Book 01
Chapter 09
Themalsar, the Ruins

Chapter
Nine

Themalsar, the Ruins

 

Timeline:

The Serenity Home company has finally caught up with the last remaining three assassins. However, they are now confronted with a new dilemma; of the remaining three cutters, two have already been killed prior to their arrival by a mysterious person who has disappeared into thin air, and quite literally. Their only hope of ever finding the answers they seek is by catching the last of the culprits and he has run off to the only place no elf, human, dwarf, or gnome would ever wish to go; the ruins of Themalsar..

This story starts right after
“The Orken and The Call”

 

 

Midnight will not take us there.”, the young, odd woman, Inshala ‘la fey’ Frostmane, was saying to the Temple Guardian, Lady Magella, in her soft, shy voice. “And neither will he allow his herd to go any further.”

“This is going to make it harder for us to catch up to the culprit.”, the she-dwarf mused with a frown. “And something tells me Master Aager is not going to take this news well either.”

“I am sorry, Temple Guardian. But Midnight has kept to his promise and brought us here and fast. I may not order him to take us to those accursed ruins. Themalsar is not a nice place for horses.”, the girl mumbled, staring at her small, naked feet as if it was all her fault.

“My dear girl. Raise your pretty face.”, the Temple Guardian said kindly. “And never look down and be ashamed of the things that are out of your hand.”

Inshala’s face burned at the compliment as she stared at the she-dwarf who was smiling at her.

“But, will it not make the dark one angry?”, she asked, her tone anguished.

“Master Aager does not need you to be angry about anything. He can stare at a mirror and that would suffice.”, Lady Magella snorted.

“I do not understand, Temple Guardian. If he is angry when he stares at this mirror-thing, then why does he look at it?”, the young girl asked with a confused expression on her diminutive and somewhat angular face.

“Always wondered the same thing myself.”, the Temple Guardian said with a chuckle. “You leave Master Aager to me, my dear child. I shall take care of him. You, on the other hand, send the horses back home.”

Master Aager did not blister as expected over the news that they would be forced to travel on foot all the way to the bloody ruins. Considering the kind of stress he had been under since they had left Serenity Home, either he had inhuman patience or inhuman self-control. But then, there was little about him that was ‘human.’

Half his hooded face glaring red in the setting sun, the other cast in shadows, he had been staring off into the distance where Themalsar was, some three days away, when the Temple Guardian had approached him, feeling ‘carefully’ sympathetic for the man, and had told him that the horses would be leaving..

The man in dark leathers, hood, and half-mask hadn’t said anything for a while. Then he had taken a deep breath and very slowly, he had released it, though whether he was seething or sighing hadn’t been clear.

“Not unexpected, Temple Guardian. I had no intentions of taking them there. Do thank the young woman for informing us..”, he said, paused for a short moment, then added, “You might also want to thank her for helping us find the last of the cutters, by the way. She should know her efforts have not been ignored, nor have they gone unnoticed.”

The Temple Guardian, Lady Magella, squinted up at his glaring profile and frowned a bit.

“Why don’t you tell her that? It would be good for her. And you too, I think.”, she offered.

“The point of informing her regarding her efforts, and that she has made a difference for the better, is to make her feel at ease and to give her a sense of achievement among strangers. And perhaps to make her feel that she belongs, also. Should it come from me, her reaction would be base suspicion at best, which would defeat the purpose of the praise. She will, however, accept your word for it. After all, this isn’t about me. It is about her.”, Aager growled.

“She might surprise you.”, Lady said carefully.

Aager turned his gaze from the northern horizon and stared down at the she-dwarf.

“Would you like to know how a Drashan reacts to surprises, Lady?”, he said, and Lady got the impression the man in dark leathers was laughing..

..bitterly.

The she-dwarf did not reply. She didn’t have to. The scowling look she was giving him now said everything that needed to be said; that he was a stubborn, mule-headed, obstinate fool!

“Prepare to move out, Temple Guardian. We shall not make camp here and wait for the wizard who burned those cutters to return, nor shall we give the sneak thief time to escape further than he already has. He will expect us to camp for the night as we have before and space out his own resting in sync with us. I have no desire to make his job easier for him.”, he growled.

The she-dwarf scowled up at him, some more.

“And how do you assume young Udoorin, Lady Moira, little Morel, and yourself to see in the dark?”, she asked in a demanding tone.

“I do not assume anything, Lady. But this is an issue we must get accustomed to, and inevitably overcome. Should said sneak thief foolishly enter those ruins, I do not expect there will be torches hanging on the walls at every so interval and conveniently light our way. And we have less than three nights to figure out how.”, he grated.

“We have Master Gnine and his fancy little lantern.”, the Temple Guardian said.

“We do. But I would rather not put our fate, nor the outcome of this endeavor in the hands of Master Nimbletyne’s nephew, who has diligently, irresponsibly, and blatantly kept his capabilities to himself.”, Aager said through gritted teeth as he looked down at the she-dwarf, then added, “You must understand, Temple Guardian, what I do not know, I can not utilize for the benefit, and hence, the survival of this company. This is something Master Gnine persistently fails to understand.”

“We don’t know what Inshala could do either. And she has surprised us at every turn.”, Lady Magella said somewhat angrily.

“La Fey has never had the benefits of any company, let alone work in tandem with others. What is Master Gnine’s excuse?”, the man in dark leathers grated.

“Gnine is a civilian and has not been trained to work ‘in tandem’ before.”, the she-dwarf objected.

“I am sure his uncle will find that particular reasoning to be very comforting when we bring back his dead nephew, Lady.”, Aager said coldly. “Or perhaps you would rather remember how you coddled him instead of having pushed him into some semblance of ‘tandem’ to be equally comforting when you are praying over his stone?”

Lady Magella’s face turned black.

“And what of you, Master Aager?”, she fumed heavily. “No one knows what you are capable of.”

“Didn’t see what I could do in your crystal balls, then?”, Aager said grimly. “Perhaps your senior did but has preferred not to tell you..”

“We don’t do cristal balls!”, the Temple Guardian spluttered with smoldering indignation but the man in dark leathers ignored her.

“..You see, Lady, this is the privilege and the prerogative of leadership. Much like your Senior Temple Guardian Demos Lightshand does not share everything he knows with his juniors, and the things he shares, he does it selectively, and neither does Mayor Arthandos and Sheriff Standorin. The difference between you and I in this matter is not about your high standing with the Great Heavens, nor is it about my sins, which, apparently, seem to cloud your judgment and blind your perspective. I simply choose not to mope, sulk, or make a dramatic scene even though I know my direct superior and commanding officer, Sheriff Standorin does not share everything he knows with me.”

“That.. was very much uncalled for, young man..”, the she-dwarf said, her eyes blazing.

“Was it?”, Aager grated. “You have been persistently challenging me at every turn, yet I have displayed nothing less than utmost respect to your station, and to you in person. Now, before you stoop down to my level, do consider your current stance, Lady, just how dissimilar it would have been had every decision or choice I made had come, not from me, but from Senior Temple Guardian Demos Lightshand, himself?”

Lady Magella stood where she was, quietly petrified. She attempted to say some things a few times, but nothing came out.

Aager held her gaze for a bit more as the sunset, and darkness settled.

“Thank you for your candor.”, he growled, and in the dark, he coughed a few, curt orders. “Ranger Laila, prepare to take the lead. Lady Moira and Master Udoorin, you two will follow her at a one hundred yard distance.

“The main company will be right behind you two. Ranger Morel, you will take the rear and make sure no one gets left behind, and nothing comes at us from that direction. ‘Listen’ to where you step. And be aware of your surrounding. Know the ‘breath’ of the person next to you.”

There was a suppressed sort of silence, then Udoorin rumbled.

“Uhhmm.. We can’t see, Master Aager. Wouldn’t it be better to wait for at least first light?”, he said.

“I am sure the sneak thief shall wait for our leisure, young Udoorin because he clearly is a man of high honor and plays by the book.”, Aager grated furiously.
A pin-point spark of light appeared somewhere behind the big, burly man, and slowly, it grew. When the young man noticed it, he gave a surprised sort of, “What the—”, and turned around.

“I shall light the way.”, a grudging voice was heard as Udoorin stepped aside to reveal a furiously fuming Lady Magellan holding up her diamond-shaped mace casting glaring white light. “The light will stay on for about an hour. When it ends, I shall light it again.”

“Would have been nice of you to tell us you got light, Lady.”, Bremorel mumbled.

“I didn’t know we would be foolish enough to travel at night, little Morel. We have always settled in and never needed it before.”, the she-dwarf replied furiously.

“We could have used it when we were fighting the orcs.”, Laila inserted.

The Temple Guardian glared at her.

“Young Inshala showed initiative before I could. It would have been distracting and sort of made her spell a bit useless, now wouldn’t it?”, she fumed.

“Ranger Laila, take point, if you will.”, growled Aager, instantly murdering the bickering. “Everyone else, take your places. We have wasted enough time as it is..”

“Here.”, Gnine piped and offered Laila his delicate little lantern. “You will need to see where you are going and we will need something to follow.”

Laila cocked an eyebrow at him.

“Will you trust me with your precious little toy, Master Gnine?”, she asked amusedly.

“I trust you with my life, my dear girl. Just.. try not to break it if you can help it, please.”, Gnine said with a pinched face.

“Your lantern or your life?”, the ranger girl said with a smirk.

“Uhhmm.. Neither?”

As it turned out, running in the night was quite more challenging than it seemed even though they had two light sources and were running on seemingly flat grassland. It was the ‘seemingly’ part that should have clued them in.

The fact that there was light did show them their immediate surrounding, but it wasn’t, strictly speaking, ambient, and it did cast many conflicting shadows.

Young Udoorin had staggered, and to catch himself, he had inadvertently stumbled even further, resulting in a stupendous crash and if there was anything asleep within five miles, they were all awake now; the big, burly man had fallen head-on, and his very heavy backpack, along with his father’s sword, his numerous axes, daggers, and knives had scattered all over the field and it looked like he was lying in the middle of some bizarre, weapon graveyard.

“I believe you dropped your sword. You shouldn’t do that. Your father would be quite put out should you lose his sword.”, Gnine snickered, dragging a longsword behind him.

Udoorin groaned.

“What is all the noise?”, Laila came running, her longbow half-drawn, and stepped on one of the young man’s scattered knives that had landed at an odd angle, and promptly dropped on her butt, moaning in pain as she held her bloodied soft boot.

“Laila?”, they heard Bremorel come running from behind and klutzed into the company when the Temple Guardian’s light had figured this was the perfect time to wink out, sending the she-dwarf crashing into the paladin girl, knocking her flat on the ground with another resounding crash.

