[Cursed Crone] The First Meteor

That was when the first meteor hit.

Mid-dash, trying to lead the great monster away from the fleeing townsfolk, Arianwyn's was focused on the route in front of her, not what was flying in from behind. The uneven earth was already too much for a spotted mare with no real athletic talent; even the minute dips and stream beds across the floodplain enough to risk her breaking a limb if she didn't wholeheartedly focus on the way forward. Though her adrenaline fueled her attention, this was still taking every bit of her ability. Though she knew the monster was following her, she didn't dare turn to look and risk taking her eyes off her own path.

She was blind to the meteor aimed right towards her.

Small and inconspicuous as it was, Arianwyn would never have thought twice about the small object that rushed towards her, not when she had a literal giant monster on her tail. That was, until something in it activated her magic.

Arianwyn's sense for silver in her surrounding area was innate, second nature. To her, it felt so natural, the same way she noticed people in a room with her or was aware of a floor beneath her feet. She could name the quantities of silver in her vicinity the same way she could automatically count the number of people in a room—it was simply how her magic sense operated. Sometimes, if there was a lot of elemental silver around, such as in fine jewelry, it felt more like an itch begging for her attention than a simple awareness, though she had largely learned to tune this out. Never before had she experienced a quantity of silver rush into her awareness like it did when the meteor closed in on her. One moment she did not sense it, the next she did and it was heavy and fast and coming right towards her head.

The next, instinct took over, and she found herself intuitively shielding herself with a slab of silver from her page, shaped on the fly into a makeshift defensive structure. The meteor slammed into it with a loud crunch, but it had done its job: somehow, she had managed to protect herself from the attack, and she did not know how. It was like how one reactively dropped a hot object, before the brain even registered the danger; a self-protective instinct so innate and natural that she did not notice what she had done until she was holding a shaped piece of silver and trying to make sense of what had happened.

She had never been able to shape silver on the fly before. Her creations were works of intellect and planning, and though there was a degree of instinct for it, it still took thought to consider exactly how to achieve the masterpiece she wanted. She had never found her powers summoned so easily before. The meteor was still embedded in the shield, the force with which it had hit making it very clear that if she had failed to protect herself, the consequences would have been fatal. How she had managed to build and move armor into its trajectory to protect herself was beyond her, but she had to hope this power remained. She had the feeling this was not the final meteor which would threaten her life that day.

With the Cursed Crone still behind her, she kept running.