Imperial Year 768

Silver River Valley

Middle North

In the nighttime a crow fluttered down into an alley in the port town of Karston, at the mouth of the Silver River. Moments later Kaya walked out. The last week had not been kind to her. Wiser crows, those born to it, had long since flown south for warmer climes, and there was very little for either a crow or a girl to eat in the woods that time of year. Following the procession of southern strangers along the road had not made the task any easier. She shook herself and looked around. Kaya had been to Karston before, of course, but she had slept on the riverboat she came down on and hadn't ventured far from the docks.

It was a prosperous town, by the standards of the region; it had a stone wall, three temples to major local gods, and a resident population of around six thousand. By the standards of the rest of the world it would be considered quite small, but to Kaya it had always seemed quite big enough. She took a deep breath and set out in search of a travellers' inn in search of food, and perhaps some information about colorful southern strangers.

The first problem was easily solved, by a hearty wheat porridge and a stew of mutton and vegetables that seemed to Kaya like the best meal she had ever eaten. By the time she stopped for breath the greater part of it was gone and she had the presence of mind to look about the inn and take in its occupants. This particular establishment was near to the docks, but not so near as to be frequented by sailors; the few people scattered about the front room at this hour looked to be merchants. Kaya had attracted a few odd looks but her dress wouldn't be out of place here at all had it been clean. The atmosphere was calm, quiet, not a place for drunken singing, there. Not the front room, at least. From a hallway issued muffled sounds of a more exuberant party.

The barmaid, a tired-looking blonde woman, bustled back to collect Kaya's dishes. "Hungry, were we, dear? Can I get you more?"

Kaya shook her head. "No, thank you." What coin she'd scavenged from the remains of her home would not last forever. "Have you heard of a party of southerners coming through here recently, on their way north?"

"The Hunt, you mean?" The barmaid snorted. "You just missed them, most of them took ship this morning. They left a few behind to keep an eye on us, they said." She paused holding the plates, made a contemptuous flick of her head towards the noisy hallway, and kept talking. "I don't know who they think they are, these hunters of theirs, all running about and waving spears and interrogating people. They all say they're here to protect us against demons but if those Dragonbloods of theirs hadn't made a light-show of stringing up old Master Vort in the main square they'd have been run out of town almost soon as they arrived, like as not." She shook her head, scooped up Kaya's mug. "I'll get you some more ale..."

"Curious." Kaya nearly jumped out of her skin. There was a woman sitting next to her that she could have sworn hadn't been there a moment ago. She was weather-beaten, dressed in an odd patchwork of hides, hair gone entirely silver, and there was a faint tracery of silver lines crisscrossing her skin. There were feathers poking out of her hair, and Kaya had the oddest sense for a moment that they had grown there rather than being woven in.

Kaya looked around. Nobody else showed any sign of noticing the stranger. "Pardon me?"

"You've been hunting the hunters, little crow, and you seem to have found them! And I'm now very interested in what you're going to do next."

"I...crow? How do you..."

"Relax, girl, I have means at my disposal these hunters couldn't emulate if they tried."

Kaya started to say something, then stopped. "I'm sorry. I am Kaya, daughter of Lea, might I know your name?" She bowed politely.

"Such manners! Always in the last place you'd expect." The stranger bowed back. "These days I am known as Austrix."

"What did you mean, ma'am, when you said you wanted to know what I was going to do next?"

"Just that!"

Kaya looked around again. Everyone else in the room was minding their own business. The barmaid came back with two mugs of ale, and placed the other in front of Austrix with a smile; the strange woman handed her a tip. "What do you expect me to do to them? I'm not one of the Dragon-bloods, I can't conjure fire or leap rivers or see blows before they happen."

"Have you tried?" Kaya opened her mouth to point out how ridiculous that was, and something about the look in Austrix's eyes made her stop. "You've been Chosen by Luna, girl, the goddess has unmoored you from your shape. Fire is all well and good, but you have deeper tricks at your disposal."

Kaya looked at the hallway, then back at Austrix. "Why don't you do something about them? They're hunting for you, too, right?"

The older woman smiled. "Ah, child, they wouldn't know what to do with me if they caught me. Their kind have been around for a long time and will be around for much longer still barring some extreme events, to me they're a momentary irritation. It seems right to me that this task should belong to you. Don't worry, I have full confidence in your abilities."