In retro respect, far far away, some few miles north of Serenity Home, Ranger Master Moorat Maelstrom prickled his ears and said,

“What was that?”

Untangling Udoorin from the mess had been a chore and Master Aager very nearly did murder that night when the young man had insisted on finding all his scattered weapons while holding his broken and bloody nose.

Temple Guardian Lady Magella had lost all her patience, tossed her cassock, metaphorically speaking, and reverted to her pre-Temple-Guardian-self and blistered the young man, the ranger girl, Bremorel, and told her cousin, Laila, to stop whimpering like a little girl!

“‘Tis alright, Temple Guardian. Things happen. All will be fine, I am sure, but I will still need you to get off me.”, Lady Moira wheezed merrily from under the she-dwarf.

“Ow, I am sorry, my dear.”, Lady Magella said with a very much mortified face as she tried to turtle herself back on her feet.

“I may help.”, a voice said quietly in the dark. “If you would let me, Ranger Laila.”

“Inshala.”, the ranger girl moaned through clenched teeth. “It hurts. I don’t want to lose my foot.”

“You were hurt more.”, Inshala whispered. “Before.”

“When? I don’t remember being this hurt before. I mean, other than the time when the Orken sliced open my leg.”, Laila hissed in pain.

“Before.”, Inshala whispered again. “Much before. I will have to remove your leather boot. May I?”

“Girl, you may do anything you want. When was I hurt more, before?”, Laila whimpered through her clenched teeth.

“Let us fix your foot before we fix your memory, Ranger Laila.”, the young woman said with a hushed voice and helped the ranger girl take her soft boot off.

Laila whimpered some more.

“It will break my father’s heart if I lose my foot!”, she moaned.

“It will break more than your father’s heart if you lose your foot, girl!”, came Bremorel’s muffled voice from somewhere back.

Carefully, Inshala inspected the ranger’s foot, then she ‘hummed’ somethings. It sounded melodic but had a few too many off-keys to be a song. There had been no fancy streaks of lights. No sprinkling golden sparks. No special sound or visual effects. She wiped her foot with what appeared to be a towel, then ran her slender hand over the sliced wound and Laila let loose a long, relieved sort of “Ahhhh..”, and slumped back.

The young woman then took the ranger girl’s soft boot and murmured another some things as she ran her hand over its sliced bottom, then placed it next to Laila.

“You have pretty feet, Ranger Laila.”, Inshala whispered shyly.

“Uhhmm.. What? I do?”, Laila spluttered as she sat up. “Ow, you have fixed my boot as well. Thank you. I really liked these boots.”

“You should wash them more often, though.”, the young woman said with a suddenly burning face.

“Are you telling me that my feet smell?”, Laila asked with amusement.

“I..”, Inshala spluttered.

Laila chuckled as she watched the odd girl squirm, then she paused, took a deep breath, then reached over to the young woman and held her hand.

“Thank you.”, she said simply. “And.. I am sorry for the things I said when we were fighting the orcs. Particularly for the things I said after the fight. You were right and I was not. Yet you bothered to explain it, and in such a way that even I understood why we all were at fault. I.. I get stupid when Bremorel is in danger. Other than my father, she is the only family I got, and I am the only family she’s got.”

“I.. do not know what family is, Ranger Laila. I did not have sisters. Only my Father.”, Inshala said quietly.

“Then you know what family is, my dear friend.”, Laila smiled at her.

“We.. we are friends?”, the young woman stared at her.

“Would you like to be?”, the ranger girl offered.

“I.. I do not know what friend is. Will it be like the ones I have at Gull’s Perch?”, Inshala asked.

“You have friends at Gull’s Perch? Wait. You can enter Gull’s Perch? All mortals were banned from there years ago.”, Laila said incredulously, and now she was doing the staring.

“I.. I have some dryad friends there.. and some nymph friends.. and some tree spirits.. and many pixie and sprites as well.. They are not Mortals though. And they are all Summer Fey..”, Inshala replied with an abashed face, though it got lost in the dark.

Laila stared at her some more..

“We swam in their pools, did fire hops, and played hide-and-tag. It was fun!”, she continued happily, then stopped speaking as if she had just noticed she had spoken a bit too much. She rose, her face burning now, and took off at an impressive speed!

“Your nose is broken.”, Lady said, holding the young man’s face in her hands.

“Dammit.”, Udoorin swore. “Father is not going to be happy.”

“I just told you, your nose is broken and you are worried about what your father will say?”, the she-dwarf asked, staring at the ‘boy.’

“Father has a heavy hand.”, the young man mumbled.

“I can fix it, but it is going to hurt. A lot.”, Lady said, frowning at him.

“Is this frowning thing the only face I am going to see from you, Temple Guardian?”, Udoorin asked innocently.

“Shots fired!”, piped Gnine from the side.

“Well, excuse me, young man.”, the Temple Guardian flared at him.

“I mean, you are always glaring when you are looking at me and I don’t even know what I did to earn it.”, the young man continued.

“I scowl at everyone. What makes you so special?”, Lady asked, glaring at him.

“I didn’t do anything to deserve it?”, Udoorin said innocently.

“You broke your nose!”, the she-dwarf fumed.

“So you are glaring at me because I broke my nose? Obviously, the pain I am already suffering is not enough. And you are not even my father.”, the young man mumbled.

The Temple Guardian gave him a squinting look.

“I see you have attained sass since we left Serenity Home, young man. I think we should remedy that.”, the she-dwarf said and twirled his broken nose!

The big, burly man let loose a grand grunt of pain as tears ran down his eyes while Gnine snickered mercilessly from the side.

“Young man.”, the Temple Guardian fumed. “You carry scores of weapons and so far all you have managed to do is to grapple an Orken, fall on your weapons, and break your nose. Perhaps you should consider the wisdom of your choices.”

“I fought the orcs with my battleaxe!”, the young man’s muffled objection came from behind the hand he held to his nose. “I dropped it during that fight. It was fortunate I had spares. I mean, even if I dropped that one too, I had a third axe. And if I dropped or broke that as well, I still had my father’s sword. Think of what would have happened had I not had the spares?”

“Nothing.”, Lady glared at him. “Seeing as they didn’t put up much of a fight!”

“Is there a reason I am being admonished, Temple Guardian? I have been nothing but polite to you.”, Udoorin mumbled. “Perhaps I should ask that Inshala-girl to tend to my nose, seeing as Laila is having a better time.”

“Well, excuse me, for your foolishness!”, Lady scowled.

Gnine snickered some more.

“Are we done, here, Temple Guardian?”, Aager growled. “We had better—”

“—not, Master Aager.”, the she-dwarf cut in angrily. “I believe I have had just about enough of this foolishness for one night. We shall set camp here, get a good night’s rest, and start off early in the morning. If you want to carry on alone, by all means, do. I have these foolish children to feed and they haven’t eaten anything since morning.”

“Food. Nice.”, Udoorin’s muffled voice came.

“I could eat!”, Bremorel said from the side.

“Methinks, I could also.”, Moira added, though hers was tinted with a bit of guilt. “Fasting is good for the soul. Fasting and running all day, and night, not so much.”

“I lost blood, thanks to Udoorin. I need food!”, Laila declared as she came and stood before the young man, tossed his knife at his feet, then added with a hiss, “You owe me for this.”

“No. I don’t.”, Udoorin said, squinting at the ranger girl.

“You don’t, do you?”, Laila gave him one of her ‘thousand-yard’ glares.

“If it is down to me to tell a ranger where to put her foot, I’d say you are in trouble.”, the big, burly man replied with a bloody grin.

Laila burned him with her glare.

“Ranger Laila, Ranger Morel, form a safety parameter if you will. Lady Moira and I shall be on guard duty.”, came Aager’s frustrated growl.

“What shall I do?”, Inshala whispered to the Temple Guardian.

“You, my dear, can help me patch up young Udoorin, here, and then we can start a fire and cook some things for this lot.”, Lady replied with a smile.

The young woman gave the very large Udoorin a careful, side-long glance, then shook her head at the Temple Guardian.

Lady cocked an eyebrow at her.

“Are you afraid of him?”, she asked.

Inshala mumbled some incoherent things.

“He is harmless, my dear.”, Lady told her reassuringly.

“He.. he hurt Ranger Laila, caused Ranger Bremorel to hit you and made you fall on top of the one with the iron clothes, making her fall on the ground as well. I do not think he is harmless.”, she said with a flushed face.

Lady chuckled.

“He is hadardus..”, Inshala said, then paused as her face flushed even brighter.

“Hadarpus..”, she spluttered.

“Havarcus!”, she tried again, her face burning with total mortification now.

“Hazardous?”, Lady offered kindly.

“Yes.. that.. He is hadarpus just by mistake!”, the girl said staring at her feet to hide her burning face.

“He is merely a bit clumsy, my dear girl. That’s all. He will not harm you.”, the she-dwarf assured her.

The young woman, however, did not look reassured at all.

“Tis alright. Why don’t you start a fire, then? You can find my cauldron strapped to my backpack other there. There is water in the waterskins. Pour some into the cauldron and put it over the fire. You will find some onions, carrots, and potatoes in the sacks inside the pack. You will also find dried and salted meat in there. If you want, you can cut some into neat little box shapes and throw them into the cauldron.”, the Temple Guardian offered.

The girl nodded mutely, turned around, and went to do as she was instructed, pretty much in that order.

“Now, young Udoorin.”, Lady Magella said with a smile that scared the big, burly man. “Shall we get started on your nose?”

It was two days later and quite past midnight and everyone had slumped down to restless sleep. The only three exceptions to this were the young woman, Inshala, who had curled up into a ball and what seemed like she was sound asleep. If one ignored the fact that she jerk every once in a while, and at some point, a frown appeared on her frows and clung there until silent tears ran down her pretty face. She seemed tormented somehow and the silent figure standing nearby covertly mused over her as his eyes scanned the area around her and finally settled at sometwhere far to the north.

The man in dark leathers was not skulking in the shadows as he oft did. He was staring, once again, in the general direction of the ruins of..

“Themalsar..”, murmured the tall, comely, reddish-brown-haired paladin girl —the third person awake, Lady Moira, who had been standing guard. She came up to stand next to Aager; one in shining armor, the other in darks. “I have long wanted to see that cursed place.”

Aager did not say anything for a good long moment.

“You have gotten your wish.”, he growled finally.

“Coming here was not my wish, Master Aager.”, Moira said quietly. “My wish was to eradicate the evil that has festered there for centuries.”

“Huh.”, the man in dark leathers grunted. “Spoken like a true Durkahan paladin.”

