A weekend away from the city was, Amber decided, exactly what she needed. Her recent camping expedition with Aura, Agnes and Andrew had proven to her exactly how much good it did her mind and soul to simply get away from it all for a little while. This time, however, she was planning to go completely on her own. She told Abyss where she was going and when she could be expected brought but otherwise brought no technology with her at all, including leaving her ever-present blackberry at home in Sanctuary. The one thing she didn't need was someone calling to inform her that for some reason she had to go back to the city before she was good and ready to go back. If everything went well, it was something she intended to make a regular part of her life.

Amber didn't bring much of anything with her beside her robes. There was no need for a tent because she had plenty of forms that could survive just fine outside at night, nor did she bring food because she could always hunt her own. Besides, it wasn't as if she could carry much with her and still expect to be able to shift back and forth. A few days before going she shifted into Pterodaustro form in order to best scout out the area, finding a little clearing a few dozen miles outside of the city in the middle of an otherwise sparsely populated area of woods. One the day she left it was also in her Pterodaustro because the fastest and most direct way to get to her little camping site was to fly there directly.

As always true flight was an absolute thrill and it was almost with disappointed that Amber arrived at her intended location and landed in the middle of the clearing. She had a whole three days to herself, completely isolated from any human contact or civilization and she intended to make the most of it. Not only would it be a wonderful opportunity to relax, but she also intended to practice some of her less well used forms, including her still relatively new gliding lizard and her watery Plesiosaurus in a nearby lake. For now, however, after the long flight over, she was hungry and that meant it was time to hunt and then probably sleep afterwards.

It didn't take long for Amber to regain human form and then transition into her most well used Deinonychus form. In that form, by far her favourite, she didn't feel any of the usual vulnerability she felt in human form. While not large by dinosaur standards, in the area she was presently in she didn't think there was anything around large enough to be considered a natural predator or real threat to her. Well, perhaps a bear if one should live this close to the city, but why would a bear want to take on something like a raptor anyway? Although now that she really considered it, perhaps it was time for her to find a larger raptor form, one that would truly trump a bear. As soon a she returned to civilization, she vowed, she would do the research and find where she could acquire herself just such a form. It was important to have a form for every potential eventuality.

Once fully shifted, Amber stretched and began running, making almost no noise as she did so. This was one form she had complete control of and had been using and mastering since the beginning. Now it was time to find herself some prey, perhaps a large deer if she was lucky.

Vicente de la Sangre sighed as he rode his motorcycle out of the city limits and headed for some sort of wilderness. Ever since he came to the city, his hands had been doused in blood. It was his profession, so it was bound to happen, but at the same time, he needed to have a moment to reconnect with the spirit that dwelled inside him. Vicente knew that he was far from having a conscience, but that did not mean that the soul did not need to be cleansed of the all the blood it becomes covered in. He was a killer for hire, after all, and even he must have some sort of spirituality.

Riding through the highway, late in the night, Vicente simply stared at the road ahead. His father’s old teaching coming back to him as he attempted to ready himself for the night. The cleansing ritual takes days to perform and he had to be close to the point of starvation by now. Vicente had eaten nothing, drank nothing, and now he was on his long journey. The events of the night would cleanse his spirit and ready him for another ocean of blood he was bound to bathe in.

Another hour passed before Vicente finally had found a good place to stop and trek out into the wilderness. The song of the trees, the animals of the forest, all of them rang in his ears as he walked. His heavy boots crunched the dead vegetation on the dirt, while his hands were shoved into the pockets of his jeans. Wearing only a vest, the warm, night air make his bare chest and arms glisten with sweat under the moonlight. It was another hour before he found himself deep enough in the woods to find a clearing.

He pulled his hair back into a ponytail and Vicente sighed as he unhitched his duffle bag from his shoulder and let it fall into a heap on the ground. He then knelt down and began to set up what he needed to perform this cleansing.

His father’s old “songs” still in his head, the old assassin muttered them as he set up items he would need around him. A feathered stick, ritualized dagger, small woodcut bowl with some odd looking combination of herbs and seeds inside. It was only when he was done setting up and had started his campfire and Vicente settled down, crossed his legs and took a deep breath. Hands clenched, Vicente sang in an old, dead language to himself as his body struggled to fight off the signs of hunger and thirst. Reaching over to the bowl, he began to grind the items inside with a stone while he still sang, the firelight roaring before him. When he was down, he carefully set the stone down, held the bowl up to his lips and tilted the contents into his mouth.

