The youngest daughter of the Tar’Kha-ti clan — Ta-ri’Za — and the suicide chimera, Chayna. “Deathrunner” is a classification for chimeras who can transmit their brain data through a portable device thanks to their innate flexible consciousness. They are sent into places where no one else would be able to survive or return from. After death, their consciousness is transferred into a prepared copy. The advantages are obvious: they are extremely useful for gathering information, and they do not fear dying on a mission while saving their comrades. The downside is that they remember every death after resurrection. Later, their memories are slightly corrected, with the most triggering points erased so the brain does not break completely. But it is only a semi-transparent mask. They both remember and do not remember at the same time. Ta-ri’Za is the youngest daughter of Matriarch Dur’Bak-shisa of Clan Tar’Kha-ti. She is also the most underestimated one. Dull and muted compared to her more colorful sisters, she was written off simply because she was the youngest. Her relationship with her five sisters is not bad. She even prefers going on hunts and missions with some of them on a regular basis. But the internal struggle continues constantly, regardless of friendship. Ta-ri’Za — or simply Tari, as Chayna will later call her — keeps reflecting on the problem of being the youngest caste in her own head. She trains excessively and constantly tries to become better, if not in battle, then in other things. That is how she mastered blacksmithing and leatherworking, always improving her craft and adding more details to her work, such as embroidery or fine laser engraving. Living with a constant desire to surpass her sisters, even when it borders on death, she meets Chayna — a girl known in her world as “Born to Die,” who has already died and proven her worth 221 times by the moment they meet. Naturally, Tari condemns it. She refuses to accept it and snarls at Chayna, asking why she keeps doing this when she already has the right to retire after fulfilling her quota. Chayna answers: “Because I’ve never lived any other way. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do in a place where I don’t have to die.” After that, something clicks in Tari’s mind. As if the meaning of Chayna’s words finally grounds her own desperate need to fight for status within the clan and turns her gaze toward something new, unfamiliar, wrong — but alive. The desire to change someone else’s life.
