First Tier Sorcery Prologue- Distant Dreams of Yesterday

  Riley’s eyes snapped open as she heard the hawk.

  Fear raced through her tiny form, all as her joints ached. She knew she was old and had already survived many seasons for one such as her, but that did not diminish the fact that she was still alive.

  Being alive was the point as far as she knew. For as long as she could remember, the light came, the light went, and she remained.

  This last season had been the hardest. For reasons unknown to her, the energy and vibrancy she had known in the past had been fading, though her instincts were still sharp and her ears keen.

  The cold, though, was again giving way. The world was warming yet again, and soon, there would be more food and warmer nights. The plains would soon put forth more food than she or those of her kind could ever consume, and with it would come the dancing, the moments of high energy, and the rise of new creatures great and small.

  In fact, this was already happening.

  Young life like her stirred and moved with all the mystery of new being. They were only a few days old, the firstborn of a new and yet-to-come spring. They still fidgeted and crowded together for warmth against the harsh indifference of an unforgiving world.

  The shadow passed over Riley again, and with it came a cry, urging her to freeze, but in her wide vision, she knew the hawk was descending.

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  Scrunch down, hide! That’s what her instincts whispered, though not so much in words as an impulse. She felt the coldness of the ground all the more, yet it was distant through her thick fur. Her ears flattened against her back, and with their touch came a sigh.

  This was the life she had always known. This was all that was for as much as she knew. Peaceful spans of grazing or resting interspersed with moments of terror.

  There were no words in her life, no definition for these abstract concepts, nothing to define the emotions she felt, but something distant in her, something half-remembered in that moment, did not identify the hawk as a hawk, or a predator, or even as a threat, but *Death* which while abstract, was also as real as anything she had ever known.

  A vague and icy chill, familiar yet not, settled on her like a wet snow as she felt her hindpaws tense, but why? The hawk wasn’t coming for *her*.

  She knew how to hide, she knew how to stay still, and had already outrun the grasping talons and snapping teeth of many a beast that would have made a meal of her. Hawk, or dog, fox, or coyote, it did not matter. She had passed the test time and time again, thrilling in her legacy.

  Riley was born to run.

  Yet those leverets had no chance. Some would die, maybe all would die, and that was just the way of things.

  It felt wrong, though, as she watched on in horror. The world slowed, and before she knew it, she was in a run, dashing over the lump of grasses that, at best, provided partial concealment.

  In an instant, the hawk was on her instead, swooping down. She could see it come in a terminal dive, getting closer and closer.

  Riley had to kick and twist, change direction, or something... She had to get away, but that strange weariness, pains in places that bent, it was all too much, and for the last time, her body failed.

  The hawk landed with a sickening crunch as bones snapped and the world dimmed. The scent of iron drifted in the air, and the feeling of pain lasted but for a moment as the world dimmed.

  Suddenly, in the peace of the void came a voice.

  Riley, again, with a choice of expending yourself for the benefit of others.

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