Seconds passed…the a minute…then just as the blackness of time began to close ahead of him the universe opened its eye and revealed to him the passage of all things great and small through the needle eye of the cosmos…

There was a gasp. Vicente opened his eyes wide, pupils dilated as his brain flood with information, sensations and a multitude of foreseeable futures! Hands shaking a little Vicente reached over and blindly grabbed the ritualized knife and held it against the roaring fire demon that cackled and laughed from the pit before him. But Vicente did not allow himself to fall too far. He held on, grasping to the thread of reality that anchored him. He needed to cleanse his soul, he needed to wait for the appearance of the spirits that agonized his bloodied soul. Once that creature was dead…he would be free again…

There was such peace in the quiet of the woods that Amber felt a sense of belonging that she didn't feel anywhere else, including the welcoming halls of Sanctuary. She may have been something long extinct for millions of years, but in those first moments away from the chaos of human civilization, she realized just how little that really mattered. There was something at the core of who she was that wasn't human or even mutant, it was something natural, wild and primal. In her human body she could masquerade as something civilized, not so different than all the mutants around her, but sometimes she needed to let her more primitive nature out. She was both mutant and prehistoric animal, both an intellectual and a hunter. It was a balance she was only just beginning to realize that she had to try and strike, to deny neither part of her true nature. Perhaps if she could achieve that balance she might truly learn to be happy and learn to accept herself for who and what she was.

Amber wondered, ideally, if Calley felt the same way. He was the only other true shifter that she knew, although she still thought he was more than a bit of an ass. There was the mutant who had imitated her present form, of course, but he was a mere imitator, not a true animal at heart. If only her fellow shifter were more approachable, more willing to actually talk civilly, she might be able to try to better understand her own nature. Then again, perhaps his experiences were nothing like her own and trying to compare them would end up doing more harm than good. Perhaps what she most needed to do was simply travel her own road and learn what she could about her own inner nature in the process. She was trying, truly she was, but it wasn't always easy.

It was amazing the sounds one heard when away from the auditory congestion of the city. There were no cars or plains or construction workers to drown out the noises of the myriad of living things around her. Her acute raptor ears, better than her weak human ones, picked out clearly the sounds of crickets, tree frogs, birds and any number of other creatures who lived naturally and peacefully in the woods. Well, as peacefully as nature ever allowed something to be. After all, nature was all about the strong surviving, the strong eating the weak, prey freeing from predator. And at that moment, Amber was most certainly the predator.

Amber silently stalked the woods, listening and smelling for appropriate prey. She didn't immediately find what she was looking for, something large enough to fulfill her appetite but she wasn't too worried. If she had too, there were rabbit and raccoons around and, while they wouldn't make a very big meal, they would still suffice.

After some time, Amber finally picked up signs of larger prey in the form of a deer trail. She began to follow it, doing her best to keep both silent and alert. Turning a corner, she stopped, startled by a human pretense, something she didn't particularly expect to see. It wasn't merely the fact that he was a human in the wild land, however, it was the sheer oddness of the man. He held a long knife and there was something about the way he moved that just didn't seem quite right. Not paying nearly enough attention to remaining silent, Amber accidentally stepped upon a dry branch upon the ground, resulting in an audible crack noise.

The eye of the spirits has opened, revealing to me the queen goddess that must be decapitated in order to allow the elixir of life to seep down into the waiting mouth of the screaming babes clawing to climb over the masses! They scream and cry in their happy tears, waiting for the glare of the Mother Goddess to open to them the pathway of the Feather Serpent that shall swallow them whole and allow them all passage back into the mothering womb of Father Stone and bathe in the bloodied crystal waters of the sky…

SNAP[/b]

A gasp and Vicente opened his eyes wide, waking up from his stupor. His train of thought was still foggy but the sensations were still there: that overlying sense of his connection with the world around him, his want to skin felt on fire, his eyes were hyperfocused, closing in on anything and everything that came within his line of sight, in the short the man looked as if he was going to pass out. His chest inhaled and exhaled rapidly as his body seemed to be caught on hyperdrive, trying to process the flood of information he was getting. But it was nothing for Vicente to fear, he had done this before.

Instead…he knew this to be the gateway to the spirit world. The pathway to where he must go to cleanse his stained spirit from the blood of all his victims.

A glance left and the trees sang, a look right and the air painted him portraits of blues and blacks. It was truly a magnificent place, but it could also be dangerous. The experienced assassin knew this from his trials before. Knife in hand, the man stood up, feeling both as a giant and yet as small as an ant. He was connected to everything! But, that snap, that sound that echoed throughout his thoughts like a gunshot in a bank vault, kept replaying over and over in his head. He sought secrets messages that could be inlayed with the sound, maybe even a hidden or forgotten language! But…as he turned…he spied some else…

“The heart of man is the beast. The beast is the essence of man without civilization…” he said out loud as he focused his eyes on the intruder. “Man can never fully conquer the primitive within him. Only by balancing, by allowing himself to be the animal he needs to be will he achieve the everlasting peace…”

In his rambling, rabid state, the man glared into the shadows, unable to see which of the spirits was watching him. But he knew how to make them known…he too had the gift. A snarl and growl and Vicente gasped in pain as the bones of his skull began to reshape themselves. Nearly a minute later his once human head has changed to that of soft tan fur with a messy, wild golden main. His feral eyes pierced the shadows of the spirit world and glared at the figure that stood there, watching him…

“Horned…serpent…” he whispered in a low growl. He knew the being could not be trusted but if that is who the spirits sent…he should listen…at least before he slayed it. “What…message do you bring me?”