Down through their midst she stalked, lost to herself, turned killer demon, no visible, recognizable part of her human side in evidence. She was all Fury now, a part of the pack, at one with the madness. If there had been something to attack, she would have done so, shredding it with relish, satisfying her newly minted primal need. The other Furies rubbed against her as she passed, accepting her presence, her place among them. They circled and sniffed, taking in her smell, marking her as cats would. She responded in kind, moving through the landscape as if in a dream, afloat and not quite grounded by anything. She had a vague sense of things not being right, of seeming out of joint in place and time; she had a dim memory of having had another life that didn’t square with this one. But her Fury self wouldn’t give way to that other life, wouldn’t let it intrude, and so she felt it slipping farther and farther away.

She cast frequent glances toward the embankment, where creatures she could eat if she could reach them buzzed and whispered among themselves, their voices raw sounding and enticing. She stalked toward them, drawn to them for a reason she couldn’t identify. The other Furies ignored her, returning now to their dens, disappearing back into the earth like shadows in sunlight. The excitement was over, the chance for a kill gone. One by one they vanished, the happenings of earlier moments already forgotten.

She walked on, drawn by a craving she could neither understand nor resist. At first, it involved the creatures on the embankment, then only one of them, a singularly tall, dark, spiky being that was descending from its perch into the valley. Her ears pricked in expectation. Fresh prey. A meal. She eased forward, but the creature didn’t turn aside or back away like her, it came on. She bared her teeth and flexed her claws. In a moment she would have it and then summon her brethren to the feast.

But all at once the spiky creature gestured at her, and pain ripped through her body, dropping her squirming and spitting on the earth. She tried to rise, and the pain returned, harsher and longer, flooding her with its razors and knives, stealing the last of her strength. She lay gasping as the black thing came over to her and stared down at her expressionlessly.

“Do you know me?” it demanded, blue eyes cold and brittle.

She did. It came back to her instantly, came back as the identity she had assumed fell away and her knowledge of who she was returned.

“Yes, Master,” she whispered.

The Straken Lord nodded. “You have excelled in your testing. You have proved your worth. I am pleased.”