This is for Jenny, Chuck and Val who all gifted me major elements of this compostion.The background (embelished again by me), the gun and the pose are from Lavinia's Tale and the character of Hagred is Val's Anna who I think she will be surprised to see as a black arts thief. At the encouragement of Jenny and Chuck I have continued to add my own embelishments to their story of Lavinia's Tale. I hope you like how I've breathed a bit more life into Hagred. ------------- Hagred was a thief. Not a petty thief mind you. Not one to break into your house, rummage your closets, and steal your stereo. Oh no, not Hagred. Hagred only stole the most sacred artifacts of civilizations - nothing less would do for her. The unlikely progeny of a warlock and a time travelling physicist, Hagred was a natural born thief. Well taught, she was, in the black arts of theft and deception but also in the science of temporal displacement, handy skills for someone who coveted the power of immortality! For if you had asked how old she was, Hagred would have given you a sardonic laugh and replied "How old is time?" For what is age to someone who can freely travel the realms of the 4th dimension? If a raid goes bad can you not just step back and start over? If you land in the wrong spot at the wrong time, and find yourself say surrounded by a pack of daunting dragons, can't you just step back a few days and try again? Yes you can, well maybe, if you have enough energy. The problem is entropy. Having stepped into a new time you have released a whole whack of energy and to go back and change that requires at least as much energy again. Such energy never comes cheap and easy and it's a bear to carry around. Far better to get a wee bit of "magical" protection, perhaps a whisp of warlock power, so you can do it right the first time around! Hagred was well aware that such magic would be just someone else's good science. How else would a Saxon warrior explain a Colt 45? To him would it not be a thunder weapon that magically killed at a distance? But to us a Colt 45 is just good engineering. Don't believe me? Go read Mark Twain's classic, "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court." You'll get the idea. So when Hagred heard of a sacred orb from the ancient kingdom of Valtrex she was on high alert. Sacred orbs don't just pop out of nowhere; someone had to make it and then somebody had left it behind. This orb was said to be the "light of civilization and hope of the future." Oh my, Hagred knew those were just code words; whispered into the ear of an ancient high priest by some do gooder time traveler posing as a God. That do gooder had left behind this "magical" artifact as a gift; knowing that the poor protective priest would never really understand. But no matter, the orb would still work. After all, you don't have to be a mechanic to drive a car, do you? Hagred, however, knew what those code words meant to a late 21 century physicist. The orb must be an energy shield! Something like that would give her the "magical" protection she needed for her work. Something like that would let her land in the most guarded enclave and escape unscathed! Having learned of this orb Hagred had wasted no time in liberating it from Valtrex. And just to stir up a bit of trouble, she had spared one last priestly guardian and told him her theft of the orb meant the Kingdom of Valtrex was doomed in seven generations. Hagred loved spooking old priests in the past and then going back to her own time and reading what legends had come of her passing. Playing mind games on minions was always such a giggle! On her way home she decided to give the orb a test run. So she took a side trip to the Temple of Lorax to snag a second orb that she had long coveted. It had always been well protected by a half dozen small but lethal dragons that always worked in paired shifts; it was never left unguarded. Her and Dark Rory, her pet Raven, who acted as her second pair of eyes, would now nip in and give the dragons a surprise visit!