The three of them set off in silence towards Lys’ domain. After a few leagues on the high roads, Rhammy felt the passenger behind her begin to fidget and stir, which meant it was probably time for a meal, and a discussion. They found a large tree to make camp under and set to it, Chassie working to put together a midday meal. Rhammy sat with her back in the scooped trunk of the tree and began to clean her sword, keeping her eyes fixed on the child from the village.

“What’s all this mean then?” she tried at last.

Rhammy set the sword in her lap, folding her hands atop it and stared at the girl. She was a delicate stalk of a thing, she’d need to put on a few dozen pounds over the next year to build the reserves and the strength for training. She didn’t look much older than her first moon cycle, if it had even occurred yet. She had time to grow strong on the stews, breads, and meats at the sorority house. Rhammy smiled thinking of a meal with her sisters.

“You have a new life, starting right now. You’ll be a devotee of Lys and train to become a knight in her graces,” Rhammy recited, remembering similar words borne to her as a child. She looked around the scraggly fields theatrically, taking in the emptiness of the world around and letting it reflect in her face back at the girl.

“Or not. Or you find your way back home, to the village. Become a lordlings wife on the borderlands, preside over a household of brats and learn accounting and sums. There are certainly fates worse than that…” she concluded, taking a bowl of camp stew and bread handed to her from Chassie. She looked at the woman appreciatively before starting to devour the meal. The adventure in the barrow had left her feeling drained.

She watched Lyric take an offered bowl and sniff it suspiciously, as if armored knights needed the subterfuge of alchemical toxins to subdue an eleven year old girl. At least her instincts were correctly oriented with survival in The Wheel, if nothing else. Rhamiel sat back a moment and ate simply, quietly, taking in the peaceful afternoon around her and the pastoral views. It was early planting season, doubtless Lyric had an extended date with back breaking labour in a piddling field of cow shit ahead of her.

She watched as Chassie took a knife from her hip and began to scrawl in the dirt between the three of them. First a large circle, then a small one in the middle. The Wheel. It would be a map. She was going to show Lyric her place in the world, perhaps for the first time ever. Sometimes perspective helped in these situations.

Chassie set about carving lines in the dirt, Rhammy watched her face intently, seeing her eyes begin to alight in shared knowledge, almost in conspiracy. These sorts of things weren’t shared with smallfolk from tiny villages in the hinterlands. Chassie had a cute expression of effort fixed to her cherubic face as she began to mark places with some flat stones.

“You know the name of where we live, aye? This is The Wheel. It’s called that because it’s like the wheel of an oxcart at home. It’s a huge round island in the middle of the sea between two far away lands, Hinterbold, and Calderos,” Chassie drew some scraggled lines as far away borders to indicate the two continents. She returned her knife tip to the map of The Wheel, shoving it into the soft dirt near the border between Lys’ domain and Dalorne’s lands, “This is where we are, more or less, right now. The very tip of this knife in this very tiny place on this vast island,” she watched as Lyric sat forward and took in the explanation. She was drinking it in.

“We’re headed… here,” she pressed the knife point in again a bit towards the coast, “The Seventh Sorority house, our home, your home soon,” she smiled at the girl, the girl smiled back. The simple act of education, guidance, illuminating the darkness of the world around her was an intoxicating pull, and Chassie was a natural at this sort of stuff.

“We’re about a day’s ride south of home… the day after tomorrow is Saint Anerys’ day, there’ll be a feast. You’ll be an honored guest, as the new recruit. You’ll meet your sisters, the women who will teach you, train you, educate you, to be a knight of Lys, so many amazing women,”

“And I get a sword?” Lyric asked, incredulously.

Chassie looked to Rhammy, who looked to Lyric, “Maybe. Well, yes most likely. Nearly all Knights of Lys are trained and proficient in the broadsword, Chassie wields a partisan though… you might find that suits you more, or a bearded axe… ooo, maybe a crossbow… what do you think Chassie? Could Lyric here set a crossbow you think?”

