"Now tell me . . . Where are you hiding the fugitives?"

She stepped nearer to the men, crouching down so that she was level with their pale, sweaty faces. She was tall, and they were low, low like the worms they were. A dagger appeared in one hand, while the other brushed the hair out of her eyes, letting them clearly see into the empty room where her soul should have been.

She waited a long while, only looking at them, not even touching their filthy hides, but that was enough. Finally a man lifted his arm and pointed at a crooked floor board under the bar, avoiding her eyes in the way most people did: as if they were trying too hard to seem like they weren't. She hated people who did that.

With barely a glance she kicked open the hidden trapdoor, jumping down into the shadowy cesspool of filth and flesh, many blades shining like holy fire in the twilight of the hole.

And as with all twilights, night quickly fell.

~~o~~

The seeds revolved in her hand, ever moving, pulsing with the energy of a hundred lives, her thin fingers spinning them even after she tried to stop. The flickering fire silhouetted her thin form, a black shape against a blackening sky, so that she looked almost like the torivor that stood guard in the trees.

Her mind was spinning in circles, as incapable of stopping as the seeds in her hand as she tried to review her most recent mission. The bright eyes of the seedmen kept entering her mind unbidden, a sharp tug at her gut occurring with every recollection. She knew that in most people it would have come with a swarm of emotion.

She also knew that the phrase 'most people' would never apply to her.

With a quick exhale she stood up, her long thin braid dancing dangerously close to the fire's grasping fingers, and shoved her revolving hand into a pocket. For a moment she felt a slight disconnect, as if her hand were about to come loose. She cinched her eyes shut and focused on it. The gentle clacking stopped immediately, the woods around her silent as a tomb. 

The emperor demands your presence.

The words dug deep into her mind like talons of ice, emanating from the torivor, and her fingers clenched instinctively into a fist. The seeds clacked together in her pocket.

"He knows I don't like to sleep." She said the words as a token gesture only, her hands already drawing the thin syringe-like blade from her belt. The hollow steel blade glinted in the firelight, dripping with poison. "He knows I don't sleep easy." The shadow was silent, still as night and she sighed, resting the blade against the scar-flecked crook of her elbow. In, out. That fast the poison entered her bloodstream, carrying with it the promise of dreams dark and bitter as the sleeping draught. Consciousness fled, and the knife fell from her hand, landing on the ground without a sound.

The living shadow darted forward as her knees buckled, its dark form a blur as if leapt to catch her. Careful as a mother cat it lowered her down to rest in the soft emerald grass. It watched for a few moments as if making sure she was still alive, before carefully resting its hands on either side of her face, thumbs covering her eyes. Still as night, the shadow entered her dreams.