Her coming was foretold by an evil star. It fell from the heavens through the House of the Devourer. Even the mountains cried out in pain when her black cradle touched the soil of the Tanirthaun district.

There resided a couple of childless souls, bound in love for each other, yet without proof of their love. The Goddess Veraishal was deaf to their pleas, and in desperation, they turned to Verkossa, and promised the Goddess of Cunning the devotion of their children, should She elect to answer their prayers.

Verkossa lived up to her name, and set the path of the couple up to the mountains that were their home. She set them on the path to the crib of Keraniba.

The found the infant monster on the mountain-side, inside a crib cracked open like a black egg. They cared not that the child was made of strange matter, nor for the bad omens surrounding her arrival. All that mattered, in their lonely existance, was that it was a child.

They named her 'Wonderous' and took her into there home, and they made for her a vase of exquisite design for her to lie in instead of a bed.

And the townspeople felt fear. They saw the signs of portent and evil in the sky. They found the black shell of the child's crib. They saw the infant, made of strange matter, draw herself into the parody of a child's form.

And they saw that the eyes of the child were an unnatural blue, and they felt fear. And they saw that the eyes of her parents had turned to hatred for their own people, and they shunned the family.

Soon after Wonderous enslaved her parents, there was a rash of strange deaths. People and cattle alike were found, bloodless and dead in their own tracks. It was as if Death itself had come down from the skies to claim them.

And the lips of Wonderous were red. And the eyes of Wonderous were ringed in the colour of Jzaral blood. And the people grew afraid.

"We must be rid of this stealer of life," they said.

"But how do we kill that which has no life of its own?" they asked. "This creature. This - Keraniba; cannot be stopped by any weapon known to us."

"She has taken lives when they are alone," reasoned another. "If we band together, then she will be unable to feed."

And they kept together, in day and night. And the family of Wonderous grew distant and dead to their people. And the eyes of Wonderous grew hungry, and she was seen staring into windows with her unblinking, unnatural eyes.

"She stays because her parents stay," they reasoned. "If we drive them off, then she will go, too."

And the people banded together and drove the family of the Keraniba into the mountains, and they took the parents of the Keraniba away from the demon child. There, her parents begged to have their life ended, rather than return to the enslavement that Keraniba had wrought.

And Wonderous was known as Wonderous no more. She was Keraniba to one and all. The people did swift mercy to the family of Keraniba, and there was a terrible howl from the mountains.

"I curse you," Keraniba howled as the storm gathered. "I curse your river and your cattle. I curse your mothers and their children. I curse your Goddess and *all* who dare worship her while I live!" And the lightning coursed down from the sky, as Veraishal had heard her.

The Goddess of Light struck Keraniba mute, but that didn't stop her curse from coming to pass.

The river turned foul and the cattle died. And the fields and the lands turned barren. And no rain fell upon the mountains until the fetid river ran dry. The mothers of Tanirthaun had many strange births. There were malformed and stillborn. There were children born of the same womb,

the same pregnancy, but of distanced birthdays. There were children born with Keraniba's unnatural blue eyes.

And the people were afraid, for these cursed ones crept away in the dark, and whispered amongst themselves, and spoke of Keraniba. Great mischief arose amongst this cursed generation. No house was safe from them, until the people discovered Keraniba's weakness.

One cursed child had fallen dead on the spot when it had eaten of the humble Shanirua plant. This child had been born in the image of Keraniba, and the people reasoned that the plant, a blessing from Veraishal, was poison to the devil-child.

And they grew the Shanirua, in any soil that would support it, and the cursed ones became humble, and there was a great cry from the mountains.

Keraniba fled Tanirthaun, but her mischief would only grow.

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