---- Dirt, damp and cold. A drop of blood warmed her back, and she was almost grateful for it. A cool breeze sheered across her like a blade of ice. The constant sound of: Clip clop, clip clop, clip clop... A horse? It must have been. Then she felt the rolling of wheels over hardened mud. Her hand fell below, and she realised she was lying down. It must have been wood. Damp planks, stained with blood and rain. The cool night air - lit only by the half-moon and its sister - captured her breath as clouds of mist.
There was only so much she could do to keep her grasp on consciousness. She focused as best she could on the thousand stars above. But with each came a thousand images, framed paintings of impossible events, that all flooded her mind. Dreams between breaths of awareness, each more fevered and foolish than the last.
The stars morphed into a blacksmith forging a heart quenched dagger; into pointed teeth sunk into corrupted flesh; into great dragons and little dragon riders; into knights, black and blue; into cities of flame and walls made pyres. She dreamt of starless skies and godless heavens.
Then the wagon skipped over a rock, and she was awake yet again. Ashtik drew on what little will remained within her to roll her head awkwardly aside.
There was the girl. Steel eyes welled with tears. Beautiful white hair flowing to her hips and the same shared deeply tan skin gifted from their mother.
Evara. Her baby sister. Her world.
"Ev...?" Ashtik meekly called. It was all she could manage; something had sapped her strength and her voice. The young girl dove from the carriage into the dirt at Ash's side. A great splash of hardened mud sullied her pristine dress, but for once she didn't seem to care.
Don't move, Ash," her sister ordered, her voice dripping with worry.
"What-" Ash tried to say. "-What happened?"
"Something struck you," Evara timidly replied.
-- "Something?"
"I know not what it was. A... starlight wisp? " Evara suggested.
Her attention fell from Ash's gaze and towards her wound. She removed the bandage for a moment and Ash caught a glimpse of the blood-stained cloth that had been used. Evara's face drained of colour once it was removed, though she didn't speak.
"What is it?" Ash asked. Her response was not in words, but action.
Her steel eyes erupted into golden flame. Evara's hands outshone the stars as she focused on Ashtik's wounds. She seemed to exert a frantic effort into her magics, though relief yet eluded them both once she finished. She erupted yet again and placed even greater agony into the wound.
"Stop," Ash weakly demanded, knowing full well what would come next if she didn't.
Evara collapsed atop of Ash. It was expected, the common result of her using her power, though what she had been so intent on healing eluded Ash. Though she was fatigued, she felt uninjured. Had the blood not been so obviously pooled around her, she'd have doubted she had so much as a scratch on her body.
Ash gathered herself and sat against the rolling cart, cradling the newly sleeping Evara in her arms.... And then she understood.
It swirled within her. It ebbed and flowed through every vein and artery. It saturated her skin and burned away all impurities. Where blood ought to have gushed, a strange mound of black and purple veins erupted.
They spread like an infection, rapidly swarming her skin as though searching for something. Evara tried to clean the wound, though it had no effect. Then it seemed she had attempted to cauterise where the flesh had been sundered. Despite the burns around the purple mound, the severed flesh refused to be re-fused.
The shard had parted the skies, split light into new and impossible colours... and it had torn muscle and bone to shreds. It didn't hurt, though. It didn't even bleed anymore. Tentacles and tendrils of purple corruption spread across her like a cancer. From the shard above her heart, it crept along. The furthest of its vile feelers made its way to down her belly and across her legs.
Another rushed her throat until it found her head, and all stored within it. Her entire body must have been consumed in putrid death before it stopped. Once it's spread had found every inch of her, it began to consolidate.
She saw it cede her legs and felt it loosen around her neck. It drew the corruption from her extremities and pushed deep into her left hand. The purple deepened in her palm to an abyssal black as it seemed to retreat from the rest of her body.
Even the shard seemed to drain. Where purple and black tentacled veins had sprawled from the embedded black steel, nothing remained. Not the shard, nor a scar where her flesh had been so violently torn asunder. Perfect smooth skin had been restored, even down to her tan lines and freckles.
"How do you feel?" Evara sleepily asked, her head still cradled within Ash's arms. There was no honest answer for the fearful girl, so Ash wiped her little tear away and lied.
"I'm well. Don't worry." She stroked a stray hair from her little sister's face, and then her heart sank to her belly, and fear gripped her.
She saw her hand, and the deathly mark it bore.
"What the fuck?" She gasped. She threw her hand as far from her face as it would go. She slid further from it, as though it weren't attached to her. The panic denied her breath as her eyes affixed to the swirling black blaze that lay just beneath the surface of her skin. The deeper she gazed, the deeper the mark seemed to be.
