Recompense and Rebirth

It was time for a break.

Renata seated herself on a fallen log at the edge of what she might have, on her more charitable days, called a creek. She set her backpack and collection bag down against the log and wiped the sweat from her brow; she couldn’t see the sun for the canopy, but it was probably somewhere around midday, judging from the heat and her stomach’s complaints. The shade was welcome, even if the claustrophobic density of the trees that produced it made for slow progress.

Assuming it was midday, she’d been at it for six hours, more or less, and she was starting to feel it. Not that she wasn’t going to come away with something for her troubles: her packs were full of plants she could turn out on the market, whether by selling them whole or using them as ingredients in more legally questionable preparations. This whole forest was a gold mine, full to the brim with unplucked profit.

She drew a simple lunch of cheese, some dried meat, and an apple from her backpack, and let herself relax for the first time since she had crossed the border into the forest. She had been, if she were honest with herself, concerned that she might have stumbled across a patrol or some other manifestation of the forest’s prohibited nature; the first two hours she spent creeping cautiously through the brush, mindful of making any noise that might have drawn attention to her. But by the time she sun had climbed into the sky, she realized that she wouldn’t find anyone here. Judging from the trackless wild in which she was currently enveloped, she was the first human to have stepped foot here in decades.

It served to confirm her earliest suspicions that all of the superstition was just that. The Reserve—only one of its many names, depending on who you were talking to, but the one most commonly used in polite conversation—loomed large in the imaginations of the sheltered city-dwellers who lived on its borders. Laborers and peasants feared the ravenous monsters who lived within, the Temple proclaimed it a holy place upon which human feet might not tread, and more pragmatically—but no less emphatically—the Consulate officially regarded it as a nature reserve forbidden to entry by anyone not in high office under any circumstances.

Penalties were steep: imprisonment or execution awaited anyone who defied the laws of gods and men, and no one would want to speak with anyone tainted by association with the place. So fearful of it were they that over the last forty years no one had even opposed the encroachment of the forest as it swallowed up farmland; farmers simply gave up and moved rather than place themselves in a position of having to cut back forest growth. It was nearly to the walls of the city, now.

In six hours, however, she hadn’t seen any indication of monsters. No god had struck her down. And no soldiers from the Consulate had stepped from behind a tree to drag her off to the chopping block. The only risk she ran would be being spotted while sneaking back into the city with her haul. And that, ultimately, was no different from the risk of being spotted doing any other form of smuggling.

She glanced down at the sack of materials she’d gathered so far. It was a risk, though, and she had to consider it carefully. If she were caught smuggling in the canals, she might lose a hand; here, she could lose her head. As richly appointed as this forest was, she wasn’t sure if she would do more than a couple of runs when the time was right. Besides, on top of everything else, the hiking was exhausting.

She polished off her lunch and knelt at the edge of the creek to refill her canteen. The water was refreshingly cold, and after topping off, she bent down to splash it over her face. After washing away the sweat and grime, she let herself drip over the edge of the creek as the ripples faded. Dappled light reflected her in the water: lean and lithe, with wide hips and a modestly small bust, and a plain face spackled with freckles. She topped it with burnished copper hair that she’d crudely chopped away into something like a pixie cut. It was a good look for someone in her line of work, especially a woman: straightforward, no-nonsense, not easily flustered. Tough.

As she was rubbing at a spot of dirt on her cheek, something caught her attention out of the corner of her eye. In the creek’s reflection, tucked away behind a low bush among the roots of a tree, she caught sight of a tiny, pale blue flower clinging to a vine. She wouldn’t have seen it but for the reflection in the water.

“Well, hello there,” she crooned. “How much are you worth?” She reached around behind the bush and plucked the tiny flower to hold up to the light. It had an almost iridescent hue, catching the light as though it were covered in a million tiny scales. She examined the interior: eight stamens, and a delicately wrapped pistil like a bulb. Each of the stamens was dusted with pale bluish-white pollen. It looked familiar, though she couldn’t quite place it. Tiny flowering vine, sparkling flower, blue pollen… wait.

She abruptly rose and dragged the bush back from the roots of the tree; it was tough work, but soon she peeled away the concealing layer of foliage to reveal a branching vine curled around the roots of the tree, tucked into nearly every crevice, and studded with similar little blue flowers. It struck her, then. She had only ever seen it in an illustration in some old dusty botanical she’d borrowed a while back, but there was no doubt in her mind that she was looking at a creeping star vine.

There ought to have been doubt. She had never seen a live one; she could not even definitively say she knew anyone who had ever seen a live one. They were supposed to be native to the miserable, sodden Oskan jungles to the south. Not only were they rare even there, the Oskans were not a generous or trusting people, and more than one entrepreneurial explorer had lost his life or his fortune trying to bring these plants back across the mountains. Almost all imports were dried, or already ground to powder. The pollen was supposedly—in the right doses and with the right ingredients—a hallucinogen so powerful as to enable someone to see the future.

Naturally, it was one of the most expensive things she’d ever laid hands on. And here there were living examples, dozens of little flowers, fresh and ripe for picking. She realized she had forgotten to breathe; she exhaled, and it came out somewhere halfway between a whoop and a laugh. This was the gold mine. And it had been sitting under their noses for all these years!

She splashed her hands in the creek, careful to wash off any of the pollen that might have stuck to them, then unrolled a fresh patch of canvas from her packs. One by one, the flowers piled up; in her exuberation, she had to remind herself not to take all of them. This would be her little garden. Even with only half of them plucked, these flowers alone would be enough to keep her fed, warm, and clothed for months, if not years. If she managed to cultivate this little patch of vines, she might eventually rival the consuls in wealth.

As she tucked her new treasure away into her packs, another thought occurred to her: if there was a patch of these vines here, could there be more nearby? The very thought made her heart skip a beat. If she played this right, she could be the richest person in a thousand miles in the space of a few years. She sprung down the creek, splashing heedlessly, and found the next likely spot, where a bush shaded tree roots from all but a trickle of light. A bubbling laugh escaped her when the pulled it back to find more of the priceless flowers. This place was better than a gold mine!

In the midst of her joyous celebration, a broad, dark shadow passed overhead, and she quieted abruptly to scan the canopy. She hadn’t seen any large animals since she’d entered the forest, except for a single deer—or what she thought was a deer—at great distance through the leaves. Whatever that was just then, it must have been above the canopy. A cloud, maybe. But did clouds move that fast?

