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She will notice the missing pen in four days, but never once suspect you.

She looks out over Novessa -- bleary eyed, searching.

Feet swaying gently, a few feet above the ground. The laces of their left shoe have come untied.

A child sits cross-legged, giggling at 'the funny man' on-screen. Her parents look on, glad she's there and not caught up in any trouble -- not realising how much their overprotectiveness will cause in years to come.

The groundskeeper will find the body. A gloved hand will erase any record of his report to the authorities.

Five feet above your head, the bedroom window. Glass still bearing the dots and lines of bedtimes past, her fingers tracing a map of stars to guide the little ones to sleep.

He stared at her mouth, disbelief, wonder. His dreams come to life. He asked her if she remembered his fantasy, offered her the job on the spot.

Hunched over the phone, desperately thumping his half-flaccid cock while teenagers laugh just a few feet away. Duchess' voice in his ear, claiming that it wants him.

Neither particle nor wave, but some other fundamental entity, uniting and penetrating all things at once.

He stared at her mouth, disbelief, wonder. His dreams come to life. He asked her if she remembered his fantasy, offered her the job on the spot.

A man leans over a fluted balustrade, savouring a pre-bed cigarillo. The Noscorrentes sea churns like liquid mercury. At his back, a suite of malachite and glass -- and a figure detaching itself from the wall, gun in hand.

The past you can account for... but the future?

Old Viúdas shifted around him. There was a route traced for him, but he veered off. Around the corner, a car kept waiting, engine ticking. In the trunk: carpet and old rope.

Lips in the concrete, singing to you.

Somewhere in the streets of Quisach, a well-to-do teenager grips his little sister by the hand and scrutinises the face of every beggar, every outcast squatting by a canal or hobbling through the alleys, wondering if, maybe...

An index finger hammers on the mouse. One click, and time jumps forward by exactly one minute.

The huntress balks. The fear inside her is the germ of that which one day will become religion -- an intuition of powers existing beyond, outside her world.

The huntress kills a boar, but instead of eating it, she sets fire to the massive corpse and watches the smoke ascend -- an offering to the superstructures which she can only conceive of as Gods.

A pale, screenlit face watches in expectation.

It descended like a vile comet from the stands above: white, planetary, drawing its own aureola of discoloured liquid as it spun. Only in the instant before impact did you realise what it was...

A pair of blue boxer briefs hang from a washline in Besanoble. A plain dress shirt crumpled on a cold bedroom floor in Landau. Somewhere in Treffe, a man leans on a marble counter, breath shallow from exhaustion.

Rivers of waterlogged rainbow silk, clogging the canals. The body of the radio host soon to join them.

Hair in a silk wrap, eyes closed, hands clasped, she mutters under her breath for a full minute. Her husband is already asleep, used to this.

In the smouldering wreckage of a schoolhouse, a screaming child writhes under the limp, heavy body of his teacher as their world burns around them.

As she looks over her deteriorating wares, Carmuna pulls her shawl closer and glances towards the shrine of Canopus. She could've sworn she heard familiar music.

Beyond the edges of the universe, falling into a tourmaline haze.

A soft click as he places his briefcase on the cobblestone, stops to clean his glasses. He replaces them, blinking up at the aerotrams and the birds circling beneath. He smiles.

Shining with a film of sweat in the orange glow, the lovers twirl and stomp. Cheers, singing, the thrill of the crowd. Ash rains on trashcan drums.

High-heels tapping on the metal gangway, skirts fluttering in the wind. A gang of men stand on the dock beneath them, eyes all whites.

Voices chanting and singing -- words learned out of spite. The sound of Nestor's window slamming shut. He looks down over them, watching from behind a half-drawn curtain.

The man kills the engine and waits, watching the morning mist part like a curtain. Slowly, the array emerges: twelve slender, glinting giants, shoulder to shoulder -- all facing north.

An echo of your former asset, clapping his hands together, urging dock workers to pick up the pace.

She smooths her skirt as she stands, slipping from her desk and walking over to an ancient mainframe -- LITOST's altar.

A recent darkening night. Dr. Gonza waits in his office chair. Unable to show his usual bravado, unable even to say 'Board', he surrenders to the sadistic mercies of whoever and whatever comes through his door.

A tuk-tuk pulls up on the dock. A young woman peers through her window. Two men step out, and walk towards the houseboat. Something is wrong.

Far below the normal region of air traffic, almost skimming the dark water, a shuddering cargo plane crosses the Noscorrentes Sea, lights dimmed.

A slender finger slips into the black curls of a phone cord and twirls them around itself... suddenly it pulls, and your breath cuts short.

Two-hundred chisels working in rhythm. Rock chips gather on the masons' eyelashes; they blink, dust falls, and slowly a face blinks back in the hardstone opposite them.

A man in a hardhat and blue vest finishes the last twist of his screwdriver and gets up from where he's knelt, knees-down, on the pavement. His fingers brush the dolphin on the way up -- for luck.

An abyssal rumble. Gigantic shadows stir beneath the surface, cetaceous forms in this era's seething water.

Inside the Containment Vessel, the entity protests. You have brought along the Small Controller.

Inside the Entity Containment Vessel, a mass stirs.

A belt hangs off the railing, the area is cordoned off.

A race of primitive sophisticates wanders through the vine-covered ruins of Portofiro. Impeccably dressed in fabrics the secrets of whose production has been lost, they skulk around judging each other's fashion while the day's strip of rat meat dries on the line.

It is imbued with its history. Psychic receptors bristle at something that is not quite a scent but is burned forever into the object.

<<Good job, CASCADE. M.I.H.O. salutes you.>>

The void around you grows agitated, heating and wetting, as your senses close around the thing.

Living... living and round... living and round and within...

A mind churning in perpetual consumption of itself.

Your true enemy has yet to reveal itself.

344 skill checks - ZERO PARADES field manual - Page 2 of 7