“So do ye know what it is?” Mr. Cross asked one last time.

“Well, ye see…”

“Yes or no, Riggs.”

“No, I guess I don’t.”

Riggs was one of the smartest men Mr. Cross knew. The manner of the crystal’s arrival was strange, thought Cross, but it was stranger still that Riggs had no idea what it might be. Riggs ran his calloused fingers over the stone’s flawless surface. He began to think out loud.

“It’s white, even in th’ torchlight, but’s not milky. It’s too smooth to be quartz, but far too uniform to be a silicate. It’s….”

“Ey!” called Elliot carelessly from the moonlit street. “Think somebody’s comin’.”

Cecilia caught Cross’ forearm and spoke quietly as he slid from his barstool.

“Tell that brute to keep it down. Town’s asleep.”

“Sure thing ma’am.”

Cross sighted down Elliot’s rigid arm as it tracked the aforementioned ‘someone’. Over twenty miles away, a train of dancing lights described the approach of a midnight caravan. Did midnight caravans operate this far north? Mr. Cross did not know. Shouldn’t it be too cold at night this time of year? It occurred to him for the first time how pleasant the air felt. The town of Madison perched at high enough elevation to see snow as early as late summer. With fall coming to a close, it should have been below freezing tonight. Maybe. Cross had never been this far north. How should he know?

“Is it always so warm durin’ night time?” he asked the night.

“Not last year.” Elliot answered. “Not th’ year b’fore.”

“Three years past?”

“What do ya think.”

“No?”

“Bingo.”

“So just this year then…”

Elliot had grown bored of the conversation. He peered past Cross into the dark.

“The bloke who was lurkin’ ‘ere earlier,” Elliot prompted. “Did he leave thataway?”

Cross followed Elliot’s accusatory finger east. He could just barely make out the silhouette of an approaching man.

“Nah. T’was th’ other way. Riggs?”

Cross held out an open hand, and Riggs placed in it exactly the thing he needed - darkvision spectacles.

“Ey!” Elliot called into the night. Cross remembered a promise.

“Keep it down!” he hissed, squinting through the arcane lenses. A few facts had begun to make Cross uneasy. Firstly, the advancing man strode down the cobblestone road’s median line as though it were market time on shepherd’s rest day. It was nearly midnight. Secondly, the man’s clothes were soaked full though. Had it rained nearby? Could he have fallen in a river? The nearest river to fall into was more than a half mile off. Lastly, the man’s calves and forearms were briar torn. His sleeves hung in tatters from his shivering wrists.

“Riggs?”

“Mr. Cross?”

“Where’s Sutha?”

Riggs gestured to the west corner of the saloon’s bonnet roof.

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“Over here, Mr. Cross!” Sutha wrenched a thick chunk of brickstone debris from the top side of the ruined chimney.

“Shhhh! Come down ‘ere.”

The brigand, the lawman, the scholar, and the chimney cleaner beheld the stranger as he stepped into the light of the Magma’s single lantern. His lacerated arms hung slack by his sides. The muscles of his face rendered an uncanny expression of relaxation.

“G’d evening sir.” Cross hid his fear behind kind, gentle intonation. “Can we help ya?”

“Help,” was the only response he received. The man’s tongue wrestled the word as though he had never spoken it before.

“Tommy? ‘Re you alright?” Cecilia shuffled into the lamplight.

“Can help…” Tommy’s lips parted only slightly, and his voice oozed forth from deep in his throat. He had become fixated on something within the Magma. It could only be one thing - the crystal that had fallen from the sky.

“Riggs… will you bring us the stone….”

Mr. Cross kept a hand on Cecilia’s shoulder while his team executed a well practiced deception. First, he conjured with his mind an illusory replica of the mystery stone. Next, Sutha moved to block Tommy’s view into the saloon. Concealed in Sutha’s shadow, Riggs exchanged the real stone for the illusory one. It seemed to Cross that the deception had been executed very well, but it did not matter. Tommy saw with more than eyes. Riggs presented him with the ersatz crystal, and he withdrew from the light.

“Oh my god…Tommy?” Cecilia donned her outdoor slippers. Was she distraught enough to follow poor Tommy into the dark? Cross held her wrist to make sure she didn’t. “Come back Tommy! Hello Tommy?”

Elliot thumbed the slightly crooked mace one his back. The hinges on the Magma’s front door creaked rhythmically in the wind. Riggs edged nearer the door. Hadraniel peered cheerily through the window. Privileged twat, thought Cross. He’d give twenty yield to be on the other side of that window. Tommy’s approaching silhouette became visible once again.

“Ey.” Elliot hailed it. Stupidly.

Cross fumbled around his back pocket for the spectacles.

“Ey!” Elliot called again.

Cross gave up on the spectacles. He wouldn’t need them. Tommy would reach him before he could properly use them anyhow. Tommy was sprinting.

* - -

The regent’s door remained shut and locked. The lights within his home remained off, and there was no sign whatsoever that he was awake. When poor, possessed Tommy threw himself headfirst through the Magma’s window, Cecilia shrieked that someone should fetch the regent. Tommy was then restrained, and her exclamation was ignored. After all manner of unfruitful attempts to cure Tommy’s condition, Cecilia’s proposition was reconsidered. Hadraniel had, of course, volunteered to take on the task of fetching the mayor. So here he was. And he was failing. Hadraniel considered his options.

He could shout. Shouting would likely wake the regent, his staff, and the deputies in their cottages out back. It would also wake the other twenty odd farmers sleeping nearby. Didn’t they have a right to know that some black magic had made it into their home? Perhaps. No use frightening them at this hour though. He could give up on the regent entirely. To give up now would morally commit him to the task of tending to Tommy’s insanity until daybreak. Exhausting. He could try knocking upon the deputies’ doors instead. Their cottages were quite a bit smaller than the regent’s manor, so they would be more likely to hear his summons. Hadraniel elected this option.

A light flicked on within the deputy’s bedchamber. Through a ruffled curtain of faded yellow linen, the man’s silhouette could be seen hopping about on one foot and then the other. As the deputy struggled with his nightclothes, Hadraniel darted from his porch to make sure Tommy was still under control. In an effort to contain Tommy’s erratic quest for a crystal he could no longer see, Hadraniel had telekinetically excavated a hole in the road. He had imagined that it would function like a prison cell, but it had turned out more like a playpen. Tommy was quite tall, and in order to keep him from climbing out, rubble from the crystal’s impact crater had to be stacked about him to a height of at least two feet. As Hadraniel beheld five adults darting about maintaining a toddler-sized barricade while another fully grown man attempted to destroy it from within, he began to feel embarrassed. It was not his finest plan. The deputy’s front door ground against a single warped plank in his front porch. Hadraniel spared him the discomfort of coming up with something to say.

“Good evening!” Hadraniel whispered loudly from the streetside. “Myself and Ms. Cecilia are in need of some help.”

“Are ye in danger?” The deputy spoke without opening his eyes.

“Yes…sort of. Someone surely is. Please come quick…I’m Hadraniel.”

“Gerrod.”

Hinges whined as the door scraped its way across the uneven porch, and the cottage emitted a half dressed, half sleeping man. He did not fully wake until he beheld the idiocy afoot in the center of main street.

“Tommy? What’s wrong with you?” Gerrod peered into the impromptu prison from within which Tommy ignored him completely. “Alright…everyone stop.” The petty battle for chunks of debris carried on. “Stop!” The jailors took a step back from the pit, and Tommy made headway in his escape. Gerrod took control.

“Alright. I’m gonna let Tommy out, and then I’m gonna take him to get some ‘elp.”

And so he did.