Xue

In the barren graveyard, a woman crouches over a rotting corpse and feeds. Her name is Xue, and she lifts the same hungry look to the living and the dead alike.

She raises her head from the bodies with no malice in her eyes at all. Only hunger.

She carries a rake and swings it wildly, with no form to speak of, yet every sweep drives at flesh and keeps anyone from closing in.

As she swings, she summons several shadowy figures in her own image. They close in together, and it grows hard to tell which of them is really her.

Fleeing disaster last year, she nearly died of cold and hunger until a band of wandering heroes saved her, promising to keep her safe and teach her martial arts. Their promise ended in a clash with Maskwalkers outside the encampment; she can no longer remember who told her to hide, or who swore to come back.

When she went looking, she found only a few mutilated bodies with unrecognizable faces. She buried them one by one, gathered up what lay scattered around, and waited where she stood for the heroes to return. Her pack grew emptier by the day, and when hunger came again she dug into the soft earth, a voice in her head telling her that vegetable roots and sweet potatoes lay beneath the soil.