The Last Dragon Priestess

My Name

I was born Sahrek. My mother had intended it to mean, "She is the Spirit".

My brother Ruvaak was the stoic one, the one who always had his nose in his books, his sword arm ready. I was the one who rallied the children, who slipped out the monastery, who drove my mother wild.

My father, although he donned a stern face for mother's scoldings, always gave me a wink. When mother wasn't in earshot, he would ask what mischief I'd caused on my escapes. I'd always felt so special telling him those tales, about how I snagged a sweet roll from the baker, spied a spriggan by Lake Honrich, even walked among the draugr in the crypts. He had that glimmer in his eyes, a glimmer that knew all my childish forays like the back of his own hand. He was proud of me. My brother may have been mother's son, but I was father's daughter.

"She is not the Spirit," I remember my father laugh, "No, she is the Phantom. Here and there and everywhere, she can walk through walls and vanish in shadows. My child upends this monastery inside out, and has become a ghost to the people of the Rift. A Ghost that steals sweets and trinkets, that giggles and flees with the sunrise. The Phantom Girl."

Perhaps my mother didn't realize the literal meaning of my name, while my father had. But it mattered not. It was a childish name I would lose at the dawn of my priesthood. Or so I thought.