Kaya stood, clenching and unclenching her fists, wishing she'd managed to recover a real weapon from the fire. She glared down at the expectant face of the old woman looking up at her, and reached for the place where the crow resided, and pulled. In a flicker Kaya was gone, and in her place stood a shorter, fairer woman who could have been the barmaid's twin, wearing the same brown dress with blue panels in the right places. Austrix's eyes lit up and she nodded approvingly. Kaya turned and walked towards the hallway, collecting a tray from behind the bar as she went.

There were three southerners in the back room, all very drunk by the time she came in, singing some kind of song in their lilting southern tongue with its clipped consonants and stretched vowels. None wore armor but their weapons were at hand. It did not save them. The most sober died first, unaware of his peril, Kaya's belt knife ramming down into his throat from behind in the middle of the refrain. The short one standing on the table tried to stoop for his sword but he met the blade on the way up and toppled off the table with a cry. The last looked up from his mug, his eyes widened, reflecting the glowing blue-green aura that surrounded Kaya as she poured power into her body, and croaked out "Anathema!" before he, too, was on the floor clutching at the blood gushing from his throat.

The adrenaline and the cool feeling of the flow of power through her carried Kaya through frisking the three bodies and escaping out the back door. She was two streets away and the screaming had started behind her before what had happened hit her and she leaned against the wall of the alley trying to keep her dinner under control. Footsteps distracted her. She glared up at the older woman strolling into the alley. "Well, you wanted to know what I'd do, didn't you?"

Austrix shrugged. "You are young, and angry, and in pain. I can't say I didn't expect something like that." She studied Kaya. "Have you never killed, before?"

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"Is that what this power is for? Did Luna Choose us for...that?" Kaya gestured vaguely behind her.

"For violence? Yes." Kaya blinked at the bluntness of the answer. "All the Chosen had purpose, once, but while we are more than human we are not separate, and sometimes being more only means being more angry or more brutal. Remember that." Kaya nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Austrix stepped forward, slowly, giving her plenty of time to respond. She didn't. "I am going to give you your markings now." She gestured to Kaya to sit, on the bare stone ground, which she did. "These will protect you; you have been unmoored from your shape, and your Exaltation has spent much time on the borders of Creation and absorbed much from the formless Wyld beyond. These markings will help your spirit remember its shape, to avoid getting lost in another." She drew forth a small pot from somewhere and, dipping her fingers into it, began to sketch thin lines in a faintly glowing silvery pigment across Kaya's body. "I name you of the No Moon caste, Kaya, daughter of Lea, of the shape of the crow." She worked quickly, lines sinking into Kaya's skin as she went, moving around and beneath clothing.

There was a weight to the ritual, and somehow in the end Kaya felt more solid, the place in her spirit where she shed her shape and made for herself a new one was a little more defined. "Thank you."

"We do not have or claim authority over each other, but I would like to offer you some advice." Austrix stood, Kaya corrected her clothes as she followed suit. "The Realm and their Hunt keep watch more closely the further you go towards the center of the world, where your red quarry returns now. If you seek her there you will most likely die with your hunt unfinished. Give yourself time to adapt to your abilities and learn of your foe before chasing her into her den."

Kaya took a long breath, and let it out slowly. "I respect your advice, ma'am, and I promise I will proceed with caution, but as long as I have this trail I will pursue it."

The older woman smiled, sadly. "I hope we will meet again, then, if not in this reincarnation then perhaps in the next."

A bedraggled crow slept under the eaves of a warehouse near the docks that evening, and the next morning a stocky, tattooed young man signed on to the crew of a trading vessel bound for points south.

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The Heptagram

Five days and five nights passed. Above the business of the Heptagram bustled on as normal. The disappearance of the student Taryn bin Ilya, so close to graduation, was noticed, but without any indication where she had gone it was deemed unimportant. Her few belongings were dutifully catalogued, boxed up, and carted to one of the tower's many storerooms. Below, in a different storeroom, sat a black lump roughly the size and shape of a coffin. It had the appearance of obsidian, but had anybody been able to examine it they would never have mistaken it for any natural rock formation or worked object. The rock seemed to flow organically into twisted shapes that didn't clearly represent anything, but if you stared at them they would have drawn you in, seemed almost to move, and you would have kept staring, helpless, as the rock slowly began to grow outwards...

Fortunately nobody entered the storeroom in that time. And then, five days to the instant after the Chrysalis formed, a faint green glow spread across its surface, spreading out in a network of tiny cracks, growing from nothing to encompass the whole structure almost in the blink of an eye. The glow pulsed and the rock split and burst outward into dust. In the center knelt Taryn, naked, dripping foul ichor that hissed as it met the mortal stone of the storeroom floor, surrounded by a nimbus of green light. She looked up. On her forehead a solid black disc seemed to warp and suck in any light, the glow of the aura fading into it, a star falling into a black hole.

