The dust of the Rathelduori rolled through the city of Zephara, bringing with it heat and grit and pain. Little pain that tickled the throat and slowly built up at the eyes, little pain that the residents had slowly grown used to.

Most wore rags over their faces, some lucky ones wore goggles too. The richest could afford ornate masks made out of porcelain or wood or glass, with goggles built into them and filtered holes for breathing.

Zaana, a young orphan living at the Little Pyramid, had none of these things. When she left the pyramid she was sometimes granted a pair of grimy goggles or an old rag to tie over her mouth but the sisters didn’t own enough to go around. So when she was in the pyramid she was not permitted either. She wouldn’t mind very much if the pyramid was built like a proper pyramid with walls and ceilings and rooves. But it was not. Almost everywhere was open to the sky or had huge open windows.

Zaana had complained about this many many times but the sisters refused to even acknowledge the problem. Most of them would say that it brings one closer to Providence to be open to the sky, to be open to the great void above from whence Providence came. Others would give even more ridiculous answers, saying that without the dust settling in all the time for the young sisters to sweep away how would they learn discipline. Only Nisi, the priestess of the Little Pyramid and the oldest sister there had ever given an answer that was close to being satisfactory. She had said that the dust wasn’t always this bad, during the Silent Summer for example, many years ago, there hadn’t been any dust at all. But that one thing that was always present in Zephara was the heat. And while sometimes sealed rooms would be cool other times they would heat up so much it was nearly impossible to live in them.

So they suffered the dust for the sake of ventilation. Which, in Zaana’s mind, was better than suffering the dust for the sake of sweeping it. Surely Providence could give them something more interesting to do to learn discipline. Hunting, for example. That required discipline.

Zaana had never been properly hunting, not really. She didn’t have anyone to teach her or show her, but she’d talked to Giselle, one of the guards who often came to the Little Pyramid for confession, and she’d told her all about what it was like. Zaana had been fascinated, much to the annoyance of the other sisters. Hunting was not something Providence approved of sisters doing apparently. Zaana couldn’t see why that was, animals went hunting all the time. Surely Providence couldn’t disapprove of that.

She hadn’t been able to go hunting properly of course. Even kindly old Nisi wouldn’t permit her to go on a trip with Giselle for that. So she’d had to get creative, figure out some way to learn while still inside the Little Pyramid.

She’d started leaving out bowls of milk in the night and sure enough stray cats had begun to drink them. Nowadays the Little Pyramid was crawling with them. Most of the sisters saw them as little more than an annoyance, but Zaana saw them for what they really were. Prey.

She didn’t hurt them of course. She just caught them and then let them go, but she liked them to know who the apex predator was around here. She’d started with the silly housecats that weren’t actually strays but liked to roam out in the streets anyway. They were much less cunning and canny than the real stray cats. Often completely oblivious to her until she pounced.

Some of them even rubbed against her legs and purred when she picked them up. That rather ruined the thrill of the chase she thought. So she had moved on to the stray cats.

These cats were far less friendly, and far less pretty as well. They had matted fur and scars and scratches. When she tried to catch them they’d hear her coming from far away and bolt like lightning up the nearest wall or into some hole somewhere. So she’d had to get better. She’d had to get stealthier and more patient. Sometimes she’d remain in one place for ages, slowly edging forward toward an oblivious cat. At first, even that hadn’t worked, they would notice her and escape at the last second. But she had improved. She had caught almost all the cats of the pyramid. All of them except the one she was stalking now.

He was a canny one this one, small and tattered, but vicious all the same. He was covered in scars and the other cats seemed to shy away from him when they were all drinking the milk she put out. He was a tabby and missing half an ear and he was currently curled up asleep on the roof of the inner courtyard of the pyramid.

Zaana had been walking through the courtyard, past the various decorative pools when she’d happened to glance up and see him there. It wasn’t really a roof she supposed. More a ledge that happened to overlook the courtyard below. It had been difficult for her to get up there, and even more difficult to do it without waking him but she had managed.

