The noon market was cacophony, a sea of bodies each adding their own noise to the shifting thrum: animals bellowed, mongers called out prices for their wares, and somewhere far off a high voice sang of an ocean of sand, an empty land. All cried for Nerys’s attention, but she gave it to none, keeping her head down and taking stifled, shifting steps through the throng. It was easy to blend into the chaos…

Or rather it should have been. A slight boy just ahead of the dark-haired woman slipped clumsy fingers into the belt pouch of a richly robed man, tugging out a fist full of silver coins. The filch pressed his ill-gotten treasure to his chest and stumbled backward into the crowd, bumping into Nerys just as the merchant turned, his pinched, watery eyes locking into her startled ones.

“Thief!” He bellowed and groped for her wrist, wrapping meaty fingers around it. She pulled away furiously, but to no avail.

“You fool!” she spat. “You’re letting him escape!”

The man only called out again, his portly face purple with a rage that needed someone—anyone— to target. Nerys glanced around desperately, but the people on either side of them were backing away to make room, and the man’s yells had caught the attention of a White Knight and his phalanx of guards in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nerys began to pant, panic building in her chest, a short-fused incendiary.

“Let go!” she hissed through clenched teeth, yanking her wrist until the bones ground together painfully. “Let go!”

Despite his soft appearance, the merchant was more than a match for the woman’s strength and every heartbeat brought the White Knight closer. He moved unnaturally quickly, his long strides bringing him across the crowded square at a speed Nerys would not have considered possible if she had not seen it with her own eyes. Fear pounded in her ears; her body sang with it, summoning power and energy that she had only felt once before.

“What’s this?” The armored man asked as he reached them, reaching to take hold of Nerys from the merchant.

The world seemed to narrow, slowing as the merchant opened his mouth to spill lies into the hot, desert air. Nerys pulled her free arm in, struggling to tamp down the rising flood within her, to bottle the force before it fought its way free. The knight’s bare fingers moved towards her captured arm as if through syrup, her horror mounting in every thundering heartbeat until his hand first came into contact with her desert-warmed skin. His eyes widened, and with a crack, the world exploded.

Nerys shuddered in delicious catharsis as the energy poured from her small frame, killing the merchant and the knight instantly, blood pouring from their mouths and noses as they took the full brunt of the blast. Behind them, all had been shoved back away from the woman, an empty circle condemning.

The noon market was silent until startled voices found the air to scream, the small folk terrified at the display of strange, taboo power. Nerys stared wide-eyed at the scene of her destruction for one heartbeat, for two. Then, she fled, adrenaline shoving her through the narrow streets.

Once, standing near the heavy wooden gates guarding the Cradle, Ari had heard an old brave talking about the hush of the forest beyond. “It was ghost-quiet,” he’d said eerily, “but for the crack of branches beneath my feet and the moan of the old ones’ bones.” A load of nonsense, of course. To Ari, the forest was louder than the village center on a festival day. All around her, streams burbled, animals cackled, and if the ruins did groan in their low, grating voices then it was more likely from the weight of so many years than the ghost story that old brave would have had her believe. Ari thought that if the storyteller had her feather-soft tread, he’d have not silenced the forest around him, but a noiseless wood did make for a more sinister setting.

Now, as she moved silently through the myriad of forest songs, she could just hear the footfalls of her shield-brother, Teb, behind and to her right. They had stumbled over the three-day-old trail just a mile outside the great gate and followed the broken branches and occasional boot impression for several hours. Teb thought it was left by bandits, but then he thought everything was left by bandits. More likely, they were on the trail of an outcast eking out a rough living away from the tribe.

It was late afternoon when they appeared wraith-like out from the cover of the trees to a small, abandoned campsite. The charred remains of a fire were half covered in dirt and mulch where the outcast had put out the flames and there was more churned earth where it looked as though he or she had buried the remains of a kill. There was enough room for a single bedroll.

“Not bandits then,” Teb said, trying to sound disappointed though Ari knew he didn’t have much of a stomach for fighting. “We’d best head back.”

She straightened and stretched, glancing up at the sun, well past the peak of her curving path between the mountains. “The trail continues from the other side… it’d be a shame not to follow it a little ways.”

