Waking up in the shade of the date tree, near the entrance to a small stone hut, One sat up very slowly. The pain in her head was the worst thing she could ever remember experiencing, and when the moment came that she tried to think too hard about why her head hurt so badly, it made the pain increase, sharply and instantly.

As One slowly regained an upright, if seated pose, there was a sudden rushing sensation in her forehead and nose, followed by a warm, wet wash of liquid down her face, neck and chest. The slithering, sliding, sloshing feel of liquid quickly leaving her body through her nasal passages made her stomach churn and flip. THe feeling made her gasp, and that gasping, gulping breath brought on waves of renewed and increased nausea

Breathing in quickly was a mistake, as some of the escaping fluids rushed into her mouth from her upper lip as well as the opening of her throat caused a more viscous rush into her mouth and throat from the back end of her sinuses.

Gagging, and hacking, One spent several minutes expelling a thick, dark red mixture of mucus and blood from her nose, mouth and throat. Something was wrong with her tongue. She couldn’t make it flex and force the errant globs of tacky mess from her mouth, and she was forced to clummsily expel her breath in hard, raking gasps to force the salty sludge from between her teeth and lips. Trying to move her tongue involved more neck muscle than she could ever remember having to employ in the past, too, and yet still nothing. She could only feel a red, siren blaring of pain and heat whenever she attempted to flex that muscular organ.

…is the tongue an “organ”...? I think it is… Maestra Attanaki taught us the organs of the body, surely the tongue was among them… Five would know… I’ll have to ask him when I see the little cretin at the next meal in the Phoenix Division’s mess tent… One thought, her mind fuzzy around the edges, and not allowing her to think too clearly as the light of the morning sun combined with her exertions and helped her regain full cognizance. But, not everything made sense to her, a part of her mind was still not flaring to life as it should have, and her thoughts were…incomplete somehow.

Knowing something is missing and knowing what was actually missing were not the same experience, and One was perplexed by her own puzzlement.

All the while, One had feared she would vomit as her gorge kept attempting to rise during this messy cleaning out process her head was engaged in. Heaving slightly, but with cold, sweating, noisy back-of-the-throat effort, her face now a finger’s length above the gorey mess she had expelled onto the pebble strewn sandy hardpan of the oasis, One steadied her breathing and tried to concentrate on the rhythm of that flow of air. The passage of air through her nose hurt greatly, but the idea of opening her mouth to gasp in gulps of air frightened her, instinctively knowing her mouth would feel even worse.

With slow, thoughtful deliberation, she placed her hands on the uneven sandy soil to either side of her knees, with a slight jingling of the metal bracelet on her left wrist, and carefully pushed herself up. From her kneeling position under the date palm, she could see the arroyo spread out below where she now perched listlessly.

To her right, there stood a travelers’ cabin. To her left was a low brick structure that had to be a well, and basin made to water livestock. The small structures were pretty standard, One knew, built of local stone or brick and dotted the caravan routes throughout the more desolate areas of the Kingdom of Hamuria.

One assumed other places had them as well, possibly, but she did not recognise this location. It was more… arid… then she remembered Hamuria ever being. At least, any part of the Kingdom to which she had ever traveled. Twitching her sunburned lips painfully, she pushed herself to her feet, noting their lack of shoes, boots, or even sandals. Back by the base of the tree, some rags of torn cloth sat. They looked familiar. Like the remains of clothing she remembered.

Now, standing on her own and looking about, the sensations of her body impinged upon her mind. The feel of the sand on her toes was inexplicably delightful, One noted, and she stared at them, flexing them in the grit. Enjoying the warm sliding caress of liquid-like granules as they flowed and played across her delicate little feet.

Her toenails, however, looked rough and barbaric to One; long, jagged, and unkempt, as though she had not tended to them in months. A part of her mind rebelled at this, and wondered why she had let herself fall to such a low state.

One then giggled to herself in the joy of the moment. It was… something new. Unexpected.

This, all of this, was a new set of sensations to her, and aside from the pain and the mucus-laden blood, she was quite enjoying it. One would admit, if asked, to never having had sand on her toes before, and was intrigued by the utterly delightful and new sensations of the experience.

Seeing a silvery reflection from the trough and well, she was suddenly very thirsty. With a stumbling, foot dragging, walk through the shifting tickling sand, One made her way over to the shade of the little roof that overhung the trough, and eased herself down onto the rough brick built edge of the wide, shallow basin that was fed via a pulley system from the well.

Looking down into the placid water of the tough, One saw herself in the water. As others who might be around would see her.

An oval Ocre face, with dark, wavy, unevenly cut, possibly burned, hair. She used to color her hair, and often used Glamours to make it appear lighter, and fuller. Her skin, was darker than she had ever let most people see it, as well, a caromel yellow brown now, aside from the many bruises. That too she had spent effort, and her Talent, to color and change. She had seen how the lighter skinned women were treasured in Aurel, the capital city of Hamuria. How much she could get men, and a few women, to do for her just by looking differently than she naturally looked. Large, almond shaped eyes, of a dark hue, looked back at her from the cool surface of the water. What would have been a long, straight nose before it had recently been broken, and a set of fading, greenish bruises across her nose and wide, high cheeks. Several of those same greenish fading bruises were on her neck.

