Author's Note: As of posting, this tale is at the same point chronologically as the current main storyline in MAGE SLAYER. Irsa of Makurov was originally going to be the viewpoint character of that book's interludes before I decided to go with Elise instead. The largest reason I cut Irsa from Mage Slayer was because we've already seen Altier Nashal and wouldn't get much new setting-wise from Irsa's story, and part of the interlude chapters' purpose is to go to places the story wouldn't otherwise go. By now, there've been as many Altieri characters in the main story as any other nationality, so Irsa would've been a little redundant. That said, she and her story about fiends will show up again in Book Five, ROYAL ASSASSIN.
Seventh of Steed, 601 NE
Altier Nashal Hinterlands
Two Days Before the Battle of Sandharbor
Spoiler Warning: This tale contains mild spoilers for RUNE KNIGHT and BLOOD RUNNER.
"There's worse than fey out here," Rex said. He kept his voice low so that it wouldn't carry further than the evergreen thicket he knelt within. "Ogre could ruin your day if he don't much like your face, and the goblins here about are touchy after the slaughter over in the Protectorate. You got dryads and naiads, wendigos and spriggans, but not a one of them is half so dangerous as a fiend."
Irsa wrinkled her nose into an incredulous expression. "Hasn't been a fiend 'round Makurov in... Waves, in floundering years. What makes you so sure that's what's killing the herds? Taking those kids?"
"I just know it, and you'd best believe me when I say so."
The foliage concealed the pair within the forest thicket. Rex leaned forward in the brush, letting the stiff brim of his hat push aside brambles as he looked out into the clearing ahead. He'd taken some snow from the ground and put it in his mouth to stop his breath from puffing into the air. A crossbow that seemed too large to be used by a single man was held at the ready in his hands. The weapon seemed closer to a siege engine than personal armament.
There was a lot about Rex that Irsa found unsettling, and nothing she'd seen from him since their first meeting earlier in the day had dissuaded her from thinking so. His eyes were a brown so dark as to be almost black, tilted and narrow in the manner of the Althandi people. His accent was Althandi, too, enunciating each word clearly as if trying to put on airs above the station of a gamesman.
You couldn't really trust Althandi. They had a tendency to get big heads what with being from the first of the Five Kingdoms. Of all the foreigners who drifted through the outpost town of Makurov, Irsa trusted Althandi the least. And Rex Hunter, least of all.
He was a small man, at least by Altieri standards. The Althandi might've called him average. Rex couldn't have stood taller than five and a half feet when Irsa was used to men being over six; she herself had a few inches over him. He was fair-skinned, not as pale as most of his countrymen but still paler than the ruddy complexions most often seen locally. Rex wore a hardened leather cuirass, battered and worn. It might've come from the armory of some northern house, intended for an armsman. It bore scars from hard use, claw marks and gouges. The armor looked ready to fall to pieces, and the man underneath was little better.
Rex was missing half of his left ear. He had a cleft upper lip from a slashing wound. Burn scars marred the right side of his face in a ropey expanse of boiled flesh, he'd lost the tips of his ring and little finger on the left hand, and his neck bore ridged marks from where it looked like someone had tried hanging him. Irsa found herself thinking that enough people and beasts had tried killing Rex that at least a few of them must've had good reason.
He didn't even appear to be that old. Maybe close to forty at the most, but Irsa would've put gold marks on him being younger. There were stereotypes about Althandi that they always looked younger than they really were, but Irsa heard youth in Rex's voice. It was just that he carried himself like a veteran of decades of warfare.
"Put up your hair," Rex ordered. "It'll get you caught up when you need to move."
Irsa frowned. She'd been about to, but now she wanted to leave it down just to spite him. Bowing to practicality, she produced a tie from her pockets and used it to bind her auburn hair into a bun. There was too much of it to get it all under control, so she was left with lengths of it framing her face. Good enough.
"I work best alone," Rex went on. "If I was of a mind to take on help, I'd ask for it, and I'd ask a hunter or a forester. Not a village girl."
