• There was a discernible knock at the entrance of a dingy hut outside the Border town of T'mellain. It was but a moment before the timber-slab door creaked ajar revealing a stout middle-aged man holding up a candle for light in the late night darkness that surrounded the tiny dwelling. Into the silence the inhabitant stepped out, looking around for the source of the sound, but the stoop was bare of visitors. Dismayed, he backtracked into the hut, pulling the door shut as he did, letting the metal lock click into place.

    "Your leader wished to meet."

    The doorman shrieked at the resonant voice and tumbled to the floor as he attempted to turn around, his foot having caught an uneven floorboard. From his grasp, the candle holder spiraled and clanged off to the far corner left of the dim fireplace. A gloved hand reached down to pick up the dead candle, grabbing it by the neck and placing it on a tottering three-legged stool nearby, letting it smoke in solitude.

    "My time will not be wasted. Get up," the voice said impassively.

    The man scrambled to his feet, hastily pushing aside a chair as he hurried to another corner of the room where he kicked aside a throw rug, revealing a square trapdoor beneath. Quickly the man crouched to undo the latch and throw the hatch open with a bang, making him jump again before moving out of the way, waiting.

    As he stood there, a shadowy figure emerged into the eerie glow of the firelight, advancing with an air of superiority and control. Cloaked in darkness with a face shaded by a wide-brimmed chevalier, the stranger's features remained obscure to the doorman even as he braved a look from the side of his vision.

    When the stranger motioned for him to lead the way, the doorman put together a torch and practically rushed down the dank stone steps, illuminating the passage before them. No words spoken between the two even as they reached the tunnel's end and entered into an incandescence of torchlight that belonged to a small underground cavern. In the center of the cavern was a ring of nearly ten men who had previously been in conversation, their voices now hushed at the emergence of the new arrivals.

    "Do not just stand there, Deimyan!" shouted a taller stacked man that broke from the ranks, the other members of the ring stepping back, giving him a fair berth of space. "Bring our guest in!" he called out as he went to greet the visitor in person, a sly grin of anticipation upon his face. "We have been awaiting your arrival, dear wayfarer. Not since the fall of Chapparal has such whispers traveled through knotholes and gates." Upon reaching the two, the host pushed the man called Deimyan aside as he escorted the visitor the rest of the way.

    "Over exaggerations I assure you, the lot of 'em," the cloaked guest answered curtly while beside the new escort.

    As the pair closed in on the small cartel of men, what was once quiet reverence was now an edgy fervor, growing with every step until it became too much for one man when the leader rejoined the circle with his company.

    "Who have you thought to fool, Yatan?" complained a fellow to the left with a scar across his cheek. "You brought us a wom---"

    The doubter barely had time to breathe as he felt the point of a dagger dig upward into the skin at his throat, pain at any shift of his jaw. At the handle end of his discomfort was the stranger, glaring with icy eyes nearly as piercing as the blade she held. Simultaneously, the rest of the group drew their own weapons, encircling the dame and her steady hand in a deadly ring.

    "I have brought you the Amarant," Yatan answered sternly, unimpressed by his own followers' actions though not looking terribly surprised. "And I suggest to the rest, that unless you wish to test that claim, you will put away your weapons -- now."

    Everything remained in deadlock for a while, each looking around the circle for some semblance of their comrades' thoughts. One by one, however, the weapons began to disappear. It wasn't until the removal of the very last that the Amarant put away her own pointed tool and returned to stand beside Yatan.

    "Good. We are short enough able men as it is," Yatan said, eying the fellow now rubbing his neck. "Now as I was saying. The reappearance of the Amarant amongst our ranks, the growing unrest our eyes have seen – these are the signs that the beginning is upon us," the leader said smoothly as he walked into the center of the circle. “This is our night to rise to power. This is our chance to make our claims heard, to decide when we will stand up to our troubles and put an end to our woes.”

    A few nodding heads echoed their sentiments along with a few soft grunts of approval.

    Yatan took notice the reaction. “The due revenge to those who oppose us will wait no longer. Along with our brethren across these lands, our comrades in arms, together our forces can make a change like such that was made during the time of Greymoor and Chapparal. Now it is our time to lead the way, to make a new legacy, a new legend. We have been ignored for too long!"

    The noise had grown from grunts to cheers as the men were invigorated by their leader’s words, until a lone voice cut through the noise.

    "As we discussed earlier, Yatan, you already know of the proposition,” the stranger in black said, raising her voice above that of the crowd. “What say ye?"

    Yatan turned to face the Amarant. "Just as you granted power to your officers of yore, I request to be one of your officers of coming," the pack leader answered with spirit, his green eyes flickering in tandem with the torchlight.

