Prologue

Aros 26th 397 AFU

My name isn't important, there is no one left to mourn me, let alone carve it on a stone to set above my head. It's amazing how quickly things can go from "on the right path" to "complete shit". Less than a year ago I was a master thief, at least in my own little mind. Now? I was huddled up against the back brick wall of a fireplace in an alley with a demon standing over me, realizing too late that I had frozen to death. It was over.

Back then I, no, we had plans. Big plans. The fire that cost us everything also convinced us it was time to move on. To do that, my best friend Piper and I had been trying to put things together. We were going to be rich and famous. We were going to be adventurers. Those were simpler times, and oh how I wished things were still that easy.

The reality of it was that by summer a war had broken out. War meant that the beautiful people were more aware of their surroundings. That wasn't good for someone used to making money by being ignored. Piper got caught saving my life on a job gone bad, and the Count's men took her hand instead of mine. She was gone now, and I was alone.

By fall, I barely had enough money to keep up with what that pig of a landlord was charging me. He had offered other methods of payment and... declined. I had once tripped a trick, and while I found no shame in the work, it wasn't for me.

I kept thinking everything will be better at the Harvest Festival people with too much beer in them and bellies full of free food will be celebrating their boys coming home from war after a victory. They will be easy targets; fat, drunk, and slow.

Only, there was no victory. The Count said that the battles had not gone well and that the men would not be coming back yet. It was up to the women to do the harvesting as well as keep up with the daily running of their homes. So, the Festival was somewhat... lacking.

What should have been a seven day Festival with so much food even the poorest of people could eat their fill, never came. Instead, it turned into two days of slim pickings and somber faces that almost no one attended. Worse, there was no food left over to be begged or stolen.

Our once proud town of South Point, with its rich homes and buildings boasting as many as three stories, began to feel run down. The cobblestone streets and alleyways started being dirtier than I had ever remembered them being. Sickness spread through town, even up to the merchants' districts. All three town squares saw their market stalls first lose their colorful banners and decorations as such frippery was sold off to pay for the rights to even set up. The tax collectors did not care what you sold, only that they got paid. Then, the merchants lost the stalls themselves as the cost of doing business became too much. New regulations and taxes on the poor, new ways for the rich to avoid those taxes, meant that a lot of people soon joined the ranks of the destitute. Only the wealthiest merchants could afford to do business anymore.

Soon winter's cold had set its teeth in hard; it was a bitter time to be out on the streets. I had been turned out of every church and boarding house in the county in favor of those that needed it more: wounded soldiers, children, the sick, and the elderly. I was 'a woman who was into her third year of adulthood who was perfectly healthy'. It was a health that would not last thanks to the cold and starvation.

When I heard the beating of wings in my alley, I thought for a moment that Ca'talls had sent an angel for me. Instead, I opened my eyes to a white skinned, winged, horned devil staring down at me.

It was tall, taller than a man I think, but I was laying down. The look on its face was feral. I would like to say unreadable, but I understood it all too well: hunger, loathing, anger, and lust. Its opened mouth showed fangs that dripped with spit. Its hands were clawed, and as it reached for me I tried to fight, but I could barely raise my head, let alone defend myself against this monster from myth. I knew that I, Chloe, small time pickpocket and one-time whore would be dragged to the Hells where a thief like me belonged. I didn't believe in such things, never really had, but when you are that cold and sick rational thought doesn't really enter your mind. I knew that there was no fairytale being coming to comfort or damn me... yet here one was in front of my eyes.

Awakening in this world again never entered into my mind. 

Chapter 1

Gwledd 11th 397 AFU

My first thoughts after my death didn't sit well with me. The world around me was wrong. In death, I had been cold and alone, and then a devil had come for me. Why then, was I now warm and comfortable? More than that I was being held and something savory was on my tongue.

That could not be right. I was obviously still fever drunk. Yet...

The warm broth held a taste I could not place, but it soothed my throat as it rolled down. My stomach was the part that wasn't having any of this and rejected it immediately. When my body was done convulsing with the rejection and I had gotten the slimy yuck everywhere, or at least all over myself, a cool hand cleaned me up.

