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It was quick like a blow to the head.

An average day was soon shattered by hot, crippling pain exploding in Starbuck's skull. A piercing light flashed behind her eyes. A terrible, trembling horror ripped through her like knives of ice. Blinded, she would feel as if she were falling, falling from an impossible height, down and deep into a hungry hot chasm stretched wide to receive her like the great maw of a beast. Its damp swirling breath smelled bittersweet, like chocolate laced with a hint of cinnamon ...

She awoke at night to the creaking of crickets and the sob of an owl. The air was cool and calm on her cheek; it smelled sweet like rotting leaves and copper. She lay on a low, circular metal platform that was half-buried in the dirt and looked as if it had been there for centuries; there were markings etched into the surface, obscured by ancient moss and creeping ragged vines. The platform was cracked through the middle; sapling trees grew out of the fissure, and the rest was covered in grass and tough weeds. At one side of the platform was a palm-sized silver box with a single keyhole and no seam that could be discerned. Beside it was a small puddle of fresh blood.

Above, a thick rustle of leaves and mossy branches obscured the sky, but she was not without light: a weathered old lantern hung from a high bough of a tree, held up by a thin shimmering thread. It cast a steady, bright red glow upon the platform directly below it, and it illuminated the small clearing of weedy flowers and spines that lay between the platform and the dark towering woods. A few feet from the edge of the platform, among the weeds, was a patch of freshly turned earth.

The tree -- which rose old and twisted beside her, and whose dark gnarled branch supported the lantern that was her only light -- was huge, ancient and twisted grotesquely. There was a deep dark hole in the bark, through which a distinct, strained mechanical noise could be heard: [i]screee chik-chak. rrrrrrrr. screee chik-chak. rrrrrr.[/i]

Deep in the dark woods, far beyond the red glow of the lantern, there was sometimes a small flash of green light. In the opposite direction, she might hear the faint echo of a voice screaming angrily. But it only lasted a moment.