FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Chosen

Chapter Three

---

Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)

Commissioned by Chirmaya Nashaar

_ _

---

There was no moment of rest or peace for Tayna in the confines of the keep. Everywhere she went, wherever she dared breathe, she was watched. Wenton seemed to relax in her presence after a few days - with access to the outdoor world once more, she could keep some kind of track of passing time - yet Reline never did. The wolf's eyes were relentless, pinning her to an ever-increasing number of injustices as each day passed. Without fail, when Tayna slipped into bed in the evening, the wolf's eyes would be the last thing she saw, unwavering in their intensity. She was not the friend Tayna had once had and her heart ached for what they'd once had.

With her nail, Tayna scratched a line in the bed frame for every night she laid her head down to sleep. They counted every day of her imprisonment irrefutably. It was one thing at least that she could be sure of, because her sanity sure wasn't certain.

Thirteen. Thirteen marks in the wood. It was hardly a great number but the passing days chilled Tayna's heart. There was no sign of escape and no leads she could follow to seek out such freedom. The vixen cried silent tears, dampening her pillow in the deep of night. Just what was the point in carrying on? They wanted her to continue on, one of their minions, yet what of her? What about what she wanted? She wanted to be free. She wanted to go back to the estate. She wanted to make something of herself. Even Jorro's smirking muzzle would be a pleasure to see.

Yet it was not to be.

She spiralled downwards and, one morning, refused to rise from bed, clamping the pillow over her ears under Reline yanked it away, eyes flashing.

"What's wrong with you?" Reline screamed, finally losing her stoic composure. "You had it all, didn't you? Is that what the problem is? You don't like that you have to work for your life now? You had it all laid before you on a silver platter - and for what?"

Spittle flew from her chops. What could Tayna say to that? She shook her head. She had no recollection of this life of finery Reline portrayed, words blurring into one another like tears.

Tayna flinched, childishly hiding her head beneath the blanket. The weather was falling colder and there was a nip of Fall on the air, although that was not why she concealed herself. It just felt safer under there. Better than the world in which she was expected to train and train, to fight and learn until her bones ached and she wanted nothing more than to drop to the ground out of sheer exhaustion. And, even then, Sellanda was there, forcing her on. Once, the leopard had even lifted her back to her paws herself, leaving bruises on the vixen's arms.

Again! She'd yowled, tail lashing. And so, Tayna had fought and fought, striking a training dummy over and over again while those training pretended to train and mostly watched, eyes burning holes in the back of her head. The vixen's vision had been bleary and her balance decidedly unsteady before the leopard had, at long, long last, let up on her. Tayna had never been so glad to slip into the blissful oblivion of sleep. Every muscle in her body ached as if it was no longer her own as darkness claimed her.

Reline kicked the bed, shaking the frame. Tayna barely flicked her ear. She couldn't find it in herself to care or even be annoyed. What was the point? If only she could close her eyes and wake up on the estate again.

"Get up!"

The wolf's words were pathetic even to Tayna's ears and she laughed, sheets rising a bit over her muzzle with the sudden expulsion of air.

Snarling, Reline grabbed the blanket and ripped it from the bed, hurling it away. Rather than bundling up and crumpling against the wall with the dramatic effect desired, it came to a sudden halt in midair, billowed out and floated serenely to the ground. Tayna shivered, eyes following its slow descent to the floor, Reline's back to the blanket she'd dismissed as soon as she'd torn it from Tayna's body. It moved as if controlled by an otherworldly force, too deliberate in its movement to be the result of a natural toss or draft. It spread out on the floor, the creases smoothing out. Tayna sighed, breasts rolling with the biggest breath she could manage. That was no good. The pulse point on the side of her head throbbed. It would get dirty.

The wolf scowled, throwing her a venomous look.

"Aren't you even going to do anything to that?"

Reline threw her paws up in the air and stormed around the bed. The flame in the lantern danced, spitting as it bobbed and touched the melted pool of wax encircling its tentative light. Rolling over, Tayna put her back to Reline but the wolf forced herself into her line of sight anyway, jabbing her finger into Tayna's face.

