"Servant of Empire" - Ch 9

Sered and the others got the rest of the human prisoners freed, and arranged what they could while Wynter tended to the weak and injured. Within an hour, they had begun marching back home with our promise to find the source of this raiding party. Rendo and I brought the mounts forward while Nix scrounged the dead giants for useful equipment or valuables.

Nix was almost giddy when Rendo and I pulled up alongside her. She had unfolded a small knife kit that for the life of me resembled either a chef’s collection or that of a very sophisticated surgeon or torturer. I spent a few moments contemplating that, how a subtle twist here or even the changing of the inflections of a phrase draw such a fine line between the profession of saving lives and ending them in the most excruciating fashion.

In this particular case, she was retrieving bits of giant and sticking them into a myriad of small jars. Blood, hair, cuticles, and several parts I’m sure came from the moist interior of our recently felled opponent were in evidence here.

She noticed me watching and stood up straight. Her hands were smeared with blood and thicker things.

“This is all really rather valuable, do you have any idea what the blood of a giant is worth in alchemical and mystical circles?” She waved with the blade of a small skinning knife as she said this.

I shook my head in the negative.

“It’s a treasure unto itself, really. Potions, enchantments for prowess or fortitude, these things require natural sources on which the magic gets a foothold. To say acquiring it is dangerous is an understatement, and of course I’ll share the profits.”

I held up my hand. “It’s good, I understand. I get excited about things too.” I looked down at the body. “Different things.”

She smiled briefly before turning back to her prize. “I’ll be a while longer, can you please tell the others?”

I nodded, and unhooked a waterskin from the saddle of her horse, tossing it onto the ground near her. “Might want to wash up a bit when you’re done. You look quite…grim.”

She turned her hands over, as if noticing the gore for the first time. “Oh yes, yes yes.”

I continued on, leading the train of mounts over to where Sered and Wynter were standing, talking among themselves. Rendo nodded to me and pulled away on his pony. “I’ll go see if there are any patrols between us and that,” as he said this, he pointed ahead to the threads of smoke in the distance. “It looks a day or so off still, but a little early scouting never hurts.”

“It does if you get caught,” Thinking about forward reconnaissance always bothered me, despite my wartime experience being behind me.

“Yeah, yeah. Let me do my job,” he made a show of false indignation for me.

As I reached the others, Wynter looked up from their conversation. I dismounted and walked over.

“Rendo is scouting ahead,” I offered.

“The way ahead looks to be about another day if we follow the track,” Sered said. “We were just deciding whether we wish to take the track or detour away and approach from another angle.”

I was still feeling mildly uneasy about what Nix was doing behind me. Happily, it seems I was able to maintain my composure as I stood with Sered and Wynter. Either that or they simply looked past my discomfort.

Sered glanced up at me.

“How’s the ribs?” was all I could manage to ask.

His gaze flitted over to Wynter and then back to me. “Good, thank you. We are undecided on our approach. If we take the track, we are most likely to be detected along the way. However, if we detour around it, we may miss any additional forces that pass on their way to Evilineton.”

I looked around, taking stock of the area. “Scavengers will find these bodies before nightfall, but from distance it may look as though they killed a few prisoners. If I am the commander of their tribe, I would send out an investigator a while after the troupe is overdue. Since they were shuttling captives, that’s probably another day or half-day on top of our own travel time. But if we leave the track, we probably lose that margin or more cutting our own trail. We may just barely reach the location before they realize there’s an issue.”

“That’s about what we were thinking, too,” said Wynter.

“I and Rendo can make our passage quicker if we choose to leave the track,” Wynter volunteered. “We’re both good woodsmen, we can find some game trails.”

I nodded. “Then I would suggest we travel several hundred meters to one side or the other, while keeping one scout close enough to be in visual range of it, and we can cycle out scouts on a one-hour basis. That way if there is a second party we will see them, and have the opportunity to react, while still making our approach. What do you think?”

Wynter was expressionless. “I am not trained militarily, I abstain.”

Sered only nodded agreement. “I’m not a general.”

“Good enough with that sword, though,” I said. “I wasn’t a general either, if that helps.”

He actually smiled at that. It was faint, just a hint of the corners of his mouth ticking up for a second. But I counted it. “My skill with this weapon doesn’t make me an expert strategist.”

“When you guys are done talking about the merits of your training,” Wynter said, “I think Az has a point.”