At a glance, it seemed to rest atop of the skin like a tattoo; lock your gaze to it and you might find a well of abyss deeper than her hand could physically allow.
"What is that?" She cried. Ash clawed at the blackened skin as if to dig the mark out. She'd have torn the flesh away with a blade, if she'd had one to hand.
"Calm yourself," Evara said, though her tone suggested she was just as panicked. "We're nearly home. The Elder will know what to do."
The words froze in her like tears in a snowstorm. She focused on them; on the little voice that spoke them. It gave her a measure of strength, though it didn't break her abominable leer. Her gaze never quivered from her hand. It remained outstretched as she stood, and as Evara guided her along the forest floor.
---- It was full dark when they returned, past the first hour of the new day. All that time, Ash had refused to allow the mark from her sight. If she so much as blinked too hard, the black would consume even more of her form; or so she seemed to believe. They skulked through the desolate streets as the carriage that had carried them settled within its communal den.
"Elder!" Evara called as she carried what little of Ashtik's weight she could. She banged against a little oak door set into a grassy hillock. She banged so heavily that the hanging torch above them rattled and threatened to bound atop of them.
It wasn't long before a croaky old voice rang from within. The Elder marched audibly from within the home and called out – in a voice thick with annoyance, "Evara! I swear by the gods, if you've started another fire..." He threw the door open and met the two by candlelight.
"Sai-Weleg?" He gasped as his eyes fell upon the barely able to stand woman.
"Please, Elder, she's hurt," Evara begged.
"Of course, come quickly." He stepped aside and allowed the two to limp into his home.
He was quick to work, cutting away her leather padded shirt to expose where Evara reported the shard to have been embedded.
"Is this a joke?" He questioned when presented with the unblemished skin of Ash's shoulder.
"No! Please, something struck her. It must be magical!" Evara insisted. Tears welled in her steel eyes and ran, without restraint, down her rosy little face.
"Child, I can't treat what isn't there," the Elder insisted. Ash lay back on his bed before raising her hand to his eyeline.
"Can you treat that?" She sighed. His eyes widened, what could be horror – or fascination – consumed him.
"Oh, child... In this moment, no magic nor power beyond it would suffice to prevent what is to happen next – and all that will come because of it," The Elder whispered. He took her marked hand into his own and squeezed it tight. "Don't fear this, Sai-Weleg. It is not your enemy."
"Then what is it?" Ash asked. He released her hand and she stroked the mark lightly. That he held it so tightly with no aversion gave her a level of comfort. It made her feel a little less fateful.
"It's the mark of a Champion," He answered.
"But... That's not possible?" Evara protested. "The Champions council is complete. There are no more Champions."
-- "And yet... Here one lies."
"Hang on!" Ash protested. "What the hells is a Champion?" She asked.
The Elder chuckled at the question. "Do you know of nothing beyond the Veil?"
"Why should I? I'm a huntress, not an adventurer," Ash huffed.
His eyes danced between Ash and Evara. He scanned over the ornately dressed younger. Her perfect white riding skirt, stained with the blood of the day. Her delicate – though cheaply made – jewellery. Her scholar's squint and her ever shallow breaths.
Then his gaze fell to Ashtik, the elder. Her red leather armour that failed to cover her well-toned belly. Her empty sheathes and numerous practical pouches. The sides of her head, neatly shaven. Red chains tattooed around her arms and across her shoulders. Names written in occasional links.
A short woman, slim and athletic as a hunter ought to be. Her deep purple eyes looked almost black under the candlelight, and her nose looked much more crooked after each breakage. A thin streak of red across the middle of her lips. A tattoo of leaves on a vine, hidden beneath her matted braids, circled her neck.
The two sisters couldn't be more unalike.
"There is more to this world than the forest, Ashtik. I think this is something you are soon to learn," the Elder laughed. "Evara... Would you be so kind as to explain the Champions to your sister?"
"Of course," Evara beamed, only somewhat wary of her enthusiasm given the dire circumstances. "The er- Champions are divinely chosen. Patrons of some southern gods. They each act as paragons of some virtue or... feat."
"Southern gods?" Ash repeated.
"Gods of the Conclave," the Elder said.
"Yeah, the Conclave believe that the gods are like- actual people..." Evara explained.
-- "People? Like mages?"
-- "No... They think people control the world and have like... plans for us. They personify the gods, and say those gods choose specific people to enact their will on Marash."
"Are they common? Does it matter?" Ash asked, utterly confused.
