what degree is an "outsider" element necessary for hacking, and for whom does that aggregate or multiply advantages?
Posted in Author Interviews, Weekly Post	| Tagged diversity, identity, inclusion, tech


I'd like to thank Jennifer Dodd for all her incredible, fabulous, and helpful work on redesigning Abby's Yarns. Thanks to all her hard work, we're able to roll out the new and improved look and feel, and I'm going to actually be able to bring some sanity to archive content and make it easier for folks to find all the various things that have come to be hidden around here.
Working with Jenn has been terrific, and lots of food for thought about small business stuff and doing things right — so much so that this week, I'll be doing a quick interview with her for the blog, to tie in with presenting all the various new features. But for now, I just want to say TA-DAH! Look, we have new blog.
Suddenly my RSS reader is cluttered with tweets from this site. I like the blog, but if I wanted to read tweets, I'd be on Twitter. Can anything be done to respect the preferences of those of us who still enjoy complex ideas and syntax, or should I unsub?
One of the things we're rolling out is separate RSS feeds for various types of content on this site. It looks like we rolled things out with the two main feeds swapped — the first being all article-type content, and the second including various other types as well (like tweets, new videos, and that sort of thing). We've updated that, so now (as intended) the primary RSS feed is posts and articles only, and the supplemental one is everything. And, coming in the next few weeks, category-specific feeds as well!
Hip hip hooray! Well done, it looks fantastic. Congratulations on the book and DVD, can't wait to get my paws on them!
The site looks great, and the background is awesome! I love it!
I've just pre-ordered your book, can't wait to get it!
The site looks great 🙂 I'm going to order the book soon and I have a question about the DVD… will it be European zone 2 friendly?
A thing of beauty. LOVE every little thing about it!
I love your new web site! It is so east to find things. I love the little area with the Flicker, Tweets and You tube too!!!
It looks fabulous! Well done indeed!
I love the new look! The artwork, layout, and navigation are great!
Just want to thank you for the new book and video. Your blog and ravelry posts have helped my spindling so much that I was hoping to get to SOAR and take a class from you. That's not going to happen this year. Which means I'll have to wait for the release of your book. Can't wait to get the video too!
Hope you enjoy your visit to Oregon.
Very nice! I'm looking forward to seeing you at SOAR and hoping that Oregon's fickle autumn weather is cooperative, though we won't get as much rain as they do in Portland. Bring woollies! It gets cold at night.
While it's fun to follow the tweets, I'm wondering if for those who aren't on Twitter the tweets are like listening in to a one-sided phone call. Just an observation.


Space Time Studios' Pocket Legends is a scaled-down free to play MMO for the iPod/iPhone/iPad.
It offers three basic classes, along with typical MMO feature such as leveling, upgradeable stats and skills, etc.
It has been getting very good initial reviews. Space Time's free to play model seems to be selling additional content/areas beyond the initial area for a fee, though at the moment there isn't much available at all for purchase for the game.
Nice, and clearly just the beginning of the transition of MMOs to mobile devices (along with the increasingly prevalent mobile enhancement of traditional PC-based MMOs).
Steve Jackson Games has created a Munchkin Level Counter app for the iPod Touch and iPhone. The app not only provides a helpful level counter to keep track of your progress, but also includes a "Boon" option which the player can use once per game and awards one of 150 in-game advantages such as treasure or yet another way to stab your friends in the back.
A bit pricey at $4.99, but I'm sure they'll sell plenty of these.
WoWInsider reports that the Battle.Net mobile authenticator is now live in the iTunes store for the iPhone/iPod Touch.
Nice iPhone cupcakes. Of course what they don't tell you is you have to wait three weeks for approval from the iTunes App Store before you can actually eat them.


Accueil » Trends » Tech Workers Name Tinyclues as a Top 10 Place to Work!
Career marketplace innovator Hired, Inc. has published its 2018 Global Brand Health Report, and I'm delighted to announce glowing news for team Tinyclues…In a survey of tech talent in the Paris market, Tinyclues was ranked among the top ten most desirable places to work!
The Hired report reflects surveys of over 2000 tech professionals in a dozen cities across the world. Respondents were asked to rate leading consumer tech companies in their local markets, based on employer brand appeal. They were also asked about how they evaluate job opportunities in general, and what factors draw them to a company…or drive them away!
While salary and benefits were the top priorities cited overall, company culture weighs heavily as well, with the opportunity to learn new skills coming in a close third. Other key considerations: whether a job offers technical challenges, and the quality of a company's team. As Employee Success Director, the report gives an interesting peek inside the minds of today's tech job seekers, and really strikes a chord with my own experience and our hiring philosophy at Tinyclues.
You can check out the full Hired analysis here.
I'm thrilled to see our company recognized for the wonderful workplace that it is, by the very people we're looking for. Our AI-first solution relies on cutting-edge deep learning technology, and we're excited to see that reflected in this report. We've been working hard to have a strong, engaging company culture and to bring together the best team possible.
Tinyclues is in full expansion mode right now, with a workforce that's doubling across 5 offices worldwide – Paris, New York, London, Copenhagen & Munich – and a great new travel perk policy. For all you dynamic engineers and data scientists out there: we've got a lot of tech positions to fill, and, one of them could be right up your alley. We've also got positions open in Sales, Marketing and Customer Success! To find out more, rendez-vous on our Careers page!


This interview is part of an ongoing series of conversations between emerging female artists and their mentors in the art world. Stay tuned for more.
(L) Sheida Soleimani's "Vitriolic," (R) Yamini Nayar's "Akhet"
I met Yamini Nayar in 2010 during my second year as an undergrad. When I saw her work for the first time, I became obsessed with how she built beautifully delicate and detailed constructions for the camera. After having a critique with her about my work, I asked for her contact information so we could keep in touch. Throughout the years, when I would visit NYC, I'd contact her to see if she would be available to meet up.
Her process and work has been very inspiring to me, and I've always viewed her as a far-away mentor. It was exciting to have the opportunity to interview her and pick her brain about her personal practice as well as her thoughts on issues in the contemporary art world.
Your process has influenced me significantly in my personal works. The usage of low-tech materials and fragile constructions became imperative to my practice as I started creating my own still life/tableau scenarios. Could you talk a bit about the materials you use and if they represent anything specific?
I'm interested in the physicality of the photograph -- as a visceral object and translator of memory and suppressed narratives. I try to use materials in a way that creates tension between the image and how it is experienced. To do this I work with objects that have been stripped of their original significance -- wood, glass, printed matter, everyday minutiae -- really anything I can get my hands on.
"I'm interested in the physicality of the photograph -- as a visceral object and translator of memory and suppressed narratives."
When looking at your photographs, I spend a lot of time trying to figure out the relationships and dialogues created between all the objects within the frame. Can you talk about how you decide on the forms you are building? Are they planned out or are they improvisational (or both)?
There's an intimacy to constructing images that I connect to. I'm very interested in how architecture translates history and memory in the present -- suppressed narratives -- and ideas of the uncanny, legibility and difference. By bringing the viewer into a space via the photograph, it allows for complicated and layered narratives. In my photographs of constructed spaces you're able to enter into a structure, which is something that interests me. And there's a sense exploration when I make work -- similar to writing. I think of my work in terms of writing and linguistics in some ways. I allow it to take me where it can, which I hope others can connect to as well.
When I attended your talk in 2010, I remember that you said the constructions you build for the camera were quite small. Afterwards, I spent a lot of time thinking about how the photographic medium translates the depth of your spaces, and how they come across as larger scale than they are. Is there a relationship between the scale of the "miniature" to the miniatures in manuscripts? What have been your influences while formulating the method in which you build things?
The constructions I build in the studio range in size depending on the subject. Some are quite large, even human scale sculptures. My photographs increasingly deal with the body through scale and physicality, so the constructions have been getting larger. My works are in reaction to collected source material, so it becomes a kind of "call and response." I present the process to the viewer in my exhibitions. Modernist architecture continues to be an intriguing point of departure for me, and its underpinnings.
Actually the photo studio culture of India impacted the way I thought about making pictures and the role of the image. Growing up, I was fascinated with the painted backdrops in the Delhi studios, of a mountain range or a modern home. What was interesting to me was their flattened sense of space and often roughly hewn brush strokes where you get a sense of the artist's hand. The camera transforms this fictional backdrop into a stand-in for desired reality.
"Feeling a sense of both belonging and non-belonging is a productive place."
Like myself, you were born in the United States, but to two parents whom are both immigrants. You spent time in India, but currently reside in NYC. As an Indian-American, how does your relationship with your dual nationalities function? Your work gives impressions of both memory and psychological space, do your personal memories ever inform your constructions?
Feeling a sense of both belonging and non-belonging is a productive place. I spent much of my formative years in Delhi, Calcutta and Kerala and I'm sure this finds its way into my work. Some of my earliest memories are in Chittaranjan Park, New Delhi, which was initially called "Displaced Colony" for the Bengali refugees who settled there post Partition. These in-between spaces are fertile ground.
Often curators use the cultural background of an artist as a platform for an exhibition. Would you participate in a show where this was used as a specific theme?
I've been lucky to work with curators who have global perspectives, and I haven't felt orientalized as such. I've participated in South Asian survey shows as well as contemporary photography shows, and I've felt equally at home at both. We inhabit multiple spaces and positions as artists, and we should be comfortable with this.
I'm always excited when I see interactions in the art world where a conscious gesture is made to bridge the gap for inequality. There are models such as Radius Books (Santa Fe) that level the playing field and publish 50% female artists. What would you say are some inspirational models of gender and racial equality that you have noticed are making commitments to the field?
The art world is really decentralized -- Mumbai, Dubai, Hong Kong, New York are just a few. There are many hubs, rather than one, and I think this is refreshing. Developing personal relationships with those who are supportive and understanding of different perspectives has been key for me. There are more avenues than there were even ten years ago, but at the end of the day, it's really about cultivating relationships with those who support your work. Looking back, serving as a board member of the South Asian Women's Creative Collective in New York in the early 2000s was a valuable experience for me. The Center for Photography in Woodstock, Art Matters Foundation, Khoj in Delhi, UnFixed in Amsterdam and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council in New York are just a few organizations providing wonderful opportunities for artists.


