"Arise" she said in her crystal-clear voice. I stood, surrounded by ash on a plain of jumbled and bleached bone. In the distance I could make out a slender needle, impossibly tall, which shone with brilliance impossible to bear one moment only to shift to a black as deep as a starless night the next. The voice I heard came from all around me as if the wisps of wind stirring whirlwinds of grey dust around me could speak. Under the pitiless red sun glaring down upon me I looked at my hands, now wrapped in blood-soaked strips of linen that I knew would never dry. "Go now my disciple. Walk the world and bring back to thy Mistress the heart of the traitor." I looked up and she floated there before me. Impossibly tall like her tower, pale skin covered in leather bindings as black as her ebon eyes, I could not tear my eyes away. "Forget not who hath made thee. Always remember thy Mistress!" I screamed as her hand clapped over my face, the slender fingers holding me motionless as her touch seared to the bone. "Do not fail."
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