In the smoking room of Reverence, Cornon’s sleaziest, upscale, members-only club, Savana Du Désert watched with keen interest as five newly-Touched priests and priestesses of Ishara celebrated.

They’d all gone into the ritual together only a few days prior, and now they were finally fully-fledged priests of the Lady of Passion. And they were definitely acting the part. They were loud and raucous, giggling as they drank dangerous amounts of spirits and smoked a small fortune of Aldressan pipe weed.

She smiled as she sipped from her glass of wine, letting her gaze wander over the rest of the room. It seemed like the good mood of the priests was infectious, a few other patrons having gotten caught up in the excitement and now celebrating alongside them. Others were clearly waiting to make their move, hoping to end the evening with them, judging by the lusty looks she saw in the eyes of some of the wallflowers.

Not that she disapproved; she’d be more upset if her priests didn’t stir up the lustful urges of others. Savana raised an eyebrow as one of the priestesses took off her top, much to the cheers of the crowd. She was a pretty little human, with short black hair and a perky chest to go with her athletic body. But… Not quite what she was in the mood for tonight. There were limits to just how far a tongue could go after all. No, she wanted something with a little more… substance.

Her gaze drifted to one of the girl’s companions, a well-muscled human priest who had shown much vigor and skill during the touching ritual. That, as well as certain… aspects that couldn’t be so easily enhanced by magic. And with the girl’s breasts in his face, that aspect was becoming rapidly apparent to any who looked, heralded by a noticeable bulge growing in his pants.

Savana took a few more languid sips as she watched the celebrations unfold and more clothes being discarded to the side—the topless girl now making out with a young elven lass on one side and a canine beastkin on the other, his tail eagerly wagging. It was quite a sight to behold the lovely passion being shared between them.

She rose after finishing her glass, briefly stretching her arms and flicking her spaded tail until her robes settled properly around it. She took a moment to whisper out a well-practiced phrase in the divine language, casting an enchantment on herself to inspire attention and just a hint of lust in any who saw her. She wasn’t going to let her target have any chance of missing her.

She strutted over to the group, all eyes turning to her. She smiled coyly to the varied onlookers, the dim lighting of the room casting shadows on her pale gray skin as she moved across it. She turned her full attention to the lucky, well-endowed priest she had settled on, locking eyes with him as she got ever closer. He may have been larger than her, but she knew from experience on the receiving end of the spell that she would be towering over him in his mind.

A moment later she was in front of him. She wasted no time—no need for pretense as her hand drifted forwards to caress his chest, feeling the muscles underneath, and the heartbeat racing deep within. “You’re coming with me,” she purred.

The priest swallowed and nodded, and Savana took him by the hand as she led him away, his departure unnoticed and unheeded by his friends.

It occurred to her as they walked that she should probably know this young man’s name, and she was fairly certain she’d be able to dredge up the memory If she really tried. But that hardly seemed important to her right now. She led him towards the bridge that would take them home, eager to have her way with him.

She’d worry about that, later.

Savana woke to banging on her door, seemingly only seconds after she and the young priest had tired each other out. It was loud and incessant, occasionally punctuated by panicked pleas in a voice she was entirely too tired to listen to. She groaned as she rose from the bed, and when the eager young priest next to her moaned his dismay, she could only empathize.

She quickly pulled on one of her robes, custom-made to have a slit for her tail to fit through, then lazily shuffled towards the unruly door. It was warm in her room; too warm for it to be much past midnight.

“Calm down,” she was already mumbling when she slid the bolt that locked the door aside, and pulled it open. Beyond it, stood an elven high priestess with neck-length yellow hair. She was noticeably taller than Savana herself, and she was so overwhelmingly… outstanding, that it took Savana a moment to notice the blond-haired feline beastkin man she’d recently hired as an assistant standing by her side. “Percy?” she asked, as she glanced from one to the other and back, and couldn’t help but notice how distraught they both looked.

“Your Eminence,” Percy said with a slight bow, his voice a pleasant growl. “This is high priestess Thane Val Dron.”

Savana blinked as she turned her attention to the high priestess. “I think we’ve met,” she assumed, though when and where was anyone’s guess. She prayed the woman would either remind her, or that she’d remember on her own quickly.

