Tempest was dreaming beneath the old cedar tree and the starless sky, dreaming of dragons…or was that a dinosaur? She wasn’t so certain anymore as the images flickered through her mind as fire embers against the dark lit canvas of her mind even as she awakened.

She couldn’t remember how she ended up in the desert, only recalled the blood seeping into the sand spilling from wounds that were healing even as she attempted to remember how she had come about them.

It had been a long road back to Rhy’din. Somehow and in some way she remembered the dreadful town and a memory was the only thing left she had to go on and she catered to that will of returning to what she remembered.

Death, Blood, and the savage way of Fire trailed in a heralded wake of her footfalls, streaking like a banner that would glow in the shadows but never lead back to her. A mystery, a solstice she had become.

Tempest still could not help but shake the feeling that she was cursed. A lone coyote had watched her from the thorny brush and a crow had cawed out an omen of warning in a voice that didn’t seem to belong to the avian, Memory. The bird carried a name that meant Memory.

A Hex gone, a Black Magic Baby had fallen to the spirits she worked with as their victim curse now.

The old ways were dead. Tempest knew that now. Points of no return had been surpassed and even though she walked alone there was something about her mind in the time that she dreamed that would not let her forget of that which remained significant.

Bonds in blood could not be forgotten.

She didn’t understand it but she felt the pull, the connection, the bond even as she had no recollection of who she shared that imprinted bond with.

Still so far her fractured memories had brought her back to Rhy’din to find herself deep in the West End where a club catered to those that seemed right up her alley.

The club felt like home to her, even as it felt different. Subtle changes, or maybe it was Tempest that had changed but the moment felt like d?j? vu as she looked around. Her eyes fell upon the graceful beauty of the dancer in the middle of the room, a glistening vision of radiant gold and shining emerald, the embodiment of youth and spring personified in the woman’s dance and delicate beauty before rising to a woman with a striped mane of black gold, predator eyes and a hunter’s frame.

The Huntress looked up and watched Tempest like she was nothing more then prey, a small frown upon her pierced lip as she dropped down from the stage silently and stalked toward Tempest

“You…who are you?”

“Tempest”

“Are you certain of that?”

A cut of a smile moved sharp at her lips as eyes the color of chipped peridot and smoldering absinthe lifted to the Huntress. Tempest could hear the breathless growl in the woman’s words, could smell the agitation that coiled in her tattooed belly.

“Perhaps.”

“You seem… familiar.”

An absent shrug, desert sun mane of hair shifted against her sand warm shoulders as she shifted her eyes away from the Huntress.

“Maybe in another life we knew each other, maybe in another time we crossed paths. It’s nothing now but the past or another life and time and plane. Nice place you have here.”

Tempest was lost in the sea of flesh then, rippling like a solitaire flame in the ocean of bodies. Only to emerge once more in the streets, back to the old cedar tree and a starless sky.

The significance of red save for the stain of blood was gone from her mind, the importance of staying from the solitaire path no longer mattered.

There was only the blood, only fire, only a bond that remained. Lost in a summer haze of burning fragments of her mind where there was an imprint and a raven called Memory.