<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="text-decoration: underline"><span style="font-size: 150%; line-height: 116%;">Zoe Theokleia</span></span></span></div><br/><br/><br/>In the cool grey of early morning, not a whisper could be heard but that of the wind making its rounds through the trees. The sky was heavy with the weight of clouds and the air sang of moisture. It would rain to day, and heavily. Most would be still sleeping at this early pre-dawn hour, only to scramble for the safety of a roof and a warm hearth when they woke to taste the rain.<br/><br/>None of that mattered to the Huntress and the Dog, as they crept silently through the forest roughly a couple yards apart. Zoe’s sharp eyes picked up disturbances on the lush ground before her. A bent leaf, the smell of soil disturbed from its slow decomposition, a scrape on a tree branch…. The little tell-tale signals where coming stronger and more often. They where nearly on their prey.<br/><br/>A glance told the woman that Dog could feel it too, the fur on the back of his shaggy brown neck standing on end in anticipation. With a short click of her tongue, Zoe slowed their pace to a crawl. They were so close that she swore she could smell the unnatural scent of imps on the morning breeze. A few more steps put Zoe on the edge of a clearing in the forest, and she pressed herself against a large oak on the border, the fur of the Dog tickling her legs as he came up behind her.<br/><br/>In the clearing was a small woodsman’s hut surrounded by a half-dozen snoring imps. Zoe guessed that the six imps had overpowered the man and gorged themselves on the spoils of his labor the night before. This would make them slow, the Huntress noted with a grin and a barely suppressed giggle—her mind would not pity the woodsman. There was simply too much sorrow in this twisted world to feel it all.<br/><br/>With a ringing metallic cry, Zoe’s sword slipped from it’s sheath and she and the dog charged the clearing with a mingled howl. As she had predicted, the imps were slow to react. Two lay headless and a third limp in the Dog’s jaws before any attempted to put up a fight. The others also met quick and bloody deaths in Zoe’s fanatic charge, and in the middle of the carnage she stood and laughed at the rumbling sky, a bead of black imp blood dripping down her katana.<br/><br/>When she regained control of her facilities, the Huntress momentarily surveyed the bloody scene and debated eating the fallen imps. Finally, she decided that they would probably only make her and Dog sick, so she shared out a ration of dried meat between them, and cleaned her sword.<br/><br/>A quick look in the woodsman’s hut revealed enough quality furs to buy a meal and a bath at the inn not too far from there, so Zoe added them to her pack with no hesitation.<br/><br/>“Mmmmmmm a real bath,” she sighed with pleasure, “How about that, Dog?”<br/><br/>The Dog shook himself, and the Huntress giggled uncontrollably. Together they strolled away from the blood-ridden meadow.<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 150%; line-height: 116%;">*  *  *  *  *</span></div></span><br/><br/>Wet and bedraggled from the relentless torrent of rain falling outside, the Huntress and the Dog tumbled into the overcrowded inn in Nacona just in time to hear a tune sung by a fairly talented musician. The topic was of romance and fair maidens, a topic Zoe immediately dismissed as boring, and the Dog paid it no attention at all; the affairs of humans were no concern to him. The pair made their way to the counter in the back of the room, where Zoe found and addressed the innkeeper.<br/><br/>“I have a number of quality furs with which I would like to purchase a meal, some scraps for my dog, a bath, and a place to sleep,” she articulated her words carefully, without smiling. Zoe had been practicing—on the Dog, of course.<br/><br/>She unwrapped the furs she had so carefully kept dry and laid them on the table.<br/><br/>“This here is what I’m talking about,” the rotund man said, eyeing the furs critically. “Much more useful than a scrap of paper or a bit o coin. Have yerself a place to sit and ma girl will bring you some food—aye and yer dog too. You’ll get yer bath later, but all I can offer you in the way of sleeping is a scrap of floor next to the hearth and an old blanket,”<br/><br/>Zoe just nodded her thanks and slipped into one of the few unoccupied corners, bumping into a bedraggled guard on her way. Finally warm, and with food on the way, a small giggle escaped her throat, and the Huntress scratched the Dog’s ears happily, just as the innkeeper started yelling at the poor musician.