She had been born to unite the many T’lan Imass clans in one gathering dedicated to the dismissal of the Tellann ritual that bound them through life and death to their relentless pursuit of the Jaghut. A war that had dissolved into irrelevance countless millennia ago as that alien race faded away into isolated individuals who retained no interest in Imass or human affairs.

Yet not all the Imass considered the war over. Here in Assail there remained one last vestige of that conflict. A soul-wrenching legacy that threatened even her sympathies for these ancient people.

Now she spent her days and nights keeping watch on the coast where the Warren, or Realm, of Tellann tended to draw those Imass guided by this lingering presence. Here they found her, and something else. Something none of them had ever anticipated, nor even imagined.

*

When she was at her very lowest Pran Chole would come to spend time with her – or perhaps to watch over her should she consider some sort of sudden drastic action to end her misery. She had yet to decide whether his silent company was a consolation or an aggravation. In the past, he’d once offered himself up as the defenceless target and recipient of her anger, her fury, and her outrage at the injustice of her fate. And she had beaten upon him the way a smith punishes his anvil. Yet she’d seen since how he had done it as a gift to her, out of love. That she should turn her fury upon him rather than herself.

Now she was not certain what her feelings were for the ancient Bonecaster – the closest thing to a father she could claim to have had. When she was at her lowest he could somehow sense it. He would come to her tent among the dunes, entering just as any living being would through the loose front flap, ducking his head bearing its broken-antlered headdress, to stand silent and watchful. Offering the last thing that remained to him to try to ease her mind: his company.

Sometimes, on nights like these, when the wind howled off the coast and the waves pummelled the beach as if meaning to wash it from existence utterly, she would sit cross-legged next to her small fire while her hide tent shuddered and jerked about her, and he would come to stand just inside the opening as if uncertain of his welcome. She was not uncomfortable in his presence; and indeed, his attention wasn’t upon her at all. The dark empty pits of his sockets gazed steadily aside, towards the coast, ever sensing for newcomers.