"I can't remember... is that how it was? Flashes, patches of memory that serve only to complicate the blackness between them... am I dead? I feel cold, my body and my mind, feel so cold. I can't feel my fingertips. My heart... I know better, but... sometimes I could swear it isn't beating."

A brutal yawn passed uncontrollably between Amilei's lips at last. High atop the seat of the sky, the first full moon of the season gazed disapprovingly into her window to remind her that she had betrayed her sleeping schedule far too many times in the last few months. The life of an apprentice templar had not been kind to her since its inception over a decade previously, but these finals days, the days of her ascension rites, seemed all the more draining upon her young heart. Tonight had been the worst, a night that had seen her poring over pages of rambling, decrepit religious text until her eyelids could no longer support themselves. Twice she had fallen asleep at her desk, each time to awaken a few minutes later with nothing but bleary eyes and lost pages to welcome her. She would sigh, contemplate the meaning of her life, and trudge dutifully on each and every time.

"All right," groaned an exhausted Amilei in her vibrant and thoroughly Irish accent, "I'm going home. Tomorrow I'll come back to this tower, and if I don't throw you out the window myself, I'll finish reading all of you." From the worn and unfortunately sweaty seat the twentysomething rose, her eyes unfocusing just enough to force a hesitation in her step. Sixteen hours had proven too long for her, despite her aspirations to the contrary. "I don't think," she sighed to the empty air, "that I'm going to make it home tonight without nodding off halfway."

Though she fought the decision with every ounce of moral fiber in her weary body, Amilei knew better than to attempt a crossing of the moors on a night like tonight. The Tower of Edmundshire, ringed as it was with complex mystical circles and the like, presented the only safe haven from the nighttime horrors of the highlands for miles in every direction. During the day the jade-eyed apprentice wouldn't have thought twice about trekking over the hills of her homeland, but the moonlight never failed to draw out devils of a dozen kinds. She had seen them before, on the two other occasions when her mind had outlasted her body and the tower floor become her bed, seen with her own eyes the beasts and spirits roaming freely along the crests of every hillock. It was something of a guilty pleasure for her, though, in that her fascination with such beings held no end. A dozen occasions had seen her reprimanded by the priests and templars for her unauthorized research of the ancient bestiaries, but all of her efforts had been the result of simple, passionate curiosity. No harm done, anyway, or at least that was her rationale for it.

So it was that she found herself, despite the tightness behind her eyes and the burning in her muscles, standing next to the glass-free window to gaze outward over the moors. Amilei had caught sight of all sorts of things this way... werewolf sightings were disturbingly common from her twelfth floor viewpoint, as were the various species of haunts. Twice she had seen a lonely banshee floating around out there, and though the creature had gazed longingly upon her with its sorrowful eyes, it had never come close enough to present a threat. All sorts of creatures that defied her ability to identify moved around down there as well, more or less incessantly.

Tonight, Amilei had been gazing downwards for only a moment when she froze, eyes wide, jaw dropped open.

"Lord Jesus," she muttered, an instinctive benediction that had long since lost its meaning. "Jesus Christ almighty..." Nothing that she had ever beheld could compare to the sight before her weary eyes. Icy mist swirling from the pores of the earth, the sound of horseshoes clopping across the hardening earth, the hellish snort of infernal nostrils heralding the monster upon the ground this moonlit night... Amilei's screams could never describe the terror she knew in that moment. She stepped back, tripped over her own feet. barely felt the solid stone of the floor splitting the flesh of her cheek wide open. Her fingers reached out futiltely, clawing at nothing, clawing at everything, just before the light faded from her eyes.

Even those not well versed in the lore of the mystical would have recognized the devil below. Would have understood the meaning of a lone rider in black... would have understood that rotten stump of neck lacking a head...

The Dullahan had come to call.

"Amilei..."