Thessa

Somewhere in the Tablelands—Year of Wind's Vengeance in the 190th King's Year, Free Year 13

Thessa crouches low behind a jagged outcropping of sandstone, her muscular frame coiled tight with readiness. The oasis sprawls before her, a mirage made real—its sickly green fronds swaying in the hot wind, the pool's surface shimmering like liquid bronze under the twin suns. She scans the perimeter with the methodical precision of a predator; every shadow between the twisted acacia trunks could harbor ambush. Her fingers flex near the bone hilt of her obsidian dagger. Water means life on Athas—and life is always guarded.

She spots them then: three figures draped in ragged cloaks, faces obscured by strips of woven lizard-hide. They huddle near the water's edge, their spears leaned against the rocks like idle sentinels. One kneels to drink with cupped hands—amateurish. No true desert dweller would expose their neck like that.

Fools or bait. Either way, weak.

Thessa exhales through her nostrils, evaluating. The tallest of the three stands abruptly, head cocked as if listening. Too late. She's already moving.

With a guttural cry, Thessa explodes from cover, closing the distance in six ground-eating strides. Her dagger finds the drinker's throat first—a wet punch of iron-scented heat.

"The water is mine," she growls, twisting the blade free as the body collapses. The remaining two scramble for their spears, but Thessa is already among them; her elbow cracks against a jaw, her knee drives into a groin. The tallest manages to raise his weapon—just in time for Thessa to wrench it from his grasp and bury its point between his ribs.

The last one falls to his knees, clutching his ruined crotch. Thessa plants a bare foot on his chest and presses down until she hears the gratifying crunch of sternum.

Silence.

She wipes her blade clean on a corpse's cloak, then eyes the pool. The water is murky with sediment, but drinkable. Probably.

"Now," she mutters, "let's see what you were hiding."

Urik—Year of Wind's Vengeance in the 190th King's Age, Free Year 13

The sun beats down like a hammer on an anvil as Thessa steps onto the bloodstained sands of Urik's fighting pit. The stench of old death clings to the air—iron, sweat, and something sweet-rotten beneath the raked sand. Her bare feet registers the familiar grit, the hidden shards of bone from fights past. Across the arena, iron bars rise with a rusty shriek, revealing her opponent: a wiry elf with oiled skin the color of bruised figs, his fingers curled around twin hooked blades made from kank carapace.

"Last breath today, stone-skin," he hisses, his voice like wind over broken glass. The templar-judge perched above the arena slams her staff—topped with a stolen metal orb that glints cruelly in the light—and the crowd erupts into hungry screams.

Elves always talk too much before they bleed.

Thessa adjusts the grip on her obsidian dagger, its edge serrated from last week's gutting of a silt runner. The elf feints left, then darts right, blades whirling. She lets him come—waiting until his leading foot plants—then pivots hard, driving her chitin-plated forearm into his throat. Cartilage crunches. He staggers, choking, but recovers faster than expected, one hook-blade slicing upward. It snags the leather strap across her ribs, drawing a thin red line just below her left breast.

She doesn't flinch. Pain is an old friend.

Grabbing his wrist, she twists until bone snaps. His scream dies as her dagger finds the soft hollow beneath his jaw. Hot blood pulses over her knuckles. The crowd roars approval.

Thessa shoves the corpse aside with her boot and stares up at the templar. "Next."

The templar grins, cruelty in his smile...

Urik—Year of Wind's Vengeance in the 190th King's Age, Free Year 13

Thessa's breath comes slow and steady despite the sprint—years of arena combat have honed her endurance. She doesn't panic, doesn't waste energy on fear. The templars' boots pound past the doorway, their shouts muffled by the thick stone walls.

Good. Idiots never check the shadows.

She waits a beat longer—just to be sure—then steps out from the alcove.

Or tries to.

The moment her bare foot touches the street beyond the doorway's threshold, the world lurches. Stone becomes air. The dry heat of Urik vanishes into sudden, damp cold. Her stomach flips as gravity twists, as if she's been yanked sideways through reality itself.

Then—impact. Hard cobblestones beneath her knees. Thessa snarls, rolling instantly into a defensive crouch, her obsidian dagger flashing into her grip.

Wherever this is, it isn't Urik.

Black iron towers claw at a bleeding sky. The air stinks of magic—thick and wrong, nothing like the scorched whispers of Athas' defiler sorcery. She eyes a passerby in clothing she cannot fathom.

Her blade tilts toward him, her knuckles white around the hilt.

"Talk." The command is flat, honed sharp by a lifetime of violence. "Where is this?"

He barely slows his stride: "Go soak yer brain-box, ya soddin' berk. Yer in Sigil—you'll figger it out...or ya won't."