“So we shadow the track and proceed?” Sered asked.

“Yes, Nix will be ready in a little while, she’s…preoccupied.” I looked back over my shoulder to see Nix struggling to cut something free. Something I didn’t really care to view for myself.

Sered frowned. “Plenty of chances for that business at the end of this trip, I think.” He started to walk over to Nix himself, leaving Wynter and I alone.

“I think I need a drink,” I said, and headed back to my horse. As I did, Wynter followed a few steps behind.

I pulled a wineskin from my bags and took a few gulps from it. This was burjhack, stopped after half-fermenting with nitrites, sweet and light. I offered the skin to Wynter, who looked calmly at it before shaking his head.

“Wine and I do not get along,” he said.

I shrugged while putting the stopper back in. “Shame, that. I don’t usually drink it, it’s either a good beer or a spirit. I was surprised that I liked this one so much. So you don’t drink at all? Even for desire?”

“I remember liking it, everything just gives me bad digestion now. So the others told you, did they?”

I nodded. “Yes, Rendo and I talked about it some days back at Orandor’s.”

“Good. I’m sorry I didn’t come to you myself. I am a bit more private these days. I don’t know how long this will last, and I don’t want to get close to anyone else.”

“So you didn’t really want this, then?”

“No, I didn’t have any idea this was even going to happen to me.”

“That’s doubly strange.”

“You’re telling me. Not eating or drinking makes it even more so, but they make me throw up, or worse if they make their way through.”

I tried not to imagine an undead being sick to the stomach or having a bout of dysentery.

Once Rendo returned and Nix got herself cleaned up, we all mounted and took our bearing towards the smoke that designated what we assumed would be our destination.

We crossed the rest of the meadow and passed into the wood, a dark accumulation of trees that soon cast shadow almost as deep as night. Even the birds were subdued in there, and the hooves of our mounts fell gently on the floor of dark green mosses and old leaves. The smell of fresh green combined with the earthy scent of mushrooms permeated the air in there, and had I not been on mission I have to say I might have paused to spend a few days enjoying the ambiance. It certainly helped to clear the smell of blood from my nose after the fight.

We crossed two small streams, channels bubbling along rounded stones revealed by their passage. They were of grey granite, with green coatings built up over years of submersion. We refilled our water both times, and gave our horses time to drink. I thought I heard an owl at one point, screeching in the distance, but mostly what we heard were small songbirds or the occasional huff of a crow.

We encountered no enemy along the way, which is about what I expected, and by midafternoon of the next day we’d reached close enough to the source that we had to tie up our mounts and proceed on foot to maintain stealth.

This region seemed natural for giants such as those we’d seen – primitives, not the cultured Cloud-dwellers or the ancient Stone giants. No, this land would be native to tribal hill giants, barely capable of rudimentary agriculture and more given to raiding to procure their needs than to providing for themselves.

Some time later we pulled up to a halt. “This is confusing,” Nix whispered while we all took stock of what we were seeing.

We had found a clearing in the forest, freshly felled stumps scattered around an area perhaps two hundred meters across. A few giant-sized huts were built haphazardly here and there, and at the center of the clearing was a huge lodge.

“This is no forward settlement, they’re here to stay.” She said. “But this just doesn’t make any sense – even giants would have put together a series of buildings, a small town or village, before building a lodge like this one.” She scratched her chin with a stick she’d picked up.

The lodge was really almost a fortress – fortified walls, stone bases, there was nothing at all temporary about this thing. Multiple chimneys along its length leaked smoke from the interior, and all along its length the wall stopped some few feet short of the roof, enabling ventilation. The smell was permeable across the distance, a musty odor, like mushrooms gone rank.

“Definitely not the primitive kind of place I would have expected from those,” I thumbed over my shoulder.

Sered nodded. “Yeah, this looks pretty fancy,” said Rendo.

Just outside the wide front doors stood a single giant flanked by a pair of ogres. Unlike giants, ogres never get more than about ten feet in height, and are fabulously stupid brutes. Misshapen humanoid forms, they don’t benefit from a giant’s hugely thick skeleton, but what they have is muscle. A lot of it. Normally ogres live solitary lives in terrain like this or in rocky mountains, but it was not unusual to see them employed by giants like this. Even the Arrol occasionally used them as beasts of burden and emergency backup for their infantry. Had used, I reminded myself.

