The cold, dead of night was the time of day that across all of Illyrica mankind lay dormant, resting for the day ahead, when they would toil again under the light of the sun. The night, to them, was a time of danger. It was at night that the underlings of their societies arose, to ply their illicit trades in secret, and it was under the moon that they imagined their phantoms dwelled, when their beasts of the wild—of flesh or of myth—came out to claim their prey; but for the people of the continent's northern forests, whose image to the rest of the world was of barbarians with jagged teeth, of beasts of the night, the light of the moon was that to which man and woman awoke, to hunt and pray and feast under the all-seeing eye of midnight. For the Gau Senxi, night was day, and the devil lived in sunshine.

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Ezitar was a woman with two identities, both of which granted her considerable prestige in some circles and considerable stigma in others, and neither of which was to her satisfaction. Her closest allies, and what little of her family yet drew breath, knew her as the second in line to the Handii, a former great tribe of the Gau Senxi, now disgraced and dissolved. Her name, and indeed her character, were not important to them; she was the backup should her older brother die without an heir, and no aspect of her life was half as important as her life itself. 

To everyone else, including her closest friends, she was 'Ezitar', a name of her own design, whose meaning in the Senxi tongue, hunter, perfectly encapsulated her personality and her role in life. She was a strong-willed, exceptionally gifted Gerrari, a member of the all-female group of assassins that was tasked with defending the Gau Senxi against foreigners, the dwellers of the day. Her best friends, all other Gerrari, knew nothing of her family, or of the secret circle of Handii loyalists protecting her secret and keeping her alive. To them, as to all her fellow Gerrari, her life was not half as important as who she was in life: a servant of the Lunar Synod, her charge to defend the Gau Senxi rising above all else.

It had been her idea, when she was a young girl, living on the run with her brother and her family's allies, to join the Gerrari. The Handii loyalists had thought it incredibly foolish at first, sending the daughter of their dead chief to join the same army that had slain him. Some, though, her brother among them, had managed to convince the naysayers. Most saw it as an opportunity to get an inside eye on the Lunar Synod's activities, and a way to put the young princess, henceforth largely a burden, to some amount of use. Only her brother had supported her in the idea for the same reason she had put it forward. The Gerrari, and their training ground, the Hazitok, offered to Ezitar something she had never had before. Somewhere to call home. Somewhere where she belonged, and was useful, where she could sharpen her innate talents to a point. And above all, a chance to make friends. To meet other girls her age, and to have someone in the world who she could trust, not because of politics, but because of a real, human bond.

Ezitar's sharpened canines sunk into the neck of her captured prey, its hot, red blood leaving a crimson trail down its neck, glimmering against the light of the full moon. It was a long-standing custom for the Gerrari to sharpen their teeth; for most it was cosmetic, a way to induce fear in the enemy and act as a calling card for the rest of the Gerrari. Some, though, like Ezitar, liked to put it to practical use. Her struggling catch was a deer this time, not a traveler from the south unwisely attempting to see the sights in Gau Senxi lands. The travelers were both more frightened by and more vulnerable to a Gerrari's bite, but Ezitar took no quarrel with subjecting an animal to it as well. For the average Gerrari, men and beast were caught equally often. Not because foolish wanderers were especially common for the Gerrari to run into, but because they usually did not need to catch their own meals. The Gerrari were something like folk heroes among the Gau Senxi, defenders of all loyal followers of the Path of the Moon, and whenever a group of Gerrari women on patrol came upon a village, they were showered in offers of hot meals and free lodging. Ezitar, often to the dismay of her partners, never accepted. She despised having things handed to her, reminding her too much of her days with the Handii loyalists, being constantly sheltered from the world and given all that she needed. To offers of lodging, she replied much the same, insisting always that she would find her own little hideout to protect herself from the light of day. In truth, she often didn't.