Something, no, someone with kind and gentle hands, who was much stronger than I, held me close. They helped me and made soothing sounds to calm me. Between the weakness that came from hunger, as well as the fever I had had for weeks now, I was trapped drifting between the world of reality and the landscape of dream.

In some of those fevered dreams, I was held by an angel. She was holding me, helping me. Her touch was soft and warm, yet cooled my fevered skin. Her words were in a language I did not know, and though I didn't - couldn't - understand, the tone soothed me. I felt at peace.

In others I saw a devil waiting just out of reach, but always when the angel was gone. He was achingly beautiful, each time I saw him my pulse quickened with fear, fear and something else. His skin was the color of fine porcelain, his hair was like pure snow, and his eyes were of deepest lavender. All these things he had kept from when he was serving as an angel of the All Father, and the horns on his face were the marks of his betrayal and his fall. So were the bat-like wings on his back, his clawed fingers, and his legs like those of a dog. No, not a dog. Dogs do not have feet that look as if they could grasp things to fly off with them, taking some poor soul to the fires of damnation.

Yet even there the skin was still so perfect, so flawless.

The horns did not mar his face as I thought they would, three small things just above each eye ridge, and three down the middle of his forehead, nine in all. He wore a loincloth with a metal ring belt, and his tunic of black fur set off the paleness of his skin. A flat tail that came down to his knees twitched and curled as the creature watched me.

I had thought the devil was a woman, but the thing in front of me looked like a man. One of her Dukes perhaps? That tail looked like it had ribs and the underside was like the hood of the monk snake. When it relaxed its tail, the result was as vulgar as what you expected from a fiend such as this. If this was the form of a devil, no wonder sex was so poorly looked upon.

In my fevered state I begged the angel when she was with me not to let that devil take my soul. I pleaded and confessed every sin. I asked what penitence I should do to avoid that fate.

These thoughts wore heavy on me when I woke in the furs after the fever finally broke. I had long given up believing in the gods or the soul. It was nothing more than a fairytale to keep people in line and not something that was real. Fever madness was apparently very real. The fact that these thoughts had created such a vivid hallucination in my mind let me know how much they had screwed up my world with their lies.

The first thing I did was take stock of me and my surroundings. It took a moment to rebuild myself and get my bearings. I was Chloe Blackthorn. I was a girl who had run away from an orphanage of Ca'talls and turned to a life of crime in desperation. I have awakened to find myself in a body aching and weary from long bed rest due to sickness. I hurt far too much and in too many places to be in Heaven, but the pain was not severe enough for me to be in even the nicest of the Hells that I was taught about as a child. Once again, reality trumps pretty lies.

Every muscle in my body was sore, a dull ache that comes from being in one position for too long. I was warm, a glorious condition I had not known for... I had no idea how long. I felt and smelled animal fur. A deep brown coat of cured fur lay before my eyes when I opened them, one below me and another above with the smoothness of a properly tanned hide against my skin. That and the lack of the smell of urine and refuse was further proof I was not in the alley that I had tried to find shelter from the cold in. Obviously, I had left that far behind.

My lungs no longer burned with each and every breath, and there was no wet rattle on my exhale nor popping sound on the intake. Though I could feel that my strength had yet to return, I knew I was no longer starving. My insides did not feel cold like they once did, and the burning and emptiness were gone.

I turned my head and looked around to be greeted with more unfamiliar sights. I expected to be inside a house, or a church, as someone had obviously taken me in from that alley. Instead, I was inside a womb of hides, which was comforting in a slightly disturbing way. It was a dome made of sticks and poles with tight stretched hide keeping the outside out and the inside in.

The dome was tall enough that an Orc could reach up and brush his fingertips along the ceiling and could lay down with its feet at the center and brush the round sides, yet somehow it felt cozy; not small or confining, just kind of homey and close.

 To one side was a strange collection of stick frame work and rope to make a sort of hammock, but one with three points of contact at the top making for two V-like cuts in it, and one point at the bottom. The entire thing, frame and all, had the look of something that could be taken apart easily and put back up with little fuss.

There was also a tree trunk near the center pole with its limbs cut off but the bark still on to make it easier to move. Looking around, it seemed it was used as an anchor point for racks, odds and ends, and various other things. In addition to the iron pots and other cookware that hung from it, there was a backpack of strange design, a staff, and a silver medallion with a leather lanyard. At the top, suspended on a wrought iron rod to keep it well away from the trunk, hung the lantern that was the only source of light in my new world.

