Zephyra was sitting around in a circle of dirty sailors and crew men on a small merchant boat that was headed for the grand harbor of Egjora. She had passed around some of the food she had packed to share with the crew around her who seemed to welcome something besides the slop they were being fed by the boat’s cook. It was only dried meats, bread, and sliced cheeses but they gobbled it up like it was roast fowl that had been prepared by a queen’s chef. While they ate they threw dice and played games of chance. She could replace the food later.
 
She always seemed to be quite lucky at these games. Every time she found herself betting against and with some scraggly sailors, it always seemed that she came out at least a little ahead of what she spent on betting in the game. This time was no different. When the game ended as they neared the docks, she scraped her coin across the deck and into her coin purse. They all congratulated her on a game well-played, though some of them grumbled in discontent more than others.
 
The ship sailed smoothly into the harbor and Zephyra walked easily across the bouncing plank that ran between the boat’s edge and the dock. Her dark hair bounced and flowed like water behind her. Her dark eyes flicked around the dock that would normally have some unsavory folk like pirates and smugglers in a city like Adeluna but here there were only merchant’s ships and personal vessels. It was very safe and certainly very clean. There was not even the stench of fresh fish for sale at the docks, which was unusual. Anywhere you went almost always had fish they were unloading from the boats. If they were they made sure you couldn’t smell them.
 
She had set off on a particular mission. Rhylana, the Goddess who burned and consumed all, had seemed to have lost her grip on her sanity or on her control of her power or both. To Zephyra, Rhylana was a good person at heart and likely would feel some sense of guilt when she finally got back control over herself. It was said that cooking fires were consuming their cooks and a call from the Goddess had gone out to demand sacrifices, particularly human, to feed her hunger least she feast on the world.
 
Zephyra intended to go around the town and find those that had lost loved ones to the fires or the family of those that had been forced to sacrifice. Then she intended on warping their minds so that they did not remember these tragedies. After all she didn’t want them all to hate the Goddess or fear her. No, she wanted them all to see Rhylana as she had seen her that day she had visited and sat and talked with her for hours on end. It was her patience and her motherly demeanor that had entrapped Zephyra.

He had no choice. The destruction had spread to every village he knew, taking unwilling souls with a single sweep of fiery rain. The mountainside was streaked with the yellow aftermath of the goddess’s weakness, where it was not cast in ashen shadow. His people knew what had to be done, but they would not do it to each other. Instead they rallied for invasion, promising to slaughter as many enemies as it would take to end their peculiar new hell. Gaius would have nothing to do with outright war, but he would contribute. He would make his own sacrifice, but he would plant the seed of inevitable guilt in faraway soil so that it would be easier to forget.

So it was that Gaius Anseriph came to walk within the walls of this strange city, among its soft people. His halberd, ironically named Might’s Mercy, was strapped conspicuously to his back as his attention turned over the crowd. He would never say the word aloud, but truly he searched for a victim—hopefully one that would not be missed, if not one that might make the city better for their loss. The faces he saw as he searched were not entirely unfamiliar; they were cleaner and rounder, but they were just as scared and shocked and uncertain. The terrible smell of ash persisted just as it did up north, and the community leaders were as dutiful as ever. These people were not as different as his conscience might have hoped, but ultimately Gaius could not let that change things.

Resolving on his mission, he kept his eyes low to avoid any further distraction. Eventually he caught sight of a crouching body at the edge of an alley, barefooted and tangled in rags. There were broken shackles on his wrists, and he seemed to be hiding from whoever he was searching for in the street. Not exactly a worthy opponent, but it would have to do for his part in all of this. Maybe after it was done, it would be easier for Gaius to take the next one. He could not return home, at least, until the destruction stopped.

He could have lied. He could have tried to smile and promise some meal or money just around the corner. Even as he approached he found himself considering which tale would be the easiest to spin. But when the moment arrived, he only said, “Come with me.”

Gaius had never been a very good liar, anyway.

Still, he could not know how he seemed to the man who would be his sacrifice. Armed but clad in civilian leathers, he was obviously not a guard come to sweep another slave off of the street and into the pyre. That alone earned Gaius the poor man’s trust, who nodded and kept close as he was lead to the edge of the city. He did not suspect that ranger had already set up a ritual space of his own, requiring only an igniting flame to send his meager soul unto the starving goddess.

As she was walking down the street, she came across a tavern that had once had a working cooking fire behind it from the looks of things. There was a pot, a circle of stones to pile the wood inside, and a stand to suspend the cast iron pot over the fire to boil. But it seemed that whatever had been cooking (there had to have been for the vague aroma of a stew still hung about the air there) had disappeared along with the person cooking it. There was a woman weeping there about her lost love. Yet the peculiar thing was, there was no ashes or pieces of metal or even melted metal. It was all simply gone and the smell of jasmine was all that was left.
 
It was just like the stories and rumors had said. Zephyra had been eavesdropping on conversations at her home and in towns and all the rumors and stories told of cooking fires that consumed everything and left only the smell of jasmine behind. It was all blamed and pinned on Rhylana. It was hard for her to imagine this to be true and even harder still to wonder what the Goddess needed all of those souls for. She was not a keeper of death, even though she kept destruction.
 