She didn’t believe in monsters infesting the forest, but there was no reason to think there might not be predators somewhere out there. Maybe she had been a little too exuberant, and spooked something, or drew its attention. In which case, it might be good for her to take what she had and head back. She noticed, as she returned to where she’d dropped her bags, that the background sounds of the forest had stopped; the bird calls that had been ubiquitous since the sun rose were now conspicuously silent. It did seem like a good time to go home? She didn’t need to stay, anyway; she had enough for a long time, and even if she did bring back more of the flowers, she wouldn’t be able to sell them all at once without attracting attention. With a final glance at the canopy, she turned back to retrace her steps out of the forest and back to the relative safety of the city.

* * *

“Not that I would be so impolite as to accuse you of exaggerating,” Velius said, leaning back in his chair, “but you do have a habit of certain grandiose trains of thought.” He sipped at his beer, lifted his eyebrows at her across the table.

Renata leaned forward, elbows on the table. There was really no need to lower her voice; the tavern was loud and boisterous and full of shouts and laughter and the occasional impromptu fistfight, and no one else was paying so much as a lick of attention to either of them. Velius was dressed in common laborer’s clothing, and wore his carefree slouch so convincingly that she would never have been able to identify him as someone from the Consulate if she didn’t recognize his face on sight. He even managed to make his trimmed black hair look tousled and unkempt. He was one of the best actors she’d ever met, and she was glad he was on her side.

“I wouldn’t have contacted you if I didn’t have something to show for it.” She slid a small cloth pouch across the table.

With one hand, Velius picked it open, revealing three small creeping star flowers. They had begun to dry out in the days since she picked them, but they maintained their luster. At first, Velius didn’t seem to recognize them, but as realization dawned upon him, he sat up straight and leaned in, inspecting the flowers closely. “These are—where did you get these?”

Renata blinked. “Does it matter?”

“Normally, no. But you know full well what these are. I’m happy to help you, Renata, but I’m not going to cause a trade incident with the Oskans, and I’m certainly not going to put my hands on these if they’re stolen. They’re already of questionable legality.”

She shook her head. “They’re not stolen. And they didn’t come from Osk.”

“I find that hard to believe. Where did they come from, then?”

She did pause here to check around her. No one was watching, and probably no one was listening, either. Still, even for someone as unsuperstitious as her, the thought of openly speaking the place’s name made her uneasy. She’d rather not anyone know but her, for practical as well as social reasons. “They came from… ah, a place where nobody is supposed to go, let’s say.”

A moment of blank incomprehension was followed by abrupt alarm. “What?” Velius hissed. “Are you stupid? What if someone saw you?”

Renata sighed. Velius was a good broker, but sometimes she thought he was a little too solicitous for her well-being. She didn’t need another father, especially not one from the Consulate. “Don’t be ridiculous. No one saw me. And if they did, I wouldn’t be here right now anyway.”

Velius struggled to replace his mask of nonchalance. “Yes, that’s true enough. Listen, Renata, this is a very dangerous fire to be playing with. If anyone even thinks you’re sneaking out… there, you’d be strung up before the night was out.” He paused, licked his lips. “You didn’t… see anything unusual while you were out there, did you?”

“Unusual?” Renata thought back to the overhead shadow. Technically, she hadn’t seen anything. “Like monsters, or patrols? No. Just a lot of plants everywhere, and then these.”

He watched her face carefully for a few seconds, then nodded. “I don’t believe in monsters, and we don’t send patrols over the wall. But gods alone know what dangers are out there.”

“I know how to handle danger.”

“I won’t be able to help you if something happens,” he insisted.

“I wouldn’t be going back every night. It’s not like we can sell these more than one or two at a time, anyway. We pick them up in batches every so often and dole them out over a few weeks or months. That’s better than running canals every night. I think it’s less risky.”

Velius shook his head firmly. “I can’t support this idea. You don’t need to buy into the superstition to know that they will kill you if anyone sees you on the other side of that wall.”

Renata exhaled, exasperated. “Is this some sudden attack of conscience?”

“Please, you know me better than that. I couldn’t care less about that law. But even with my title, I’m not in a position to change it, or to do anything on behalf of anyone who breaks it, and frankly I’d rather not be associated in any way with someone who was caught breaking it. Trust me on this. You may think it’s nonsense, but the Consulate is deadly serious about it.”

“It is nonsense.”

“Nonsense that kills you still leaves you dead. Listen.” He nudged the flowers back across the table, and folded his hands in front of him. “I’ll help you move these, and whatever else you got from that trip. We’ll do it slowly. But after that, I’m not touching anything you take from there. Period.”

He was so stubborn! But if he was going to help her sell her last haul, that would give her a few months to find an alternate route. Another broker with less compunction, perhaps. She might even find a way to make contacts with clients directly, with enough coin at her disposal. “All right. You win.”

“Don’t be like that. This will bring you more money in a few months than most patricians make in a year. Your biggest problem will be finding a place to keep it.”

She nodded, wrapped up her package, and tucked it back into the sack at her hip. “You’re right.”

“I’m glad you agree. And, speaking as a friend, and not as your broker, I strongly recommend you drop any ideas of going back. It’s only going to end in tears.”

“Sure, Velius. I appreciate you looking out for me so much.”

“You make life more interesting. Just remember that there’s such a thing as too interesting.” He leaned back again with a smile, and lifted up his mug in a mock toast. “To my reckless friend’s wealth.”

She smiled in return. “May it ever increase.”

* * *

It took Velius two weeks to find a buyer for the first set of creeping star flowers. They had already sold the remainder of her haul, and while that was enough to keep her going for a couple more weeks, she was restless to see the proceeds from the real jewels of her collection. When the time for the deal finally arrived, she discovered that their client was a wizened—but wealthy—old man who claimed to want three of the flowers for experiments into potions to restore youth and virility

She couldn’t care less what he wanted them for: he was offering three times the amount that she thought she would get for them, on account of their relative freshness and the accumulation of pollen within them. What she offered was far better than anything he’d ever been able to source from Osk; it was then that she realized that her discovery was even more valuable than she’d imagined. She tried very hard not to giggle and laugh as she made the trade—it was the single largest amount of money she’d ever received at once in her life. And it wasn’t even all of the plants in her stock.

After the deal was done, Velius took his cut. She took a small amount for immediate expenses, and let him hold the rest—she had nowhere she’d trust to store that much money at once. That would change very soon, as soon as she bought herself a nice estate with a vault, and guards… but that would happen one step at a time.

They parted ways, and she returned to the tiny apartment she used as little more than a place to sleep and change between runs. She didn’t even hesitate; still giddy with the tremendous amount of money she had made, she geared herself for another hiking trip. Velius didn’t know how many flowers she had in reserve; she could go and gather up another batch and claim they all came from her first visit. What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him, and it would help both of them in the long run, wouldn’t it?