text:
Q: Laravel Project on local Xampp mysql error : file_put_contents: Failed to open stream: Permission denied I have developed a laravel project on one laptop using local xampp mysql and want to install it on another laptop. I am having this error: file_put_contents(/Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/htdocs/sfms/storage/framework/sessions/VS0cObLn8ItoKMt5HQJOlZ0srelpMLsSwm5ZQcPa): Failed to open stream: Permission:
I have tried the following but they did not work:

*

*php artisan cache:clear

*php artisan config:clear

*manually deleted vendor\laravel\framework\src\Illuminate\Foundation\Console\ConfigClearCommand.php
among others.
Please, I need your assistance. Thanks in advance.

A: you can run this command
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data ./storage ./bootstrap

And then use the command
sudo chmod -R 755 ./storage ./bootstrap

A: Run this two command for permission.
sudo chmod -R 777 ./storage
sudo chmod -R 777 ./bootstrap

A: I run the following code in the terminal and it worked for me:
chmod -R 777 storage

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Regulation of Brain DNA Methylation Factors and of the Orexinergic System by Cocaine and Food Self-Administration.
Saad L1,2, Sartori M1,3, Pol Bodetto S1, Romieu P1, Kalsbeek A2,4, Zwiller J1, Anglard P5,6.
Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives et Adaptatives (LNCA), UMR 7364 CNRS, Neuropôle de Strasbourg, Université de Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France.
The Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience (NIN), Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
IGBMC, Inserm U 964, CNRS UMR 7104, University of Strasbourg, Illkirch, France.
Department of Endocrinology and Metabolism, Amsterdam UMC, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives et Adaptatives (LNCA), UMR 7364 CNRS, Neuropôle de Strasbourg, Université de Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France. anglard@neuro-cnrs.unistra.fr.
INSERM, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, Paris, France. anglard@neuro-cnrs.unistra.fr.
Inhibitors of DNA methylation and orexin type-1 receptor antagonists modulate the neurobiological effects driving drugs of abuse and natural reinforcers by activating common brain structures of the mesolimbic reward system. In this study, we applied a self-administration paradigm to assess the involvement of factors regulating DNA methylation processes and satiety or appetite signals. These factors include Dnmts and Tets, miR-212/132, orexins, and orx-R1 genes. The study focused on dopamine projection areas such as the prefrontal cortex (PFCx) and caudate putamen (CPu) and in the hypothalamus (HP) that is interconnected with the reward system. Striking changes were observed in response to both reinforcers, but differed depending on contingent and non-contingent delivery. Expression also differed in the PFCx and the CPu. Cocaine and food induced opposite effects on Dnmt3a expression in both brain structures, whereas they repressed both miRs to a different extent, without affecting their primary transcript in the CPu. Unexpectedly, orexin mRNAs were found in the CPu, suggesting a transport from their transcription site in the HP. The orexin receptor1 gene was found to be induced by cocaine in the PFCx, consistent with a regulation by DNA methylation. Global levels of 5-methylcytosines in the PFCx were not significantly altered by cocaine, suggesting that it is rather their distribution that contributes to long-lasting behaviors. Together, our data demonstrate that DNA methylation regulating factors are differentially altered by cocaine and food. At the molecular level, they support the idea that neural circuits activated by both reinforcers do not completely overlap.


Daddy with the evergreen boyish charm, Jimmy Lin, regularly takes his boys out to play at the gardens.
To celebrate the Chinese New Year, Jimmy Lin dresses his twin sons up as lions to welcome the "Chicken Year", winning them 336000 "likes".
For some reasons yet unknown, the Year of the Chicken in Chinese has always been translated as the Year of the Rooster.
Happy crowing and roaring out loud.


