In the wide plains of Djherma’s Great Valley, the barbarian tribes roamed wild, hunting massive herds of hooved animals and moving their camps to follow those same herds. The Blue Arrow tribe was one of the largest and most powerful tribes in the Great Valley. Among the giants of the plains, Salidda had always seemed so very small. She was the third daughter of a low ranking hunter. This gave her only a tentative position in the tribe. Women were barely more than possessions to the barbarians and of daughters only the firstborn was even marginally important. More than slightly petite for a barbarian of the Great Valley, Salidda had little value as breeding stock and thus more useless than most daughters.

Though small and slender, she was well muscled from hard work. She wore her curly black hair in a tight braid down her back and her chocolate brown eyes were fierce and proud. The third daughter of a man with no sons, she was a hunter born and raised. Though usually hunting was a pursuit not allowed for women, since her father had no sons, she was given the task.

She was with her father, stalking close to a herd of grey, horned antelope, when they came upon a hunting cat pursuing the same game. The yellow and black spotted cat roared as it launched itself at Salidda’s father. The girl didn’t think, didn’t even realize immediately that she had reacted. She lifted both hands before her face and cringed away from the hunting cat. Even as she drew herself back, her hands pushed forward. The hunting cat, caught in mid-pounce, rebounded off an invisible barrier and was shrouded in a flickering blue light.

Salidda felt a strange tingle within her skin, like the brush of unseen spiderwebs, flowing through her veins. Sher heard her father scream, heard the terror in his voice. He fired an arrow, she heard his bowstring twang loudly, for the instrument was close at hand. It was barely a second between the scream and the twang and even less before the intense burning pain ripped through her chest.

The pain was so intense it exploded like a shower of sparks inside her eyelids as those apertures slid closed.

Salidda had no idea how long it was before she regained consciousness, she only knew that the first thing to greet her was the stabbing pain. She tried to scream, but all she could manage was a grunt around the gag someone had placed in her mouth. Her hands were bound tightly behind her back and though she struggled mightily, her slender frame did not contain enough strength to even stretch the rope, much less break it. There was a bandage over the wound to her chest, but already it was soaked through with blood.

Her body shuddered as waves of pain crashed over her. She could not begin to understand what had happened, did not realize the full gravity of her situation. Had she been captured by another tribe? Was her father held somewhere nearby? It occurred to her then, that her surroundings seemed strange. There were familiar touches, the hide walls seemed like those of her own family, but were not exactly the same. There were the charred remnants of a fire in the center of the hut and a strange thick smoke wafted from the embers.

Again, Salidda tried to call out, tried to draw some response from outside the otherwise empty hut. Intermittent sounds came from beyond the hide walls, the bleating of sheep and the scuff of bare feet on bare dirt, the dull murmur of conversation.

The next hours passed in an agonizing blur of pain. It filled her, stealing every thought and making even breathing difficult. By the time the tent flap lifted, Salidda’s cheeks were burned raw by the flow of hot tears, her brown eyes painfully swollen, and she felt drained in addition to the burning wound to her chest, it felt as though her entire body was aflame.

Hope coursed through her as she recognized the man entering the tent. He stood nearly seven feet tall and his entire body was rippled with strong muscles. Dark hair grew in short, shaggy shanks around his face and his stern, chiseled visage was as familiar to her as Salidda’s own.

“I am disappointed in you, Salidda.” Her father began.

She was at a loss, her eyes wide and she tried to stammer a rebuttal around the gag in her mouth.

“You were useless to me before this day. What honorable tribesman would want you for a wife?” The big man shook his head and came to crouch before his third daughter. “You are a good hunter, that is all I can say of you. But hunter or no, you are still a girl, and as such not fit to hunt the mighty beasts of the plains.”

He shook his head then, shaggy hair falling into one piercing ice-blue eye. He impatiently shoved it away in an habitual gesture. “What you did today cannot be excused and you will be punished for it.”

Salidda shook her head violently from side to side, denying her father’s words. She did not understand, what had she done?

“Witchcraft.” Her father spat the word, then made a sign with one large hand. He put his middle finger against his tumb, lifted his index and pinky and set his ring finger straight, the sign to ward against evil.

Salidda’s eyes widened, the bloodshot white showing clearly around the deep brown. She shook her head again, in denial.

“Oh yes, my daughter. Do not deny your link to the devils of the underworld. I saw you, with my own eyes cast that spell.”

Confusion drew Salidda’s brows together in a deep frown. What spell did her father speak of? Even as the expression set itself on her delicate features, her father’s right hand smashed across her face in an open-fisted cuff. Salidda felt her upper lip split and blood soaked quickly into the gag that stilled her lips.

“Don’t go trying any of your devilry on me, child. I see you.”

Tears sprung anew from Salidda’s damp brown eyes. At last she began to understand the gravity of her situation. Her father, the man who spoke for her in the eyes of the tribe, accused her of witchcraft. As Salidda’s eyes were held in the icy gaze of her father’s stare, she swallowed painfully and began to grasp, at last, what had occurred during the hunt. When the hunting cat had been cast away from her and her father, saving both of their lives, the man she loved more than any other man in the tribe had shot his own daughter.

For the first time since she had awakened in the tent, Salidda felt an emotion other than fear. A great and powerful rage filled the diminutive barbarian for the first time in her life. For hundreds of years, her people had relied on a rage that was unique to the tribesmen. This first swell of rage brought with it a terrible heat. The dying embers of the fire in the center of the tent flared to life, Salidda felt sweat popping up on her upper lip, stinging the split her father’s hand had opened.

The smell of burning sinews preceded a loud pop by only the barest of moments. Suddenly, Salidda felt the bonds that kept her hands stilled fall away. With the newfound mobility, she ripped the gag from her mouth and spat a stream of bloody saliva on the ground between her father and herself.

“Devil!” He screamed, leaping up from his squat and stumbling toward the door.

The explosion caught him halfway there. The wooden supports of the tent splintered and flew outward, shredding the hide with the force of the explosion. Salidda’s father went flying forward, through the tattered hides and out onto the bare dirt beyond. Salidda rose unsteadily to her feet, the burning inferno of her rage swirling about her in glittering flames that were apparent even on the material plane. She stumbled towards the opening where the wall of the tent had once been, as she emerged into the brilliant sunlight, the tent behind her burst into roaring conflagration, though she was wreathed in those same flames she felt no heat beyond that of her emotional turmoil.

The barbarians of her tribe fell away from her, stumbling over one another, as she stalked, awkwardly, towards the edge of the encampment. She heard, over the roar of the flames, the sharp twang of a bowstrings. Though her people were, for the most part, consummate shots, none of the arrows found its mark. The arrows were burned in the raging flames that surrounded Salidda well before they would have hit her. She could hear the screams of her people as they fled from the dangerous creature she had become.

As she reached the waving grasses outside the tramped down earth of the encampment, she took a deep breath and tried to calm the fires of her rage. During the dry months, fire on the prairie was a dangerous endeavor. She heard another volley of arrows and braced herself for the impact, when it never came she glanced over her shoulder, back towards her people. What hope did she have of leaving them alive?

The sensation of spiderwebs filled her veins once more and Salidda’s vision began to darken. She could feel the power rising within her, her father had been right, she was a devil. She had known it since the hut had exploded around her, casting her accusing father out through the tattered hide walls. Salidda’s last clear sight was that of her people, fleeing from her. The darkness within her swelled up and overtook her and Salidda knew nothing more.