Chassie looked at the girl dolefully, “I’m not sure lord, those arms…”

“Aye…”

Chassie pulled a leatherbound book from her bag and set it on the map, unwrapping it and turning a few pages of parchment until she found a list of towns along their northern trek. Lyric nearly gasped at the casual way the woman handled a bound book of paper, presumably with intricate knowledges within, she scrunched her nose up and look around, getting her bearings.

“Your village is about twenty leagues that way,” she said, pointing west, “You could hoof it if you really wanted, there’s a trader track you’ll hit eventually that’ll take you to familiar ground. Rhammy and I are going north,” she said, wrapping the book up and stowing it after giving a glimpse to the girl, enough to tantalize, “You’re welcome to join us. You’ve been chosen, by Rhammy, you were the coin that saved your village. It may be there next year, it may not, that’s not our concern now, you are our concern.”

“Show me more? Please?” Lyric asked, gesturing at the map and biting into an apple from her lunch. Chassie invited the girl over and she scooched next to her for a better view, as Chassie began drawing out the main cities of The Wheel along the coastlands, Lys, Highgarde, Dalorne itself to their east (a convenient beetle carcass serving as its marker), the trader highway ring that bound the spokes, the cities that sat stride them, and the hub, in the center… The Citadel last, “The Warden’s demesne,” she concluded, sticking the knife in the middle of the map and leaving it there.

Stolen story; please report.

Lyric looked up at Chassie with awe, “Tell me about The Warden?”

Chassie again looked at Rhammy, who acquiesced with a slight shrug, ‘What do we even know?’

“The Citadel is the nexus of The Wheel’s power, it’s where the Engraver’s guild operates, it’s where the leylines of power that move beneath our world meet, where weavings are strongest. The Aspects that rule over the lands around the Citadel petition it for favour, bring tribute, seek wisdom, power…” she let that last word hang in the air, dripping with intrigue. Rhammy was frowning at the Citadel now, she was to be Engraved there soon, to be grafted with a boon of Lys’ power, a fragment of it bound to her soul. She shuddered in anticipation at the thought.

She stood and approached her horse, a seven year old mare named Damsel, who has never once in her horse life been in distress. She scratched gently at her long chestnut face, then began the ritual of brushing the beast, letting Lyric and Chassie have their time together. Now that the girl was away from her village, she blossomed into the open air around them, spilling out her vibrant youth and curious energies, and even showing a bit of folksy guile at some of Chassie’s revelations, which started to get more mundane. Highway routes, trader tracks, ports, piers, besotted swamplands best left to rot. How many places did this girl know anyway?

It didn’t matter. Lyric was sold, that was all that mattered. She was freshly minted from a bumpkin into a wide eyed recruit, and began to seize on the opportunities that were before her, the perspective trick always worked wonders. Show someone their place in the world, their exact little spot, and they’ll immediately want to know more, how to become a person who can harness knowledge to guide their own path, how to see more of the things that exist in this world they live in. These were treasures that people died for once upon a time. By placing a person into the greater context of the world, you gave them lands to explore, and frontiers to map. What was local became mundane.

As she thought on this, Chassie approached, tossing a bag over Damsel’s rear with some of their camp kit in it, she set about securing it with a tether, “We’re about a half day’s ride from the inn at the trader highway crossing lord, we should set about if we want to get there before sunset.”

“What do you think, Chassie?”

Chassie spared a quick look over her shoulder to Lyric, who was staring at the ground in fixed awe where Chassie had drawn out their crude existence in low fidelity dirt etching, “She’s eager, has a lot upstairs in that noggin’... she’ll learn to read, write as well probably, she might be an artisan, lord.”

Rhammy hissed in a theatrical display of displeasure, another scrivener, a scribe, an ink stained map pervert, always thinking about scrolls. Boring. “Let’s not write her off just yet… she might bulk up a bit, take to the sword…” she sighed. Longing for more comrades in arms. She and Chassie were one of only three active border scouting units for Lys at the moment. Her contemporaries were Paladin Nyx on the western border and Paladin Brenna on the coast.

