Kha’las is a young, city-dwelling crowfolk, or “kenku,” in their native tongue, hatched into a poor tribe of fences and cutpurses. While never much of a thief, he supported his tribe’s lot in life by using his discerning eye and encyclopedic knowledge to isolate valuable gems and trinkets from worthless refuse. Raised in a cliffside district high above the religiously divided metropolis of Stronn, Kha’las never found much use for either of the city’s two prominent faiths, but his brother Ja’kil found kinship with the Celestine Church of Albalesta, diametrically opposed to the Circle of Throght.
 
After the head prophet of the Celestine Church narrowly survived an assassination attempt during a government-sanctioned sermon, the tepid peace between factions erupted into brutal violence. Ja’kil betrayed his family; revealing the secret, religious allegiances of those of his kin belonging to the Circle of Throght. The ostensibly neutral city guard, the Stronnmach, facilitated his crusade, executing dozens of crowfolk as they slept. Kha’las confronted Ja’kil atop the Perch, and they engaged in a mortal struggle that killed Ja’kil, who fell to his death. In his memory, Kha’las pledged his life, and his soul, to peacemaking among faiths.
 
Unable to immediately execute his wish in Stronn’s politically and religiously turbulent environment, Kha’las left the city, wandering Khess as a vagrant, picking up work in forges, jewelers, and shops, learning about the dynamics of faith through books and personal experiences shared with traveling merchants. In the small town of Basomm, he met Iva, a strong-willed itinerant merchant who shared a story of justice through faith, which drove Kha’las to pledge himself to the god responsible for it, Cuinatre. After performing a ritual at the site story featured, he has gained the power, conviction, and magical abilities necessary to propogate a faith based on defeating ethnic and religious cleansing.
 
“Violence may be means to end, but it’s end violent understand.”
 
___
 
Kha’las was hatched in The Perch, a district in Stronn, a metropolitan power center within the decentralized moorlands of Khess. Founded nearly a millennium ago, Stronn is built on what is believed to be a planar axis between the Celestine and Infernal realms. Some strive to ascend to the Celestine Plane from its peak, while others believe that a path to the realm of devils exists in the city’s subterranean caverns.
 
As such, Stronn has always been a nexus of deep religious significance. While many have made it their home as a point of pilgrimage, others have made it a trading haven in the vast, grassy scrubland. Humble farmers, religious zealots, ambitious socialites, unsated thrill-seekers, hardened adventurers, working families, and shrewd merchants all call Stronn home.
 
Kha’las’ belonged to the Akma tribe,a once-promising tribe of merchants and artisans now notorious for their legerdemain; they’re said to be able to steal anything, even a baby’s cry. The Akma kept much of their kenku social tradition, despite assimilating with the other crowfolk tribes of Stronn’s Perch. Without true parental relationships, most Akma bond most closely with their clutchmates. Kha’las hatched from a clutch of five eggs, but only one other fledgling survived to adulthood: his excitable, charismatic brother Ja’kil.
 
A keen-eyed and curious chick, Kha’las was reared collectively by the Akma in their spontaneously-adopted trade; the ways of remaining unseen, stepping lightly, and developing crowfolk’s innate skill to mimic the voices of the humans who dominated Stronn’s politics and trade. They practiced delicate acts that tested their agility and poise. “A light wing is a live wing,” the tribesfolk instilled.
 
Kha’las was not as gifted in the art of theft as his tribesfolk were, but he had other gifts. He had an exceptional memory, a studious mind, and a sharp eye for quality, sifting through a pile of his tribesfolk’s pilfered spoils to find the trinkets most likely to fence. As was Akma tradition, and for many crowfolk at large, he did not receive his name until he leaves the nest. His name, Kha’las, means “pebble-gem” in colloquial Kenku. He was also an excellent impersonator, copying the accents, mannerisms, and timbre of some of Stronn’s most famous politicians, performers, and preachers. Kha’las’ acted more cautiously than his brother, Ja’kil, whose gregariousness and magnanimity made him a natural leader within the tribe. Ja’kil would boast about his confidence schemes great and small, and together with Kha’las’ discerning beak and knowledge for valuables, the Akma subsisted.
 
Stronn’s fiercely religious roots grip the city in weekly, government-sanctioned sermons, rotating between the two prominent denominations represented within the capital’s vast urban complex. These sermons are given late at night in the cavernous Sun’s Square, the city’s central plaza, named for the glittering sun that shines off the polished flagstones on clear days. One such faction is the Celestine Church of Albalesta, a church advocating submission to the ascended angel Albalesta. The Church in Stronn advocates for the eradication of evildoers and the support of the poor. The opposing faction, the Circle of Throght, are an openly recognized cabal of infernal thaumaturgists and their underlings. They are determined to aggregate enough spiritual power to open the infernal portal beneath the city to allow the archdevil Throght to subjugate the land, installing his followers in places of power throughout Marafel. These sermons are often passionate monologues espousing the factions’ values, promising deliverance from the ailments of the Material Plane, and, inevitably, denouncing their rival.
 
While kept in check by the neutral Stronnsmach, violence had frequently erupted between religious factions. Moreover, the ideological and monetary influence of any given religious faction bends Stronn’s more unscrupulous political leaders towards bias and discrimination. At any given time, either faction might be currying favor with municipal authority, undermining Stronn’s egalitarian democratic system. In the end, both good and evil factions will do anything to ensure dominance of their faction and the deity they revere.
 