text:
Post category:CHAPTER 18 / ELMIRYN / OTHER / PART 2: IN SIGHT, IN MIND / QUINCY
QUINCY____________________________
They didn't try for conversation, which was fine, because the woman didn't feel like talking. Graziano and Paulo stuck to their side of camp, resting from the day's events it seemed, while Hakeem and Quincy sat against the rock. Argos was sitting, staring toward the tower, his head on his paws. The woman watched the embers float to the dark sky–starless with the cloud cover. One of the scultones sighed and the woman was fit to agree with it. Earlier, the question was raised if someone needed to stand watch for trouble. The blonde pointed out that she had already taken care of any oncoming threats, and when the others came with Syria, all they'd have to do was follow the main path to discover their camp again.
"My suggestion is to stay near the fire and be ready to move," the woman said.
Then she thought of something.
Quincy drew up her magic bag, and Hakeem glanced at her.
"You need something?" he asked with a mild voice.
Quincy started to rub the sides of the bag, her gaze narrowed. "I want to check the Divinare Cube. Sadly, I used my last angel tear at Belcliff. I think it'd be better suited to this situation."
"It's unlikely the cube will tell you anything you wouldn't already expect." Hakeem inspected his armor, which he had decided to keep activated in case of trouble. He wiped a snowflake off his shoulder.
Quincy shrugged. "Perhaps you're right, but I still want to check."
When she felt points poking her skin, she opened the bag and let a small black stone cube fall into her waiting hand. The woman took one corner of the cube and pushed at it with her thumb. The little pyramid that had been the corner swiveled out, as though on a hinge. Just as she had outside of Tiesmire, the woman turned and twisted the cube until it began to shift on its own. Quincy favored its clear readings and broad divination. There was an angry scorpion demigod on the Indaban continent that would've liked to have it back…but it had been worth the trouble for the amazing little cube.
Graziano and Paulo sat forward, watching with curiosity as much as apprehension.
"Oye, what're you doing?" Graziano asked, his handsome face pulled into a frown.
Quincy glanced up at him. "I'm checking the spiritual state of our environment. I've heard Holzoff's is drenched with unhappy souls. They can tamper with our magic."
Graziano squinted his eyes, as though he wasn't sure he could trust her answer. Then he sat back with a grumble. Something about a "bruja maldita". She had been lying, of course. For all she knew there was no oncoming threat–or atleast nothing they couldn't easily handle, so the lie could be innocuous, but still–
The cube stopped its assembly. It had changed to form a short straight line with a wide triangle jutting to the right.
Quincy clenched her teeth, her eyes searing.
Thurisaz. The Thorn. It meant danger. It meant betrayal. It meant destructive forces, spiritual possession, and two clear paths to take–retreat or attack.
The wizard wasn't going to turn back now.
She looked at her husband, and whispered, "Hakeem, we need to move away from camp and position ourselves in a way that we can see the others when they come."
Hakeem frowned at her. "What did you see?"
The woman held up the magic stone. "Thurisaz. If the others manage to return with Syria, I think something bad will happen."
"Should we tell Graziano and Paulo?"
"Better to keep quiet. If there's too much suspicion, then things could end prematurely–and not in our favor. I can only guess that the enchantress is the source of the trouble, so I want to be prepared. She can feel our emotions and thoughts if we're in sight, but not if we're out of sight. Let the Morettis lull her into a sense of security. We won't be able to hide completely, she'll still be able to sense our presence, but she won't be able to use her enchantment to harm us, and then we can spring in at the most opportune moment."
"This could be risky for Paulo. Are you really okay with just…putting him out there like that? We've known the Morettis for years." Hakeem gazed at her hard.
The woman looks at him, annoyed. What was this hesitance all of a sudden? "They aren't our friends."
"Neither are Karolek or Jetswick, yet I know you wouldn't let them risk coming to harm this way." Hakeem managed to sound bitter.
Quincy blinked at him. Then she sat back and sighed in exasperation. "We can move fast. Plus, I have some tricks to use in case trouble stirs before we can intervene." She stroked the side of the stone's face, and it shuddered before shifting back into a normal cube. She dropped it into her bag and it vanished into nothing.
She stood and held out her hand for him. "Let's go."
The man gazed up at her for a long time. Then he took her grip. When he was on his feet, he leaned in close, his cheek brushing hers.
He spoke low in his Fanaean language, "Mweze, when this is all over, we will talk."
Quincy glanced at him from the corner of her eyes. She answered him similarly, "I will speak with you about whatever you'd like for as long as you'd like, bwa-taika…" She let go of his hand and turned, leaving the camp. Graziano and Paulo sat up, the elder sparing her a question, but she didn't answer, and she knew they wouldn't press the issue. They knew better.
…Her husband should've too.
With her face turned from them all, Quincy's eyes shone beneath the shadow of her hood. "I will speak with you, but that does not mean I will listen."
ELMIRYN___________________________
This was it. Did she need answers? Did she need a spiel laid before her, revealing the motives?
No. The crimes committed by this woman were too severe.
Elmiryn slashed horizontally at Syria, but she didn't put all her power into the stroke. With only the one arm, the woman found her balance was hampered by the snow and her inability to adjust. She couldn't control broad power strokes unless she wanted to become unbalanced and open to attack. But what a surprise! Syria was quicker than the warrior had expected, leaning back so far, the tip of the blade just managed to graze her beneath the chin. Her left hand, still swollen at the wrist, came rising up underhand, and Elmiryn had just a moment to brace herself when–
Quincy lanced forward from behind. Syria let out a hiss, her eyes flickering to the side as though her mind picked up on the intention. She shifted her body to dodge being impaled and the direction of her left hand was altered.
This change in motion meant everything, for it seemed the world around Elmiryn became muted for a split second, and she felt an immense pressure throughout the front of her body. In the next second, she was sent flying, in a low arc, backward at high speed.
She tumbled and crashed, everything hurting to the point that thought was lost amidst the desire for release. She heard herself screaming. She felt like she had knives in her arms. The fractured bones were likely stabbing her. Perhaps the injury had been exacerbated. Elmiryn finally came to a stop, down slope, face down in the snow. She couldn't breath in right away. Beneath, her left forearm stung angrily, and there was a strong ache at her left shoulder. Her right shoulder fared no better. Perhaps the tumble had opened up the stab wound?
What would've happen if Syria had been able to hit her dead on, with all her power? Would the warrior be alive, let alone conscious?
The cold bit her skin. She wasn't wearing proper clothing for this sort of climate after all. She was a Fiamman. It had never snowed at the kingdom. She made a note in the future, if there was a future, to invest in heavier winter clothing. Nyx had known a thing or two about the cold, why the hell hadn't the girl thought about it?
–Oh right, they were poor. And it was sorta (kinda) her fault.
With bared teeth, Elmiryn made to rise. Pain, pain, pain. She gagged and coughed, and dark fluid stained the white snow. Her chest hurt with every breath she took. Broken rib? Internal bleeding? She'd heard of that. Seen it happen atleast once before–a man under her command dying from the shock of it. She groped for her sword and found it, down near her leg, but she didn't have the strength to lift it up. The woman let herself fall back to the snow and let out a ragged sigh. She heard the sounds of combat ahead, and felt anxious that she was missing it. But as she tried to push up with her right arm again, her shoulder screamed at her, and the woman hissed and let herself fall back again. The warrior still wanted to try and see what was happening, so she struggled to roll onto her back. There, she craned her head back to try and steal a look.
Elmiryn saw the others, their heads atleast, over the slope. The battle was furious and broad–covering a wide area so that she found herself cut off from them. Though she couldn't see the details of it, there were flashes here and there that told her Syria and Quincy were intensely engaged. Even if she were well, Elmiryn was certain she'd find it near impossible to join the fray and imagined the others faced a similar problem. It was all between the wizard and enchantress now.
The warrior was quite far down the slope, as detailed by the messy trail her body had cut into the snow. The others seemed so far, their faces indefinite to her in the dark night. She counted out the heads. One, two, three…she imagined Paulo and Lethia were lying out of sight, still unconscious, but there should've been a fourth. Nyx was missing.
She faded for a moment, wondering about the girl…
Then a cry cut into her thoughts and Elmiryn's eyes snapped back open and shifted to see a streak of gold flash over the slope. Something tumbled down in a blast of snow to rival her landing. The person slid to a stop just a little before the warrior. Quincy. She grunted and raised herself onto all fours, her eyes immediately turning to gaze up towards the battle. Her limbs were visibly shaking, and her face was drenched in sweat. Her hood had fallen back to reveal that her hair looked…luminescent. The others up ahead finally moved to take her place. One stayed back to watch those unconscious. The redhead guessed it to be Farrel, judging by the light hair.
Elmiryn turned to the woman, who had closed her eyes and was muttering to herself. She grinned jauntily. "Oh my! How nice of you to join me wizard. I was getting a bit lonely."
The blond opened her eyes turned to regard Elmiryn with a blank face. Her azure eyes were glowing too.
"Fool. If you're done, then keep out of the way," The wizard said. Her voice lacked the malice the warrior would've expected, but it was strained–like she were pushing a large rock. Quincy pulled her hood back on and shifted into a crouch, her golden blade gripped in her right hand. The thing seemed to pulse at Elmiryn's gaze. She was waiting for an opportunity to rejoin the battle.
The warrior hissed through breath, trying to keep the spots from clouding her vision and the ice cold feeling from sending her thoughts under. Sweat soaked her hairline and rolled down her neck. "Come now," she cried. "That's uncalled for! Just because I beat you before–"
"You didn't beat me."
Such a quick response. So the wizard was a sore loser…interesting…
"Okay," Elmiryn grinned, closing her eyes. Despite her efforts to remain conscious, she felt so sleepy. "But can we be a little nicer to the gimp, huh? I mean, no hard feelings, right?" she breathed, cradling her arm. She was certain the splints were out of place now. Then her eyes snapped back open. "And hey isn't your arm supposed to be broken like mine?" Elmiryn twisted her head to the side so as to look at Quincy better.
The blond had already looked back to the battle, craning her neck to see what was happening. "Never mind that. You're attack against Syria was idiotic. You should know better than to announce yourself," she said this without a glance.
"What can I say?" Elmiryn snickered. "I've been a little insane lately."
"Elmiryn!!"
The woman opened her eyes and turned her head. Nyx's shadowed form came tumbling, her breath a trail of fog behind her. She was coming at them from the north, strafing along the slope, whose shifting made it difficult to run in a straight line. She grinned as the girl came near. She had probably gone and jogged a crescent through the snow, to give the battle wide berth.
The girl stumbled next to her, all panicked breath. "Gods, Elmiryn, are you okay!?" she cried. She glanced at Quincy warily, who resumed ignoring them.
Elmiryn winced pulling away. Then she grinned. "Sorry, I got cocky. But you know, Syria can't get a grasp on my thoughts, maybe I could–"
Nyx took hold of the woman's face and shook her head. Her eyes were clouded with tears. "Enough is enough, Elle! Cajeck, ni aji üle boeneh? Your left forearm is broken, your left shoulder was just recently dislocated, and you were stabbed by–by–" the girl turned and glared pointedly at Quincy's back, "By her. Speaking of which, why on earth are you even here!?" she asked the wizard, venom in every word.
Elmiryn pulled at the girl's front. "Nyx, put it out of your mind. With our run of luck, we can't be choosy about where help comes from. You said the same about Farrel, didn't you?"
"But that was different–"
Quincy turned her head slightly. "Therian. Stay with your friend for now. Hakeem, Graziano, and I can manage. The halfling is watching the others, but should one of us fall, you must be prepared to defend them."
Nyx hissed at her, her teeth bared. "Who are you to give orders!?" But even as she spoke, Quincy was already dashing away.
"It must be exhausting, fighting Syria. She's good at mind control. I bet they have to fight to keep in control of their minds every single second. Syria told me my thoughts were like smoke. I bet it's my curse that makes it hard for her to get a handle on me. If I could just get in there…But what can I do when I'm like this…?" she muttered.
A sigh. "We can't do it all, Elle. You've already done so much these past few days."
"I want to see this finished." The warrior felt anxiety thrash inside her. She clenched her jaw and glared skyward. "I don't want to just sit here." But even as the warrior said this, she knew and understood that she'd be more of a hinderance than a help. It bothered her greatly.
"We will see this finished, one way or another," Nyx said grimly. "Syria is incredibly powerful. I've never even heard of someone capable of using so many different forms of magic, and at such levels! It's better that you stay safe. When I saw Syria hit you with that attack…" The girl's voice trailed away. She stroked Elmiryn's face, her hands shaking. "Och tet boenah üle lunam…"
I thought you had died…
Elmiryn gazed up at her somberly. She had told the girl these things would happen. There would be danger, there would be struggle…possibly even sacrifice. The warrior had made it very clear.
But she knew, given her own scares with Nyx, that this made those moments no easier to handle.
The redhead found the girl's hand and squeezed it. From her mind, she drew up an Ailuran phrase she had learned from her borrowed memories back at Gamath. It seemed appropriate here.
"Och oeni…" Elmiryn mumbled.
On the mountain ridge to the right. They were just close enough to camp to still be able to make out which of the Morettis was which, but not close enough to see the expressions on their faces, or to hear what they spoke of. Hakeem was crouched, his gauntlet gripping the rock. They had a decent view of the tower. Detail was robbed by mist and darkness, but they could still make out the gate at the end of the bridge. Quincy squinted her eyes as she saw the gate roll up, leaving the tower entrance wide open.
"Hakeem, I think they're coming," she said.
Hakeem nodded, his eyes shadowed beneath his furrowed brows. "But…what are they doing?"
Quincy shifted higher up the slope she rested on, her hands pulling her up. She squinted her eyes as she saw the snow and rock surrounding the tower shift, almost as though…
"…It seems the daesce are invading the tower." She pointed, "But look there. There's a group moving away from it." Her voice took on a fascinated note. "Those aren't daesce. Those are the ones we're waiting for. The monsters are ignoring them…"
"They have the enchantress…and she's killing everyone in the tower," Hakeem breathed. His grip tightened around the rock.
Quincy sighed. "If she's that powerful…we'll be in for quite a fight."
"I believe you…but your voice suggests something else."
"When I was in Belcliff, I told you about my findings. The files suggested two spellcasters were needed for the damage done to the bodies. Lethia's hair was found at the site where the bodies were being kept. If Syria is capable of controlling a mob of daesce, and possibly enchanting an entire tower beforehand, then what's stopping a person from believing she could control Lethia?" As she said this, Quincy reached for her leather pouch with one hand. She pressed it to the rock and began rubbing it. Within a minute, she felt a round object grow beneath her palm. The item she pushed out from the pouch was the Orb of Ilkmar.
"Why do you think the woman controlled her? Maybe the girl went along with everything?"
The wizard shook her head. "Even Gaduman of the East was incapable of such broad mind control. This woman's power is on a level I've never seen before. Enchantment is one of the Unbound Disciplines, what if Syria discovered new lengths in which to use it?"
Hakeem shook his head. "I still don't see what you're getting at. Syria's an enchantress. What happened to those bodies were the work of a master sorcerer and magician. You said it yourself."
Quincy shook her head. The mystery was still working itself out in her mind, and she didn't have that answer yet.
They watched as the group grew closer and closer. Finally, they arrived, and the Morettis rose to greet them. …But then something went wrong. The therian girl had collapsed, and the dog, Argos, had turned on Syria. Lethia fell to the ground, on her knees. A newcomer, light-haired and dressed in guard's armor, stepped away from Syria, visibly appalled. He was shouting. Quincy couldn't make out what was being said.
Then everything went to hell.
The others were frozen in place, it seemed–for Graziano, the guard, the dog, and Elmiryn were in mid-movement before they suddenly stopped. Lethia rose from her place on the ground, then proceeded to help Paulo undress. She seemed different now, removed from her hysteria. The boy was going along with it, but his movements were far too calm as well. Syria was likely controlling them both.