The eastern lands were her charge, and she took her duty very seriously, even if she longed for a change of scenery from time to time, or perhaps some new adventure to get into. Part of that would be more scouting parties, enough to start a rotation. The truth was, recruitment had been difficult lately for The Sorority. Dalorne’s followers were unraveling society at the borders, seducing simple folk into their schemes and covens for the Cult of Saints. She had a foe on the other side of the border, a contemporary of a sort, all that she ordered, he set about undoing, all that she righted he tried to wrong. She had just begun to get a sense of his mind, and his strategies, and sadly he was her better, at least for now.

The agent they just recently dispatched was most assuredly placed by Withers as a move against her, but the typically canny foe delivered them Lyric in the process. Doubtless the agent had eyes upon them on the roads, mean stares in the bushes, in the brush, belonging to wretched serfs of Dalorne toiling in fields, hunters in perches, bandits in blinds. Maybe even the eyes of creatures as well. She often felt the gaze upon her with seemingly nobody around.

“Lord?” Chassie asked, concerned at the blaze building behind her master’s eyes.

“Mm? Oh. Thinking of Withers again, is all,” she said, clapping a hand to Chassie’s shoulder. ‘Withers’ is what the women had dubbed their nemesis, based on a name scrawled on a shred of parchment they found in a lair, the way the name had invoked a panic across the features of one of his agents when uttered. She was confident in bringing this person down, but not quite of how it would be done just yet.

Lyric stood beside them, staring between their faces. Rhammy felt one of her signature tugs from the spiral. The rightness of this scene clicked in her mind like a puzzle piece sliding home. This trio here was powerful in its composition, and would be formed again and again many times in the future. This first imprinting upon reality was an anchor in the firmament and already she felt the seas of fate begin to indelibly mark the surface. She smiled big as she considered her good fortune. She was the eldest by a few years at twenty seasons, Chassie was seventeen, Lyric scarcely more than eleven, but a powerful bond was enwreathing the three women and binding them to Lys.

“A prayer, Chassie, before we set off again?” she asked, a bit formal, but she wanted Lyric to understand.

“Of course, lord,” Chassie responded, gripping Rhammy’s gauntleted hand and Lyric’s as well, they formed a ring and knelt, first the knights, then Lyric after, bowing their heads in contemplation.

“We pray thee give us safe travels and light upon our roads, Lys, the aspect of flame that gives shadow to everything within its reach, a lighted grace upon its face and darkness well behind us, we beseech you,” Chassie concluded.

“We beseech you.” Rhamelia confirmed.

“We beseech you.” Lyric joined in, looking nervously back and forth, “D’you feel that?”

“Aye,” Rhamiel responded. She did. It was like a ring snapping shut around them, a loop of power that bonded the strands of their fate together in the spiral. That Lyric felt it too was heartening; she may have a talent that can be cultivated by her sisters. She made note to journal about that as well. It was her night with the Sister’s Songbook and she had well enough to report. The operation in the village, Lyric, and all that comprised. Her thoughts were already composing for the entry that would travel through the aether to the other six songbooks and be there in the morning, a powerful ley ritual had been worked through them all.

They continued down the road without incident, reaching the crossroads inn shortly after sunset. Rhamelia paid for stabling and lodgings within, the companions sitting in the common room together for awhile supping before turning in for the evening. Rhamelia opted for a bath, and combed her hair out before setting herself at the writing desk near the window to her tiny room. She reached into her bag and pulled the Sister’s Songbook from a leather wrapping and opened it to the latest pages, setting out a quill and pot of ink, reading the last few days of activities from her sisters, smiling at good news, making notes of things to ask about. With a flutter of joy in her heart, she picked up the quill in the candlelight and began to write the first words of a journey that would change all of their lives.