AngelaSasser-story

It wasn’t till my arrival in Dinas Rhydd long after my journey as Koh had begun that I would learn what the witnesses of that day had dubbed me - The Uncrucified.  I loved the poetry of that.  Whether I was murderer or not, those in the crowd that day knew my innocence and spread the whispers of my name across the city of Nexus and beyond like wildfire. In my first days as Koh, I followed the rivers, venturing along the roads gathering slaves and runaways to me. I lived up to my bandit king namesake, making Guild caravans ours, with special attention to those shipments I knew were coming from my old friend Oroshu.  The symbol of the Ec

The night before my execution was the longest night of my life, in a life filled a third of the way with long, fearful nights.  At first, I sat in the dark, my spirit still hollowed out by all that had transpired.  Hours passed and my mind began to race, pouring over every detail.  Where did we go wrong? What should I have noticed earlier?  How could I have stopped this? Could my father have lived if I didn’t convince him to fly in the face of the status quo? He could have been working on his maps right now with none of this worry, while I, like a dutiful daughter, could have been running his business, the both of us prosperous and co

Ahrun Vadras, my father, the eccentric merchant prince, known as the Fearless Seeker, was found dead in his own bed in the warmth of Fire Ascending, the year RY 763. It was I who found him that fateful morning. I noticed he had slept in longer than usual, for he was a prompt and studious man, and I thought I’d relieve our servants of the responsibility of bringing him his morning tea and biscuits so I could tease him about his growing bad habits. I cannot describe the horror of finding someone so dear simply…gone. He had been there smiling and laughing with me just the night before. By the time I found him, death had already made

Before our eyes, Dinas Rhydd has raised itself from mud and sticks to wood and brick, weathering armies and invasion like the oldest mountain stone.  It grows as life will on the old bones of a great city that once toiled beneath our feet.  My Pristine Guild weaves a golden thread through it, tying outpost to outpost, smithy to baker, heart to heart.  Only now do I understand the power of this golden web.  Like silk, it seems fragile, but holds strong the fabric of Creation. I realize now how little I understood about this balance as a young woman, fresh from school and full of plans and ideals.  I could only see a small part of the weave an

No time to read?  You can listen to the audiobook of this chapter here! When I met the young men who would become my loyal bodyguards and ‘little brothers’, they were barely older than children.  Arc of Silence and Night Locust appeared one day on my path through the countryside, two of many lost souls that gathered in our makeshift caravan seeking the thin thread of hope that was the road to the free city of Dinas Rhydd.  I didn’t pay much attention to them, at first.  They were another pair of unfortunates in an unending stream that never ceased to trickle from the Threshold.   It wasn’t until we were held up by hig

No time to read?  You can listen to the audiobook of this chapter here! I couldn't have guessed at this stage in my life as a teen verging on adulthood exactly when Vadras’ tolerance of my curiosity and taste for learning turned into affection.  For sure, I made myself as useful as possible to him in hopes that he would never find a reason to banish me from the wonders of his study.  While I had an appetite for books, it was mathematics that I took to like a bird to the air.  This proficiency had only just begun to take root under Cynis’ instruction, but under Vadras, it bloomed with voracity!  I was his constant shadow in nearly

No time to read?  You can listen to the audiobook of this chapter here! I took my exile from Varia’s household harder than I could have ever anticipated.  I was like a man lost in the desert who had finally had a taste of water on his lips.  The taste of being treated like a human being, even if I was being used by someone for their own gain, had been such a sweet taste.  But now?  I was chattel once more.  Literacy had afforded me a position as a ‘permanent resident employee’ of my new master, Ahrun Vadras’, for who was Cynis to resist bartering me away at a good price with his tutelage and training of my person as a

No time to read?  You can listen to the audiobook of this chapter here! Foreword. Let it be known in the chill of Resplendant Air of RY 765, I began this memoir a scant time after settling into the freshly built shack that would become the first guild hall of the Pristine Guild, the guild I built from the shattered hopes and dreams I had left in me. It would rise from stick and mud beginnings just as I have from the dusts of the South to a grand path that lies before me. Already, those who would tear this place down and reclaim this city and its people have been beaten back. The strings of destiny knot here in this place full of the undenia