And something inside the vixen snapped. Sitting bolt upright, she opened her mouth, ready to verbally tear the wolf apart - foreign anger flaring up like wildfire - when the lantern shattered. The metal frame splintered off like needles of wood and the wax spluttered over the floor, wick dropping into liquid and fizzling out like a warrior's last breath. The level of light dropped suddenly in the room and Tayna blinked, fumbling for the edge of the bed as if she could anchor herself exactly where she was if she could curl her fingers around something.

Only one lantern at the far end of the dormitory remained, casting a dismal glow over the static trio. Tayna looked slowly between the wolf and the ox, who had his massive paw on his sword - drawn, of course - with her heartbeat slowly returning a normal pace.

For a moment, none of them spoke. Reline's breath came harshly in her chest, raking its way through her windpipe with every breath to draw a harsh wheeze from her lungs. Wenton grunted and shifted his bulk, clothing rubbing as he turned his blocky head to one side and then the other. He snorted wetly. Wax dripped off the lantern, a skeleton frame that was not even recognisable as a lantern rolling back and forth gratingly over the cold floor. It squeaked and dripped, the wick a stark, dark slash through near translucent liquid wax. There hadn't been that much left to burn.

"What was that?" Reline's voice wavered, a paw to her breast.

With the instance of excitement swiftly retreating, Tayna rolled her shoulders and slumped back in bed, tugging the blanket up under her chin.

"The lantern fell."

She closed her eyes.

"Must you make any more of it than that? There is no more. You probably knocked it over yourself with all your huffing and puffing. Leave me alone. Go play swords with the other pups in the training grounds. That's all you lot seem good for anyway."

Reline started, tail tucked down to her rump. Hurt flickered through her eyes, unseen by the vixen who had hers resolutely closed.

Tayna kept her eyes shut as she listened to the wolf shifting, straightening and brushing off imaginary dust from her jerkin.

"Wenton? I trust you can watch our guest while I take a visit to the training grounds?"

The ox shifted.

"I shall want to train myself."

The wolf snapped her fingers.

"After noonday meal. I shall return and take my shift if the wench refuses to move."

The door opened and closed and Tayna felt the absence of the wolf in her footsteps retreating down the corridor. She almost wished she had stayed but the Reline she knew was gone anyway. She may as well be alone for all it mattered.

Dropping to his knees, Wenton grumbled and muttered curses under his breath as he cleaned up the broken mess of a lantern, using the tips of his chunky fingertips, more like hooves than paws, to separate metal from wax. His ropey tail swatted the wall. Tayna turned away, dragging the blanket in close to her chest. It was all the comfort she was going to get.

As she drifted into a fitful sleep, she finally wondered how the blanket had gotten back on the bed. Yet she was already in the land of the dreaming and tossing and turning before the thought had fully formed. Upon waking, it would be gone like the dreams she both loathed and loved, an escape from a reality she feared.

She feared herself too.

*

Leaning against the palisades encircling the training grounds, Tayna shrugged and looked up at the sky. Grey with clouds, they roiled against one another. Sellanda claimed that the Church was mounting another attack, their hunting party having failed dismally. Tayna could only wonder why a hunting party had heavy artillery to begin with, but what did she actually know of skirmishes and warfare? More than she used to, that much was sure. In all honesty, she wasn't sure if it would be a bad thing if the Church got hold of her again after all. Perhaps then things would begin to make a bit more sense and she could piece together scraps of the puzzle, one by one.

"Hey, you."

Tayna turned her head slowly, pursing her lips at the tall, slender polecat. He had become something of a friend - or as close to a friend as she could possibly have in the godforsaken place. He smiled tentatively, tail thumping his thigh.

"Yes?"

He baulked at her frostiness but pressed on. He held out a wooden sword to her, a second buckler hanging loosely from his opposite forearm.

"Up for some practice?"

Tayna shook her head.

"Not today...thanks."

His expression dropped and she bit the inside of her cheek. Anything to stop her lips twisting in pity. She kept her expression as cool and as hard as stone. There was lead in her paws and the very thought of lifting a sword seemed beyond her reach.