It was real hard for Irsa not to roll her eyes, so she didn't bother stopping herself. She held up a clenched fist and flexed her arm to display her bicep. Irsa was awfully proud of her biceps. "Do I look like a village girl?"
"Put that away before you hurt someone. You know what I meant."
"Do I, now?"
"My problem isn't gender. It's experience. Best fiend hunter I ever knew was a batty, old granny from Leyrshore, and she didn't need excessive protein to bring down her marks." He tapped a finger to the side of his head. "She had brains. Outsmarted them. Knew what they would do before they did it, and you don't get there with... admittedly impressive arms. You need to know the fiend to kill it, and you don't know fiends like I do."
"You haven't even proven it is a fiend," Irsa said pointedly. "Half the goodfolk think it's a rabid fangblade."
"Fiends do what they do for a reason. They're cunning, and when you've hunted them as long as I have, you start to be able to feel the cunning behind the things they do. The ones who live long enough to make a nuisance of themselves are just as cunning as men, if not more so. You ever see a fangblade do something like that to its prey? Even rabid beasts eat what they kill, and they don't carry off shepherd boys and little girls without leaving a drop of blood behind. Or leave tracks like the ones your headman showed us. It weren't no big cat."
"Fair enough, but just so you know, Altieri call village leaders the mayor. Not the headman. Your way sounds like an executioner."
Rex looked her square in the eye and didn't blink. "Who else would carry out justice but the village leader?"
Irsa honestly didn't know what to say to that. She turned away from Rex and peered out into the clearing. The trick with putting snow in your mouth was something she'd heard of but never tried before. She stuffed some in, not wanting to be the one to give away their position and get nagged at for it. It was uncomfortably cold, but the snow carried a faint flavor of juniper from the undergrowth, so it wasn't so bad.
"Why you?" Rex asked in a low growl.
"Pahrahn?"
"You don't need that much snow. Why'd the mayor insist I bring you?"
Irsa spat out three-quarters of her mouthful. "It's dangerous out here, like you said."
"I've been in the Altieri hinterlands before."
"Experience, remember? No one from outside the kingdom has spent near as much time in these woods as I have, and I know how to handle myself in a scrap."
Rex passed an eye over the chain hauberk covering her shoulders and upper torso. Her padded shirt underneath it wasn't as finely made as an armsman's, nor as protective as a knight's gambeson. Makurov wasn't exactly on the beaten path, so the only armor in the outpost was what could be cobbled together from scraps. Irsa had about the most complete set of gear out of anyone, and even hers was missing some key items. Other than the hauberk, there was nothing guarding her arms. No gauntlets, no helmet, and her heavy boots were about the only protection she had below the waist. Come to think of it, Irsa wasn't much more protected in her armor than out of it.
"That makes you what?" Rex asked. "The town guard?"
"Nothing official." Irsa stopped herself from adding it wasn't for a lack of trying to convince the mayor. "I just live here, is all. Not much else I can do, so I lend a hand when there's trouble."
"Then join the legions like a normal person."
"The legions don't come out this way," Irsa said with some heat. "They didn't even before the civil wars started. Now the White City's armpits deep in dragons, goblins, and spirits know what else, so it's not like we're gonna start seeing the crown's protection all of a sudden."
Rex curled his lip and dropped the subject. Fortunate for him, because it was a touchy one for Irsa. Of course she'd rather enlist in the legions, but what point would there be to it with the kingdom turning on itself? Fight for one Altieri house against another Altieri house? All with the real possibility that the house she fought for wouldn't exist by the end of the year or even turn to banditry before it collapsed. Become an armsman, and she'd most likely be sent right back to Makurov but to rob it instead of protect it.
All she'd accomplish by leaving Makurov would be to remind the squabbling nobles that it existed. As things were, it was better for the town to be forgotten.
Irsa exhaled, wishing to banish her frustrations as easily as air. If she was being honest with herself, her problems began long before House Karst and Rodrik's Rebellion broke a once great kingdom into five dozen little fiefdoms. Her problem was that the dream she held sacred for as long as she could remember was out of reach, and that dream was never going to come true, now less than ever. An orphan without a family name would never become a paladin.
