The old woman's cold eyes stayed on him, and Achilles decided she had earned a name in exchange for the beating she'd taken without flinching.
"I am Adrastia. A newly selected Attendant of THE Swords of Existence." The title still fit strangely, like a coat he hadn't finished breaking in. "We had just begun clearing Gilded Ones from THE Strand of Broken Scales in THE Source Lands when the thing holding the form of a Gilded One sent us all here. The thing that imposed these chains. The one we can't even talk about."
He let that sit, then asked the question that had been pulling at him since the prompts named her Scale.
"You are?"
Her eyes flashed, and the cold in them sharpened into something older than anger.
"I didn't know his influence had already spread into THE Source Lands that far." She said it half to herself.
