Chapter 35: Interlude—Alyris
Izalia has been the Chieftain of the Alyrisin since she was twenty-two.
She’s not the youngest chief they’ve ever had, but she was not nearly ready to lead an entire village when her grandmother had died. Her grandmother had outlived Izalia’s parents, not as incredible a feat as it sounds, because Izalia’s parents were full-fledged Warriors, and did not care for living nearly as much as Izalia’s grandmother did. Even so, at twenty-two, Izalia was only just beginning to understand how her own mind worked, much less a complex ecosystem of people given unnatural strength and those cursed to live without it.
Maybe not a curse. It doesn’t seem so much like a curse anymore, because, as Alyris is now discovering, a lack of unnaturality means a lack of unnatural things going wrong.