A family name meant everything in Altier Nashal. A name would tie her to a lineage, would have been written on a letter introducing her to a knight, led to her being accepted as a squire, maybe even pave the way towards an education whether through an apprenticeship or from a university. An education meant access to the magocracy, learning magic, becoming an arcanist, and only spell-wielding knights were called paladins.
But Irsa was eighteen now, when squires usually began serving their knights at ten. She was come of age and out of time. All chances for the future she wanted had been spent before she ever got the chance to take them, because Irsa of Makurov lacked a name.
She gave her head a shake, bringing her back to the moment. "What sorta fiend you think it is?"
Rex grimaced. "Fiends don't have 'sorts', girl. Been at this for years and rarely saw one anything like another. Each one is birthed in its own way. Sometimes, unfortunate beast wanders into a ley line intersection and gets caught up by the ether leaking in from the spirit world. Could be it runs afoul of one of the incorporeal kinds of fey, and its body gets twisted up just like a wendigo. Other times, nasty type of arcanist tries their hand at biomancy."
"Men make these things?" Irsa asked, incredulous.
"Not always on purpose, but often enough there's some fool or another fancies himself a flesh forger. Fiends that type makes are usually the worst. Designed to be as dangerous as the madman what dreamed it up could make it."
"Waves," Irsa swore under her breath.
"Few fiends live long after they're made," Rex continued. "See, they're mutations, and living things don't often take well to having their parts jumbled about in ways they weren't meant to go. Fiends keel over soon after they start walking, more often than not. Then there's the ones what have a beating heart, working lungs, and a brain smart enough to keep all that running. Those are the ones what need a fiend hunter to hurry along their demise."
Irsa was losing interest. She hadn't come to listen to lectures. "If you're trying to impress me, do it by proving the thing we're hunting is what you say."
Rex's lip curled. "You're not listening. I'm not saying what it is. I'm telling you there's no knowing until we find it. Not for certain. Right now, we're looking for signs of its habits. What it does when it's not killing. If it ever stops killing."
"And if we catch sight of the thing itself?"
Rex sucked on his teeth for a moment before answering. "Depends. Maybe I take my shot. Maybe I come up with some other plan. Best not to make judgements before you know everything."
That didn't sit well with Irsa. "Better to make a snap call in the moment, I guess?"
"A swift decision weighted by experience is of greater worth than a deliberate one made in ignorance. One is far likelier to bring misfortune than the other."
It bothered Irsa that she found the wisdom in what he said.
They'd been crouching in their hunter blind for nearly two hours at that point. Irsa's thighs were starting to cramp, and she longed to stand up to give them a stretch. She wasn't about to and get called out for it by Rex. Not until the floundering know-it-all made the first move.
It came as a relief when Rex at last went fully alert. Irsa saw his pupils contract as he focused on something up ahead. His muscles didn't tense so much as they just readied themselves to be used, and the tip of the bolt in his crossbow raised by half an inch.
Eyes darting between him and the clearing ahead, Irsa didn't make a sound. She leaned forward in hopes of catching sight of what had caught his attention.
It came and passed more quickly than she expected. In the span of five heartbeats, something large— something more massive than she'd have ever imagined to find out in the woods— thumped through the knee-deep snow drifts within the clearing. It broke through the branches of evergreens as it entered and still more as it left again, passing right by Irsa and Rex's hiding spot.
Irsa caught only a brief glimpse, her view of the creature hampered by both the brush and the fact that it'd been too close for her field of view to encompass all of it. She'd seen enough to catch an impression of scales and tufted fur around knees and ankles. Four legs with heavy hooves like obsidian, thick muscles, and it panted with deep and guttural breaths at each step it took in its swift trot.
What Irsa caught even more strongly was the biting scent of brimstone it left in its wake.
After five minutes and the last sounds of the creature's heavy footfalls had faded from hearing, Irsa turned to look wide-eyed at Rex. The fiend hunter was unmoving, his eyes unblinking.
"Waves and tides," Irsa breathed. She almost laughed out of relief that she was still alive.
"Aye," Rex mumbled. "Not one to swear by water spirits, but waves, indeed."