She’d shimmied her way up one of the arches that went over the pools and managed to get her fingers onto the dusty ledge. Covering herself in dust and grime she hauled herself with trembling fingers onto the ledge. Staying quiet, staying slow. Painfully slow.

By the time she maneuvered herself onto the ledge her arms were trembling and her breath was coming in gasps. She needed to practise climbing more often. But she was on the ledge, and the cat hadn’t woken up.

So she started to shimmy her way slowly toward him. It wasn’t a very big ledge but there were plenty of handholds with the various arches and open windows of the next floor of the pyramid beside her. She wondered if maybe it would have been easier to climb out one of those windows instead of going up the way she came.

She’d have to look out for things like that next time. There were many things to think about when you were on the hunt like this. She edged her way along, slowly placing her bare feet on the ledge, each step getting them further covered in the dust that had built up there.

She could imagine that this was what Giselle felt like out in the scrubland where she hunted. Lying in wait with a void powered weapon waiting for some great beast to come in range. Zaana didn’t have a void powered weapon, but she wouldn’t need one. The cat was still asleep. Completely oblivious. She was almost there, just one step away.

Footsteps rang out through the courtyard as someone walked hurriedly alongside it, directly below Zaana and the cat. The cat’s ears flicked up and he raised his head curiously. Still calm for a moment. But then he saw her.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Before she could grab him he was off the ledge and darting out of the courtyard. Zaana followed, landing lightly on the ground, dislodging a cloud of dust as she did. She hurtled after the fleeing shadow right into the footsteps.

She bounced off a tall man who was walking through the hallway and fell in a dusty heap to the ground. His eyes went wide and he tensed, something moved under the cloak that wrapped his body. Something fast, like something alive. But then he realised what was happening and it stopped. He smiled and stood up straight again. His hands falling to his sides. Hands that hadn’t touched whatever it was that had been moving.

She looked up at him. He was tall, and somewhat scary. He had a poorly shaven beard and unkempt hair. She’d seen unkempt hair look good on some of the boys in the market but his hair was not unkempt in a good way. He wore a tattered brown cloak wrapped around him with faded symbols on it. Symbols in the dripping, tainted, script of Providence. And one symbol, originally covered up but revealed when his cloak had moved inexplicably, that was far bigger and more twisted than the others.

Zaana didn’t recognise that symbol, but she knew what it was. The symbol for one of the elements, the symbol to mark an elemental.

Still smiling, the man readjusted his cloak, covering up the symbol again. Despite his rough and scary appearance he didn’t seem bothered by the fact that she’d crashed into him.

“Who might you be?” he asked happily, although in a harsh and grating voice.

“I...” Zaana shook herself out of her stupor and bounced up from the floor. “Sister Zaana, can I help you?”

The man smiled again. He was certainly trying to be friendly, although his scary face and harsh voice weren’t doing him any favours. “I’m here for a confession. Would you be able to point me in the direction of the priestess of this pyramid?”

Zaana nodded, brushing some of the dust off herself. “Yes, of course, come with me.” She led him to the confession booth, brushing herself off as she went. She noticed she was leaving a trail of dust all across the hallways. The man didn’t seem to mind but she knew some of the other sisters would mind very much.

She left the man there and went to the priestess’s quarters, she knocked on the Priestess Nisi’s door and shouted into it. “There’s a man here, wants to give a confession.”

“Yes yes, give me a minute,” Nisi replied in her kindly old voice.

Zaana told her the man was at the confession booth and then walked off to see if she could cover her tracks a little bit but then she stopped. The ledge she’d been crawling all over. That ran right above the confession booth. Usually when people gave confession Nisi would check to make sure no one was around first but she wouldn’t check there, she wouldn’t be able to see there. Listening in on confessions was forbidden but she just wanted to see if it would work. It could be useful in future to know about a spot like that.