Ezitar, like all her family and their supporters, were blasphemers, enemies of the Lunar Synod. They, and she, did not feel the need to shelter against the sun, in spite of the Synod's teachings. She would use the daylight hours, when the lands of the Gau Senxi were asleep and all was quiet, to hone her skills, and to gain more intimate knowledge of her surroundings. When she was with a partner she did not know, perhaps a new Gerrari, or one from a farther off tribe, she did not do this unless she was sure she would not be caught. But when patrolling with her friends, she was more brazen. Some of those closest to her even joined her in her daylight excursions, defying the most sacred of the Synod's teachings in spite of their role as the hand to its will. Such was the power of Ezitar's personality, the force of her character. She could convince most anyone to do most anything, and was nigh impossible to dissuade herself. Growing up, she'd been taught that all Handii were that way, but also warned of the consequences that can belie a woman too charismatic for her own good. The fate of her family, of her father and mother, was never too far from the front of her mind. Still, it did not dissuade her.

One sleepy day, when Ezitar's tiredness had compelled her to rest, but her stubbornness had forbidden it, she came across a peculiar sight, one entirely unfamiliar to her in spite of her years of experience as a walker of the woods. A humanoid beast, small and ugly, interrupted her training with its notably loud footsteps and repugnant stench. She had never seen such a beast before, but remembered it from her training at the Hazitok. It was a Bannik, one of the hellspawn that served the Lehenegun, the massive, smouldering death that resided somewhere far to the south. Baffled at what a creature would be doing here—this far north for one and in the lands of a people that would no doubt kill it on sight for another—Ezitar decided not to kill the being too quickly. Instead she captured it, quickly and silently climbing atop a tree along the creature's path and leaping down to pin it to the forest floor once it walked underneath her. With her teeth grazing gently along the beast's neck, she allowed it to squirm in surprise and terror for a short time, before whispering into its ear in Senxi, a tongue she could only hope the demon understood. 

"What is your purpose in my people's land, servant of Lehenegun?" she rasped, threateningly.

"The eye, the eye!" the monster screamed in its disgusting tone, entirely too loudly for Ezitar to tolerate. She covered its mouth with her left hand, using her right to keep the beast (relatively) still.

Glaring down at the restrained creature, Ezitar spoke in a slightly more conciliatory tone, "Explain yourself, in a soft tone and in as few words as you can, and there is a possibility that I will allow you to flee back over the river without leaving a trail of blood as you run."

Thrashing all the more, the Bannik fought against Ezitar's grip, seeking to free itself and flee. The feeling of a cold, sharp metal blade against its exposed neck was enough to keep it still. "The Eye of the Volcano. It has been revealed, in Ethea! The empire lives, your cousins could not slay them, and they possess the key to become the next champion!"

Ezitar raised an eyebrow, suspicious of the monster's forthcoming response. Surely a servant of the Lehenegun, foremost of the creations of the Usurper, was not so easily intimidated. "You lie." the young Gerrari claimed, driving her blade just far enough against an unimportant part of the creature's neck to draw blood.

"Truth, it is truth! I am here, I was sent here, to tell it, to tell the truth! There will be a new champion! The eye is in—"

The creature's sentence ended as abruptly as its life did, not from the blade against its neck, which it had stared at so intently as it was interrogated, but from Ezitar's sharpened teeth. She had never tasted a Bannik before. It was slightly less revolting than she had anticipated, although the hairs were even more unpleasant than she'd imagined. As the beast's blood emptied and pooled on the forest floor, she was reminded of how happy she was that it was fashion for the Gerrari to be hairless. Men, and especially women, spent entirely too much time maintaining themselves in that way. It was much easier to cut it off and be done with it.

Looking south, the direction that the monster had been running from, Ezitar began to ponder. She believed the monster, it had no reason to lie, really, but she had no particular reason to abandon her entire life and go hunting for treasure in the lands of the day dwellers. With only slight disappointment, she holstered her dagger, turned her gaze north, and began to walk to the small encampment she had built for herself. She would sleep the rest of the day, and join her fellow Gerrari the next night to head back to Senxin. There she would reunite with her brother, and see what he had to say about her run-in with the Bannik. For now, she settled cozily into her furs and slept, dreaming of a monster as large as a city, bellowing smoke and fire, being fought by the armies of the moon. If the Smouldering Death was ready to name a new champion, it could very well be that the Lunar Synod was ready to take action against them. Only time would tell how the events set in motion today would impact Ezitar, and her people. And time did not yield to a sharp blade or a sharp tongue.