What came next filled Quincy with wonder, and in a more diminutive sense, revulsion. Paulo was now naked and levitated in the air by Lethia. Syria used sorcery to command flames from the campfire to surround the boy. The wizard didn't have to guess at what the woman was doing. She was burning symbols into his body. From her place, the wizard thought she saw Syria speaking. It wouldn't surprise her. Rituals of this sort usually required a spoken rite of some sort. If this was correct, then Syria would draw out the process until the flames had worked down to the deepest tissue–almost to bone, and then she'd castrate the boy and have him gutted.
…This seemed as good a time as any to intervene.
Hakeem seemed keen on this, as he was already over the rocks.
But then Quincy's eyes lightened and she grabbed him by the elbow.
Her husband stared up at her, surprised. She spoke quickly, "Hakeem, I just realized how this works! Enchantment deals in the mind. When a person dreams or goes unconscious, the mind can delve into a hyper-state that creates a pocket of perceived reality. Depending on the strength of the users mind, and their ability to control their dream state, an individual could–theoretically–make seconds into days. Break this down further, and time can be removed as an obstacle completely."
Hakeem gestured down to the spectacle below. "Fascinating, Quincy–but don't you think–"
She jerked his arm and continued on, doggedly. "Listen to me! Think of the magic form of primality. Time magic is the ultimate limitation that controls space and gravity. Remove time, and space is free. A person could then split themselves infinitely, like little ideas acting independently of one another but connected to the same intellect. Taika, Syria is capable of simultaneous thought. She may not be able to control time in the real world, but it wouldn't matter if she could simulate this in her mind!" Quincy let loose her version of a smile, and the corners of her lips twitched up a fraction. "She managed to fool her own animus, which is the boundary that contains the intellect. Quite a feat, even for an enchantress, to make the mind forget the nature of the world on such a primal level whenever it conveniences her."
Hakeem's brows rose high. "…And if given this control, this power, one could use it to their advantage. Like–"
"Mastering different schools of magic," Quincy said, her brow creased. "In which case then, if Syria managed to use the ability of simultaneous thought with another individual of matching power–"
"Then she could use two magic forms at the same time." Hakeem looked down below him. "Lethia Artaud must have an incredible amount of raw power for Syria to vicariously cast her magic through her."
"I'm a bit envious, I'll admit," Quincy nodded and let go of him. She held up her reflective orb. "Unfortunately, we'll be on the wrong end of that power in just a moment."
Hakeem glanced at her. "What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to use the Orb of Ilkmar. With just the two of us, we could possibly take down an enchantress–even one capable of mind-controlling so many at once. But an enchantress who's a master in sorcery, gravitational magic, and gods knows what else? That's why I had to stop you. I think we'll be needing a little help." She kissed the orb. "Maybe this thing will give the others below an idea of what to do…"
And perhaps–the woman wondered quietly as she activated the magic–
"I see, so you see. I hear, so you hear. I know, so you know. Illuminate this for the eyes of the blind. Reveal what is hidden, bring forth what is desired!" Quincy threw the orb into the air and it flashed–
–Maybe the Orb of Ilkmar could reveal to her why it was someone so powerful, allowed herself to be incarcerated for so long?
At a glance, it seemed a bit unfair. Three against one?
…But the enchantress was holding them back. No, more than that, she seemed to be winning.
Quincy was as quick as the light she drew power from, for her attacks were like flashes, and her stabs as powerful and poignant as lightning. Elmiryn meant it when she said she wasn't surprised the blonde had come. Hakeem was her partner, and if there was gold in it, then she would likely go along with their plans. But more than that, Quincy was driven by some kind of code of honor. When they had fought barely a day earlier, the wizard had believed her to be a part of the evil power surrounding them and had been determined to stop her. Elmiryn wasn't sure if Quincy was entirely convinced of her innocence, but given the greater threat before them, the matter seemed set aside for the moment.
Syria, after all, proved the greater surprise here.
For a woman who had been in prison with a body bruised and swollen and stiff, she moved like a leopard–fast, graceful, and indifferent to her body's limitations…and the warrior was reminded of Lethia. The girl had conquered a wall of jagged rock after suffering a possibly near-fatal injury. Was this the true extent of enchantment's powers? Expanding one's mind and rising above the mortal coil to defeat challenges with ease? Mind over matter, as they said. She wanted to ask Graziano how it was possible that Syria knew gravitational magic and various forms of sorcery on top of her enchantment. Gravitational magic alone took years to learn, didn't it? And decades still to master it? So why was Syria able to use it with such ease?
More help would be needed, and not from her.
Elmiryn tugged at her companion's sleeve. "Hey, Nyx."
The girl looked at her, blinking.
The warrior pointed up the slope. "You have to help them."
"What? But what about you?"
"I'm not dead, gods damnit. Let Halward do his part and keep me safe. Your ass needs to get up there."
The girl shook her head bowing down low. She let out a shuddering breath through her mouth and stroked Elmiryn's cheek. "No. You need me here. I don't want you getting hurt anymore than you are. I don't…" the girl choked back a sob. "I don't want to go through Gamath again! I can do something to help you this time!"
Elmiryn snatched at the girl's upper left arm with her right hand. It hurt, and she knew her grip must've been painful judging by the look that crossed Nyx's face. She jerked the girl forward and sat up as best she could. Her mouth crashed against Nyx's, the girl's breath was harsh against her cheek. She could feel the cry against her lips, and through her pain nettled an inexhaustible desire.
No longer able to keep the position up, the warrior fell back and turned her face away. "Right now the others need you. Go now…or you'll regret staying with me more than anything." This phrase pumped acid through Elmiryn's veins, and her eyes clouded. Why…did she feel guilty now?
Nyx sat there for a minute, tears silently falling onto Elmiryn's arm. Then she stood and wiped her eyes on her sleeve.
"Elle…" she said in a querulous voice. But when she spoke again, her voice steeled, and the woman heard hints of a growl in the belly of her words. "I won't let you down!"
And the girl was gone.
Elmiryn blinked the moisture from her eyes and weak tears dripped to the snow. She took a breath and pushed herself into a sitting position, her vision tunneling away for moment and all her upper body protested.
…It hadn't been her intention, but now that Nyx was not around to stop her, she could work on trying to stand again.
"But the right to first blood is mine!"
Idiot. Did the Fiamman want to die? …Or was she trying to give Quincy an opening?
The wizard saw Syria's hand pull back and felt the power surging around it. With little thought, she stabbed forward. Syria shifted and her blade went slicing past its target, but the enchantress had been forced to change the course of her strike, taking away the energy she had built up. The dark-haired woman lashed at Elmiryn, and the warrior was blasted away into the dark of the night, down a slope where she couldn't be seen. Was she dead?
No time to think of her.
Syria didn't pause after her attack, and instead turned with a full whirl to send a sickle of gravitational force at Quincy. The woman dodged and pressed forward, stepping in close enough that her left foot slid between Syria's legs. The wizard stabbed from low at her right hip, cutting up in a diagonal line towards Syria's right shoulder. The enchantress leaned back, and the sword tip sailed over her shoulder and just missed grazing her tender neck.
She lifted her right knee high to her chest, then shot it back down again, close to the center of her body. Just as it came down along Quincy's inner thigh, the enchantress hooked it to the right shoved at the wizard's knee with hers. Simultaneously, she leaned her body forward and to the left where she slammed her fist into the woman's exposed left side.
The body blow was backed with a gravity force that, coupled with Quincy's compromised stance, sent the woman flying. Syria's form and execution were excellent, but the power of the attack came mostly from the magic she used. Though she was clearly ignoring the limitations of her own swollen wrists, that didn't mean physical strength appeared out of thin air.
So to Quincy's fortune, she wasn't sent very far, and rolled back upright, her sword at the ready. Her side throbbed, and she had to focus to get her breathing back on track, but the woman was fine.
Syria didn't wait for her to counter. The enchantress narrowed her gaze and brought forth more flames, which seemed to funnel from the campfire to roar in a hot cloud about the woman. With a push of her hands, the woman speared the fire forward.
Quincy straightened and held out her sword.
As the flames neared, there was an inhuman scream as the fires that surged forth vanished and flickered, the cooled air rushing about Quincy in a startled gasp. Her sword was engorged on the light and glowed hot. She drew back Tonatiuh's fang and let out a breath–
Flash.
Within a millisecond she was a blast of light, pulled through space in a hot sear through the dark. She was raw energy, traveling at a high speed, and she rocketed toward Syria–but she met resistance. A gravitational field. How could this be? The world warped, and her form bent. Unlike before, when she had taken Tonatiuh into her heart, Quincy was still in a humanoid form. Perhaps because of this, she was denser, and of course, she wasn't moving at the true speed of light. This would explain how the field was redirecting her, so that she saw Syria beneath her, like she were looking through curved glass. Within the next second, the wizard was headed for the snowy ground, unable to stop, she had just enough time to flip herself around, feet first–
The snow exploded and slushed about her boots as the energy left Quincy. The force of the landing sent her down onto a knee, and pain shot up from her soles. She looked up just in time to see Syria swing overhand toward her. She jumped backward, and the enchantress slammed her gravitational hammer into the ground. The force rattled the ground. Quincy pressed forward, blade drawn back at the hip. She couldn't flash forward again, but her weapon still held power. With a slash, a long lance of hot light blasted forth towards Syria's body, atleast four yards long, melting the snow it carved into. Syria slid away, the snow shifting about her feet to pull her yards back. She raised a hand and snow drifted up from the ground, collecting into hundreds of icicles at around her head. She then pushed her hand out, and the icicles shot forth, whizzing.
Quincy shifted to the left, putting her companions further behind her. Lifting her sword toward the sky so that the light shot up like a beacon, the woman closed her eyes and squeezed the hilt of her sword. She felt the light, felt its heat and power, and imagined it as glass at the hands of her animus–her soul. She broke it.
The light shaft shortened to stop just two feet above Quincy's head. It flashed and hundreds of rays cut forward. She could see through the individual paths of light, see the icicles just as they were within three feet of her–The rays sliced into the icicles, cutting them up, melting them, leaving the wizard only to be sprayed with water and small ice chunks. She could hear more snow collected, more icicles. Syria was going to keep blasting her until the woman missed one. She wouldn't let this turn into a fire fight–there, Syria would have the advantage. Quincy's power was limited as her sword drew from light and the suns still hadn't risen yet, but the enchantress could draw infinitely from their surroundings with her sorcery.
Quincy opened her eyes, swinging her blade to the side. At the back of her mind, she could feel Syria fishing–trying to worm her way in, trying to anticipate what she would do next. But the woman had been trained in protecting herself from such intrusions, and she steeled the barriers of her mindscape.
"You have no home in my mind, witch!" she called as she lurched forward into a charge. The rays of light swirled and pulsed around her, obliterating the hail of icicles as they came. But the rays were dying off each second. Quincy knew the battle had become too complicated, too dangerous for the others to try and join in, but what could she do? The enchantress had attacked her with high power. The wizard had to respond similarly or be killed. This was most likely what Syria wanted–to fight them one at a time. Without a foothold to control the minds of those around her and so many things seeking to break her attention, her best bet was to isolate them in battle.
Quincy cursed herself. How could she have played into the woman's plans so easily?
Syria didn't run from her as Quincy came close, and this caused the woman pause. She cut at her front, but she knew the blade would not reach, just slash near the mark. It was to test the older woman's resolve. Syria didn't move. Didn't even act to defend herself. She seemed to wait for Quincy to come and deliver the final blow. But the wizard didn't take the bait. She stared the enchantress down.
"Syria, what is this all for?" she asked quietly.
The enchantress gave her a pitying smile. "Freedom."
Then Quincy took in a breath and noticed the damp, humid smell. She blinked and with squinted eyes saw the vapor that flew about her, highlighted by the last of the dying rays. She cursed, stepping back, but it was too late. Syria bowed her head, and within the next instant, the wizard was encased in ice that seemed to thicken exponentially. Her eyes watered, and her skin stung from the cold. She tried to twist, but her spine, hips, and shoulders ground painfully into the ice. Her eyes stared through inches of translucent white. The woman tried to suck in breath, but only managed to expand her chest a quarter of an inch before limitation stopped her.
"Tai'undu!" Quincy thought. She saw Syria move away towards the others, who rose to engage her. If she did nothing, she could suffocate in seconds–there was no new air flowing in and restriction kept her from even recycling her breath. She had to get out, and quickly, but her sword had used up the last of the power it had drawn from the fire.
Quincy, however, came up with a wild idea.
She drew in breaths, quick and short. She consciously conjured up memories of the smoldering remains of huts and charred flesh. Of gusty winds that buffeted her. Of a certain young enchantress with her head trapped beneath iron. Of manacles on her wrists while a shadow stood over her, seagulls squawking overhead. Of sea salt and blood on her tongue. Of tall, tall men with tall, tall tales of heroes and villains and gods. Of standing in a swaying field, a heavy sword in her tiny hands, watching as a cloaked figure grew farther and farther away… "You have more than that, lazy beast," she thought, tightening her grip around Tonatiuh's hilt. "Pathetic, worthless scrap metal." Suddenly it wasn't that hard to feel angry. She strained against the ice, felt her muscles press and twist painfully. It fueled her fury. "I'll cast you into the sea, where you can rust away in Atargatis' dark belly! Cursed weapon!!"
The weapon grew hot beneath her touch, scalding her. Fire seemed to erupt in her chest, and her skin flushed with heat. Sweat rolled down her tight face, and Quincy groaned.
"That's it," she panted against the ice. "I'm feeding you. It's been a long time, hasn't it? Take my anger! It's yours!"
Tonatiuh flashed, blinding her. She felt herself blasted backward, through crumbled ice and water where she sailed through the air. She felt like she flew a long time. Then she crashed and tumbled into the snow. Dizziness and a relentless heat boiling inside her made movement an impossibility. Than through sheer effort, the woman raised herself with a grunt. She looked up the slope she had tumbled down, craning her head to see the battle resume without her. She took deep, slow breaths. Beneath her cloak, she was trembling, but she banished this weak show of constitution by repeating a mantra her old master had taught her, to reign in her emotions when they had slipped away from her.
She closed her eyes and muttered this to herself over and over, quickly. "Baghun, mahar-krun ekhep jukatiba…Baghun, mahar-krun ekhep jukatiba…Baghun, mahar-krun ekhep jukatiba…"
Tonatiuh was laughing in her head, even as she struggled to fight down the unwanted memories. Then Quincy heard a voice.
"Oh my! How nice of you to join me wizard. I was getting a bit lonely."
GRAZIANO__________________________
"How do you figure Tulki managed it, Graz?"
"Capturing those Lycans?"
"Pure silver, likely. Some other alchemy trick, who knows."
"I figured you did, hermano. You know so much about this crazy stuff."
"Choi, that's only because your ass of an older brother won't bother keeping up with the new ways."
"If Ard were around I bet you wouldn't talk so fresh, eh?"
"Yah, yah–c'mere perrico, lemme show you what he'd do if he were around!"
"Ow, ow! Distagea, distagea hermano, merci!"
Paulo's body was covered in rune-shaped burns, the skin blistered and in some cases peeling some of the superficial layers of skin away. Some of the runes were weeping blood and puss, staining the snow. The smell of burned flesh was nauseating. There was a weak pulse at his neck. Graziano held the boy's face, his hazelnut eyes shocked wide and his entire body trembling.
"Choi?" he whispered. He avoided the hollow of his cheek, because there on each side, mirroring runes had been burned in. Symbols that looked like they belonged to an ancient language. He didn't recognize them. There were too many to count. All he saw was pain and horror, and while he half-wished his brother would regain consciousness, he feared the suffering he'd find if he did. The man tore at his wavy hair, his body tensing as something indescribable built up in him. He thought of his older brother, Arduino, and what he would do. What he would say. His brother had been the surrogate father to them both, but this time Graziano had thought he'd known better, he'd thought…