So she ignored the dust that had been splashed all over the hallway and went back to the courtyard. She climbed a bit faster this time, but still stayed quiet. The man was in the confession booth and who knew how much he could hear.

She reached the top and grabbed a window ledge for support, then remembered her observation that climbing out of a window would have been much easier than going up this way. She muttered a curse to herself and then tried to shift into a comfortable position. Listening carefully into the wall.

She was hidden from the confession booth but she was still right above the courtyard. If anyone walked through they’d definitely see her but today was a day of rest. Hence why she’d been allowed to chase cats. Most of the sisters were off at the markets or somewhere else in the city. She hoped that no one would walk through.

She heard voices inside as Nisi welcomed the man into the confession booth. It was difficult to make them out through the wall but luckily the man had a rather harsh voice that seemed to carry very well.

He started with some typical blathering about repentance and forgiveness and such but soon started with the actual confession.

“My name is Davrial of the Wastes, I am an elemental of the thirteenth kind, and I fought in Gahenna’s armies,” he said sadly. Zaana nearly fell off the ledge. She didn’t know much about Gahenna’s armies, they hadn’t attacked Zephara. But she did know that they had assaulted the capital and kidnapped the Pharaoh. There was a whole mythology around Gahenna too, supposedly she was an elemental with metal implanted all through her body, making her bigger, stronger, and unkillable. But she wasn’t the only elemental in those armies. There were plenty more, the most dangerous of which was the Day Star. An elemental with a weapon in the shape of a six pointed star that whirled through the battlefield killing everyone. Gahenna had been captured but he was still at large, the most wanted man on all of Solinare. Maybe this man knew something about him.

The confession continued. “I... I am the Day Star,” the man said and Zaana’s heart skipped a beat. Well that seemed to answer that question.

She didn’t hear what the man said next because there were footsteps drowning it out. Footsteps coming toward the courtyard. Zaana leapt from her perch and desperately tried to run away but a voice called out to stop her.

“Zaana what are you doing?” Sister Eren shouted and she stopped running. “You’ve tracked dust and dirt all through the hallway.”

“Um... well... yes...” she said, turning around slowly to face the wrath of Sister Eren. Eren wasn’t that old but she seemed to act like she was far superior to Zaana despite it. She also seemed to be very insistent on keeping up perfectly with all the teachings of Providence. Zaana much preferred the timid Eren who would go along with all her crazy ideas when they’d both been children together. This new Eren would never chase cats with her. She only cared about cleanliness, and prayer, and boys for some reason.

“Clean it up at once! This is a sacred pyramid!”

“Yes Sister Eren,” she moaned and dragged herself off to get a broom. She was frustrated but part of her was glad that she hadn’t been caught listening in on a confession, that was far worse than just tracking mud everywhere. Mud you could clean up. Secrets you could never put back away. And she’d just learned a very powerful secret.

As she swept she made sure that she was sweeping the part of the floor near the confession booth when the man walked out. She watched him go, looking at his faded cloak and his unkempt hair. He seemed worried, maybe the confession hadn’t gone that well. Zaana wouldn’t know. She didn’t really like confessions, they just seemed like the older sisters trying to extort information from her as to where she’d hidden the priestess’s necklace, or what she’d been doing on top of the pyramid, or where she’d gotten the money she’d tried to bribe Eren with. So many questions. How did anyone live with it?

And people came in to willingly give these confessions. Ridiculous.

But Davrial had, and she’d heard him reveal some very dangerous secrets. And now her interest was piqued. She’d seen that movement under his cloak when she’d bumped into him. Movement like a blade, but a blade not held in either of his hands. The blade of an elemental.

He looked down at her as she swept and smiled. He waved goodbye and walked out of the pyramid. Completely oblivious to her snooping. She hoped. She would have to find out more. This was the Day Star, the most wanted man on the planet. It was time to put all those skills she’d developed hunting cats to good use. Looking around to make sure no one was watching she left the broom and snuck out after Davrial.