Tayna rolled her shoulders. Sellanda suggested - during the course of their last 'meeting', each and every one of which the vixen was beginning to dread - that her weakness and lethargy was due to her separation from the Church. They muttered about finding a way to acquire more artefacts from her destroyed Church for the sole means of strengthening her but dismissed it as too dangerous. If that was the cause, it was something she would simply have to live with. She wasn't sure how she felt about that.

Yet Tayna would not show weakness, even to her sparring partner of the last few...days...weeks? She'd stopped putting her marks on the bedpost, losing track as life spun out of control around her. Why make a pretence that she controlled anything anymore? She'd rather be thought lazy, however, than expose any semblance of weakness.

No, that was hardly her way.

The polecat scratched his head, rounded ears twitching down closer to his brown-furred skull.

"All right," he rubbed his throat, taking a deep breath through his nose. "Didn't mean to bother."

Moseying off, he wandered in search of another sparring partner and Tayna's heart sank somewhere in the region of her hind paws. She really was a monster. She didn't even know his name. How could she even consider someone a friend when she didn't even know their name?

"Are you going to stand there all day?"

Reline tapped her boot and narrowed her eyes.

"Are you going to keep ogling me all day?" Tayna shot back.

"As long as you stand here, I'll be the one guarding you."

"Is that because you've abused Wenton's good nature over the past few days?"

Reline stepped back, paw on the pommel of a dagger strapped to her hip. Tayna wondered if her sword was with the smith being sharpened. She had never seen the wolf without it before. Regardless, she had been passing off more and more of her duties to Wenton wherever they involved Tayna - her disdain of the fox was impossible to not notice and, truth be told, other members of the Alliance were starting to talk, whispering behind the vixen's back. There was little she hated more than gossip.

"What do you mean by that?"

The wolf pried cautiously, folding her paws over her stomach as if she needed to link her fingers to keep her paws from doing something she regretted, fingers twitching constantly.

"What do you care?"

Reline scoffed.

"Not at all, though enough to make conversation rather than staring at the sky like a fool. Standing here doing nothing wears on me. I don't know how you can think to stand it."

"You get used to it."

The wolf shook her head and tossed a brown length of wood at the vixen. Without thinking, her arm flashed out to catch it and drew it in closer for examination. A simple, wooden staff, there was nothing special about it. The end wasn't even sharpened to a point and it could have just been a staff for one more aged in years to use to aid their walk.

"And what, pray tell, do you expect me to do with this?"

"I'd suggest you use it. And watch your language." The wolf's eyes narrowed to slits, tail stiff. "You know that isn't allowed here."

Tayna sighed. Slips of the tongue were all too common. A little expression such as praying - really, who would she pray to anyway? - were linked with the Church and, as everyone knew, the Church was the sworn enemy of the Alliance, determined to snuff them out forever. Tayna was sure that praying to a far less corrupt faction had existed before the Church but they had stolen the association nonetheless. It didn't make Reline any less annoying.

"Sparring?" Tayna rolled her eyes. "Why would I even want to spar with you?"

"Like talking, it beats standing around letting everyone get one up on me. I need to train."

Blunt and practical. That was a side of Reline that Tayna had never had the fortune to see seen on the estate. It made her different to the friend she remembered, a disassociation that she was occasionally thankful for.

Tayna didn't let her emotions cross her muzzle.

"If I spar with you, will you leave me alone?"

Reline considered, tilting her head thoughtfully to the side.

"I'll go practice on my own after I have a training partner for a while, if that's what you mean. You only make me grow bored of standing around here." She shifted her weight. "Don't you get bored?"

In all honesty, Tayna was bored, sick of seeing the same day over and over again with no change. And she always seemed to be breaking something or knocking something over - it was becoming annoying. Even in the communal dining hall where the entire Alliance present in the keep ate together every evening, she was especially prone to bumping clay plates off the long tables and sending them crashing to the floor. She sighed quietly. Others had even started blaming her even when she was nowhere near whatever had broken. How that made sense, the vixen would never know.