“Yes, Your Eminence,” the priestess said with a slight bow. “You appointed me to be Pontifex De La Cornon’s herald.”

“Ah,” said Savana, quietly. “And what news do you bring?”

The priestess swallowed, nervously. “I… I’m afraid he’s dead, Your Eminence,” she said.

Savana felt a pang of stress and despair at that. She took in a few deep breaths, and her eyes widened as any semblance of sleep fled her in an instant. “WHAT?!” she demanded. “What happened?!”

The priestess shrank away from her outburst. “I… He was found dead in his hammock after our party set up camp,” she said. “Assassinated by a changeling mystic,” she added in a whisper.

Savana’s mind raced at that. The word assassinated echoed through her mind, bouncing around and hitting every thought she had, tainting them all with the stress of what was to come. “Are you sure?” she asked.

The priestess nodded. “I saw it myself,” she quietly said. “Magic could not reveal a hint of life left in his body.”

“Ishara preserve him,” Savana quietly whispered. She stepped back into her room, and quickly reached for her day clothes, ruefully aware of the fact that she wouldn’t be sleeping again tonight, and probably not the day after, either.

The young priest she’d invited into her bed earlier that evening briefly propped himself up, and rubbed his eyes as he looked at her. “Wha’s going on?” he drowsily asked.

“You should get dressed—we’re done having fun, here,” she urged him as she pulled on enough underwear to qualify as decent, then slipped back into her clerical robes, the white fabric ever a lovely contrast against her dark gray skin.

When she returned to the pair that was waiting for her, she wordlessly gestured for them to follow her as she made for her office. It wasn’t far, as the Isharan embassy in the Convocation was only a handful of buildings of the hundred or so on the island.

“We’ll need to recall the abbots and leading high priests,” she told them as she led them through the mercifully empty corridors of the building, ancient sandstone floors smooth underfoot, the occasional enchanted lamp set into alcoves in the wall for light. She would ask for more details about what had happened to the pontifex soon, but first, she needed to set the wheels of succession into motion.

“Of course, Your Eminence,” the high priestess, Thane, said. “Though it may prove dangerous for the Adampora priests to contend with the front.”

“Right,” grumbled Savana under her breath. How in the hells would she-

“I could ask High Priest Du Labirin in Astoria and Abbess De L’Abanie to seek audiences with His Majesty Ashlom and the First Councillor, respectively,” offered Percy. “Ask them to arrange for safe passage during a prisoner swap?”

Savana smiled at the beastkin. He’d been exceptionally useful in the months since she hired the man, and that bit of advice was an outstanding example of how and why that had been the case. “How long do you figure to gather everyone?”

The beastkin rolled his eyes up and to the left as he thought. “Oh, five weeks, or so? The Cereni abbot and obviously the Mercinians will take the longest to join us.”

“So they will,” answered Savana, thoughtlessly, as they started to climb the stairs up to her office. Five weeks, she mused. Five weeks to gather a quorum to confirm a new pontifex, five weeks stuck with all of the responsibility, and none of the legitimacy.

She groaned at the mere thought. Not once in the history of Lady Ishara’s church had such a quorum actually been needed. The terriarch, in this case herself, was always elevated to the office of the pontifex when it became vacant, more often than not unanimously so. Gathering this quorum was a pain nobody needed.

“You sound troubled, Your Eminence,” said High Priestess Thane, as Savana’s office came into view.

“Of course I’m troubled,” hissed Savana, before she took a deep breath to steady herself. This priestess had done nothing wrong, and didn’t deserve to be treated like that. “I apologize,” she said. “But yes, I am troubled. I have to inform the Convocation that one of the pontifices is dead, I have to organize the confirmation, and…” She sighed. “And I have to write a letter informing Abbess De La Cornon that her younger brother is dead.”

Savana groaned as she threw her head back, and she stretched and shook her cramping hand. The sun was quickly rising behind her, blocked by the hill that was the island, but ambiently illuminating the world outside.

The letters she had penned over the last few hours left her fatigued and drained, but the work had needed doing, and so she had done it. Already, the template she’d written was being disseminated to the Convocation’s scribes, to be tweaked and either copied into hand-delivered letters, or transmitted through arcane means.

Over the coming hours, word would start to leave their little pious island, and go out into the wider world, carried by couriers astride pegasi with holy tailwinds to hasten their journeys, or the swiftest ships the church could charter.

