Gwen sat on a nearby rooftop, watching as the museum guard locked the doors and turned to embark on his nightly rounds. She waited, ensuring he was safely gone before making her way onto the museum roof with a large leap. She landed softly, pausing to listen for guard footsteps or anything out of the ordinary. When the night air remained silently still she stood up from her crouch and made her way to the rooftop skylight. The museum below was dimly lit, just bright enough for the guards to see the exhibits were safe on their rounds.

She trailed her finger in a circle along the glass of the skylight, leaving a glowing pink path behind where she touched, then carefully pulled the circular piece of glass free from the body of the window. She smirked as no alarms sounded at her security breach, then attached a line to the metal frame of the skylight and threw the slack of the rope through the new hole. She tugged the line, ensuring it was fastened securely, and lowered herself slowly through the opening.

As she reached the bottom of the rope she paused, lightly tapping the floor with her foot before fully stepping onto it. She surveyed the room, eyeing the exhibit case she was here for. The glass encasing the artifact was thick, impossible for her to lift herself. She stared at the tablet within the glass, narrowing her eyes in frustration. She could cut the glass as she did the skylight, but the breach may very well set off alarms.

All too suddenly the echoing of footsteps filled the room, approaching quickly from the hall. She frowned, running to the rope and heaving it up through the skylight before ducking behind an oversized exhibit pedestal holding a bust.

The footsteps stopped in the doorway and the light of a flashlight cut through the dark of the room. It hesitated on every exhibit piece, taking time to ensure nothing was amiss, and upon finding everything present the guard continued on. Gwen exhaled in relief, grateful that the guard was lazy enough to not actually walk around the room. She waited an extra couple seconds to ensure he wouldn't return suddenly then crept out from her hiding spot. She made her way back over to the case, deciding that in the time it would take the guard to respond to the potential alarm she would be long gone, and began to cut a hole in the glass case.

As she had suspected an alarm sounded the second she pulled the circular cut out of the body of the case. She reached in as quickly as she could and pulled out the small stone tablet. Close by, she could hear the shouts and heavy footsteps of guards racing towards her and, tablet in hand, formed a flat pink platform beneath her feet and began floating back up to the skylight.

Just as she reached the opening, however, the tablet in her hands began to burn her skin. She winced and looked down to see the ancient runes coating the stone illuminated in an eerie pink glow. The glow began to crackle, lines of energy flowing up her arms and across her skin, sending waves of piercing pain through her. In a last stich attempt to stop the pain she dropped the tablet, only to find it impossible to release it from her grasp. She swore under her breath and flailed her arm trying to get the tablet off her skin.

Just as the pain reached it peak, the guards burst into the room and began shouting for her to stop. She glared at them, annoyed with their simplicity, only to see them disappear before her eyes as the pink glow consumed her entirely. In the back of her mind she noticed the alarm had stopped ringing, replaced with a slight humming noise that was somehow equally as annoying a sound.

After what seemed like an eternity and an instant all in one, the glowing began to recede from her vision and the pain began to dissipate. She blinked, desperately trying to un-blur her vision.

When the smudges of colors became a clear picture she gasped in utter shock and confusion. Where she had once seen a museum and frantic guards she now found a clearing. The grass was long and damp under her skin and as she sat up she noticed a thick brush of trees surrounded the field in a perfect circle. She inhaled deeply, desperately searching for a logical explanation, only to sneeze as she was assaulted by the scent of thistles and heather that were strewn throughout the long grass. She cringed as she turned to survey the entirety of her surroundings, her muscles sore from the pain that had been coursing through them just moments ago.

That's when it hit her, the tablet.

Frantically, she jumped to her feet, only to stumble backwards and find herself leaning against a large rock. The rock was in the center of the circular clearing and looked unnatural. Nearly nine feet tall, it was completely smooth, as if a seamless oval had been carried and placed into the space. Its glossy black surface was marred only with familiar looking runes. They didn't seem to be carved, as if they'd appeared there naturally, and were just as smooth as the rest of the rock's surface.

She squinted, trying to make sense of the foreign symbols. She reached out her hand and trailed it across the lines of one of the runes, watching as the rune began to glow, as the tablet had, with her touch. Startled, she withdrew her hand from its surface, taking many steps back and staring at the rock in its entirety.

She shuddered, shook her head and turned away in hopes of finding the tablet in the long grass and ending this odd nightmare. She bent over, running her hand through the grass in search of it.

That's when she heard it. It was a familiar sound, the beating of hooves against the earth, and she snapped upright, her hair red fluttering in the breeze as she did so. The sound stopped as the horse, and its rider, halt a few feet away.

The horse's coat was charcoal black and glossy under the afternoon sun, a stark contrast to the rider's dirty blonde hair tied down his back with a leather thong. He stared at her wide-eyed, as if unsure what to make of her. It was only then that she realized his chiseled, sun kissed body was covered only waist down by a traditional Scottish kilt.

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me!" she ground out, finally getting an inkling of where she might be.