"I... Don't know how many gods the Conclave hold, but I know each can have a single Champion at a time. The more powerful – or influential – the god, the greater the power of their Champion." Evara wiped a bead of sweat from her sister's head as she spoke.
"The Champion to the Crimson goden... I think his name is Rein Khan, or something, holds the storm cane which can control the weather. Then there's someone like the Champion of Orange... She can make trees sprout fruit."
"But," the Elder urged.
"-But, all the Champions have already been chosen... unless a new god has popped up?" Evara scoffed.
"So, I'm one of these 'champions'?" Ash sneered, stretching out her burdened arm..
"I hope not," the Elder whispered. He strolled the short gap between her sickbed and a great diamond box filled with scrolls and slated. After a moments search, and a quiet rustle, he came upon a musky old letter, sealed in broken golden wax.
"You don't want me to be a champion?" Ash questioned.
"It would mean a great many things are coming." He opened the letter, and it consumed him. His eyes couldn't be peeled from its inky characters as he continued in a newly wearied way, "Great things; terrible, but great. Rest now, Ashtik Sai-Weleg, and come the morrow, return to the forest and seek out your new name."
"My new name?" she doubted.
-- "Follow the songbirds, child. Follow the Sparrows, they shall be your guide."
-- "Sparrows? Guide me where?"
-- "I could not possibly know, but I do so hope I am wrong. Return home now, goodly ones. You must rest well and face your dreams."
---- The night was frantic and restless, though she slept the whole way through. She dreamt of a great void. White and nothing spanned all around her. She woke here and stood, though her feet found no purchase. There lacked an up, or a forward, but there was something here. Something... wrong.
"Hello?" She called to the nothing that surrounded her. "Who's there?"
She turned in place, though it made no difference in this directionless space. Dread gripped her again and her voice caught in her throat.
"Who are you?" She asked the nothingness before her. "It's not nothingness. Where are you?" She called. Again, she received no reply. "Please, I don't know where I am? Who are you?" She asked. "Stop saying what I'm doing! Who are you?" Ashtik ordered. Her breathless words echoed eternally in the nothingless void. "How do you know my name? Where are we? Who are you?" She demanded a final time.
It took her a while to comprehend, though she could never truly do so. The easy truth was, she was simply dreaming.
"This isn't a dream," she protested. "I can feel... It's too real. Please just answer me!"
---- She rose with the sun and a sweaty jolt. Her heart raced and her mind fought to overtake. The dream was so vivid, but the memory of it was slipping, even now. She remembered a void, and the fear, then just the void.
"You're awake?" Evara dreamily grumbled. The girl had fallen asleep at her bedside. Her hair had sprawled out into a crazed bundle of knotted and matted tangles.
"Aye, but it's still early. Go back to sleep," Ash whispered, her chest heaving for breath. She stroked a gentle hand over her sister's head and patted down a few exceptionally wild hairs. It calmed Ash just enough to stop her from shaking.
"Okay..." Evara mumbled as sleep took her again.
Ash drew from her bed and gathered some clothes. Her shoulder yet ached from the night's ordeal, so she elected to dress in a rough cotton shirt and pants in place of her usual armour. Something of the night played on her mind as she bound her braids, though she couldn't remember what.
Her hand still caused her discomfort. A simple glance and her heart would drop at the impossible depth of it. She had hoped that it was nought more than a dream, brought on by an autumn fever. There was no such fortune in her world.
An old winter glove was hidden beneath the pile of cotton rags and patches which she was so itinerant as to call clothes. She drew her dirk from the bedside and cut off the fingers, before sealing her fears within its cotton cage.
"Long night, Snowy?" Tilak asked in a hush. He poked his head through the bedroom door, his grey eyes looked around her room and fell upon the still sleeping younger.
"Very," Ash whispered back. She left the room at his side and slid the door shut behind her.
"Well... Breakfast is ready. Shall we rouse Ev?" Tilak smiled.
A tuft of deep brown hair fell across his sun kissed old skin. He had grown skinny in his twilight; it made him look much older, though he had recently begun shaving his beard away in some feeble attempt to regain his youth. He was a foot taller than her but stood as though he was half her size. The proud hunter he had once been existed now only in the glint of his eye.
"No, let her sleep." She dragged him into a hug. She almost dangled from him as her arms clung around his neck. He laughed with what little breath he could manage.
"Okay? The hug is nice?" He chuckled into her shoulder. "Is everything alright, Snowy?"
She parted the hug and matched his chuckle. "Yeah, sorry. It was a very long night."