"If it'll get you to be quiet," Tayna conceded grudgingly. "I don't know why you'd want to spar with me anyway. You barely even look at me unless you have to."

Reline tensed, pausing with her sword held before her stomach as if halfway through executing a practice sweep.

"Didn't you just ask me..." Reline trailed off, shaking her head. "Doesn't matter. But that's not true, that I don't look at you."

Barking a laugh, Tayna levelled the staff and looked down the length, feeling its weight in her paw. It was a good size for her.

"Is too," she retorted childishly, eyeing Reline out of the corner of her eye.

The wolf held her sword at her side, tail twitching. If Tayna had not known better, she would have said the wolf was nervous.

"Is not."

There was the suggestion of a growl lacing Reline's tone.

"Is too."

Reline narrowed her eyes.

"I'm not playing this game with you. Let's get this over with."

Grabbing Tayna's shoulder, Reline propelled her forcefully to the bottom of the training pit. A well-timed jab to her ribcage ensured she kept moving even when she dug her heels into the dirt and Tayna cursed, words she would have been ashamed to utter slipping from her lips like water trickling down an incline. When had her language become so foul? Her mother would have been disappointed in her. Her heart twisted.

And then the wolf's paw was gone as Reline thrust her away and the vixen tottered, free arm flailing as she desperately tried to use the length of the staff for balance. Digging it into the dirt, she righted herself and scowled darkly at the wolf. Just what was her problem anyway?

"You could spar with anyone in the whole arena and you're dragging me out?" Tayna laughed incredulously, throwing her head back. "There really must be something wrong with you."

Reline's wooden sword swung and the vixen squealed, body reacting quicker than her mind to bring her staff up in the nick of time to block. Wood on wood rapped smartly through the arena and Tayna swore, blood beading on her lower lip where her teeth had caught it in her haste to prevent the strike. Her arms trembled with the force it took to hold the wolf back, Reline bearing her weight down on her weapon. A splinter dug into her paw.

The wolf disengaged fluidly, practice blade moving so swiftly that Tayna's eyes had a hard time keeping up. But her body seemed to know what to do even if her scared mind did not. Her palms sweated, gripping the staff, and she brought it up over her head with two paws as Reline dared a reckless overhead blow. Tayna broke away and countered seamlessly with a jab with the butt to the wolf's stomach - a blow that Reline easily blocked, clothing shifting to allow for her contracting muscles. Tayna flinched at a burst of envy. The wolf exuded raw physical strength.

It was funny to think of the Reline from the estate being as brawny as a male and Tayna huffed, expelling her giggle before it had the chance to twist into a laugh. Reline's shield smacked into her chin and she yowled like a wildcat, scrabbling free as she eyed the wolf. She licked her lips. Blood seeped from a crack in her lip. The wolf smiled grimly and pressed the attack. Tayna barely blocked in time, taking two steps back before she threw her weight against the hold, driving Reline's sword away with a vicious snarl that she could hardly believe came from her lips.

The wolf was hardly dissuaded. Growling like a demon, she leapt and smacked her shield into Tayna's staff, striving to knock it aside. The vixen swatted her aside like a fly but the wolf caught herself, spun and slid her sword up the inside of her staff as Tayna rapidly backpedalled. It was not enough, however, and the wolf caught her side with the blade, scoring a blow that, on the battlefield, would have sent her lifeblood spilling into the dirt.

The vixen scowled and darted forward, hooking her staff around Reline's sword to trap it at an angle. The wolf snarled as Tayna forced her away at a vicious angle, the vixen pushing in to close the distance between them, staff sliding along Reline's bicep. Reline's muzzle twisted with pain, eyes flashing, and Tayna grinned fiercely.

"If there's something wrong with me, then what does that say about you, Chosen?" Reline hissed, too quietly for anyone else to hear. "You should think about that."

Thrusting the vixen away, Reline spun sideways and slashed wildly at Tayna's side. The point of her sword, dulled as it was, nicked her jerkin and Tayna grunted as it dug into her ribs. The pain was fleeting and she twisted away, sliding her staff up the inside of Reline's sword to shove the wolf away. Her push sent the wolf reeling and she advanced swiftly, taking advantage of the moment to press her old friend relentlessly.