"What in the name of tides was that thing?"
"No zoologist, but I think it was a moose."
"I've seen moose. Waves, I've eaten moose. That weren't no moose. Never seen a moose with scales."
"I said it was a moose. Started off as one, at least. Isn't one anymore. It's a fiend now."
Irsa was suddenly grateful for the stinking salve made from pine tar and bear urine he'd had her slather all over her clothes. Moose had sharp noses, and if the fiend really had started off as a moose, it would have likely been able to sniff them out when it passed so close to them. Waves, but it'd been inside of three paces at its nearest. She could have practically reached out to touch it.
"I can't help but notice you didn't shoot it," Irsa whispered.
Rex looked down at his giant crossbow as if remembering he had it. "Would've hurt it. Don't think hurting it is enough."
Irsa nodded. It wouldn't have been the best idea to give the thing a sting while they were practically under its feet. The two of them would've been stomped by its hooves long before Rex could ready another shot.
"Alright," she said, "I'm convinced. Fiend. How'd you know it'd come by here?"
Rex licked his lips, visibly calming himself from the adrenaline spike. "It's got patterns. Each attack its made around your village so far has been before evening. All in different parts of the forest, but all the tracks its left have been to and from the same direction. Knew it was using this game trail on its way in and out of the foothills."
Irsa furrowed her brow. It had a lair, and she was starting to put the puzzle together.
"Too much snow," Rex went on. "Falls regularly even in the spring and covers the tracks. Wouldn't be easy to track it."
"Ah," Irsa whispered. "But now we have a fresh one."
Rex glanced at her. "Aye," he said with a heavy sigh. "Only one problem."
"How's that?"
He hefted his crossbow as he stood. "Not sure this peashooter is big enough to do the job. Looks like I'm gonna have to be clever."
Rex went to the gouge the fiend's passing made in the snow. He bent over the depressions and touched at stains of red within the hoof prints.
"Fresh blood," Irsa observed, looking over his shoulder. "Please tell me its goat."
"Seems so, if patterns hold. Maybe cow. Human blood is darker, so rest easy. I don't think it killed any people this time."
Irsa frowned. "This time, but it's killed before. Waves take the fiend, but I knew everyone it's taken. All of them were just children."
"Easy," Rex muttered. "No saying just yet it's killed anyone."
"Are you actually telling me to keep hope? I told you, Hunter, I'm no village girl. Don't try sugarcoating things."
Rex fixed her with a glare. "Hope don't factor into it. If anything, hope those little ones are dead, because I wager that'd be a kinder fate. Fiends aren't animals anymore. They're monsters. There's no telling why it's snitching up children, and you'd best believe it's not for reasons you want to know." He stood and pointed at Irsa's face. "I told you already, fiends do things for a reason. The arcanists who make them are mad, but the fiend isn't. We just don't know the whys of what it does yet."
"There's a lot you say you don't know for someone what acts like he knows everything."
Rex scoffed. "Knowledge is all well and good, but wisdom tells you what you don't know. When the stakes are this high, you need both."
That appeared to be all he was willing to say. Rex turned his attention downward and set off to follow the long tracks in the snow. Sighing, Irsa followed after him.
He talked about not knowing enough about the fiend, then he went after it anyway. His actions didn't coincide with his claims. That bothered Irsa. It bothered her terribly. She didn't like hypocrites.
"What's the plan, then? How you mean to kill it?"
"Don't know yet."
"You don't know?"
"Still thinking."
Irsa kept a tight grip on the old half blade she wore on her hip. It was a nobleman's weapon scavenged from some battlefield or another. It'd languished in the mayor's attic for decades before he offered it to Irsa when she insisted on being the outpost's protector of sorts. Irsa kept it as maintained as she could, but steel aged, and she suspected the noble who first wielded the sword hadn't been the most diligent about keeping his weapon ready for battle.
Should have brought a spear, Irsa thought. A boar-hunting pike for if the fiend charges. Waves take me, but I wouldn't want to fight a regular moose with a sword. Let alone a fiendished up one.