The moon was still high in the sky as she slipped over the city walls. She disappeared into the forest silently, and began to pick her way through the brush back toward the creek that bore her treasures. It was to the northeast, if she recalled—but she had to be careful to orient herself, unable to navigate by the light of the sun. She realized, a few minutes after creeping through the vines and bushes, that the lack of sunlight would prove troublesome in more ways than one: the forest was dark, and what slivers of moonlight filtered down through the high canopy barely even silhouetted the trees around her.

The darkness was oppressive. Superstitious or not, she grew increasingly uneasy the further she hiked. If she hadn’t been assured of a lifetime of luxury, she would have had second thoughts about continuing to pick her way among the trees. No birds called in the night, no small animals startled at her approach. Only the light breeze rustled the leaves around her, a looping refrain that crowded in at the edges of her awareness.

After what seemed like a good hour of walking, she stopped to lean against a tree. She had been going in a mostly straight line since she entered, which meant she should be getting very close to the creek. But she heard no burble of water over the whispering wind. Her stomach turned uneasily. Was she lost? Did she turn somewhere, and not realize it? Was the creek further ahead, or had she somehow passed it already? The night’s earlier exhilaration was fading, replaced by a creeping sense of dread.

She hadn’t handled this properly. She ought to have marked her path with string or markers on the trees. She’d even brought a knife to cut through troublesome brush, but she hadn’t thought to carve anything into the trunks as she’d passed. She had been irrationally certain that it would just be a quick, effortless jaunt. And now here she was in the middle of the forest at midnight with no clear trail.

It wasn’t the end of the world, she reminded herself calmly. She’d brought some food with her, and in the absolute worst case scenario she would simply find a place to sit and be bored for a few hours before the sun rose and let her find her way again. The darkness was just darkness. There were no monsters, and if the gods had seen fit to let her come this far, they weren’t going to bother with her either.

She wasn’t quite ready to give up yet, though. She’d go a little further. She focused on her hearing, hoping to catch the sound of the stream over the wind. Her eyes were virtually useless, anyway; about the only thing they were good for right now was making sure she didn’t run straight into a tree. Supposedly, the flowers of the creeping star vines sparkled in the moonlight. She was certain they’d stand out when she came upon them.

She hadn’t gone far before she thought she heard something not too far away, low, and under the brush. She froze, heart skipping a beat. Was it an animal? Was she being followed? She held her breath for a full minute, straining her ears. Just wind. She crept forward one step, another, another, and—there! Barely audible, the sound of shallow water rippling over rocks.

All at once, she heaved a great sigh. She found it. Relief flooded her, and she pushed her way through the brush with renewed ardor. A glint of moonlight soon caught the surface of the water, and nearby, tiny pinpricks of pale light lay scattered around the roots of the trees. She shrugged her backpack off next to one of them and began collecting her find. Notwithstanding her relief, she didn’t want to remain out here any longer than was necessary; the dark and silent night had rattled her, and she would be happy to be back in a nice, small, enclosed apartment safe behind the city walls.

As she was gathering, the brush rattled in the distance; she froze, again, listening. The wind. Nerves. This place really was getting to her. She returned to her task with more urgency, clearing the roots of her tree and wrapping up her gathered flowers to return to her backpack. She stood to carry it to the next tree, when the rattle came again, closer this time. Her heart was racing. She hurried to the next tree. She’d get these and then leave. That was it for one night.

The snap of a branch was as loud as a whipcrack in the relative silence. She bolted to her feet and whirled to confront the fathomless darkness. Her right hand clenched around the handle of her knife, sheathed at her hip. As if it would do her any good. “Who’s there?” A stupid thing to say. She shouldn’t have said anything.

There was no reply. There was nothing for miserably long seconds, as her heart beat a staccato rhythm against her ribcage and her breath held fast in her throat. Silence. Stillness. She decided now was a good time to leave, never mind the flowers.

She was reaching for her backpack when it leapt from the darkness, a deeper darker shadow swallowing the silhouettes of the trees behind it. It brought no cries, but branches snapped and bushes shook violently as it tore them aside. She didn’t know what it was, but it was big. She shrieked, dropped her pack, and ran.

In broad daylight, she’d have had a hard time running through this forest. Vines hung from branches, snapped at her head and shoulders like whips as she barreled blindly through them. Bushes beat at her legs and thighs, and the ground was littered with rocks and twisted, exposed roots that threatened to trip her with every step. And there was no straight path for her to run through the trees—every ten feet she nearly collided with one.

Behind her, the thing gave chase. It made no sound, but she could hear it crashing through the obstacles that were perpetually slowing her. There was no possible way she could outrun it like this. But she couldn’t stop, either. She could only push herself. She had endurance, at least. But she couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, and every other step forced her to change direction or duck around some new obstacle. In her panic, she slammed her right shoulder against a tree as she rounded it; the impact send a numbing chill down her arm, and she staggered around the trunk to try to place it between her and her pursuer.

In seconds it burst around the tree; one limb dug into the bark just above her head, lethal talons raking deep gouges into the tree and sending shattered fragments of bark cascading around her shoulders. Another darkness billowed, spread behind it with a snap like a flag being unfurled. Wings? With her left hand, she fumbled her knife from its sheath and lashed out in front of her just as the monstrosity lunged forward.

An ear-splitting shriek, like the keening of the largest eagle she’d ever heard, ripped through the air. The thing recoiled backward, falling away from the tree; its violent thrashing wrenched the knife from her hand and sent it clattering somewhere into the underbrush. She turned and ran. Behind her, the thing howled and writhed on the ground.

She made good distance before it recovered. And it was injured, now. Maybe she could keep ahead of it. Maybe it would give up the chase, even. Her hopes were soon dashed when she heard it sprinting behind her once more. A subtle, rhythmic, animal keening sound had replaced its earlier silence, low and intense; had she done nothing more than anger it? Her stomach sank. But she couldn’t stop. She didn’t have time to do anything but run. And maybe its wound would slow it down.

The point soon became moot. Her toe caught in a stiff vine laid across her path, and all of the sudden she was pitching forward at breakneck pace. The impact knocked the wind out of her, made even the silhouettes in her vision blurry and doubled. Panicked, she tried to push herself to her feet, but she got no further than her knees before a great weight bore into her from the side and threw her onto her back.

The pursuing beast loomed over her. Through bleary eyes, all she could make out was the profile of something quadrupedal, with enormous wings stretched to either side to black out what little moonlight she was able to see. One heavy forelimb slammed her left shoulder into the ground, pinning her, and it reared up, an angel of death preparing to strike. She saw something like a beak part—caught something like a gleam of savage intent in dark eyes reflecting the moonlight. It was over.

“Anu! Baktha aneru a’da!”

The beast recoiled, jerked its attention away from her to somewhere behind her. It emitted a sharp, harsh cawing sound followed by a growl. And then, as the sound of footsteps came from somewhere behind her, the thing released her and leapt away into the darkness without further sign.

