When the redheaded quizm said it was going to be a hard day it was an understatement. I was awoken by a bucket of ice-cold water spilled over me by the quita woman, while still very much naked and now bruised all over.

I am uncomfortable with nakedness, and at that age, the feeling was even more acute. In the end, I was just a girl of twelve, that had been raised quite secluded, and now a little crowd of unknown people was staring at my very pitiful self.

The quita woman threw a white tunica my way that I wasn't able to catch. That made the little crowd laugh but they silenced abruptly when she frowned.

"Stand up. Put that on. The rules here in short are that you don't speak unless addressed, you don't move unless told to —"

"What if I have to pee?" I interrupted to ask. Not sure where that bratty attitude came from, as I was generally a docile child, but I probably resented her for the beating. And just like that, she gave me another reason to resent her. Her sharp quita claws dug into my arm leaving five punctual bloody marks behind and a lot of pain.

The circle gasped for whatever reason.

"Here you are taught obedience first of all. You are not at home anymore."

I had my fair share of complaints about home but that morning made me realize that my life so far had actually been good. At the palace, I was ignored, but except for some light slaps when I had been very naughty, I was never beaten.

Grumpy, and most certainly a bit entitled, I pulled the tunica over my head.

"Stand up. You have to fetch water and prepare breakfast. Since you are new it's your turn but you can choose one of the girls to accompany you."

That was the first time I actually took a look at the girls gathered around the bed. They were five in total. The first one to my right was a black-haired manab girl, that seemed, like me, southern. Then followed a smaller one with sandy hair and the pale skin of the mountain people that you could also find in the northern parts of the Empire. The red-headed quizm girl, who frowned at me to make sure I didn't choose her, was right in the middle. To her left, sat a blond one with shimmering golden eyes and little copper horns on her forehead, a ghazal. She was fascinatingly beautiful, just like described in the stories. And the last one in the half circle was ebony-skinned and willowy. She seemed human until she opened her eyes which were dark pink, a trait of the people of the east, the midrib.

"Mairi, you go with her," said the quita woman. The quizm girl grimaced.

Great start to my new life.

"Come on, your not so royal highness," she said rolling her eyes.

I would have expected her to get hit by the quita woman too for that but nothing happened. So much for equal treatment.

Every movement felt like torture, as I walked slowly behind Mairi.

The Priory of the White Stones is rightfully called that. Everything was white around us, the stones of the walls, the statues of people I didn't know, that were set along the hallway, and all the garments. Mairi's hair was the only thing in deep contrast with the rest.

"Well, nice to meet you, Mairi," I said after we walked in silence several steps down the halls of the priory. She didn't answer anything and I felt stupid for having opened my mouth.

"This evening, when you will get your stone, try to stay passive and void of emotions. Don't resist it, else it will hurt to the point of unbearable," she said after a while after we were far enough and nobody could hear her.

That girl was strange, and cranky but didn't seem evil. At that point in my life, I hadn't met a lot of evil to recognize it though. What she said made me just want to cry. More pain?

"What stone?" I asked timidly.

"Oh you really don't know, do you? Then again, I didn't know about this god-forsaken place either until I landed here."

"I know this is a place to foster orphan girls. I have never heard about any stone though," I confess.

"How did your parents die?"

"My mother died a long time ago and my father was killed," I answered placidly.

For the first time, this girl's eyes were not presumptuous but rather sympathetic, but only for a few heart beats, as if she were afraid to show that.

"Just do what I told you, alright? Then you will survive," she said adverting her gaze.

"Survive?! Can I die?!" I ask astonished.

"Fetch the bucket and fill it," she said pointing at the big silver jug. It was damn big and even empty quite heavy. "You can always die, every second of every day but yes, when you get your stone it's more likely. So like I said, a limp will, and it will be fine."

"This is barbaric. Why do they do that?"

"This is the world, you dummy. Where have you lived before, under a rock?"

"In my father's estate, I told you. Stop being so rude, I didn't do anything to you."

I tried to lift the full bucket and almost caved under the weight. Mairi rolled again her eyes but put a hand on the handle to help me while carrying her own full bucket too. She was thin and not particularly tall at that point but likely the strongest girl I had ever seen.

"No, you didn't, but you seem very spoiled and damn weak. It annoys me," she said in the spirit of her attitude so far.

"Well, I am weak and empty. But I still didn't do anything to you. Now tell me what that stone is for," I ask exasperated.

"We are all empty here, stop thinking you are special. So are most people as you might have noticed. But unfortunately for me and you, they think we can still make a magic child. That's what the stone is for, so whoever acquires us can control us," she said and pulled her hair up to show me the silver stone, the size of an egg planted on the back of her neck."

I felt like fainting only looking at it and imagining how painful it would be.

"I have read about a lot of things but my father didn't have books about this in the library. I am not sure why. He had books about everything else on the face of Alard. This is awful, this is so awful," I couldn't help whispering and started crying again.

I always knew I would be wedded off at some point to someone that my father would choose, I just saw it far in the future and I didn't know about any life-threatening control device. The marriage age for a noble girl was starting with eighteen, more than five years in the future, so I didn't really get to think what that meant. Now this problem came to meet me with striking force.