"Pardona me," He sobbed, rocking back and forth. He scraped at the skin around his neck and tore at his shirt, trying to find release from the pain and desperation that gripped him. "Pardona me, Choi! Yo no sabea!"
"Oye, Choi! Look at you! Big bounty hunter now! That was quite daring of you, swinging down on the rope the way you did."
"Tulki was going to shoot you, Graziano. You smell funny, pér familia is everything!"
"Ha! I love you too, idi'ute…"
A light touch at his shoulder. Graziano jumped and turned to stare wild-eyed at Hakeem. The dark-skinned man was gazing intensely toward the battle. "Graziano, forgive me, but I think trouble is turning its eye on us."
The Moretti blinked and looked in the direction the wizard was staring. Quincy was trapped in a rock of ice, and Syria walked toward them calmly, her expression blank. The man grabbed onto the hilt of his rapier, but paused and looked at his brother in anguish. "But my brother–"
"Go," said the halfling man. He held a hand over Paulo and gave Graziano a nod. Argos brushed up next to him, panting. "I just have my dagger with me, and I'm not much good with close-range combat, but I'll watch him and try to keep him safe as best I can."
Graziano clenched his jaw and nodded once. Then he looked at Hakeem, and together they both rose. The Moretti drew his sword and held it before him with quaking hands. He tried to steel himself, but rage and anguish were devils that sought to overthrow him.
"Why have you done this!?" He screamed, advancing slowly. Hakeem kept pace on his left, his fists held up. "Paulo is just a boy!"
Syria stopped and blinked at him. Then she looked to the ground. "I will answer you, Moretti, because your pain is so vast, it warrants some response…though I doubt you'll like my answer anymore than you'll understand it." The woman took a breath and raised her head. "Paulo is fertile. He is young and vivacious. He had everything she needed, and I must deliver him to her."
"To who!?" he raged. He slashed his sword through the air. "For what!?"
"To the one who speaks to me always. I fought her for years, but I found I could do this no more. My own struggles were futile in the end. If it were not me, then it would be others still. Like my Lethia. The one who speaks to me seeks to break down boundaries." Syria turned her face toward Holzoff's. "My last rebellion was in allowing myself to be taken away. If structured bodies could stop me, as a virus, then perhaps the world had merit in its incarnation? But…my darling girl showed me how such things could be conquered through pure and basic principle. Unabashed loyalty. Love. Then I realized there were purer things then the insecure practices so many abide by. These crippled societies, these hungry kingdoms, these prejudicial communities…I have seen and touched the dreams and minds of so many. You would not believe the horrors that breed in sentient minds. Belcliff's marshal saw me for years over guilt for what he did to the Albian dwarves. He murdered them all, you know. Kept it quiet. With my help, he kept it quiet. Yet he feared I'd reveal this, even as he begged me to help him with his pain. Do you see the broken madness in this? What's wrong then, in opening the flood gates, and returning the world to its baser qualities?"
Syria's chin crumpled and she took a breath. "I tried to keep Lethia safe. I didn't want her to know about what was really happening. But her subconscious always remembered the rituals. The blood. Her nightmares were so powerful, they flooded the minds of all in Albias." Suddenly, a crooked smile spread across her face, and she looked at Graziano and Hakeem again. Tears trickled from her eyes into her frozen smile. "But despite this all, I'm glad an end can finally be reached!"
"You're insane," Hakeem said, he pulled a fist back, and the space around it rippled.
Syria cackled and raised her arms. Wind swept up around them, whipping up snow. Graziano took a step back as he saw the snow collect together, then hardened into thousands of icicles. They slashed at his skin, and the Moretti shouted as he tried to shield his face and neck.
He looked at the wizard, "Hakeem, do something gods damn it!"
The man in question raised his fist in the air. There was a muted rush and Graziano felt an invisible force brush past all of his body. The wind and icicles stopped. He lowered his arms and saw that Hakeem had created a sort of barrier around them. Outside, the wind still whirled sharp ice. Syria's lip curled and she made a beckoning motion with her hands.
Both Hakeem and Graziano fell as they snow they stood on shifted, like a carpet had been pulled beneath them. The snow shifted again, and the next thing they knew, they were sliding towards Syria at high speed. Hakeem had other plans, however.
Striking both arms against the ground, the wizard knocked both himself and Graziano upright with a strong gravitational blast. The Moretti stumbled, unprepared for this sudden change in position, but the wizard charged forward, and in the next instant, he was throwing punches, his attacks backed with gravitational force. The wind around them died as the enchantress couldn't keep the magic going. But Syria, for her ragged appearance, dodged the man's advances. There was a critical misstep, and Hakeem was sent spinning to the ground from a blow to the shoulder.
Graziano didn't pause in taking Hakeem's place. He jabbed at her stomach, but the woman shifted away. The man followed up quickly with a slash to the face, but this too Syria dodged. She mirrored his footwork, tracing a perilous dance through the snow. With each stroke that missed, Graziano's rage grew. It pulsed within him, tearing away at his control. His attacks grew wilder, leaving him open. Syria struck him in the chest, knocking the wind out of him, and he was launched backward to the ground.
Gasping, he stared up at the sky.
"Capturing Lethia Artaud…This is the last bounty before we go back home to Erminia, right?"
"Yes, Choi."
"…I don't want to go back, hermano."
"It's alot more fun, being out here with you and Ard."
The man growled and scrambled to his feet. Hakeem was back to fighting Syria one-on-one, but this time, Graziano didn't wait. He pressed forward, his blade swinging at Syria's head. The tip of his sword nearly hit the wizard's neck, and the man strafed away from him, his eyes cutting. Graziano ignored him. The only thing that mattered was killing Syria.
Their fight gained a rhythm. Syria was forced to travel backwards, her black hair a swaying curtain as she dodged both fist and blade. She tried to shift the snow beneath their feet, but both men recovered quickly each time. Graziano became dimly aware of Quincy's joining the battle. The blond didn't say a word. For a time, she followed the battle fine, but the attacks soon clashed and the rhythm was lost. Syria took advantage of this.
With a stomp of her foot, the ground rolled like a wave, going outward from the enchantress in a growing circle. The three of them were forced backward.
Quincy shouted at Hakeem, "Give us some paths!"
The man nodded, and with a swing of his gauntlet, he sent a roll of force at Syria. The woman jumped away, but the man didn't appear too concerned. The air seemed warped there. He punched both arms out from his sides, yelling from his gut. Another wave of force blasted from his fists. As he did this, Quincy attacked Syria, keeping her busy.
Despite her talk of teamwork, the woman seemed to be doing alot of the fighting herself. The Moretti recognized this to be her impatient professionalism–the old "If you want it done right, you've got to do it yourself," at work.
He spat at the ground, his grip tightening around his sword.
…And what about him? What about his family's right to battle?
Hakeem called to Graziano, "Moretti! When the time is right, jump into my pathways and try to keep still! We can flank her in ways she can't follow! If you can, back her into the pathways. They're a condensation of space, and it could disorient anyone unprepared for it."
The man gave an imperceptible nod. Hakeem leapt through one of his pathways, flashing to the end of it. There, he let out a kai and sent another wave of force slicing through the snow. Another pathway.
From the corner of his eye, Graziano saw someone jogging toward them in the snow. He glanced and saw it to be Nyx, her expression taut with apprehension. She stopped near him, watching as Quincy fought against the enchantress.
The man grabbed her by the shoulder and pointed with his rapier. "Quincy's just keeping her occupied. We have to help her or Syria will just overwhelm her in the end!"
The girl swallowed and nodded. As they ran forward, Graziano pointed at the pathway before them, where view of the battle was warped like a fish lens, "Watch out for these. I know they're hard to see right away, but if you go through them it can be dangerous. Here's an opening, come on!"
They passed through, the air between the separate pathways charged with static energy that made his hair stand on end. As they neared the fight, Syria had drawn back her arm and was about to lash at Quincy's head. The wizard had just missed with a downward stroke and her body tensed to dodge the blow. She wouldn't make it. Graziano yelled and lunged at Syria, forcing the woman's attention on him. The enchantress fell back, and instead of lashing out at Quincy, sent her attack at the Moretti instead. A swing of her arm and the man felt a sickle of force strike him from his left shoulder down to his right hip. The blow did not knock him down, but he was forced to stumble back several steps.
Nyx, a little wiser it seemed, flanked the enchantress, taking the time to go around to the woman's side and strike with a kick to the back of the knee. Syria went down, and the therian moved to knee the woman in the face, but as she lifted her leg, the enchantress jerked her head back. The snow beneath Nyx shifted, and the girl gave a surprised yelp as she fell backward. Quincy slashed down to cut at Syria's head. Their opponent rolled backward and slammed her fists into the ground. The force of the blow, much like Hakeem's move, launched her to her feet in an instant.
"Therian help me!" Quincy shouted as she pressed forward. Nyx wheezed but was back on her feet and following suit. Graziano watched as they fought the enchantress back more and more. The Ailuran had what the Moretti didn't–control. Her speed and agility made each attack seem part of a greater whole, an interwoven series that allowed little pause on the part of the defender. Graziano had always known Quincy to be the adaptable fighter. She fed off of the girl's rhythm, using it to her advantage to offer the power that Nyx's technical skill lacked.
Did the enchantress know what they were doing? Was the relentless onslaught so much that she couldn't change it, even if she did? Whatever the reason, the outcome was the same.
With a unified kick to the chest, Quincy and Nyx sent Syria flying backward into Hakeem's pathway. …But she went in the wrong way.
From where he stood, it was like the woman's body was warped to be no wider than three inches, and no shorter than seven feet. There was a choked gasp from Syria, and then she fell back, out of the pathway. Hakeem, jogging up to join Quincy and Nyx, waved his arms, and the pathway vanished, leaving Graziano's view of Syria clear.
The woman fell to her knees, gasping for breath. Her eyes were wide and her arms limp at her sides. Was it over, was it done?
Graziano sheathed his sword…then drew his pistol. The ivory stock fit his palm so nicely. He walked forward with slow steps, his face blank.
He could hear Quincy speaking to the others. "…must close the ritual somehow. The magic is still active, but it's deteriorating, leaving the required objectives less definite. That's even more dangerous. The last thing Syria needed for this to be complete was–" the wizard cut off as the Moretti appeared next to her.
"Un otrie sin casé, no posque funcío," Graziano whispered, silent tears trailing down his cheeks. "A tool has no purpose without a hand to use it…" he lifted his pistol.
In a rare show of expression, Quincy's eyes widened, and she made as if to grab the man's hand. "No, Graziano don't!"
The man managed to squeeze off three shots in rapid succession before the wizard grabbed his wrist. He didn't just want the woman dead. He wanted her to suffer…
One shot entered Syria's right shoulder.
The other two stopped in mid-air just before they could. These would've struck her in the forehead and throat. The woman's eyes flickered back to life, and they moved to meet Graziano's horrified gaze. She offered him a thin smile, her eyes clouded with tears.
Dimly, he thought about his father.
"Papa, don't worry, Arduino and I can take care of Paulo just fine."
Then the hovering bullets shot forth at him. One pierced his heart, the other the middle of his forehead.
Graziano fell, and when he hit the ground, he didn't think about anything anymore…
The warrior made a last push up the slope, her breath ragged. She teetered backward for a scary moment before she managed to right herself. Doubled over, she tried to catch her breath. Then she heard three gunshots, and her head snapped up.
Nyx screamed.
Ahead of her, far away, Graziano fell to the ground, limp. To the side, Farrel had stood to his feet, one hand clenched like a punch he was considering throwing. Quincy stared down at Graziano's body like she couldn't compute it. Nyx fell to her knees, also in a sort of disbelief. Hakeem pulled the both of them back harshly, leaving Elmiryn with a clear view of Syria. Blossoming in her right shoulder was a blood stain, from a gunshot wound it looked like, but this didn't seem to phase her. Her head was tilted back, and the enchantress whispered something into the air.
Elmiryn stumbled forward as quickly as she could. "Nyx!" she shouted.
The girl turned and saw her. She ran to the woman, arms held out. Nyx was in hysterics as she took the woman a little too roughly by the shoulders. "Elmiryn, she killed him! She killed Graziano!"
The warrior winced at the harsh contact, but turned her eyes to Quincy. The wizard was staring at Paulo. Elmiryn followed her gaze, and her brows crashed together. "Oh fuck…"
Farrel stood staring down at the boy's body with horror, his face under lit by the white glow that shone from the burned in runes on the boy's body. Argos stood near Lethia, as though shielding her with his body, his hackles raised and teeth bared.
The air around them grew thick. Elmiryn grabbed Nyx's hand and squeezed it. "Stay close to me, something's happening."
"Should we run?" Nyx asked quickly, her voice taut with fear.
Overhead, a white mist had appeared, and it shifted in the sky, like milk being stirred. Drops of water and light pieces of snow began floating upward, toward the sky. With each passing second, the mist grew wider until it were a dense liquid disc that occupied all the sky overhead. A powerful hum began to reverberate all around them. Elmiryn started to feel the hair on her skin rise, and her blood felt thick in her body. She clenched her jaw and began to pull Nyx back toward camp. There, the scultones stood watching, their white eyes glowing in the dark as they flared their nostrils and took in the scene.
"Oh gods…" Nyx whimpered, squeezing Elmiryn's hand.
Quincy and Hakeem jogged toward them. Elmiryn slowed to a stop and gazed at them hard. The man spoke, out of breath. "We can't get near Syria–there's something preventing us from getting near."
"Graziano, the fool…" Quincy muttered, staring blankly upward. "The ritual needed a sacrifice to be completed. Because we had interrupted Syria's process, the magic had started to deteriorate, leaving that requirement open to be interpreted by the power in question. Graziano's life and blood were enough to substitute for Paulo's…but the reaction will be different than whatever Syria expected. Not even she can control it now–however she doesn't seem to mind."
"But what the fuck is happening?" Elmiryn snapped.
Quincy sighed. "Nothing good."
The warrior started to run, dragging Nyx with her. "Then why are we just sitting around talking about it!?"
She started to feel lighter. Her feet sunk less and less into the snow. When her next step barely skimmed the ground, Elmiryn shouted and tumbled forward on purpose, back to the ground. Her hand still held Nyx's, and when she turned, she saw the girl was in the air, floating, her legs kicking wildly.
"Elmiryn!" The girl screamed in a panic.
A little behind them, Quincy and Hakeem were holding hands as well (oh, they were a couple?) and were floating up, but they're expressions were less surprised. They looked at her with somber expressions.
"Elmiryn. We aren't running, because we already know it's too late," Hakeem said, his brows together.
Elmiryn started to feel her body lift as well. She looked to Farrel. The man was clutching both Lethia and Paulo around their upper arms. Argos was writhing and snarling near Lethia's feet. Farrel looked wildly at her, and she thought she heard him shout over the growing hum, "What's goin' on!?"
The warrior craned her neck to see Syria already floating near the mysterious liquid overhead. Her expression seemed peaceful as her body was swallowed whole. When she was out of sight, the liquid rippled, and the redhead's eyes widened as she saw a myriad of colors flash in the white. She thought she could make out objects between the ripples–mountains, rivers, people–
Syria had opened up a gateway.
Elmiryn's tension sloughed away. As she drifted up, ever closer to the liquid, she pulled Nyx to her and held the girl around the torso.
"Nyx…" she breathed, her eyes shining with wonder. "I think I know where this goes."
The girl seemed beyond speech. She was trembling and hugging the woman tightly, so that it hurt, but the warrior was beyond caring.
She laughed and threw her head back, the momentum twisting them both around so that they slipped into the liquid feet first. Upon touching it, she felt as though her nerves were on pins and needles. Nyx was staring at her, hyperventilating. She opened her mouth, trying to say something but nothing came out. Hakeem and Quincy were already halfway in. The warrior couldn't even see Farrel and the others anymore.
"I'm going to tear this evil out by the roots," Elmiryn said between laughs shortly before her head was swallowed by the oblivion.
And the torrent of unknowing that howled around them, pushed and pulled, wanting and puzzling and tasting to make sense of their particle existences.
…Because in the Other Place, definition had to be destroyed before it could be discovered again…
End of Part II
Forward to Short Term Solutions