She could scarcely believe what had just happened. She had been within an eyeblink of being ripped apart. But the monster was gone, and someone was approaching swiftly. She didn’t recognize the words, but she’d have known the voice anywhere.

“Velius,” she croaked. She rolled herself onto her hands and knees and tried to push herself to her feet. Her limbs were shaking, and her right ankle wouldn’t hold her weight; she collapsed forward the moment she tried to stand. The pain in her ankle nearly made her black out, and she bit back a sob.

Velius caught her, lowered her to the ground as he knelt beside her. “Hush. Relax. You’re fine.”

She reached up to clutch at his shirt. She had never been so happy to see anyone in her entire life. “It almost killed me. Thank you.”

He shook his head. “Stubborn, stupid woman. What did I tell you?”

Despite the screaming pain, she laughed raggedly. “You were right. I was stupid. I’m sorry.”

Velius shifted his position, reaching down to draw something from his belt. “Me too, Renata.”

The sudden sadness in his tone made her heart skip. “What are you talking about?” She tried to focus on his face, saw him lift his hand above her. Something thin and metallic glinted in the moonlight there. A needle. “Velius?” She tightened her grip on his shirt as fresh panic set in.

“Hush. It’ll be all right.” The scratch against her neck was brief and light.

“What—“ Already her vision was spinning. Light-headed. Her limbs felt sluggish; her grip on his shirt slackened, fell. He’d betrayed her. She trusted him. And this was her reward. “Vel…” She could not finish before a darkness deeper than the night fell upon her and cast her into oblivion.

* * *

Her first sensation was something cold and hard against her shoulder. Next was a dull, pulsing pain in her head. Heaviness in her chest. She could breathe, but each breath felt like it took too much effort. Her shoulder ached, pinned between her body and that unyielding surface. It slowly dawned on her that she was lying on her side, on top of her right arm. She tried to move, found her limbs stiff and barely responsive. The most she could manage was to tumble onto her back, where the hard, rough ground met her. Stone? The movement birthed a wave of nausea.

She was alive. In a miserable state, but alive. Her last moments before losing consciousness were dim and distant—she wasn’t sure where she was, how she ended up here. Where was here? She flailed about for memories. What had happened? What was she doing? Something went wrong. She tried to open her eyes, found them heavy, sluggish. Vision was bleary. But the night sky was clearly visible to her through what narrow slits she did manage, bright clear stars and a full moon looking down on her through a clear sky.

Night. She was… out at night. Looking for something. Running. Chased. Some monstrosity. Her stomach turned as the memories filtered back to her waking mind. It had almost caught her, whatever it was. And then—Velius.

Velius. He was the one who had done this. Was he? She tried to say something, call for somebody, but the only noise that came out was a croak.

She heard voices, then movement. Someone touched her shoulders, her back, hefted her into a seated position. A canteen was pressed to her lips, and she drank greedily and carelessly. The water was warm and bitter, but it quenched her thirst. Dribbles of the water splashed down her chin and across her breasts, and only then did she realize that she was naked.

“What—“ she managed, as soon as the canteen withdrew, only to be silenced by a pair of fingers upon her lips.

“Be still now.” It was a woman’s voice, calm and comforting. The hands moved to lay her down again, and she protested feebly. She tried to lift her own hands to push, but something rough caught her at her wrists. She pulled, and they would not move. She was bound with rope. Her pulse quickened. She quickly discovered that her ankles were bound, too, and her knees, and that all three were tied together just tightly enough to keep her in a loose fetal position. There was no way she could wrestle her way out of this in her current state.

Even that much movement made her head spin, and soon she grew still. There were more people around her, blurry figures illuminated by torches that lined the edge of this clearing. The ground beneath her was smooth, hard stone, but in the distance she could still see the silhouettes of tall trees ringing her on all sides. The woman who had attended to her rose to her feet, and Renata shifted her attention to her.

Her eyes had cleared enough now that she could make out the details of the woman’s clothing—not that there was much of it. A corded belt suspended a gauzy skirt that stretched almost to the ground, but which bore such high leg-slits that its purpose could not have been to preserve modesty. The woman’s breasts were barely covered at all, wrapped in little more than a narrow strip of cloth that served more as support than anything else.

But what truly caught Renata’s attention was the elaborate mask the woman wore. Shaped to look like the head of an eagle, and ringed with trains of dangling beads and feathers, the mask covered her entire face but for her eyes. A great cascading trail of feathers extended from the top of the mask down the woman’s back, spreading out like a loose and billowy cape that fluttered in the breeze. She could not know the purpose of the mask, but she soon realized that everyone who surrounded her—all women—wore one very similar to it.

“Where am I? Who are you?” Her question was quiet but clear. There must have been something in the water; she could feel her stomach settling and her strength returning. It was something to be grateful for, even if her nakedness and bindings were not.

“Soon,” the woman promised, and left.

No one else approached, but many heads were turned in her direction, and the murmurs of subdued conversation made her keenly aware of just how much attention was focused on her there. Heat rose into her cheeks and neck—less from her nakedness and more from the ignoble and humiliating circumstances in which she was so exposed. There were at least two dozen of them gathered in small groups around the clearing, watching her.

She tried not to think about them, and craned her head to survey the rest of the area. The clearing was a rough circle maybe twenty or thirty feet across. Flat paved stone ringed the outer edge, with a square dais raised in the middle. Atop the dais stood a squat, rectangular slab of rough stone. Torches burned in tall, raised stands erected at regular intervals along the perimeter, and again at the four corners of the dais. She herself lay at the foot of the wide staircase that led to the top. It looked like nothing so much as a rough-hewn, open-air version of the chapels in the city, with an altar as its centerpiece. The thought was not comforting.

By now the pain in her limbs had subsided, replaced with an unusual tingling sensation that washed up and down her in waves. There had definitely been something in the water. She tested her bonds again, but while her strength had returned in part, she was bound too securely to wrest herself free. And even if she could, she would have to find a way to evade over two dozen strange women in bird masks—and then make her escape from a completely unknown location.

“Hey!” she called. “Hey, what’s going on?” The murmurs rose, more heads turned toward her, but no one approached or answered. “Hey, don’t ignore me! What in the hell are you up to?”

“So impatient,” came a voice from behind her. She shifted herself on the ground and craned her head up to see the woman from before—at least she thought it was the woman from before. And next to her, wearing a long tan robe and draped with a cloak of feathers, stood Velius.

“Velius!” Renata’s mouth fell open, then her face bent into a snarl. “You son of a bitch! You dragged me here, didn’t you? I trusted you!”

Velius squat beside her; she would have kicked him if her bindings had allowed for it. She was limited to a glare. “Renata, you don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said quietly. He sounded sad. Was that just an act, too?

