الامبراطوري الصيد بالصقور
translated by Матвей Иванович Петров

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My name---if you care---used to be either 'Ahmad' or 'Hana'. I was born---depending on how the story goes---in either Akka or Sur. When I was young---eight or twelve---I was taken from my home to Edirne and there raised as a student of the arts, primarily calligraphy, and a student of the sciences, predominantly astronomy.

I was---using the terminology of Linnaeus, who classified all the sapient species known to the old world---an Aquila nipalensis et Panthera leo leo, a Steppe Eagle and Atlas lion gryphon. It was uncommon for anyone of my family---or of my kind, for that matter---to be born in the wintering lands around Akka, but the political realities of my family's Muslim faith had prevented us from returning to the Crimea since the fall of the Khanate.

In the same system, I was also a Falco peregrinus et Vulpes zerda, a peregrifox. In this story, my family had always lived around Sur, even back to the time of Alexander of Macedon.

Naturally these double stories confuse you. I shall endeavour to explain myself more clearly, but please allow me to continue. I was fortunate to distinguish myself, and was selected by the Ottoman Sultan to form part of a group that would be dispatched to the North, to the newly unified Schwartzwaldklan Empire.

I was quite excited, the détente that the newly formed empire was pursuing with our own offered many opportunities. The old enmities between us and the eastern Tsar and western Kaiser were being washed away as the new Tsar and Kaiser, one person, had pursued a policy of peace with the Ottoman Sultan.

The power of the Roman Pontiff---an ancient enemy---was broken, and the Anglo-Franconian Empire of the Bournover family was more concerned with it's overseas empire than with local affairs, granting a great opportunity to peacefully pursue trade.

However, I was far less excited about the prospect of being sent to the seat of power in Ko¨nigsberg, as the Prussian winters were, I was told, quite cold. Few gryphons lived that north, though I figured that it was my duty to at least brave the cold as much as I could. It would not do to fail to represent the Sultan to the Imperial court, especially with the newly crowned eastern emperor being a Phalacrocorax carbo et Delphinus capensis---a gryphphin---himself.

And so it was, on the 13th day of Rajab in the year 1200 (12 July 1786), that I arrived in Ko¨nigsberg and first attended the imperial court. The Emperor greeted our party and informed us that he welcomed us to the Empire. For a few years all seemed to be going well, and I remember the days I spent speaking with the Emperor and the ministers very fondly.

The Emperor was a gryph of many talents, and I found myself drawn to one in particular. This was where I first met myself, as both Ahmed and Hana were drawn to the same entertainment: Falconry.

It was an exquisite pleasure to ride with the Emperor and his trusted companions on Falconry hunts, and it was not long before we had grown accustomed to spending the summer months leisurely hunting in the Transylvanian Alps about Klausenberg, the Ukrainian Steppes about Lemberg, or the Polish-Lithuanian marshes about Pinsk. Sadly, it was a pleasure that was not to last.

Just a couple of years later, on the 20th of Shawwal in 1203 (14 July 1789), a Revolution began which deposed the Bournover Emperor in Paris. The crown-prince immediately assumed the throne in London, but by the time he had ensured the revolution would not spread to Britain from the mainland, the Anglo-Franconian Empire had been split in twain. The new French Republic was an aggressive state, and the Revolutionary wars in Europe had begun.

Still, this would have had little effect upon me, for the French Republic was no Friend of either the Emperor or the Sultan, but as the fortunes of war seemed to turn in France's favour---especially in the favour of their cunning general Napoleon Bonaparte---so to did the tide of international opinion. When the Sultan allied with France on the 9th of Rajab in 1219 (14 October 1804), I became an enemy citizen in a foreign land, and was immediately taken prisoner.

It was a shock to move from the comfort of 'Guest of the Emperor' to the meagre accommodations of 'Prisoner'. It was a further shock to learn that at the Battle of Austerlitz, the army of the Schwartzwaldklan was defeated, forcing a bitter peace that left the court in Ko¨nigsberg furious at foreigners.

Knowing this, I hope you can understand why I said 'yes' unconditionally when my old friend, the Emperor's falconer, came and offered me a chance to return to the Imperial court.

Placed in chains and blinded by an execution hood, I was concerned as I was led out and placed in a carriage. It seemed likely, to me, that I was being brought to the court to be executed as a vent for the emperor's anger. Thus, I was relived when I was unblinded to find myself standing in a field at the Imperial Magister's University.

The Imperial Falconer led me to the main building, into the Archmagister's chambers, where I was stripped and then bound, sanding naked, in the centre of the room. Nervously, I looked over myself and the room around me. There was only the Imperial Falconer, the Archmagister, and the Emperor, all of whom were looking me over.

Wordlessly, the emperor approached and forced an indignity upon me. Despite my clear shame, he reached down and forced his hand into my folds. I let out a soft squawk and moved to stop this, but it did not matter as he withdrew his fingers and wiped them on my chest. He then turned to me and gripped my sack squeezing it softly before petting me on the chest. Then the Emperor turned to the Archmagister and said only three words. "Yes, these two."

The Archmagister said something I could not understand, and then my body was on fire. Engulfed in white-hot flame, I fell to my knees and then over into myself. Then, instead of feeling, as I expected, a separate body against mine, I felt my body falling into another.

The sensation was very unusual. Slowly, the two bodies pulled together, I could feel my wings, chest, legs, and the remainder of me mixing. Strange sensations occurred as the combined forms of Ahmed and Hana blended and solidified into one form. When the fire was gone, I looked over myself. An eagle and a peregrine's 

head shared my shoulders, and I looked into my eyes and felt my body slowly. My legs had the thin fur of a fennec but the powerful build of a lion. My crotch contained a leonine sheath hanging over a deep, female fennec's slit. My belly was taut and lean like a fennec's, and my chest was covered in strangely mottled feathers. My wing muscles were powerful and aquiline, as were my talons, but they had the length and build of a peregrine.

As the memories of the two lives that had led up to my joining began to flow, mix, and become inseparable, I lost sight as new hoods, oversized falconry hoods, were pulled over my heads. I heard the falconer speaking as unconsciousness came, "You're right, shi looks just like the imperial emblem your majesty. Shall I call hir Ahmana?"