The girl came up on the side of the partially rotund woman who was much older than her as she wept by the place she last saw her love. From her pocket Zephyra pulled a cotton handkerchief and bent down to offer it to the woman. She took it with thanks and wiped her eyes and face as she continued to blubber about her love. She took a step behind her and her fingers danced their elegant, ballet-like movements near her temple. A collection of red energy shot into her mind. The crying ceased almost immediately.
 
“You were out here putting up the hot cooking ware. With the Goddess being angry it isn’t safe to cook with a fire so the tavern will have to serve cold food.” The woman nodded and seemed to have completely forgotten all about the man she had just been crying her heart out over. Zephyra smiled at her. “Oh goodness dear I must get to work. Either go on in or head on out! But thank ye for reminding me.” Pleased with the work she had done, she offered up a small farewell wave and set out on the street.
 
It wasn’t far down the street when she noticed a man. He was in leathers that weren’t the uniformed look of the guardsmen (and many of them had chainmail or plate). He was speaking to a poor man in shackles that appeared to be starving and was probably cold. She got a sense from this man in leather and did not like it. She followed them out to the edge of the city before she finally made herself known. “Hey! You.” She motioned to the man in leather. “What are you doing with that poor man?”
 
Carefully she approached the pair at enough distance where she could throw her own cloak over the man. The bite of winter was out. It was why she was clad in black woolen breeches, black high leather boots, a warm cream woolen shirt, and a dark cloak that now hung over the man. Her long dark hair fell almost as straight as a board and her dark eyes watched him. “Please tell me you did not have intentions on sacrificing him.”

Gaius stopped at her first call; it was all he could do not to let his nerves get the better of him. He was almost there—he had almost gone unnoticed, had almost been able to get his duty over with. But hindsight would argue that it was fate which brought the psionic to him, beckoned by his instinct’s repulsion to his actions. Briefly he looked her in the eye, his grey gaze faltering beneath her parrying intensity. He seemed certainly a woodsman, with a halberd strapped to his back and his light hair darkened by grime. There were stones protruding from his face like a disease, which he itched nervously as she voiced her suspicions.

The poor man’s crooked arm was still grasped in Gaius’s leading hand when the cloak was thrown over him. Weakly he withdrew his grip on the escaped slave, but nonetheless his posture was tense. His only movement was to turn so that the blade on his back glinted in the falling sun. He would not fight this woman, whom he did not know and certainly underestimated, but neither would he allow her to occupy him for long.

“And what if I have?” He said lowly, and without meeting her eye again. “The whole city is doing it, and you should be too.”

He did managed to look down at his would-be sacrifice, crouched beneath the heavy cloak for warmth. Gaius was a warrior, but he was not heartless. The same inner turmoil, which he could not know was perceptible by this dark-eyed woman, twisted his face into an averting frown. Gaius distracted himself with the city behind them, gesturing at the emptying streets and somber aura. “They would do the same, if they caught him. Look,” Bringing his attention to the man’s shackles, “I didn’t put those on him.”

The man stopped almost dead in his tracks. His nerves seemed on end and it didn’t seem like he had wanted to be noticed by anyone as he was leaving the edges of the city with a man in shackles. Zephyra had seen many like the bound man, but they were working and laboring in the city whether it was building, breaking ground, or even the dingiest tasks of cleaning the almost never traveled side streets of the human waste that was deposited there. This one looked mostly a laborer. He was extremely lean- probably not fed well- and he was tanned from exposure to the sun. His poor hands were so rough she imagined they felt like stones.
 
She looked at this unknown man with pity, for his life was already gruesome enough without someone trying to kidnap him for dark purposes. Her dark eyes flitted from the slavery bound man to the man that was seeking to usher him away from the safety of his work, if safety was what you would call it. She supposed it was if it meant you weren’t dying at the hands of the twisted and the demented. With judgment her eyes lingered on the man with his grime covered hair and his face with embedded gravel in it. She noted the halberd at his back. What a strange man he was.
 
When he finally faced her concerns he had made a move to remove his grasp, which was quite possessive, from the man’s arm. Of course the man did not wander off as any slave might do. Likely he thought this was a well-intentioned man with good things on the horizon for him. Likely he had not the thought that crossed his mind that this man could be luring him away for some demented fun or simply for a sacrifice. Many of the people around them in town were making sacrifices.
 
“If you have then I am afraid I cannot allow you to do so. Just because the whole city, and I doubt it is the whole city, is doing it doesn’t mean it’s what should be done. This is very unlike the Goddess I know. I am trying to erase as much pain and hatred as possible. Just because a God or a Goddess demands it doesn’t mean they should get it. I will not join in. I will continue my work.” Zephyra’s head cocked to the side, oddly defiant towards a man who was much older than she was… oddly defiant to any stranger that posed a risk to the life of the innocents.
 
When the man mentioned that the man was already living a life of servitude as if to justify his actions she merely smirked and nearly laughed at his attempts. She shook her head, her loose, dark hair bouncing about her head. “Did you think I had not noticed them? They are on several people here. They are workers. But you don’t get to decide that a life in the underworld is better than a life of servitude here. That is his choice to make, now isn’t it?”