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Chosen

Chapter Four

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Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)

Commissioned by Chirmaya Nashaar

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Thinking that she could hide her powers proved all too swiftly to be a false hope. Making a daisy grow, from just the one concealed seed was an absolute fluke and, no matter how she tried, she could not force her power to do as she willed. It flared up at the most inopportune times, such as in the middle of a sparring bout with Reline. Nothing like trying to hide the fact that you're a bit different when suddenly you have the strength of ten males. Or at least as strong as Tayna supposed ten males were, judging from her experience in training. She began calling her powers a gift, for it seemed like every gift she'd been given in her past life had been taken away just as swiftly.

She managed to sneak one peek, over the outer palisade protecting the keep, at the mountain range that cut through the sky with bold, dark silhouettes before her world was torn apart. After that, any thought of escape was torn from her grasp. Tayna pressed her fingers to her temples, mind whirling between bouts in the training arena. Could hers be torn apart any further? She didn't have long, sand trickling through the hourglass. A secret held close to one's heart was the quickest to be revealed. It seemed silly in hindsight that all she'd wanted to do was live. But the rest of the world seemed intent on dragging her into something far greater than she.

While most of the Alliance still slumbered, Reline ripped the sheets from Tayna's curled up body and struck life into the lantern. The flame crackled to life as the vixen blinked awake, scrabbling for blanket to chase the sudden chill from her body.

"What do you think you're doing?" Tayna snarled, snapping her teeth where Reline's paw had been clenched around the blanket a moment ago. "It's not even dawn! Get back to your own bed! Church knows we need to rest. Don't you need to rest?"

Reline eyed her stonily. She knew Tayna had referenced the Church to irritate her. But she wasn't taking the bait. Not today, at least.

"We're going to see Juan."

Tayna scowled.

"And who, Church forbid, is Juan?"

Reline didn't answer and simply threw Tayna's clothes at her.

"Get dressed."

Tayna soon found out who, exactly, Juan was, standing in front of a small, seemingly innocent dormouse. Seated behind a desk strewn with maps and other items Tayna did not recognise, the brown-furred rodent rubbed his paws together, oblivious to how his tiny claws scratched his pink, trembling paws, and looked her up and down. He licked his lips as if presented with a particularly fine treat, something he desired to savour rather than gulp down in a single bite. Dressed in darker, more sombre colours than the rest of the Alliance, his jerkin and trousers had clearly been dyed. Tayna tilted her head, taking his measure as subtly as she could. Didn't most dye their clothing bright, fancy hues if they had the leisure and coin? What a strange mouse.

He beamed at Tayna, who swung her gaze frostily between him and Reline.

"This is the one, Sir Lono." Reline jerked her head towards Tayna, not bothering even to point. "She's the one that they've been talking about."

"Good...good..."

The mouse snuffled and rubbed his nose, the grin never once leaving his muzzle. It was starting to become a bit deranged, though Tayna didn't feel she had the stomach to say so to his face. Despite his small size, the mouse exuded an air of authority that she could not hope to match.

"Right, so you're Juan," she tried brazenly. "What do you want with me? Can I not even go to breakfast now?"

The mouse chuckled and hiccupped, his beady eyes dark and glassy.

"Oh, my dear, of course, you may go to the first meal of the day," he promised her in a silken tone, gesturing as if he could make the food simply appear before her. "I would not want you to be weak going into your first magic lesson."

Tayna started and wrinkled her nose. As inappropriate as it was in the moment, she couldn't drag her eyes from a spot of white fur above Juan's right eye. It moved with the muscles beneath his fur, twitching as fervently as his fingers twisted together.

With a great effort of will, Tayna dragged her attention away, forcing herself back to brutal reality.

"Magic training? And why would I need that?"

She hoped he didn't hear her heartbeat pounding in her ears. It sounded loud enough to the fox to summon a whole horde of hungry enemies, closing in on their prey with jaws salivating and agape. Juan's grin, if anything, grew even wider.

"I hear you are developing your powers once more, vixen."

Tayna stiffened.

"My name is Tayna. You can use it, if you like. And I don't know what so-called powers you're talking about."

Shaking her head, she stubbornly folded her arms across her chest.

