**I make no pretense as to owning any of the Harry Potter Characters (they belong to the illustrious J.K Rowling!!), but as far as Raxa Nayan and her merry band of renegades, they miiiine! Wanna use em in a fic of your own? Email me for permission: gt94@barnard.edu**



I was one of the lucky ones.

The people of Eyara Prime had long been ravaged by war, with neither wizard nor Muggle left unscathed. Extreme poverty and extreme fear, shared equally between both classes, have been said to have brought about a relationship between the inhabitants of my world virtually unheard of in other parts of the galaxy. But could such a peace, if one can call it that, have come by less destructive means?

In my early youth, my eyes would wander from face to face as I strolled through the ruins of what was once Eyara's capitol city, and would fight back tears at the sight of those scarred far worse than I from the nuclear fallout. Then, the alarm would sound-another attack, and with it the chaos of Eyarans, scurrying like Earth rats to find shelter inside one of the few remaining bunkers. Most had already been destroyed, as had nearly everything else on the planet, including any hope of one day reaping the fruits of peace.

It was on a day such as this that I was first approached by a recruitment officer from the resistance militia.

"You!" He shouted to me from across the crowded bunker, pulling out a military issue wand to aid him in weaving through the distraught throng of once proud Eyarans, packed in like mere livestock. "You're a Psi Witch, aren't you?"

"Yes," I replied cautiously as I telepathically scanned him. Sensing no sign of The Enemy, I continued, "I received my training at Transcendence School on Earth. But that was before the war-since then I haven't found much use for my abilities. How can one when every day is a struggle to survive, sir?"

"I'll show you," he smiled, reaching a hand to my forehead, and in that moment, I saw what I was to become.

I was one of the lucky ones, merely because I found a way out-or so I thought. Old battle scars were erased only long enough to be replaced by shiny, new metallic ones.

"Lieutenant Raxa Nyan, let the record show that on this date you are hereby granted the Star of Eyara, the highest medal of conspicuous bravery and achievement to be awarded to one of our people."

Applause. Cheering.

I bowed my head slightly to allow the Military Governor to place the glorified bauble around my neck. A hunk of metal I had to slaughter thousands of sentient beings in order to obtain-I felt so proud.

And yet, were it not for my deeds, the war probably would have dragged on indefinitely. On the night I received this award, a banquet was held celebrating for the first time in twenty-five years our independence from the Dark Alliance.

Complacency was a familiar face for years to come, until finally it happened.

Upon signing the treaty to end the war against the Dark Alliance, the government of Eyara Prime, its protectorates, and supporters had, in fact, signed its own death warrant. Any victories achieved over the past quarter of a century were revealed as hollow ones, as the nearly thirty-nine billion inhabitants of my world became enslaved as soldiers of the Dark Lord, himself.

Apparently, witches and wizards whose genes contained a fully active Psi Factor were far and few between on the Alliance worlds, as a hefty price was placed upon the heads of any aberrant Eyarans not accounted for during what became known as "The Cleansing".

I struggled. Ripping, tearing, and screaming; trying desperately to conjure my telekinetic abilities to set myself free as two scaly, ominous looking creatures in dark robes succeeded in tethering my futilely resistant body to a what appeared to be a crudely fashioned operating table.

*The injection, * I suddenly thought to myself. *All that talk about the need to 'protect us from diseases that would be no doubt foreign to our immune systems'-diseases native to.oh.what is this planet called again? Earth? Something like that? If what was in that syringe was supposed to do anything, it was to prevent our voluntarily tapping into the part of our brains reserved for telepathic activity! *

I felt a surge of electricity pulsing through my nervous system, as though I were to be punished for such a conjecture, and all went dark.

Eleven years later, I was finally able to wake again as myself, and what those gathered at my bedside told me fueled the fire I would need for the journey through time I would have to make.

This is my story, the story of an Eyaran who would come to be known on Earth as Roxanna Zimmer, and throughout the known universe as Freedom's Dagger.