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The krynn held out his left arm without a word.

Besides him, the borman shifted the unconscious figures in his grasp. His left arm wrapped tight around their torsos, securing them against his chest, while the parts that were their legs hung limp over his right forearm. Like that, he presented his free paw, palm up, fingers curling, not from hesitation but from sheer thickness.

The paw was easily large enough to crush a skull. Yu's, for example. Yet the shaman met it without pause, cradling it with a calm that spoke of fearlessness — as though she had touched far worse than bormen. As though she was far more dangerous. She, and The One Who Listened through her.

Her left hand moved slowly. One of her long, pale fingers traced the borman's lower arm, not stroking, but marking. She pressed into the hide, as if etching something. Then she turned to the krynn and repeated the motion, with her finger running over his arm just beneath the fur.

"Blood is life," she said to both travellers. "And essence is memory. Both carry truths the mind forgets, and those it never learned. Sometimes, even those it was never meant to know. Will you give of yourself, to be understood in a language beyond lies?"

The borman grunted. "Yes."

The krynn gave a sharp nod.

"Borman," the shaman said, "I will begin with you. I will draw from your hand, both blood and essence. It will not take more than you offer. But offer you must."

"Just make," the borman repeated.

From the folds of her semi-translucent cloak, the shaman drew a small pouch. Its drawstring was braided from some dried, pale fibre, too thin for leather, too sinewy for any fabric Yu knew. She unfastened it with care. From within, she removed a narrow, silver-sheened case, and from that, she selected one of three crystalline needles. They were almost invisible; long, thin, and too clear to cast a shadow. Yu, standing just two paces away, caught their shape only where the orblight bent slightly at the edges. Even then, they seemed barely real. There was no weight to them, like something not meant to be handled. They looked like they could break from mere touch.

The borman kept his paw outstretched.

The shaman raised the needle and placed the tip against the centre of his palm. It touched fur. Then skin. And then it sank in. There was no puncture. No resistance or stain. No cut. The flesh took the artefact like water accepting a blade. The needle slid inward. It vanished until only the final fragment held between the shaman's fingers remained.

The borman's shoulders locked. A low rumble passed through him, thick and wordless, but he did not pull back.

Yu watched the crystal fragment between the shaman's fingers. Dark veins unfurled within its core. Not the red of blood; but lines of scorched amber emerging against the clear shaft.

Without a word, the shaman withdrew the needle.

Yu exhaled sharply. He had not realised he had been holding his breath.

The borman stood silent, save for the subtle violence of his movements: paw clenching and unclenching, shoulders rolling, jaw tensing and releasing as if chewing a taste he could not identify.

Meanwhile, the Shaman raised the needle, holding it delicately between her fingers. Within its crystalline length, the dark swirl had deepened into motion; a shifting storm of colour and motion. A thread of something restless. Not stolen. Offered.

Beneath the shaman's cloak, something shifted too. Not fabric, not flesh, but the very shape of her body. Her shoulders slipped back, realigned and broadened. Her chest expanded in the space of a single breath. Then the petal-scales around her collar stirred. They rippled and unfurled. In layers of perfect symmetry, they peeled back from her neck to her shoulders, baring the base of the shaman's throat, where her collarbone would lie, if she were of humanoid origin. Yu could not see what hid there. He was too short and stood to her side, where her coat, shoulder and raised arm blocked his view, as she now lowered the needle to the base of her throat. All he witnessed was the slow descent of her hand. Then the needle was gone. Her shoulders realigned and the scales folded back into place. It must have sunk into her too, Yu thought.

"You carry rage, Kel-Khadar," said the shaman. "But not the kind that destroys. You bear the kind that shields. Not flame, but gravity. Heat pressed inward and endured." Her voice carried no judgement, only certainty. "You do not seek to break. You hold."

"I hold the injured," the borman interrupted, "I enter now?"

Her mask never moved. And yet something about the shaman's posture smiled with too much patience. Not subtly. Not dramatically. Just precisely enough to suggest and unsettle; something in the angle of her spine, the slight spreading of her arms and the slow unfurl of her fingers as she retrieved a second needle from her pouch.

Yu brushed frost from his eyes.

"You are not marked by a witch," the shaman said. "You may enter. But first, the reading must be complete."