Like many of his tribesfolk, Kha’las worshipped no god. Kenku proclivities to atheism didn’t keep the factions from evangelizing throughout the Perch, winning crowfolk over with promises of religious fulfillment, a life free from greed, and, what might have been most attractive, a full stomach. One would know the preachers were making their rounds by the smells of the freely-offered spiced rodents, tender grains, and yeasty beer warming the winds as their “charity carts” passed through.
 
Inquisitive at heart, Kha’las was a skeptic not necessarily of religion at large, but of these two factions, seeing through their manipulative recruitment methods. For him, the power these faiths claimed their gods gave them came at too high a cost: freedom of thought and association. Ja’kil, on the other hand, was won over to the Church of Albalesta, though he kept his conversion a secret. He then started lifting purses and running cons only from the waistcoats of known collaborators with the Circle of Throght and the unaligned. Only Kha’las knew of his devotion; religious crowfolk had always been quiet practitioners of faith.
 
One evening, Albalesta’s head prophet, the Most Serene Speaker Dyvres Amal, an elegant aasimar woman of incomparable wisdom and zeal, was scheduled to deliver a rousing sermon in the Sun’s Square. Crowfolk would often be in attendance at sermons of both factions, either to ply their thieving or as a secretly sincere audience, seeking redemption for their fragile souls. As he’d done many times before, Kha’las came down from the Perch and climbed a nearby parapet to get an unobstructed view of thousands of eager listeners who filled the Square below, to people-watch and to keep up with the goings on around Stronn. Admittedly, seeing the factions bicker was entertaining, too.
 
An overcast, moonless night had fallen. Faction torches now wreathed the square, their flickering blue flames casting long shadows across the hoods and hats of Stronn citizens. The Stronnmach gathered, as they always had, in squads of a half dozen, peppered throughout the throng, ready to respond to disorder. The combative rhetoric of both factions had become pitched, so the sprinklings of glittering armor and halberds had multiplied. The soup of the crowd had become oversalted; still, Kha’las saw his crowfolk brethren, with their telltale beaks and glinting black eyes, bobbing and weaving through the crowd, albeit more carefully, witnessing the occasional purloin in progress during the briefer lapses in surveillance.
 
Finally, after a long wait, the head prophet took the stage to cheers and applause. Regardless of one’s own faith, Dyvres was striking to behold. A shimmering crystal tiara kept her long white hair neat, despite the constant breeze. Her clear, grey eyes, discernable even from a distance, glittered with soul-borne fervor. While she and her fellow adherents most often wore blue, her vestments tonight were white and flowing, with gold-colored threading hugging the cloth to her limbs and midriff. Her voice carried almost unnaturally into every alley, gutter, and crevice around the Square as she orated, reaching out to the masses of unaligned who had gathered to hear her offering of comfort in the collective.
 
Kha’las listened for a while, but soon found his thoughts wandering. He heard the crowd applaud and exclaim at the prescribed time, while hearing a chorus of commiserating sneers and boos as she indicted her infernal counterparts. The buildings that surrounded Sun’s Square were tall, and imposing, quiet monoliths cast in flickering shadow. Kha’las looked more closely at one such building adjacent to the stage, counting the floors as he examined it. The first floor was, during the day, a barber and groomer, his eyes could resolve; the second floor was a laundry. But the sixth floor had an open window, its broad pane yawning over the square. Maybe the proprietor had forgotten to latch it and the perennial moorland breeze that swept through the city on chilly nights had thrown it open. He witnessed a speck of light, as if from a mirror, from the bottom of the distant sill high above the square. He couldn’t make it out, but it was quivering, and not with the wind.
 
Meanwhile, the crowd audibly swelled as hundreds of converts to Dyvres’ message came forward to pledge their souls to Albelesta. She held her slender arms aloft and closed her eyes, beseeching her celestial for the powers needed to affirm them. As she began her prayer, Kha’las watched the glint from the window zoom over the crowds with terrible speed towards Dyvres, a shooting star across shadowy ink.
 
An instant later, Dyvres gasped. The fletching of a crossbow bolt jutted out from just beneath her collarbone, a contrasting splotch of blood blooming across the white and gold neckline of her robe. She didn’t cry out in pain; she just collapsed, carried down by the force of the bolt.
 
Some say they heard Dyvres call out for justice. Others say that the Stronnmach turned against the crowd, bludgeoning and detaining indiscriminately in an attempt to re-establish order. Still others said they saw the hideous, horned specter of Throght himself guide the bolt to its target.
 
Nothing was certain. Bedlam reigned. Religious partisans prepared to fight for their sworn patron at a moment’s notice separated themselves from the crowd, drew their concealed weapons, and attacked each other. The Stronnmach deduced the source of the assassin’s shot, and an impromptu raid on the building’s ground floor commenced with haste. With the Stronnmach distracted, some opportunists demolished the glass storefronts along the Square, looting indiscriminately.
 
The orderly Sun’s Square disintegrated into a writhing mass of flesh and steel. Kha’las watched in horror as proponents of either faction turned against the other, drawing daggers, hammers, gardening shears, loose bricks, broken bottles, anything to strike their neighbors down in the name of the unseen. From his lofty vantage, Kha’las watched fires erupt in pockets throughout the districts, and the rhythmic, haunting clang of muster bells permeated the cloudy air, summoning more Stronnmach guards to battle. Kha’las looked up to the indented reliefs nestled in the Perch’s cliffside. Blue flames flickered within its sockets.