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Roby Pantall Jazz Trio — Artist Retreat Center, Bella Vista.
Jimmy Wayne Garrett & The Dreamwalkers — 8 p.m., Black Apple Crossing, Springdale.
Mayday By Midnight — 11 p.m.; Kevin Fowler at 8. Cherokee Casino, West Siloam Springs, Okla.
Jonathan Tyler & The Northern Lights — 10 p.m., Choctaw Casino, Pocola, Okla.
Ashtyn Barbaree — 7:30 p.m., Dickson Street Pub, Fayetteville.
Matt Venuti — 7 p.m., Fire Om Earth Retreat Center, Eurkea Springs. $15-$20.
Mudhawk — 7 p.m.; Ultra Suede at 6. George's Majestic Lounge, Fayetteville.
The Atlantics — 7 p.m., JJ's Grill, Bella Vista.
Goose — JJ's Grill, Dickson Street.
September's End — 8:30 p.m., JJ's Grill, Fayetteville.
Western Swing Rules — 8:30 p.m., JJ's Grill, Fort Smith.
Jamie Wolfe & the Wranglers — 8:30 p.m., JJ's Grill, Rogers.
Dr Nola and the Soul Shakers — 8 p.m., Levi's Gastrolounge, Rogers.
Lou Dog — 7 p.m., Sublime tribute. Meteor Guitar Gallery, Bentonville. $10-$20.
Flashback — Mojo's Pints & Pies, Fayetteville.
Ghost Cities — 8 p.m., with Groaners, and TV Preacher. Nomads Music Lounge, Fayetteville.
Serpents of Eden — 7:30 p.m., Ramo d'Olivo, Bentonville.
AHHFUGYEAHS — 10 p.m., Smoke & Barrel Tavern, Fayetteville. $5.
Buddy Shute & the Motivators — American Legion, Bella Vista.
Large Coats — 9 p.m., with ESC, and more. Backspace, Fayetteville. $5.
Dave Yates — 8 p.m. stand-up comedy. Black Apple Crossing, Springdale.
Honey Shuffle — Brick Street Brews, Rogers.
Rocket Science — 9 p.m., Cherokee Casino, West Siloam Springs, Okla.
David Lee Murphy — 10 p.m., Choctaw Casino, Pocola, Okla.
Nick Caffrey — 7:30 p.m., Dickson Street Pub, Fayetteville.
Go Strealy — 7 p.m., Elder Tree, Fayetteville. $10.
Guitar Center Studio Open House — 1-4 p.m. with studio tours, free jump-start lessons and more. Guitar Center, Fayetteville.
Dudley Jr. — 7 p.m., JJ's Grill, Bella Vista.
Mark Shields & Good Co. — 8:30 p.m., JJ's Grill, Fayetteville.
Whippersnapper — 8:30 p.m., JJ's Grill, Fort Smith.
Mr. Lucky — 8:30 p.m., JJ's Grill, Rogers.
HXXS — LaLa Land, Fayetteville.
Kids over the 90s — 8 p.m., Levi's Gastrolounge, Rogers.
Ashtyn Barbaree — 7:30 p.m., Ramo d'Olivo, Bentonville.
Han Duo — Rowdy Beaver on W. Van Buren, Eureka Springs.
Chicken Pot Pie Duo — Rowdy Beaver Den, Eureka Springs.
Roby Pantall Jazz Duo — Ruth Chris Lounge, Rogers.
Worst Party Ever — 10 p.m., Smoke & Barrel Tavern, Fayetteville.
Gove Scrivenor — Gove Scrivenor brings his "high energy folk blues" — with inventive slide work and powerful vocals, tempered with singular work on the autoharp — to 17 Elk St. in Eureka Springs for a Eureka Springs House Concert at 6 p.m. Nov. 18. Brent Pierce will open the concert. Meet-and-greet potluck starts at 5 p.m. 244-0123, eurekahouseconcerts.com. $15.
Sub-Sahara — 9 p.m., with Datenight, and The Phlegms. Backspace, Fayetteville. $5.
Gove Scrivenor — 6 p.m., with Brent Peirce. Eureka House Concert, 17 Elk Street, Eureka Springs. $15.
The Oh Hellos — 8 p.m., with Samantha Crain. George's Majestic Lounge, Fayetteville. $18-$20.
Harmonia — 2 p.m. benefit concert. Heart of Many Ways, Eureka Springs. $10.
Comedians NWA — 8 p.m. all ladies comedy show & live album recording. Stage Eighteen, Fayetteville. $7.
Wood Chickens — 9 p.m., with The Wirms, and Gardensnakesss. Backspace, Fayetteville. $5.
Tony Alvarez — 5 p.m., JJ's Grill, Bella Vista.
Dirty Flannel Shirt — 6 p.m., JJ's Grill, Fayetteville.
Kim Carson — 6 p.m., JJ's Grill, Rogers.
Acoustic Open Mic — 7 p.m. with Nick Lohanick. Stage Eighteen, Fayetteville.
Swon Brothers — Oklahoma's own The Swon Brothers return to SEVEN Bar at Cherokee Casino in West Siloam Springs, Okla., for a free show at 9 p.m. Nov. 23. Brothers Zach and Colton Swon hail from Muskogee and rose to national prominence by reaching the 2013 finals of the hit NBC competition "The Voice." The duo's most recent release is the EP "Pretty Cool Scars," which features the single "Don't Call Me." (800) 754-4111, cherokeecasino.com, swonbrothers.com.
Fossils of Ancient Robots — 9 p.m., and Barbarians of Tomorrow. Chelsea's Corner Cafe, Eureka Springs.
Jed Clampit — 6:30 p.m., Hoppin' John's, Fayetteville.
Kim Carsen — 5 p.m., JJ's Grill, Bella Vista.
2Shock — JJ's Grill, Dickson Street.
Jason Campbell — 6 p.m., JJ's Grill, Fort Smith.
Jon Dooly — 6 p.m., JJ's Grill, Rogers.