“It’s pretty damned obvious that you’re working with… them,” she spat. “Whoever the hell they are. What kind of stupid game is this? Were you planning this all along?”

Velius tightened his hands into fists and set his jaw. “I tried to keep you away from here. That wasn’t some devious gambit to spring a trap on you. I told you not to come here. Because I liked you, Renata, and I liked your enthusiasm, and I thought you were a cut above the rest of those cutthroats you called your peers. But you got greedy. And I told you I wouldn’t be able to get you out of it.”

“Don’t try to sugarcoat this!”

“They wanted to kill you!” It was nearly a shout. Renata shrank back; it was the first time she’d ever seen his composure snap like that. “And they were going to! But I convinced them that there was a better way. Because you were always my favorite, and I didn’t want to see you die.”

“He speaks the truth,” the woman next to him said placidly. “We did not wish to allow you to leave alive. But he spoke on your behalf, and we value his counsel.”

Renata jerked at her bindings. “This doesn’t look like mercy to me.”

“Other than death, there is but one way out of your bonds,” the woman said.

“Well, what is it? Let’s get it done with.”

“Very well.” The woman turned and gestured to a group of women standing nearby, who nodded in unison and departed into the forest. Velius stepped back as another pair of women approached, and hauled her to her feet. Her right ankle was stiff, but whatever was in the concoction they gave her earlier had numbed the pain of having twisted it earlier; she found herself more or less able to put her weight on it, though her ankles were yet bound.

As the women held her up by her arms, another approached with a short, sharp knife. Renata stiffened; the grips on her tightened. After a moment’s hesitation, the armed woman knelt to cut away the rope around Renata’s ankles, knees, and wrists. Despite—or perhaps because of—her newfound freedom, her arms were not released.

“What do you want me to do?” she demanded.

“Endure. Nothing more.”

That gave her pause. Were they putting her through some sort of trial? “Endure what?”

As if to answer, the woman stepped aside. Behind her, at the far edge of the clearing, the departed group had returned, two each flanking the sides of a hulking animal the size of a horse. It was nothing she had ever seen in her life: its forequarters were like an enormous eagle, limbs ending in savage hooked talons, but its hindquarters were… feline, stocky and muscular like a lion. A pair of broad feathered wings sprung from its back. She had seen things somewhat like it on carvings here and there throughout the city, but she thought it was only a fanciful flourish by imaginative sculptors.

When it saw her, it keened, and its entire body tensed; its wings unfurled with a familiar-sounding snap. The women flanking it restrained it—barely—with soothing words and hands stroking along its sides and through its feathered crest. But it was restless, now, pawing at the ground and shifting back and forth.

Dark, predatory eyes glared at her above a savage, hooked beak. Its feathers were all white, but she could see a ragged, diagonal cut across its face where the feathers had been slashed. An angry red line stood out starkly against the white surrounding it. The wound looked recent, only freshly cleaned. With dawning horror, Renata realized that this must have been the thing that had attacked her in the forest. Seeing it in the light was scarcely any better than seeing it in silhouette, least of all with the beast pacing back and forth with its eyes pinned on her like she were a piece of meat.

“In the course of your crime,” the woman—who by this point Renata had taken to be the leader—said, “you have raised your hand in violence against the great gryphon Akathur. He is justly aggrieved and demands recompense, which he shall take from you.”

The word caught Renata’s attention away from the staring beast. Gryphon. “That’s a—they went extinct hundreds of years ago!”

“No,” the woman replied, bitterness creeping into her voice. “Not quite.”

Renata’s pulse quickened. She tested the grip of the women holding her, finding them strong and secure—stronger than she would have expected from such willowy-looking figures. “So what do you mean, recompense? You said you weren’t going to kill me.”

“We aren’t.”

The woman gestured, and the pair holding her pulled her back, toward the stairs leading up the side of the dais. By instinct or impulse, Renata fought them, twisting and kicking to free herself from their hold, but however much that concoction had restored her strength, it wasn’t enough. One of them seized her by the hair; another drove a knee into her stomach. She bent over, gasping, but did not give up, even as they bodily dragged her backwards, thrashing, up the stairs. As she went up, the gryphon kept pace, its muscles tensed, its tail lashing back and forth like a whip.

She was spun about at the top and shoved across the edge of the altar. She was only just barely tall enough to bend over the edge; with her thighs flush to the side, the tips of her toes barely touched the stone floor beneath her. She had no grip, no leverage. One masked woman pressed her cheek to the cold stone while the other secured her to the altar: opposite the edge over which they’d bent her, an iron ring was bolted into the altar’s rim, and a chain ran through it to terminate in a pair of manacles.

“No! We can—we can find something else!” The first manacle closed around her left wrist. “Velius! Someone! Please!” The second shut about her right wrist with a dreadful click of finality. Her posture made it almost impossible for her to get any leverage, and the weight of her own body pressed her chest firmly against the stone beneath her.

The two women retreated down the stairs. By this point, the crowd had begun to assemble in a neatly ordered circle around the base of the dais, as if an audience had gathered to watch a public performance. Renata craned her head to try to look behind her, over her shoulder. The great gryphon stood at the bottom of the stairs, one foretalon raking impatiently at the bottom step, its wings flexing rhythmically. Velius and the leader stood flanking him, the woman whispering into the gryphon’s ear.

Then the gryphon began to rise, taking the steps three at a time. Panic shot through her. She tried to make eye contact with Velius, who stood watching as calmly as the others, with his hands folded in front of him. “Please, do something! I—I’m sorry! I didn’t know about any of this!” The monster was halfway there, its nares flared. “I’m telling the truth! I’m sorry! I won’t tell anyone!” But no one answered.

The gryphon crested the lip of the dais. In a moment he was above her, his bulk blotting out the light from the nearby torches and drenching her in shadow. One heavy foreclaw clamped around her shoulder and upper arm. She expected him to shred her arm in apart, but he only seized her in a brutally tight grip. Furry, dense musculature pressed in against the back of her thighs as his legs drew in close.

She clenched her eyes shut and braced herself for the strike. There was no way anyone would save her now. But it never came. Instead the gryphon rolled his hips forward, pushing itself further flush with the curve of her body where she lay bent over the edge of the altar. Something distinctly non-furry slid along the inside of one thigh. Its heat melted into her naked skin, and it left behind a damp trail as it slid up toward the curve of her ass.

No.

She jerked at the manacles, rattling the chain in its housing, and twisted herself beneath the gryphon. “Stop it! You—you can’t let it do this!” Her cries were muffled, and useless besides, and soon afterward another foreclaw planted itself between her shoulder blades and pressed. Breathing suddenly became laborious. “I’m sorry,” she wheezed. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. Please.” She didn’t even know if he understood her. Or if he cared.