Ah, there we go. The voice in her head was distinctly masculine.

"I'm sorry?" No answer. She tried again. I'm sorry?

Alive!

Who are you?

You! And not you. But definitely you. Why are we naked?

She stood. There was a table in the corner with a basin of water and a stack of folded clothes, a simple tunic and breeches in an archaic style. She shrugged, washed the ichor from herself, thinking. She knew about Awakening, the process by which a mortal could unlock the ability to manipulate Essence directly rather than through indirect ritual, often achieved through years of study. She also knew about Exaltation, the right of the blood of the Elemental Dragons, by which the children of the Blessed Isle unlocked greater power and the ability to ascend to greater heights than any mere Awakened.

Both explanations she discarded. She didn't have the blood of the Elemental Dragons, else her education would have been somewhat easier, and mortal Awakening was not something that could be brought on by a demon and a brief coma. Supernatural ancestry, blood of demons or gods, could do a lot, but the aura...the aura pointed to the ancient horrors the Immaculate Faith called the Anathema. Ancient demons, they said, that possessed great power and who had enslaved humanity in ancient days before the Dragon-Bloods overthrew them and banished their remnants to the corners of the world. Taryn chuckled. She'd asked a favor of a demon, been subject to their magic for...five days, the voice supplied, and now there was something in her head talking to her. We're the monsters of their nightmares!, the voice agreed.

She dried herself and dressed. Mara hadn't had the courtesy to leave her any shoes. There was a note, under the clothes, written in a demonic mode of Old Realm, the ancient tongue of scholars and gods. It said "Good luck, my Chosen! We meet at Calibration, you will know the way. Be prepared to report." Below that the imprint of a kiss in black. As she read it the note smoldered, sparking into green fire and burning itself away. Right. Now to get off the island. She extinguished her aura with a thought, and found with the application of a tiny fragment of power to her eyes she could still see perfectly well in the pitch darkness, though everything was tinted slightly green.

Taryn met nobody, padding through the passages of the tower barefoot. As she passed through to higher levels there were a few students roaming the halls, servants bustling about on errands, she proceeded cautiously and ducked into rooms or side passages as they passed, avoiding contact. And then on the ground floor a guard at a crossing in the tower, a ceremonial posting, but the sight of the shining armor and the elemental sigils of the Realm sent the voice in Taryn's head into a towering fury. TRAITORS!, it shrieked, and she didn't know if it was the voice or her that sent her sprinting forward.

The guard turned, and barely had time to say "What?" before she struck. Still ten yards short her hand came out in a strike and her will went with it, honed by hatred into a razor, and chopped into the guard at the throat. Taryn slowed, stopped to examine him for a moment. Through the flood of gore she thought she could see bone. She frowned, thinking that her first time killing someone should affect her more. Not OUR first time, the voice said, and a memory bubbled up, a skirmish on the Great River, not a battle of great record, daiklaive cold in her hand, thrusting through the man in front of her...

She came to leaning back on a wall staring down at the dead man, frowned. That wasn't her. Was it? She shook her head and moved towards an exit to the tower. A secondary exit, one less likely to be guarded. How was she going to get onto a boat? She didn't have passage papers, would she have to stow away? She couldn't steal one, she'd never sailed before...A door opened next to her, and a tall woman in a faded blue robe stepped out. Taryn fell into a fighting stance. The woman looked down at the guard, up at Taryn, unarmed and ready to fight, and gave an exasperated sigh. "I have a colleague who would like to speak to you, come on."

Taryn frowned, not dropping her stance. "...Just like that?"

"Would you rather wait around for someone to discover this? Or try to run for the docks and pray you get there before the alarm is sounded?" The stranger was speaking Old Realm, in a high mode, Taryn struggled to place her accent. Somewhere in the East, she thought.

"So I should follow you into an empty classroom instead?"

"In a sense. You may not come out in an empty classroom." The woman winked, and walked back through the door, leaving it open. Taryn followed, then stopped. She should now be in a dark wood-paneled room with three rows of hard benches sloping down to a focal desk. She'd instead come out in an airy marble structure running around three sides of a walled garden. She looked back as the stranger closed the door behind her, and caught sight of what looked remarkably like a broom cupboard.

"What..."

"We'd better hurry. You're in less immediate danger of being caught here, but that doesn't make being caught any better for you." The stranger hurried down the walkway, and Taryn followed, mystified.