A/N: Hey, this is the first fic I'm writing for this section. Actually its been forever since I've written anything at all for fanfiction so I may be a bit rusty. Constructive criticism will be much appreciated. Oh and I'm pretty sure that this idea has been used already so I apologise in advance if it is similar to something you've read/written. Hang in there though, there will be an interesting twist.

Disclaimer: The characters that I am using for this story are not products of my own meagre imagination but belong to Tamora Pierce. Don't sue me!

Prologue

Veralidaine Sarrasri dropped to her knees beside the body of her mother. All around her, she felt her friends cry out in an agony that emulated her own but she ignored it. She was numb to it. She did not feel the hard wooden floor beneath her knees, nor the sudden bite of cold Snowsdale air that suddenly drifted through the open front door, nor Cloud's teeth biting into her shoulder; urging her back to reality with a pragmatism that only the pony could muster in such a desperate time. One thing alone filled up her senses consuming all of her conscious thoughts until she thought she would burst. Her mother. Ma.

Eyes wide and brimming with unshed tears she reached out to the unmoving figure that lay sprawled on the floor in front of her. She paused. Memories of having to wake her mother up on lazy summer mornings came back to her. In those times Sarra would jerk awake suddenly, and scold Daine for letting her sleep so long. Now Daine prayed to every deity she knew for the same reaction. Only a large part of her knew that this was not the same. There was never blood when Daine had gone to wake her mother up before. Now there was. Too much blood. Her knees were soaked in it and so was Sarra.

Jerkily, trembling hands brushed the warm skin of Sarra's cheekbone; a movement that only a few days ago, many of the village men would have envied her for. With the last vestiges of her spirit, Daine forced herself to let her hand slide down to her mother's neck, where it searched ineptly for a nonexistent pulse. With each passing second, the mounting pain in Daine's chest swelled, making it hard to breathe until she was gasping through wretched sobs that shook her body, not even noticing the tears streaming down her cheeks or the blood flowing from her hands where her fingernails had been digging into the flesh of her palms. The blood dripped onto the floor to mingle with that of her mother's.

Still, unmoving brown eyes stared hauntingly up at Daine, sunk into a face pale and frozen in a position of unadulterated terror, making the girl want to scream or cry or…kill. Daine stopped her shaking and sobbing at the sudden thought, eyes blank as she contemplated the feeling that was slowly drifting to the surface of her ravaged mind. It was something like hate only with a colder less attached side to it. Yes. She liked the cold. She did not want to feel right now. Forcing herself out of the foetal position she was in she made herself look at her mother.

No more fear, no more sadness, she told herself. Letting the cold envelop her she reached a hand over and closed Sarra's eyelids. Then she closed her own eyes allowing a part of her that she had thus far suppressed to take full dominance of her body, mind and soul. At the edge of her consciousness, she felt them. Her family, the only family she had left and the only people that would help her now, she knew. Her eyes opened slowly, and when they did, all traces of the girl that had been Veralidaine Sarrasri were gone, leaving a feral creature born from tragedy, of a nature that could only be described using a word that coincided with the very essence of what it was; wild

The creature smiled, feeling no warmth despite this show, it was just a facial spasm triggered by the subconscious and a shadow of the emotion that the previous owner of the body would have felt had her family still been alive. First she would bury the bodies; the previous had made it clear that this was to be done, and then, the creature would hunt.

Nineteen year-old Daine sat up abruptly and nearly flew out of her bed. Blue-grey eyes wide and chest heaving erratically she wiped cold sweat from her forehead and forced herself to calm down. It was a dream, just a dream.

Rays of sunlight streamed through her window through a crack in the curtains, falling across her face and making her blink dazedly in the early-morning twilight. Having calmed down sufficiently she guessed the time to be around six o'clock in the morning, a highly indecent time to be awake considering she didn't have to be working until nine. Nevertheless she knew she would not be able to sleep now and so peeled off her sweat-soaked covers with a grimace.

"Must have been something strange I ate." She muttered to herself with a yawn. Remorsefully, she climbed out of her bed and padded over to her bedroom window. Bracing herself, she threw open her curtains, half expecting to see snow hugging the peaks of jagged mountain tops, with needle like spires stabbing at an ice blue sky that lingered frostily over a village. From a panoramic view she would see houses laid out sporadically across the land in a way that was obviously intended to exhibit a crude sort of communal ambience. The sight that met her eyes however was a far more familiar one. The new sun peeked out from behind the renowned sky-scrapers of New York City. "Home sweet home." Daine exclaimed with a relieved sigh.