Ah, now a full blade. That was what Irsa wanted. Not even a Hell-spawned moose could take a good swing from a weapon like that and stay standing. Would be next to pointless having one, though. It took a paladin, juiced up and flush with magic, to wield a sword that big properly.
Irsa shook her head to clear it of fantasies. She wasn't a paladin, and she needed to accept that she never would be. But still... Irsa would have given anything to ride out after this fiend on a Gaulatian guerrier, full blade in hand, etherlight pouring from the runes engraved on her plate armor.
"Sulfur," Rex muttered.
Irsa snapped back to reality. Waves, but she needed to stop drifting off into daydreams like that. "Say again?"
"That scent. The fiend. It smelled of sulfur."
"Aye. Brimstone. You didn't smell it before?"
Rex's lip curled yet again. "My nose isn't what it could be."
"I take it all fiends don't smell like that?"
He shook his head. "No. Not that I've seen."
"So what's the reason this one does? It breathe fire?"
Rex's mouth pulled taut. "Well, it might."
"Or... Waves take me."
He looked to her in question.
"Or the fiend don't smell like sulfur. Its home does."
Rex's lips parted, and his eyes widened.
Irsa quickened her pace to get in front of him. She followed the trampled path in the snow, and her nebulous thought began taking form into something salient. "Hot springs. The forests have plenty of them, specially near the foothills. Lots of rocky terrain. Lots of caves. That's where this fiend is going."
"Don't let your imagination run wild, girl," Rex warned as he stepped quicker to keep pace with her. "Not every monster lairs in a cave."
"This one does," Irsa said, resolute. "That's what you've been telling me all along, isn't it? You don't know, so you take what you see to put it together, right?"
"Aye."
"The fiend comes out before evening, but not to feed. It doesn't eat the livestock it kills."
Rex pulled up alongside her and kept his eyes on her face. He was listening.
"But it kills them anyway. What's the reason?"
"Don't know yet."
"I know," Irsa declared. "Something you need to understand about shepherd boys, they're as brave as they come. They keep watch on their herd from close by. The goats know where to find them. If a wolf or fangblade comes, the goats scurry to whatever tree or blind the boy's using, where his bow or sling can protect them. Don't matter if its a whole wolf pack or a medhved bear, the beast's gonna take some lumps if it wants to make a meal out of the herd. Don't matter how big it is, they'll fight it off with all they have. Shepherds are the bravest cusses in Altier Nashal."
Rex breathed out when he understood. "The fiend only kills the livestock to draw out the shepherd. It comes for them, not the herd. But why a cave?"
"The smell. Brimstone comes from the steam off hot springs. It builds on the surrounding rocks, but if the creature smells that strongly of it, there has to be a lot. More than what would come from a spring in the open air. That means a cave."
"Winds and storms," Rex murmured, swearing by his homeland's spirits.
"Glad you mention, because wind's gonna be what lets us kill the bastard." Irsa pointed ahead towards where a little brook appeared through the trees ahead. It flowed swiftly down from a hillside, its banks clear of both snow and vegetation.
Rex looked at the stream with a frown on his face.
"No plants grow by that water, and it's still hot enough to drive back the snow. I know this brook. Everyone round here knows not to try drinking from it until you put it through a boiler. Has enough sulfur to be poisonous."
"Aye," Rex nodded. "So we can follow that to the hot springs, but what's that gotta do with wind?"
"Your nose really isn't what it could be," Irsa chuckled. "Be glad for it, because my eyes are watering right now for all the brimstone in the air."
Rex sniffed, then shrugged.
"We're downwind, Goodman." Irsa left the trail the fiend left behind and started climbing the hillside, following the stream bed. "I know these woods. The fiend's taking the long way. Things with hooves can't climb so well, and it's no goat. Big as it is, it has to circle around and come to the hot spring caves from uphill, the direction the wind's coming from. I'll give us favorable odds we can reach the caves before it does if we follow the brook. It won't scent us before we want it to. It won't know we're there waiting for it until you've put a crossbow bolt through its brain."
Rex picked his way up the hillside after her. "Don't get too eager. We might just blunder in on the thing just as its settling down for the night. I lost my ear startling a sleeping fiend and don't much like the idea of repeating the mistake."