Kha’las’ heart sank and his black eyes widened, scanning the cliff face. His beak clicked together as he struggled to find a prayer, an appeal to any higher power to protect his kin. He leaped down from his vantage point and scrambled across the cobblestone streets below. He bolted across the ancient stone causeways that crisscrossed Stronn’s cityscape, gradually climbing to the heights of the Perch. Kha’las was breathless, but he kept running. As he got closer, he heard the shouts of humans and the frantic squawks of his kin.
 
Blades whistling through the air, the crunch of bone, the flapping of feathers. Kha’las’ panic whipped his feet to move faster along the cliffs’ switchbacks.
 
He arrived at the Perch where he found a harrowing scene: Stronnmach soldiers hoisting blue torches over dozens of slain crowfolk. Weapons of convenience lay strewn beside the slain. Awash in the bluish pallor, Kha’las saw a hooded kenku. His heart fluttered in his breast.
 
“That’s all of them,” the hooded figure announced, the Common sounding unnatural from a kenku tongue. “We have done Our Serenity’s work!”
 
The battalion commiserated. “To Our Serenity!”
 
Kha’las shuddered. He knew that voice. The battalion commander called her marching order, and the Stronnmach processed away from the carnage they’d wrought.
 
Kha’las remained hidden, mentally reciting the mantra he’d remembered from his youth. “A light wing is a live wing.” He watched the hooded kenku, waiting for a moment to strike.
 
As the hooded figure surveyed the mayhem, Kha’las lunged from the shadows, knocking the surprised kenku prone. Kha’las, bulkier and stronger than the average, more nimble crowfolk, pinned him down, lifting his opponent’s hood with a feathered hand.
 
“Ja’kil,” Kha’las conceded. He stared Ja’kil down. The playful brother he’d known, the charming and agreeable clutchmate with which he’d sparred, was gone. Instead, a new Ja’kil stared back, fire in his eyes, dark red blood splattered on his beak, the blood of his own kin.
 
“Brother,” the pinned kenku said in the Common Tongue. “There’s still time for you.” His head twitched to the dead beside him. “These traitors have turned their hearts from Our Serenity, but you don’t have to!”
 
“Fool!” Kha’las squawked back. He pressed harder on his brother, and he felt his brother strain against him, trying to wriggle free. “You slaughter your kin?” Kha’las struggled to say the words even in his native tongue. “They seek truth, same as you!”
 
Ja’kil scoffed, refusing to answer in Kenku. “The truth is plain, brother. Did you not see the murder of the Most Serene Speaker?”
 
“I saw.” Kha’las paused, glancing over at the openings of the Perch, which bore witness to the still-raging battle in the city below. “But…how you see? I came home soon as angel-woman shot; wind could not outrun me.”
 
Ja’kil’s beak curled into a wry smile. “Every pyre needs kindling…brother.” Ja’kil jerked hard, reaching towards the khukuri sheathed in his cloak. Kha’las staggered to one side, trying to turn Ja’kil and disarm him.
 
Kha’las constricted his brother, cracking feather vanes beneath his grip, and rolled his brother over. Kha’las felt the ground beneath him suddenly slope, releasing his brother in surprise. Ja’kil gasped; he felt the breeze of the open air and glimpsed the sheer cliff below the Perch. He grasped at his brother as he slipped, but he was too far out of reach. Gravity ensnared him, and Ja’kil plummeted down to the city hundreds of feet below.
 
Kha’las stared agape at his lost brother as he was swallowed by the night’s shadow. He kept staring into the darkness for sseveral moments. Overwhelmed, Kha’las cawed like his avian ancestors, mourning the loss of so many of his kinsmen, and the one who mattered most.
 
Ja’kil had loosed, but not drawn his khukuri. It clattered back and forth beside the precipice, finally coming to rest. After a long silence, Kha’las looked at it in the morning twilight. He surveyed the fires below, the smoke that billowed from the extinguished flames in some districts, and listened to the chants, the battle cries of the unleashed legionnaires of each faith, finally able to battle openly with their rivals. Who would stop them?
 
He grasped the khukuri, bringing it closer to his scrutinizing gaze, tilting it to catch the scarce light. The unadorned weapon was streaked in crowfolk blood, which had crusted over and dried. Such atrocities to his kin had been committed with this implement, all in the name of faith.
 
Kha’las finally resolved to stand, and he walked amongst the slain, several dozen in all. Some were from the Akma tribe, but most were from other, more religiously minded tribes. Most, but not all of the dead, carried hidden marks of their allegiance to Throght, either carved into their flesh or couched within their coat of feathers, or with scattered paraphernalia in their possession: black-leather ritual books, foul-smelling whiskerwax candles, bloodletting knives. The rest of his kin, presumably, had fled the Perch when, or hopefully before, the battalion arrived. Kha’las scoffed as he considered the treachery of the Stronnmach oath: “indentured to none, in service to all.”
 
The clouds had cleared, and the early morning sun’s light seeped through the Perch’s cliffside apertures, splashing the ghastly scene in violet. Smoke from extinguished campfires lingered as a translucent haze, drifting like spirits around their tribal homesteads.
 
Kha’las picked up a rent strip of cloth and rubbed the encrusted blade, chipping the smeared blood off like dried paint. He looked at the cloth; bits of his kin, the family he’d known, forever lost.
 
