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Mateo de Orikeno’s tall, slender body hovers several hands above the smoothly-packed dirt floor, hazel eyes focused on the pulsing ball of light in his right hand as he tells the tale. “The chief of the land of the dead thought it over for a long time,” he says. The ball of light, an effervescent crackle casting flickering shadows across Mateo’s smooth, unlined face, pulses in sync with his voice – a deep, soothing baritone inherited, like all of his talents, from his mother’s Oniat blood. Recanting the sacred myths of her people, he manipulates the ball of light into…

In the ten winters since she’d come to this unbearably hot island, Lady Bludwerth found herself longing for the travails of her homeland more and more often. The fact that “winters” was a definition of time that had little meaning here was only a small part of the reason. That there was a virtue in fighting for freedom that seemed lost when the battle changed to one of aggression loomed much larger. Could it be, as her father had said, that there truly was no middle ground? That a victor always required a vanquished? The clang of iron striking iron…