text:
Local FM Highfields
87.6 mhz On the Dial
TRR group stations
Highfields & District Australia Day Awards
January 29, 2017 News No Comments
Senator Claire Moore, Cr Bill Cahill, Ron Baxter, Cr Megan O'Hara Sullvan, Mayor Paul Antonio, and Cr Geoff McDonaldi
Citizen of the year – Ron Baxter
Ron Baxter is this year's Highfields Citizen of the Year. Ron is an active and committed volunteer of the Highfields Lions Club and the Highfields Pioneer Village. His dedication to the Historical Village has seen him amass more than 1660 hours of volunteer work since he joined the tourist attraction in 2012. Ron's talents include restoring old engines and tractors, among many other jobs.
He donned his chef's apron to help with the barbecue at the Toowoomba Hospital Children's Appeal during the Easter Vintage Festival.
Ron's willingness to help the Highfields Lions Club also knows no bounds. He cheerfully lends a hand at the annual Block Party, the Highfields Show and Shineas well as overseeing the barbecue at Highfields State School on election days.
Lions also rely on Ron to man the donation table at Highfields' successful Carnival of Flowers competition garden.
Mayor Paul Antonio and Cr Bill Cahill present Anna Bartlett with her award
Cultural award – Anna Bartlett
Anna Bartlett is a contemporary painter who is inspired by happy colours. It is little surprise that her artistic heroes are Matisse and Australian painter Ken Done. Her colourful illustrative works often include children, flowers and birds.
She recently completed six children's murals at the Toowoomba Hospital and another five detailed murals at Breastscreen Queensland.
Apart from painting original works, Anna runs Shiny, Happy Art. This includes the popular Paint Along sessions which are aimed at beginners and group collaborative events.
Anna recently donated a painting in a fundraising effort for disabled teenager Joshy Mitchell and his family. Proceeds from a pop up art event were donated to the Mt Lofty Heights Nursing Home.
Her artwork adorned the cover of the 2016 Carnival of Flowers program and has appeared in other magazines and outlets.
Senior sports award – Ryan Nicholson
Sports awardee, Ryan Nicholson
Ryan Nicholson has a boundless passion for soccer. He was named most consistent player in South West Queensland for his 2016 efforts with the Highfields Colts.
At the South West soccer tournament Ryan was part of the successful Highfields FC division one team and gained additional honours when he received the referee's best and fairest player in the first division grand final.
Ryan is respected by his peers and was voted Highfields Football Club's Under 18 player of the year.
To cap an incredible season, Ryan was in the top three nominations for the first division player of the season at the 2016 South West Football awards night.
Community group – Highfields Pioneer Village, Museum and Park
Vince Little proudly displays Highfields Pioneer Village's Australia Day award
A voluntary community organisation committed to preserving and promoting Darling Downs pioneer history has been awarded the Highfields' Community Group award.
The Highfields Pioneer Village Museum and Park is a non-profit group that was established in 2000 to support and maintain the Highfields Pioneer Village. The organisation maintains and establishes static displays of significant historical events as well as demonstrating and passing on traditional skills used by early settlers on the Darling Downs.
The displays include a large collection of vintage cars, trucks and tractors. Visitors also can browse a fine collection of antique radios and electrical appliances.
The Heritage Chapel was built in 1909 as a Congregational Church at Meringandan. The Village Fashion Shop features an original silk wedding dress from the 1890s.
The Village also houses a unique collection of tinsmithing machinery. The historic Gore Railway Station now also takes pride of place at the Highfields Pioneer Village along with a new favourite, the Myrtle May Miniature Steam Railway.
More than 31,000 people visited the attraction last financial year.
The Village won the Community Event of the Year category in the 2014 Australia Day awards and is a past winner of several Toowoomba Chamber of Commerce business awards.
No U-turn On The Highway Outside College, Highfields
Highfields Pioneer Village Incoming Office Bearers 2017-18
Highfields FM