From the path he’d ascended, he heard the din of crowing and fevered conversation in his own native tongue carried on by hundreds of voices, and it was approaching fast. He wheeled around; he was the only living kenku he’d found in the Perch, and the khukuri he held was still partially speckled with their blood. He looked to the Perch’s precipice, considering taking a forlorn leap and joining his brother. He looked at the khukuri, slid it in his belt, and fled the other direction, opting to amble down the opposing cliffside rather than trying to explain to his kin that one of their own had perpetrated this massacre.
 
The sharp khukuri buffeted his calloused claw-feet as he descended, forever destined to be a reminder of the brother he’d lost. But never, Kha’las promised, of the faith that had won.
 
Kha’las never returned to the Perch. Eight moons later, the Stronnmach’s high commander was found to have violated the city’s charter of neutrality and was held personally responsible for more than 1,200 of some 4,000 murders that occurred city-wide immediately following the assassination attempt. He was executed, and the Stronnmach was restructured, being more open and welcoming than it had been before.
 
Dyvres Amal eventually recovered from her wounds and vehemently denies that the assassination was staged. No one has ever been arrested for the attempt on her life. Kha’las had nothing left for him in the city, so, with little more than the clothes on his back and the khukuri at his hip, he defected entirely, looking to the world for opportunity, faith without politics, and time to let the wounds of betrayal heal.
 
❧•❧
 
Kha’las left Stronn at the age of 17, wandering the moors of Khess for the next six years, looking for a new place to settle down. The moorlands are crisscrossed by simple farmer’s paths, feral trails, and babbling creeks during the wet seasons, and Kha’las learned to follow them to his next destination, where he’d stay for a few moons and relocate, hoping to find somewhere that felt like home.
 
He subsisted as a small-time apprentice, finding work as a smith, jeweler, and forger. While in the employ of a riverside smith in the crossroad village of Basomm, Kha’las reforged his brother’s blade in his memory, using his steady jeweler’s hand to etch a sheepsvine into its tang, a universal symbol of peace in kenku society. He tried to find time to read and learn, but outside of religious texts, books were scarce in the Khessian countryside.
 
While in Basomm, winter descended on the moorlands, so Kha'las quartered at the forge; the benevolent smith who employed him let him make his bed beside the heat of the forge to keep his feathers warm. As winter fell, a caravan of nomadic merchants, a common sight in Khess, set up for the cold season as well. The townsfolk were happy to barter with the travelers, exchanging their handicrafts for food, drink, and fineries.
 
As a crowfolk, Kha’las didn’t garner much respect in the insular, conservative communities of the plains. The merchants, however, were eager to entertain and fold in Kha’las, and Kha’las was grateful for their companionship. The news of the Leechnight had spread throughout the continent, and while sore at first to recount, Kha’las retreaded the events of that evening with these nomads. He shared stories of life within Stronn, the oppression of its two religious factions warring with each other, but also the positives: the cosmopolitan nature of the city, the beautiful architecture, the wonderful food.
 
After regaling the vagabonds with his stories one cold night, one of the elder merchants called him back to her wagon while the rest of the travelers and their guests drank themselves to sleep or returned home. The merchant was called Iva the Spiteful, a name she joked was ill-gained from her brother in their youth but one she was never able to shake, either. Her silver hair, braided long in the back as a younger woman might wear, trailed nearly to the hem of her winter’s cloak as she led him to the wagon.
 
Her wagon was small, cylindrical, but well-appointed with a small bed, finished floorboards, and about a thousand hanging baubles and curios, which rocked back and forth as Kha’las crossed the threshold.
 
Kha’las and Iva barely fit inside the wagon together, but it meant it was cozy and surprisingly warm. Iva muttered a comment in a tongue Kha’las did not know, and a soft orb of light appeared in Iva’s right hand. Now illuminated, it was easy to see that at the foot of her tiny bed was a small bookshelf filled to the brim with scrolls, folded leather covers and loose vellum. She removed a simple, leather-bound diary, held together with catgut and frayed twine.
 
She turned back to him, handing the Kha’las the vaguely bound stack of vellum. “We leave tomorrow night, Pebblegem. Read this, and tell me what you think.”
 
Kha’las took the book gingerly. “My work at the forge will–“
 
“It’ll snow heavily tomorrow, nestling. No one will dare quit the hearth.” She shoved the papers back into the foot-shelf. “I think you might find Gelban’s tale…captivating.”
 
Kha’las walked out of her wagon, not needing to duck to dodge the lintel. He rounded. “This is a kind gesture, Iva, but –“
 
“Tomorrow night, nestling.” The door closed with a hollow thunk. The light vanished from behind its curtained porthole as she extinguished her spell. Kha’las looked up, the sky clear as glass, its myriad stars belying Iva’s forecast.
 
Kha’las returned to the forge where he labored. The coals within the forge were still warm; he stoked them for a moment, then curled up in his bedroll beside it, dosing off to sleep.
 
The next morning, Basomm was completely socked in. Kha’las awoke to find his beak covered in snow, all of his tools stacked with several inches of powder, and a gentle breeze building drifts against the smithy’s house a foot tall.
 
Steam billowed from the front of the forge, the trap of which Kha’las had left ajar. He scrambled to his feet, ran over to the forge. Snow had doused the hot coals, steam gushing forth with a noisy hiss. Kha’las looked back at his bedroll, where the folded journal lay.
 
He stuck his hand inside the forge, opened the top flue, and grabbed the journal. He climbed into the toasty forge, the coals hot, but not searing to the touch. The steam wafted out of the top, clearing the air within. He took off his outer cloak, set it on the coals, and sat. The embers gave a bit of light to the copper-lined kiln, which illuminated the old pages.
 