He rocked his hindquarters again, sawing that hot shaft against her; she clenched her thighs together in response. He couldn’t possibly mean to—to do what she thought he was trying to. Could he? Was this her “recompense”, to be mounted like a chained animal? Her resistance, as feeble as it was, drew a low, hissing growl from the beast, just above her head, and a spike of fear further weakened her resolve. He pressed himself in hard, thighs flexing. His shaft was stiffening with every passing moment, and in seconds it pried her thighs apart and worked itself past her defenses.

He didn’t slow down once he had forced his way through; his heavy erection, now prodigiously thick and drooling wetness everywhere, rocked against her insistently. He was… hunting for something. Probing, restless, eager. Renata sucked in a shallow, ragged breath, her stomach roiling with the ever-growing certainty that he did seek what she feared he did. In his next shallow grind, the gryphon caught the wet tip of his shaft against her naked folds, and she jerked, whimpering, as if struck. Eagerly he bucked his hips, raking a long wet line from one side of her labia to the other. Again and again he rocked, shifting this way and that, adjusting his height and angle; once, twice, three times the beast’s shaft slid against her flesh, catching for a moment here and there before slipping free.

It was only a matter of time. Every muscle in her body was tensed. She couldn’t do anything but wait while he bucked, seeking the perfect angle. Almost, almost, almost—and then the tip caught between her folds, now sodden and dripping with precum, just a little deeper than the last time. When the gryphon pushed, this time he didn’t slip out. He slipped in.

Her heart froze in her chest and her hands clenched into fists. No, no, no, no, no. This wasn’t happening. It wasn’t. The first inch was all terrible dread as her flesh parted around him, and then the beast, delighted and encouraged by his success, tightened his hips and thrust. The impact slammed her hips against the altar, and all the clenching in the world wasn’t enough to keep him out of her. He speared into her with a force and ruthlessness she couldn’t have imagined, and her tension only made the sharp blooming agony of being spread open that much more intense. One thrust put him halfway into her, and she choked back a mewling sob. The second nearly hit bottom, and she cried out.

It was too much, too thick, too hard, too fast. Her loins were on fire already. And the gryphon was not going to stop, was not even going to slow down. He released her shoulder, lifted his claw from her back, and then curled both of them around her waist as he hunched in close above her chained and helpless body. The first backward rake of his hips tore a garbled, stunned cry from her throat as a billion tiny jolts ricocheted through her loins. The tip of that animal cock was lined with so many tiny, angled fleshy barbs that she couldn’t even count them individually, and they dragged a carpet of shocks down her tunnel.

As soon as the agonizing cascade began, it was over, interrupted by another sharp thrust pounding her against the altar. And another, and another—the gryphon began with a sharp and piercing rhythm, not building up to it but rushing from the beginning. The altar beneath her was harsh and cold against her bare skin, and each slam of the gryphon’s hips into hers dragged her breasts raggedly over the rough surface.

Her muscles were in agony. He was too thick, too long, too… barbed. She was no virgin, but neither was she built to take this animal’s cock—not gently, and certainly not with the savagery with which he now fucked her. He seemed to be enjoying plowing her as hard as he could; his head was bent down above hers, and his rhythmic, hot breaths flowed over the back of her neck with each stroke of his hips, interspersed here and again with a sharp avian trill. It wasn’t just sex—it was revenge, and he was extracting it from her sob by sob.

It took only a few minutes before Renata’s clenched inner muscles had been forced and stretched so thoroughly that the gryphon’s rutting grew easier. Slicker and faster, as his precum painted her insides in such thick coats that it began to drool and splash out of her with each successive thrust, trickling down her inner thighs, spattering the altar and the dais below. Sloppy, grotesquely wet squelching accompanied each thrust, a lewd and humiliating counterpoint to her own staccato groans wrenched from her at the apex of each stroke.

Each time, he pushed a little deeper, forced her a little harder. Each time, the backstroke brought fresh, blinding shocks from his cruel barbs. He seemed determined to fit the whole length of his cock inside her, and each progressive nudge deeper deepened Renata’s fear that the next would push too far. The heavy weight of the gryphon’s balls began to thump against her ass with each swing as he pushed his luck. She was stretched to her limit, filled to capacity. A bizarre flush of relief washed over her when she felt the fuzzy prickle of his sheath press against her labia and she had yet to be torn in half.

The relief proved to be short-lived. Just as she was beginning to think that it had gotten as rough as it could have, and that all she needed to do now was hold on, an odd, subtle tension began to throb between her thighs in rhythm with the gryphon’s rutting. At first it was dim and muffled amidst the glowing heat of her thighs and the numbing stabs of the gryphon’s barbs. But it swiftly intensified, and soon each thrust was stretching her wider. The root of his cock was… swelling.

“Gods, please, stop, enough,” she moaned against the altar—then abruptly cut herself off as the gryphon dipped his head to clamp his beak around the back of her neck. Was it a warning? She took it as one. She tried to hold back her whimpers as his fucking grew frenzied, as that cock swelled and bulged into a knot that brought fresh tears to her eyes. Soon, blessedly, he buried himself inside her with a wet pop, and pulled out no more: he was stuck inside her.

It took only a few seconds of eager grinding before the gryphon’s hips jerked in sudden, irregular bursts. His beak tightened about her neck and his whole body bore down on her, fur and feathers matting against her back and thighs. His sack, mashed up hard against her ass, hiked high and tight, and in a great flooding burst the gryphon emptied his balls deep into her bare, raw pussy.

She felt the coursing flow bulge his cock for a split second before it shot into her, hot and thick and much too much for her to hold; raw pressure sprayed squirts of his cum between the tight seal formed by his knot, splashing down her legs and his and spattering over the stone. He drained himself to the last drop, still grinding and rocking to the very end, trills and croons thrumming against the back of her neck.

And then, stillness and quiet. The animal’s heart thumped in his chest, against her back. His pulse throbbed in his cock, buried in her to the hilt. His quiet, wordless huffs and her ragged gulps were the only sounds. None of their audience—she had almost forgotten they were there, and the recollection flushed her hot with fresh humiliation—spoke a word. With languid ease, then, the gryphon stirred himself, rose from her back. An experimental, backward tug proved his knot was still tied inside her. Surely it would fade over time.

But he was not interested in waiting. He pulled, at first carefully, and then with increasing force. The knot strained against her from the inside, but he didn’t stop. The pressure grew, metamorphosed into a sharp, blinding pain.

“Please, w-wait—“

With a loud pop, the knot flew free, spraying a stream of cum down her legs and splashing it over her feet. She barely heard it over her own wailing sob—nor noticed, in the aftermath, as her loosened folds now drooled the gryphon’s conquest, that the beast had turned aside and left her limp, weeping, and alone upon the altar.