"Whatever you're talking about with me being able to use magic and all that is absolute cow dung, that's what it is."

She swept her arm out to the side, eyes blazing.

"All I know is that you lot have told me that I'm supposed to be able to use these powers or something. That five years have passed. That I have a past that I don't even remember. None of this is something I could tell you."

Taking a folded handkerchief from the pocket of his jerkin, the dormouse dabbed at his nose delicately, fur fluffy around the collar of his loose-necked shirt. The shirt was an off-grey colour as if to compliment his dyed jerkin. Tayna stared at him incredulously, eyes darting between Juan and the ostentatious handkerchief. Who other than a noble would keep such a luxury on them? A scrap of cloth - tailored! - to wipe one's nose? Why bother when a rag would do the same job and cost far less coin? Tayna shook her head. Not that she didn't secretly want to have the coin to afford being able to wipe her nose on a pure, white handkerchief.

"We know the truth of you, vixen, so there really is no point in you continuing this charade."

Tayna's heart skipped a beat and she looked down her nose at the seated rodent.

"Who are you to tell me so?"

Reline smacked her paw into her forehead, cursing her ancestors who had put her on this continent out of all others.

"He's_Juan Lono_, Tayna."

When the vixen blinked uncomprehendingly, the wolf sighed.

"He's one of the leaders of our Chapter of the Alliance. And, yes, he can very much tell you what you are going to be doing here, so don't even try to argue the case."

The vixen glanced at Juan who smiled pleasantly back at her and rubbed his paws.

"He doesn't look like much."

"Tayna!"

Far from appearing affronted, the mouse bobbed his muzzle and positively beamed at her remark.

"You're in training now. Exempt from daily practice in the training grounds, I think we shall swiftly find a very new use for you..."

He placed the tips of his fingers together and smiled dangerously. Tayna could not help but worry why he had not addressed her sharp remark. It made her think that he was keeping her insolence in store for later.

There was no telling what one of the Alliance would do.

She gulped as she met his eyes and the mouse chuckled, a little hiccupping laugh that made his rounded head bob. His tapered snout dipped nearly to the surface of his makeshift desk, the only rickety piece in his commanding office. Reline shuffled her hind paws and looked straight ahead.

"We've never had one of the Chosen in our ranks before."

He paused, peering at her. The dormouse's nose twitched. Rapidly.

"This could be very interesting."

Shivering, Tayna, for once, had no reply.

*

"Again."

Tayna frowned at the pebble on the floor as she sat cross-legged with her arms resting on her thighs. She pursed her lips and prodded it with one finger.

"I'm supposed to lift this rock up?"

An older pine marten with a scar running through his left eye, rendering it blind, milky-white and useless, snorted and shook his head. The sleeves of his draping, flowing robe swung with the hint of movement, although the hem around his bare hind paws was still sullied with dirt and dust as if he had not been given leave to cleanse his clothing in a while.

"Levitate,levitate! You are to levitate the pebble!"

Tayna rolled her eyes. What did it matter what words she used? The pebble wasn't moving either way.

Juan had sent her off with a cheery wave that did not suit his position and instructions to seek out one of their mages, the pine marten that now eyed her like vermin. His nose crinkled as if there was a foul smell when she walked into the room - and that was how the vixen had been introduced to Devan. Tayna wondered if Devan was their only mage but did not dare ask.

Bored with watching training that had been going nowhere for several hours, Reline leaned against the wall in the corner of the room and stared blankly at the ceiling. From time to time, her eyelids drooped and she started awake with a guilty look.

Devan rapped the top of her head sharply with his knuckles and Tayna snarled. The pebble shuddered and shot straight up, nearly smacking into the pine marten's brown and cream striped muzzle. He caught it in a paw and bared his fangs at it, thick tail slapping his leg.

"Good, good!" He clapped his paws together, eyes narrowing. There was no smile on his muzzle. "Again. Use that anger. Find your essence and use it."

"What's essence?" Tayna asked, brow furrowing.

The pine marten laughed and flipped a paw mockingly in her direction.

"You cannot play the fool with me. You were the right-hand weapon of the Church not a great deal of time ago. And you expect me to believe that your entire memory has been wiped? That you remember nothing?"

