[center][color=lightsteelblue][h3][i]Shiara Cazarin, bone mage[/i][/h3][/color][/center]


Shiara joined the group of refugees as they made their tired way into town.  She was a stranger, and while brown skin like hers wasn't unknown in the towns it wasn't particularly common.  Better not to have to explain herself, she figured, clicking to her donkey on his lead as they matched their pace to the last stragglers through the gate.  Her hair was tied back, making a poofy ponytail nearly as big as her head.  The girl had long ago foregone her usual adornments of braided beads and bones.  She wasn't in the islands, and the clatter of them in her hair marked her as foreign far more than the color of her skin.  Her necklaces and bracelets held her powers easily enough, and were acceptable in the eyes of the mainland folk -- odd, but not so odd as to be frightening.

Her face was unremarkable -- a wide nose above full lips and a strong chin.  Her clothing was faded with wear and road dust, but the colors held well enough in the patterned hem of her long tunic and the wrap at her waist.  She wore loose pants beneath, and a wide baldric with many pouches to match the belt of pouches and satchel half-concealed by her wrap.  Over all of it she wore a cloak with the hood pulled up against the weather.  The rest of her belongings were in her donkey's bags, and she seemed unarmed aside from the knife in her belt, though she had the appearance of one who had little to offer potential thieves.  The simple worn tin of her few pieces of metal jewelry said as much.

She lifted dark eyes to the sky, watching the pair of ravens wheeling overhead, remembering the vision that had started her on her way.  Shiara could feel Kem's presence like a reassuring hand on her shoulder, and she lifted her free hand to touch the lump of her necklace beneath her tunic.  The other attendant spirits whispered softly, but had nothing of substance to contribute.

Just ahead of her were two people that looked more like warriors than farmers or townsfolk.  She wondered at them, and the faint smell of death they carried.  [i]Plague Knights,[/i] she thought to herself.  [i]Warriors, accompanied by ravens...could this be them?[/i]  Even though she knew better than to stare, she let her pace slow just a bit as she passed the pair.  She didn't look at them, but instead tuned her ears to pick out their voices.  Something about a curse?  She knew a little about curses, but mostly she worked with spirits.