    “You have been forewarned of the cost. To gain the power given out in the past, you are willing to part with your soul for the Blessings of the Swan?”

    Any voices still audible were not any more upon hearing the proposition that was on the table. All eyes were on Yatan, confusion, disbelief, and a myriad of other emotions being channeled through their colorful orbs. It was apparent that none had known of the earlier dealings between their leader and this lady in black.

    “What’s a soul when one cannot control their own fate,” Yatan replied.

    “That’s not enough of an answer.”

    Yatan, slightly put off by the Amarant’s particular reply, said with some force, “I say ‘yay’, dear Amarant. My soul is yours.”

    The pact is made.


    The Amarant lifted her head to look directly at the bandit leader ignoring the voice that no one else took notice of. When her eyes met his, Yatan felt a chill fill his lungs. The arctic eyes peering back at him through their slender slits… instantly he knew he had made a mistake, but it was if his airways were paralyzed in shock with what he had just done. No gasp of air, no scream of terror fled his unmoving mouth.

    The price is paid.


    While Yatan could not shout, the rest of his followers could - and did - all while rushing the vision of the night their leader had put his faith in. They had seen the end of a black blade come forth from their leader’s back before he quietly crumpled to the floor. And just as the first vengeful blade tip touched the murderer’s cloak, the entire circle of armed men was blasted back by some unseen wave, a force that blew out all but one of the torches in the room.

    Scrambling to their feet, the men looked on in the shadows at two fully unfurled wings, demonic in look, raised high in the air. All remaining thoughts of this being the ‘Amarant’ had fled their minds. This was nothing but a nightmare incarnate… and it had to die.

    …


    The lady wiped away her midnight blades before returning them to their sheaths. She glanced over the pile of bodies on the floor, stepping back as the blood began to pool. Her clothes had been stained with enough of the liquid during the fight and afterwards while she was removing what valuables they had on them. Though the stains were never apparent on the dark cloth, she felt the areas where her clothes weighed her down in some combination of sweat and blood, some of it being hers, most of it belonging to those now resting on the floor.

    She hadn’t come out of the fight unscathed. She had taken a light hit in the thigh and the tear through the side proved it. The powers given to her while she was ‘enlightened’ (as she sarcastically thought of it) had some sort of tendency to speed up the healing process, making such wounds trivial. Despite this knowledge, she did not openly rely on its effects less should it fail under more serious injuries.

    Wearily, the female turned to the tunnel she had entered from and climbed up the steps, much of her energy drained from the fight, enough so that when she stepped out into the make-shift kitchen of the home she had come in by, a creak in the floorboards to her right startled her.

    Instinct took over as a dagger flew to the source, striking it in a vital location… but not the one she had intended.

    What she saw in the corner of the room right then horrified her as she watched the body hit the wall behind it and slump to the floor.

    She had hit a child, a young boy in tattered clothes. She had aimed for what would have been the chest on a light-footed man which put her target at a precarious position farther up on the shorter boy, one that he wasn’t going to be getting back up from.

    Dropping to her knees beside the young person, she fought off the urge to be ill, seriously debating as to whether or not she could retrieve her dagger from where it had lodged itself. During her third attempt, she felt the significant feeling that someone was watching her. Turning to look up the stairs, the glinting of small eyes peeked back at her before they disappeared to the pitter-patter of smallish footsteps.

    Swallowing down bile at this point, the battle-worn visitor pulled the small blade from its resting place and shoved it in her belt, for once breaking from her meticulous ritual of cleanliness. Trying not to look or even think about the boy on the floor, she looked up the stairs in sorrow to where she knew there was another child, probably traumatized and hiding.

    …


    Once back outside, the female visitor hauled herself back up on the chestnut horse waiting for her, a limp little girl younger than the boy inside lay across the front of the saddle. As she had expected, after ascending the stairs and finding the little girl behind a bed, the child had screamed while drowning in tears. There had been no other way to calm the girl other than to forcefully drug her into the state that she was in now, a dreamless comatose that would carry her through a good half a day. It would be enough time for the traveler to silently leave the girl at the house of the nearby healer with the money she had collected from the bandits and quite possibly the girl’s father. Without the funds, there was a good chance that the girl would be turned out onto the street by anyone who would simply think she was another mouth to feed in such troubling and hard times. The healer was a good man though she knew – in her other life at least. If he could not find the girl a home, the money would at least help him take care of her for as long as he could, maybe until she could be of some use.

    Hopefully.

    There wasn’t much hope these days for the traveler. The lands had been left in the dark for so long that hope was merely a vice now.

    Silently, forcing herself to go on, she dug her heels into the horse’s sides and made her shadowy trek to the healer’s house.