"But I don't know any of this!" Tayna growled, anger darkening her tone. "Do you think I'd be sitting here like the fool of the village if I knew how to do it? You're not telling me how to do anything."

Devan frowned, crossing his arms.

"You are obstructing your lessons."

"You're not teaching anything!"

"You're deliberately not learning."

"I just want to get out of here!"

Shoving his muzzle up close to Tayna's, the pine marten jabbed her in the chest with one bony finger.

"Magic is not forgotten. Do not try that on me a second time, little vixen, or it will be a misstep you regret. Again. Levitate the pebble." He turned on his heel, robe whipping about his ankles as he dropped the pebble back in front of her. "Enough of this insolence."

Desperate, Tayna snatched up the pebble and threw it in the air. The pine marten watched its rise and fall with a critical flash in his eye. Tayna folded her arms smugly and tucked her tail to the side of her rump.

"There.Levitated."

The pine marten looked away pointedly.

"That is hardly the purpose of this exercise."

"What purpose does me levitating a stone serve?"

"It is training!" Devan snapped, eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. "And you would do well to take it to heart. We will make you an asset to the Alliance yet, you stubborn vixen. Do you think insolence will render you useless?"

Tayna sighed and kicked the pebble, sending it skittering across the floor.

"From that tone, I doubt it."

"Can I go now?" Reline interrupted, standing and brushing dust off the seat of her trousers. "I'm late to the training grounds. It's already gone noon and you've been at this with no success for hours already."

The pine marten huffed, expelling hot breath through his nostrils.

"I hardly think so, wolf. You need to stay here, just the same as her."

Reline scoffed and tapped the toe of her boot.

"And what purpose does that serve, mage? I have no magic to be trained in."

"You are her guard, are you not?"

He pointed at Tayna as if she could not speak for herself. The vixen frowned but said nothing, glaring down at the pebble. She didn't realise how hateful she could feel towards a Church-damned _pebble_of all things.

"She needs to stay here and so do you." He turned his back on the wolf. "From the looks of her lack of progress, I don't expect you will get to go to the training grounds today. Or any following day until she complies."

Reline's jaw dropped and she gaped like a fish.

"What?" She yelped. "Why should I be tied to her? You're watching her, aren't you? You're training her? Aren't you a good enough guard? I don't need to be here!"

"You need to be here because I say you need to be here." Devan glared. "Do you wish me to speak to Sir Lono about your attitude? I'm sure he would be delighted to hear what a divine delight you are being."

Reline clamped her jaw shut and shook her head, hatred burning in her gaze. Stomping to Tayna's side, she crouched down and looked the vixen in the eye. Tayna flinched inwardly but otherwise gave no outward response to her close proximity. The pebble lay to their right, an inconsequential object in the grand scheme of life.

"Can't you...I don't know..." She waved her paw. "Can't you just lift the pebble or something? Please? Just so I can go and be done with this charade for the day?"

Tayna bit her lip.

"I'm trying..." She rubbed her temples. "Do you think I would be sitting here beating myself up over not being able to do something that is apparently so simple," she quoted Devan, "when I could be absolutely anywhere else?"

Reline studied her and, although there was no reason for her to believe Tayna - she could have been playing a game, for all she knew - Reline nodded. And the vixen knew that they had, at the very least, acquired a common enemy. Her stomach twisted into knots as the wolf resumed her position against the wall, eyes downcast as she sank into a state that was both waking and sleeping. The vixen's nose twitched. She hadn't taken the wolf for one so inclined to meditate.

Again and again, he forced her to concentrate, to reach for something she didn't know existed. And, eventually, after many hours blended into a single seamless mass of loathing, the pebble moved. She couldn't tell Devan how she did it but the pebble started with a wobble and, painfully slowly, juddered up from the floor. Tayna eyed it sceptically, looking around for some other force than herself that may have moved the pebble. There was none. But how had she done it? Her eyelids drooped from exhaustion and her muzzle dipped down towards her chest, the fox dead on her paws.

Devan bounced on the balls of his hind paws, the only indication of emotion aside from the derision he'd shown throughout their entire session. He took this as confirmation that she did indeed know magic all along and congratulated himself with a smug smile and flick of his tail for drawing it out of her.

