The Dragon Star (Realms of Shadow and Grace: Episodes 1-3 of 7)

THE FUGITIVES - OGTANKAA

NIGHT JAYS called their mating songs across the marshlands, the bright light of the twin moons painting in pale gray the packed dirt and worn down stones of the elevated road cutting through the watery plains.

A lone woman stood in the middle of the lane. The hunter. She raised the eyes of her dark-skinned face toward the glowing orbs in the starry heavens above. Two moons, white and cratered from ancient cosmic battles. Sister celestial bodies traveling through the sky, never touching, yet always within sight of each other around the curve of the night horizon, always showing the same faces to the world below them.

The big sister hid perfectly behind an index finger upstretched at arm's length while her smaller sibling barely peeked around the edges of the smallest fingertip at such a distance. A child's game. Hiding the moons. The Yiityoth tribe of the called them sisters, hiding from brother sun. The mountain peoples of the northern named them Lanut and Lanua, illicit lovers banished to the night sky, forever forbidden to embrace. The fishing folk of the Punderese Coast said nightly prayers to the twin guardians of the sky, Kanma and Kanmathus, beseeching the night gods for blessings to protect them in their slumber.

The hunter, Ogtankaa, had spoken with all these peoples and many more across the Iron Realm, traveling from dominion to dominion, from lowlands to mountains, villages to cities, deserts to ocean isles. For nearly twenty years, she crossed the land, asking simple questions, listening to rumors and long-told tales, waiting to uncover a hint of a trail, searching for a sign, hoping for a signal.

When the moment came, it almost passed without awareness. It had been so long since she felt the once-familiar tremor in the field of life, that discordant vibration in the substance of reality, that she nearly missed it. It lasted only a few seconds, then passed. A momentary lapse of her prey's long maintained restraint.

Ogtankaa always knew it to be a matter of time before her prey revealed itself through a reawakening of its nature. It could not be avoided.

We are what we are and we do what we do because we are what we are.

She had heard an old tribal shaman woman utter those words years ago. They held true for Ogtankaa as well. She possessed an essence as constrained and defined as that of her prey. And she would fulfill her destiny as always — she would hunt.

She looked down from the , her face turning toward the direction she now knew would lead her to her prey. Her prey would flee. Would try again to hide, but Ogtankaa swore to herself that she would not lose the trail again. Not after so long.

Where has it been hiding?

What will it look like now?

And what will it call itself?

More importantly, why has it been silent so long?

So consumed had she become in thoughts of her prey that it took a moment to notice something other than the sister moons shining bright in the night sky. A new star, unseen in all her years of travel, blazed in copper-tinted brilliance, heralding the direction of her prey.

Had she believed in such things, she would have considered it a blessing or an omen, and she might have said a prayer of thanksgiving. She believed in neither.

Ogtankaa began walking, following the new star westward toward the conclusion of her long quest.