Before her on her desk, laid two final pieces of parchment. One of them, the personal letter of condolences to the pontifex’s Shala-worshiping sister, and the other the speech she would be delivering to the Convocation in—she looked at the clock that had been built into her Adampor-styled desk—ten hours. Not that she actually needed to deliver the speech.

She’d called for the assembly herself, and as terriarch, she only had the authority to do so in two circumstances. One would be a catastrophic crisis in the absence of her pontifex, and the other the pontifex’s death—arguably, the latter was just a variant of the former. And by giving them no forewarning of any crisis, she’d effectively already informed them the man was dead.

The fact that he’d been assassinated and not merely died, however, would likely still shock most of them.

She rose from her writing desk a few moments later, and turned to the open door that led out onto her east-facing balcony. The view through it was dominated by the large, domed building that was the island’s focal point, made of blocks of the local sandstone rather than a better material so as not to appear to favor one of the denominations.

The railing of the balcony, too, was sandstone, though it had Ishara’s sigil laid into it in rose gold. Savana knelt before it and folded her thumb under her two fingers to make the sign of prayer, then ran the two extended fingers down her chest before she bowed low to the ground.

“Bonjour, Madame,” she said, charging the words with intent and the goddess’ power as if it were a spell, then launched into the rest of the prayer. “Ishara, Blessed Lady of Love and Lust, I ask you to walk with me, bless me, guide me to new passions, shield me from heartbreak, and be a balm on my soul.”

The prayer was answered by a very faint tingle along her back, and relief of the exhaustion that was the price of a nigh-sleepless night. She felt her ragira, her magical reserves refill. It wasn’t very much—Ishara having not been as generous with it as she had once been. But it was still invigorating. It still told her her actions had been righteous, if not exactly what her Lady wished of her.

“I…” she began, solemnly. “I’ll miss Jacob,” she said. She didn’t use the late pontifex’ given name lightly, and only did so now to underline the significance of her words. “I didn’t always see eye to eye with him, my Lady, but I will miss him. I beg that you and your holy peers preserve him.”

Another tingle up her spine, a little stronger than the first. It didn’t imbue her with more power, but it did convey her goddess’ approval. She repeated the sign a few moments later, then rose from her prayer, rejuvenated and ready to begin—or rather continue—the day.

And as the day dragged on, Savana watched as her words recalling the Isharan leadership to Cornon left, just as she’d intended. Not all of them would come, of course—many smaller sects did not recognize the Convocation. But she’d still sent word of the pontifex’s death to as many as possible.

She spent much of it getting ready for her address, bathing thoroughly, styling her hair into something that complimented her horns, and putting on the exact right amount of make-up.

As she was about to leave, she checked herself in the mirror one last time. With dark gray skin, yellow irises, white nails and hair, horns, and a demon-like prehensile tail that had a sharp spade at the end, Savana Du Désert was the very picture of a forty-year-old pandema woman.

Pandema were something of a curiosity to the other races of Eitheris, Savana reflected. They lived close to as long as elves, and were perfectly able to reproduce with most other sapients, yet their features still earned them distrustful glares in many places. Even now, Savana wasn’t quite sure why that was. Many demons didn’t have horns, and pandema like herself never had wings or claws, nor a need to feed on souls.

It was superficial and shallow bigotry that drove many to mistreat the desert folk. Though, luckily, she was shielded from that here, on their little island of temples and priests. Here, all anyone cared about was whether she had the medallion of a divinity around her neck, and she very much did. Ishara’s sigil hung from the chain around her neck, framed by an echelon ring of silver that was decorated with little studs of gold.

Soon, it would be a purely golden ring, and she rather looked forward to that.

At exactly one hour past noon, Savana walked into the Convocation’s assembly hall with purpose. It was a large, round hall, ringed by three tiers of stone benches for scribes, notaries, and other observers, and a central flat area with room to arrange the thrones of the various pontifices as needed.

Most of that flat area’s floor was stone, though a quarter was made of wood; a removable section that covered access to the underwater corridors that ran beneath the island to accommodate any pontifices of aquatic races.

