Redemption, Prologue

At the edges of the Northern Wastes, in the camp of the Undregons.

Anastasia hit the ground with a breath stealing, dust blooming thud.  The air escaped her in a quick, prematurely ended groan.  The pain in her chest distracted her from the pain in her jaw, but only for a moment.  She did not have time to take back her breath before a powerful hand took hold of her hair, yanked her head up, and slammed her face back into the ground.  The hand didn’t let go.  It pulled her, dragging her foot by agonizing foot toward the far side of the room.  Teeth and blood spilled from her mouth between abused, snarling gasps.  She reached at the things she hit, trying to find a handhold or a weapon.  Her attacker’s other hand gripped her at the thigh and hoisted her like a piece of lumber, only to toss her onto the raised stone altar.  She hit and her arm shattered beneath her weight, making her roll over in a flinching jerk.  One of the brutal hands grabbed the broken limb and stopped her involuntary escape in the most excruciating way.  Even through the pain and flaring lights in her eyes, she saw the man draw a befouled, rune-etched dagger from his hip and raise the weapon above her belly.

“In the name of the Four,” her attacker bellowed with an inhuman depth, “you have spawned your litter and served the purpose of the whore.  The Gods demand your soul.”

He raised the blade over his own head, summoning the strength and passion that only zealot barbarians can.

Anastasia screamed.  She screamed at the fates, she screamed at the Gods, she screamed at her attacker, and she just screamed.

She had always lived her life as a devoted priestess of the Gods.  When she had been discovered as having the God-sight, she accepted her new role with vigor.  When the southerners came with their cannons and their legions, she turned her cursed gifts upon them and sent their souls to her immortal Masters.  When she had been wed to the monster bringing doom to her upon the altar, she accepted the twist of fate stoically, and dedicated her each of her four sons to one of the Eternal Powers.  She had never hated the Gods, or defied their capricious whims.  Until now.

Beaten, broken, and poised to be cast into oblivion, she felt so unbelievable small and insignificant.  She felt as if her life’s dedication had been cast aside for nothing.  Most would have wailed in despair at the cruel and unjust abandonment of such a devoted daughter.

Anastasia screamed in anger.  She released her sudden, incandescent rage in a howl that rippled the air and shook the ground.  Fueled by her Gods-given talents, she roared to tear at the convoluted web of schemes that would see her undone.  And tear they did.  Her erstwhile husband was thrown from the altar to slam into a mammoth’s skull across the room.  The chanting faithful who had come to bear witness grabbed their gibbering heads at the ears and fought to resist the power of her voice.

At last, she was allowed to roll.  She fell from the altar, interrupting her scream with a pained bark as she landed on her broken arm.  Across the room, her husband rose from the pile of powdered and shattered bone, the dagger still locked in his grip.  He broke into a run, advancing with the implacable power and pace of a furious bull.  She refused to meet her fate as a mewling sacrifice and staggered to her own feet, blood pouring from her mouth and her arm hanging limply at her side. 

“Your death is due,” her husband snarled with injured effort.

“NO,” she bellowed, with enough force to stagger the charging warlord.  “I am no plaything to be cast aside, by you or the Four.” 

He pushed through the force of her voice and closed the gap with murderous speed.  She knew that her life hung in the balance, and that her survival depended on the strength that fled from her with every passing second.  She raised her hand and summoned her gifts to her, demanding that raw, tempestuous magic obey her commands.  Though it knew no sentience, she stoked and goaded its rage to mimic hers and prodded it through the veil between concept and reality.  What emerged from the Realm of Chaos was a coiled mass of fluid hate that fed on her fury and saw as she saw.  The ethereal tentacle uncoiled into a lightning fast lance that solidified even as it flew toward its target.  It impaled Anastasia’s husband, punching through his bared torso and ripping through his muscled back in a welter of bodily fluid.  He froze in his tracks, not sparing a sound from his lips, and stared at the ghostly appendage as it pushed through his chest and wrapped around his form.  Where it touched his body, his skin faded into an ancient grey, robbed of its once terrible potency. 

Anastasia felt neither gratification nor elation.  Only the pain of betrayal burned in her heart.  She twisted her outstretched hand into a fist and pulled back, beckoning the summoned tentacle to seal her husband’s fate.  The insensate predator retracted like the tongue of an amphibian, ripping the warlord from his feet and into its place of origin.  His body hit the space where the tentacle disappeared, slamming into the air as if there were an invisible, rippling wall in front of her.  She watched as his limbs broke and dislocated as they were bent back against the unseen force.  She watched as his body was compelled through a hole in reality far too small for a human body.  He vanished in a spray of compressed blood and shredded clothing, and the tentacle went with him.

As reality reasserted itself, Anastasia collapsed to one knee.  She would have fallen to her breast.  She would have submitted to her desire to sleep and the call of the grave.  But one thought, ironically bound to her blood by her submission to her late husband, kept her up.  She had a responsibility, and while her oaths to the Gods had been broken by their own hands, she would never allow her duty to go undone.  There were four people left in the camp of the Undregons that she had to protect, that she could not let succumb to those who sought to strike at her.

Her sons.