"Must we Sisters?" Veda sighed, glaring baleful at the stone doors which had been her vexation since they three were all but fillies. Pythia and Polaris both knew how she hated these riddles. It was just like them to put her on a path through one, but there were five wayward lives at stake-- surely they did not find it so amusing that they would commit five sacrifices to the dark to have their joke? "There is no time for this! Or would you have Daybreak...

They passed this way. Dzvezda smelled them in the dust, heard the echoes of the hoofbeats on the stones all around her. They were not the first... not even among the first to lose someone in this chamber. Veda picked her way delicately over the grooves of liquid gore. It wouldn't hurt her, of course, but that did not mean she enjoyed viscera clinging to her gilded hooves. Pensive, silent, she approached the deepening pool in the sarcophagus to stare at her own rippling reflection. ...