Nix paused with the scratching. “The chieftain of such a tribe wouldn’t have started with this, it would have been the ‘crown’ of his village. There isn’t even a perimeter wall here yet. Look around – they came here, they built this lodge, and only then did they send out any raiders to collect slaves and food.” The stick broke in her fingers.

“So he’s got his priorities out of whack,” Wynter suggested.

“No, I think Nix has a point,” I said. “This force of giants needs food, and they apparently had it from somewhere while they built this place. It would have taken them what, at least a couple of weeks to erect something like this. That’s a lot of food. And there’s no livestock here. No pigs, no cows, no nothing.”

Nix nodded. “Someone provided for them, to get this constructed. But why?”

Sered pulled aside a bit of brush for a clearer look. “Perhaps more to the point, who?”

“How many could live in there?” Wynter asked.

“We could fit a few hundred,” Rendo replied.

“Giants, you numbskull.” Wynter said while elbowing him. I wasn’t so sure whether Rendo was joking.

“Perhaps twenty?” Sered said. I could see him figuring at things. “We’ve taken out seven, and there’s one more at the door.”

“So maybe twelve inside, maybe more.” I thought it over. “Can’t say I like those odds.”

“It’s built with two levels, look towards the back there.” Nix pointed towards an extended section. “Those look like a top floor with a couple of rooms, or maybe a balcony all around the central fire-pit.”

“It’s going to be dark soon,” I said. “Should we do a little nighttime reconnoiter?”

She nodded. “Can you see in the dark?”

I shrugged. “A bit.”

Wynter grinned. “Guess we found something I can do better now.”

I looked over at him. “Really?”

He nodded. “It’s really good in moonlight, good as daylight for me. Even in pitch dark I can get some view, though not very far.”

“Now that’s fascinating,” I said.

Sered looked sour. I was beginning to think that was his natural state.

Within a little while, the giant at the door lit a large torch and buried its tip in the ground a ways out from the building. The guttering orange light gave the building a haunted look, and the gentle wind pushed the smoke up against the wall of the building in a soft caressing gesture. I could see smoke coming from the chimneys at either end of the building. Strangely, nothing emanated from the center, where I would have expected to see some.

As darkness settled into the sky above us, occasional stars began to glimmer. Wynter readied himself.

“Don’t be noticed,” Sered said. “Stay quiet.”

He didn’t grace that with an answer, just a disapproving look.

“Wood this new will be soft,” Rendo said. “Should muffle things pretty well.”

He nodded, and disappeared into the wood to our left.

Silence, in a wood, is hardly silent. Around you, except on the most still of days, you hear leaves rustling in the wind, the boles of trees creak and crack, and branches slap together occasionally. The trees are fighting amongst themselves, really. It just happens in such slow motion that most of us never notice it going on – but they’re all elbowing each other down, trying to get the best look at the sun.

In addition to the sound of the trees in their never-ending battle, insects of all sorts chirp and chitter.

And other things. Things most people would rather not think about. Many never see them. King’s Grace unto them that never do. But the forests are full of mysteries that are loathe to reveal themselves.

Rendo spoke up while we were waiting. “What if we ambush their investigation? When they send out someone to see what happened to their raiders, why don’t we jump them like we did the first ones?”

I shrugged and nodded.

“If it’s the same number or smaller, yeah,” Nix responded. Sered also grunted acknowledgement.

After a moment, an idea popped up to me. “We could just burn this place down around their ears.”

Sered shook his head. “Rendo said it earlier – new wood, and this heavy, it won’t burn easy. Even if we had napthia it’d just char the outside before burning out.”

I really felt the loss of my colleagues in the Caern Jale. “Sure wish I had some battlemages. Even a fireteam of two or three could make short work of this place.”

“But we don’t have those.” Rendo said.

“Nope.” I didn’t need the affirmation. I was just lamenting the absence.

Over the hills, the white shine of Maure’s rise began to permeate the misty air rising from the forest. Hecate’s great eye would rise soon. (Yes, we call her Hecate too, it’s the name she bore from the beginning.)

We whispered amongst ourselves for a while longer, perhaps an hour, before Wynter returned to us. He silently crept across the field and into the forest off to the side, then appeared amongst us a few minutes later.

He was grinning like a serpent when he came in, eyes cold like those of a crow.

“There are six more in there, one big one. No females, strangely. Five more ogres nesting in the common room.” He looked over to Rendo. “And trolls. Two of them.”