"You're coming with me - now."

Grabbing her by the scruff of the neck, the pine marten hauled her bodily from the room, clamping his paw around her muzzle so that she could not scream for Reline. As tired as she was, she couldn't dislodge the beast from her and hung limply as he dragged her through the keep to the training grounds, the wolf dozing fitfully back in their bare-walled practice room. What would she think when she awoke?

Outside in the yard, Tayna gnawed her lip as the pine marten dumped her in the middle of the flat training circle. Night had fallen and she blinked blearily up at the stars, wishing she was resting beneath them on the precipice of a dreamless sleep, not standing on two paws looking to continue her training.

Tossing her a metal sword - sharpened, unlike the wooden ones she more commonly used to practice - he inclined his head to the training dummy, the sack it was made from spilling straw as if its guts had been gouged open. One of its large eyes, made from a button, was askew.

"Attack. Use that magic of yours. I know you have it now, you can't hide that from me." His eyes gleamed. "I want to see it in action."

"If we were going to the training grounds anyway, why did you leave Reline behind?" She swayed on her paws. "She could have trained."

Devan rolled his eyes and pushed up his sleeves, exposing a pair of skinny forearms.

"That wolf and her sharp tongue needed taking down a peg or two. This isn't about her. It's about the Alliance."

Something told her that Reline wouldn't be happy to hear that and the vixen pushed it to the back of her mind for relaying at another time. She was too tired to care.

The pine marten jabbed his finger at the training dummy, the fur on his forearms scruffy. It was darker there as if he rarely rolled up his sleeves to expose them to the sun.

"Attack."

Tayna blinked.

"You cannot be serious."

She slipped into a more formal tongue in her drained state, almost laughing at herself. But there was nothing funny about the situation. Devan scowled and licked his lips.

"Did I sound like I was jesting? Yes? No?"

He cast her a dark look, muzzle wrinkling as if he wanted to snarl.

"Attack. That magic you felt? Levitating a pebble is all well and good, but we need to see how much of that magic you can put into your attacks."

He paused, stroking his whiskers.

"Simply do what you did with the pebble again. Only, this time, attack the training dummy. Use your magic to strengthen your attacks." He waved his paw. "As long as you use magic for your attack, it makes no difference to me."

Tayna threw her paws in the air. They only reached the level of her shoulders before dropping back down. She didn't even have the strength to gesture.

"I don't even know what I did with the pebble!"

The pine marten laughed, tail slapping his leg.

"You try to take me for a fool yet again, vixen, but that is not the way we play this game. Attack."

Blinking exhaustion from her eyes, the vixen raised her sword to the training dummy and struck it weakly where a shoulder may have been. It raised a small cloud of dust.

"Again. With your magic. This should be easy for one of the Chosen."

Tayna stared at the dummy. How? Recklessly, she reached for that wild thing darting back and forth like a little silverfish inside her and grabbed it, wrestling it unconsciously to the surface. Energy - for she could not describe it any other way - pulsed around her and she flung it without thought of recourse at the dummy. It exploded into a mess of straw at just the moment the sword hit it, singed flakes drifting to the ground. The button-eye dropped into the dirt and rolled to her hind paws, pivoting as if to show off what she had done.

She blinked at it as if somehow watching the scene from a great distance. It could not have been her that had made the dummy explode - she hadn't meant to do that. What had she meant to do? She didn't even know what she'd done. Despair cradled her. How could she repeat it if she didn't know or understand the method? It was like being asked to bake something entirely new in the estate kitchens without being given a recipe to follow. What would be produced, as a result of such a leap of faith, would be, to put it in eloquent terms, hit and miss.

She yawned, forgetting to cover her mouth with her paw. Devan clapped his paws sharply together.

"Better. Again."

Tayna grew sick of the word. Again and again and again until she dropped that night, cheek pressed to the dirt as unconsciousness claimed her. The last thing she saw was the disapproving toes of the bare-pawed mage tapping the ground in front of her nose.

"You disappoint me."

When she woke, the mage stood above her and the stars still twinkled above. Devan hauled her to her paws, demonstrating surprising strength for such a skinny pine marten, and forced her to continue. There was no telling how long she'd been out for and he kept her at training until dawn tinged the sky, only then sending her to bed and a furious Reline storming back and forth along the length of the dormitory. She hadn't even had her evening meal.