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

With the second needle in hand, she turned to the krynn. "Your arm."

The krynn did not move at first. His eyes flicked to the ker on the stairs. The ker nodded, barely a gesture, just a tilt of the chin. That was enough. The krynn stepped forward and offered his arm, long and wiry, with fur short but tight along the forearm. The skin on his palm was a map of scars, some fresh, some deep-set, others faded into lines.

The shaman took it without a word. With her other hand she set the needle's tip at the centre of his palm. It sank in silently, disappearing until only a sliver remained between her fingers. The krynn hissed as she withdrew it.

This time, the needle glowed with a stark, ghostly silver, like moonlight caught in ice. The shaman rotated it in front of her mask, watching the tremor of light within.

Yu forced his gaze up to her collarbone. He took two quiet steps to the side.

Again, her shoulders shifted and the scales at her throat peeled back.

This time, he saw.

Between the scales stretched a single, precise line of dark flesh — no ragged scar, but a deliberate incision from one shoulder to the other. Too symmetrical for battle, too neat for accident.

She guided the needle toward it.

The line parted. No tear, no blood — It simply opened up, revealing layers of flesh within.

Then came the sound. It was not loud. It was not even clear. It crawled out of the opening, low and dry and rough and so, so wrong. It was —

Yu recoiled and hit the windowframe behind him. The stone pressed the wet of his coat into his feathers. It was grounding, but only barely.

That was a breath! A breath!

This is. A. FUCKING. MOUTH!

Not a wound. Not a cut. A real mouth! Not under her mask, or part of her mask, or on her face at all, but below her neck, set into her chest, where no mouth should ever be. It was so wrong. It was disturbing. It was damn disgusting. Yu took a sharp breath. HOLY SHIT!

She fed it the needle.

The scales closed and her shoulders moved back to her sides.

"You are unrooted, krynn," said the shaman, as if she were an absolutely normal person who had just done absolutely nothing but absolutely normal things. "You do not stay."

The krynn offered no reply. His tail gave a single lash, but he kept his stance measured.

The shaman tilted her head. Not far. But far enough to be wrong. It was the kind of gesture someone might make to show curiosity or sympathy — except it came too late and was held too long. Like someone recalling the memory of empathy, and now reproducing it frame by frame for effect.

Amidst everything, Yu became aware of this strange impression; something he had not looked for, but could not ignore. Where had it come from, this insight? It was not that he was in any way skilled in reading body language or unmasking intent. He had no training in dissecting the various complex mannerisms of all different peoples that traversed the continent, let alone seeing through any well-constructed disguises that diverted from them. No, it was the opposite. While he had gained some basic knowledge on the pretences of politics through Tria, Yu had lived as a loner for the majority of his life, which gave him close to no experience with actual people.

Rather, there were bodies that sometimes, quite naturally, talked to him, regardless of how much the person inside wanted the body to shut up, or to say something else entirely. It did not happen often, and the revelations were sometimes hard to decipher. But when it did, he recognised it for what it was. Tirran's body had done it. From the start, beneath every polished phrase, his posture hummed with dissonance:

Ï̴͋ a͚͒m̏ͭ͢ c̰o̦̝͗at̨̅͂eͥd i̠͊n͈͟ f̴́̀a̺͇ke̷̲͒ fo͉̽͢rͥ͘ma̝͐ͩl̤it̶̻̣y̫̲͓.

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That impression had been immediate, and undeniable. Now, Yu felt the same disturbance again. The moment the shaman had fed the needle to herself, her true form had opened up to him, smiling falsehood.

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.̬͉̻̎ͯ̓ I̡̚ a̧̩͖͎̠̯ͣ̾ͪm͍̂̎̇̾ t̘ͬ͌̕ỏͫ̀͜͞ g̶̥̻̲ͥ͑͆ͪ̍a̴̢̞͍̦͕ͬ͠ṱ̷̢͙̬͍̿͒͜h͌̿ẽ͇̠r̨̨̪̾̄ a̼̓͂́̅nd̶͎̙̓ͧ to dͣe̎͂̂ͯ͝v̼o͕̠ͭůr̞̾.̴͙͖͕̝ͮ̽̀ͅ.̹̗̮͒̉

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