“Perhaps you think us quite mindless and we long to pit our steel against evil, Master Aager.”, the girl said.

“I would not have phrased it like that.”, Aager replied.

“But it is true. Just not as mindless as people would have us be. If you could offer an alternative, I am willing to turn back.”, she said.

Aager tilted his hood slightly in her direction, displaying the slightest of surprises.

“To quote the words of a very wise person; ‘A confrontation avoided is better then an enemy overcome.’”, Moira grinned.

Aager frowned.

Was it only him that thought just how naively stupid that ‘wisdom’ was?

A dead enemy was a dead enemy and you never had to worry about them again, other than, perhaps, their relatives —if they had any. And should they come after you with some sort of vengeance in mind, you killed them as well. End of story.

Perhaps he was looking at the odd girl, Inshala’s words out of some context he wasn’t aware of.

Or..

Perhaps he was just not looking carefully enought and he had to rephrase his former question, sort of to put into some perspective;
Was it only him that couldn’t see the wisdom in those words?

Nope.

It still didn’t make any sense to him and only garnered further frustration from the man in dark leathers.

“You want to turn from your cause on the words of a naive girl?”, he grated.

“I am not in the habit of turning from my cause, Master Aager. The demands of my calling is clear. I wanted to come here and see what lurked in there, for I can sense the presence of the festering evil even from here. I want to call my Ayla and charge the ruins, for the things I feel makes my blood boil. I desperately want to fight the evil and destroy it —if I can. And if I can’t, send word to those that can, at the very least.”, the girl said with ardent passion in her voice.

“However I might personally feel, Master Aager”, she continued, “I am unwilling to endanger those around me. Hence I leave the choice to you.”

“The choice you leave me seems a bit redundant, Lady Moira.”, Aager grated. “We are all but inside the ruins.”

“We are. But you are willing to stop the moment you apprehend your culprit and go back. Once I enter those ruins and find the evil therein, I shall not be able to ‘just stop’, and neither is turning back is among my choices. Suffice to say, I must go to the heart of the evil and face it. Such is my calling.”, the young paladin girl said solemnly.

“You are telling this to me, why? I am not privy to the details of the laws pertaining knights and paladins that have been knocked out by the use of a sap and dragged out of harm’s way for their foolishness, but I am not willing to face any magistrate regarding said laws. Considering my dark past, I feel skeptical that any court will show me leniency.”, Aager growled.

“I doubt you could knock me out to your satisfaction with a sap, Master Aager.”, Moira grinned at him. “Nothing short of a sturdy oak club will suffice, I am afraid.”

“Huh.”, the man in dark leathers grunted amusedly. “Perhaps you might want to tell me what you have in mind, Lady Moira. Drashans seldom react well to surprises.”

Moira gave him a brilliant smile.

“You, Master Aager, are a diligent man, and ‘half ways’ does not appear to be your maxim. Hence, I shall do my utmost not to hinder you and shall I follow your lead, also. I would, however, advise you to keep that club handy at all times.”

In all candor, the man in dark leathers appreciated, and in a professional sense, admired this tall, broad-shouldered, reddish-brown-haired, clad-in-steel, cheery girl. She knew what she was good at, just like she knew what her faults were or where she was lacking, and she was happily honest about them. What made Aager truly respect her was, unlike some others, Lady Moira carried her own weight, she never made a burden of herself, she did not let herself be driven by her own ego, and she was open-minded where it mattered. Her best was when she thought she might, in fact, turn out to be the problem, and even then, she offered the option of how he could overcome said problem, even if it meant clubbing her senseless!

“I shall have a club handy, should the occasion deem it necessary, Lady Moira.”, he growled. “Though I would rather I do no not end up being forced to use it, much like I would rather forgo butting heads with the esteemed Temple Guardian should I be forced to use said club.”

“No worries there, Master Aager.”, Moira smiled cheerily. “I have already informed Lady Magella as to why you might, in some near future, club me senseless.”

Though it was lost behind his half-mask, Aager Fogstep inevitably smiled. Ironic as it was, he liked the girl in her shiny armor. To be certain, it would be unlikely they would ever see eye to eye where morals and matters of faith were concerned, but working with her had been a lot easier than anyone else he had met in his life.
“She is special.”, he heard her say, and noted she was staring down at the sleeping, curled-up young woman with a thoughtful expression on her face. “Of all the people in this company, I would rather she did not fear me. Yet she avoids me like the plague.”

Aager chose not to comment. This was something he preferred not to get involved.

“You watch her.”, she murmured quietly.

“I tire of her incomprehensible and irresponsible actions, but the Temple Guardian has made a lamentable choice and adopted her. Hence I make sure she does not run off.. again..”, Aager grated with resentment.

“No, Master Aager. You watch her as you would watch over her. And you should.”, Moira said.

“I doubt she needs any watching over.”, the man in dark leathers growled.

“Everyone needs watching over, Master Aager. Willy-nilly we need others. It is what makes us human, perhaps not in a racial sense, but rather that of an existential nature. And Inshala needs it more than others, for she is special.”, the paladin girl said, her frown deepening.

“That is the second time you said she was special.”, Aager’s gravelly voice reverberated in the dark.

“I have, though I do not know what it means, nor what it may entail. I can only.. sense.. Not good, nor evil, but something else. Something vast and profound and it is beyong me.”, Moira said quietly.

The corner of Aager’s eyes crinkled as he stared at her, then at the sleeping girl who was now shaking her head as if saying ‘no’ to someone they couldn’t see. And she was cringing.

“Poor dear. She suffers even in her dreams and not even sleep shall buy her any surcease nor respite.”, Lady Moira said somberly. “One wonders, what has the world of men done to this girl, and why? And now, she is all alone with no one to turn to, no one to lend her happiness, nor has she anyone to carry the burdens of her fears.”

The man in dark leathers pressed his lips together and refused to get involved.

“A family. Inshala needs a family. A father, a mother, a grand, a brother, and sisters three..”, she murmured more to herself, then turned to stare at the diligently silent man. “And she needs love.”

“It is good, then, she has found the esteemed Temple Guardian.”, he grated..

..and ghosted away.

He’d had one sister that had been entrusted to him, and people had come and taken her away from him.

The next time he thought he had finally found her, he had witnessed the wooden building she was in, burned down to the ground, along with everyone in it. There was no way in Hell was he ever going to take the responsibility of another person, let alone an incomprehensibly odd and naively foolish one like this girl.

Clear.”, came Ranger Laila’s low, hissing voice from the right.

It was past midnight when the Serenity Home company had entered the burnt, charred, and salted lands around the ruins of Themalsar, and to their chagrin, the land was indeed burnt, charred, and salted in a very literal sense.

The land seemed to be covered with some kind of sea sand. Only it wasn’t the healthy, glittering sand one would see at any seashore, but something sooty black and caked, and it crunched and cracked with a disturbing depression.

There were no plants anywhere, nor were there grass or bushes, and the few trees they saw were all gnarly, petrified skeletons or grossly bloated and they spewed some vicious, sulfuric fumes. A choking miasma of fog seemed to have settled over the ruins and hid everything beyond ten or twelve yards and what structure they saw had either rotted down to hazed rubble or crumbled away beyond repair.

Young Udoorin had his great battleaxe held firmly in his hands and step by step, he moved forward, ready to swing at anything that might come at them.

Lady Moira was on his right, her tall shield strapped tightly on her left arm and she held it before her. Though she hadn’t drawn her longsword, her hand rested on its pommel. The rules of engagement for knights and paladins were quite clear; they would draw their blade only when they needed it, and with the intention of using it.

The ranger girls, Laila and Bremorel were nowhere to be seen, though their voices came through the fog in low, cautious tones every thirty beats;

“Clear.”, Ranger Bremorel responded from their left.

Udoorin took a few more steps with Moira, and Master Gnine, who was staring intently into the fog while scratching one itching palm. The Temple Guardian, Lady Magella followed him closely and she also had her shield on, perhaps for the first time in years, while holding her diamond-shaped mace tightly in her fist. Coming from the rear was the young woman, Inshala, and her face seemed pale and drawn. A frown adorned her frows as she hugged her long spear tightly and close to herself as if seeking reassurance. There was a serious expression on her diminutive, somewhat angular face, and she had her small lips tightly pressed together.

“Clear..”, Laila’s voice came again from their right. “Found tracks, though.”

Aager appeared out of the thick, oozing fog like a ghost and held up his fist. Udoorin stopped and so did the rest of the company.

“Report.”, he growled in a low voice.

“Orcs.”, Laila’s hiss was heard. “Also many ogres and gnolls. Quite a number of them. And some humans, though their tracks are very old. It is likely a few trolls have come this way as well. There are some other tracks but I do not know what made them.”

“Same here.”, Bremorel said from her side of the fog. Ogres mostly. And some orcs and gnolls. I can see human tracks too, but there is something wrong with them.”

Aager waited.

“It’s like they are all crippled or something. They are mostly bare feet tracks and need a good nail clipping.”, she continued.

“Blazing Heavens!”, hissed Lady Magella from the rear and everyone turned to stare at her. It was a common occurrence that the she-dwarf scowled, and scolded those around her but she never cursed the way she’d just done!

“Temple Guardian?”, Aager growled. “You have something to add?”

“Undead!”, Lady spat. “I suspected this cursed place would host orcs and ogres. Along with any number of other unsavory critters, but undead is taking it a step or six too far.”

“Uhhmm.. How so?”, Udoorin asked.

“Undead rarely appear out of nowhere, comrade Udoorin.”, Lady Moira explained, her voice hushed. “They are almost always the creation of unscrupulous necromancy or by unholy priests.”

“On rare occasions, however, they may raise from the ground if there was great evil done over an extended period of time.”, the she-dwarf added. “Seeing as we are in the ruins of Themalsar, both options are likely. This ‘temple’ housed many evil creatures. And during the first Themalsar War, many, many demons were summoned and hordes of undead were raised to fight against the high elves of High Woods and Bari Na-ammen, the dwarves of Elder Hills, druids and shamans of Ritual Forest, gnomes of Silent Hills, knights of Koruxan, and paladins of Durkahan. It is rumored, that there were even some Angels and Celestials present in that war, helping the forces of the alliance, and still, the death toll numbered in tens of thousands.”

An uneasy silence settled in the choking fog.

“Thank you for the history lesson, Temple Guardian.”, Aager growled. “But we are not here to study the past. We are here to capture a fugitive. What happened here some eight hundred years ago is not our concern.”

“My Father was here, during the Themalsar War.”, came Inshala’s mumbling voice from the very back. “What happened here, should be your concern. Many good people died here. Many more were just lost, and never heard of again.”