Teb nodded reluctantly, his face folding into familiar lines of worry. “A little ways,” he repeated, never one to argue, and Ari’s chest tightened with guilt. Yes, they were supposed to return by night fall, but wasn’t their primary goal to determine whether or not the trail would mean danger for the tribe?

She shook her head to clear it, trotting past the camp with less care than normal in her haste to go farther. She wasn’t even really sure what she wanted to see; ruins, outsiders, bandits? Maybe just anything new. Behind her, Teb shouted for her to slow down, but the trail was so easy to follow and obviously old. He was always worrying too much.

Ari glanced behind to call back to her partner when she slipped, sliding several feet in loose dirt and stones until the earth disappeared beneath. She hung suspended in gloom for half a heart beat, then crumpled into something hard and cold. Metal.

She pressed shaking fingers to her legs, her ribs, her face, but nothing was broken and other than a few scapes oozing slowly, nothing was bleeding. The outsider they had been tracking had not been so lucky; the stench of decaying flesh filled the strange metal cavern and Ari tried not to look at his twisted form as she got to her feet. “Teb!” she called. “I’m okay!”

When his pale, frightened face appeared over the edge of the drop, she was suddenly, intensely glad it had not been him that had fallen into this mess. The walls were slick, the drop too far to get back up. She would have to find another way out of the ruins, and her partner looked close to panic. “Look at me, Teb!” she shouted. “Go back and tell the others we were separated on the hunt! I’ll find away out, just do not tell them about the ruins.”

Wordless, he nodded. Why why why, had he ever chosen to be a brave?

Ari hunted around in the loose rock that had tumbled in with her until she found her spear and checked that her bow and quiver were still strapped to her back. “Be safe!” she yelled up to her shield-brother and plunged into the dim light of the ancient bunker.

Blood. Sickly sweet and cloying. The metallic tang of it stung Etana’s nose, forcing her to breathe through her mouth as she ran. It squelched up beneath her toes as she flung herself forward, the sticky substance slowing her tired footfalls, a foul-smelling adhesive. It clung to her face in blotchy droplets and soaked into the fabric of her carefully woven tunic. Still more welled up behind her, a wave of blood forcing the squire on in a desperate race to stay alive. Alive! She hadn’t even lived yet.

Trees whipped by, black monoliths sending spouts of thick, red liquid into the tepid air as the cresting wave hit them without breaking. On and on it grew, surging upwards even as the blood beneath Etana’s feet climbed up har calves, dragging on her legs with each splashing step. Soon it lapped against her thighs, little crests splashing up to touch her belly, her breasts. Then it was too thick to run, the crimson mire imprisoning her more effectively than any chain, and finally, the wave was breaking. It had reached its peak and fell ominously downwards, a blood red sea in which she would surely drown. Etana raised her arms to protect her face, unable to move, to think…

And then woke up, dampened by nothing more sinister than sweat, her only prison a woolen blanket wrapped uncomfortably around her legs. The light pooling in her small quarters was the grey lightening of dawn soon to come, the air warm and smelling of spring. Etana pulled herself from the wreck of her bed sheets, standing sorely as if she really had been fleeing for her life, the muscles in her back and legs protesting. She was still panting as she brought cool water to her face in trembling hands, but the last dregs of terror began to lose their hold on her mind as she stood there above her wash basin. What a dream….

Still, waking early wasn’t such a bad thing on her first day as a squire. Etana had been ordered to meet Sir Cherrane at the training grounds that morning, and she thought a warm up first would do her good, especially if there was to be any form of assessment. She dressed quickly and left her room, her bastard sword sheathed and in her hand rather than on her hip. She had yet to earn the right to go armed within the castle walls.

All through the halls were the signs of a keep awakening. Servants bustled to and from every corner and the smell of baking bread near the kitchens was warm and inviting. The training grounds, by contrast, were still all but empty. Etana didn’t mind. She ran a couple laps around the edges to get her blood pumping before finding a quiet corner to begin her sword work, going through standard forms slowly to challenge her strength and precision. In the calming, physical effort, Etana finally felt like herself once more, the terror of her dream only a memory.