It was difficult to tell which of them had the upper paw but Tayna grew more and more confident with every blow, blocking so that Reline did not touch her again. The wolf, on the other paw, became slowly littered with bruises and moved more slowly, eyes burning with open hatred. Slipping into her stride, Tayna caught the wolf a cracking blow on the shoulder and sent her tumbling snout over paws on to her rump, tail crushed beneath her legs. The wolf snarled, upper lip curling back from her teeth before she caught herself.

Tayna circled, staff at the ready, balanced carefully between both paws. A smirk tickled at her lips but she pushed it down. It would only incite further anger. And there was no need for that, not really. Yet there was part of her that liked seeing the wolf sprawled in the dirt, scrabbling for her paws. Tayna sucked in a breath. She was good at this. Better than good.

Strength thrummed through her veins and something danced just beyond her reach, begging to be used. Her brow furrowed. What was it? Like a living force, another entity flowed through her, bringing life to her limbs like sustenance brought them strength.

There was no time to consider the notion further as Reline launched herself straight at her from a crouch, teeth bared in a savage yell that sounded more animalistic than wolf. Battering the vixen with a deluge of crude blows, Reline tried to overpower her with brute force - something that Tayna would have thought more befitting Wenton's style. Maybe the wolf was getting desperate.

Emboldened, Tayna met every block with surprising strength, her parries driving the wolf back and back and back until she was forced to retreat up the side of the pit, chest heaving for breath she couldn't catch. The vixen snapped her jaws, something she couldn't explain thrumming through her veins as she saw without seeing the air shimmering around her, her friend pulsing with an ever-changing aura that clung to her body like a second skin.

Darting and feinting like she had been doing it her whole life, Tayna drove the butt of the staff down on to the wolf's hind paw, dodged her subsequent jab and neatly brought the wooden pole up under her jaw. Knocking the wolf's head back, the vixen neatly swung the staff around and slammed it into her stomach, driving every scrap of air from the wolf's lungs. Bent over double, Reline dropped her sword and gasped for breath, waving her off. Tayna's lips broke into a smile. Was that what victory felt like?

Slowly, the wolf straightened, lips twisting in an expression that Tayna could not discern. Disgust? Derision? Regret? She took a step back and readied her staff, just in case.

"Hm, not bad," Reline conceded, inclining her head. "You fight hard. Like your life depends on it. You don't pull your blows either. A lot started off doing that with me."

"Only started off doing it?"

"Well..." Reline flashed her a sudden grin, muzzle brightening like a sunbeam through the clouds. "A few broken bones on their part taught them the lessons that needed to be learned, you could say."

The smile softened her muzzle and, for a moment, Tayna found herself returning it, just as she had in days not so long gone. Just as quickly as it had appeared, her grin was gone and the wolf tucked her hair neatly back behind her ears.

"You're strong - very strong." Reline looked her up and down. "Keep practising. I'm going to start drilling you going forward. So, I'm sorry to say, you're going to have me watching you more."

Her lips twitched as if she was trying not to smirk.

"A lot more."

Tayna's jaw dropped.

"What?"

"You heard me. We need fighters like you. Sellanda said so."

She made a face as if it pained her to admit the truth.

"Take a go with Tier here." Reline pointed across the arena to a slim leopard that looked as if the faintest gust of wind may knock him off his paws. "He's stronger than he looks. And quick. He should be a good one to learn with. At least for now."

A shadow crossed the wolf's muzzle as if she was doubting herself but Tayna ignored it in favour of anger.

"Why would I want to waste my time sparring even more?" She snapped, ears back. "I've done one bout with you. That was the deal."

"Yes, and I am leaving you be," Reline shot back. "Now go train. I'll be watching."

As usual... Tayna growled mentally, kicking a stone viciously with the toe of her boot. So much for making a god damned deal.

_ _

The leopard stared from halfway up the training pit's slope and she sighed, rolling her shoulders as she trudged heavily to meet him. The quicker she got it over with, the quicker she could get the hell out of there. A nap sounded nice. She felt she needed more and more naps these days.