No one said anything to that and the man in dark leathers chose to merely fume silently. He had no intentions of getting entangled in some historical debate he had little to no knowledge about, nor did he have any inclinations of going a step further than he had to, beyond capturing the bloody sneak thief, who was either dead by now, if there were as many orcs, ogres, and gnolls as there were tracks, or was likely going to die soon enough. If he had any sense, which Aager highly doubted, he would likely find a quiet hidey-hole and make himself scars for a few days, then sneak back out and disappear in the winds. One thing he was determined to do, however, was that if the sneak thief was indeed in these ruins, he was going to find him, beat or bleed him, get the answers he wanted, then drag him back to Serenity Home —dead or alive, he didn’t care one way or the other, so long as he got said answers..

These people, whoever they were, had accosted a few too many lives, the townsmen of Serenity Home, Master Cathber, and many, many elves, along with the destruction of their village, had him and his company run around from one end of Ritual Forest to the other for nearly three weeks, and almost cost him the two rangers under his command.

Yes. Beat or bleed, preferably both.

Aager Fogstep was a religiously pragmatic, piously practical man, and he did not like complications. When they occurred, he faced them with fatalistic equanimity. He did not, however, appreciate those that caused said complications and made sure they regretted it. And the bloody sneak thief was going to regret it all the way to Hell!

“Ranger Laila. Carry on. Find me the culprit’s tracks. Lady Moira. Master Udoorin. Take point. Ranger Morel. You shall cover our left flank while I cover our right. La Fey, you will cover our rear.”, he grated.

“Yes, Sir.”, Laila’s voice came from inside the fog, somewhere off to their right.

“On it.”, Bremorel confirmed.

“By the Great Heavens, we shall face what evil lurks in here and surely prevail.”, Moira said with honest determination.

“That sounded awesome!”, Udoorin grinned at her.

“Tell him I will do as he says.”, they heard Inshala whisper at the she-dwarf. Then she lowered her voice even more and added. “But he should not do what he has in his mind.”

“He has in his.. what?”, Lady asked with surprise. “You can read minds?”

“I can not, Temple Guardian. And even if I could, I would not.”, the girl replied quietly.

“Ow?”, the she-dwarf said.

“It is not nice to do things to others without them knowing. That is like..”, she paused and her face turned bright red. “That is like peeking at a girl when she is bathing without permission. And that is not nice.”

Lady Magella stared at her.

“No. That is not nice at all.”, she said a bit perturbed.

• • •

It took them several hours of stressful browsing through the old, crumbled, rotting, and fog-riddled ruins until Ranger Laila finally found the tracks they were looking for. After conferring with her cousin, they appeared next to the company to share their findings.

“Found the sneak thief. His tracks, I mean. They disappeared somewhere inside one of the larger buildings.”, Laila said in hushed tones as she pointed at one of the broken-down structures, its base lost in the fog. “I suspect it was a tower once, perhaps eight or ten stories high, though it has all but crumbled down to a stub now. Inside is a mess; broken and long rotted furniture, smashed statues and sculptures, and the floor and wall tiles are totally destroyed. With the exception of the far wall, the ground floor, and the floor once above it seems to be still intact. The far wall and the ceiling have caved in and are a heap of rubble. The tracks lead to that rubble and end there. We searched the area and Bree found a broken door that seemed to have fallen from the floor above. Turns out, it concealed a shaft that leads down as far as the eye can see. The shaft is wide enough for even Udoorin to slide through. We found orc and gnoll tracks leading to, and disappearing in the shaft.”

She paused for a long moment as if considering her words.

Aager stared at her.

“Is there something you want to add, Ranger Laila?”, he growled.

There was another moment of silence and Laila frowned a bit before she spoke.

“Sir, the shaft goes quite a long way into the ground, but what caught my attention, in particular, was that it was all sooty as if it had been burned and not too long ago. I took a whiff and could still smell burnt things, possibly flesh, coming from inside the shaft. I think someone put the shaft to fire when there were people inside it, and it happened two or maybe three weeks ago. Other than the sneak thief, the orcs, and the gnolls, I found another set of tracks, this one, quite unique, but I do not know what made them. They were extremely light like I have never seen before. As in, whoever they belonged to, had no weight whatsoever. Or was inhumanly graceful. Bree also found something; a fourth set of tracks.”

“Ranger Morel?”, Aager turned to the younger of the two rangers.

Bremorel shrugged.

“Don’t know what made them either. Seemed like a human, maybe, or an elf. Can’t be sure. Like I said, I don’t know what made them. I could say they belong to a female though, possibly young, mid-twenties if she is human. Had small, naked feet. Was wearing some sort of a cloak. A heavy one. She also went down the shaft. I found two of these.”, she said and held up two, rather long, charcoal-black feathers. They weren’t soft feathers like they belonged to an owl. They seemed like they had fallen off a raven, though not as snappy, harsh, nor brittle —assuming the raven was the size of a human. “It is possible she was wearing a cloak or mantle made from feathers, though I do not know what has feathers these.”

“Let me see them.”, the little gnome, Gnine, said as he walked up to them and he took the feathers and mused over them for a good, full minute. “These are not raven feathers. Nor do they belong to a griffon. Certainly not a chimera or a cockatrice, since neither have feathers on their wings. For that very reason, I suppose we could chalk off manticores. Could be a pegasus, though a black breed would be quite unique. Or a sphinx, which would be just as rare. The only other three options that spring to my mind and they would be quite dire ones, all three of them being demons; a vrock, a succubus, or an Erinyes.”

Everyone stared at him.

“Boy, I should smack you around just for the fact that you know of such foul fiends.”, Lady Magella scowled down at him.

“Whot?”, the gnome said. “I read about a lot of things as part of my training.”

“And what training would that be? I wasn’t aware artificers needed that kind of information for their tinkering.”, she fumed.

“You never know what could help discover a new gadget or improve it. But, no. I did not read them as part of my artificer training. I read them as part of my arcane training.”, Gnine said glibly.

“And where did you find these books about fiends and demons? I am sure there aren’t any just lying around in our town?”, Lady said through gritted teeth.

“I am not giving you that information!”, the little gnome said with a decisive tone. “You will seize and confiscate them, and likely burn them the moment we return back to town.”

The she-dwarf glared down at him.

“I suppose I will just have to ask Master Nimbletyne about them.”, she growled.

“You could, I suppose. But he’s not going to tell you either.”, Gnine told her with a shameless grin. “On the bright side though, I doubt most of the listed creatures came this way; they wouldn’t have fit through a hole as narrow as the one Laila described.”

Lady Magella’s face turned black.

“The matter of how Master Gnine entertains his curiosity is irrelevant at the moment, Temple Guardian.”, Aager grated and killed their annoying debate. Then he turned to the ranger girls and growled. “Do you have anything else to add?”

“We did not find any of the ogre tracks leading to the shaft, Sir.”, Laila said. “There must be another entrance somewhere, just not in that tower. These ruins are quite large and extensive. I mean, we could spend days here and still not be able to fully map it, even if we don’t get turned around in this blasted fog.”

Aager fell silent for a long moment.
Long enough to make everyone uncomfortable.

Fate, it would seem, had left him with beggared choices. One would be to turn around and return back to Serenity Home, quite empty-handed, the other was to enter the shaft and see where it led them. Had he been alone, he wouldn’t have had second thoughts on the matter, but others were going to be involved and no matter what they thought of him, he wanted them to return alive, intact, and functional, which was at the core of his dilemma; even should he manage to get in and get back out with all of them still alive and functional, most would never be quite as intact as they were now. He was a man who didn’t care much for rumors or gossip. He just did not outright discard them either. And rumors about this place had always been bad and not in a mere, disreputable way, but rather in an ‘existentially’ bad way if that made any sense at all.

He pressed his lips tightly together behind his half-mask and his eyes crinkled deep in his hood. Then he turned to face them all..

“I will go down and after the sneak thief. Should any of you want to go back, I shall not blame you nor report your actions as desertion. The choice of staying or going back, I leave to you. I would, however, expect you to report to Mayor Yuleman, Sheriff Standorin, ranger masters Davien and Moorat and tell them about all our findings, from the moment we left town, up until this very moment. Should you decide to follow me, some of you will be defying direct orders regarding the prohibitions about entering these ruins.”, he grated, looking at each one and settling on the ranger girls when he gave his warning about the prohibitions.

“It is possible you will be held in contempt for defying said orders.”, he continued. “As I recall, not even ranger masters Davien and Moorat entered these ruins even when they were trailing the ogre fugitive, Cabot, several years ago. Should you decide to come with me, however, I will expect your full cooperation at all times. We will need to work together and in tandem. If you can suspend your personal feelings for the duration of our hunt, I guesstimate most of us will return alive. If you have any doubts about the matter and do not wish to participate or get involved, follow the route we came, then go south until you reach Arashkan River. Should you turn west and follow the river, you will reach Serenity Home in about two weeks if you leave now.”

He waited for the duration of a six-count, then disappeared in the fog, heading for the broken tower..

Everyone stared after him, then at one another.

Finally, the young man, Udoorin, shrugged, though he had a sour expression on his face.

“Reporting all our findings since we left Serenity Home sounds like a lot of paperwork.”, he mumbled. “And I hate paperwork..”

..and followed the man in dark leathers, and into the choking fog.

I think I should go first.”, Udoorin’s rumble echoed in the dark, smothering tower. The inside of the ruins was an utter mess of rubble, splinted and charred furniture, broken urns, statues, figurines, and other, unidentifiable ornaments. Scattered here and there were bits and pieces of gnawed bones and shattered skulls that did not seem to belong to any human, elf, dwarf, or gnome. Some of them had impossibly large canines while others had horns, and they stared up at the company through cavernous, pit-like sockets.

Aager looked up at the big, burly man.

“Hey, if I can pass, everyone can. And if I get stuck, well, I hope one of you guys can somehow pull me back up.”, the young man rumbled.

Aager stared at him, some more.

“Ranger Laila, do knot a rope around our young venturer, if you will, in case we do need to pull him back out. It would make his father sad, should we end up leaving him there.”, he growled.

Gnine snickered.

Laila chuckled.

Udoorin’s face went red.

He unloaded all but one of his big battleaxes, dropped his very heavy backpack on the ground with a shuddering thud, checked the rope Laila had knotted around his waist, took a deep breath, and crawled into the chasm, his arms and his axe stretched in front of him as if he was diving into deep water, and soon enough, he disappeared in the hole.

“Great Heavens!”, his choked voice echoed out of the chasm.