Luckily mundane issues didn't let me think too deeply about that. Cooking breakfast for thirty people when I had only been cooked for, so far, was not easy at all but at least not as horrible as carrying that damn bucket up the more than a hundred steps from the yard to the kitchen.

Cooking wasn't easy either when it was your first attempt. I had cut my fingers while snipping vegetables several times while Mairi laughed or rolled her eyes. The blue moon of midday was not even up in the sky when I decided I hated it there and wanted to go home. It was just that there was no home left for me and everyone I knew was dead. Whether I liked it or not, that was my life starting from that point on.

I was sharing the breakfast table as well as the room with the five girls I saw in the morning. There were eight other tables just the same with older and younger girls grouped by age. The bigger table in the eating room of the monastery was reserved for the white sisters, that were seven in number, the quita woman being one of them. Alone in the middle of the room was The White Grace, who seemed to be the authority above everyone here.

The food was way simpler than what I usually ate at the palace. We made vegetables with rice. Mairi told me what to do while laughing at me on several occasions. I burned it a little and it tasted a bit strange but I was too hungry to care.

After eating, we were divided again. One of the sisters told me I should go to the study room. Of course, I had no idea where or what that was and looked desperate at Mairi.

"Oh, high-born indeed," she said smirking in that way of hers that seemed slightly mocking. "Go with Salma. She is the only one from our room who goes there," she whispered.

And who is Salma? I asked myself and my mimic was probably just as desperate and easy to read.

"Salma is the horned one. The one with the red eyes is Chioma, the tall one is Itotia, and the one that is left is Fera. If you know what's good for you, you keep to yourself and don't annoy any of them."

That was strange advice because to my knowledge, we were all in the same boat here and everybody needed closure.

The study room turned out to be an immense library, even bigger than the one my father had, and I smiled for the first time since I arrived at that awful place. There was also another sister that was taking care of it and bringing us books.

Out of the probably fifty girls in the priory, only thirteen were here. I sat near Salma at the long table and she smiled at me. Smiled! And oh that was a beautiful smile. That girl was so beautiful I couldn't take my eyes off her.

"Hello, Zaretha," she whispered and smiled again. "You ought to be a wife too?"

"Wife?" I asked. I was not sure if that was on the table anymore.

"Yes. If you are noble and bearer of a magic gene you are likely to be acquired by a noble family to marry their son. If you are of common birth you are more likely to be a concubine. That's why the others are taught to fight while we are taught politics, etiquette, and dancing. These things that are required of a noble lady to know."

"Oh," I only gasp. So my destiny didn't change so much, after all. The only difference was that now it was not my father that would choose the family I would marry in, but the family would choose me. I was just a child of twelve though; I shouldn't be worried about marriage. I should be playing and learning and yet I had to.

We were silenced and a sister started talking to us about court etiquette, which for me wasn't foreign at all, having been taught from a young age. I saw Salma eyeing me interested when she noticed I knew the answers to all the questions.

Then came a lesson in history about The War of The Keepers, also known as the Scales War for the common folk. That was over five hundred star circles in the past, when all creatures still bared magic, and the tanyin—huge horned creatures, winged and covered with shimmering scales—wanted to exterminate the other races. They were defeated by the joined forces of most people, and they were the ones being exterminated in the end. Many details of that war were lost but it was still fascinating to learn about it and about a world without empty ones, a world where I would have been complete.

Not all lessons were quite as interesting but they were at least not foreign to me and the familiarity made me not feel so bad anymore.

When the red moon was up in the sky we all went to supper that was prepared now by someone else, thanks to the gods. Salma walked by my side still smiling. When we met the others again I noticed Mairi frowning at the scene.

My childish brain got distracted by the lessons and smiles and I forgot for a while of the past pain and the one to come. So I was again surprised when one of the sisters told me to stand up from the dining table and led me into a big empty room where I was asked to kneel again. Cuffs were fastened at my ankles and I knew I had been naive once more.

My mind flashed back to the pleasant monotony that my life had been only a week ago, when my only problem had been that my father didn't love me.

The girls were all gathered in the room and started chanting together with the white sisters. For a while, nothing happened but then the atmosphere was getting heavy with magic. All girls were supposedly empty, but still, the atmosphere was charging progressively. When The White Grace opened the box with the stones, one of them started glowing. It was bigger than Mairi's and that made me shudder.

I was afraid again and with reason because when the stone touched the back of my neck my body started to burn. It was as if fire was running through my veins beginning with that very spot and I felt like crying. Mairi said I should let my will be weak and all that, but somehow it didn't really help or matter because it was hurting terribly regardless.

I looked up at Mairi. Maybe she was giving me deliberately wrong advice. We weren't friends after all. She made that clear enough. Quizms were said to be wicked. Maybe what I had to do was the whole opposite, maybe I had to be strong and fight it so it would hurt less.

As soon as my will stiffened the stone became more active and I cried out in pain while my body was convulsing held only by the chains and I could see the girls' frightened gazes. I had been wrong; I concluded just before everything turned dark. 

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Yey! Finally! I am having more and more ideas and hope to not forget the stuff I set up before. Feel free to ask questions and point out inconsistencies.