It was written by a squire named Gelban, a human who’d lived two centuries before Kha’las was hatched. Like Kha’las, he’d been on a spiritual journey; Gelban was squire and nephew to the Blessed Lord Fol Korrin, knight and cleric of Aurell, the God of Light. The Blessed Lord was the head of his temple, and he was going on a pilgrimage to the holy site of Erkett, cloistered away on a peninsula in southern Khess. He and his hand-selected entourage traveled along the route for several weeks before arriving at the foot of the hill on which Erkett sits. The local villagers had long profited from the pilgrimage trade, and they were delighted when Lord Korrin arrived, but it wasn’t because of the money he brought. Erkett, normally aglow in the soft white shadow of the Erkettstone, had not shone for several days up on the hill. Lord Korrin, fearing the worst, climbed the hill, armor and all, to find that the Erkettstone was nowhere to be found. The site had been vandalized; stones were kicked out of place or missing entirely, the manicured grass had been upturned, and the alcove that contained the Erkettstone bore graffiti in Orcish, goading whoever found it to come and get it.
 
Gelban’s uncle was furious. As the sun set, he made camp and mustered his best men, but not eager Gelban. Instead, Gelban looked after the horses, shoveling horse flops while the “real” soldiers plotted their holy crusade to recover the stone and exact vengeance on its thieves.
 
 
Kha’las clucked mid-sentence; even though centuries separated them, Gelban’s tone was not subtle.
 
The next day, before dawn, the Blessed Lord ascended the hill again to beseech Aurell for guidance and power. Overnight, his scouts had ventured out, finding an encampment of orcs a day’s ride ahead, back up the peninsula. The entourage hurriedly struck the campsite and galloped up the peninsula in hot pursuit.
 
They’d caught up with the encampment of thirty orcs by mid-afternoon, Gelban wrote. His uncle beseeched them, in Orcish, for the stolen Erkettstone, but they denied having it. He draw his beautiful longsword, threatened to slaughter the whole group, and cursed at them for their insolence. Now angered, the orcs turned to warn him to stand down, that they did not have the stone he was looking for and to leave them be.
 
Lord Korrin had only his five horseman, and the orcs numbered about thirty, including women and children. Still, Lord Korrin attacked. He and his cavaliers rounded up and killed each and every one of those orcs, invoking Aurell’s power with each charge. In only a few minutes, the plains grew quiet again, the slain orcs heaped around the goods they carried. Lord Korrin asked his horsemen’s squires, including Gelban, to help him locate the stolen Erkettstone, but to be careful, should it be unsheathed. Korrin believed only he was pious enough to withstand the stone’s purifying energies directly, Gelban opined.
 
The horsemen and other squires had seen war and the carnage it brought, but this was Gelban’s first experience in battle. More of a massacre than a battle. While the lads searched, Gelban found himself overwhelmed. The sight of severed heads, the splatters of deep-red blood covering his young face and probing hands, the squish of viscera beneath his boots. Tears sprung to his eyes, overcome with heft of death.
 
They found nothing but food and clothing; if this orcish band had stolen the stone, they’d relieved themselves of it already.
 
Korrin flew into a rage, cursing the winds, his scouts, the squires, anyone who could have let the stone escape had they just been a little faster, a little more thorough. Their faithful adherence to Aurell, their very souls were now at risk.
 
Lord Korrin quested his scouts with finding another band of orcs, orcs apparently being the only company interested in a huge, magical diamond left out in the breeze. They departed that afternoon with great speed, returning that night with news of a larger orcish settlement off the road twelve miles distant. Surely they would have stolen it. Even Gelban seemed to start to believe it.
 
Darkness overcame the fields of Khess, and as each horseman returned to his tent, Lord Korrin returned to his own quarters, where Gelban would help him doff his armor. Gelban recorded their conversation.
 
“You’ve now seen battle, young Gelban.”
 
“Yes, sire, I have,” Gelban admitted, unbuckling his master’s shoulder braces.
 
“Some cannot be saved,” Korrin lamented. “The Sun shines on us all, but only some can see its true light.”
 
“And fewer still can stare back,” Gelban recited. “Could…could we not have taken them prisoner, search their possessions, then let them go? What mandate had we to kill– “
 
“Complete,” Korrin corrected. “Complete them, young Gelban. Orcs are different than you and I. You see, the Sun’s glorious light will shine on them daily as their body returns to the earth. That is their only chance at redemption in His eyes.”
 
“But some of them were younger than I!” Gelban retorted, wishing he could take it back. Squires weren’t supposed to backtalk.
 
“Less time for them to live in darkness.” Gelban slid off his chausses, leaving Lord Korrin with only a light, linen jerkin. He exhaled deeply, his nostrils flaring. “Thank you, squire. To bed now.”
 
“Yes, sir.” Gelban hung his chausses on the lower part of Lord Korrin’s armor stand, then curled himself under a single blanket to sleep. Lord Korrin extinguished the candle besides his cot, and the large tent fell dark.
 
Gelban’s penmanship changed drastically and jarringly. Kha’las furrowed the brow beneath his feathers. Maybe because the squire was writing in darkness, perhaps? Kha’las tilted the vellum to read each misaligned paragraph.
 
Gelban’s next words were out of place, as if written by someone else, and all in majuscule script. The marks of the quill still indented the vellum, applied with considerable force.
 