“By all means, a little louder, if you will, Master Udoorin. We need everyone to know we are upon them.”, Aager grated.

“Sorry.”, Udoorin’s voice came. “But this shaft absolutely stinks. I mean, it’s like someone burned someone in here!”

“There’s a cheery thought.”, Gnine mumbled. “Who is next? Provided he doesn’t get stuck and clog the way. And who is going to bring all his arsenal and carry that gravestone of a backpack of his?”

“I would like to go next.” Lady Moira volunteered. “We should send his equipment down, though. “A warrior will need his arms.”

“You don’t have so many weapons.”, the little gnome said.

“The answer to that is rather simple, Master Gnine.”, she smiled at him.

“Ow?”

“I am not a warrior, but a mere paladin.”, she replied with a broad grin.

Gnine snorted.

“Ranger Bremorel, if you would help me with Master Udoorin’s weapons, which I believe we should bundle with another rope and slide them down. And perhaps give me a hand with his pack as well?”, she said merrily.

“You could pick the pack and just toss it into the shaft.”, Bremorel offered.

“I would rather not embarrass myself should I fail to pick up the pack, sister Bremorel.”, Moira replied with another smile.

“So you want to share the embarrassment.”, the ranger girl snickered.

“One might blame a girl for failing to achieve a task that clearly requires brute strength. No one in their right mind would blame two.”, Moira beamed.

Bremorel chuckled and the two of them heaved with a massive grunt.

The pack did not even budge.

“What the..”, Bremorel exclaimed, staring down at the backpack.

“Well. That was an awkwardly shared embarrassment.”, Moira admitted with a bright red face. “Makes one wonder what young Udoorin carries in his pack.”

“You girls need a hand?”, Gnine piped from the side with a grin.

Bremorel glared at him balefully.

“Ranger Laila could also give a hand, perhaps?”, Moira offered, looking at the other ranger girl.

“But I just had my nails done.”, Laila said with a chuckle.

“Good one, cuzz.”, Bremorel laughed. “C’mon. Give us a hand. And I really hope Udoorin has a good answer when I ask him what he really has in this bloody thing.”

“Ladies.”, Aager growled, sort of to move things along.

“Any particular reason you are not helping, Master Aager?”, Bremorel said with a tint of sarcasm.

Aager did not say anything. He just looked at her..

“Same reason why Master Gnine will not give a hand, even if he could, Ranger Morel.”, he grated finally.

“Which would be?”, the ranger girl asked.

“It is a guy thing, Bree. You wouldn’t understand.”, Gnine replied a bit evasively.

Moira held one of the backpack’s straps, while Laila held the other. Bremorel knelt down and grabbed the pack from the sides.

“On three.”, Laila said.

“A guy thing?”, Bremorel asked as she held the pack tightly.

“Well, yes. No man will touch nor handle another man’s tools or equipment. It just isn’t done.”, Gnine replied with a shrug.

“One.”, Laila counted.

“Are you serious?”, Bremorel exclaimed.

“I am.”, Gnine piped.

“Two..”, her cousin said.

“Why?”, Bremorel asked with despair.

Gnine shrugged again.

“Like I said, girl. You wouldn’t understand. It is a guy thing.”, he said.

“Three!”, Laila finished.

And the three girls heaved, and barely did they manage to budge the backpack with dark red faces. They heaved some more, and they finally raised the pack, very slowly, and with a chorus of exploding breaths, dropped it into the shaft!

“Bloody blazes, that was heavy!”, Bremorel wheezed. “What does Udoorin really have in that pack? I mean, he’s been carrying it around since we left town like his life depended on it.”

“I hope he was out of the shaft.”, Gnine chortled mirthfully. “Or he is in for a very big surprise come crashing on him right about now.”

The sound of something brutally heavy crashing far below echoed up the shaft and everyone winced.

“That must have hurt.”, the little gnome said with a pinched expression.

“Lady Moira?”, Aager growled.

“Right..”, the paladin girl nodded and climbed into the shaft, but with feel down first. With an ear-splitting screech of metal scraping rock, she disappeared in the hole.

“Yep.”, Laila murmured. “Everyone knows we are here.”

“Ranger Laila, if you will? Then Master Gnine, followed by Lady and La Fey. Ranger Morel will follow her and I shall enter last.”, the man in dark leathers listed in his gravelly voice.

Soon enough, Laila, followed closely by the little gnome, the Temple Guardian, the odd girl, Inshala, and Ranger Bremorel slipped into the shaft and disappeared in the dark. Aager gave the collapsed, rubble-filled chamber a final look, and climbed into the shaft..

..and vanished into the dungeons below Themalsar.

Aager dropped out of the shaft and into a blasted mess! He went from zero to full battle mode in the blink of an eye, his sharp shortsword drawn, his wicked-looking dagger out, and he was ready to pounce, but only until he realized the others in the room; their cautious stance, and the general expression of disgust they had on their faces.

The Temple Guardian, Lady Magella had cast her light spell again on her mace and it looked not unlike a torch, except the light was not the flickering, breathing, reddish-yellow flames of an actual torch, but a steady, bright, unwavering light, which was probably why the she-dwarf had her mace raised well above her head, just so it wouldn’t glare into her eyes.

Gnine had also produced his elegant little lantern and he was staring at the charred corpses all around them with a pinched expression. The room they had ‘dropped’ into was perhaps fifty feet wide and forty feet deep and it was in shambles with rubble, broken and splintered furniture, and not a few shattered bones and skulls lay scattered everywhere.

There were crumbled statues of some things unrecognizable at each corner and one on the west wall, a tall, once magnificent-looking double door, now missing one of its wings, the other, barely hanging onto its last remaining hinge. The high rubble right across the double doors, along with the mostly buried archway hinted that there was once a flight of stairs leading down here from the ruined tower above.

All these, however, seemed quite old, perhaps by centuries. The stinking and burnt ‘mess’, on the other hand, seemed more recent..

“Master Udoorin. Report.”, he growled as he sheathed his sword and his dagger.

“Uhhmm.. Not much to report. I see a lot of orcs here. Or at least I think they were orcs, looking at their general shape and size. Well-cooked, though. Someone’s already been through here and left this gruesome stew. I mean, I know I could make a mess when I fight..”, the young man mumbled.

“Understatement of the century.”, Gnine quipped.

Udoorin squinted down at him.

“In a ‘thorough’ kind of way, I meant.”, the little gnome added hastily.

“As I was saying, I know I can make a mess during a fight, but this? This is wholesale destruction.”, he finished with a disturbed grimace.

“I’d say someone dropped a fireball in here, but there isn’t enough overall soot in this chamber. And the bodies appear to be burned where they stood.”, Gnine inserted.

“Do explain, Master Gnine.”, Lady Magella said in disgust.

“Don’t look at me like that, alright? A fireball, in essence, is a blast. As in, there is a lot of fire, true, but there is also a massive amount of high pressure involved. Not unlike a firedamp explosion, really. You are a dwarf, Lady. You should know the effects of firedamp.”, he said carefully.

The Temple Guardian did not reply. But a certain grim expression did appear on her face.

“Suffice to say, there are no signs of an explosion here. These orcs have been burned where they stood. Sure, they have run around and possibly trashed, but none have been blasted up against the walls. Other than being quite crispy, they are all intact. You would have at least a few limps missing in any decent fireball.”, Gnine continued with a surprisingly educational tone.

“The midget’s observations seem surprisingly accurate.”, Bremorel said, looking at the remains of the charred and blackened orcs.

“I resent that.”, the little gnome huffed.

“I counted a total of sixteen orcs. How they burned, I don’t know, nor can I see anything that would be the source of the fire. But I do believe it started up where we entered the shaft. Someone cooked these orcs while they were coming down, which explains the soot and the stink in the shaft, leaving them nowhere to run. Rather cunning, really.. in a demented way.”, she said with a sour face. “I mean, I hate orcs with a passion, but I would still give them a chance to fight back, or even run away, not that there will be much of a fighting chance in an ambush, which I would do, and they wouldn’t be able to run from me no matter how far they went.”

Aager stared around the room, trying hard not to breathe through his nose. Apparently, the smell of burnt orc was indeed, quite nauseating.

“The sneak thief?”, he grated.

“Hard to tell. These orcs have run around quite mindlessly when they dropped out of the shaft on fire. They have trampled over everything. If he has entered here, he will have gone through the double doors. We will pick up his tracks there, Sir.”, Laila answered.

“Very well. Ranger Morel, you will take point and scout.”, Aager growled.

Bremorel frowned with distaste. Taking point in a dark, enclosed, a potentially hazardous dungeon with narrow corridors was not like leading a party in the woods where she could run, circle around her enemies, ambush them, disengage without a moment’s notice, disappear back into the woods, then ambush again.

Down in these stinking dungeons, she would face things that probably had some form of darkvision, as opposed to her, who would have to rely on everything but her eyes. Her cousin, Laila, would have made a much better candidate for taking point in the dark. She was a half-elf and had inherited her mother’s innate racial ability to, not see as if in daylight, certainly, but at least discern things in overlapping shades of gray. But where she, herself, was excellent at swordsmanship, her cousin excelled at archery. As much as she disliked ‘that Aager-guy’s decision, she grudgingly admitted it she was the best choice for the job; she had good senses, better hearing, was stealthy where necessary, and fast on her feet.

The other options were, that either Udoorin would lead, waking everything out there with all the noise he made, and apparently, the big, burly man just did not have any aptitude for ‘quiet’, and he neither had her ranger training nor could he see in the dark. She inadvertently chalked off Lady Moira for the same reasons. Lady Magella could see in the dark, much like all the other dwarves, but placing the only person who was here for her specialized skills to heal on the lead just didn’t make any sense, and sort of defeated the purpose of putting her in the center of the company. For reasons she refused to even frame in her own mind, she didn’t even think of Gnine. But words like, ‘unpredictable’, ‘unreliable’, and ‘squishy’, did unavoidably cross her mind. Inshala seemed to have a natural tendency for stealth. But again, she was not a warrior. And she was still an unknown factor where combat was concerned. That only left ‘that Aager-guy’, and Bremorel got the impression that should he lead, they would likely find a long trail of murdered corpses; the man in dark leathers just did not strike as the ‘sharing’ type to her.

“Will do.”, she said grudgingly.

“Master Udoorin and Lady Moira will follow you, two abreast, and at a distance so as not to crowd you.”, Aager continued.

The young man and the paladin girl nodded.

“Master Gnine and I will be right behind the two of you.”, the man grated from behind his half-mask.

Gnine grimaced.

“The Temple Guardian and La Fey will come next..”, Aager listed.

The Temple Guardian pressed her lips together while the young woman, Inshala, hugged her spear.