"Then stop yapping and move faster," Irsa scolded.
Rex started grumbling under his breath, but Irsa caught something that sounded like "too old for this shite" in the mix.
It was a long climb. Before the end, they'd both needed to fall to all fours to make their way up steep grades and gravelly escarpments. This terrain had little in the way of top soil, and that meant fewer trees to use as concealment. It left Irsa feeling a little exposed.
Rex hissed to draw her attention. She looked back to him and saw him aiming his crossbow to the east. Irsa followed his aim until she saw how the treetops about a quarter league off were swaying against the wind. Something large was moving underneath the canopy, and it was moving fast. The trees further away started swaying while the nearer ones fell still.
"It's alright," Irsa said quietly. "It's going the way I said it would."
Rex didn't lower his crossbow, and his teeth chewed anxiously at the cleft in his lip. "Don't much like being this close and in the open."
"We're ahead of it. It's moving quick, but it's got a lot longer way to go."
Rex didn't move from his spot.
"If it knew we were here, what would it do?"
"If it saw a threat?" Rex asked. "It'd end the threat. Aye, as exposed as we are, its best bet would be to charge. Even cunning fiends fall prey to bloodlust when it sees a hunter."
"So, you trust me yet? The plan's a good one."
Rex lowered his crossbow. "Aye, lass. I trust you."
Irsa was pleased that she'd graduated from being called "girl". Less pleased that it'd taken this long.
"I have to point out," Rex muttered as they resumed their climb, "this plan of yours don't say much about what we do once it catches up to us at these caves."
Irsa was also pleased that he now spoke of "us" rather than "I". She shrugged and tried unsuccessfully not to smirk. "Don't know."
"You don't know?" Rex growled.
"Still thinking."
"Winds take Altieri girls," he groused. "More bicep than brains."
"Yeah, yeah, but you'll be grateful for these biceps if you bungle your shot."
"I don't bungle," Rex promised.
Half a league and three quarters of her stamina later, Irsa reached the top of her current hillside. The brook flowed down the way she'd come, out of the wide mouth of a limestone cave. The broken remnants of stalagmites and stalactites gave it the appearance of a hungry beast's maw. One cave, but Irsa knew there to be dozens of similar ones spread across these hills.
Rex crept towards the cave with his crossbow at the ready.
"Hold on," Irsa whispered harshly. "No saying this is the one we're looking for."
Rex gestured with his weapon towards the broken rock formations lining the cave mouth. "Those say enough. Limestone don't break off from the wind so easily."
Irsa blinked as she looked over the stalagmites once again. They hadn't simply fallen over. Something with enough force to sunder stone had broken it in half at where it was thickest. That didn't happen without help.
"Fiend's strong," she observed.
"Goes without saying," Rex snapped. "Now you moving or staying out here?"
Irsa pulled her half blade free of its scabbard. She turned around to face the outside as she backed into the cave, keeping a watch for anything that might follow them in.
They had to have beat the fiend here. She was sure of it. But, Rex had said that fiends were often made by men with a mad purpose. It was possible that whatever purpose that might've been required more than one fiend.
Before she'd gone more than two steps into the cave's mouth, Irsa nearly doubled over from the stench of it. The air was heavy with corruption and the stink of death. It cloaked and overshadowed even the strong scent of brimstone that billowed out of the cave like a cloying miasma. There was more to the stink, a putrid scent. Irsa recognized it immediately as she'd earned her room and board in Makurov more than once by cleaning out latrines. Human waste, and it had the horrid undertones that accompanied sulfur poisoning.
"Lass," Rex called in a harsh whisper, "get over here. I found your shepherds."
Irsa felt her stomach roil, and it was from more than just the horrid stench of the cave. The scent of death on the air could only mean corpses. She'd told Rex not to sugarcoat the truth, but she'd regardless allowed herself to hope that this hunt might have a happy ending. She turned and followed Rex's voice into the gloom of the cave.