“TO DEATH CONSIGNED”
 
Kha’las turned the page, but there was nothing else. He scanned each page to the back cover. Blank.
 
Kha’las pulled the iron latch on the forge trap. The snow had stopped, and the whole town was engulfed in soft, purple twilight. Kha’las lumbered out of the forge, brushed off the soot, and ran to the travelers’ encampment.
 
When he arrived, camp was packed, and the roamers were already tacking their horses and bundling them up for their journey through the cool night. Kha’las saw Iva’s wagon, ran to its little steps, and ascended, rapping on the thin door.
 
“Is that you, nestling?” she called from within. Kha’las nudged the door open. “What did you think?”
 
Kha’las clicked his beak. “What happened?”
 
Iva chuckled. “Want to come with us?” Kha’las thought about it for a moment. Spring was just a few weeks away, and the meager lot he’d earned was enough to get by. What did he have there in Basomm, after all? Kind as she was, Kha’las couldn’t even remember the smithy’s wife’s name. As if she felt his reticence, Iva prodded. “We could use your stories, young one. Then I could share this one with you.”
 
Kha’las felt a surge of excitement from crown to claw, and he nodded. He ran back to the forge, gathered his belongings, and bolted back to the caravan, which had already started moving. He didn’t even leave a note.
 
❧•❧
 
“It’s okay, Peb. You don’t take up much space. Please.” Iva gestured for Kha’las to lay out beside her bed and offered him a thick scarf as a blanket. “We’re glad to have you.”
 
“No one ever called me that.” Kha’las felt the warmth of the wagon loosen the tension in his muscles. He found himself speaking like he hadn’t in years. He looked at Iva coyly, and he mimicked her, “It snow heavily tomorrow, nestling.”
 
Iva laughed jovially. “The name suits you; my voice does not.”
 
Kha’las smiled, pleased to use his talents again. His timbre became his own again. “Why you give me diary?”
 
“Your heart is for justice, Peb, and Gelban’s story is one circulated in the company of a forgotten faith.”
 
“No faith forgotten,” Kha’las rebutted. His mind drifted to the violence spread in the name of faith, and the ghastly images of the Leechnight’s havoc returned, fresh and raw. “Faith give those who want power too much power. Tool of death, nothing more.”
 
“A crutch for the weak, a switch for the strong.” Iva stared off, looking past Kha’las to the window behind him, which had grown dark with the sun’s setting.
 
“What Gelban do?”
 
Iva paused for a while. Kha’las to consider poking her with his beak to rouse her from her idle staring.
 
“Gelban couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t get the faces of the orcs out of his head. Screaming, begging for mercy. He tossed and turned.” As the wagon rumbled along, she began pantomiming. “In his torpor, he nudged a rock with his knee, a sharp, heavy rock. He took that rock…” Iva said, grasping a nearby basket filled with empty vials that clicked together as she lifted it up. “…hoisted it aloft, and he smashed Lord Korrin’s head. Again and again he smashed it. He daren’t cease, lest the wound not be mortal, lest the Blessed Lord cry out for help as those poor orcs had.
 
“Then Gelban stopped. The rock slipped from his hand to the ground. Gelban broke down. He didn’t know what had come over him.” She trailed off.
 
Kha’las waited for her to continue, but when she didn’t, he intervened. “But you do.”
 
“I’m sorry for your brother, Peb. The battles we face against those who would dare bend gospel for their personal trysts, their thirst for power; those are the true fiends. Your brother may have run afoul with that crowd of zealots, but it was they who saddled him with their own ambitions. Do not mourn his treachery. Avenge it. Find those mannequins of power and strip them of it.”
 
Kha’las’ face grew warm beneath his feathers, his eyes honed in on her face, which stared fiercely back. “Ja’kil was, he was good kenku.”
 
“And he won’t be the last, nestling.”

Kha’las lay down against the rumbling floorboards, his ears and mind abuzz. After several moments, he clicked his beak and asked aloud.
 
“What happen to Gelban?”
 
The darkness was filled with ponderous silence. “He fled the camp, but was captured three suns later by the Lord’s right-hand man, caked blood still on his nightclothes. The Erkettstone was found in the village at the foot of the hill, stolen by a fanatical villager in town. When they found the poor thing, he was a burned-up husk; the Stone really could overwhelm. Gelban was court-martialed and hanged a moon later for sedition, treason, and murder. Even as he stood on the gallows, he never apologized for his crime.”
 
Kha’las’ thoughts drifted to the orcish settlement, its citizens unmolested by zeal.
 
“Was it crime?” Kha’las wondered aloud.
 
“Was it crime,” Iva repeated. Neither spoke again as slumber took them.
 
❧•❧
 
As the caravan travelled around Khess, Kha’las continued to ply his trade, repairing jewelry, exchanging goods for gold and gold for other goods. He became the procurer of the caravan, getting them deals on supplies and curios alike. He made a reasonable income, most of which he spent on books and scrolls, learning history and religion through the eyes of their authors. Iva shared more stories as they ranged across the countryside while Kha’las regaled her with tales from his big-city youth. They became close friends and confidants, a child for the childless Iva, a mother Kha’las never really had.
 
In one of his tomes, an encyclopedia of historic gods, he found one that intrigued him. She was a goddess last openly proclaimed nearly two centuries earlier until Stronn banned open worship of her; she was named Cuinatre. By her acolytes, she was described as a protector of life, a preserver of faith, and a champion of mortal agency. By her foes, she was presented as a saboteur, an inciter, and an assassin. She was probably a bit of both. Religious uprisings had been both started and thwarted by her followers, who dedicated themselves to keeping the integrity of honest faith alive at any expense.
 