Rendo’s eyes flickered between us and the door of the place. He said nothing.

“The trolls are moving about, but everything else is bedded down. A couple of the giants are…particularly vulnerable.” He said.

“Something else,” Wynter continued. “There’s no central fire-pit. There’s a hole there. I didn’t follow it, but it’s at least ten, maybe fifteen feet across. Goes down at a fairly severe angle. The trolls and ogres could walk down standing up. The giants would have had to hunch.”

“Six giants, five ogres, two trolls, plus those fellows at the door,” Nix mused. “That’s still a lot.”

“Wynter, you think you could do for those couple vulnerable ones you mentioned silently?” Sered asked him while looking at the single giant at the door and his two attendants. “That’d cut the odds considerably.”

His grin showed teeth now. “I thought you’d ask me that. Already done.”

Sered’s eyes snapped straight to him. He drew in a breath to speak, then thought better of it. “Okay, good job. We’re committed now, I guess.”

“How do we take these three without alerting the rest? Is there a way, or should we consider starting inside?” I asked of everyone. “I can bolster us up, but I haven’t anything to silence this crowd.”

Nix shook her head. “Neither do I, not at the ready.”

“If we surprise those three at close range, I can probably do in an ogre with one swing.” Sered wobbled his head a little as he gauged it.

Wynter cocked his head. “If we get that close, I can do the giant, but he’ll scream.”

I’m not sure what was more unnerving. Seeing him just look things over like a bird deciding whether to eat a seed, or the calm matter-of-fact way he spoke.

I considered it. “Well, that leaves Nix, me, Sered and Rendo to finish the other ogre and anything still standing after our first attack. Let’s figure this out…assume we take then down. They’re going to alert the house, but it’ll be a few moments before they can respond. So if we hit and fade, we can fall back a bit into the forest. If they pursue, we can lead them on while softening them up with arrows and such.”

“Don’t expect them to be stupid. If they realize we’re just ranging them, they’ll fall back and hole up in there.” Wynter said.

I nodded. “We’ll have to lead them out a ways before we begin. Maybe lead them past us, and we can close the noose that way.”

Nix raised her hand. “Ogres, they can see in the dark okay. And trolls are really good. They’re going to see us right off.”

“Can they be blinded, by a bright light?” Sered asked.

Nix shrugged. “Not sure. Never tried. I can cloak the whole area there in a deeper darkness, though, one they can’t see through.”

“I don’t think it’s so much about them in the door, it’s if they come after us out here in the woods, we’re at a natural disadvantage against them. Anyway, if we’re planning to make this work, we should keep it close to the door. Out there in the dark, trip once and they’ll have us.” I looked around. “Night fighting is really terrible.”

“Not much choice, they’ll find the bodies Wynter left in there, in the morning.” Sered looked around a bit more. “I like the idea that we take out this bunch up front and then run. If they pursue, we range them as best we can. Kill the ogres first, then the giants. If the trolls come too, we’ll have to take them last, because we’ll need to burn the bodies when we’re done with them.”

Nix nodded. “Yeah, they grow back quick. If I get time, I can maybe pitch a frost on the area, which will freeze the ogres and giants if they stay in it, and will probably immobilize the trolls for a little while.”

“This is giving me a bad feeling, guys,” Rendo said, thin-lipped. “Do we really want to do this?”

I held a hand on his shoulder. “It’ll be okay. Let’s focus on the door guards first. Sered, Wynter, do you think you can approach from the rear of the place and come at them from each side? You might get a single ogre each first, then you can focus on the giant together. Depending on how that goes, you fall back to us or we come up to you.”

Sered nodded. “Yeah, I can manage that. I know he can.” He jerked his head towards Wynter, who was looking at the building.

“I’ll take the left one,” he said. “You take the right?”

He nodded at this. “We’ll need some kind of signal to coordinate. Once we get up there, can one of you strike a spark?”

Nix held up his hand. “I got it, yeah, we can do a little one here that you will see from where you will be. We’ll do two flashes – one to get ready and the second to go.”

We spoke for a few more minutes, then both Sered and Wynter vanished together.

A little while later, we saw both of them moving up on either side of the building. The rest of us had arrayed out facing the doorway, watching the bored sentinels. One ogre sat on a stump facing out near one corner on Sered’s side, while the second was rumbling some complaint at the giant some eight or ten feed from his corner. The giant stood looking down at the ogre from the door, clearly not enjoying having to speak to the creature.