“..and Ranger Laila will bring the rear, covering our back and should it be necessary, utilize her excellent archery skills from there.”, he grated in his gravelly voice.

Laila nodded at him in acknowledgment.

Aager paused for a moment before he continued.

“I want it made clear; we are not here for some higher purpose, much like we are not here to right, wrongs. We are here to find our sneak thief, apprehend him, and take him back to Serenity Home. His punishment is not ours to give. That would be the mayor’s job, who will likely summon a magistrate from Arashkan to pass a sentence. I do not want any drama, last-minute hysterics, or lust for vengeance clouding the issue. We shall try to sneak past anything that we can, or through them if we can’t. The idea is to capture our objective. Not die while trying to capture a bloody sneak thief. Anything else we find, see, and observe, we shall report back, and they will decide what to do with them.”, he growled, then looked at everyone, giving them each a hard, crinkled stare. “Have I made myself clear?”

The Temple Guardian cocked an eyebrow at him. The others mumbled an affirmative, except for the young woman, Inshala, who just stared at the man in dark leathers with the blank eyes of someone who understood absolutely nothing.

Very cautiously, and silently, Bremorel led them past the broken double doors, her greatblade held low. Her movement was lithe and she took one long step, then another, always making sure where she put her foot while looking in every direction. It wasn’t a fast going, per se, but sort of a consistent and ‘mile-chewing’ pace, which had likely been a good choice for the young ranger girl; the long corridor behind the shattered double doors was perhaps ten feet wide, fifteen feet high, and full of scattered rubble and more broken and charred furniture, and it turned left, then right, then left again, seemingly for no reason, until it opened up to another room, some fifty feet wide and eighty feet long and ended in a T-junction leading north and south. When the ranger girl turned around the corner to check the north corridor, she came face to face with a group of creatures and she showed no hesitation in cutting the first one down!

They were not easy to see, for most of the light from Lady Magella’s illuminating-whatsit and Gnine’s fancy lantern toy was too far behind and they were ‘buried’ behind the hulking young man, Udoorin, and the broad-shouldered paladin girl, Moira. What little light that did manage to seep all the way to her showed a large, muzzled face, much like that of a dog, yet Bremorel thought there was something a bit too blunt about those muzzles.

Their faces were furry and hackled, and they had ‘spots’ in contrasting tones sprinkled around their arms and shoulders. They stared at her through a set of dark, reddish eyes that reflected the seeping light. Their ears were not pointy like that of a hound but seemed more like the ones a hyena would have. The young ranger girl had never seen a hyena before because there were none in Ritual Forest, nor around Serenity Home, though she vaguely remembered hyenas lived in warmer climates and that they roamed in raiding packs, much like this bunch.

They had clawed hands, strong arms, somewhat hunched backs, and reversely jointed legs, and they held wicked-looking swords, brutal maces, and carried spiked, wooden shields. Some of them even carried sawed-off spears, short, snapping bows, and a quiver of dark feathered arrows, and the one at the front didn’t even get a chance to yelp when Bremorel swung her greatblade and guided it up at a slightly diagonal angle and caught the creature —the gnoll, she suspected it to be, right at the neck.

She didn’t push the blade to behead it. She cut through the gnoll’s artery and opened the larynx, then her blade was out without even grazing its cervical spine. The creature made a wet, gurgling sound as blood gushed out of the sliced gash and its canine riddled jaws. Then, its reddish eyes rolled and it collapsed. Its body jerked and quaked once, then again with its dying breath, and finally went still..

“Gnolls! Engaged!”, she shouted as she made good use of her sword’s own momentum, spun around while ducking low, and slashed open both the legs of the next one, missing the bottom edge of its shield.

Something whistled past her ear and she felt a stinging pain erupt on her right arm. She clenched her teeth and swung wide, spun again, and repeated her wide arc to buy time..

..and something spinning flew past her. Something big.

And with a massive, meaty ‘thud’, a greataxe embedded itself into the chest of one of the gnolls, shattering right through its wooden shield. The gnoll got flung back by the sheer force of the axe and crashed into its pack mates— ⊗

Then Udoorin was there with another of his axes in his large fists. And he rammed right into the gnolls with brute and stupid force. Surely he would be admonished, quite severely, by both Master Aager and Lady Magella, giving both of them a ‘common cause’ for that particular bravado, but the young man was of an odd frame of mind; even though he knew both the ranger girls had had much better, and a lot more extensive training then he’d had, and would likely get severe, verbal abuse for it, giving them a common cause as well, to his way of thinking, one didn’t attack girls. Period.

Neither their race nor their creed mattered where the young man was concerned. You just didn’t attack girls. Besides, both Bree and Laila were some of his oldest friends, dammit.

What would get him into more trouble, later on, would be when he would naively admit to the fact that he hadn’t stupidly ‘rammed’ into the gnolls out of some mindless fear for his friend’s life, but done so with deliberation, even if the reason behind it had been the same, causing Master Aager to want to do murder him, Lady Magella want to mace him, and Bremorel want to throttle him!

⊗ —The four gnolls behind their ‘axed’ comrade got themselves hurled back and they crashed right into the incoming six behind those!

“What the..”, Bremorel spluttered.

“Stay as you were, Ranger Bremorel. You have a cruel arrow in your arm. The Temple Guardian is coming to have a look at it.”, Moira said merrily as she drew her longsword.

“I’d rather not wait for that!”, she replied with a wince as pain bit into her arm.

The paladin girl grinned at her, then she ran past her and started cutting at the gnolls.

An arrow caught one of the gnolls at the very back, right in its snarling muzzle. It grunted once, let loose a choked, coughing sound, and dropped, as another long shaft suddenly pinned the one standing next to it onto the wall.

Two brilliant sparks zapped right past Moira, who had raised her shield to defend herself from a spear that came flying at her. The spear smacked against the paladin girl’s tall shield and shattered, but not without leaving a dent.

The gnoll who’d just cast the spear yelped as a pair of tiny, blazing holes appeared in its padded armor. It made a snarling sound, pulled out a wicked-looking axe, and charged —only to lose its head when the big, burly man got up and swung his own axe in a wide circle as the gnoll tried to brush past him. Moira took a few more steady steps, pushing towards the young man, her shield up like a steel barrier, protecting herself and those behind her while she slashed at the somewhat concussed and dazed gnolls that had been knocked back by Udoorin, and then, the two were standing side by side, one cutting the remaining gnolls with massive, savage heaves while the other gutted them with swift, easy lungs.

Soon enough, the fight was over, with Laila sending a few more arrows while Gnine helped himself to another volley of sparkling, fist-sized bolts of fire.

Inshala had come to stand right next to the wounded ranger girl, and she was making odd, soothing sounds, wanting very much to touch her, possibly to comfort her, but she was either too shy or was simply unable to overcome her resident fear of humans.

Aager had watched the slaughter, looking for any openings he could exploit, but apparently, the young man and the paladin girl had the front line pretty much covered and Laila, along with the little gnome, Gnine, had either killed or hammered the ones at the back.

And when the fight was over, he had nodded with grim satisfaction as he too, came to stand next to Bremorel and stared silently down at her with his dark eyes, lost inside his hood.

“Clear.”, the big, burly man rumbled as he pulled off the greataxe he had hurled and stared down at the dog-like creatures sprawled all around him with some fascination, now that they were all dead.

“Clear.”, Lady Moira confirmed, though with less fascination but more cheer..

 

• • •

 

“Sit still, little Morel.”, scowled the Temple Guardian. “I believe we had already talked about you taking silly risks. Charging headlong into a dozen, well-armed gnolls was not a wise choice on your part. I guess we will just have to revisit that speech, won’t we?”

“No we don’t!”, the ranger girl said hastily. “I did not charge them at all, Lady, I swear!”

“Ah, but we should. And you shouldn’t be swearing at all, little Morel. It is very unbecoming for a young girl, and a ranger.”, the she-dwarf said sweetly, though the storming expression on her face did contradict her tone.

“But.. I really did not charge them! I turned around the corner, and they were there. I had to make a choice between taking advantage of their surprise, or letting them get their act together.”, Bremorel objected as she made a whimpering sound when the she-dwarf carefully touched the arrow shafted on her forearm, close to her shoulder.

“That so?”, Lady Magella said, cocking an eyebrow at her.

“If anyone charged, it was Udoorin!”, the ranger girl blurted.

“Now, that was low, Bree..”, Udoorin mumbled while holding his left wrist. His stupendous charge, apparently, hadn’t been quite flawless. “..and it is clearly snitching.”

“Better you get the speech than me.”, Bremorel tried to snicker but could only grimace as another jab of pain stabbed into her arm when the Temple Guardian carefully tugged at the arrow.

“No use, Lady.”, she said through clenched teeth. “The arrow is barbed. Crafted so for maximum damage and pain, and it’s clearly working. You are going to have to cut open the wound wider to remove it.”

Lady Magella gave her a very steady gaze.

“How brave of you, little Morel.”, she said angrily.

“The other option is, you pulling the arrow out, along with half the muscles there. I would rather suffer a bit more and keep the arm.”, Bremorel whimpered.

“Do it.”, Aager growled at the Temple Guardian, without taking his eyes from the ranger girl.

And now the she-dwarf released her anger on him. The man in dark leathers, however, was still staring at Bremorel.

“Perhaps you would like to cut open her arm, then, Master Aager?”, Lady Magella flared.

“Better, that I do.”, Aager agreed, then slowly drew out, not his wicked-looking dagger, but a slender knife. “Seeing as slicing open wounds is not like cutting vegetables.”

“Well, excuse me!”, the she-dwarf spluttered.

“Ranger Laila. Please hold Ranger Morel down and keep her from moving, if you will.”, the man in dark leathers growled as he knelt next to the ranger girl.

Laila came over, put her bow down, and very carefully, she wrapped her arms under her cousin’s and locked them in place, then watched Aager with blazing eyes.

“Bet you are going to enjoy this.”, Bremorel grated through gritted teeth.

“That would be; ‘bet you are going to enjoy this, Sir’, Ranger Morel.”, Aager replied.

“Perhaps I should do it.”, Laila said grimly.

“Perhaps you would want to be responsible for your cousin’s death, should something go wrong and you cut more than you should, Ranger Laila?”, the man in dark leathers growled.

Laila shut up.

Aager did a quick, lateral motion and cut the arm of the ranger girl’s shirt at its shoulder seems. With another slice, he shredded it down to the lodged shaft without ever touching or moving the arrow. Then, carefully, he pulled what remained of the arm, and the sleeve of the shirt off and stared at the ugly hole, and the brutal shaft.