Oh, this is the greatest show! Circus spectacular rolls into town for Royal William Yard's Spring market.
Royal William Yard will hold its first Spring event with an unforgettable extravaganza from world-famous performers, The Invisible Circus. This unmissable celebration of entertainment will take place during the monthly Good Food and Craft Market on Sunday 7th April.
A dazzling troupe of performers will bring the era of The Greatest Showman to the Yard, with an immersive programme that the whole family will enjoy! With acts taking to the stage from midday, there will be an array of performances and street acts located throughout the Yard, including stilt walkers, a cycling pianist, balloon modelling and more!
Bringing P.T. Barnum's vision to life, performers will entertain the crowds with daring feats headed up by The Greatest Showman himself and front man of Invisible Circus- Doug Francisco. Acts will include the amazing upside down acrobatic queen Felicity Footloose, the fabulous Stripy Twins performing aerial hoop dance and stilt walking, knife throwing from Pete Dobbs, comedy juggling from Daryl J Carrington and the infamous Rimskis Cycling Piano who will be making his way around the Yard.
Bristol based circus theatre company, The Invisible Circus, has been entertaining crowds for over 20 years and is best known for performing in unusual locations that bring them closer to their audience, including arts and music festivals around the world.
The ever-popular Good Food and Craft Market will run from 10am – 3pm on the lawn, spreading along Main Street and into Melville Building. The market attracts some of the South West's top artisan makers as well as the region's finest food and drink producers and vendors. Whether it's the best seasonal Spring produce or Easter treats, the market will have all bases covered!
A vibrant event packed with family-friendly fun, there will also be circus themed craft activities in The Guardhouse for children to truly embrace the creativity and theatre of the circus and a chance to meet some of the performers.


Do you have an application where you need to measure and display more than 600V AC or DC and have a multimeter available? The HPD-28 works with most multimeters (500MΩ input impedance) to safely measure DC voltage up to 40kV and AC voltage up to 28kV.
0-40kV DC and 0-28kV AC.
Accurately measure and extend voltage measurement capability of almost any multimeter.
Lightweight and rugged design can withstand abuse.
Two year warranty for piece of mind.