The First Age

The man across from her, Étienne, tipped a wine flute to his lips. He was a pretty one, Grym thought while the bubbles fizzed at his mouth. Her own flute was untouched. For now.  She plucked the bottle from the ice-bucket, emptying the remainder into her date’s glass. He tried to wave away the refill, but Grym winked and insisted. He didn’t resist too hard.

“So, you work as a – I’m sorry, what did you say it was called again?”

Grym tilted her chin, “A bone-black technician,” she repeated. He nodded, assimilating the words silently on his pretty mouth.

“You make black powders?” he asked like he was still trying to grasp the idea. Grym nodded.

“We grind the burned up remains of old bones. I don’t ask where the bones come from,” she smiled, toying with the knife alongside a half-eaten steak. Her date admitted before they ordered that he was a vegan, which Grym thought was adorable as she ordered her medium-rare T-bone.

Just like how she thought it was adorable when he squirmed at the idea that her job comprised of handling burned animal carcass. Well, he assumed they were always from animals; admittedly, most were. Grym wasn’t lying when she said she didn’t know where they came from, but the job was a handy place to dump remains. Couldn’t let just anyone come across the skeleton of a creature that shouldn’t exist.

He changed the subject, kinda.
“What did you want to be when you grew up?” He asked.  

Grym answered as she popped a fry between her teeth. “A priest.”

He almost sputtered.

“Like a real priest?”

“Clearly I went another way. It’s probably for the best. I’m not exactly pious.” She grabbed the necklace buried in her cleavage. She kissed the silver crucifix, gory spikes driven through red paint at the ends, winked, and dropped it back to place. She wore a black v-neck, leather pants, and a black motorcycle jacket complete with spikes on the shoulders.

Étienne followed up. “Why did you want to be a priest?”

Grym tipped a shoulder, shrugging. “Probably because I was raised by them.” She gulped the last fry and finally snagged the champagne from the table, dumping it back in one swallow.

She let the intrigue hang on the air like stagnant smoke. Shit, she could use one right then, but being in polite society and everything, she refrained. Étienne’s curiosity was writ on his face, carved into the shallow edges of his jaw. The way his hair curled around his temples, well, Grym was fine with making him squirm a few more seconds. Finally, she elaborated a little.
“Orphanage, actually. Sad story and traumatized childhood. The Church loved me. The Sisters were bitches. Who can blame them, though? The priests were badass.” She made a symbol of the cross across her chest only to thrust a playful right hook off the end motion.  Étienne was more confused than ever, but Grym closed up shop. She was done talking.

She got up, dropped payment, and leaned, palms down upon the table. “You coming or not?” She cocked her head toward the door with a grin.

Étienne exclaimed sudden understanding before quickly gathering his things and following her.

Later, she shoved the sleeping angel from her shoulder and slithered from the bed. She left no note. No number. There would be no next-day calls to discuss simpering feelings. The young man would barely remember her after what she slipped into his drinks. The off-market drug didn’t affect performance, only short-term memory. Exactly as she preferred. A clean break.




She climbed from the car, knuckling the small of her back from having sat in it the last twelve hours. Grym rolled her neck around, stretched, and finally surveyed her surroundings. She was in a parking lot illuminated by a single working streetlamp on the opposite side. Grass broke through the crackled asphalt. An old movie theatre, abandoned years before, loomed dark nearby. Graffiti decorated the exterior. What was previously boarded up windows were mostly stripped away while glass littered the ground beneath.

Finding the scene calm, she squat nearby to take a piss and go through her usual pre-battle routine. A dragon-silk vest was shrugged on. Developed by the military in the 20’s, this was state of the art ten years before and the vest saved her skin (literally) a few times. She was rather attached to the kit. On top, a belt was looped around her shoulders, magazines in place for easy retrieval. Finally, her favorite weapon, a double-curved battle axe was holstered to her back.

Then she waited. And waited. She checked messages. Fired off a few unpleasant ones about driving all day as a favor only to sit and fucking wait for the action. Finally, a ping returned.

’Help’

Grym blinked. And another followed immediately. 'Inside'.

Her focus snapped to the theatre, heart immediately racing. Aamir? Fuck!

She ran hard, 9mm and flashlight coming to hand as she jumped through a hole in the building. Her heart pound in her chest even as she moved to only the sound of glass crunching underfoot. Aamir asked for her help to neutralize whatever creature inhabited the abandoned building, calling two days ago and asking to meet her tonight. They had to take it out together after Aamir barely got away. He described the strange defenses that swarmed his mind, and Grym agreed that it sounded like Jann. Aamir fought them before in north Africa, and he agreed that was the most likely monster. At the time, Grym didn’t like the sound in his voice, which was why she bothered to drive all day. Why did he go in alone? Fuck fuck fuck! She had to find him.

The central hallway split into wings in the belly of the building. Dark doors hung on broken hinges, portals to abyss-like movie screens that nobody watched anymore. The place stank of piss and shit, mold and mildew woven into the old carpeting. No wonder even the bums didn’t come in here anymore. Especially if the place was haunted by Jann.

Unable to find Aamir, she pulled her wallet, but when the message shot off, she heard the resounding ping from his and ran toward the sound.  She found him in a pool of his own blood, body mangled, wallet limp in his hand. As she rolled him over, carefully watching their surroundings, she gasped when she found his eyes bulging. His dark mouth formed its final words: ”Not Jann.”

A chill ran down her spine as he died. If not Jann? What?

Suddenly, a wind tunneled down the hall. She screamed, but leapt into the outcropping of a theatre bay, hugging the wall and looking carefully around the corner. The wind died as quick as it rose. Pistol aimed, Grym checked the corner, but found nothing. She darkened the flashlight, hoping that whatever was here was not the kind of thing that could see in the dark, let her eyes adjust a second, then she hurled herself into the aisle and ran hard toward the other end.