Inside, brightly lit by the setting sunlight pouring in from the mouth, the hot spring steamed near to boiling. Altieri hot springs were often a favorite place to bathe, but this one would turn anyone foolish enough to hop in into soup. It sat in the center of the limestone chamber within a natural cistern of rock, water spilling over the side to become the brook that flowed down the hillside. Between the steaming heat and the stink, the cave wasn't far from what Irsa thought Hell must be like.
Rex stood beside a bundle stuck to the cave wall by what appeared to be slimy-encrusted ropes. As Irsa neared, she saw that it was a tiny, pale body. He'd been no more than ten years old.
"Olaf," Irsa whispered, an immediate wave of grief coming over her. He'd been a lively boy who'd been so proud to at last be entrusted with a herd of his own.
She looked past Rex to see more bodies secured to the walls by these foul bindings. Seven children in total, five boys and two girls. Waves take the fiend, it had hunted those most precious to Makurov.
"Even this nose can smell the rot," Rex muttered. "Spect it comes from those over there."
Irsa furrowed her brow. She looked in the direction Rex had nodded to in indication. On the side of the cistern opposite the cave's mouth, there was a pile of detritus. She saw bloated flesh and the glint of metal. Dead men, armsmen by the looks of them.
No. Knights.
Irsa picked her way to the bodies. Not just knights, but at least three of them had been paladins. One was crushed, his white armor all but smashed flat as something massive had fallen on him from above. What the man had once been was easily identified by the diabolic metal horns on the helmet, as well as the black shroud covering the face.
An inquisitor.
The others were more difficult to identify. One might have been a hand knight, judging by the delicate chainmail gauntlets. The wizard looked to have been on the wrong end of an inferno. The third paladin had heavier gauntlets. No runes on his plate armor, so not a rune knight. He would've been a song knight, will knight, or blossom knight.
The last paladin wasn't as severely mangled as the other. He was big as an Altieri, but his hair was black and the one eye not covered by a patch had an epicanthic fold like an Althandi. A half-breed. Nothing else about the half-rotten corpse served to identify him, only the black and violet selkie crest on his soiled cloak.
"House Valdar," Irsa said. "These were from the First Legion. Knight-General Kastus' men."
"Look at that one-eyed fella's neck, lass. Weren't no fiend did that."
Irsa grimaced as she moved the dead paladin's head to give it better light. He'd been killed by a slit throat. That or the stab wound in his good eye. Done in by a knife.
"Goblins kill this way," she said.
"Goblins don't mistreat the dead this way," Rex said. He was panting as he worked at something, but Irsa didn't turn from the fallen knight to see what he was doing. "They give their enemies pyres, or leave them as they lie if they're really good and hoggled off."
Irsa nodded grimly. "Fiend found the bodies and brought them here for some reason?"
"Or something else did. Those've been here a lot longer than this fiend's been causing a fuss."
Another mystery, but one Irsa didn't feel responsible for solving. Valdar swine didn't have a high place in her estimation after they started this civil war. Irsa stood and turned towards Rex. He was using a knife to cut Olaf free of the bindings.
"Better wait until the fiend's dead for that, Goodman," Irsa sighed.
He looked at her as if she were daft. "Boy might not last that long. These mites need help now."
She felt her flesh prickle at that statement. "Waves, he's alive?"
"A bit."
Irsa rushed to his side. She took Olaf's face in hand and said his name.
A tiny whimper came out of him.
"Waves and floundering tides," Irsa hissed.
The scent of human waste. The children were left bound with nowhere to answer nature's call but stuck to the wall. Some of them would've been here for days. Olaf had been taken more than a week ago. How were any of them still alive?
"It's tending them," Rex whispered, "and not well. It's watering them from the hot spring. These poor mites got sulfur poisoning. Even I can smell the sick in their shite."
"It's keeping them alive," Irsa said under her breath. "Why?"
"Don't think we want to know that."
"Fair enough. Is that knife getting any headway or do you nee..."
She cut off when she heard hoof beats echoing through the cave. Rex met her eyes and they both looked towards the cave mouth. A red sun continued to shine in through the opening, and the sound of heavy hooves was getting louder.
Irsa swallowed. "Hide?"
"Aye, lass. Hide."