Knowing that the curve and cut of the mountains was just beyond the walls of the keep, Tayna ached for another world and another life, so close that it could have been within her reach. Yet was it within reach?

Days passed and Devan pitted her against living opponents as her meagre skills grew, at least from the mage's perspective. She would never be able to get the image of their eyes round with fear as she advanced out of her mind. Her magic, erratic to her touch, flicked them aside as easily as she would flies, when it did what she wanted it to, which was not often, she had to admit. She didn't think she was learning anything, as her magic only seemed to come when she was caught up in a sudden wave of emotion, whether that be sadness or overwhelming anger, burning through her veins with such ferocity that she once feared it would singe her fur.

When her magic did not rise to her mental grasp, feeding on a source she did not know the name of, she failed dismally in the arena. Focusing on her magic, her physical prowess lacked as her concentration wavered and she became black and blue from bruising, one eye swollen shut from a cracking blow that caught her square across her face. And still, she was forced to fight and train with as much magic as she could randomly call upon.

Sellanda watched many of the bouts with a flick of her tail and a smug smirk on her muzzle. The Alliance couldn't be happier whenever Tayna flattened an opponent, using her increased strength, magical and physical, to defeat them, raw, untamed magic empowering her weapons erratically as she fought and failed for true control. Yet it was not the vixen's true self to battle with such little heart, and her soul ached for her victims, wishing she was fighting them on even terms or not at all. At Sellanda's whim, they were little more than obstacles for her to knock down, instruments on a training path that Tayna could not determine. There was little she could determine these days.

And it could only go on for so long.

Anyone could be pushed beyond their limits. And her magic lessons allowed the vixen greater range within the keep than before, exploring and pretending to test her magic - of which she developed little to no control over - at any time when she felt she was being watched. The Alliance relaxed, allowing her about the keep. They thought her training and training with due diligence. As long as she was practising as they wanted her to, where was the harm?

They allowed her freer reign, even without Reline or Wenton shadowing her, to the point, in fact, that she had learned exactly when the guards at the gate changed shifts. And that they would exchange a few words between one another before moving on to their next post, whether that was guard duty or their lonely beds.

It was easy, almost too easy, to slip out and over the wall with a stolen length of rope when the guards were otherwise occupied, tongues loosened by a drop or two of filched mead. That was Tayna's gift to them. It would ensure they would sleep until past dawn or the captain's boot connected with their thick skulls. Her heart pounded in her chest as she shimmied down the coarse length of rope and crouched low to the base of the wall, thankful for the strength in her arms as she focused on drawing her magic.

It slipped and wriggled like an eel, refusing to come to her call - it was not as if she understood what she was doing anyway - but eventually, through a combination of brute strength and debatable magic, she managed to drag the rope down after her. It slithered from its knot on the ramparts and pooled neatly at her hind paws, and it was all Tayna could do to not do a little jig from sheer joy.

Freedom! The fox shook herself, nose twitching. Oh, it had been too long, far too long since she had been out of the keep. The seasons had changed around her, the hint of winter licking at her fur. Fall was in full swing but there were few trees on the ragged mountainside to spread colourful leaves.

Taking a deep breath of fresh air, untainted by any animal scent, the vixen smiled and disappeared into the night. Pouring strength into her paws, she ran quicker than the wind and fled as if the hounds of hell were chomping at her heels. The vixen laughed quietly to herself, the sound lost on the wind as she ran without sense or direction. Her hair whipped wildly off the back of her neck and she increased her speed, running so that she was but a blur fleeing across the mountainside.

Her heart thudded heavily, the trapped bird finally free of its cage. This was what she was meant to do. She wasn't meant to be cooped up, a soldier ready to do their duty - she was to be free! Maybe she'd even find the estate again and all could be exactly as it was before? The vixen grinned fiercely. No, she'd find a life that was better than before! She'd find her parents and go onward!

Tail streaming behind her like a russet flag, the vixen felt that she could go on forever, if only she remained as free as she was in that moment.

Let them chase her. She'd be ready.

No matter what it took.