Sered’s robes drifted ghost-like around him in the faint breeze, and he halted just short of the corner to raise his arm to show his readiness. From where he was, he could see the ogre ahead of him seated on its makeshift stool. Wynter crept up, almost a reflection of Sered’s appearance, he was a painted shadow against the wall of her side of the building. He flowed up to peer slowly around his corner to get her bearings on the enemy. He also raised a hand to us, the pale skin standing out like a solitary leaf on a shadowed tree.

I already had my bow ready, and raised it while Rendo and nocked an arrow and drew. Nix took her flint and steel above her head and drew them sharply, making a bright spark. Ready.

Neither the giant or the ogre it was speaking with showed any sign that they had noticed. The seated ogre, however, snapped his head directly towards Nix’s position. In the torchlight I thought I saw it squinting, peering anxiously our way. It let out a single noncommittal grunt.

Nix sparked her steel again. Go.

The seated ogre stood up, leaning forward, and was about to take a step when Sered’s long blade passed through the back of its neck with a sound reminiscent of an axe biting solidly into a tree. Its arms and legs all tensed immediately, going completely straight and stiff, which made it hop grotesquely. Its head flopped off as the body reached the apex of its little trajectory, black ichor gouting from the thick stump on its shoulders. The head fell to the ground with the sound of a cabbage, and bounced a few times as the body toppled, limbs shivering and twitching. Sered himself appeared to be floating past the body, a pale ghost with a flickering blade.

The giant and the other ogre hadn’t noticed Nix’s sparks, but the sudden death of their comrade certainly got their attention. The giant turned toward the sound, taking an uncertain step as it tried to grasp what it was seeing.

The other ogre froze in place, scratching at its chest with one hand while the other reached back to absent-mindedly bat at something behind it. A black stain was growing between its enormous pectoral muscles – the small point where Wynter’s blade had emerged after passing through the creature’s vitals. Behind it, he was swiftly twisting the long sword while stabbing repeatedly at the femoral artery of the beast’s left leg using a long dagger. At least one blow found its mark, as black blood began flowing like obscene urine down the creature’s hairy thighs.

As the ogre stumbled, he spun himself around, extracting the longsword as he did, opening another spigot of blood from the creature’s back.

He’d killed it, so silently that the giant hadn’t even noticed he was suddenly alone.

“Take his throat,” Nix said. “If you can.”

I thought she was talking to me at first, and was about to explain I wasn’t that good with my bow, when I heard Rendo mutter “Mmhmm.”

We loosed our arrows together, a flutter of dark wasps crossing the yard in a swift angry swarm. Rendo’s found it’s mark – mine went wide and buried itself in the wall of the lodge. One, just as Wynter said, through its throat; the second which followed moments later looked like it pierced its guts. My second shot entered beneath the left clavicle. The gasp of breath the creature let out was a hiss of escaping air mixed with a curdled attempt at a voice.

It staggered over, away from the wounds it had taken, up against the side of the lodge. Using its right hand to brace itself against the wall, it raised its enormous club – fully as long as I am tall – to confront the menacing spectre that it saw in Sered’s approach. Gathering itself up, it pointed the club directly at the Neff, weaving it slightly in an attempt to keep him away.

Sered’s blade had never lost much momentum, and he was swinging it wide as he moved. His feet moved almost drunkenly, the robes cascading around him. He dropped his body down close to the ground, giving his blade an upward tilt as it came about. The inexorable steel ducked under the weaving club and passed through a large portion of the giant’s wrist.

More blood. The club dropped to the ground as the giant clutched at the gouting wound. It never saw Wynter take a running approach at the wall of the lodge, three steps up the vertical to leap into the air over it. In the back of my mind, I found myself marveling that an undead could show such mobility. His longsword sank into the giant’s body between its shoulder-blade and collarbone, while his offhand dagger sank directly into the top of its skull. The huge body fell with a soft thud, a flaccid tree trunk on the mossy ground.

Both Sered and Wynter hustled back to us, and we all gathered cautiously, keeping an eye on the door.

“Well done, everyone,” Sered said. “Seems not to have raised the alarm yet.”

“So now it’s four giants, five ogres, and two trolls inside, yes?” Rendo asked, thumbing the string on his bow.

Wynter nodded. “Yes. Unless I missed any, and I didn’t miss any.”