Kha’las had never felt a strong draw to either one of Stronn’s celestial or demonic patrons, but he could not deny Cuinatre’s appeal. He had vivid dreams about his home, things he could have done differently, and things he could do now. As he continued to read about the tales of her agents, Cuinatre, and the execution of her mission, became Kha’las’ charge. In the books he read, he found the rites necessary to confer upon himself her power and commit his soul to her, though she had no places of worship left to use.
 
It had been four moons since he had joined up with the caravan, and that time was coming to an end. They passed through southern Khess in late spring, near the coast, and after confirming its location, he decided to perform his ritual at Erkett, over which blood had been spilled in the name of faith. He had surreptitiously obtained the necessary supplies over his roving journey through the moorlands, attempting to not attract attention to what he was planning.
 
He only told Iva of his plan, about what he had read, and what he was fixing to do. On the day of his departure, as the caravan passed near the peninsula on which Erkett rested, he was gathering the items needed to complete the rite.
 
“After these things, I bear her mark.” He showed her in a book he’d picked up four towns back a sketch of the mark: an abstracted moth, its wings pierced by an arrow. Iva nodded.
 
“It’s very pretty by itself,” she offered. The wagon stopped as they approached the crossroad. “Do you have everything, Peb?”
 
Kha’las hoisted the satchels that held his every possession onto his shoulder, his feathers cushioning the load. He nodded, turned, and opened the small door to Iva’s wagon, his tiny home for the last few moons. She followed him out and found that the entire band of travelers was out to wish him off. He felt a sting in his heart; they’d been so welcoming, but he must move forward.
 
Iva, only a few inches taller than Kha’las, leaned down, moved the hood over the crown of his head, and kissed the feathers there. She hugged him.
 
“Thank you for carrying on our message, Pebblegem,” she whispered, sobriety suddenly dominating her tone. She ran her hand down his arm, lifting her sleeve. Though her skin had become gently mottled with age, he still saw it, black as coal: a moth-shaped figure, roughly the size of a dun, pierced with an arrow, blazoned just above her elbow. Kha’las felt her slide something into his pack with a crinkling sound.
 
When they parted from their hug, Kha’las looked at her, wide-eyed. She placed a single finger in front of her smiling lips. “Off you go.”
 
As he departed, he waved good-bye, knowing that he’d hope to see them again, some day. While many of the travelers resumed their posts a few moments later, Iva watched him unceasingly as he disappeared over the hill.
 
Kha’las arrived at Erkett the following day and, waiting until it was dark, ascended secretly up the hill, a small, muffled satchel carrying the elements of the rite. It was just like he imagined it while reading the journal: the circle of stones well-kept, the grass neat, symmetric, and orderly, even with the frequent rains that washed over the plain, and a glowing alcove where the Erkettstone had been safely returned. He was alone under the stars; not even the moon was there to keep him company.
 
A soft, whistling wind rushed across the grass, buffeting his cloak. He sat down midway along the semi-circle’s axis and set the bag in front of him. He removed the elements: a holy focus and unholy focus, a length of blank parchment and a small pot of ink made from the blood of the pledged and charcoal, a living moth in a woven wicker cage, a goblet made of pure silver with a silver arrowhead inside, a skin of tea, and a strip of natural linen dyed black.
 
It was surprisingly easy for him to obtain the foci; lapsed clerics, it seemed, were in abundant supply across Khess. The holy focus, dedicated to Albalesta, is an opaque glass rod lined with asymmetric wings and a crowned orb. The unholy focus was wielded by a cleric of Throght, a hodge-podge of obsidian pearls of different sizes held together by a thread of cured human sinew.
 
He’d caught the moth two suns earlier, and he’d hidden it within an empty, slightly ajar footlocker where it quietly flittered around. The goblet and arrowhead he’d forged himself, and he was quite proud of them. He’d brewed the tea himself, too, though the acrid, combative odor was difficult to explain away. Thankfully, it seemed, he didn’t need to with Iva around. A coarse linen strip lined the bottom of the satchel, and he set it out before him, illuminated only by the dim aura of the Erkettstone in the alcove ahead.
 
Kha’las opened the book of rites, folding over the unbound sheaf. He reviewed it in silence for a moment and closed the book. He reached forward, took the linen sash and wrapped it around his head. Kha’las spoke aloud the opening rite and reached for the two foci. He held them aloft, balling the loose Throght focus in his left hand, and gripping the glass rod of Albalesta in his right. With great force, he smashed his two hands together, the glass of each clattering against the other. The rod broke in half, a pop of white light and smoke flickering out of the crack. Several beads broke, too. As he set down the broken pieces, he started to hear a low, soft hum.
 
Kha’las ceremoniously closed his eyes behind the blindfold, letting his hands feel out the next item, the goblet, the arrowhead, and the skin of tea. He uncorked the tea, and the aroma hit him again: a bittersweet combination of crystalized honey and chicory root. He poured it into the small goblet, the arrowhead sloshing around the bottom, until he heard the goblet become full. He set the skin down, grasped the goblet with both feathery hands and drank the goblet’s contents in one gulp. The tea tasted even stronger than Kha’las thought it would, and the arrowhead was grated against his insides.
 
The hum grew louder, but no less deep. Unbeknownst to him, the grass around Kha’las started blowing around him against the wind.
 