“The arrow has nicked the bone, but not lodged in it. This will hurt, Ranger Morel. I suggest you brace yourself.”, he growled.

“So nice seeing your tender side.”, Bremorel hissed through her gritted teeth as tears of pain ran down her pinched face. “Let’s get it over with.”

The man in dark leathers gave the young woman a barely discernible look, and even though he found her pig-headed attitude to be tiresome, he did silently appreciate the girl’s courage and brevity. There was a barbed arrow sticking out of her arm, likely grinding against her humerus, and was probably buying her nothing less than excruciating pain, yet here she was mouthing him off, rather than crying as she should.

He made a very small, ‘tapping’ sort of motion with his two fingers, making sure no one saw it, and the girl turned her head and looked at her other shoulder as if someone had just tapped it..

..and Aager stabbed the tip of his knife at the base of the arrow, sliced open the wound an inch, and withdrew his blade —in less than a second!

The ranger girl didn’t even get the opportunity to feel the sting of the blade and by the time she turned to look back at her arm, she noticed the deed had already been done and she adopted a surprised expression on her face as she watched large drops of hot blood bubbling out of the cut.

Then the man in dark leathers kept his promise..

Bremorel sucked in a breath full of excruciating pain that zigzagged up and down her arm, zapped her through her brain, and cramped all the way down to her toes as Aager bent the shaft towards the cut he’d sliced open and ‘took’ the barbed arrowhead out, rather than pulling or tugging at it. The world still went white, then black for the young ranger girl as she let loose a lung-full gasp and she was sweating profusely when her cousin lay her down. She pulled out her own blanket from her backpack and spread it over her cousin.

“My work here is done, Temple Guardian. She is all yours.”, Aager growled, paused for a moment, then added, “There will be no scolding today, Lady. The ranger has earned her peace. Her reaction to immediate danger was appropriate as it presented an unprecedented advantage which she utilized excellently and bought time for young Udoorin, Lady Moira, Master Gnine, and Ranger Laila to get here. Together, the company has managed to down a dozen gnolls, creatures most here have never encountered before, and in under two minutes.”

Lady did not say anything as she tenderly took the young girl’s arm, closed her eyes, and started murmuring some prayers. It took a while and Laila, Udoorin, Gnine, and Moira watched in silence as the oozing hole in Bremorel’s arms bubbled a bit, squirted some dark blood, then slowly gathered in on itself and sort of ‘melted’ together, as odd as that sounded.

“You are a miracle worker, Temple Guardian.”, Moira said in a hushed tone.

“Yeah, and awesome too!”, Udoorin blurted. “That was amazing, that was!”

Gnine snorted.

Lady Magella’s face went a little red, though she did look tired.

“Thank you, Lady.”, Laila said solemnly as she scooped up her downed cousin and hugged her close to herself, all wrapped in her blanket.

“How long will she be down, Temple Guardian? This is not a good spot to set up camp.”, Aager growled. “We must move.”

Lady pressed her lips together.

“You are right.”, she conceded after a while. “We can’t stay in this juncture. We don’t know what is at either end of these corridors. We do, however, know the gnolls came from the north end. It is possible they have friends there. I suggest we go south. As for little Morel, health-wise, she is fine. But she did lose some blood and must be feeling tired. Healing is a trying effort. Being healed is a different matter altogether. Some feel a moment’s dizziness, others feel grossly fatigued. I am guessing little Morel feels the latter, rather than the former. It would appear she also has trouble accepting the fact that I can heal wounds even though she has seen it happen before with her very own eyes. Perhaps it has something to do with her past and her parents; once something is lost, it stays lost. A cumulatively sad conclusion she subconsciously clings to and can’t seem to shrug off. And she is a rather stubborn girl. Hence, she will stay down until she’s up.”

“I had the same issue too. I couldn’t walk without limping for hours when you first healed me after that Orken sliced open my leg.”, Laila inserted, coming to her cousin’s defense.

“You have had similar losses in your own past too, little Laila. But unlike you, your cousin here actually witnessed the death of her parents. Not something a little girl could easily get over. And until she learns to make peace with her losses she will likely carry that particular scar to her grave. Poor girl.”, the she-dwarf said grimly as she pulled out a bit of old rag, wiped the blood off her hands, and got up.

“I may help ease her rest. I think.”, came a soft, hushed, and shy voice, and Inshala flinched when Lady Magella, Laila, and Aager turned to stare at her.

“Would you?”, Laila asked her.

“I.. I do not know if it will work for her. I know it worked on me when I was beaten. It helped ease the pain from the sticks and blurred the bad memories. At least for a while.”, she said, staring down at her own feet.

“Do it. Please?”, Laila almost pleaded.

“I.. I can’t do it when everyone is watching and.. listening.. it is.. embarrassing..”, she said, her voice even lower.

“Udoorin. Move the bodies and secure the north corridor.”, Aager growled.

“Why am I moving the bodies?”, Udoorin asked.

“We do not want to fall over them should we have more of them coming at us, young man.”, the man in dark leathers grated.

“Ah, yes, of course.. Makes sense, I suppose.”, the young man mumbled and started dragging the dead gnolls and heaped them next to the walls to sort of make a hole. Then hefted his big axe and turned his back at the company and stood to watch.

“Lady Moira. Secure the south corridor, if you will.”, Aager growled again.

“I shall defend Ranger Bremorel and sister Inshala with my life.”, Moira said as she slammed one iron fist on her breastplate, tightened the straps on her shield, drew her longblade once again, and took a vigilant, ‘en guard’ stance.

“Ranger Laila.. I shall task you to find us a suitable spot for La Fey to do.. whatever she needs to do.. This is not a good spot to be, and it is indefensible.”, the man in dark leathers grated. “Follow the corridor south and see if there are any rooms available. We shall follow you at a slow distance. Should you encounter anything, do not engage. Fall back and warn us.”

Laila’s face paled a bit. She didn’t like this place. Something about the very stones of this dungeon seemed to want to constantly crawl up her skin, and taking point wasn’t usually her job. That had always been her cousin’s because Bree was clearly better than her when it came to destruction at a sword’s reach, and she, herself, was the better when it came to pinning things down with her bow.

Then she looked down at her cousin and pressed her lips together..

“Yes, Sir.”, she said with grim determination, turned around, and with light steps and her longbow half-drawn, she disappeared down the dark corridor..

It is right here, Sir.”, Laila whispered. “There are many such rooms along this particular hall. I believe they were dormitories once, a bit like the ones we got in Serenity Home temple. This one is a bit larger. Perhaps for initiates. Thought you’d want us all in the same room, so I went for size. There are other rooms that were likely studies, mess halls, training rooms, and a congregation hall with a bloody altar. There seems to be nothing left intact in the dormitories and all the books in the rooms have been shredded and burned in heaps, the mess hall is a mess, and the bloody altar has been smashed.”

“Good work, Ranger Laila. You have done commendably.”, Aager growled, earning a surprised expression from the young ranger girl.

She almost said, ‘Thank you, Sir.’, but choked it down.

“Lead the way, if you will. Lady Moira and La Fey are bringing Ranger Morel. We shall wait until she wakes up in the room you have deemed fit for us. Might as well make use of this delay and rest as well.”, he chafed as he started in the direction of the dormitories.

Laila frowned.

“It isn’t her fault she is down, Sir.”, she said a bit sternly. “Not everyone is at ease with their past. And for some, it is harder to get over.”

Aager stopped, slowly, he turned around and faced her.

“Perhaps you think I blame your cousin for her current disposition, Ranger Laila. I do not. And I have not. I fault her only for the things that are not beyond her ability to control, but thinks they are, which is ironic.”, Aager said in his low, gravelly voice. “I do not expect her to fix herself, not because I think she is unsalvageable, but because she has defined herself by her faults. A poor way to spend life restrained and bound by things that are clearly not her fault, nor were they ever, in any way, within her control. You and your cousin, both must see this, and understand it. You must also understand, I may not be your friend but neither am I your enemy. And I do not take some demented pleasure in tormenting either of you. I am sure there are some rare Drashans out there that like to play with their food before they eat it. I am, in essence, just not one of those demented souls.”

Laila pressed her lips together and didn’t say anything else. The man was right, again, dammit..

She led them down the corridor that took several turns and past two junctures, down a flight to broken stairs, and into a pitch dark hallway that was, perhaps, fifty feet wide and over two hundred feet in length, and there were doors, all broken down to splinters, lining each side of the great hall at every fifteen or twenty feet interval.

She passed several of the doors and came to stand next to one and pointed inside.

“This place.. it still smells of sin..”, Lady Moira murmured with a frown as she and the young woman, Inshala, brought Bremorel in and lay her on the ground. “And these rooms.. It was written in very old historical records after the first war that Themalsar trained a whole batch of followers and acolytes he called Death Priests. I believe these rooms are where they were stationed. The amount of death and suffering his Death Priests caused numbered in the thousands. They were also known to have sacrificed many men and women on their altars to appeal and appease their demon masters..”

“That’s just sick.”, Udoorin said with a sour face.

“It was more than sick, comrade Udoorin. They did not merely sacrifice their captives. The depravity of Themalsar and his followers was never made public to prevent anyone else ever getting similar ideas.”, Moira said angrily, making a departure from her merry self.

“They were in the wrong.”, came Inshala’s voice. “Demons are never pleased. And neither are they ever satisfied with Mortals. They only make tools of them, then discard them, for they feel no obligation for them, nor do they feel the need to keep whatever promises they might have given them; what obligation would a monster have for what it believes to be nothing more than food, which is how they always deem Mortals.”, she said somberly.

“They could be powerful allies if carefully controlled.”, Gnine inserted. “There are ways to do that.”

“There are ways to control them, but there is no way to make allies of them, Master Gnine.”, Moira said with rigid fury, a something she had never displayed before. “They always promise what mortals do not have. But Inshala is right. A promise given to food is never a promise to be kept.”

“I do not think it is a good idea to dwell on demons, young Master Gnine.”, Lady Magella said sternly. “This conversation is over.”

“Just saying..”, the little gnome said a bit defensively.

“I said, this conversation is over!”, the Temple Guardian snapped at him.

“Alright. No need to make such a big fuss out of it.”, Gnine mumbled.

The she-dwarf glared at him.

“Master Udoorin, Lady Moira, perhaps you two can take Master Gnine and check all the other rooms and make sure we are the only ones here while La Fey does, whatever it is she needs to do.”, Aager grated to fend off the bickering coming their way. “Ranger Laila, please make sure the stairs are secure also if you will. I shall send Udoorin, Lady Moira, and Master Gnine to keep you company once they finish sweeping the other rooms.”

