In The City, Take 1

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    <P>Tasha slipped from shadow to shadow along the rooftops, unseen and unheard. Granted, it wasn't hard to avoid eyes and ears captivated by a monster raging against the city, but Tasha wasn't taking any chances. The next building was taller, a proper skyscraper, and she thickened behind the humming warm block of an air conditioning vent to plot a path between darkened windows. She looked almost human in her thick form, her height disguised by crouching a bit, and her stray shadows shaped into the semblance of a cloak.</P>
    <P>"It walks among you, but it is not one of you! You alone know your kind well enough to tell…" The monster paused its rant to fill one floor of a skyscraper with fiery breath, presumably having seen someone attempt a last-minute escape. Flames burst from the floor's windows two by two until the far side all went at once, likely rendering that attempt futile. "…but if you refuse to cooperate, I can kill things near it that look like you until it burns!"</P>
    <P>Tasha thinned and slipped into the shadows of the taller building. Rising, and darting this way and that, and always rising, she made it through the shadowed windows to the top, pouring over the concrete wall and pooling with the other shadows on the high roof.</P>
    <P>The night had a dusting of stars and a silvery half-moon presiding over it, but the city lights and the fires the monster had lit stood out most. The monster's golden head rose for a moment on a sinuous neck, eyes the size of a human's head casting their piercing gazes through multiple layers of reality, soaking up light and waste magic and who knows what else. It swept its gaze over the rooftop Tasha was on, but continued right past, then darted down. A crash of vast claws destroying plaster walls, a rush of flame, and another human failed to hide in a building with few windows. "This death is needless! Help me find the predator among you, and I'll leave you in peace!"</P>
    <P>Tasha thickened, and narrowed her eyes. She'd have to be noticed for this to work, and she never liked that. She hopped up atop the concrete wall, her shadows spilling loosely down the top few stories of the skyscraper until she collected them again into the semblance of a cloak.</P>
    <P>Promptly that head darted over, locking two hunter's eyes onto her, followed by the monster's neck and then its body. An ophidian dragon, old enough that it likely had a place in the underpinnings of reality, leaning in less than a story from her. "You… You are clearly not human, but neither does a spark burn within you." It bowed slightly(well, about Tasha's height), never taking its unblinking eyes off her. "Call me Goldbrick. Who and what are you?"</P>
    <P>Tasha bowed, only half her height, but enough considering. "Call me Firewalker. I am a shadow of shadows, but that's neither here nor there. You seek a celestial predator of some kind, I gather?"</P>
    <P>"Indeed; a <I>forda</I> predator, red-gold of wing, its soul visible at ten fingers's distance." Goldbrick held both hands up, three stories apart.</P>
    <P>Tasha nodded sagely. "Dawntreader, then, the ruler of these humans."</P>
    <P>Goldbrick froze very, very still.</P>
    <P>"Sie rules from further "downtown", where the high buildings are," Tasha gestured to the section of the horizion that was punctuated by a cluster of skyscrapers, "although I suppose your aggressive search may've driven hir here. Irregarding whether or not you're willing to make war upon these humans, it seems I can't help in this situation." She held her left hand up in a four-fingered salute. "As the humans say, live long and prosper."</P>
    <P>Tasha didn't give Goldbrick time to reply; she thinned and slipped into the shadows of the rooftop, pouring in a vent and down into the dark airspaces inside the building, and beyond. In the midnight interstices between the walls she found a pipe leaking water and slipped through the crack, flowing through the watery darkness to the feed pipes below the building. In a matter of seconds she was blocks away.</P>
    <P>For a while yet, she kept fleeing the place where she was seen.</P>
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