Her mind was scrambled. Every muscle in her body ached. Her nipples had been rubbed raw against the altar, and her hips and neck were laced with shallow, stinging cuts left over from the gryphon’s talons and beak. Sweat stung at the wounds as it beaded and ran along her skin. She lay there long enough for the sweat to dry in the cold night air, long enough for her heart to calm and her breathing to settle into a normal, if labored, rhythm. At least it was over. She had endured.

There were footsteps behind her. A masked woman approached on either side, while Velius circled the altar to kneel across from her. One of the women set a bowl of some sloshing liquid onto the altar next to her, dipped her fingers into it, and began to trace something along her bare back. She felt the wet touch only for an instant before the liquid dried—if the woman was leaving any marks or even making any intelligible motions with her fingers, Renata didn’t know.

“Not much longer now,” Velius said quietly.

Renata focused on him, her eyes blurry from tears. “Velius? It’s… over, isn’t it? I did it. I paid. Please. Let me out.”

Velius shook his head. “You’re not returning to the city, Renata. I’m sorry. It’s not something any of us can risk. Not after all this time. But you’ll be alive and healthy. And in the end, it’s better this way.”

A chill rolled through her gut. “Better… what way? Velius, you said—“

“I said that they wouldn’t kill you. And they won’t, not now or ever. But you aren’t going back. And soon, you won’t be able to. Hush. It’s not going to be that bad. Trust me. Just a little longer.”

The lines the women were tracing on her back had reached her hips. More loops and whorls spread across her outer thighs. What did Velius mean, she wouldn’t be able to? There was something grossly sinister to this, something frightening. She thought she was finished. Was she going to become one of these women, living in the forest? Was that it? She had a life in the city! Riches! She was going to become the rival to the Consulate itself—

With an unexpected clank, her manacles popped open. She would have slid from the altar were it not for the hands around her arms. They had released her, she was not free: she was dragged up and rolled onto her back so that she lay upon the altar lengthwise. Her entire body neatly fit within its dimensions, and she was too exhausted and pained to give more than a token struggle. She laid her head back and groaned, while hands fell upon her again. Neck, abdomen, even her breasts—she twitched when they began to loop lines around her raw nipples, but otherwise did not pull away. Her back was beginning to tingle, an icy sensation like peppermint in the mouth.

“What are you doing?” she mumbled.

“You have been touched by the water and by the seed,” one of them promptly replied. With one hand, the women brushed aside Renata’s bangs, and drew a mark across her forehead. “And now you have been touched by the light.”

“By the water, and the seed, and the light, we find growth,” the other woman intoned, as if it were a prayer. The cold prickling had extended now to Renata’s thighs, and wrapped around her torso.

“What did you do?” Renata reached up toward one of the women, but halfway there her arm jerked in a sudden spasm and collapsed to the altar. She could barely move it, could barely even flex her fingers. Her arm felt hot and cold all at once, and she clutched at it, hissing.

Both women retreated to the top of the dais stairs, bowed toward Renata as she squirmed upon the altar, and descended without a further word. They explained nothing, offered nothing. Nor did the upturned, masked faces of those surrounding the dais, still watching her—the women who had watched her brutal rape, the women who were even now watching her as her body began to shake like a fever were clutching at her. Velius, too, abandoned her; his fingers brushed her shoulder once, but after that he was gone.

She did not see where he went, or if he remained to watch from the lower level; a sharp, sudden pain like a knife cut through her right arm, starting at her shoulder and ricocheting down to the very tips of her fingers. She cried out, clenched her left hand around her shoulder as if she could hold in the burst of agony. Ripples of opposing heat and cold, like a wave crashing against a beach faster than nature herself would allow, flowed down her arm, and in their wake came an uncontrollable spasming as though her limb were controlled by an entity other than herself. Had those women poisoned her? Did Velius betray her, even in the end, to death?

Then, impossibly, her shoulder shattered. Her muscles spasmed with such unrestrained force that the bones themselves cracked beneath them. She didn’t hear whether she made any noise in the wake of the blinding shock; the totality of her experience was focused, in that awful moment, in the act of her arm tearing itself apart beneath her skin.

The convulsions continued, clenching and loosing in rhythmic pulses, starting at her shoulder and extending all the way down her arm. Something wrenched at her shoulder blades, and her arm jerked as if repositioning itself against her own shoulder. Soon, the same kind of quavering instability began to roil just beneath the surface of her left shoulder, and fresh panic set in.

What was happening to her? Her body was… was rebelling against itself. Her arms—either of them—scarcely responded to her commands. Only her fingers flexed, and those barely. The convulsions spread inward across her back, past her shoulder blades to meet in the center of her back, and then down, to her hips, past them, encompassing her thighs, her knees. She forced her eyes open, commanded herself, against the demands of her own terrified mind, to look down at her own body.

She was a lithe figure, with taut, well defined muscles thanks to years of hard physical activity. And those muscles were now visibly rippling beneath the skin, tensing and bunching in unnatural clumps, twisting and forming shapes that did not belong on a human being. Each new twist brought with it a dull, throbbing ache. If she thought it possible, she would have said they were… were rearranging themselves.

A shudder made her left hand clench about her right arm, and that brought a sharp, unexpected sting. What? She looked down to her hand, where she was clutching herself, and the deepening anxiety that had hovered around her matured into frightened realization. The back of her hand was… stiffening. Hardening. Soft skin was already thickening, forming into layered plates. Their color deepened, from sun-touched bronze to a rich, dull yellow-orange. And her fingers—her nails were extending, thickening as well. Even as she watched, her nails twisted and bend on her fingers, canting from horizontal to vertical. They grew, sharpened to points before her eyes. Claws. Talons. Sharp, deadly, killing things. Blood trickled from her arm where she had clutched at herself too hard with them.

An abrupt crack tore a fresh cry from her throat as the bones in her arm audibly snapped. Bone and muscle jerked about as if pulled by an invisible hand; one shape melted into another. Her joints twisted, migrated as the proportions of the limb shifted. Before she could comprehend what her eyes were telling her, the same sensations spread to her right arm.

A fresh series of cracks drew her pained stare down to her hips, her legs. Them, too. Shifting fluidly, bones cracked and legs bent into unnatural, perverse shapes. Her feet grew long, ankles half melted and reformed. Her toenails disappeared, subsumed into thickening, broadening feet that soon bore no resemblance to human limbs. If she were to try to stand now, she wouldn’t be able to hold herself upright. Worse, as she watched, her skin was changing.