“Yes, Sir.”, Laila said, but before she left, she reached over and took Inshala’s hand. She gave it a little squeeze of reassurance and smiled at her, then picked up her longbow, and went over to the broken door.

Lady Magella looked at the young woman, Inshala, and noted she was just sitting there, quietly unmoving. She sighed and muttered..

“I suppose I can help guard the stairs as well, then. It is clear nothing will get done without you children getting me involved.”, she said, picked up her shield and mace, and followed the ranger girl out.

And now it was only Aager, the young, unconscious ranger girl, and Inshala left in the room.

The odd girl had checked her hair, making sure her buns and braids were in place and all proper, then sort of patted down her dress, making sure it was dirt and wrinkle-free, and had diligently pillowed Bremorel’s head in her lap. Apparently, she had also ‘mended’ the ranger girl’s shredded shirt at some point, and it didn’t even have bloodstains on it! She was also, at that very moment, staring up at Aager.. quite boldly. Or perhaps she was simply choosing not to show any fear to him, much like one didn’t show fear to dangerous predators.

“I think you should leave, also.”, she told him with the tiniest of frowns.

“I would rather see what you will do to Ranger Morel.”, Aager growled.

“There is nothing to see. Only hear. And.. and I do not want you watching.”, she mumbled.

“Perhaps you wish to hide something and embarrassment is a good excuse for you.”, the man in dark leathers replied with a grin, though it was lost behind his half-mask.

“I do not understand your words. But I see your lack of understanding in mine as well. We make a stupid pair, you and I, for neither of us understands the other.. And I see your mistrust in me also, even though I have done nothing but tell you the truth, always. Perhaps you think I hide things. I do. Yet you hide things from others yourself.”, she said, still staring up at him and there was a feral glint in her eyes now.

“I do, do I?”, Aager growled.

The girl stared at him some more, then, very slowly, and discreetly, she reached down to the sleeping girl on her lap, and using only two fingers, she tapped her lightly on her shoulder, then stared up at him again.

Aager blinked!

That little bit of magic he had used to divert Ranger Morel’s attention while he made his incision just to make it easier for her, had been something he had picked up in his earlier days, back when he was still at Drashan, and it was almost impossible to see, let alone pick out among all the heat and the context of the moment.

Yet, this odd girl had noticed it.

Dammit.

No one had noticed it before!

True, it wasn’t much of a magic, really, as fireballs and lightning bolts went, albeit quite a delicate one that require precision and a strong will to maintain steady concentration; a mere mental projection of his own hand, very nearly invisible, that would imitate the hand it was projecting from a limited distance that required line of sight, meaning he could move relatively small objects with it, and as long as it was not heavy, he could pick it up and put it in a container, or even open said container and remove its contents. Hell, he could even pick pockets with it! Not that he had done much of that. Picking pockets had never been Aager’s style, really. He’d always preferred to loot the corpses of his enemies. He couldn’t use a knife or a sword with his projected hand, but he could use it to distract his enemies.. or even a wounded girl by tapping her on the other shoulder.

Aager suddenly came to a vital conclusion that this odd girl was incredibly perceptive.

Inhumanly so..

He wouldn’t have expected young Udoorin to have noticed it. And certainly not such levels of attention from Lady Moira, nor the Temple Guardian. After all, none of the three would know what to look for. But the little gnome, Gnine, had been there, and apparently, he was a wizard of some sort and although he was blatantly ignorant of the world around him, he seemed to have good intuition where magic was concerned. Ranger Laila had been there too, for that matter. And as worried as she had been over her cousin, she was a perceptive girl. Further trained to be so. Yet, while none of them had noticed his little ‘arcane-hand-trick’, this feral girl had. What was more, was that she had opted not to tell the others of her finding. Hell, she hadn’t even voiced her notice, just so she wouldn’t be overheard. She had merely mimicked his deed in a way only he would see and let it go at that, and something told the man in dark leathers that she wasn’t being politically polite with him at all, the way he always had been with everyone around him, but rather being innately, and intuitively considerate of him, as odd as that sounded, even though she clearly disliked him. Enough to pester him at every opportunity by sneaking up to him and whispering into his ear about just how ‘he wasn’t a good person.’

“I.. see..”, he grated.

“No.”, she replied. “You do not. And neither do you understand that which is right in front of you.”

“And that is?”, the man in dark leathers grated.

“You are not a good person.”, she said honestly.

Aager’s face turned black with fury, though, much like his earlier grin, this was also lost behind his half-mask and dark hood. He felt like he had fallen for that one and she hadn’t even crept up to him. She came at him in clear daylight, per se, and still, he had tripped! The corners of his dark eyes crinkled as he pressed his lips together and he was just about to burn her, and her self-righteous attitude, when the expression on her face told him something; that there was absolutely no sense of any ‘self-righteous’ in that face, nor any form of gloat or sneer. Her eyes were wide open, her cheeks had a slightly flushed tint to them, and her tiny, cherry-red mouth had a clear, unhappy shape.

She was just..

Sad.

“I guess I shall have to prove you right and stay, then.”, the man in dark leathers said harshly and his voice sounded not unlike a stone grinder.

And now the odd girl was truly unhappy.

“It was not my intention to provoke you to obstimanse..”, she said, then paused, her face suddenly burning now.

“Obsimance..”, she mumbled.

“Ospinance..”, she said and squirmed where she sat.

“Obs..”, she stuttered in great discomfort and almost in tears now.

“Obstinance?”, the man in dark leathers provided.

“Yes.. That.. Obstimanse..”, she spluttered and she was no longer looking up at him, but staring down in total mortification. “Yet I have. For that, I am sorry. Stay if you will. Or go. You hold a stick and I may not even run away; you have stripped me of my choices. Yet I shall do what I must for it is not for me, but for Ranger Bremorel and she hurts in her dreams.”

She unconsciously touched her buns, making sure they were there, then she cupped the young ranger girl’s face between her slender and delicate hands, closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and began to murmur a song and it was pure, it was simple, it was untamed, and it was beautiful, and it tugged and beckoned him and the young girl sleeping restlessly in her lap as if whispering at them from the very depths of something as vast and green as the Ritual Forest itself..

 

It is time to spend
some time in my silent shrine again,
For I have made Mortal crime
mine and once again.

They came at me with their sticks,
and their stones, and their rakes again.
But did they hurt, with their whips,
marked and marred my dreams again.

I asked my Father, why do men sin the way
they do as He tended my wounds again.
‘Fear not men nor their sins’, he told me,
‘But ‘ware the fools’, thus they are again.

I held up my broken braids and withered
hands and saw the clot on them again.
I gave my care and bought their pain,
why, I wondered, must I live again?

Now I sing this song to dim,
whilst I mend my heart and rise again.
For there is no leaf and there is no life,
to dwell on my scars over and over again.

Natheless to the Great Heavens did I plead,
to best my fears and be whole again.
And did I hope that which sullies I
shall go away, or shall I belong again..

 

..and Aager Fogstep stood where he was, quietly thunderstruck, as the song, its words, its longings, its desires, its desperations, its hopes, and its scars seeped into his very soul and ricocheted in the dark, gaping hole he’d had for a heart as something, possibly fury, and maybe even wrath, collided in defiance against the thing that seeded itself in that very dark and very dead heart for he’d just figured something, then and there, what it was that had bothered him about this odd, and quite off young woman. And just like that, his base, pragmatic instincts kicked in and told him what it was that he had found;

A pair..

..for this young woman’s heart was just as dead as his.

The only difference between her and himself was, where he was ‘content’ with his own dead heart for its lack of empathy and compassion, and hence, ‘unwanted and unwarranted complications’, and to ‘never lose what he never had’, her heart was not thus content, and her only wish was to either ‘go away’, or ‘to belong!’

And the man in dark leathers felt disturbed for the whole idea, however he looked at it, was foolish, childish, idiotic, quite inconceivable.. and very much unprecedented.

He noted, also, that the ranger girl, Morel, had awoken, and she was staring up at the strange young woman, Inshala ‘la fey’ Frostmane, with tears running freely down her face..

..as she mourned, finally, after some fifteen years, and for the first time, for the loss of her mother, and her father, also.

Aager Fogstep had traveled, out of duty, across the vastness of Ritual Forest to capture those responsible for burning, not ‘his’ town, but ‘the’ town he was entrusted, and nothing more.. just to figure he’d had his own dark forest to travel yet, and right under his very nose, much like the ranger girl, Morel had awoken to the fact, just how blank she’d lived, seething and smoldering in her own desolation all these years, and that she would have to look back and make peace with what she beheld before she could look ahead and move on..

..and in the middle of some bloody ruins!

The man in dark leathers, hood, and half-mask had never been a man of High Heavens. Drashans seldom were and that was putting it rather politely. The fact of the matter was, he had never been a man of destinies either. But something told him he was, not quite being prodded for greatness or some higher purpose, but perhaps being told, and not so subtly, that he was being prepared for a long, long journey that would require his all and that there would be consequences too severe to ignore should he fail. He was also being informed that his overtly and religiously pragmatic Drashan senses were going to help him, certainly, but they were not going to be enough, and that he was being given the tools, and the people he would need to get the job done.

The part that defied any form of sense or subtly in the warnings was the part where his comprehension brought one last bit of understanding; that he would also need to change his perspective altogether, for his current ‘ignominious’ stance toward the people around him, as the Temple Guardian had so robustly and quite pompously declared, just wasn’t going to cut it.

And to further add to his frustration, he would also have to prepare those around him as well..

Aager Fogstep did not ‘get’ any of these from the odd woman’s quite personal, and likely very private ‘hymn’, but from how she’d delivered it; there had been a sense of cascading vastness and great, reverberating depth and even an eager ‘egress’, as odd as that sounded, in that song.

An escape from..

Himself?

The man in dark leathers stared down at the young woman, who, even now, was uncontrollably cringing from the tear-stricken and troubled stare of the ranger girl in her lap, and in his grinding voice, he mused..

“So.. Alone is alone..”

 

Here ends Book One of
Whispers; a Cabal
“Serenity And Back”

The Adventures of Aager Fogstep,
rangers Laila Wolvesbane and Bremorel Songsteel,
young Udoorin Shieldheart, Gnine Tinkerdome,
Lady Moira, Temple Guardian Lady Magella, 
the strange young woman, Inshala ‘la fey’ Frostmane,
and the convolutions of men will further unfold in;

Book Two
Whispers; a Cabal
“Themalsar, the Old.”

 

---

When Inshala says, “..you have stripped me of my choices.”, she is referring to the conversation that took place between them in the previous story, The Orken and The Call.