Kha’las clicked his beak and reached for the pot of ink and parchment. He set the parchment flat on the grass, weighing it down with the pot of ink as the wind, both natural and supernatural, pulled at it. He took the wicker enclosure, groped for the small rope latch, and opened it. The moth fluttered out onto his hand. A sizeable creature, Kha’las closed his grip around it gently, enough to prevent its escape, but not enough to hurt it.
 
The hum still ringing through Kha’las’ ears, his breath quickened, and his heart raced. Placing his hand, palm-up, on the parchment, he held the pot of ink on his palm, relaxing his four fingers. Then, he waited.
 
The droning hum in his head reached a roar, like a clear, incredibly loud bell. Kha’las felt a searing pain in his right hand, and he reflexively clutched the inkwell. It felt as if a white-hot iron was being slowly driven through his hand. The silver arrowhead in his gizzard also felt aglow with fire, as if his innards would boil away. The hum stopped, and so did the pain, sheltered from the storm in an instant. He felt the moth in the cage his left hand had made, and it wasn’t moving at all. Completely limp in his palm. Its wings became dry like a fallen leaf. He felt it desiccating, shriveling away to nothing.
 
Suddenly, he heard the voice of a woman, full-bodied, elegant, and powerful. He didn’t so much hear it as it possessed his whole body. “Morata ad dono,” it said. Kha’las responded liturgically in his native kenku tongue.
 
“Kasso kira!”
 
The hot-iron sensation in his right hand immediately returned, and Kha’las clenched the inkwell in surprise. His innards reignited, and the pain was much fiercer this time. Kha’las clenched his beak and tensed every fiber of his being, trying to maintain a neutral position as instructed in the rite. The hum returned with immense speed, thundering a denouement in his mind’s ear. The pain started to fade again, becoming a dull ache, as a muscle well-worked by exertion. Kha’las left hand twitched, and the moth within became supple again. After a moment, its wings sputtered to life, it leapt off his palm, and began flittering around in his hand again, as if nothing had happened. Amazed, Kha’las completed the rite’s final directive: he opened his left hand, allowing the moth to fly free. He felt it leave his grip, coasting away into the evening sky.
 
Kha’las relaxed. He used his left hand to remove his blindfold and he looked at the elements of the rite. From beneath the inkwell in his other hand, white smoke issued out in thin wisps. He set down the blindfold and took away the well, which was completely empty despite no sign of spilling.
 
On his hand, emblazoned in white in his feathers and, as he could feel, the skin below, was a moth-shaped mark, bisected by a straight line. Beneath his hand, the parchment reflected the blazon more clearly, black scorch marks emitting their own smoke. The smell of burnt wood filled the air, intermingled with the stench of seared skin and feathers.
 
Kha’las looked up at the Erkettstone, which flickered like a candle in a gale, slowly returning to its more constant, regular glow.
 
Kha’las, who felt like he’d worked two suns without rest, struggled to stand to his feet. Despite the epiphany he’d experienced, the world looked much as it had a few minutes earlier. He gathered the elements into a sack and departed across the moorland. Later that night, as he made camp in the wilderness, he burned all the elements but two: the parchment, and he also retained the goblet. He slept under the stars that night, dreaming more vividly than he had in years. Following a restful night, he woke up, the sunrise bathing his exposed face at his tiny camp.
 
He remembered the paper that Iva had slid into his backpack when they departed. It was folded and bound tightly, the creases clean and crisp. In surprisingly elegant Khessian script, its outside read, “After the Rite”. He opened and unfolded the letter, but it appeared blank. As he examined the paper with his fingers, a word leaped into his mind, startling him. “Find!” his mind shouted. He looked at the paper again, the twittering birds and leafy breeze seemingly resuming after an unscheduled break. As he held his hand over the paper, the sounds of the world dimmed to become insignificant, and Kha’las found more letters with his fingers. He could now hear it was Iva’s voice, speaking to him through the letter with each grazing touch. He found the letter’s greeting, and haltingly started to let Iva’s voice speak to him, tracing the letters across the paper.
 

Pebblegem –
 
I am at once happy, sad, and grateful that our paths crossed. Though our time together was brief, your companionship will remain with our band forever. But Marafel will be forever changed by the path you must continue.
 
It was no coincidence you and I met. Your purpose, I feel, is yet to be realized. It won’t be easy, but I believe that your future will take you and the duty of our faith to sights unseen.
 
The next step is the most important, but you won’t be alone. In the east, seek my companion, Ilana. Though she may not appear so, we share the same birth year; time has aged my skin and bones, while she remains young and wispy. Windfolk, you see, have made some bargain with the seasons we humans cannot afford. Last I heard, she tends a flock just east of the Khessian border. Don’t worry about finding her; if I know her, she’ll find you.
 
I received my brand when I was your age, but I still remember how much it itched. If you find the Mark of She Who Weeps brings you discomfort, find some whistlegrass on a high hill, mash it into a pulp with a splash of spirits, and slather it on your palm. You did put it on your palm, didn’t you? It will sting at first, but you’ll find relief while it heals.
 
May your path be sure, and your heart be strong.
 
To death consigned –
 
Iva
 
The paper felt lighter in Kha’las hands as Iva’s name drifted from his mind. He placed his hand across the paper, but heard nothing, tracing invisible marks on the page with a feathered finger.
 
The day was already starting without him. With a kick of loose soil, he doused the small campfire he’d made, saddled his pack and followed the sun eastward, answering the call of his closest friend and the god they both worshipped.