Tey Ka Metanah is the youngest son of the Master Lord of the Twelve Clans of the Rueschelaan. He has the Bane. If he is discovered with the disease his family will hunt him down and murder him. There is no cure and no one he can tell until meeting Lean Tra, a Meecan female from the Barrenlands. Using the ancient medicine of her people, can she heal him? Tey Ka hopes so, because if she cannot, he will have to hide not only the Bane, but his love for Lean Tra as well, for neither are acceptable to Clan Metanah - the one necessitating his death and the other, Lean Tra's, by Tey Ka's own father's hand. As Lord of the Talacticans, Tey Ka's father, Het Ah, is responsible for the health and purity of the Clans. As Talactica's primary descendants of the Great Eagles and the Blood Bats, the Talacticans have ruled over the Rueschelaan for centuries. From the edge of the Cliffs of Origin and the jungle deeps of the Rueschelaan, to the far reaches of the Caverns of the Witches and the Barrenlands, Tey Ka's disease teaches him not only about pain but about endurance, and what it takes to fight a system that has stood for generations, a system that demands the impossible from him - the absence of an incurable disease or the female he loves... Unless he can find another way to live or another way of being. Unless he can find a way to be something...Other.