Xarinath - Daughter of Irinax

Xarinath was an orphan of Iriksha, one of a dozen who slept beneath the same collapsed archway near the city's lower markets. She begged for scraps most of her childhood, and was beaten more than once by merchants who caught her fingers too close to their stalls. Few in the city spared her a second glance, and fewer still spared her any kindness. She remembers most of their faces still, the ones who spat on her, the ones who kicked her from their doorsteps, the ones who laughed when she fell. She was thirteen when Irinax first spoke to her. It came as a whisper in the dark of the archway, promising her that the city which had cast her aside would one day kneel. She followed the voice down into the tunnels beneath Iriksha, and there she was given to the priestesses who serve as the Daughters of the Spider God. The metamorphosis nearly killed her, as it kills most who attempt it. She spent three days screaming in the dark as her body reshaped itself to something Irinax found worthy, and when she finally rose from the ritual chamber, the priestesses who had once looked at her with pity now knelt. Xarinath has not forgotten a single face from her years as an urchin. She keeps them catalogued somewhere behind her eyes, and when Irinax calls for sacrifice, she does not choose at random. The merchant who once broke her fingers for stealing bread was the third she offered. The boy who laughed as she fell in the mud was the ninth. She works through the list slowly, in no particular hurry, for she has learned that Irinax rewards patience, and there is no pleasure in vengeance spent all at once.