------------- Lost Angel – Not Just a Female

She had been born to a culture that might be considered the worst place on Arrallon for a girl. To Tarkanians, women were a necessary evil, little more than property, and never worth more than a good horse. The Khans of the Tarkanian clans constantly warred on each other, and in so doing, captured, raped and killed the females of their rivals. It was amazing that any Tarkanian women lived past the age of thirty,… even more so that one would become more than “just a female”.

From the first time she looked to the sky as a little girl, she knew where she wanted to be. Growing up on the open steppes of Tarkania, where the sky is so huge it consumes the heart and fires the imagination, it was only natural that Chandra wanted to fly. But she would never be able to pursue any dream as long as she stayed with her clan. By the age of twelve, she knew she had to escape and find a better life. That life came with the unlikely events that took her into the hands of a desert wanderer, a Thune whose name she never learned. He spirited her away on his flying beast, mere paces ahead of the Tarkanian hunting party that had set out to retrieve her. The man had snatched her up, a rabbit running across the fields taken by a hawk. But in her case, it was a gryphon that had spirited her away. In that one moment, when other girls would have been terrified, she gaped in awe and wonder at the thing, and reveled in the hair-raising flight over the mountains.

Years of slavery and abuse finally ended when a Symballan General named Mithias noticed her petting his gryphon, a massive creature with the forebody of a giant golden eagle and the hindquarters of a Shiva Tiger. The Symballan bought her that very day and took her east, to the northern stretches of the Equideyean Mountains. He told her she was free. Barely past fourteen, she didn’t know what would become of her. Then the general said one word,… “but”. What followed was a choice. She could be free to wander the world and maybe find her path and her fate, or maybe end up an Ogre’s next meal. Or, she could stay and become a student of a great master, Sabai Ling, the Gryphonlord. Neither she, nor the Symballan knew her true nature, but she would soon learn.

One day, while riding a gryphon over the high cliffs, a blue dragon attacked from out of the sun. Her gryphon was killed instantly, and she plummeted to her death. But she did not die. The blood that had been hidden within her all her life, the reason her mother had been treated so badly and she with such scorn and contempt, the real reason the sky called to her, awoke. In an instant she transformed. Her true form, her true nature realized. She was Heru-ur, and she’d never known it. She escaped the dragon on her own swift wings and found her way back to her master. She didn’t know how to tell him, but she got the feeling Sabai Ling already knew.

In the years that followed, her transformation was more than just in form. Her spirit grew, her resolve hardened, her skills honed, her focus sharpened. She took her master’s name, for he now was as much her father as the Mystaino she’d never known. She swore to herself to one day find and kill the blue dragon that had taken her first gryphon. Then she was on her own. She wandered south, eventually ending up in Xanthius. Along the way, she ran across a small band of Tarkanians raiding a farm. “Ignore it”, one said, “It’s just a female.” As they tasted their own blood on the edges of her scimitars, they sadly realized,… no, she’s not just a female.

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