Kricket of no name

Kricket was ten years old when she found herself on her own. Her mother had once told her she was touched by a demon and Kricket had always believed it. When Kricket's mother, a brothel worker with average earnings, sent Kricket on a trip with some religious neighbors down the street, Kricket didn't know that it was her mother's way of getting rid of her.   lPerhaps her mother wasn't a bad person but she had needs and Kricket interfered with her needs. She would bring a man home, hoping for a husband and a respectable life and then there would stand Kricket with her ginger hair and accusing green eyes asking a million questions, embarrassing her mother and sending any potential mates running in the opposite direction.   Kricket was a sorcerer. She didn't know she had magic until the day she accidentally burned the brothel partially down. She was just mad at the other kids. They had made fun of her so she had shaken her hands at them all, telling them they didn't know anything about anything! And as the accent of her last shouted word, a word that rang with pain, she felt something strange happen. Her hands felt an odd sensation of beauty and burning as suddenly two fireballs shot from her hands straight at the other children. The children had already moved but the brothel had nowhere to go. It took the brunt of the damage.   Kricket had looked at her hands as if they were alien but when the workers from the brothel poured out to see what had happened, she was the only one still standing there. The other children had fled. Her mother, wearing only a flimsy robe had grabbed Kricket by one of her braids and dragged her all the way home lecturing and yelling at her about how she had always ruined everything. Kricket had cried that night. She would never cry again.   When she was on her own at 10, she followed the cats. Cats always knew the best places to sleep when it was cold and knew how to find food from others' trash. Kricket learned to step from shadow to shadow like the cats did and was practically unseen by the denizens of the night.   In her years on her own, she had seen many strange things. She learned to take advantage of some of those strange things. Like the night the two men in the alleyway had suddenly torn each others clothing off. She had thought they were going to fight at first but then they did something strange to her ten year old eyes. They rolled around in the grass like lovers but making strange grunting sounds. Kricket saw her opportunity and took everything from the mens' pockets including a gold ring with the name "Katerine" engraved inside.   She learned how to tell when homeowners left their homes to vacation and made her way into their homes freely, taking what she wanted and needed to survive. She survived this way for three years and only had to kill twice. She didn't like to talk about that.   One night, someone outsneaked her. She was shocked. She was as quiet and dark as the shadows but someone had grabbed the back of her collar and insisted she go with him. She struggled to get away until he promised her he wasn't with the orphanage or a church. He was with an organization that could use people with her talents. It appealed to her small bit of vanity and she went with him.   At 13, she was a full fledged member of the black guild. She had her own special dagger and cloak and was prepared to do whatever she must for she had, discovered a family of sorts. Her family was the only family. All cutthroats and thieves, she was one of them now. But she was about to be elevated when her mentor took her to the capital city where she was given her first contract as an assassin.   All Kricket ever wanted was a family. And now, finally, she had one. She was a grown woman. She was 13. She would kill for them. She would steal for them. She would do whatever it took. They were family. Kroft, her mentor, had told her that many times. They were family. Kricket was determined she would never lose her family and so she did what she was told and quite successfully. That she had sorcery magic was a great bonus for her. It's why she moved up so high in the organization so quickly.   It never occurred to the powerful council of the black guild that Kricket, at 13, might figure things out on her own and make her own decisions. They knew she was theirs by enticing her with that all elusive thing known as 'family.'   Whether it was fate or destiny that intervened, Kricket would never know but on her way to fulfill her first contract as an assassin, her mentor was killed and everything changed. She was thrown by fate into a group with three other people she didn't like very much to begin with. They treated her like a child and she was no child.   Eventually, they came to understand she was no child but they didn't really know what she was. They caught her in several lies but ignored them. She traveled a land that was being torn apart by something greater than them or the black guild. Kricket knew that the world's fate was at stake, not merely her family.   She would learn something that made her question her belief in her family, a something to do with the very thing that was destroying all of the land. She was loyal to a fault until she felt threatened and used. And though she always thought she was a grown woman, she didn't truly grow up until she realized she had choices. She chose to save the world over her loyalty to her black guild family. In some fashion, people might have called her a hero but she wouldn't hear of it. She rejected the notion. For Kricket was a practical person. She knew she wasn't a hero. She knew that what she did to save the world would also save her.   Privately, she called herself an anti-hero.