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Reaching into the waters, shocked by their chill against her hot skin, she brought cool water to her lips and sipped sloppily. The cool water making her start, eyes widened, as she brought water into her mouth, and the renewed pain in the stub of where her tongue had once rested in her mouth became intense. A torture all its own, as well as soothing the injury.

...odd that it can be both pain and balm... One's thoughts continued to ramble and sway.

The realization that her tongue was gone startled One, and left her dazed.

..Surely not… she thought.

But then, she knew that was just the truth. It had happened. And this was a part of her new reality. One could not remember ever being as accepting of changes to her life, certainly not anything she might consider deleterious changes; but she had never lost a body part before, either. As she was now, her mind refused to rise to anger or indignation at the loss.

...odd...

The bracelet now painfully dragged at the skin of her left wrist again, and bringing the silvery thing up to her face to inspect it, she saw it was not a bracelet at all.

It was one cuff of a pair of shackles. The shackles THEY had placed on her to subdue her. To sell her.

The magical artifacts called “Weeping Wives” that delivered a galvanic, painful jolt to the wearer whenever they attempted to use magic. With her right hand, One grabbed the thing, and tried to twist it open.

But it wouldn't budge, and tugging at it just drove the small needle-like thorns on the inner side of the manacle further into the soft skin of her wrist. Like most artifacts, the Weeping Wives kept their spells active through "Met Conditions" that regularly fed power to the spells and charms laid down upon them by the mages who made them. For these manacles, it was blood, drawn from the wearer.

But, now this pair was broken. She had hazy memories of breaking them, but her mind shied away from those paths. For now.

The lock on the device was set, and while she didnt remember how she had removed it’s mate from her right wrist, she could see the intense scabbing in a ring about the skin of her right wrist, telling her that it had not been an easy task. Her left wrist was equally raw and covered in thick, and sundered scabs. She had worn the Weeping Wives for a long time, if she were to judge.

She would have scars from this, she knew. It repulsed her, and what she thought of as her refined sensibilities.

And then she remembered her missing tongue and her broken nose, and she laughed.

It was a long, donkey-like breying, and it went on for some time.

From behind One came the tremulous voice of a very frightened man.

“Mistress… are you ready for breakfast? Anuish and I have found some food, and we have prepared you a bowl of grains and meat, with tea.”

Turning to the voice, One was on the edge of rage. This had been someone whom she had trusted. Someone who had betrayed her.

And now.

Now he stood before her, his voice dripping with obsequious compliance and fear. The fat man had lost much weight since she last remembered seeing him, and now he stood in the baking sun, outside of the shade offered by the well, and the small overhanging roof of the travelers hut.

His clothing hung from his depleted frame, some of it bloodlied and in tatters. He refused to look directly at One, and his outstretched arms held her light robe that she had remembered packing when she had fled the camp.

The Army.

Her Pride, and her fellow Apprentices.

She had taken money, and as many of her possessions as she could carry, and she had fled. Slipped away in the night, as had her fellow Apprentices.

Five, the smart little reptile, had found out… something. And they had all fled. For their lives. And for more... something. It was all a jumble.

One had intended to flee to the Kingdom of Salmet. Possibly live there as a woman of wealth and leisure. Or, possibly to cross Salmet, maybe make it to one of the small kingdoms of the western coast of the continent.

Maybe take sail, make her way to someplace far off and exotic, on another continent, someplace like Rhiada. She had loved Rhiadian fashions.

But, then she had been betrayed.

This weak little man with the receding hair, and the rolls of fat overlapping his belt, and pulling at his shirt. Tarley…? Taigh…? Teag…?

As she stared at the man, he looked up at her with his good left eye, his right eye now being a scab encrusted, sunken socketed mess.

And then a moment in time flashed in her thoughts, a flickering of motion, and anger, and hatred. Her thumb in his eye socket up to her knuckle, and him screaming silently as lightning danced around them both in the night. Bodies lay about them where they had stood, locked in bloody struggle, still and lifeless on the ground as meat in a butcher’s window.

She forced the word out. "Where?" It sounded flat, and clipped without a tongue to guide and mold it.

The Piincar man looked back at her with his one hazel eye, confused. "Mistress...?" He sounded almost pleading in his confusion.

She stepped forward. Staring at the man, pinning him into place. Enunciating as best she could, "Where."

"Mistress, we are far to the north of Salmet, and somewhat to the west. When you..." He paused in obvious discomfort now. "When you broke free of those who held you, your arts threw many wagons of the caravan far. As only a mighty mage could do such. And then, when we came to a rest here, you bought your vengeance on those who had betrayed you." He was visibly shaking now, and his story rang true, even with his omission of his own part in her kidnapping. Her torture.

She stepped forward again, a small step, but menacing for all of that, and the man quailed in fear.

She smiled then. And stepped forward holding out her arms as she twirled about to face away from him, her naked body, skin burned red in too many places by the sun’s overenthusiastic embrace, and waited.

She felt the cloth of her light, linen robe travel up her arms guided by shaking hands.

Turning back to Taigh, she gestured back to the little cabin, and smiled at the man. Cracked lips splitting here and there, blood still in her teeth from her earlier efforts.

Taigh shook, and cringed back from his Mistress, before he finally sighed and led the way to breakfast.