The floor was covered all around with furs of various colors and thicknesses; bits and pieces of different lengths and from different animals, from the close short hair of a deer, to the shaggy pelt of a sheep with the fleece still on it. Though the pelts were thrown around, there was definitely the suggestion of harmony, almost like the owner of the furs was worried about them clashing with the decor. I had seen high society people in town worry about such things, but to find it here in a barbarian's hut was strange indeed.

That thought brought me back to the here and now. Someone who was obviously a barbarian, a wild-man of some sort, had found me and had brought me here. They often came in to town to trade, mostly bringing goods up from the south.

Up that way were wild lands with no government... well, not any as we knew it. Those southern barbarians claimed that further up in the cold reaches of the Deep South, was something called 'The Empire of the Five'. They said this in such a way as if it was a fearsome force and something not to be taken lightly. To hear them talk, it was a land ruled not by men or law, but by monsters, and breaking what few laws they had was always a death sentence. Yet, they claimed to be treated better there than in most towns they visited down in the North.

The priests often pointed to these men and their strange ways as a bad example, talking about their lack of civilized behavior, but the visitors treated me well enough. They just didn't seem to care about ranks like Lord and Lady. I had to admit that their ideas on fun, sex, and how men and women should interact were distressing, and the way they dressed and their mannerisms were sometimes frightening.

Armed women were nothing new to me, but their women often acted and dressed no different than their men, and the men drank, fought, and bled more than even I was used to. Life seemed cheap to them. They were always looking for the next wenching, even if they had their wives along with them. The stories I had heard of how the women of these people like to lay with dogs or stallions for the sport of it always disturbed me.

Now I found myself in a place that looked like one of their tents, owing my life to them. If half of what I heard was true, one of the Hells may have been a better option. At least I would deserve what I got there. Again, small comfort in a fairytale.

The flap that acted as a doorway opened then. As soon as I heard it I dived and grabbed one of the black iron pans off the post. Sitting there clutching the weight of it, I knew it had been a very long time since anything this heavy had been in my hands.

A dark outline entered from the brightness of outside and light flooded the near dark interior, blinding me. I lost sight of whoever it was. How long had it been since I had seen natural light?

A gentle hand took my new weapon out of my grasp before I even realized anyone had moved. Not that I could have really done anything with it, but it had felt good to have the illusion I could protect myself and not be at this stranger's mercy. Maybe I could have dropped it on their foot and crawled away quickly, or maybe they would have been so stunned I could have gotten outside the tent still naked and crawled away into the darkness of this obviously bright day... Yes, and maybe I could sprout wings and ascend to the Heavens. Both were just as likely to happen.

As my eyes adjusted to the light and my mind grasped what was in front of me, I went numb in terror. Before me stood the devil that I had dreamed of, his skin still like porcelain, and his eyes still as beautiful.

Maybe this was a Hell after all? Then he opened his mouth to speak and my world came crashing down around me. His voice was that of the angel that had held me and nursed me back to health. All I could do was shake as the shock ran through me.

"Vanti Dawn," he said softly, then again in TradeSpeak "Calm, peace. No harm do I mean to you." His smile was warm but his words warmer. I could smell him, smell his breath and a scent of lilies was coming off of him. This was no dream, and my mind could not come up with a nightmare like this. I realized how much trouble I was in, how terrible things were about to get for me, and how truly screwed I was.

This wasn't a devil. It would be better for me in the long run if it were.

I was alive. If it had been a devil it would just kill me. Maybe not fast, and it would probably do horrible things to me first, but it would kill me. I knew that for certain. This, though, this was going to be worse than anything I could imagine. This creature in front of me may not be a devil or The Devil, but it was one of her mortal southern followers. One of the monsters of the so called Empire of the Five.

"I know you not know my tongue, but might I know yours. Speak and let us see if my tiring studying has paid me off." His words were soft and he had a voice meant to sing songs to loved ones on cold nights.

This could not be happening; this could not possibly be real.

The word softly escaped my throat unbidden. It was both a muttered curse and a prayer of salvation from the path before me. A prayer I did not know if even Ca'talls could have answered if he existed.

"LeatherWing..."