It wasn’t the change upon her hands and forearms, where already skin had given way to thick scaled bands. The fine, virtually invisible vellum hair on her legs and thighs grew thick and dense, sprouting like grass growing an entire season’s worth in a few short seconds. It grew, and spread, even as her skin rippled and roiled like ocean waves from the muscles reshaping themselves beneath—as each heartbeat pounded in her chest, the consuming carpet of russet broadened. It crept down along her legs, up toward her waist—though there it seemed to stop, as if hemmed in by an invisible fence.

Her spine cracked, then, and half her body went numb in an instant. There was hardly any breath left in her to even cry, and in some sense, the sudden lack of sensation was a blessing in disguise. She clutched at the edges of the altar, blindly, unthinking—maybe if she pulled herself from it, she thought feverishly, she might stop whatever monstrous thing was happening to her. Her arms responded strangely, not moving how she expected them to; they were attached strangely to her shoulders, and her hands were angled all wrong. Both were covered in scutes from the elbows down, now, all five fingers tipped with two-inch talons. But those elbows were in odd places, her arm too long here, too short there. And too thick everywhere. The muscle had… grown, dense and taut and bulky. Everything that was familiar to her was bleeding away as she watched.

Unfamiliar hands—claws—caught hold of the altar’s edge. She pulled, and her body slid toward the edge with a speed and ease that shocked her even through the haze of confusion and pain. She tumbled half off the side. A distant, dull thump somewhere in the furthest recesses of her mind made her realize that sensation was returning to her legs and feet. She looked down at them, found her whole body angled oddly. She tested her feet, found them responsive—but her hips and legs didn’t align right, and when she tried to stand, she nearly pushed herself free of the tenuous grip she held on the side of the altar. No amount of muscle would let her do what she was trying to do, she realized. Her body wasn’t upright any more. Her legs weren’t parallel to her spine—they were perpendicular to it. And they were… thick. Very thick. Muscular, dense with fur, capped with broad, broad feet. Not human feet. Paws, like a lion’s.

A fresh shudder rocked her from head to toes, and like the final sharp retort at the end of a whipcrack, her hips jerked. The base of her spine itched, then burned, then screamed in agony—then with another crack, her spine, extending, burst through her skin and carried with it fresh muscle. It grew from her like a flower seeking the sun, stretching and unfurling , its coat of russet fur wet like a newborn. The sensation was new; her mind, in a dizzy haze, barely understood it. But she… felt it. She knew it. Tail. Even as the word bloomed in her mind, she felt something… click inside her, something shift in her thoughts. One thought sent the new limb lashing this way; another thought sent it flicking that way. And soon there were no thoughts at all, just movement, as unconscious as moving her arms and legs was.

Ten seconds ago she could not have comprehended the idea of moving such a limb. And now she found herself unable to imagine herself without it.

Her neck prickled, her shoulders. Her scalp. Hair fell from her in clumps as though it had been shaved, but the prickling became a stinging, and the stinging became a splitting pain like she were being cut a million times, everywhere, from her head clear to her waist. Feathers, the same brilliant copper as the forgotten hair that now littered the altar, sprouted from her in tufts, at first slowly, hesitantly, and then with great eagerness. As the feathers blossomed across her chest, her breasts quivered, melted away, skin tightening into a smooth, flat surface a moment before her ribs cracked beneath. A pulse, like a single thunderous heartbeat, shook her, and her chest bulged from neck to waist. Another followed, and another, and each time her muscles grew denser, thicker, stronger. Her chest grew wide and powerful, matching the dimensions already in place elsewhere.

Her vision was blurring. She couldn’t think straight—her movements were uncoordinated and clumsy. She couldn’t see a way free, couldn’t even focus for long enough to imagine what an escape might look like. She was caught up in the cacophony. She realized, with dull terror, that she was already beginning to have a hard time imagining what it was she wanted to return to. She was—she was what? Where was she? And why? She was… changing. But from what? She looked out, tried to make sense of the scene below her. There were… things below, indistinct. Upright. Dozens of them.

Humans. Yes. She was—she had been one. She was one. Wasn’t she? Yes, and then she… she was here, and… and what? I was a human. She forced herself to envision the words. No. I am a human. I am a human. I am a human. Had she always been a human? Why was she a human? What was so important about it? She didn’t know. She felt that there was some reason, something, something incredibly important, that she was forgetting. And it was fleeing from her faster than she could even compose herself to chase after it.

I was a—

Sunbursts. Incoherent. It couldn’t be called pain. It was beyond pain, beyond sensation. It was every sensation, a perfect distillation of all possible sensations, past and present and future. Her mind exploded, again and again. It was a blessing that she couldn’t feel her skull reshaping itself, that she was not privy to her own last moments as a human as her beak grew forth, long and hooked and sharp, as her nose lifted to become nares atop it, as her brain itself at last melted and reformed.

The first thing she felt was at her shoulder blades, a dull throb, itching, hot. She knew what was coming even before the wings burst forth, great and mighty pinions fresh and wet. Their copper hues caught the torchlight and scattered it dramatically; their thumping beats caused the flames to dance and sway madly. And then, exhausted, they too fell limp atop the gryphon that lay slumped at the foot of the altar as if dead.

Every part of her body hurt. She wasn’t sure why. It was a dull, distant pain, though, like an old wound, or soreness after running too hard and for too long. It wasn’t enough to keep her from pushing herself to her feet. Her wings were useless; she was barely able to even draw them in against her back. She wavered, but four limbs kept her upright while she steadied herself.

She heard footsteps, coming up the stairs; her ear swiveled independently a moment before her head turned to follow it. A man and a woman were approaching, the woman wearing a mask like her own face and the man a long robe. The man seemed familiar to her, for some reason, like she might have known him. She couldn’t quite place it. She had seen him somewhere, she knew. He smiled at her, and both her ears lifted straight up in a show of pleasure. She thought she must have liked him, even if she didn’t quite remember. She liked him a lot—that felt right. It was a relief to see his face.

“Come,” the masked woman (human was the word for them, she thought, these strange and upright creatures) said. “You must be tired. It is time to rest.”

She was tired. Exhausted. She could curl up right here and go to sleep. But the pair wanted to usher her somewhere more comfortable, she imagined, so she followed them down the stairs. She carefully picked her way down each step, one claw in front of the other.

At the base, the man ran his hands through her crest, smoothing out damp feathers and even adjusting a few that had gone askew. He wriggled his hands beneath them and scratched between her ears; she lidded her eyes in pleasure and her tail twisted about behind her. That felt good. “See, Renata,” he said, “I told you it would be all right.”

Renata. Her name? Yes, that felt right, too. It was a nice name, especially hearing it come from this man. She wasn’t sure what he had told her, exactly, but… everything did ring true to her. She was just forgetful, she supposed, and there was nothing in him that made her doubt his sincerity. She fluffed up her crest and trilled back at him.

Yes, everything was all right.