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Claire Lightsky, Merenna Morgana, Felicity Nithlis and Mirna Blackcloak are the creations of I, the author, as much as they can be while working within the framework of another author.

The Children of Chimera

Thirteen years before the searing.

Morgan ap Serthis was worried. He paced up and down the corridor, hands held firmly behind his back in an attempt to stop himself from wringing them. He heard the wails from behind the door, and flinched, barely managing to stop himself from rushing into the room to check on his wife's health. The priestess of Lyssa who had come to help in the birthing had chased him out and forbidden him from entering.

Suddenly, another wail was cut off by a gasp of surprise, and he could not help it. He rushed into the room, forgetting his usual poise and control in his rush to make sure that his wife was all right. She smiled at him from the bed, looking bedraggled but healthy. The surprised sound had come from the midwife, who still held the child. She was looking at the baby's eyes, as though enraptured, but made no move to resist as Morgan took the child from her. She shook herself awake, and looked at them.

"A girl. Her name, quickly, before the body becomes used to having none."

"Merenna." The girl's mother said, instantly, and Morgan nodded. They had chosen the name beforehand. The priestess-midwife nodded, and wiped the girl's brow with her knuckles, murmuring her name to her with a skitter of power that sealed the babe's soul into her body until death broke that bond.

Only then did Morgan allow himself a look into Merenna's eyes, and he was quite as shocked as the Lyssan had been. It was fading now, but there was still the hint of a shifting myriad of coloured gemstones in place of her eyes. He blinked, and the next moment the crystal was gone, and her eyes were a normal, soft blue-grey.

---

Rachel Starlight's hand tore into the sheets of the birthing-bed as she cried out in pain. Suddenly, the pressure eased, and the torment became a mere echo of the agony it had been. She spent a moment to catch her breath, before opening her eyes again and trying to sit up and look at the Dwaynan acolyte who had talked her through the birth. It had been difficult, for Rachel tended towards almost unnatural thinness, and was ill-built for childbearing. Her child came into view a moment later, and suddenly it all seemed worth it. The child was – to her – beautiful. The ranger-priestess smiled back at Rachel, and held the baby out, passing it into her hands.

"Dwayna has touched this one." She remarked, indicating the babe's white skin and hair. She seemed to have a lightness that had nothing to do with weight, and it seemed as though a breeze stirred the room despite the windows being shuttered.

"Claire" Rachel murmured to the acolyte, who nodded, and brushed her fingers across the babe's brow. Magic caressed their skin as the babe was named.

"Lightsky, she is called by Dwayna." She acolyte responded, acknowledging the name chosen by the mother.

"Claire Lightsky…" Starlight murmured to herself, and smiled. "Wind to thy wings, sister." She spoke to the acolyte, who simply bowed her head before backing from the room to leave the mother and her daughter to bond. Rachel looked down at her child, and found herself falling into depthless eyes only now opening on a fading crystal vista.

---

The cold, stonewalls of the abbey resounded with the cries of two women in labour. Seven-year-old Mhenlo grimaced, but knew that there was little he could do – either to help, or block out the sounds. He turned himself back to his studies, chewing his lip thoughtfully as he re-read the passage.

"As is ever the case with peace, it once again came
to and end when the volcano erupted…"

He paused again, and blinked. Something… the screaming had stopped. A short while later, he heard footsteps, and the grating, icy voice of a priestess of Grenth he had once had a lesson with came to his ears.

"The birthing was hard… the mother is in my Lord's hand now. Kellis has passed. I will take the girl – Grenth has named her Mirna – and raise her. The strangest thing…" the woman trailed off, uncharacteristically uncertain.

"What happened?" A second voice, male, and one that Mhenlo couldn't place for a moment.

"Her eyes were… strange." The priestess' voice fell silent on that, odd, given that usually it easier to convince a glacier to flow backwards than to slow that frostlike maundering.

"My Felicity's as well." The man responded, and Mhenlo finally placed him as a monk in the service of Balthazar who had come to Serenity Temple with his pregnant wife to ease the birth. "Like her eyes had been taken from the Crystal Desert, it seemed." The voice finished, and the woman's reply was lost as the two moved away into another part of the temple.

Sighing, Mhenlo returned to his history text and dipped his pen, beginning to copy the page as he had been set to do almost two hours previously. Unnoticed to the young monk, a strangely weightless crystal that glowed with an inner light appeared in the pocket of his over-robe. It wasthe size of two grown men's fists.