"Hey." She grunted. "I'm to train with you."

He licked his lips, eyes wide.

"You want to train...with me?"

"Have to, have to train," she corrected him. "I don't want to train with anyone. You just happen to be nearest."

She tossed her staff aside, keen to have something of an excuse to rid herself of the accursed thing and barrel towards an end to the training grounds for the day. Or a week. If she faked an injury, would they let her off practice for a time? She doubted it. And a sword would do her better if that was what was also in his paw. There were plenty of them about and she hefted one from a barrel of weapons, testing the weight of it in her paw.

She was ready.

The leopard scrabbled to ready himself, hind paws still shifting into a fighting stance as she launched her attack. Best to get it over with. Swinging her sword over her head with what she thought was a particularly fearsome battle cry, she brought it down as if to crack the poor leopard over the skull. He barely got his steel broadsword - dulled like hers, she was grateful to see - up in time to block the hit and stumbled back on to his rump with a grunt and flick of his tail. Tail crumpled beneath his buttocks, he leapt back to his paws and covered his body with an oversized shield, paw trembling so badly that it rattled against his sword. Tayna's heart softened with pity. He didn't want to be there either. Her lips hardened into a thin, tight line. Who would?

The cat yowled, fur standing up in on the back of his neck, which the vixen could only think of as cute, not scary. She tried not to smile as he charged at her, sword questing from left to right as if he could smite her if only he searched hard enough for her sinewy form. But the feline forgot to consider that she would defend herself and Tayna had plenty of time during which to raise her weapon in return.

Only, as she went to lightly block the leopard's pretence of an attack, something changed in Tayna. The world around her seemed to slow down, although she didn't feel an ounce of daring pumping through her veins, triggering that fight or flight instinct. She was simply blocking a rather feeble attack. Yet something she could not describe, tingling like lightning down her arm into her fingertips, rose excitedly to her touch. It clenched her fingers more firmly around her blade's pommel and, despite the steel blade that was her opposition, a sense of surety flooded her senses.

She had him. She had something the leopard didn't. The vixen chuffed a laugh, not knowing quite where that thought came from. Either way, she had her foe of the moment exactly where she wanted him.

The leopard flailed as if slowed down and she countered instead of blocking, body moving without mental will or direction. Bringing her sword back down over her left hip, her lips parted as she powered into the block, swinging it up and up to the leopard's blade. It collided in exactly the spot she intended and her dark lips curled into a self-satisfied smirk.

She had expected to throw him back a pace, staggering and annoyed. Tayna did not expect to see the leopard's hind paws leave the ground as he flew backwards across the pit, whiskers fluttering in the breeze of his own body as it forced passage through the air.

He landed with a bodily thump in the dirt and moaned, rolling his head back. Dust settled around his rounded ears and the feline dropped the pommel of his sword. The blade had already dropped to the ground some distance away, completely sheared from the pommel as if separated with an iron hot rod in the blacksmith's shed. Panting, the leopard's jaw hung loosely, showing a flash of needy, pink maw as innocent as the inside of an infant's bawling mouth.

The vixen stared. She shouldn't have been able to do that. She should never have been able to knock the feline back halfway across the pit. She flexed her paw, something like adrenaline but not quite pulsing through her veins. Part of her wanted to advance - to make sure the leopard really had been defeated. As the thought of stamping on his chest to truly seal his defeat crossed her mind, the vixen reeled even as part of her mind sung, thirsty for bloodshed.

Wiping a drop of blood from the corner of his muzzle, the leopard gaped at her. His head rolled from side to side as if he was having trouble supporting the weight of it upon his neck. The vixen shook herself, forcing down the part of herself that yearned to close her paws around that skinny neck and squeeze.

Taking a deep breath, she calmed herself, rolling her shoulders back and cracking out the stiffness from her neck until the feeling of being off-balance teetered from her grasp. It disappeared slowly, sluggishly, as if it wanted to remain within reach and she groaned as exhaustion seeped back into her limbs, weighing them down after her sudden feat of strength. It seemed like it had taken all of her energy to send him flying, even if it had never been her intention to begin with. And she had the inkling of an idea where it had come from...

