With her genuflecting, hooded attendants receding, this mortal girl-still a stripling!-was sent away to face He Who Walks in Blood, banished to the hissing realms where unspeakable things await any who stray from the cohort that protects them. The Seventh Book of the Old Kingdom made it clear what would be required of her. Not Galena! Even at an age where most played idly, unaware of the storied agonies to come, her eyes struck fear in others! Her words rang with authority! And when the time came for Galena to tread the Path of Pain, even her attendants knelt, transfixed.”” Many brutally die in the quest to know the Whispering Walker. Many would stumble on the path to serve Volkerh. “From The Song of Those Who Attend: “And lo, the terrible power already nascent in the one named Galena, in honor of the golden champion of old. And like so many before, they did not understand that such an offering-the whelp taking her first timid steps towards the waiting Talon Priests-could be accepted only as a solemn promise of their own destruction! Her kin destroyed! Her village destroyed! Each and every connection she had to her world, destroyed!” Her terrified begetters, like so many before, came believing that through this innocent offering their own lives would be protected. “From the account of T’zik Oor, acolyte of the Gaunt Shepherd: When the days of the Twelve Thousandth Harvest began, she was presented to Those Who Attend. She does not dream of her mother's world.
She learned that blood is judgement and penance is sacrament. She learned that crying and laughing were no different, so she stopped. Like all children, she watched and imitated. "She shall live as we do", it whispered, and in so doing would shape herself by the gloaming will of He Who Walks In Blood. The talon-priests weaned her on ash-milk and consulted the Guunt Shepherd to learn her fate.
She was 4 years old when given as an offering to the Celebrants of Volkerh.
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