Today, the thrones were arranged in a u-shape to allow all to clearly see and focus on the one that had called the assembly. The various pontifices all eyed Savana with curious expressions, though a few—notably the pontifex of Lady Shala—occasionally glanced at pontifex Jacob De La Cornon’s empty throne with grief-stricken eyes. They all knew what was to come.

One of the lesser priests in the benches stood up when Savana reached the opening of the U-shape, and cleared his throat. He had the sigil of Lord Lah, the god of Protocol and Law around his neck, and Savana felt him cast a spell before he spoke. “The record reflects Terriarch Savana Du Désert has invoked the assembly this day. The Chair of the Convocation’s duties are suspended until the next routine assembly, and temporarily fall to the terriarch,” he declared, his voice amplified by his magic. The pontifices all nodded in agreement.

Savana had never quite gotten the hang of talking under the influence of such a spell, and as such, she simply walked into the center of the hall, and resolved to speak loudly. “Your holinesses,” she began. “It is my solemn duty to inform you all that Lady Ishara’s pontifex, His Holiness Jacob De La Cornon, has passed on.”

As predicted, the Convocation was quiet at the news, all of them having deduced as much.

“He was found during the night, at his campsite a day’s travel north of his residence, struck down by an assassin’s blade.”

That provoked a few gasps, at least.

“By all accounts a shapeshifter snuck in and left a trail of drugged or enchanted guards in their wake, then was able to vanish into the night,” Savana said.

“Ghastly,” spoke Barath, the elderly elven pontifex of Lady Shala. “Was there anything left behind by the killer? A manifesto, or a statement? Some manner of message to justify such a heinous crime?”

Savana shook her head. “Not as far as I am aware, your holiness,” she said. “If such a thing is found, I will of course inform this Convocation. Though for now, it seems the motives and agenda behind this horrific deed are known only to the killer and their cohorts.”

A soft murmur rose as the pontifices considered and debated what Savana had told them. She heard everything from apologist drivel to talks of vengeance pacts, and theories that spanned the spectrum from a spurned lover slew him to Abanian sabotage. None of it was productive.

“We will have to increase the scope of our security,” said Mirdell, who was the pontifex of Lord Daray. The thirty-odd-year-old human stood out as being by far the youngest of the pontifices, owing to the competitive nature of the war god’s church. “I can pledge an extra fifty Darayite acolytes to help guard this holy island, and some of the Touched will doubtlessly volunteer as well.”

“As can I!” said the Lahan pontifex, an older dwarven woman. She said it quickly enough that it was obvious to Savana that she only said it to not be outdone by her peer—posturing rather than providing real solutions. Savana had to suppress the instinct to roll her eyes at the childish display, and she faintly found herself wondering whether that instinct would ever be stamped out of her by the Convocation’s antics, or if she’d prove resilient about it.

She also wondered whether either of them would volunteer any assistance to her church, whether she and her priests and abbots could look forward to protection by acolytes of War or the Law, or whether these volunteers would only manifest in places where they could be seen being useful. She expected the answer would be a rather firm no if she were to ask.

Savana sighed in exhausted dismay as she filed out of the assembly hall. Three hours. Three godsforsaken hours, the pontifices had gone on, telling each other how useful they’d all be, posturing about how sad they were that Jacob was dead.

She looked up at the vast city that was Cornon, the Convocation island connected to it by a long and narrow bridge like a baby connected to its mother by the umbilical cord. The sun was still high in the sky, now far enough to the west that the hill-hugging city appeared to lean towards it like a sunflower.

She stepped towards that view, up to a waist-height wall that was built just before the hill that was the Convocation started to slope steeply down towards the embassies around it. She leaned against the little wall, wary of the chance it might crumble after the centuries it had likely been there, but entirely unwilling to care about it.

“That bad, huh?” a growly voice came. She looked up and saw it was Percy, flanked by a much larger beastkin woman. A gray-haired canine with a wolf-like air about her, she was dressed in rough clothes and covered in pouches and weapons, an outfit that screamed mercenary.

“Who’s your friend?” Savana asked, half-heartedly.

“Name’s Daciana,” the wolf-beastkin said, with a voice that sounded younger than she looked, and had an unmistakable Abanian accent to it. “Your assistant invited me, implied you might be looking to hire someone to catch a killer.”