Tayna shook her head. It was too much to take in. Not all at once.

The leopard stared at her with a slack jaw and Tayna flinched to see other members of the Alliance ogling her as if she had sprouted a second head. The vixen's mind raced. She had to act quickly! What if they asked her questions? What was it? Her stomach chilled. What if they wanted her to do more for the Alliance?

Swallowing hard, Tayna carefully brushed off her trousers and affected a nonchalant air. She eyed the feline with moderated disdain, looking him up and down.

"Is that the best you can do?" She said scornfully. "And they said I was an extra mouth to feed. What does that make you?"

His ears drooped and he sullenly collected his blade, tail hanging so low that the fluffy tip dragged in the dirt. Guilt seared through her veins, as red hot as a poker straight from the heart of a fire in the hearth of a noble's home, but she brushed it aside and shoved it down deep. It would creep into her dreams when she closed her eyes, twisting and curdling into the viciously vile. Her fingers tingled and she surreptitiously clenched and unclenched one paw as the hairs on the back of her neck raised and flattened themselves of their own accord.

No, she just had to get the leopard to go away - that was all that mattered. She swallowed her guilt and forced her lips into a mocking smile, eyes as hard and as cruel as she could make them. She tried to imagine that the leopard's ineptitude amused her, as sickening as the notion of finding such a thing funny was. He was pretty good, as a matter of face, she had to say.

Walking to the palisade, Tayna snatched up a drink of water, cradled in a clay pot, and gulped it down, water trickling down her chin. There was dust in the pot but she didn't care - thirst ruled her and every gulp felt better than the last, sliding smoothly down her throat. Putting the bowl aside, she squatted down and scratched her nails lightly through the dirt, drawing furrows as if she was making lines in the soil ploughing the fields once again. That was a simpler time.

Glancing back, she sighed to see the leopard skulking off with his tail between his legs, ears splayed sadly. She hoped he'd find someone a little more forgiving to practice with next time - there was nothing bad in the skinny feline, not at all. Or perhaps just someone without something to hide would do the trick. Tayna's stomach twisted itself into knots and she rubbed it with the flat of her paw as if she could soothe the unease away. It was no use.

One thing was certain. These powers they said she'd had... Tayna opened and closed her paw, sensing something - she couldn't put a name to it yet - throbbing just below the surface. Like blood, the life energy of the physical being, there was something more in her.

If she hadn't been sure that she had lost five years of her life as one of the Chosen, she was sure now. Spreading her fingers wide, she poured the force within her into the dirt, digging deep and finding a tiny seed of life that had, somehow, been forgotten. It flared into her touch, searing past dead soil, and she flooded it with everything she had stored up. Although her wielding felt clumsy and untrained, much like the first time she'd taken a dagger in paw at the keep, it flowed seamlessly into the minute seed, quickening the very beginning of life.

And, before her eyes, the seed pulsed and a green shoot sprouted through the dirt, growing and unfurled three perfectly formed leaves. A bud grew at the tip of the shoot with a faint tinge of yellow around the tightly furled petals and it blossomed beautifully, purple petals flickering up to the light, hungry for sustenance. Tayna stared down at it, frozen into a crouch despite the aching of her knees and dirt smeared across her muzzle.

A daisy. She had made a daisy grow.

Something warmed in her chest that she had not wanted to acknowledge and, with the sprouting and blooming of that little daisy, the day seemed just that little bit brighter. The vixen stared at her paw, curling and uncurling her fingers as if she would uncover some implement that would explain the flower's sudden arrival. But no, there was no explanation that could be denoted other than the use of what so many feared... The vixen licked her lips, afraid to even think the word.

Magic.

That thing of certainty? Tayna smiled and picked the flower, tucking it into the collar of her borrowed jerkin where the petals could tickle her cheek. Her powers had not been lost at all in her separation from the Church. Oh no. They were very much alive and kicking. Her mind spun and she giggled, a tiny burble of insanity breaking her lips. She didn't even care if anyone was watching.

Maybe she had a chance at escape after all.