Nabbed by the Nara

We will take back what is ours.

The Nara swooped down and made to grab the man. Just as their talons readied themselves to clamp down on the shoulders, the man turned around, raising his left arm over his eyes. The ornate band around his arm shone brightly and the psychic Hoard dispersed.

"You should know better than to sneak up while talking. I could hear you a mile away."

Undaunted, the Hoard reformed its mass:

Tricks of light and sound,
your scent they masked is found,

No longer are we blind,
Your secrets we will find.

The man darted into an alley, weaving his way towards the Market Center, where he hoped that the throngs of merchants and shoppers would make it impossible for the Nara to track him.

"Achyanto!"

It was his daughter's voice, raspy and hoarse from a heavy night's drinking.

Not now, he thought. Still he turned his head upward toward the girl leaning out of the second story building.

His eyes widened as they took in her new form. Her hair was dark and gold chains swung from her neck, all bearing the mark of the Nara Priesthood.

She called him again and waved him to come to her. He ran.

But the time it cost him let the Hoard catch up with him. He was minutes away from the Market Center and he had run into a dead end. Quickly he ripped the band from his arm and cast it aside.

I should have stayed home, he thought as the Hoard descended from the sky.

The talons gripped him. He could feel thousands of them digging through his flesh, absorbing his bodily and mental functions.

The onslaught came in waves, and gradually, the invasion pummeled his spirit from his body.

Beside him, floated his daughter's spirit, Cata.

"I've been waiting forever", she greeted him, in the bodiless sort of way that spirits did. "What took you so long?"

"Are you kidding?" he snapped back. And then he realized that she was indeed attempting to joke.

There was no one else beside them. Possibly Achy and Cata were the only ones the Nara captured. That thought was oddly comforting despite the growing sense of loneliness.

"You won't get away with this!" he shouted at the Nara. "It's one thing to take my body but you can't keep it because we're not dead and we're not moving on."