“What if we raise the alarm ourselves?” I pondered.

“What?!?” Nix’s eyebrows almost leapt from her forehead.

“Really. What if we raised the alarm from the door here, or called their attention – we could use this as a natural bottleneck. Wynter, did this door open into the main room, or is there some sort of entryway?”

He thought about it a moment. “Pretty sure there’s no hallway. The rooms are all along the other sides.”

“Okay, so when an enemy is standing in your front door, would you guys take cover and hide, or would you throw all you have at the door?”

Wynter grinned. “I see what you mean. They don’t get a choice here – it’s an intruder, and enemy, already in the door. They have to push us out.”

I nodded. “And when they do, we back up just a bit and we kill them as they come out. Keeps their number limited, so long as we keep a cork in the bottle. Despite having the brain capacity of my left boot, they’re still very dangerous and cunning. I’d be afraid to really engage them inside there – they might have set up log-falls or other hunter-style traps in there.”

“So what do we do? Just walk up and knock on the door?” Nix was a bit nervous.

“It probably isn’t barred, we could shove it open and shoot a few if we see them. Wynter, were they roaming around in there?”

She nodded. “The trolls and a couple of ogres were moving around the far side of the building, but the rest were bedded down around the fires.”

“Wait, you’re serious?” Nix was glancing from one to the next of us. “You’re really just going to walk up and open the door?”

“You thinking of something else?” I wasn’t impatient or anything, I just wanted to know if she had a better idea. “Now that I’m thinking about it, I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty pissed off. Been eating hardtack and trail rations for what, a week and a half now? Riding these horses that long as well. Could have been having some good, cooked food in an inn with some beer, a nice bed waiting. These bastards decided to mangle that idea. I’m ready for a little payback.”

“How about we take off? What do we get by hanging around here, much less assaulting this place?” Her anxiety was growing by the minute.

I gently pulled her aside. “Hold on, calm down. We’re not charging in – we’re staying out here. Do you have any more of those big artillery-style spells?”

“One or two, yeah. It was never my specialty, but I’ve picked up a couple over time.”

“So here’s the scoop – once we open the door and stir up the hornets, they’re going to start spilling out – but we’re going to keep them cooped up for a while. Once a large number of them are clustered up, won’t that give you a perfect layup to crisp a few or whatever it is you can pull off there?”

“I don’t think…well, yeah, maybe. I guess that would work, yeah.”

“So, anyone have any objections to this?” Sered asked.

“Not any more,” Nix said.

“Just remember, everyone – don’t get caught too close up. Hit and run.” I said.

Rendo nodded. “Yeah, we’d be little toys to them if we get caught. ‘Look guys! I put one of the smallies in my pants!’ That’d be the last thing we hear when one of them sits on us.” His mockery sounded like he’d had experience with this sort of thing, so I didn’t press.

“Alright – Wynter, let’s go.” Sered and he started making their way across the ground.

I hefted my bow. “I’m going to move up a bit, I want to be able to back them up with my sword if the archery doesn’t work out.”

Nix nodded to me. She was fiddling with something in her hands and mumbling. Sounded like a prayer. Rendo had already poked a dozen arrows into the ground in front of himself, ready to fight. I saw him checking the heads of them all, making sure they were sharp and firmly attached.

Sered and Wynter reached the door, and both of them leaned heavily against the left side of the huge portal. After a few moments, with some creaking, the door slowly swung inwards. They both scrambled back once it was halfway open, drawing weapons and dodging to the side. It kept going on its own momentum until it reached a stopping point.

Nothing happened.

The two whispered amongst themselves for a second, and Wynter leaned around to peer into the dark.

Stubbornly, nothing persisted in happening.

He looked back to us for a moment, then signaled to Sered. The two of them pushed the right side of the portal open, and again hopped back to cover.

Refusing to relinquish its primacy, nothing insisted on happening again.

They conferred again, with a few hand gestures, and eventually Wynter crept ahead into the dark.

“What in the hells is he doing?” Rendo whispered.

“Not sure, but I suspect he’s kicking the hornet’s nest.” I responded.

A few moments passed before Sered, the impatience showing in his twitchy movements, followed into the cavernous entryway. He vanished into the dark.

(All content here, outside of those elements attributed otherwise, is copyright (2025-) Thomas Theobald. With the exception of AI training, personal use with attribution is granted.)