Shadow Mountain Some form of hyperagonal media,

Black waters in her veins.

Black, ancient waters; rivers running dark with the sand and soil of time, rivers running red with the blood of countless ancestors whose buried bones formed the roots of her ties to this land. Anathema would never know this. But she felt it. She traveled, and each day reunited with a place she'd never been. It almost felt like being home again.

The sea still called to her. It was far too quiet this far inland. Still, some moments made up for the absence.

She crested a rise and saw a raven leading a snake into shadow — but the snake turned away at the last moment, and then the raven was alone. And then it vanished.

She crept along a frozen stream and saw a man with two faces who did not want to remember, and a woman with two names who would not forgive. Ana watched them until they withered and crumbled to dust.

She stepped into a small cave and saw a girl like a thousand silver crystals, always shifting, always reflecting the light in a new way. She saw her again as a woman, the crystals turned to opalescent fangs, and the flashing figure of another woven in shadow. The shadow disappeared, and the woman burst into glittering shards.

Anathema blinked and found that night had fallen over the mountain.

the овце-

ram

-ran.

up the mountain, higher and higher.

through white snow.

then red.

then black.

until it was night.

they ran.

she at their heels.

a huntress.

bighorn hunt, challenge rating of 16, 4 tries
1st roll; 7

The pursuit nearly passed her by without her noticing at all. Ana flinched as several large beasts flew past her in a flurry of shadow. Their hooves were thunderous upon the earth. She scrambled back and her eyes landed next on the slim figure darting after them, a brass arrow glinting under the moonlight.

Thoughtlessly she followed. Ana was no great hunter. She didn't know at all what she would do if she caught either of them, hunter or prey. In the chaos of the moment she made a split-second decision — and in the next instant she was consumed with the flickering desire for blood.

her eyes were sharp, but the dark was a silkscreen. consumed by the hunt, she did not spot the twin gleams from an indent in rock.

they ascended higher; the huntress realized the ram had followed a thin stream, to its wider source.



they thought the water would dissuade her.

she weighted her options as she leapt to higher ground.

2nd roll; 8

Ahead, a river speckled with winter frost; Ana scarcely saw it. She braced herself nonetheless as the chase brought them to it, but her focus was singular upon her target. Not a wolf. Something else.

She meant to kill it.

The beast leapt and Ana leapt with it, snapping for the haunches of the unfamiliar creature. The rams were not her concern. They were too large, too intimidating; she would never hunt them on her own. This hunt was something deeper. Something primitive and volatile, an instinctive urge to rid the wilds of something she recognized as other in a way that was wrong. It was all wrong. But she would fix it.