A pulse of light strobed overhead, and a black shadow ran down the hall. Grym chased, waiting to shoot until she had a good angle. Panting. Grunts. Footfalls. With a battle cry, she tackled the shape, heedless of what her arms would enclose. The body writhed. An elbow clocked her nose. Then a swarm overtook her mind. A piercing howl like a wind spiraled inside her ears. She thrust her hands over her head, scrambling away. The flashlight fell aside, rolling into an arc, illuminating only the wall.

The creature came to stand over her, and for a moment, all Grym saw were flashing teeth and wild eyes. She aimed the pistol and fired straight up. The force threw the body backward and the siren wail in her head ceased.

She scrambled to her feet, grabbing the flashlight and gun to finish off the creature.

What she found scared the shit out of her more than any Jann, Rakshasha, or Bannik. It was a just a boy.




The nightscape of the city industrial zone sped past. Grym drove with her elbow hanging out the window and air whipping her hair in and out of her eyes. After rolling by a series of damaged streetlights that were never replaced, she whipped the car, a black and white Holden Monero muscle car, across train tracks. The warehouse was a former bone-black processing plant. The company went out of business twenty years previously, but the building was so disgusting, simply driving in a two-block radius kicked up enough bone-black to make a man cough. Grym plowed heedless of the concern, having made some modifications on the engines sourced from old filters and hoses from inside the plant.

The car rumbled into a delivery bay. Once the hulking door rolled shut, the fluorescent lights powered up in randomly working order. A thud from inside the trunk gave her pause as she climbed out, only to shrug and leave it behind.  

Grym headed toward a work bench, dumping the battle-axe on the surface. The room was stocked with enough ballistic firepower to kit a small civil war. Her knives followed. A shotgun and pair of rifles waited in the back seat of the car. She’d clean them all later, which reminded her to pick up more gun oil next time she was out. With a groan, she unbuckled empty magazine holsters and pulled her shirt up and over her head. Her abs were slicked with sweat and dried blood, but nothing penetrated too deep, she was relieved.

It wasn’t long before that she would have had a second pair of hands to help. It was just her now, so she rummaged through a portable fridge and dug out two vials. Not much was clean in here, so she opened the syringe with her teeth and laid out on a couch to do the stitching.

As she snipped the remaining thread from the eighteenth knot, another bang thudded from inside the trunk. She sat up just long enough to glance at the car before passing out.




Grym was taken to a Catholic orphanage after her parents died. She was too young to understand the circumstances of their death but does remember the feeling of having parents. She was treated well by orphanage, as well as one can expect. No undue trauma was endured there.

Her parents were Catholic Atharim working mid- and eastern Europe. Long before bringing her into the world, they agreed that should any child be left behind by their untimely demise, their Atharim priest and mentor would raise her. Given that he was unable to adopt, it was the orphanage of his polish parish that would be responsible for the child. To continue the lineage of her family, she was raised Atharim. The affection she felt for the priest that taught her the knowledge of the Atharim is the reason she wanted to follow in his footsteps as a child. Obviously, that was impossible, and she was paired with Atharim trainers instead.

After her partner died, she moved to Moscow and worked alone for several years until Aamir called. She drove all the way from Moscow to back up his hunt, only to find that what he hunted was something she’d never encountered before. Talk of the return of the gods spread like wildfire through the Atharim. These monsters were the worst of all of them because they walked free and unidentified. Grym took no pleasure in the kills, but she was ruthlessly persistent. Given the newfound public danger of identifying as an Atharim, she keeps her opinions to herself, even careful about what she says around other Atharim concerning the gods. For self-protection, she had her ouroboros tattoo recovered.

She works and operates out of an abandoned bone-black warehouse in one of the industrial complexes of Moscow. Most people avoid the place due to the pervasive black powder that clings to everything. In addition, she remains because of the access to an incinerator and other machinery that comes in handy.

She drives an engine-converted 1970’s Holden Monero muscle car.




Grym is tall at 5’10”. She is muscular and fit. She keeps her hair tactically short and has never worn makeup a day in her life. She wears dark colors, primarily black since it covers up the blood stains. She tends to attract attention to herself when she walks into a room, although she will often stand off to the side and watch until the right moment. She has a variety of poorly healed scars from cuts and puncture wounds.  




The thread of Grym’s life always puts her in a place of servitude to people in power while not desiring to rule herself. She is very loyal. She clings to people that she can connect with, which are few and far between. These people are rare to find.  She will fight to the death for that person, and loses a little more of herself after they are gone. In all lives, she seeks to prove herself, and when found to be wanting, pushes away others to avoid the pain of rejection. She is always surrounded by war in one form or another, and she is naturally gifted with close-combat.


1st Age – Tanis Peregrym, she is an Atharim hunter based in the greater Moscow region.

2nd Age – Name unknown, late in the Age, she was a champion of gladiatorial games, a dueling blood sport that pit combatants against one another to the point of defeat before a crowd. Later, during the war, she declared her allegiance to an Aes Sedai patron and fought in his armies, unaware or uncaring of the influence of the Shadow.

3rd Age – Name unknown, she was a Maiden of the Spear of the Aiel .

4th Age – Name unknown, Deathwatch Guard who served the Emperor and Empress of Seanchan as a member of their personal guard.

5th Age – Bānu Gošab, Persian mythology. A heroine knight who frequently killed or captured suitors who did not meet her standards.

6th Age – Vishpala, a warrior of Hindu pantheon who who lost her leg in battle, was given a ‘leg of iron’, and returned to fight.

7th Age - Khawla bint Al-Azwar, legendary Muslim warrior.

Personal arsenal, base of operations, and past lives are described here.