Savana turned around where she stood, half sitting on, half leaning against the little wall as she crossed her arms. “My assistant implied correctly,” she said. She’d said she would inform the Convocation if anything was discovered about Jacob’s assassin beyond what the herald had said, and while she’d meant that at the time, it now occurred to her that she’d had no idea how to actually achieve such a thing. Evidently, Percy had some ideas about that, and she was all too happy to go along with it. “An Abanian is an… interesting choice, though,” she cautiously added.

“Formerly Abanian,” Daciana said.

“Formerly?” Savana repeated, as a prompt to elaborate.

“Formerly,” the wolf-woman confirmed. “Had some disagreements with the empire about you magical types.”

“I should sincerely hope so,” Savana mumbled under her breath. Abanians were the stuff of nightmares for priests and mages alike, kidnapping anyone with even a hint of magical potential and enslaving them so their empire could use them as tools or living weapons.

“Is that fear I smell, pandema?” Daciana asked, her nose quivering as she said it.

“Hardly,” Savana lied. “Tell me, mercenary. What makes you think you can catch whoever had the nerve and skill to kill my mentor?”

“I prefer bounty hunter,” Dacia said with a growl as she stepped closer, and fished a toothpick from one of her many pouches she wasted no time in putting to work. “Changelings are an obnoxious breed. Pests, really. Hard to suss out by sight, but easy enough to track by scent. Most of my fee’ll probably be traveling expenses.”

She seemed competent, Savana had to concede. “And you think you can do better than law priests?”

“Not a doubt in my mind about it,” the bounty hunter said.

“And what will this cost me and my colleagues?” Savana asked. As soon as the words left her mouth, she could see Percy’s ears drop slightly, and she figured that meant he knew the price tag would be a tough pill to swallow.

“Normally I’d charge, oh, fifty Dragons for a gig like this,” Daciana answered. “But your cat promised this’d be a chance for me and my Pack to prove ourselves to you, so… I think I can forgo the fee for the sake of a healthy partnership.”

Savana wondered what she was supposed to make of that. She wouldn’t say no to help that didn’t drain their coffers, but she didn’t see all that much need for this woman’s services after this case. Not unless she fumbled it, and this assassin came back to deal with Savana herself. “I suppose that’s reasonable,” she said, then extended a hand to the bounty hunter.

Daciana took it and squeezed it hard, the calluses that passed for the beastkin’s palms uncomfortably rough against Savana’s own well-cared-for skin. She grinned an unsettling grin at Savana, too. Like she was happier to get the chance to chase this fool down than about the chance to secure a healthy business relationship with Lady Ishara’s presumed next pontifex.

“Then we’ll get to work,” Daciana said to her, and turned to walk away once the handshake was done. She did so with a swagger about her that told Savana that, yes, she was happier to have someone to hunt than to have a business opportunity tied to it.

“Find out why they did it!” Savana shouted as an afterthought. Gods above, she’d nearly forgotten that!

“Doubt I’d earn myself a repeat customer if I didn’t,” the beastkin answered without looking back, then disappeared from view as she started to descend the hill, down to the bridge or whatever ferry had brought her to the island.

“Where’d you find her?” she asked Percy.

His head snapped back to her, and his ears perked up to show she had his attention. “Old acquaintance, your eminence,” he said. “We ran in similar circles before I found out about this job.”

“Oh, do tell,” Savana teased, only to watch his ears drop back down and practically disappear in his mop of blond hair.

“I’d… rather not,” he softly said. “I doubt it would do good things for our rapport.”

“Fair enough,” Savana conceded, confident she’d find out eventually, anyway. “But remember, the gods tend to be understanding and forgiving—”

“Yours, maybe,” Percy said in what Savana assumed was meant to be too quiet a whisper for her to hear.

“Excuse me?” she asked.

He blushed and his eyes widened in a delightful display of being flustered. “I just mean… Ishara isn’t Lah or Nerielle. I know your Lady is known for being forgiving, but they’re not all like her.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Savana conceded. “But if you ever decide you want to talk about it, my office’s privacy spells will make sure she’s the only god that hears us in there.”

He smiled at that, seemingly cheered up and almost certainly interested. Everybody liked it when she mentioned those privacy spells. “I’ll… keep that in mind, your eminence,” Percy said.

Savana winked at him. “I’m sure you will.”